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July 15, 2001 |
"Cutting a path right through the stars":Aphroditeby Stephanie Hiller |
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The Return of Aphrodite Under the wave it is
altogether still, Listen to the long rising
curve and stress, From deep she rises, poised
upon her shell. --- May Sarton
We all know of Aphrodite, Greek goddess of love. Less known, is that she is descended from a long lineage -- the primal goddesses of the Fertile Crescent. Asherah, Semitic goddess of the sea, is her immediate predecessor. Worshiped in Her sacred grove in the land of Canaan long before the arrival of the Hebrews, the luscious fig of her sacred tree became the apple from the Tree of Knowledge that robbed Eve and Adam of their immortal bliss. (Merlin Stone) Fruit is also a symbol of Aphrodite, writes Patricia Monaghan in The Goddess Path, "for she is the goddess who, drawing bees to flowering branches, creates the bountiful harvest." Or as Shelley would have it, she is "the lure of the moth for the star", the pheromones that attract the male to the female, the desire that compels us to seek union with another. Hers is the passion love arouses, the expansion of the womb to receive the rich wild flow of life that enters it, the sweet earth swelling pregnant with rain and ripening compost. She is more than the "goddess of love" -- she is the great procreative power, the infatuation with the object of its desire (itself!), and the wild urge to become one. She is the Queen of All, and Goddess of the Sea. She is thought to be unruly. Monagan calls her amoral. "In all her myths Aphrodite is the force of attraction and connection, of passion and of the juiciest form of love. Such love can grow and become lasting, but that's not Aphrodite's concern. Broken hearts? Ruined Lives? Troy in flames? Not her problem." When Aphrodite appears, we are flung into the sea of passion beneath the light of a golden moon. Yet Barbara Walker in her vast Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets links Aphrodite with the law that governs the universe, for "she was once indistinguishable from the Fates (moirai); her old name was Moira, and she was said to be older than Time. She governed the world by ius naturale, the natural law of the maternal clan." Ius naturales is "the Latin term for the Law of Aphrodite, or of Juno, or of Demeter: the legal system of the ancient matriarchate. It was related to 'the Aphroditean law which permeates matter and causes it to be fertilized . . ." In the ancient Aryan pantheon, Brahma is the Creator, and for the same reason: he is the embodiment of Desire.
As Asherah, she was Goddess of the oldest continuously-occupied temple in the world -- Byblos. "Bibles" were named after her city because the earliest libraries were attached to her temple. "Kings of Byblos received their mandate from the Goddess before they could rule," writes Walker. So the ius naturales is the same principle which governed the Iroquois, whose chiefs were chosen by the women elders. The Great Goddess travelled, perhaps, as Lucia Birnbaum writes, from a single source in Africa, or from multiple sources throughout the southern cultures of the world, transforming herself, revealing herself in new aspects, and generating rites of worship and practice. As She travelled, She was covered up, like the moon that is waning. Even in the dark of the moon, She was not gone. She left her final imprint as the Mother of Jesus who so enraptured the Indians of the South American Hemisphere that she became their own Virgen of Guadalupe, firmly wed with their own ancient Aztec goddess, Tonantzin. Aphrodite's temple in Cyprus later became a sanctuary for the Virgin Mary, who is "hailed to this day as Panaghia Aphroditessa, 'All-Holy Aphrodite." But no one has told the Pope that the Mother of Jesus is none other than the goddess of passionate love. The Greeks, not terribly fond of real women, celebrated this goddess in beautiful poetry. Monaghan quotes these lines from Homer. The golden one has left us, gone to her island, Aphrodite is sometimes called the chief Grace -- when we're lucky in love, so she is. From her ancient foremothers, dating back to the Sumerian goddess Inanna, this immortal goddess presides over the sacred marriage -- the tantric union which imbues the flesh with the iridescent energy of spirit. By the rite of the hieros gamos, which dates back to the Babylonian goddess Ishtar, kings are endowed with the power to rule. And if the man does not please her, off with his head! "The length of a king's reign was often predetermined, because people thought the Goddess needed the refreshment of a new lover at stated intervals." (Walker) This death and resurrection of the son/lover has its origin in the story of Isis and Osiris. After his brother murdered Osiris, flinging his parts to the four corners of the earth, Isis was able to retrieve all the pieces save one: the penis. She fashioned one out of clay, and in deep despair made love to the dead god, conceiving her son Horus. And so, the king is resurrected -- not unlike the Christ, the Beloved Groom. Perhaps it is no wonder that the Hebrew patriarchs railed against the rituals of Asherah, and against the "prostitutes" (actually priestesses) of her temple. The annual sacrifice of the king could well be the source of male fear of unrestrained female passion. In any case, eager to establish a consistent lineage in which patrimony could be assured, and ever determined to follow the letter of the Law, the patriarchs and prophets exhorted their flocks to seek passion only within the confines of marriage. When Jezebel, a great queen and devotee of the goddess, was called the Whore of Babylon, the Hebrews gave the ancient rites a bad name, one that has stuck. Alas, for this distortion of the sacred practices of the Goddess, civilization has paid a great price, so that we labor even today under this revulsion with the pleasures of the flesh whilst doomed to its obsessive pursuit -- seeking ecstasy in the shadows. Male obsession with the unattainable, impermissible orgasm has produced the caverns of pornography, the dark alleys of prostitution, the torments of the marriage bed -- while the Church maintained the absolutely incorrect and absurd notion that mind can be elevated above the body, and made pure. Women have suffered through it all. Matrimony never appealed to Aphrodite. She married Hephaestus but had many love affairs, the two most notorious ones with Ares and Adonis, which she flaunted before the august Greek pantheon. How often she flees the marriage bed can many attest, leaving a flock of contracts and bills to cement a union which has lost its luster. The "free love" movement of the 1960s liberated Aphrodite from the yoke of marital chastity, unfortunately unleashing a wave of promiscuity which now carries AIDS across the planet. How easy for the Christian Right to call it just punishment. But AIDS did not come from God. According to a new book, The River, it came from a medical laboratory. Then how shall we resurrect the goddess of love? Writes Monaghan,"This is not a goddess to take lightly: never forget the Trojan War. Yet she is not necessarily destructive, so don't hesitate to invoke her when life seems dry or loveless. Just be prepared to deal with the rush of feeling and desire she provokes." Wrote the poet gladly: She has come back, piercing us all
Homeric Hymn quoted by Patricia Monaghan in The Goddess Path Order from Powells! Barbara Walker's Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets Order from Powells!
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