Emerging Aphrodite

Statue of Aphrodite. Handmade of alabaster,and painted in museum patina.

Emerging Aphrodite according to ancient Greek mythology and religion,  is the goddess of love, beauty, sexuality, pleasure and procreation. The planet Venus owes its name to her.

Her birth

As with many ancient Greek deities, there are more than one myth about its origin. According to Hesiod,  she was born when Saturn cut off the genitals of his father, Uranus, and threw them into the sea. From the foam came the goddess, hence her name. According to Homer Iliad, she is the daughter of Zeus and Dioni. Plato claims in the “Symposium” that both narratives are valid. But they refer to the birth of different entities. Of Urania and the Pandemus Aphrodite, patrons of the spiritual Platonic idealized and carnal hedonistic love respectively. Although extradited women considered Aphrodite their patron saint, her public worship was serious, solemn, and unpretentious.

Loves of Aphrodite

Because of her beauty, the gods feared that they would be led to war. So Zeus arranged for her to marry Hephaestus. Who, because of his ugliness and deformities, was not perceived as a threat. Aphrodite, however, had many lovers, both gods like Mars and people like Aghisis. She played an important role in the myth of Eros and the Soul, while she caused the birth of Adonis, who later became her lover. She is considered the mother of many even smaller deities and entities. In the Trojan War, which he largely triggered by helping Paris kidnap the Beautiful Helen, the goddess sided with the Trojans.

Sacred beings of the goddess were myrtle, pigeons, sparrows, horses and swans.Emerging  Aphrodite is also known as Kythera and Kyprida from her two main places of worship, Kythera and Cyprus, which claimed to be her birthplace. Thanks to the legend of her emergence from the sea, Aphrodite was widely worshiped as the protector of sailors, with the adjectives Pelagia, Euploia and Thalassia.