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AmberLou2 
Village Jester
Posts: 153
(3/5/04 11:31 pm)
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Aphrodite
Aphrodite-Passion
Aphrodite is often called the goddess of love, but that is too ambiguous a word to define her. For there are many different kinds of love, including those that Aprodite does not rule. She is not the goddess of happy domesticity, although some who adore her can find that. Nor is she the goddess partnership. Her domain is not that of loving parents and siblings, nor friends who respect each other, No: Aphrodite rules physical attraction. It is too coarse to just call her the goddess of lust or even sex, for physical passion can stir us when we look at splendid art ot at nature's magnificence. Nor can we simply say that Aphrodite is the goddess of beauty, as we define it today-a checklist of visual attributes.
If Aphrodite is not these, who is she? She is served by handmaidens called the Graces, and sometimes she is called the chief Grace. And that is her secret: she is the goddess of gracefulness, of that which draws us to be closer, of whatever pulls is nearer to itself. She can be found in the fragrance of a summer rose as much as in the drooping eyelids of an attractive stranger. She is in the brilliant night sky, for which she is sometimes called Urania, as well as in the curving bodies of entwined lovers. She is a mythic symbol of all that binds us together-with each other, with our world, with the cosmos.
Her myths, as one would expect, emphasize her connection to live and sexuality. Born from sea foam impreganated by heaven, Aphrodite floated ashore on the islands near Greece, where she was greated by the lovely maidens called the Graces, who fressed teh goddess in attire worthy of her beauty and who became her constant compainions. She married Hephaestus, the crippled god of smithcraft, but Aphrodite could not be contained in a single relationship and spread her favors liberally among divine and mortal males.
The most famous-perhaps notorious-of Aphrodite's affairs were those with Are and with the beautiful young Adonis. She carried on scandalously and publicly with Ares, the god of war. All heaven knew of their assignations except the goddess's consort. When someone finally tattled to him, Hephaestus was humiliated. He retaliated as only a smith could do: he fashioned a mesh of gold in which he caught the lovers in flagrante and displayed them for all to see. Ares and Aphroditewere the laughingstock of heaven then, naked and damp, their limbs entangled in each other's and in the golden web that held them.
As for Adonis, it was said that Aphrodite fell in love with his youthful beauty and hid him in a chest that she gave for safekeeping to the underworld queen Persephone. But Prsephone peeked inside to see what treasure she was guarding and, smitten, refused to give Adonis back to Aphrodite. Kingly Zeus, called in to arbitrate, ruled that Adonis would thereafter live one-third of each year by himself, one-third with Persphone, and the remaining one-third with Aphrodite. Each year, Adonis was killed while hunting a wild bore, and his spilled blood turned the river named for him red. Each year, then, the goddess mourned the loss of her beloved, and each year rejoiced when he was restored to her.
Given her centerality in human life, we should no be surprised that Aphrodite makes appearances in many other myths and spics. There is the story of the judgement of Paris: when the golden apple of discord, inscribed "To the Fairest," was tossed into an assembly of goddesses, Aphrodite was one of the claimants (the others being Hera, and Athena) and, bribing the Trojan shepherd Paris with the love of the beautiful Helen, won the prize-and started the Trojan War. There is the story of Aeneas, the Trojan prince who founded Rome: son of Aphrodite, he followed her bidding in founding the imperial city, even though it meant abandoning the loving queen Dido of Africa. There is the story which, transmuted by George Bernard Shaw into the tale of Henry Higgins and the guttersnipe Eliza Doolittle, is perhaps the most famous of Aphrodite's myths today: how Pygmalion, a sculptor, insulted the goddess by falling in love with one of his own statues in stead of mating with a living woman, and how she won him to her was by enlivening the statue, who became Pygmalion's lover Galatea. In all her myths, Aphrodite is the force of attraction and connection, of passion and of the juiciest form of love. Such love can grow and become lasting, but that's not Aphrodite's concern. Broken hearts? Ruined lives? Troy in flames? Not her problem. Aphrodite doesn't care about consequences, so long as there is passion. This goddess can be a trouble maker-but how dry our lives would be without her!
Symbols of Aphrodite
What does not represent Aphrodite? Anything that moves or grows, anything that blooms or flourishes, anything beautiful and shining-the symbols of Aphrodite are myraid.
Flowers are especially sacred to the goddess of love, as merchants even today recognize. And why not? Flowers are the sexual organs of plants. Thus Aphrodite is shown in art holding, wearing, stepping on, or surrounded by flowers. The lily, poppy, myrtle, narcissus, and crocus are among the flowers sacred to her. But no flower appears more consistently associated with Aphrodite than the rose. Fragrant, beautiful, and vivid, it still symbolizes passionate love today. The red rose-as courting lovers know-especially signifies Aphrodite, being the color of the heart's blood.
Fruit, too, is a symbol of Aphrodite's power, for she is the goddess who, drawing bees to flowering branches, creates the bountiful harvest. Among fruits, the pomegranate (shared with several other goddesses, including Hera, and Persephone) and the apple (shared with Hera and the goddess of discord, Eris) are her special favorites. Trees that give forth fragrance, like murrh and cinnamon, also are sacred to her.
As she is a sea-born goddess, water is naturally a symbol of Aphrodite, especially salt water; all the salty fluids of our bodies are similarly unuder her domain. Pearls, born in water, are a perfect emblem for Aphrodite. Similarly, waterbirds appear as the goddess's servants. Geese, ducks, and swans are some of her symbols; sometimes she rides on them, sometimes they are yoked like horses to a chariot that bears her. A few non-aquatic birds are also associated with her-especially the sparrow, who was thought by the Greeks to be especially sexually active.
Of all symbols of Aphrodite, however, the one most consistently associated with her gold-not just yellow metal, but goldness as a quality of light. She is often called "the golden one," or simply, "the golden." In veryancient times, Aphrodite was connected with the sun and the dawn, whose golden light she embodies. Although we now connect love with the night, this goddess reminds us that we are beautiful-she is always described and depicted as wearing golden jewelry-but Aphrodite's real gold is found in the graceful movements of lovers toward each other.
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Cara2000
New Student/Teachers Apprentice
Posts: 18
(6/2/04 7:01 am)
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Re: Aphrodite
this is a small reserach about Aphrodite I gathered for my mythology class.
In greek myhology, Aphrodite is the goddess of love, sexual rapture and beauty, identified with the Roman Goddess Venus.
According to Homer, she was the daughter of Zeus and Dione the oak goddess. However her being an Olympian was accepted only in a few areas because according to Hesiod the poet, she was born when Uranus(father of the gods) was castrated by his son Cronus who threw the severed genitals into the ocean. Her name literally means foam-born because she rose from the aphros ("sea foam").
According to Homer, after her birth, Zeus married her to the steady smith god Hephaestus who could hardly believe his good luck and used all his skills to make the most lavish magic girdle for her; when she wore it no one could resist her. She was constantly unfaithful and they had no children. Her favorite consort was the god Ares (Mars, Adonis) with whom she bore Deimos, Phobos, Harmonia, Hyppolite, and possibly Eros and Anteros. She is accompanied by the Graces. In The Odyssey of Homer, Aphrodite and Ares secretly sleep together in the bed of her husband Hephaestus. Helios, the sun, secretly observed the lovers and told Hephaestus. The smith went to his work and devised fastenings that would hold the lovers in an unbreakable trap. The careless lovers fell into the trap and Hephaestus stood before the other Olympians and demanded his gifts of courtship to be returned. Apollo asked Hermes how he would feel in such a situation. Hermes answered that he would suffer thrice the number of bonds if only he could share the bed of Aphrodite the Golden.
Most worshipped on the island of Cyprus, in her Paphos and Amathus temples. There, she was associated with fertility prostitution and seafaring. Her priestesses were not prostitutes but women who represented the goddess and sexual intercourse with them was considered a method of worship. Aphrodite was originally an older-Asian goddess, similar to Ishtar and Ashtart. Her attributes are the dolphin, the dove, the swan, the goose and the sparrow the pomegranate and the lime and the myrtle trees. Her colors are pink and red and her day of the week is Friday.
Aphrodite involved herself often with mortal issues. She is also said to have caused the Trojan War. When the hero Peleus was married to the sea-nymph Thetis, all the gods were invited to the ceremony but one. That goddess maliciously deposits a golden apple on the banquet table. The fruit was inscribed with the words "For the fairest". Immediately all the goddesses began to argue which one of them was entitled to the apple. The dispute was put to arbitration and the designated judge was the most handsome mortal in the world, the Trojan youth named Paris, who was serving as a shepherd. So the three finalists, Aphrodite, Hera and Athena sought him out. The three goddesses proceeded to offer bribes. Hera, Queen of Olympus, took Paris aside and told him she would help him rule the world. Athena, goddess of war, said she would make him victorious in battle. Aphrodite sized Paris up and decided he would be more impressed with the guaranteed love of the most beautiful woman in the world. This was Helen, who happened to be married to the king of Sparta. Paris awarded the golden apple to Aphrodite, who in turn enabled him to elope with Helen, famously known as Helen of Troy. Helen's husband and his brother raised a Greek army to retrieve his wife, and this was the inception of the Trojan War.
Another occasion in which she aided a mortal also involved golden apples. When the mighty heroine Atalanta agreed to wed whatever suitor won against her in a foot race, Aphrodite favored one of the contestants with by strewing enchanted apples on the race course, which caused Atalanta to be distracted and lose the race.
In classical art she has no distinctive attributes other than her beauty. Flowers and vegetation motifs suggest her connection to fertility.
in Love and Light
Cara
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