Not just erotic, though

The erotic nature of Aphrodite is not limited to the erotic itself. Eroticism is the art of sex. Titillation, teasing, flirting, and even things like obsession and lust are all part of the erotic experience.We are, all of us, victims to its power. We all remember that man or woman who you just couldn’t get out of your mind. We all have that memory of that one man or woman who touched you one day, and the very touch of him made you react sexually, even if there was no such intent.

The erotic nature of Aphrodite extends to the concept of sensation and all that means. The feeling of a penis in your hands is erotic, but so, I might add, is the taste of a cold orange. You might wonder how this can be, but that’s not hard to explain, because sex, as a part of the erotic art form, is all about sensation. It is all about pleasure, and sometimes, eating a cold orange is almost as intense a pleasure as sex is. “That was better than sex!” is the expression.

But the erotic, as an expansive explanation or definition of pleasure, is always with us. Aphrodite adores sweet scents and flavors as much as she loves the ac of love making, and we often forget this in our looks at this bright and broadly encompassing goddess.

Her nature is one that demands that you be aware. If you are not aware of how much you love a feeling, a taste, a smell, you may never learn to appreciate it. You may never learn to see that pleasure and thus acknowledge that part of yourself. This is an aspect of the goddess as Ourania, or Celestial. This aspect of Aphrodite is often seen as a higher aspect. One of the mind, of consideration, and of the soul. But this is a false assumption based on the Judaeo-Christian ideal. An ideal that sees the body, sex, sexuality, and eroticism as bad.

Not that Christianity is alone in this, the Greeks had philosophies of this type too, as do the Hindus and Buddhists. Philosophies in which the body and its pleasures are said to hold down the soul, keep it from flying free when life has ended.

To me, this is simply a falsehood. The great goddess of love is not intimately tied to both love, an emotion that is very much a high one. One that requires a person to sacrifice and think of another before him or herself, and to lust, the emotion that focuses on the bodies instinctive sexual reactions, for no reason. The great goddess love is tied to these for a reason, and that is that Ourania is not an aspect that is as a separation of purity and carnality, but a symbiosis of the two, a combination, a harmonious union of the purity of emotion and the carnality of lust.

Aphrodite lusts after Ares, and Ares lusts after Aphrodite. So the myth goes, and in that myth lies an interesting answer, for the goddess of love and lust and the god of war, and the restless emotional warrior spirit are joined and give us Harmonia. Love and Lust, bound together into Harmony.

Amen, brothers and sisters :-)