The 5 Temple Arts of a Love Goddess

The great goddesses of love hold the secrets of life, fertility, beauty and abundance – golden Aphrodite, beautiful Oshun, sweet Hathor, bold Ishtar… and once upon a time their temples held hundreds of priestesses trained in their service. 

But what skills would an ancient priestess of the Love Goddess be trained in? How would they express their devotion for the Goddess, and what would they offer visitors to their temple?

Let’s explore the five core temple arts of a priestess of the love goddesses!

1. Fragrance.
   Once upon a time great clouds of scented incense would spill out of the temples of Hathor, Asherah and Aphrodite. Baskets of precious petals would be scattered on the floors, and holy herbs and flowers would be carefully infused and distilled to create sacred fragrant oils that would be poured on the statues and vessels of the Goddess Herself.

   There is no temple without perfume!

   Temple priests and priestesses would have been keepers of the oils, the precious potions that could confer divinity – to anoint after all means to make sacred. They would have worked with the spiritual dimension of perfume to delight, to awaken, to arouse and to deepen into states of ecstacy.
    

2. Dance
   In the ancient temples of India there were specific priestesses whose job was to dance for the deity. In Odisha in eastern India they were called the Maharis. They were considered married to the god and wore the red hennaed fingers of a traditional bride and they would dance in devotion to the deity twice a day to please the divine.

   Dance has always been a sacred art of the gods, and the temple dancers of the Love Goddesses of old would have known how to embody the beauty of the divine through their movement. From Salome in the middle east to the Mahari of the Indian temples, dance was always a core part of worship and a tool to embody the ecstasy of the divine. 

3. Music
   The first depicted drummers are women – the goddess Hathor holding her frame drum in the millenia old egyptian temples, statues of Cybele of Anatolia holding a drum in one hand and a lotus in the other, ancient cypriot bird goddesses cradling a drum in their arms.

   The rhythms of the drum were a core part of ancient ceremonies that the priestesses of old lead – processions, vision journeys, dreaming temples… The priestesses needed to be able to drop people into a trance to experience communion with the divine, or to access the states needed for magic, oracle and transformation. The drum would have been such a powerful tool!
     

4. Adornment
   Forgotten and dismissed in a world that holds a shaming christian morality, adornment was a sacred tool of the temple priestesses. How would they adorn this body so it may most please the Goddess? How could they honour this vessel as the spark of the divine?

   In museums across the world precious jewelry belonging to long-dead priestesses is carefully displayed: paintings of priestess in Minoan Crete show them in their sacred tiered skirts and holy uniform: and many cultures still today adopt the practice of the veil, seen as both an honouring and a shaming of the feminine today.

   Once upon a time when the Priestess walked by, you knew it by the tinkling of her golden bangles, the sheen of her silk skirts, and the tilt of her kohl-rimmed eyes. Beauty is always an art of the goddess of love, and embodying the charm and delight of the gods is a requirement of her priestesses. 

5. Sacred Sexual Energy Practice
   In our English language we don’t really have a word to describe this – the ancient tantric practices, the awakened kundalini and the shakti energy of the goddess running in the body. 

   But in the ancient temples of the goddess the Priestesses of Love would have known how to work with the energetic currents in the body to amplify their vitality, sensuality and magnetism. They would be working with life energy, creative energy – sex energy – and tending and threading it through their bodies as part of their personal devoted practice, making their body a fit and ready vessel for the full of fertile shakti of a love goddess!

   It’s important to note that these practices would not necessarily be obviously sexual (though I am sure some were!), and although some priestesses may have practiced tantric sexual alchemy with partners, the story of the sacred temple prostitute priestesses is a myth.

Which of these arts are you most called to study as a modern day beloved of the Goddess? 

***

Ready to immerse in the Arts of the Goddess of Love? 

Join me in Santa Barbara California this September 2025 for a weekend of ceremony, dance, music and magic in honour of the goddess Aphrodite as we return to her temple to learn and practice her temple arts – a true weekend immersed in the energy and fragrance of Aphrodite to awaken her essence and joy within you. 

Learn sacred drum beats holy to her, infuse your field with her holy oils, trace her dances on the sand and bring her offerings to the seashore as we dance and drum in her honour under the new moon on the California coastline. 

Want in? 

Learn more and book here: