For Femme Fatale Friday for this Love Week 2022 I have chosen to write about the most iconic Goddess of Love! Aphrodite is her name in Greece, and in Rome, she was called Venus. She is the embodiment of love, lust, and sexuality!
Her relationships are many in the myths. She is a lover to Aries, Hermes, Adonis, and married to Hephaestus. In some versions of the myths, we also have references to her taking lovers in Zeus and Apollo. It is not common to find those two listed among her lovers, but it would make sense that she had all of them being those that she beds.
She had several children, being a Goddess of love, but she was never associated heavily with motherhood. For her, the children were a result of her divine sexual nature! Her most known child is Eros, or Cupid, as we know him from Roman myth. He is the God that is known to be very mischievous and often used his arrows to cause havoc amongst Gods and mortals alike.
I have given an in-depth look at her relationship with Adonis in other posts. So I would like to look a bit more at her most famous relationship in this Love Week post. Aries was the God of War, and he was the great love of this Goddess’s immortal life! Their story was something that was recounted many times in ancient texts. There is a great story, in an amusing way, of the beginning of their relationship. Hephaestus had caught on to their betrayal and decided to use his skills in metalwork to create a very thin net. With this net, the two were caught during a tryst, and Hephaestus called all the other Gods on Olympus in to see them. Instead of the irate reaction, the Blacksmith of the Gods had intended, however, the reaction of the other deities was one of laughter. Everyone thought the two lovers being caught like fish in a net to be endlessly amusing!
I wanted to share this amusing love tale because I believe it highlights an aspect of love often overlooked. Love is meant to be taken both seriously and lightly. Lovers must remember to laugh at themselves and to laugh together, often! Live life with laughter and love, as well as remember to embrace your sexuality. That is an enduring lesson from this Great Love Goddess! I hope you have enjoyed this brief look at Aphrodite. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
Note on Image: The image at the top of the post is Aphrodite. I found the image on https://redbergh.artstation.com/projects/Xn2k8L.
Further Reading
- Bulfinch’s Mythology by Thomas Bulfinch
- Mythology by Edith Hamilton
White Rose of Avalon 