Welcome to our 10th is that true? Yes. 10th class of love and ether where we are going to take on the subject of Aphrodite Pandemos. And we've been sort of dancing around this subject in a lot of different ways throughout the class. But today we're going to talk about sex and sexuality and sexual healing. And before we begin, as usual, if you have offerings for her, go ahead and light your candle. I have that already going. And place anything that you want to place on her altar. And together let's say the sibiline hymn. 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. Oh 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 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 Kippris with your fair mother where the 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. So we're going to just take a moment here because today we're going to talk about lots of different topics that some people can find triggering. sex, sexuality, sex work, sexual healing. All of these subjects together can bring up a lot of different emotions. So, let's just take a minute right now to anchor Aphrodite in our hearts and help ask her to help us melt anything in us that is frozen or stiff or fearful or awkward or uncomfortable around the subject of sexuality. So with her eyes alone, she could give this response, this absolutely erotic response, as if febriel waves were trembling there. Pools of madness, something devouring that could lick a man all over like a flame, annihilate him with a pleasure never known before. And this is an Ais nin writing in 1940. She is writing about this raw sex appeal. This um feverish febriel waves, feverish waves that like cause the air around a woman to shimmer. Um the way that a woman's eyes will darken in uh desire and the raw potential, even if unfulfilled, the raw potential that she would in fact engulf and devour the man that she is gazing at completely. And that there's something about this that speaks to how much power there is in being the the receptical, the receiving, the cave, the womb, the um you know, the socket, the all of the different ways that we could see this idea of being like a vessel and a receiving vessel specifically and how the patriarchy wants us to be seen as merely receptical vessels. But what we actually are are devouring vessels. It's not actually the surrender to an empty cup that will bring a man to his knees. It's the potential that he might be engulfed and consumed entirely. And when we recognize the value of this, what it is to be the mystery cave, the antrum, the womb cave of initiation through sacred sexuality, all of a sudden our own fears and insecurities around sexuality can melt away. We don't have to worry about our desiraability or our um you know appearance or our expertise or our um I guess you'd say our uh you know confidence even. It's not about that although to certain degree of course we need to care for ourselves. We need to, you know, do things that give us joy and pleasure. We can't just be like wandering around being down on ourselves and expect that we're going to have that magnetic effect. But when we are giving to ourselves, when we are protecting ourselves, when we are caring for ourselves, when we are valuing ourselves, when we are nurturing and nourishing ourselves, when we're doing things for ourselves that we love, then that is when we project that sense of potential of being an initiatory cave. And that potential of being the initiatory cave isn't necessarily about desiraability as much as it is about how much we devour when we are in that intimate moment. If and this is I'm speaking from a heterosexual paradigm but it actually works in all possible configurations but specifically in this quote an Nin is referring to the heterosexual paradigm but Ana Nin was bisexual. She had numerous lovers male and female. She was adventuresome and she understood the nature of being of body as initiation of sex as initiation. So into this arrives Aphrodite pandemos. Pandemos is comprised of two different words. Pan meaning all and deamos meaning the people or the community. So it's Aphrodite of all the people. And it's interesting because when we think of this Aphrodite of all the people, it it sounds almost democratic. It sounds almost like pytho of persuasion or sounds more like dia of you know the halls of learning like Aphrodite of the library, Aphrodite of the bus stop, Aphrodite of the thing of the brushing your teeth, Aphrodite of the thing that everybody does. And then for that to be sexuality. So pandemos is the in theworld counterpart to urania. So Urania is the cosmic, the otherworldly, the idealized, the pure, the held on a pedestal, the remote, the out there. And Pandamos is here. She is carnal love. She is desire. She is the pumping of the blood. She is the greening of the spring. She's the swelling of the grain. She's the blossoming of the flower. She's the engorgment of sexual organs during peak desire. She's the you know sweat on your brow or behind your um you know like on on the back of your neck, the feeling that erupts when you feel an electric connection with someone. And so her form pandemos basically says we all experience some version of this, the quickening of desire. And that desire force moves earth the way the Uranian force moves heaven. As above, so below. Through the quickening of desire, the planets orbit one another and the sun. Through the the the magneticism of attraction, they stay in their gravitational fields. Through the magneticism of attraction, two beings come together and form a third. Two beings come together and form a one. So it's, you know, Pandemos and Urania are like two sides of the same coin. And today we even see the kind of descendant of this way of thinking in the term pansexual which basically means you know inclusive. Panssexual means I like who I like when I like them. I'm a sexual being. I'm open to everybody and everything and I make my choices. um the idea of transcending a strict category or boundary of I like this or I like that and allowing yourself to just like what you like when you like it is kind of one of the definitions of pansexual. So we see Aphrodite Pandemos in in this term of when the moment arises when the spirit flourishes when the grain or the flower burgeons that is pandemos and you can't have one without the without the other. This piece um this is from Na Pafos. These are two female figures that are part of a single statue. Uh one of whom is um Aphrodite cloaked in stars and the other is Aphrodite holding some kind of a vase or um they say here maybe it's a mirror. Um, but basically she's or she might be holding a an incense burner. Basically this statue which is at the archaeological museum of PAOS uh which I haven't been to yet but one day next time I go that's on my list is to go see this statue. Um because there's the cloaked in stars form which is Urania and then there's the one who's clothed in a filmy garment and holding uh simple objects with no stars and that is Pandemos the more everyday Aphrodite. And we have seen a couple different images now of Aphrodite with herself. There's Aphrodite of Aphrodesius being crowned by uh Greco Roman Aphrodite. We've seen this statue of these two two women figures, but they're identical and mirrored and likely Aphrodite because they're near her temple ruins. Um, and there are other famous depictions of Aphrodite with herself. And when we see these depictions of Aphrodite beside herself, crowning herself as a double goddess, some will say, "Oh, that that's meant to be Aphrodite mirroring herself." But usually they don't look alike. They usually look different. And so the implication here can be political. It could be um sociological or cultural. Whereas like Aphrodite of Aphrodesius crown or Aphrodite of um Greco Hellenic sort of form crowning Aphrodite of Aphrodesius shows the sovereignty of Aphrodesius from Roman rule. Their ability to govern locally. So important, right? But then we see this in pathos which is like the heavenly and the earthly but they're one. They're on this single block together. They're connoting this duplicity of the transcendent and the imminent Aphrodite. So um Plato, Paganius and Xenopon also all write about this. They write about two separate but related Aphrodites. The heavenly one and the earthly one. And so when we kind of get into this concept of multiple actually aphrodites, there's many different Aphrodites, but that there's actually this idea of one who is in charge of the sensate landscape in this world and one who's in charge of the uh felt or perceptual landscape of the cosmic order and that they have distinct roles. You can sort of get underneath the hood of the mindset here that felt that sexuality was separate from that which is heavenly. So in a way there's already kind of a demonization of sexuality um patriarchally in Greco Roman uh teachings. And we know this to be true because of the relative enclosure of women in Athenian society, particularly in the middle to upper echelons of Athenian society as well as in other places. And we know of their relative freedom and empowerment in other spaces like Sparta. So Aphrodite Pandemos is this idea of basic animal lust, but it's more than that because it, you know, when I say animal lust, it's almost like I want to say natural lust, but even that term isn't quite right. It's like a na the natural swelling forth. It's not only lust because this is also what causes flowers to bloom and animals to be born. writers um on you know Paganius and all his friends all kind of wrote about Aphrodite Pandemos as a kind of a commonplace um you go to her for your cheap pleasures your instant gratification and they write of Aphrodite Urania as the heavenly love the unattainable and this is going to kind of come into play when we talk a little bit later about sexuality and how to know when a partner is the right person for you. And in you know one regard it's that even if you feel a little bit of nervous excitement about being around them or with them you do not feel like they disregulate your nervous system. So what causes that unattainability is boundaries and reserve. And so, um, not being immediately accessible, not being like already in the mix with somebody, but having that certain amount of space to discern how does this person make my nervous system feel is really about cultivating more of the urania. But the writers write about it as if it's her unattainability that's desirable rather than her reserve. But her reserve is her unattainability. Um, Scopus, uh, the sculptor, we've seen some of his work before, um, depicts Aphrodite Pandemos here is similar to Aphrodite Epitraia, which is Aphrodite riding a goat or a ram. And the se sexual implication here is that the male ram symbol of Aries, one of the things sacrificed to Aphrodite, white goats, although not always. Sometimes the white goats were allowed to live as you might remember. Um, the idea of Aphrodite riding this kind of brutish but hyper masculine male animal. um and her sort of um civilizing capacity over the savage beast um shows up in like a beauty and the beast paradigm. And we see this in other Greek myths such as Aphrodite with Pan or Aphrodite with Hephestus. But we also see it in any myth that you know worldwide has like a be you know like a beauty and the beast phenomena. a beautiful maiden, a shape-shifted man, or a disfigured man, or a wild man out in the forest who's gone feral, or a brutish man who is so uh hyper masculine and toxic that he's turned off his feelings. We see it all the way up to and including like a trope in movies usually that involves a kerogenly grumpy or wild older man with a young perky joyful hyper feminine woman. We see it in um you know a lot of different ways this myth and this trope shows up and this h the Egyptians had their version with Apis the bull god or kunum the ram-headed god the canineites had mllo the Kelts have kernos and her so there's this idea of like this sort of savage beastial male who is civilized by the loving touch of Aphrodite we see it in a midsummer night's dream where Tatana is civilizing um uh the the man who was shapeshifted into an ass. Um you know it it this trope shows up again and again and this beauty and beast trope it's used for a variety of narrative purposes in myth. One is that it makes a very um overt suggestion of animal instincts overcoming reason for the sake of uh sexually possessing a woman of refinement and beauty. There's this idea also of the need for a certain wildness for the sake of fertility. It can mean being close to the earth. It can also imply a kind of a um you might say eosexual relationship between Aphrodite and all the things of the earth not just humans and where also Aphrodite in this form or the beauty in this form represents purity, refinement, morals, good manners. um you know her she's clean, she's groomed, her essence has a certain civilizing effect. Whereas the beast man represents base passions, desire um you know mating and um doing away with uh any kind of uh preliminaries. But there's also the democratic aspect of Pandemos and that is that she also brings people together. And so beyond just the kind of sexual implication of Aphrodite Pandemos, which is close to Aphrodite Epitraagia, um the kind of woman who's out there with the brute, there's also this idea of after a time of war, the people have got to who are, you know, both the conquered and the conquering have to find a way to live together. And we saw this back a ways in Pytho, how she presided at the Bulletarion um and she was responsible for there being dialogue amongst peoples that there would be uh decision-making processes that there would be debate. But here under Pandemos we see her as she yolks all the people together. she brings everyone under one national identity or one tribal identity. Um and this um narrative is an important piece because it would help shape perception of community oneness amongst people who knew that they were originally separate Mediterranean tribes who were conquered and colonized over time, excuse me, by you know the Helenic Greeks and but but even before that by each other and by the Friians and by the Lydians or by others. So it positions Aphrodite in this curious role of being this hypersexualized being but also this democratic being who is the civic protectress of all who come under her sway her civilization. Let's talk for a minute about the many loves of Aphrodite and how Aphrodite actually responds to passion and what ends up happening. I gave you really brief synopsies here. They're the briefest of synopsis. Um, but I'm going to actually just share with you a little bit more. You know, Aphrodite was given in marriage uh to Hephus. Zeus thought she was too disruptive, too sexual, too wild. Um, and so he gave her uh to Hephistis. And that's not really like a great beginning to a marriage, but it speaks to certain aspects of the culture of the time where marriages were often arranged particularly amongst uh the wealthy. And um you know it also speaks to this like primordial beauty and the beast trope where Hephus although it is not anim animalistic exactly is described as being disfigured from having been thrown down from Olympus by Hera when she was disappointed in his appearance. But also sometimes Hephestus is described as being very muscular and hairy, almost anim animalistic. So they get together. Hephest knows that she's for the streets. She's out there. She's going, you know, home with whoever she wants. She's carrying on with her lover, Aries, who was her true lover. Um, and so Hephus devises a um a net that will catch the lovers in bed and trap them there. And then he calls all the gods of Olympus to come and aid him in some way or witness him and trapping Aphrodite and Aries in bed and then humiliating them. And basically after this, Hephistas and Aphrodite are no longer really depicted as still married or still together. We don't see a lot more stories of their interactions. It's thought that they kind of go their own way, but he's still kind of technically her husband because Zeus decreed it, but she's kind of also like no longer participating in that. Um and so you know then sometimes he goes on to just remain alone. She goes on to other lovers and sometimes he goes on to Aglia one of the graces uh splendor to which is Aphrodite's friend um to be with her instead of Aphrodite. That leaves Aphrodite free to pursue her other love relationships and her passion-based relationships. Three of these are Aries, Anises and Adonis. So with Aries, this is goddess and God. So whereas with Hephestus it was also goddess and god, Hephestus is considered to be in some ways like a lesser of the gods again because he's more involved in worldly affairs having been hurled down from Olympus being a devisor of um inventions, a workman um kind of like the workingclass guy of the Olympians. He's often depicted as closer to human than God, especially because he underwent disfigurement and didn't regenerate himself, wasn't able to fix himself. In this way, he's kind of a Chironesesque figure as well, where there's something that will just never be healed about him. So he occupies a particular role that is a deity but not exactly like a deity in the sense that the other Olympians are thought of as deities. Then we have Aries who in every way is like a god among gods. He's a man among men. He's um you know successful, assertive, aggressive, warlike, passionate, um smoldering. Um he's fiery just the same way Hephestus is. But whereas Hephus fire is given to construction and building and tool making, Aries fire is directed toward destruction, war, defense, and protection. Um, it's said that Aphrodite just feels completely besided with Aries. They have like a completely explosive volcanic level of passion. Um they meet in stealth. They give birth to um Aeros the you know Puty or the little um nymph of love and sexuality. Harmonia who is the goddess of conquered and harmony. um Phobos and Daimos, different um personifications of the fears and the wreckage that can be left by war. Um and as usual, their affair is witnessed by primarily just one being, Helios. Helios is also the one who witnesses the kidnapping of Pphanany by Adis. Um when Helios goes and tells on them, that's when Hephistis devises his golden net and ridicules them. And then Aphrodite and Aries are basically told like you need to stay apart. Um, but you get the sense that they continue to, you know, look at each other from across the room. Sometimes they're honored at temples like in Sparta. Um, sometimes they're paired and then other times they're depicted as very opposite. Um, it's almost like for each other they're the one that got away. um they don't necessarily remain permanent or lasting lovers. There's obstacles to them being together um in any kind of durable way, but they have this incredibly hot love affair. Then we have Anisees. Now, Anises was a mortal prince of Troy, and Zeus was upset with Aphrodite for her behavior. her um you know sexual wildness. And so he uh made her fall in love with a mortal like a mortal because he was like all these people are out here falling in love with you and you just leave a wreckage behind you of hearts and bodies and lives. You just take who you want and you you can't just do that. And so he strikes her with uh desire like unto a mortal. And so she enters into that mortal desire fully. She depicts herself as a friian princess. And um she uh or a friian princess or a queen, a mortal woman and she goes to Anises. They have a passionate night of love making. Eventually, dawn breaks and the spell of Filiponos is over and she reveals to him, hey, actually, I'm a goddess and this all is kind of like a mistake, but it can't happen and it can't really happen again, but um please don't tell anyone that it was me and that you were with me. Please don't brag about it because if you do, Zeus is going to strike you down and I just don't want to see that happen to you. this is not your fault, you know. And then she leaves him. But when she leaves him, she is pregnant and she's pregnant with Anias. And when you um when she gives birth to Anias, she secrets him away with the nymphs to raise him. and she watches over him until such a time as he becomes a hero of Troy and the progenitor of what is considered the Roman civilization. And so when you go to um like the Chinaklay Museum in um western northwestern Turkey and you see the story of the Trojan War, you you get kind of a sanitized version of this. But Aphrodite is very present there because she is the one who un she understands that she in a way has caused the downfall of Troy. And so she also uplifts Troy through her patronage of her son Anias. But Anes does go out. He gets drunk or he's talking to his friends. He just can't help but brag that he spent the night with the goddess of love, Aphrodite herself, and Zeus strikes him down. He's mortally wounded or he's not mortally w he doesn't die from it. He's but he's severely depleted, wounded terribly by Zeus's lightning bolt. And yet he still um manages to escape um Troy and escape um you know uh the wrath the full wrath of Zeus and he goes on to uh live his own life and he dies in Sicily. he leaves um you know he leaves Troy and journeys on to what is now called Sicily where he's said to die there but that you know not before he gives you know he fathers the clear ancestor of the Roman Empire and if you've read Virgil's Aniid it's actually all about Anias and his exploit So Aphrodite has this relationship with Anises that's just one night and it's, you know, brief, tempestuous, but causes kingdoms to fall and rise. Then there's Adonis and Adonis is born. Um, when he's born, she sees him and she just thinks, "This is the most beautiful being that's ever been born and I need him to be safe and protected." So um you know he was born from the tree body of Meera. So um Meera was being pursued by uh Zeus I think. Can't remember. But Meera is a woman. She's being pursued by a god to be raped. She doesn't want to be raped. She cries out to the goddess. The goddess transforms her into the myrr tree. And then Adonis is born from the myrr tre's body. But here's the thing about the myrr tree. the mer tree mirror and that word mirror mara all of these words in the languages of like the time of of um prehea hebraic languages pre you knowic languages um the language of the Nabotans the language of other peoples of this Levventine region in those um languages this name is the name that comes down to us later as Mary or Miam or Stella Maris. So this connection at the myrr tree where the word myrr or mar or mir or mara all means bitter and the bitterness is associated with the sea salt bitterness. So it's not like pungent bitterness it's like salt bitter. From this we can draw the inference of both Aphrodite of the sea, Aphrodite of the myrr tree which is why she would then have such a significant placement along with um atargatus along the uh roots of the myrr and frankincense traders of Petra in Jordan and the Nabotans as well as the inland saltwater well at Aphrodesius in Turkey. All of these are related through this um particular vector of this word this root word m or m which means myrr that also connects her in with a lot of other a lot of other things but we won't get into that for now. Anyway, she sees Adonis born of Miraa. She gives Adonis to Pphanie and says, "Hide him until he comes of age so that nothing happens to him because I want him to come and be with me and be my love when he's older." Which super creepy. Definitely a story written by a guy to be perfectly honest. I think like no woman would actually write that story. But I feel like in this story she then gives him to Pphanie. Praphanie falls in love with him, raises him, and then when it's time for him to come back to Aphrodite. Um, she and Pphanie get in a tussle about it, and then they have to bring that before Zeus. And Zeus decrees that Adonis will spend a third of the year with Aphrodite, a third of the year with Pphanany, and a third of the year of his own choosing. And then the lore states that he typically chooses to spend it with Aphrodite, but then he dies while he's above ground with Aphrodite. He she warns him. She knows if you go hunting, if you're out with wild animals, you're in danger. This is part of the curse under which you were born is that you would be caused harm. It's why I secreted you away in the underworld. Ostensibly, no animals could kill him there. All these different things. And then what happens? He does go out boar hunting and he's gored by a wild boar. Potentially the wild boar is sent by either Aries or Artemis uh to basically interrupt Aphrodite love affair with this half mortal. and he dies and he bleeds out and dies and so Aphrodite mourns him and she causes the anemone flower to bloom from his spilled blood um in this story. Then after that, ostensibly he is always with Pphanie thereafter. But there's not really any other stories talking about that after this. Um it's interesting to note that the story of Pphanany has um her spending part of the time underground and part of the time in the world. And then when we get the story of Adonis, now she I guess is full-time underground. I'm not sure but basically he replaces Pphanie in this story. So in a way the story of Adonis is the cognate of the story of Pphanany taken you know in youth not given a choice decreed upon by Zeus how and when he'll spend his time just like Pphanie was and then torn between the upper and lower worlds. So what does it all mean? Well, when in pursuit of one's passions in life, Aphrodite Pandamos helps us see that the striving toward pleasure, toward fulfillment, toward love, toward sacred union will cause pain. And so with Hephestus, the pain that her passion causes is shame. She doesn't feel a spark toward him, but yet she's shamed for not wanting to be with him. She feels like she's aversive to him and ashamed of being his wife and doesn't feel like he's actually worthy of her. He doesn't strike her as refined or civilized enough. He's not got that quality that she loves that awakens her and enliven her. And under this, we sometimes ourselves might feel the shame of, you know, like, why can't I choose the nice guy? Like, this guy's being so nice to me, but I just don't feel it. And then we might question ourselves or feel shame about the fact the spark just isn't there. under Aries. Aphrodites um feeling is around that excitement of the volatility. She knows it's not good for her. She knows it can't go anywhere. She knows there's not really any outcome in which they are happily ever after. And yet she keeps going back. She can't help herself. It's too good. The energy is too awake and alive. The energy excites her. It makes her feel the ex joy of rebellion. And so for her, the cost of her passion with Aries is volatility and the unknown and having to dwell within the unknown with Anises. And here he is depicted carrying anas um obstacles. It's that she was, you know, out there living her own best life. And Zeus decided that she needed a taste of what it was like to be mortal, to love and desire and to feel afraid or unfulfilled. And so she goes and she's with Ances, but their love affair is it can't be. They face too numerous of obstacles. They're from totally different worlds. He's not even a demigod. He's immortal. And there's nothing. There's nowhere for it to go. He will die before she ever breathes in and out once in the long ex inhalation and exhalation of the cosmos. His life is a blip on her radar. It's like a bird and a fish could be in love, but where would they build build a home together? There's nowhere for them to be at one. and he never overcomes his pride. His pride is a huge obstacle just as arguably her pride was the obstacle in the face of Zeus who strikes her down. Although I don't necessarily agree with that, but the way that we're given to read it is that Zeus is trying to give her a taste of her own medicine and show her there are some obstacles that just can't be surmounted and you can't treat this so casually. But with Anises, the risk of passion is obstacles. And then with Adonis, it's the profoundity of loss. everything she gave, everything she did, every sacrifice she made, whether it's, you know, taking him away from certain death and putting him in the underworld and then having to fight for him to be able to come back and then having to share him with someone else and not being able to um have access 24/7 all year round. And then uh telling him, "You really can't go out with the wild animals. it's too dangerous for you. And then knowing that he died because he did it anyway. All that there was at the end of all those efforts and labor, it was all for nothing. He dies. His blood goes into the earth and blooms as the anemone flower. And that's it. There's nowhere for that love story to go anymore. It's done. So she has this inddehaticable love and passion in her. So much love to give, so much passion she can share. And yet when it comes down to it, there's always some cost to that passion. And the real essence of these stories is not that we shouldn't have passion. It's that whenever we sign up for passion or for love, for relationship with anyone, we run the risk of encountering shame, volatility, fear, obstacles, and loss. And should we not do it just because something painful might happen? Or should we go forward anyway? and say yes. Yes to trying. Yes to love. Yes to pleasure. Yes to passion. Yes to giving things another chance. Yes to knowing when to walk away. Yes to it was worth it in the end. And I think that Safo and her poetry and Aphrodite and her example show us that it's always worth it. It's always worth it to try. Even when it seems impossible, even when there's a sense of the even when there's a sense of danger of losing something precious, whether that's our pride or whether that's a sense of stability or whether that's our sense of identity, or whether that's our sense of satiety, it's worth it. It's worth the potential loss to have the feeling of love. I want to talk about this for a minute because when we are talking about Aphrodites lovers and Pandemos, one of the things that really comes up is that Pandemos is sort of written in a derogatory way by ancient writers because of her lust and appetite for sex and men and that she has lots and lots of lovers. And I really I introduced this concept. This is new in our in our teachings for this year, but it's something that I've seen coming up a lot in the field, which is this idea of a woman's quote unquote body count being um something that determines her worthiness or value of like actually like people out there asking women how many people or men they've slept with to see if she's quote unquote pure or used. And here's the thing, this narrative is so backward because it's rooted in judgment of a woman's consensual sexual experience, but also it could be rooted in a judgment of a woman's trauma of things that happened that were not under her control or things that happened when she was at a different place in her life before she knew better or things that happened at a different place in her life when she didn't value herself very highly. or things that happened when she was too young to know better about anything and so she just went buck wild. And so there's this idea that like you had to have already known the the the level of maturity that you would need to cope with your later sexual identity back when you were still forming that se sexual identity. But that sexual identity is formed because of everything that you've experienced, because of everyone you've ever been with, consensually or not, and because of all the experiences that that shaped you in love. So, it's almost like the more lovers you have, really, the better you are at sex. The more loves you have, the better you are at being in love. if you are applying the lessons that come as part of each of those unions. So why wouldn't someone want a woman to be experienced and gifted and knows herself and knows what she's doing. It's almost like how do you want to and and further why on earth would you expect that a well-lived woman would still be a virgin for you? The only reason she's here talking to you is probably because she's not one, right? The only reason that she would be talking to some men is because she was one. Because the idea of your experience being a gift, and this isn't to shame anyone who doesn't have a lot of experience, this is just to say like your experience is a gift. And judging a woman based on how many lovers she's had is nonsensical. And a healed and discerning priestess of Aphrodite will embody the possibility that her love affairs, her sexual experiences, and her conscious embodiment in the now have transformative capabilities, not just for herself, but for anyone that she gives her gifts to. So maybe she has been through the ringer. Maybe she has had negative experiences. Maybe she has gone through a difficult time. Maybe there is some kind of a a loss that she's experienced, a grief that she's experienced, a trauma that she's experienced. But as long as she's no longer dwelling within that woundedness and deciding about her life from within that woundedness, as long as she's creating in the world based on who she would rather be, who she wants to be, that's the result of all that she's learned, then there's no problem at all. Um so the um you know priestesses who are embodying sacred sexuality, embodying the scope of their experience, embodying all of what made them who they are now, including their heartaches and heartbreaks and traumas and betrayals and challenges. Those are the women who are going to go out into the world and emit radiance, emit joy, emit a kind of a natural, easygoing sexuality that is universally transformational for everyone that it touches. Whether that's just other women wondering, "Wow, I'll have what she's having." Or whether that's someone who desires her and feels awakened by her very presence. I like this last line here. In the eyes of Aphrodite, what matters is not how many lovers a woman has had, but how true, how kind, how embodied, and how free she is. And the reality of it is that many of us who are priestesses of Aphrodite have a natural sexual uh beingness to ourselves, a strong natural sexuality. It's not about like um you know it's not a sexuality that's developed for the male gays or for any gays in particular. It's not a performative sexuality. It's not a longing to be desired sexuality. It's not a an emptiness that we're trying to fill. It's actually um a natural like almost exudes from your pores sexuality. It's I'm a sexual being and I'm allowed to be and because I know this about myself. I treat myself really well. I make good decisions. I respect myself. I undertake any liaison willingly and with full knowledge of who I am. I am nourished by um my own sexual identity in the world, not depleted by it. I bring a sense of essence or sacred spark wherever I go. Um, so when we're having like an entanglement and or like intensity drive, like we feel like hungry for attention or when we have like a haunting tendency toward bad choices or we're placing our eggs in one basket that it hasn't really earned or we're in like a situationship, that's not necessarily the exuding of one's natural sexuality. That's actually usually the result of one's natural sexuality being out of balance. But when we are in our natural sexuality, it doesn't matter if we're partnered or not partnered. It doesn't matter if we have a liaison or not. It doesn't matter if we are um you know with someone for a day or with someone for a lifetime. What is there is this natural embodiment of our sacred sexual selves where there's no one who can take that away from us and there's no one who gave that to us either. So the reality is you will know the difference because a spark driven by desperation or compulsion or hunger within will almost always feel draining later if you like indulge it like too much. But when you're in your natural sexuality, that honest sexuality, the spark doesn't drain you. You just feel alive and awake and the energy is flowing to you and through you into the world and there's a limitless supply and you're not like feeling that sense of like emptiness within you. Now you feel you still might go through heartaches and breakups and losses. it. You know, having your natural essence out there in the world in the kind of balanced, healthy way doesn't prevent you from having the ups and downs of a normal relationship. There will still be mistakes and tears and pain and loss, but they don't define you. They're the stones you've carried in the past or now, but you can use those stones to build a stairway to your own personal heaven. And I won't get into this here, but this is a poem that I wrote that kind of summarizes this, how love and pleasure can hurt and at the same time cause us to bloom all at once. Our ancestrus for this class is Anaisen whose quote we had earlier. She was born in 1903 in Noai, France and she passed away January 14th, 1977 in LA. She had um these diaries which are scorching and scathing, seven volumes which talk very honestly about her life, her artistic pursuits, her love affairs and the people that she was close to and her passionate love affair with the writer Henry Miller is a key feature of these diaries and his other lover June who she also becomes lovers with also features in there. But she was she got around. She was, you know, a a welltraveled lover girl and her way of talking about sex and sexuality. It's so like it's really raw and it's really honest and really poetic all at the same time, which is why people really love her writing. Uh amongst other things, she also wrote um The Delta of Venus, which is a collection of erotic short stories, The House of Incense and Incest and A Spy in the House of Love. These are like shocking um erotic works. Um and a lot of feminist writers will and and um scholars look at Anais Nin's work as truly deeply transgressive for its day and an experience of relative sovereignty and liberation amidst a very repressive time. And um she talks a lot about what's taboo. She talks about female desire, sexual pleasure. She talks about what women want. She writes scandalously in her novels about them and in her stories about women. And all of it is, you know, in a sense liberating because at this time it was mostly only men writing that way about women. So we have a lot of male authors writing erotica in which women transgress. not as many female writers writing about that at all. And what she does is she puts desire as a tool or weapon in the hands of women. She's like, you're not just passive. You're not just a receptacle. You're not just a receiver vessel. You are the sacred initiatory cave. You are the activating essence. So, I just grabbed a couple of Ana nin quotes that I like because I and I paired them with Aphrodite love affairs because I thought this might be like an interesting little glimpse into this ancestrus and her world and how we might see her as an embodiment of Aphrodite which in this photo where she's sitting on the grass with her big black jacket spread out. Oh, just is incredible. So if she were talking to Aries, she might say, "To hell. To hell with balance. I break glasses. I want to burn even if I break myself. I want to live only for ecstasy. I'm neurotic, perverted, destructive, fiery, dangerous, lava, inflammable, unrestrained." If she were speaking to Anises, our love of each other was like two long shadows kissing without hope of reality. If she were speaking to Hephus, she would say, "Shame is the lie someone told you about yourself." And if she were speaking to Adonis, she might say, "Last night I wept. I wept because the process by which I've become woman was painful. I wept because I was no longer a child with a child's blind faith. I wept because my eyes were opened to reality. I wept because I could not believe anymore. And I love to believe. I can still love passionately without believing. That means I love humanly. I wept because I have lost my pain and I am not yet accustomed to its absence. So a lot has been said about Aphrodite as the patron of sacred prostitutes. And I chose the temple at Acro Cororinth to illuminate pandemos because there's a lot of conflicting information about sacred prost temple prostitution in the ancient world. Around the 6th century B.C.E. the temple at uh Acro Cororinth was built and it was um a site of uh pilgrimage for numerous different deities not only Aphrodite um but likely the temple did have a statue of the goddess. We know that um in 146 B.CE CE the Roman general Lucius Mumius raised Corinth as part of a Roman conquest and we know that he took down the temple of Aphrodite there. The temple was never rebuilt. The site fell into ruin. You can still go there today um and visit its ruins cuz excavations have uncovered the site of the temple of Aphrodite including architectural fragments, columns and artifacts. And ancient authors mention the presence of sacred prostitution at this temple specifically. Not at every temple, but certainly this one gets specific mention. And yet scholars still debate about what is meant when they're talking in these ancient texts about sacred temple prostitution. Um Strabo says uh that you know he writes in the 1st century B.C.E. that Corinth um did have a large number of sacred prostitutes. He actually gives over a thou a number of over a thousand prostitutes dedicated to serving Aphrodite by you know plying their wares and giving favors to men who came through. But it's important to note that the archaeological evidence of the uncovered temple shows that there was fewer than a hundred residents and no more than 100 people could have lived in that temple in that space. So how could it be a thousand women if the space only held 100? Heroditus writes in the fifth century B.CE. So a little further back um the presence of sacred prostitution at Corinth. He doesn't specifically mention the Aphrodite temple but he says that every woman in Corinth regardless of social status was required to engage in a form of sacred prostitution once in her life. that she would go to the temple and take the first man who came to her. And um that through doing that she would basically make the money that she would put into her dowy or if she were the child of nobility she would hire um a lowerass woman to take her place in the temple. So there's an implication that in uh Herodotus that wealthy women kind of just got away with sending a maid or another or hiring a prostitute themselves to go stand in the temple and perform this duty. And that then that woman ostensibly got paid twice both by the wealthy family of the daughter and by the the customer himself. and that women of middle to lower class means would have to go stand in the temple themselves to make the money to take the stranger to earn the dowy. Then we have Paganius um writing about this um um and he says that from about the 2n century CE. He says that there were uh sacred prostitutes in Corinth, but that they did not operate within the temple itself. Instead, he says that they were located in lots of different buildings around the sanctuary. Of these three, I actually feel that Herodotus might be speaking to a leftover of something akin to um like the system whereby um the wealthy patron was given first right of access to uh any woman who was enslaved or um part of his retinue of servants. I feel that Strabo is kind of being a little bit um facitious and inflated in talking about the thousand prostitutes and that maybe it was because there was so much traffic in the temple of women who were not actually regularly prostitutes but who were there just kind of doing that marriage um custom. I think of these three panagas gives us the most plausible explanation because in every city where there were temples to Aphrodite we know that frequently around that temple and also to other deity temples there would be a very vivid brisk marketplace with lots of different people who would be um going back and forth and that prostitutes amongst many others garment makers, but uh people selling animals for sacrifice, divers would be in those market stalls. um you know but the real the reality in another article which I'll try and dig up and send to you um the reality is most modernday new age practitioners and um even several authors have a tendency to overromanticize the idea of the temple prostitute. There's this idea of the temple prostitute as providing sacred sexuality and having secrets or being tantric or having some kind of a valued role. And in fact 90% of the time as then as now that is not the truth. 90% of the time or greater what we're actually talking about is something akin to absolute desperation financially and or trafficking. And so we should not get it twisted in our minds. Let's not romanticize the sacred prostitute archetype. It is not true of the people who have practiced prostitution statistically in the past and now, but even more so in the past. You're talking much more about orphaned girls, girls born out of wedlock, or girls sold by their families into sexual slavery being trafficked. And today when we romanticize this, we create a fantasy idea that is not the case. And when um for example, there's a lot of documentation about Cyprus being an island that was known for um pleasure gardens and prostitutes and the way that it's described is very like romantic. But then when you actually look at the architectural evidence that's found there, you find a society in which um there's a high rate of infant mortality of girls and where there's documentation of girls being born and then never mentioned again in family records. There's documentation of extensive trafficking. And so I just really think that when we get into this topic, it's a hard one because the liberated sexual woman, the liberated sexual priestess of Aphrodite is not the archetype of the temple prostitute that has been romanticized in ancient or modern literature. Instead, the archetype of the sexually liberated priestess of Aphrodite should be more like the woman who decides for herself who she's intimate with and what she wants to do rather than it being kind of like cloaked under this guise of a financial transaction which typically then as now would benefit benefit the John and or the pimp much more than it benefited the woman whose body was being used as a receptacle. Biblically speaking, we see the temple at Corenth show up in a kind of a reference to um Paul's biblical letters to the Corinthians. So Corinth was actually known for a very diverse religious practices. the involvement of sacred prostitution, also of queer love. Um there's numerous um records that depict Corinth as being a very sexually liberated kind of a place. And then Paul is writing these like moral and ethical treatises based in his um opinions about what should be happening to the Corinthian community. So in his first epistle to the Corinthians, he talks about immorality, marriage, and proper conduct of believers. And he says, if you're going to be Christian, um you can't be having sex outside of marriage. You have to maintain moral purity. Even sex within marriage should just be for procreation. Um you know, and he's all the, you know, no gay sex, no homosexual unions. Um, and he doesn't specifically mention Aphrodite, but he does specifically mention um, his teachings are very much a a bullet point by bullet point against what is likely actually happening at Corenth um, where there's a relative sexual liberty. So what we see is that the early Christian church is directly um trying to dominate uh the popular views of Helenic polytheism which was already still pretty patriarchal that were informing the local culture at Corinth. So, what to take away from all this? If I'm not embodying the kind of misty, filmy, gauzy, uh, fantasy of the sacred sexual prostitute, what actually is the art of sex for a modern-day embodied priestess of Aphrodite? And I think that the embodied Melissa of you know sacred sexuality of Aphrodite brings forward three things. Sex appeal, sexual activation and sexual adaptation. The first part about sex appeal is that we have to do away with the thought that it's based on how we look. that it's based only strictly on do I adhere to a particular um look around um you know what's considered popularly attractive or do I you know have the perfect eyelashes or do I have the perfect outfit or do I you know have uh you know enough attitude or confidence. It's not even about the attitude and confidence cuz even those can be put on like and taken off like lipstick or eyelashes. It's actually about knowing your inner flame is this smoldering flickering light and that it comes from within you that nothing can actually extinguish it. No matter how many people have tried, no matter how many mistakes you've made, no matter what has happened in your life, nothing can actually extinguish that flame. That flame is the pytho energy of your subtle yet catalyzing presence. Whether you speak or not, you being in the room changes the room. It is the sensuality of filiponicos. It is the crio energy of your secret name and your cord. That is what your golden light is. under the category of sexual activation. Sometimes we think that earning someone's love, earning someone's esteem by going overboard, by giving too much, by letting someone do more than we want to do, by being charitable, by giving someone, excuse me, a pity [ __ ] Sometimes it's also like thinking that we have to prove to someone that we are girlfriend material. We have to show them ahead of time by like cleaning their house or cooking for them or doing something for them. No, that is not it either. That is not going to activate what you want. It's better for you to tap into your inner your inner calipos, your inner despina, and to become implacable, irresistible, um never quite fully satisfied, demanding, a little bit um dismissive, a little bit like pushing away to see if someone comes back, not answering, not always being at the beck and call, being more remote. This will have a sexually volcanic effect of causing desire to build. And part of the reason for that is because it is true that absence makes the heart grow fonder. And that by showing up, as we talked about in our other class, you know, as that black cat energy is going to be better than showing up as golden retriever energy if what we want is for there to be fireworks. Also, when you're in your sexual power, you have a glow. When you're just like, I am in my sexual power at any age, at every size, at every phase of life, no matter what's going on, I can dial into myself and get that. That has that explosive and volcanic effect. And it will provoke and inspire a variety of responses. Some people will be intimidated by by you. Some people will be jealous of you. Some people will desire you. Some people will be magnetized to you. Some people will feel like whatever it is that she has, that's what I want. Some people will want to be close to you just for the sake of being close to you. That's an activation. And then we have adaptation. Either we're going to let our past, our regrets, our memories haunt us and make us feel smaller, or we can adapt to the reality that sometimes we've learned hard lessons whether or not we were consciously seeking them, whether we wanted them, and that it is okay for us to be okay. Nonetheless, we're not acting from within our victim. We're not acting from within our wounded. We're not acting from within our trauma. We are trauma informed about ourselves. And then we have that ability to reclaim our sacred sexuality as if you know today is the first day of the rest of our lives because it is. And finally, adaptation means you know it is easy to fall into a comfort routine with same old same old. this is just like what we do or how we do it. Especially if you have a partner for a long time or this is like what is happening, you know, because this is just like all I know or, you know, we just aren't very inventive. We just have like a little quickie, whatever. It's easy to kind of fall into that habit, especially in long-term relationships. um or to fall into the, you know, dreaded bed death syndrome of like now we're just not intimate anymore. It's like we're living like brother and sister or like sister and sister. And so in those cases, we have to then be the ones you you think to yourself, oh, I want the other person to uh be the one to make innovation a priority here. But it's not always going to be that person who does that. Sometimes it has to be you. You have to be the one who's like, "Can we try something?" or who just purchases a toy and leaves it somewhere in like the bedroom or who writes a seductive note with tantalizing innuendo and leaves it in the work briefcase or whatever. We have to be the one to stir the pot when things go dead. If you stir the cauldron, you're, you know, sort of awakening your light of your inner sanctum of sexuality and stirring that in the world with a lover and they're not responding, then you know it's time to walk away cuz they don't want that from you anymore. And then it would be better just to be friends. The gift of pandemos is discernment. I feel like I've only just scratched the surface of this topic and actually um next year I'm going to revive a class that I taught before which was called Maestra Mistress Melissa and I'm going to make that um available which is talking about these sexual archetypes of what is it to be the teacher the the experienced one the guide the sexual healer what is it to be the anenu the one who's the lover girl, the one who's the romantic one, and then what it is to be a sacred sexual priestess where sex is an act of devotion. I'm going to be bringing that together. And the other thing I'm going to introduce probably next year is a class called secrets of a cortisan and it is all about cultivating the proper type of sacred dynamic sexuality in the world. that would be held from within a truly sovereign woman. And that we're going to be looking at some of our ancestruses in that class and their examples and also looking at modern examples as well. and ways of holding your sexual energy in such a way that you actually are living the dream that we associate with that myth of the prostitute, the sacred temple prostitute. But actually, it's not that because there's no pimp and there's no John. There's just you being who you are in a liberated way in the world. Not for the benefit of anyone else, though others benefit. It's you being this fully embodied um essence of delight in the world. So we're going to have further deep dives into this in the future. Um we're also going to talk about this in uh in depth in one of the classes in orads and pelletes which is coming soon. But that said, discernment is the difference. It was is what gives us the difference between judging ourselves about past sexuality or uh living with from within our woundedness about past sexual experiences or about living from within our longing in such a way that it disempowers us. Instead, discernment gives us the gift of being open to pleasure and that our spark is the true passion. The willingness is the true passion. It belongs to us. It will not drain us. It doesn't come from outside of us. It's not someone else who turns us on. It's that we turn on. Something in us lights up. And it doesn't drain us. It actually illuminates us and fulfills us when we're in that energy. Um discernment is what helps us understand that passion and conflict, you know, even loss, even shame, even the grief, even the sorrow, even anger, even obstacles can all make us feel alive. And that we can learn to um you know, channel that aliveness toward greater passion. Both passion and conflict will make us feel alive, but they, you know, the one is a little bit more traumatizing than the other. And over time, we can take the energy of the conflicts that we've experienced and convert them into passion, convert them into a greater sense of knowing who we are. What is discernment? It is non-judgmental judgment. Discernment is a scientific kind of laser where or or a surgical blade where judgment is a dull machete hacking away at something. You know, judgment we just hack at it and hack at it and hack at it. I'm not this, I'm not that. Look how great I am because I'm not this. I'm not that. Whereas discernment just says, I'm not that. And walks away. Clean. Done. Pain is a teacher and its lessons will last longer than the lessons that we learn by pleasure. This is a sad fact. We will learn certain lessons through pleasure, but we will learn bigger lessons through pain. If we allow the lessons that we have learned in pain to just remain in pain, they will shape us to staying in pain. When we allow the lessons that we learned in pain to actually elevate us and to guide our pleasures of the future, then they shape us into the women we want to be rather than feeling stuck in the archetype of what we don't want to be but feel powerless over. And finally, it's up to us to separate myth from fact. When we are open fully to love, it's amazing. The lirance, it's incredible. The attraction, the yearning, the longing, the desire are all amazing. But we also can't afford to lose ourselves in the fantasy such that we don't always kind of have a um an eye on our own safety, our security, our health, and our well-being. So, here is your homework. For some of you, this will be easy. For some of you, it won't. But for this next week, abstain from sexual intimacy or pleasure. Try not to have sex with anyone else, including yourself. But do think about sex every day. Like, think about something that turns you on or some moment that was really hot or something that's really exciting to you. Think about it every day, but don't do anything about it. Not with yourself, not with anyone else. Then on the last day of this week, you're going to do a ritual cleansing bath for yourself. You can add a little of your rose oil. You could do another mask if you want. You can make it sensual and wonderful. And envision that you are being washed like the ancient statues of Aphrodite would be washed annually in a ceremony to restore the virginity of the goddess. And um allow your your ritual bath at the end of this week to restore your virginity. Allow your own sense of purity to return. And every day as you're thinking about sexual thoughts, about uh sensual thoughts, about what turns you on, you're thinking about that as in this is so good and true and pure and healthy, and I'm so grateful that I have these feelings and that I can experience this level of desire. And I love that I get the choice whether I'm going to pursue it and participate in it or not. And that choice is my freedom. And then after you've taken your bath, create some experience of sexual pleasure or sensual pleasure for yourself either alone or with a partner. And when you are having your moment, whatever that is, dedicate that pleasure to Aphrodite, give that pleasure to her and say, "In your name, I renew myself." You know, kind of just like to yourself. So, this is not a homework we're going to report about. This is just for you to do. So, our class went really long tonight, but I'm going to sing our hymn, and then I have one more thing to say about our vows before we close. Aphrodite of the sea, friend of dove and sacred bee, queen of sensuality. Lay your blessings upon me that I may walk in love and beauty. Hail Aphrodite. So, great questions coming up around our vows. What is the difference between a one-year vow and a long-term vow? In the one-year vow, we make the promise that for the coming year, we will study Aphrodite's mysteries. We'll connect with her lessons. We'll look for her symbols in our lives. There may be that sense of breathing that sometimes she's there and sometimes she's further away. But in both general and specific ways, we might say, "I'll read a book about you. I'll tend an altar to you. I'll make regular offerings to you for the coming year." And in return, we ask that whenever I feel like you're far away, you send a sign to let me know that you're still there. If you want to work with me deeper, you'll show me. You'll lead me. You'll guide me. you'll put me right where I'm meant to be so that I understand that in all matters of love and pleasure and connection and relationship and also all the other aspects that we've studied that you are with me and at the end of this year um if I wish I'll dedicate myself to you for another year or I may dedicate to myself to you for life then you have your longer term vow your life vow and that could be to say, "I've already worked with you for so long. I already know you so intimately. I've already watched your workings in my life. I know many of your lessons. I care about your presence in my life. And I know myself to be your priestess." Then that's when you would commit to I will embody your love, your beauty, your grace, your power, and your pleasure in the world. I will keep a permanent shrine to you. I will study you and your epithets. I will return to um your material about you, you know, material about you, this class, other classes, other things you might study again and again. I won't take for granted that I already know everything there is to know about you. I will look for the ways in which you are giving me the life lessons that I need. I will trust that anything you do in my life is for me rather than to me. I will make this commitment here and I will renew my vows to you, you know, from time to time or annually with the rest of this sisterhood as you wish. Either way, where I recommend that if you haven't taken any vow to Aphrodite before that you take a one-year vow first just to see how it goes and that then after that you come back and take a lasting vow. But if you already do have um a significant experience with Aphrodite and you know now's the time. I've been saving for this time to do this vow in this kind of a way. Then by all means take a a lifelong vow or a long-term vow. Either way, you're going to choose one of these epithets that we've studied to be your focus for the coming year. If you need a year of self-care, calipos. If you need a year of creativity, um maybe and and creation and fertility of your ideas, maybe Urania. If you need a year or even a year of like put fate and destiny on my side, um Urania, maybe it's I'm looking to cultivate more sweetness in my life, Melissa. Maybe it's I would like to hold my mystery closer to my chest and allow people to come discover me. Maybe that's maybe it's I want to get more of what I want in my life despina or however however you want to go about it. Maybe it's I want to have more lovers pandemos. So, think about the epithet that you'd like to work with for this year and make sure to include it in your vow. And I sent around um an example vow today, my vow, which um honors Aphrodite as a lifetime commitment in general and then gives the specific epithet of the year. And so if you're taking a long-term vow to Aphrodite, your long-term vow will be to Aphrodite in general and then you'll add a portion of your vow that is subject to change year after year for that particular epithet. And um the way that and yes, you know, the way that we will go about this will be going forward when you renew your vows, you can always take on a new epithet that you'd like to explore as well as giving the long-term commitment to Aphrodite in all her many forms. Um so I'm going to pause our share or I'm going to stop our share here. Oh, we have a question here. So the first part of our vow if we're doing a long term can include different epithets. Yes. Uh they can it can um the first part of your vow ideally will not really be so much about the epithets at all. It'll be about Aphrodite and Toto, all her faces. And then um the second part will be the part where you mention more specifically the epithets that you're working with either short-term or long-term. And if you wanted to make it so that it's you know kind of more general like Aphrodite I dedicate myself to you and your many faces and phases all the things that you do and all that you are all the ways that you work in the world and with special attention toward XYZ epithet. And this year I am giving myself over to XYZ epithet uh to explore your mysteries further. I'm paraphrasing like something really quick here but so that you understand kind of the format of it. So there I'm going to stop our recording and then we will close.