welcome to love and ether This is the priestess of Aphrodite training that I have developed uh over the course of being a devote and priestess of Aphrodite for the last 16 years of my life And um here's a list of all the supplies you'll need during the course of the training I sent around an email with um some places that you might want to get those um supplies but you can also just get them on your own You'll need a beeswax candle You need a special chalice or wine glass or a bowl that you like to put your offerings in You'll want a small jar of honey some rose oil a piece of rose quartz You'll need some gold satin cord or even like a gold belly chain because we're going to make a special belt A compact or a small handheld mirror Olive oil Sea salt Kolin clay which is just basically like um the kind of clay that we get for beauty products Rose water which you can get at a grocery store and a special lipstick or lip balm that you'll consecrate to Aphrodite So these are some of the things you'll need as we're going along I just wanted to make sure everyone has a list of those Here are our classes And I apologize that there was a mistake in the emails that I sent but we actually do meet at 11:00 a.m and then on on Saturdays and at 6:00 p.m on Tuesdays for these classes and they're always recorded You can always watch later Um here's a helpful bibliography if you are interested in learning more about Aphrodite and studying some of the books that I've studied These this is like my short list of the ones that I've found to be the most succinct and helpful about Aphrodite And you'll get this list of resources And then here is a printable version of the sibilene hymn to Aphrodite uh which we will be reciting in each class And for all those who decide to take vows to Aphrodite and commit to her I do recommend that over time you uh do your best to memorize it It's a very potent powerful prayer It's wonderful to be able to recite this prayer at sacred sites that you might go to or in rituals that you might want to do So let me just pause my recording for a second so I can toggle over to the other screen So now let's get into today's class Um we open our love and ether training at each class with the sibilene hymn to Aphrodite Ethereal illustrious laughing queen born of the sea and lover of the night mother of longing all connecting who joins the world in harmony All things spring from you oh divine power The triple fates are ruled by your decree All the works of craft and love yield to your hand With a smile O Aphrodite you sway the all encircling heavens the fruitful earth and the storming oceans All obey you All are awed by you Companion of the broomal god Beautiful goddess of marriage Mother of love Lover of the banquet Source of persuasion who grants secret favors Illustrious born seen and unseen Gentle lover Luprical who smiles upon upon mortals Prolific most desired lifegiver Kind goddess Wielder of the scepter of all the immortals You bind mortals and every tribe of beasts in magic chains of mad desire Come lovely Kiprien and bless these rights Whether radiant in the heavens or presiding in the temples of Syria guiding your golden chariot over the sacred floods of Egypt or dancing on the azure shores by billowing seas with circling choirs of mortals and beautious nymphs with cerulean eyes or riding out along the dusty banks renowned of old or if in Cyprus Kippris with your fair mother where married women yearly come to praise you and the pure virgins sing hymns to you and to Adonis Come divine union for you I call with holy reverent mind And if you have offerings to make um normally going forward we'll take this moment to consecrate our offerings You might have a flower or a candle that you want to light like I'll light a candle today And you can also have a cup of water or chalice of water or of wine or of rose water You can float a flower in your cup if you wish Up to you But we'll be making offerings of some form at every session So Empeticles um wrote "The force that unites the elements to become all things is love also called Ephrodite Love brings together dissimilar elements into a unity to become a composite thing Love is the same force that human beings find at work in themselves whenever they feel joy love and peace Strife on the other hand is the force responsible for the dissolution of the one back into its many the four elements of which it was composed And this speaks to Aphrodite and the power of love as the great binding agent that brings together the disperate elements and causes them to be inspirited So that the um the fire the water the earth and the air each of which has its own separate function and identity all cohhere into one thing under the the veil of quintessence or sometimes known as uh ether which is that mysterious fifth element I call that fifth element love devotion It is the thing that brings everything together and gives it life And today we honor Aphrodite as Urania She who is the vessel into which we pour our devotion And I thought today I'd sing this song to you which I wrote Um and it's uh this is a depiction of Aphrodite standing on the back of a tortoise It's from the 2nd to 3rd century um that it was found in the temple of Artemis in the chapel of Aphrodite in Syria and is now in the Louvre And we'll talk more about Aphrodite standing on this tor tortoise in a moment But I thought I would just share this song with you that I wrote for her Uh because you will be invited to write a prayer or song for her as well I am devoted to love I am a vessel of love I carry love wherever I go Hey Hey Hey And in holding love I love all for we are one And in holding love I love all for we are one I am a being of love I am a creature of love I am a lover mind body and soul Hey hey hey And in being love I love all for we are one And in being love I love all for we are one I am a servant of love I am in service to love [Music] I am her priestess day after day Hey And in loving her I love all for we are one And in loving her I love all for we are one Hey Hey Hey So there are two spellings for our epithet today Urania Sometimes it has an O sometimes just a U The U tends to be the Greek spelling The U tends to be the um Roman spelling or Latinate spelling And basically they translate as the same thing which is the queen of heaven or the heavenly one And this is a version of Aphrodite that actually predates Zeus So there are a couple different creation myths of Aphrodite none of which is definitive One is the belief that um Kronos the father of Zeus ca uh cut off the genitals of his father Uranos and then cast them into the sea with the help and support of his mother Ya or we say Gaia And that the reason for this was that Uranos was devouring all of his children So Ya would give birth and Uranos would devour the child And that then after Kronos uh cut off Uranos uh uh genitals that then um his own children were liberated and Ya stopped being in the story um assaulted by Uranos Then in a later story Zeus cuts off the genitals of his father Kronos and kills him and throws them into the sea Sometimes um it's believed that Aphrodite is born from this act of violence Other times it's believed that she is the child of the union of um Zeus and um uh a a consort and in other cases she has no birth story but she's depicted as coming over the sea from Asia Minor into the Greek world So this is the form of Aphrodite that would have been considered heavenly cosmic planetary distant and remote She doesn't get involved too much in the affairs of humans in like our day-to-day lives She's not um like one that you would make offerings of wine or anything that is considered uh to be a um intoxicant She didn't like intoxicants She is the shining beacon She is the starry heaven She is representative of the veiled woman which means the um woman who represents the domestic sphere in Greek society So this is a kind of chasteed Aphrodite It is um a form of Aphrodite that is not engaged in all of the pleasures and sensuality and lentiousness and hedenism that most of the other epithets are associated with like we're going to get into filopanos pandemos filamdes genitalis and other epithets which are far more related to Aphrodites worldly pleasures But this is like Aphrodite as the High Priestess card in the tarot Remote removed She's not here to solve your problems for you She's here to be a beacon and a guide She's here to be the assurance of fidelity in marriage And she also is related to women's enclosure which is originally for protection and later becomes for the suppression of feminine um power during the comparably patriarchal Greek and Greco Roman periods This version of Aphrodite is actually closely related to the Cyian goddess Arhimpasa who is also considered to not like intoxicants or um you know she's into religious ecstasy but not necessarily intoxicants the Phoenician Estarte the Friian Cabel the Persian Anahita the Armenian Anahit All of these are um at at the places where they were worshiped When Aphrodite shows up to these places um she is synretized with all of them So Aphrodite Urania is often depicted with animals or with the world And this represents um symbolically kind of this role Aphrodite and the swan This is a form of urania that was found in 400 60 B.CE on the island of roads And the swan symbolizes Aphrodite as patronists of the arts and creativity Also Aphrodite Urania as the diver the guide and the protector The swan as you know is a very competitive animal If you go near a swan's babies you are going to see the fierce mother warrior protector in the female swan And so this depiction of Aphrodite riding upon the back of a swan isn't only about the swan's grace and beauty but is also about fierce protection and relates to the arts relates her to Apollo who is the patron of the arts the patron of music and harmony and Aphrodite alongside the swanlike Apollo is the um representative of that We also see Aphrodite and the swan as a relationship between Aphrodite and Zeus Zeus never rapes Aphrodite It's one of the goddesses that he does not assault and instead sometimes he's her father and sometimes he's her protector Then we have Aphrodite standing upon the turtle This is the closeup of that statue that we saw earlier This is um made this statue was made um in the style of the Greek sculptor Fidius in about 420 B.CE And it symbolizes Aphrodite as the veiled one And the veil is kind of like the little nomad tent that travels with women everywhere they go in the Greco Roman ancient world One of the things that modern folks talk about about veiling is that it's been used as a suppressive element for women's power And I won't disagree that when veiling is mandated by any culture like as you must do this or else you're going to face consequences it is always an act of suppression of women But in the ancient world and certainly in the preatriarchal times which um you know women still wore veils then in those cases the women's veil was a symbol of her protection It said to the world this woman no matter where she goes bears the protection of her ancestors her spirits The spirit of her house comes with her wherever she goes and protects her wherever she goes She is worthy of respect She is worthy of protection And it was to convey that idea So some women who veil today myself included veil in that spirit in the spirit of I am veiled because my veil is a symbol of my domestic sphere wherein I have the protection of my ancestors and all my spirits coming with me wherever I go Finally we see in this Macedonian coin from about 300 B.CE CE um Aphrodite seated upon the globe She is literally sitting on top of the world and this symbolizes her dominion over the earth and all its elements She is that which brings together the earth the air the fire and the water all the directions all the states of being and all times and through her divine love makes this world a beautiful place to live So getting a little deeper into this idea of the tortoise and the veil Um this is in the A altes museum in Berlin This statue is from the about 420 BCE It's from Athens It's a replica carved of that statue by Fidius And so we see it here Um and we also see it here with the tortoise under her foot Um there were numerous replicas of this statue that were made And you know this is just kind of a little further explation And I won't read it all to you but some women are passionately against the veil passionately against head covering Understandably so because like in America as women we have been taught that freedom is to wear what you want and do what you want and dress how you want And that you know after patriarchal years of women being mandated to wear and dress a certain thing even up to and including in the 20th century the expectation that women would always wear high heels and panty hoes and a skirt to their office jobs or to other types of jobs no matter how impractical that uniform was how uncomfortable it might have been The idea of a woman forced to wear a business suit made of polyester to go to an office job and sit under fluorescent lights is a similar enclosure But we don't necessarily always see it that way What we see as western women often in the veil is this exotic form of patriarchy But we have our own domestic forms of patriarchal compulsory dress And in some cultures women feel that the veil is actually a symbol of protection and respect and they like to wear it So I think allowing for our minds to be open to say for the woman who says I choose the veil because it suggests that I am modest and I cover my body and my body isn't on display it is for who I choose to give it to from my own empowerment is a different form of modesty than enforced modesty Um and the um protection you know the veil I will say the veil protects me from sun and dirt when I especially when I'm traveling all around different places I'll tell you I love that I wear a head covering and will often veil myself even more than I do when I'm at home because just the dirt of the road and you just don't want to feel grimy and you don't want your hair to feel dirty or and you don't want your hair to have like a smoky cigarette smell or whatever So that's another reason why a woman might choose to veil Um it does sometimes cannote financial or marital status like in ancient times many women who veiled were veiling to protect and shield themselves from the sun Um because to have the privilege of staying out of the harshness of the sun meant that you had a certain amount of financial support often related to being married or having um you know a a patron who provided for you whether that was because you were a cortisan who was financially kept by a patron or whether that was because you were married and you had a a partner that paid for everything And then of course there are those of us who veil as a symbol of our devotion So I just invite a kind of an introspection into the meaning of the veil When it's compulsory when it's demanded when it's patriarchally enforced it is not a symbol of freedom But when it is chosen and worn from devotion or worn from a sense of agency over one's own body I think it is a symbol of liberation and that there are probably a lot of women in America who would happily trade in high heels panty hoes and polyester suits for a beautiful draped linen calf tan with a matching veil that had sparkles on it to lounge around in the house and live a life of luxury So I just invite us to kind of think about that because that is one of the more uranian aspects of Aphrodite Now this is a photo that I took of the altar of Aphrodite Urania It's in the ancient Agora in Athens near the temple of Hephestus Actually a beautifully preserved um hilltop temple This sanctuary of Aphrodite um we know existed as late as the 2n century uh in the common era because of the writings of Panaganius He describes it in his narrative as he transitions from talking about the temple of Hephus um on the Colonos Agorios which is the western hill of the Agora toward the Athenian Agora which was like a busy marketplace and to this day is still a busy marketplace with tons of little street vendors So like between this hilltop shrine of Hephestus and then the busy marketplace below you have this chamber this this altar that was for Aphrodite Urania And this is what he writes He says nearby is a sanctuary of the Aphrodite Urania Among the Athenians the cult was established by Agus who thought that he was childless and at the time he had no children and that his sisters had suffered their misfortune because of the wrath of Aphrodite Urania Behind the portico is a temple of Aphrodite The goddess in the temple they call heavenly Urania She is of ivory She was not carved from elephant ivory This is his description of probably something akin to the Peran marble which is white with a bluish vein running through it um from the island of Paros and gold the work of Fidius this famous sculptor and she stands with one foot upon the turtle The meaning of the turtle I leave to those who care to guess So Paganius is sort of being a little tongue and cheek here He describes the setting and that behind this main altar or around this main altar there was a small temple and that this small temple was at the foot of um the Hephestus temple which is quite large and between the hephus temple and the agora Now in the ancient world um we don't actually see official temple prostitution in the vast majority of Aphrodites temples but there is one acroorinth where there were temple prostitutes plying their wares both within and outside of the temple However at most of the ancient temples of the world there would be a busy marketplace and agora outside of that temple where vendors would have everything They would be selling chickens They would be selling cows and goats to be ritually sacrificed They'd be selling clothing and fabric They'd be selling jewelry They'd be selling um you know the things that you would need in or you know incense and unuent and candles and torches the things you would need to carry out your ritual So that you would walk through the agora in pro procure all the items you needed then go into the temple complex perform your offerings perform your rituals receive your divinations pay the price for whatever it was that you had received and then you would exit back out often through the agora where just like today you exit through the gift shop Now you can go and buy a little special momento or you can go out there and if you've been told to practice clutammancy you can go out there and listen You know you ask a question of the deity when you're in the temple and then you walk out into the busy marketplace with your hands over your ears and then you uncap your ears and listen for whatever message was offered in the moment from what you overhear Um so the agora is where we would see numerous cortisans and um you know everyday prostitutes plying their trade in the marketplace So a lot of times when we hear about temple prostitution um for Aphrodite it's actually not happening inside the temple It's happening in the agora around the temple And so this shrine of Urania is like the bridge between these two worlds The busy marketplace of the agora with all everything for sale that you can imagine under the sun And then the temple of Hephus who would not have appreciated his wife's prostitution or cortisan arts So Hephus as we know was a kind of a jealous husband He wanted to catch Aphrodite in the act of cheating on him with Aries And so he devised a special net that trapped them and humiliated his wife in front of all the gods for cheating on him Um Hephestus you know was protective and possessive So it makes a lot of sense that this sort of chased form of Aphrodite would be the one that's at his temple between his temple and the agora which was very much a pandemos sphere and we'll talk more about that in another class Uh Plutarch writes Fidius represented the Aphrodite of the aliens stepping on a turtle as a symbol for women for women of staying home and keeping silent So by the 2n century CE whatever former meaning Aphrodite standing on the turtle might have meant which could have included her coming over the sea from Cyprus to the mainland or coming from Asia Minor to the Greek mainland by the 2 century CE What it means is women in the house women covered up women's silence women's um lack of agency So I think it's interesting that in a way regardless of how this symbol of the tortoise started and how Urania started as this like woman who is whole free traveling journeying adventuring by the 2 century CE under the Greek interpretation it is enclosure something akin to um footbinding um something akin to um you know being in uh you know kept in one's place I feel that the original meaning of Aphrodeti standing on the tortoise jives with a lot of other world myths which are um you know common to India to China to North American indigenous beliefs to numerous other places where the foot standing on the back of the turtle is similar to the goddess seated on the globe She is the she holds dominion over the earth So we have an ancestrus that we honor every single uh week or every single class in this class Um and so today we are starting strong with Safo I think that can hardly be argued that there is a better known devote of Aphrodite than the poet Safo who was um bisexual from the island of Lesbos who was a devote of love in all its forms And this is one of her poems Deathless Aphrodite of the spangled mind child of Zeus who twists lures I beg you do not break with hard pains oh lady my heart but come here if ever before you caught my voice far off and listening left your father's golden house and came yoking your chariot and fine birds brought you quick sparrows over the black earth whip whipping their wings down the sky through midair they arrive But you oh blessed one smiled in your deathless face and asked what now again I have suffered and why now again I am calling out and what I want to happen most of all in my crazy heart Whom should I persuade now again to lead you back into her love who oh Safo is wronging you for if she flees soon she will pursue If she refuses gifts rather will she give them If she does not love soon she will love even unwilling Come to me now Loose me from hard care And all my heart longs to accomplish accomplish You be my ally So in this we see Aphrodite um you know being spoken about and then spoken as and then spoken to So first we see an you know Safo describing a Aphrodite as child of Zeus Then we see her addressing Aphrodite directly to you Don't break my heart Please come help me Be my ally Leave your father's house come here listen to me at my shrine A and here you come And now I hear you arriving And this is a a kind of a contrivance within epic Greek poetry of describing the arrival of the deity It is a form of invocation to do this to describe the arrival of the deity Then we see you oh blessed one smiled in your deathless face and asked "And now we hear the voice of Aphrodite what now again have I suffered and what and why now again I am calling out?" And now she's sort of saying "And to whom should I persuade now again to lead you back into her love who oh Safo is wronging you?" And you hear this kind of humor in Aphrodite's voice like again you have me coming here again from heaven I'm I'm heavenly Aphrodite I am not here for your petty problems But since you called me and I came I will help you Sappo Don't worry about it She will love you again even if she doesn't want to even if she doesn't you know and we might not love this because there's definitely something here about you know like Aphrodite bending the consent of the other person and compelling the other person to love Safo But there's also a lesson in it which is to say at the end come to me now loose me from hard care and all my heart longs to accomplish accomplish You be my ally where Safo kind of accepts that maybe what she wanted you know someone to be compelled to love her isn't actually the whole prize It's actually that having Aphrodite as her heart's ally is the prize here And so there it sort of you know the poem takes us around to the other end It takes us to this place where you know we are with Sappo We understand that safo is not just it's not just about getting this one person to love me It's not about compelling someone against their will It's actually that inviting Aphrodite and having her actually show up for you is the prize itself So let's talk a little more about Safo She was born on the island of Lesbos around 6:30 B.CE She is considered one of the most significant female poets in the ancient world at and and it's not just that her poetry is regarded later by historians theologians and um you know uh people who study the creative arts It's that actually at the time Safo was quite famous She was well known in the ancient Greco Roman and Anatolian world She wrote about love longing the beauty of the natural world her intense devotion to Aphrodite and she frequently mentions Aphrodite in her poetry We know that she mentions Aphrodite in numerous of the existent fragments and also that she's talked about in ancient texts as being a writer for Aphrodite Um she believed that poetry itself the writing of sacred lyrics was a form of worship Her writing often talked about romantic love and longing And she also wrote autobiographically which gives us this window into her freedom She had um amazing freedom in terms of she was able to travel she was able to have lovers The island of Lesbos was a much more progressive place than ancient Athens And this was true of many of the far-flung colonies like basically uh roads Lesbos Deos Paros uh Cree Cyprus they all have unique interpretations of Aphrodite that are um a lot less restrictive than the Athenian Aphrodite So when we as a modern western audience are taught about Aphrodite as um kind of this like you know blonde Barbie doll jealous bitter a little bit costic a little bit difficult Um you know that's not actually her main form That's just the form that's been handed down to us by henistic myth But there are many versions of Aphrodite that we will be exploring in this class that are not like that at all that are clever cunning smart secretive in charge uh of influence of open sexuality of cortisanly arts of um you know a kind of overarching uh bent that is very liberated So over the course of this class we sort of start with this comparably enclosed truncated disembodied Aphrodite Urania of the Athenians and the Helens But it's almost like that's the that's the version we've been shown but that's not the original version That's not the prototype That's the end result after patriarchy takes over Sappo lived during a time when women's voices especially the voices of of upper class middle and upper class women were silenced Um her work was bold and groundbreaking because she would not allow herself to be silenced Uh she came from a wealthy family She was married to a successful merchant but she lived a very adventuresome life She traveled She wrote this poetry She recited it in public She talked about her lovers I mean this is a very different version of Aphrodites devotion than what we get in Athens Um it's difficult to say if she experienced some of the same enclosure as Athenian women and if her poetry was her outlet or if her life really was as free as it seems But what we do know is that whether it was Safo herself or other women or other people her poetry was often performed at festivals and in public and it was wellreceived by audiences of the day People loved the work of Sappo and I feel it's important to honor Safo in uh this first class because this first class takes place during pride month uh in America June and um Sappafo is a very important figure in LGBT LGBTQ uh plus history So even though you know what we see of Sappo's life is through limited historical texts and some fragments of her poetry and the reports of others around her talking about her poetry I think we can see that um she had a comparably very free and luscious life um not nearly what we've been taught was the norm for Athenian women of the day On the island of Lesbos there is an ancient temple ruin and archaeological site known as Messa and it's actually important to both Safo and Aphrodite Um Sappo was born in Mitilin which is the cap was the capital of Lesbos and obviously like her poetry reflects the area where she was born and where she lived But Messa um was also on the island of Lesbos and has a very long and detailed history as a sanctuary an important sanctuary of Aphrodite that attracted pilgrims from all over the world Um we know that it was from the 8th century so about 800 B.CE to about 300 CE was when this was active So it's active over a thousand-year period And there were several buildings on the site There was a temple dedicated to Aphrodite There was a stadium and a theater And at most sites of Aphrodite we will find these three things We also see it in Aphrodesius in Turkey We also see it at Yupoa's site in Kidos on the Daca Peninsula We also see it in Pathos on the island of Cyprus that you would have had a stadium a theater and a temple And the stadium would be for the hosting of sports and competitions The theater would be dedicated often to Dianisis as a companion of Aphrodite where the performances and plays would happen readings of epic poetry and then the temple would be where rituals happened Um so this site at Messa is very valuable to this day in providing a kind of an insight into the types of practices that would be consecrated to honor the goddess And it's funny cuz we wouldn't really think about Aphrodite as like a sporty girl but she absolutely is She has a gymnasium and or a stadium at almost all of her sites And so the gymnasium and stadium would often be where um you know let's just to kind of unpack that a minute What would happen in a gym or a stadium well it's not wealthy women working out there I'll tell you that it's a place where men would go to compete with each other and prove their capabilities and their worth A man who could be you know successful in leading his team to victory in a sports competition would earn the favors of the women around him The women around him would say "This is a man who has proven himself." There is something really powerful about this about the is the empowerment of the female gaze Envision a stadium in which scores of men and women alike are sitting there watching groups of men go toeto toe in competition and may the best man win That inherent competition is the female gaze assessing the worthiness of men This isn't something that you'll hear almost anywhere else but in this class I don't have any documentation about this that it's been proven nothing But I can see it where it would make sense to have a place at every Aphrodite temple where men would go to compete with each other to see who would get the favor of the goddess and her women And this is the empowerment of the female gaze which we often do not hear about as like a thing We hear a lot about the male gaze about how women's fashion and women's um body shapes and women's beauty and women's success are all assessed by the male to see if she's worthy of his attentions We don't hear as often about the female gaze of women saying "Go compete for something Go perform Go do something important and then come back and I'll see if you're worthy." But it did happen and the sites of aphroditic temples where we see these stadium buildings are proof of it Um at the sanctuary of Messa we also had other deities worshiped Zeus Hera and Dionis were all worshiped here In this case Zeus and Hera would be a pairing at this site and Dianisis and Aphrodite would be a pairing Dianisis and Aphrodite are occasionally depicted as lovers other times depicted as um friends There are forms of Aphrodite where Ariadne as the lover of Dianisis has an aphroditic component to her Um so to see Dianisis and Aphrodite paired together at uh Lesbos is you know alongside Zeus and Hera uh makes sense that they would be in divine union Um we see here that the vast precinct of it um was dedicated to um the god of supplants Zeus and Aolon Aphrodite the glorious goddess the mother of all And they also named Dionis Chamellios the eater of raw flesh So at this site Zeus and Dionis are probably the ones who receive the sacrificial offerings Hera and Aphrodite would be petitioned for love marriage fertility and the like So um in this uh you know there's another temple I also included here the temple of Cather um we hear the epithet caththerian Aphrodite describing her temple at this place this island Catera um Cather had a temple of Aphrodite Urania and it was likely built on top of an earlier temple of the Phoenician goddess Estarte who um is you know the pre-affphrodite we see the phoenetians worshiping Estarte and then over time as the Greeks and Phoenicians are cohabitating and the Greeks are starting to kind of move in we see Aphrodites name linked with a start's name um the this is reputedly the oldest temple of Aphrodite in Greece is Caththerian Aphroditees temple This sanctuary was dedicated to as I mentioned Urania Um and it contained a statue of an armed Aphrodite That is an Aphrodite with weapons Now I've never seen a statue of Aphrodite with weapons However I will send it around these two photos around I didn't get them into the slideshow here but I'll send them in an email to you um in our in our recap email um on Monday of this form of Aphrodite because when I was in Antalya at the um an uh Antalian Archaeological Museum of Turkey last month I saw a form arm of Aphrodite that was holding a shield And this is the first time I've seen her with a an actual Aphrodite with a shield And probably she also had another weapon but that broke off uh you know over time I also have an image of a form of Ishtar from Syria Oh no from Iraq from not Syria from Iraq That is from a city known as Arbella in which this form of Ishtar is carrying um a bow and arrow and swords And so I'll send those images around so you can see these armed Aphroditic images The um apparently one of the cult images at Aphrodesius in central Turkey also was a warlike and armed form of Aphrodite but that image does not exist to this day The only image that exists to that day is Aphrodite as patron of the city According to Hessiad Ktherra was the first island that Aphrodite encountered as she emerged from the sea So the implication of Aphrodite coming over the sea coming from Anatolia coming from Syria coming from Iraq um over the sea to the islands of Greece and emerging from the sea Um Herodotus talks about this and says "This temple I discover from making inquiry is the oldest of all the temples of the goddess For the temple in Cyprus was founded from it as the Ciprians themselves say and the temple on Cathra was founded by the Phoenicians from this same land of Syria Then Posanius writes "In Cathther off the coast of Lacadom Lac Lacademonia the sanctuary of Aphrodite Urania is most holy and it is the most ancient of all the sanctuaries of Aphrodite among the Greeks The goddess herself is represented by an armed image of wood a sanctuary of the heavenly Aphrodite So this wooden image obviously wouldn't have survived The first men to establish her cult were the Assyrians Now the Assyrians come from um Iraq modern-day Iraq and um Syria and Mesopotamia The Assyrians after the Assyrians were the Ptheians of Cyprus and the Phoenetians who live at Ascalon in Palestine modern-day Israel um the phoenetians taught her to worship but modern-day Palestine the Phoenicians taught her worship to the people of Ktherra So now we see that there is like a lineage here from that emerges out of Iraq out of Syria out of um Cthera to Cyprus and from you know out of Anatolia to to Cather mainland Greece Homer characterized Cthera as Zatia meaning all holy Nicobay a traveler who visited Caththera mentions that there was a statue there of Helen of Troy which was later brought over to Venice He also refers to the legend that on this site Helen and Paris consummated their union after her abduction and that there was also a castle of Menaaus there in the Byzantian period a church that was built on the site of Aphrodites hilltop throne for the saints Cosmos and Damian which were the Christianized form of the dascuri And what's interesting is Cosmos and Damian are today uh called upon by gay men as the sort of sacred lover twins Now oh I'm going to tell you one other thing The reason this slide is purple this is actually Tyrion purple Tyrion purple is made from the shells of snails that are found on the island of Cather And Cather uh when it was in the grasp solidly in the grasp of the Phoenetians was the main producer of this color of purple in the ancient world And this color of purple was very expensive because it took thousands of the bodies of these snails harvested and so sorry boiled um to create this purple dye And apparently um the s I'm so sorry the smell of the boiling snails was so awful that like people described really hating it but that the end result was this incredible purple dye that would stain any garment this vivid deep purple Um so Tyrion purple is is what it's called You can look it up online you'll see different shades of it but um over the years like different types of snails were boiled And so um there's two different varieties of snails that appear on this island's coast and some of them produce this like more um magenta purple color and others produce a more blue purple color But either way and some of them produce a more scarlet color but either way this color purple was like it would cost a lot of money even just to have one hem of your robe dipped into this dye much less an entire garment So only the very wealthy could afford it which is part of the reason why to this day purple is considered a color of royalty And so for me when I think about Aphrodite of course I think about pink Of course I think about green the color of the heart chakra Of course I think about red the color of roses and love at Valentine's Day But I also really think about the color of purple And if you kind of pressed me for it I would say that my version of Aphrodite is a sort of a purplish color So the gift of Urania when we honor Urania in our own practice we gift her with poetic prayer and she gifts us with the silver tongue to write that prayer and the silver pen to write that prayer Poetic poetic prayer brings together the breath of inspiration the fire of passionate devotion the water of authentic emotion and the earth of our faith in Aphrodite to provide us with what we need and want When we offer prayer we are offering that breath We are offering that devotion We are offering sometimes our tears at least our emotions and the earth of our faith that solid belief that Aphrodite is real and that she can help us and that she wants to and that she will So when we write a prayer of devotion or a song of devotion and we offer it with a pure heart it actually heals us It restores us to the innocence of love I can't tell you in my work as a as an oracle and a seer and a diver how many times women come to me and they feel jaded They don't believe in the version of love that they once believed in that pure beautiful innocent version of love And while it's true that heartache and heartbreak over time can have us thinking that love doesn't really exist that it's not real that it's not true that we aren't going to be allowed to have it Um that first version of love that you ever believed in when you were younger that ideal love that beautiful love that pure true love that undefended love that no walls around the heart kind of love That love still exists in you And it is 100% safe for you to trust it to redirect yourself to it to say "Yes I can have that with Aphrodite herself in her form as Urania." Aphrodite Urania who does not mess around with our you know sex lives and our money and our you know houses and our relationships but who is that purest truest form of cosmic love The love that we can believe in She is here to heal our hearts of everything this world has done to us that caused us to think that love wasn't real or that love was jaded or that love didn't have an form of expression in our lives This is the Aphrodite who looks on us and says "You are now and have always been my pure and tenderhearted child I love you forever unconditionally cosmically at every level I can heal your relationship with feeling unloved by a parent I can heal your relationship with any friend who's ever turned her back on you I can heal your relationship with any lover who ever used you I can heal your relationship with anyone who ever mistreated you What now O Sappo do you need me to do for you i am here And we can pour our hearts out to this Aphrodite We can say I've been hurt I've been wounded I've been become jaded I don't believe anymore I feel shut down I feel too old for love I don't feel that I'm beautiful anymore I don't know my worth I feel like I'm scared I don't know if I can trust someone I don't know if I can believe in myself I don't know if I can believe in love We're allowed to pour our hearts out And to hear her in response smiling a little amused laughing saying "Oh my sweet child What now who's hurting you what torment is upon your heart don't worry I've got you I love you unconditionally and forever I will take care of you I've never gone anywhere I've always been here Even if we offered nothing else no water no wine no flowers no food no perfume no incense Although I think we should offer all those things our prayer written with a focus on creative devotion is the most royal and priceless offering we have to give And so in that spirit you are invited to write a devotional poem or song for Aphrodite It doesn't have to be long It could be a little short four-line chant that you repeat over and over Or you could go full boore and write a whole ode Here's the twist on the assignment Do not use AI to write your prayer for you You write your prayer It has to be personal It should be the place where you pour out your personal heart You can use you know um a little spell check You can use a thesaurus for better words You can you know kind of say okay like I'd like to make this a little more elegant or I you know I don't like how I phrased this so let me see if I can reframe it use a different word But don't let AI write your prayer for you You write it in your own hand with your literal own physical hand on a piece of paper Then after that you can type it into a computer You can revise you can refine you can do all of that But promise me pinky swear that you're going to write this as an act of sacred devotion of pouring out your heart You will be invited to share your prayer at future classes if you so desire but you don't have to If you write something deeply personal that you're like I cannot let anyone read this This is just for me No problem But if you write something that you feel really proud of or that feels really transformational for you please do share it in a future class Uh a little further reading I've put a link here and this is going to be all about Aphrodite the tortoise the veil women's enclosure expectations societal expectations of Greek women It's an interesting um link So I've linked it there for you All right So that brings us to the close of this class I will um you know we're gonna we're gonna sing this song to close our class and then I will turn off the recording and we'll just have a little bit of time for those of us who are here to just talk a little bit about what we learned today Aphrodite of the sea friend of dove and sacred be [Music] Queen of sensuality Lay your blessing upon me that I may walk in love and beauty Hail Aphrodite