Welcome back to Aphrodisia Week 2026 here on White Rose of Avalon, my Darlings. For this fifth post, I will be discussing Aphrodite’s epithet of Heteira, which means Courtesan! In this post, I will explore what the term Courtesan means and what it brings to mind for me, as Aphrodite Heteira is a great epithet to aid us in examining our relationships to sexuality. So, think of today’s reflection as what my mind thinks of when I feel the energy of Aphrodite Heteira!
Personally, I have always been fascinated by the history of Royal Courtesans and Mistresses to Kings. Of course, the idea of a Courtesan is more of a high-class prostitute than a full-on Mistress, but they are intimately linked. This is especially true when we think of the King’s Mistresses who began as Courtesans, like Madame du Barry. So, at the end of the day, the energy of a King’s Favourite and the idea of a Courtesan are not that different, as both would have been lovers of incredibly powerful individuals. In the case of Aphrodite Heteira, we can also add in the energy of the Sacred Prostitute, the one who would sleep with Kings and Warriors to bless them in the name of the Goddess!
This shows the true power and the true Sacredness of Sexuality. Well before the world became so puritanical as to believe that sex was dirty or shameful, there was the knowledge that the act of intimacy was sacred. Sacred Sexuality could bless the King with his very right to rule, with the Ritual coupling of a King with a Goddess of Sovereignty blessing his reign. This is why we have so many stories of Sovereignty Goddesses and Faery Queens marrying a King on behalf of the land. Famous examples include Guinevere, Rhiannon, and Blodeuwedd. That is what the epithet of Heteira means to me. Not a shameful energy of one who is simply a high class sex worker, or even a Mistress of a King, but the Sacredness of one who is a true lover!
In fact, when we look to history, we often find that a King’s Mistress held as much, if not more, sway than his Queen. This is partially due to the fact that a King could choose his Mistress for love, while the Queen was forced upon him. That is certainly the case with Louis XIV’s famous Mistress Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart de Mortemart, Marquise of Montespan, who was famously given the nickname of ‘The Real Queen of France.’ We even see this play out in how certain Kings would choose their Queens. After all, Edward IV of England married Elizabeth Woodville for love and had a very fruitful royal marriage, producing ten children, due to the passion and love they shared. Their own grandson, Henry VIII, would choose to marry Anne Boleyn for love decades later! Anne Boleyn was famously considered Henry’s Concubine (another term very similar to Courtesan) before they were wed! So, as we can see, there is a lot of nuance to the idea of a Sacred Courtesan, for she is not one who gives her body up to another purely for their pleasure, but for the betterment of the Kingdom as a whole.
Aphrodite Heteira is there to aid us in thinking about Courtesans and Mistresses in a more nuanced way. This epithet is wonderful to work with to open your mind about how you think about Sacred Sexuality, and even how you think about (and maybe unfairly malign) sex workers in general. I have always been very drawn to this epithet for the complexity in understanding of how people think about sex that is tied to this epithet’s energy!
I hope you have enjoyed reading this reflection on Aphrodite Heteira, and that it has given you some food for thought about Courtesans and Mistresses in general. What is your relationship to this epithet of Aphrodite? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
Note on Image: The image at the top of the post is the painting The Birth of Venus by Louis Devedeux. I found the art on https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Louis_Devedeux_-_The_Birth_of_Venus,_1850.jpg.
LINK TO AVALONIAN ROSE FAERY MYSTERIES PATREON: patreon.com/AvalonianRoseFaeryMysteries
Further Reading
- Aphrodite: Encountering the Goddess of Love & Beauty & Initiation by Irisanya Moon
- Blood and Roses: A Devotional for Aphrodite and Venus by Bibliotheca Alexandrina
- https://www.theoi.com/Cult/AphroditeTitles.html