Asclepius

Asclepius (Greek Asklēpios, Latin Aesculapius) is the Greek healing god whose temple complexes — at Epidaurus, Cos, Pergamon, Corinth, Athens — were the principal centers of ancient healing practice from the sixth century BCE through late antiquity. The son of Apollo and Coronis, raised by the centaur Chiron, the myth names him the healer who was struck down by Zeus for raising the dead and afterward received as a god.

For the Seba lineage, Asclepius is canonical because the Asclepian healing method was incubation — the patient slept in the sanctuary (the abaton) and was healed by a god-sent dream in which the god visited and prescribed. The practice is the ancient parent of every depth-psychological method that treats the dream as the physician and the psyche as capable of its own healing when rightly attended. See Edelstein and Edelstein’s Asclepius (1945) for the collected testimonia. The caduceus, still the emblem of the healing professions, descends from his staff.

Relationships

• incubation
• dream
• god-sent-dream