The promise of sexual pleasure is not one Aphrodite actually makes. Aphrodite offered Paris the most beautiful woman in the world. She gave Hera her girdle that Zeus might be attracted to her as he had been once. He gave Pygmalion his heart’s desire, the love of the statue he had so lovingly created.
Aphrodite is said to be the Goddess of Love, but if we explore what this means to a deeper level, it means she is the Goddess of Beauty. Man aspires to beauty, for beauty, and to come from beauty. Men long for beautiful mates, beautiful lovers, and beautiful children, and in these things, Aphrodite is the great promise, the great provider, for the world is filled with her eternal spirit of beauty and the pleasure beauty brings.
Sexual attraction, love, physical desire, they are all tied to beauty. This doesn’t necessarily mean culturally accepted standards of beauty, but a personal, and often subconscious standard of beauty.
When we fall in love, there are always a million things we find beautiful about the person or people we fall for. They are physically attractive to us. They are sexually arousing to us. They are intellectually beautiful. Emotionally appealing. All of these things, are part of our inner beauty, part of what makes us beautiful to others.
It is in these things that Aphrodite is present. It is in these things that Aphrodite forces us to bend to her power, and say what you want, deny it all you want, we are, all of us, powerless against her.
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