When God Is Really Love: Unveiling The Goddess Aphrodite

We are too inclined to think of Aphrodite as a trinket as if she were a decorative accessory. She appears seductive, vain, unserious; and yet, we know that the ancient Greeks took beauty very seriously.

When Pythagoras first called the universe a kosmos, he did so because he saw in it the embodiment of both order and beauty. The goddess of beauty personifies the embedded beauty of our universe and beauty’s endless dance with its order, the truth of the universe.
She is the Lover Goddess and she tells the story of life as a love story.

Love is no trinket either. Indeed, Aphrodite cuts a colossal figure! At once tender, terrifying and transformative, her crown is in heaven; her feet walk upon the earth; and she plummets broken-hearted into the underworld—as low down as her heavenly ascent is high. Given that her underground and heavenly aspects were taken off the table in the Classical era, we must piece her full portrait together from local cults, pre-Homeric verse, Platonic dialogue, and Pythagorean symbology.

With the method and magic of comparative mythology, we can trace her back to her powerful Eastern roots and further back yet to the Neolithic Great Goddess. We can also trace her forward from Greece to Alexandrian and Roman initiatory rites, and to the Roman Venus whom the Renaissance would come to recognize as the source energy of all art.

Today, Aphrodite emerges unconsciously in the images, slogans, wishes and, indeed, the fundamental energy propelling the woman-led revolution in Iran.

Aphrodite is life-giver, energizer, transformer, healer, as well as death-wielder and initiator into the mysteries. Who among us has not been seduced, propelled, abducted, destroyed, and recreated anew by the irresistible goddess who wills wonders with her golden laughter?

December 10, 2022

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