Aphrodite is powerful as as hell. She’s the infamous greek goddess of LOVE and so much more.

Although nowadays she’s shoved to the side as a love and romance goddess, good only for sex magic and spells to get a boyfriend/girlfriend/theyfriend her true ancient roots have her as a goddess for everything. So many of the stereotypes we have about Aphrodite are just that – stereotypes designed to gloss over and dismiss the most potent, powerful force in the greek pantheon. 

Let’s explore the roots of the divine Aphrodite and uncover some little known things about her. 

Why is she diminished to a silly, vain, frivolous goddess today?

Because she is so powerful all the gods were AFRAID of her. 

Aphrodite is not an easy part of the greek pantheon. She had to be folded to fit in – her original birth from the primal gods Uranus (the sky) and Gaia (the Sea) , but was later retold to have her as the child of Zeus and the ocean nymph Dione. Myths are told about the mad scramble Zeus had to get her married off, and she is criticised in the Illiad by Zeus for being weak and emotional and rubbish – and why was she so uncomfortably wedged into the patheon?

Because Aphrodite is POWERFUL. She is the power of desire, of attraction, of love – the most powerful force in the world. As much as the ancient greek world valued reason and logic and Zeus-and-Apollo vibes, they had nothing against the magic Aphrodite wields over the world. 

Nothing can beat primal Aphrodite, the goddess of Love and the mother of Seduction, Pain, Fear and Lust. 

(No, these last three were her legit actual children – Peitho, Demios, Phobos, and Eros: Persuasion, Pain, Fear and Lust.) 

She is the goddess of life – of being human. 

And why is she still not taken seriously today? 

Because that much raw power in a woman’s body was uncomfortable for later Greek society (well, the age when they managed to write down the myths in 700bc) and very uncomfortable for western society of the last two millennia. 

Originally, Aphrodite was a Rock. 

Her first icons and statues were just powerful big rocks. Back then she was known as Kypris, the Goddess of Cyprus, the personification of the abundant, rich earth and the life-giving sea. There were no half-naked ladies or golden-haired women with big tits – just powerful fuck-off rocks that represented to primal power of this goddess. 

At her ancient temple sanctuaries in Cyprus, black conical rocks represented the goddess – well work by centuries of worshippers touching the goddess to get a blessing. 

The further back into history you go, the less human the gods need to be. 

And, she wasn’t originally Greek either. 

When you look at the ancestry of a goddess, they are usually an evolutionary mish-mash of many other goddesses and beings who came before them – I call it their sister-ancestry. Aphrodite as we know her today was born out of the merging of Kypris, the life-giving goddess of Cyprus, and Astarte, the popular goddess of love, life, sex and war from the Levant (that’s Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel etc).

Astarte in turn has her sister-ancestry in the even deeper past as Ishtar, the Sumerian goddess of culture, love, sex, fertility and war, who was worshipped 5000 years ago in modern day Iraq.

One way you know they are sister-ancestors is that they carry the same stories. This lineage of love goddesses (sometimes called the Rose Goddess Lineage in modern times) carries the story of the sacrificed lover – Ishtar lost her lover Dumuzi, Aphrodite lost her lover Adonis.    

We know Aphrodite is powerful because she comes from such a long lineage of earth-shaking badasses.

And, strong doubts that she was a perpetually naked blonde with white skin. 

In fact, all the surviving stories and references we have of Aphrodite always take pains to describe the phenomenal and expensive fabrics and jewels she wears. She doesn’t go naked – she wears Haute Couture darling so she is living art all the time. 

The whole blonde Aphrodite with porcelain skin… she’s the western ideal of beauty that has existed from the Italian renaissance, where women with pale skin and golden hair were exotic and harder to find in mainland Italy and thus prized as great beauties. No where in the surviving myths and stories is she ever explicitly described as light skinned. 

The thing about Aphrodite is that she is femininity personified, so every culture projects their ideals and desires on her. 

In truth, her golden hair probably comes from her association with precious metals. Our Cypriot goddess held within her womb-earth all sorts of precious metals that made Cyprus a rich island – particularly copper, essential for making the all-important bronze of the bronze age, but the talented metal-workers of the island loved the most precious metal of all – GOLD.

She’s associated with lavish metals, because she is a goddess of lavish metals, and thus shines all golden. 

Makes sense, no? 

(In fact, her epithet Chrysea means Golden, and there are a bunch of names for her that mean shining one too.)  

How fun is it to dive in deep and see the roots of our powerful divine feminine past?

It is so often that the most discredited and pooh-poohed parts of our history are things that hide hidden power – and this is so ubiquitous with the Divine Feminine throughout history. Why would it not be doubly so with the glorious goddess of femininity, Aphrodite herself? 

Aphrodite is a phenomenal, complicated great goddess of life, love and abundance, covering everything from grief, to precious metals, to war, to motherhood. 

It’s time she is adored and seen in her fullness once more. 

Want to learn more about Aphrodite?

I have a free gift for you:

🌹Aphrodite’s Sacred Arts of Beauty

Divine one! I invite you on a FREE four day celebration of Aphrodite and her arts of beauty. 

This free class is for YOU if you – 

🌺 Are curious about how Aphrodite is powerful and want to connect with her like her ancient priestesses did

🌺 Are fascinated by sacred ART and the way we create beauty in honour of the Goddess

🌺 Know or suspect that cultivating and adoring Beauty is one of the central missions of your life

In this e-mail class you will:

❤️ Learn about Aphrodite (including things you never knew before) and how to work with her energy in a lavishly illustrated 29 page guidebook

❤️  Discover the Path of the Priestesses of Beauty in a 15 page guidebook which will reassure you that beauty is the ultimate act of spiritual devotion by looking at the ancient priestesses and seeing how they practices – and looking at the sacred texts that 10/10 back up your devotion to beauty.

❤️   Take part in a pre-recorded Temple Dance Class and learn a beautiful dance prayer to honour Aphrodite

❤️ Connect with the lineage of ancient priestess drummers and learn to drum like they did in the temples of Aphrodite – even if you are a total beginner!

Once you sign up, the first class will be sent to you IMMEDIATELY – no waiting! Aphrodite in your inbox today! – and you get to enjoy the four classes over four days. 

Sign up here:

By signing up for this free gift you are also joining our fab Rockstar Priestess weekly newsletter, which you can opt out from at any time ❤️