People get very confused when thinking about Aphrodite and what it means to carry Aphrodite energy. 

Here’s the thing. 

Our modern vision of Aphrodite is influenced by millennia of old prudish white men full of shame projecting their sexual fantasies on a goddess and those who served her. 

In mainstream culture he has come to mean nothing more than sex and sexual appeal, that’s it. All her primal powers were cut from her – her wealth, her influence, the way she is the very spark of life in all things – and she became just The Sex Goddess. 

And not even as an erotic-primal-essence-of-all-life goddess, the way that all of life and creation is some form of sex and every aspect of that, flowers, love, desire, union, harmony, attraction… 

I mean as just the physical sexual act. 

That’s it. 

That’s all these old timey dudes doing archaeology and translating greek texts could see. That’s all they cared about. That’s what they got so excited by that they couldn’t see anything else.

Historically so much crap has been projected on Aphrodite because of this ridiculous tunnel vision. 

Folks have been convinced for centuries that her priestesses must have been sacred prostitutes, because what else would the priestess of the goddess of sex do? 

(They were not. Go read this article here.)

Our modern conception of Polytheism thinks that it means each god lives very neatly in one box and has one purpose – Zeus is Kings, Morrghan is War, Artemis is Moon & Maidenhood and Aphrodite is sex. 

This is nonsense. 

And in the case of Aphrodite, it’s full fantasy male gaze to the max. 

This projection of Aphrodite as the ultimate sexual fantasy, as the beautiful and charming (and submissive) sexually available woman who will have sex with you whenever you want (yes, you!). 

I have some of my students telling me that men respond to this Aphrodite essence within them, expecting more than just friendship over and over again (even when they were explicitly clear that a sexual relationship was never on the table). 

And I want you all to know that I don’t believe what these men are seeing in you is actual Aphrodite.    

It’s the male fantasy projection of what they want Aphrodite to be, what they want you to be, what they hope you will be.  

That’s what they see. 

They don’t see her power. Her grace. Her indomitably fierceness. Her soft vulnerability and naked intimacy. 

They see sex. 

I mean, that’s what they have been trained to see. 

That’s what we all thought Aphrodite was when we first heard of her – oh, that’s the sexy love goddess who can make us beautiful and help us connect with our sexuality. She’s Marilyn Monroe and Kim Kardashian and Jessica Rabbit all at the same time – the male sexual fantasy.

Our world is still so ashamed and repressed when it comes to sexuality, and sex is inherently so fascinating and compelling and attractive that when it’s present it overshadows everything else and attracts so much intensity and emotional charge. 

Like people only see Marilyn as a sex icon, Kim Kardashian as a shallow vapid sex doll, and Jessica Rabbit as… well, Jessica Rabbit. 

This is the edge of Aphrodite. 

She is, at her heart, attraction – she’s desire, magnetism, beauty, love, everything we naturally gravitate towards. Her energy IS pure attraction. 

But her energy is not the male fantasy of Aphrodite, always wet, always available, always horny. 

No. 

These are two DIFFERENT things.

***

MAN this makes me angry. 

Aphrodite’s worth isn’t that she is fuckable, and that’s not our role as priestesses and devotees of Aphrodite. 

Our sexuality is our own. Our sexuality is our very life force energy. We do with it whatever we want, and that deserves to be respected, and we do not deserve to have to put up with the outdated fantasy projections of what it means to serve the goddess of love. 

We do not owe ANYONE our sexual energy just because we serve, work with, love or worship Aphrodite.

Yuck. Done with it. 

Priestess Perceptions

When we step up and present as priestesses or as Aphrodite women, we have to GOTS be conscious of the way folks project their perceptions onto us, especially with charged stuff like female sexuality and female spiritual power.

It’s easy to see what isn’t actually there – to project an expectation and then be disproportionately furious when it’s not me. 

We need to see where others are doing this to us, and we need to be aware of how we are doing it to others.

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