WineOlive oilA weight carried for someone elseIncenseFirst fruits
Invocation Approach
Tone
Grave and steady
Address
AtlasSky-BearerEnduring One
Relationship
The one who holds what he did not choose
Warning
He is under no obligation to lighten your load
Resonance
Carers the long term ill those who hold a household up
Symbols
The heavensThe pillarsThe globeThe mountainsThe pleiades
Mythology Summary
Atlas is the Titan son of Iapetus and Clymene, brother of Prometheus, condemned after the Titanomachy to hold up the sky, the heavens and not the earth, for eternity. He is father of the Pleiades and the Hyades and in some telling of Calypso, and Heracles meets him on the road to the Hesperides and takes the burden from him for a while. Perseus turns him to stone with the Gorgon's head and the Atlas mountains are the result, a local aetiology rather than the main myth. He is endurance without reprieve: the punishment is not pain but permanence.
Modern Practice
Atlas is worked with by people carrying a load that has no visible end: carers, the long-term ill, those who hold a household together. The practice is not to ask for relief but to make the standing bearable, and the offering is shared because the carrying is.