 Aphrodite and Adonis Death and rebirth, myrrh and wind flowers 
The goddess of love and beauty was subject to plenty of legendary gossip, positive and negative.
In her earliest guise, Aphrodite was a divinity resonating the respect due to the most sublime of
emotions. Considered a descendant of the ancient fertility goddess Ishtar, her worship was solemn,
if not austere. But the Greeks loved a good juicy story, and the most beautiful divinity turned up
as ever a more sportive figure. She became flighty Aphrodite, the goddess of desire, thinking of
nothing but sex, sex, sex and never neglecting her rapturous duties. In the end, known as Venus
to the Romans, she became the divinity of prostitutes, sacred and profane, as well as the sexuality
of lovers. Her attributes were the swan, the dove, the pomegranate.
We marvel at Botticelli’s concept of her birth. She is as white as milk, her face angelic, clad only in her own windblown golden hair and riding a shell. Her story was less aesthetic than the painting, for her creation resulted from primal patricide. When the Titan Cronos seized power and killed his father, he flung the body into the sea where it floated, spouting a drifting cloud of seed. From the froth the goddess arose like the vision of beauty that she was, and her name derived from aphros, “foam born.” Waves curled around her and Poseidon’s white horses conveyed her to the island of Cythera. Wherever Aphrodite stepped, grass sprang from sand, flowers bloomed, and the air filled with birdsong and perfume. The most beautiful of goddesses moved in radiant light, enriching mortals with joy, respite, and laughter. Her cult adored her and celebrated the Aphro-disiac, her priestesses offering ecstatic sexual intercourse as ritual worship for adherents. Inside the tree, an unearthly baby The birth of Adonis was equally bizarre; the Greeks adored strange conception tales. Myrrha cherished an incestuous love for her father, the Syrian king Theias. With the help of Aphrodite she coupled with her father in the darkness. When Theias discovered the deception, his rage was boundless and lethal. Myrrha fled from her father, and Aphrodite turned her into a tree for protection. Theias shot a spear into the fragrant tree later named for the princess. The tree split and a baby emerged. Charmed by his unearthly beauty, Aphrodite protected the newborn and deter-mined to keep Adonis hers for his adult future. The goddess put the baby in a box. She gave him to Persephone to raise in the underworld until he was grown, safe from his father/grandfather. Persephone agreed. |
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