Click here to listen to Love and Beauty: the Greek Myths of Aphrodite and Eros
in the Season 1 archives on Buzzsprout
“Without warning
As a whirlwind
Swoops on an oak
Love shakes my heart.”
—Sappho
In this podcast I share some of the ancient Greek mythology about Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love, and Eros, the God of Desire, the force that brings people and things together. These are universal, timeless energies and the Greek ideas about them, personified in this Goddess and God, can help us expand our thinking about the role love, beauty, and desire play in our lives.
Aphrodite is depicted as very beautiful. You may be familiar with Botticelli’s painting “The Birth of Venus,” for example. (Venus is the Roman name for Aphrodite). She personifies beauty and yet Aphrodite is not the goddess of beautiful people. She gives her gifts to everyone who wants to know the transformative power of love.
Here is a transcript of this podcast:
Love and Beauty: The Greek Myths of Aphrodite and Eros transcript 050219
Hello everyone and welcome to Myths in the Mojave, destined to come to you soon under the new name of Myth Matters. This will continue to be the storytelling and conversation about mythology ,and why it’s important to our lives today that you are used to—there will be no change in content, my friends. And I will continue to be your personal mythologist, Catherine Svehla. Wherever you may be in this wide, beautiful, crazy world of ours, you are part of this story circle.
Today I want to share some of the ancient Greek mythology about Aphrodite, the goddess of love and Eros, the god of desire, the force that brings people and things together. These are universal, timeless energies and I think the Greek ideas about them, personified in this Goddess and God, can help us expand our thinking about the role, love and desire play in our lives.
But before I do that, I want to give a shout out to the marvelous people who have been supporting this podcast financially by being members of the Myth in the Mojave community on band amp. My mission as a mythologist, and the motivation for this podcast, is to inspire and empower creative and thoughtful people like yourself, to mine the riches of our mythological inheritance and become more sensitive to the mythologies that comprise our culture. Today we live in a world of stories friends, just as Muriel Rukeyser said, and if you don’t know this, you are easily controlled by these stories, by the stories that you recognize as stories and by the many modern myths that pose as ideologies or facts, purporting to offer us certainty in the face of ineffable mystery.
I know there are many demands on your time and many ways to get information. So I am very grateful to each of you for listening and making Myth in the Mojave part of your life. This is truly a story circle. And because this podcast is born of my love for the stories, for the life of the soul, for your journey, and for our precious, troubled world, I am deeply thankful for those of you who have the means and the willingness to send me a few dollars every month via the community on bandcamp. So let’s all take a moment together and give special thanks to these listeners who make this podcast possible: Julia Warnking, Mark Brady, Gillian Spedding, Deborah Tobin, Rags Rosenberg, Cindy Caldwell, Fred Burke, Constance Walsh, Cheryl Cox, Curt Sautter, KD Shahin, Elise Kost Paula, Trish, Sara Munro, Luanna Lynch, Amy Kelley, Carmen, Cynthia Anderson, Jaime Baum, Melinda Molnar, Belinda Edward, and Kim Whitney. You are superstars in my cosmos. Thank you so much for sending a few dollars my way and providing some compensation for the time that I spend putting this podcast together for all of you.
And this mention of superstars in my mythic cosmos is a good segue into the mythology of Aphrodite and Eros, who were among the very first to emerge, suggesting that love does indeed comprised the cosmic glue that keeps our world going around.
Now, according to the poet Hesiod, who first wrote down the Greeks creation myths, Eros was born out of the chaos at the same time as Gaia, the earth. So at the very, very beginning, the earth emerges and so does this principle of desire, the force that brings things together and makes life possible. Obviously the power of attraction is going to be important to creation project. Right? Hesiod also tells us about the birth of Aphrodite. Now some of you may remember the ancient myths and the whole story of the Titanamachia, the war between the Titans who were the first set of gods and the Olympians who came a little bit later. Well this story of Aphrodite takes us right back to the origins and the Titans because you see, after Eros and Gaia emerged, we then had heaven, or Ouranus come into being. Heaven was a “he” and spread himself on Gaia.
And every time that he did this, she gave birth to something. She gave birth to a lot of the things that we consider features of our earth. She also gave birth to the Titans, this first race of Gods, and she gave birth to a lot of other beings, cyclops and others. And the problem here for the Earth (Gaia) was that Heaven came down and spread himself on her too much and too often, and she got tired of this pressure to be producing and also, Ouranus, heaven, he didn’t like all of her offspring. He found some of them really unappealing, like the three horrible brothers who are not to be mentioned, and forced the Earth to take them back into herself. And she didn’t like this because she loved all of her children.
So Gaia made a sharp sickle out of some stone and she appealed to her Titan sons, that they might come to her aid and stop Heaven from making these regular visits. The youngest son, Kronos agreed to help her. He ambushes his father and lops off his testicles and throws them into the sea. And there they float along for a while and a white seafoam forms around them. From this foam comes Aphrodite.
She’s carried along on the foam and the waves and floats first to Cythera and then to Cyprus, both islands east of Greece. And some say that Eros traveled with her and others say that when the winds blew her to Cyprus, that she was greeted by the Seasons. Now, some of you may be familiar with a very famous painting by Botticelli called The Birth of Venus, which was the Roman name for Aphrodite. Well, she was greeted by the Seasons and they were overcome by her beauty and they dressed her in beautiful robes and put a golden crown on her head and gave her jewelry, and then they led her to Mount Olympus to meet the Olympian gods who should be her companions.
All of them marveled over her and the gods wished to be her husband. From the very beginning, Aphrodite brought new life and freshness and playfulness to every place that she went. Later, Aphrodite’s myth changed a little bit and she was given parents. We don’t really have a story about this. It’s more a suggestion in Homer’s Iliad that Aphrodite is wounded in a battle and she flees to Mount Olympus, where she has comforted by her mother Dione. And there’s this suggestion that Aphrodite is actually the daughter Zeus and Dione, who was an ocean goddess who was born from the Titans. And a similar thing happened to Eros. He was also given parents and it’s a little bit unclear who his father was, but the common story was that Eros was the son of Aphrodite and Hermes. And it’s this association with Hermes that lent Eros his wings in his various depictions. Eros is most commonly seen today when we have pictures of him as Cupid, you know with the little wings on his back.
Now we just want to pause here for a second and consider this change in their creation myths. On the one hand you might see this as a bit of a demotion, that we have these two forces who in the earlier stories arise independently at the beginning of things and are essential to creation, who later on become the children of the Olympians, a later set of gods. They go from being a cosmogenic force if you will, to something that’s more personal and sort of manageable in the Olympian realm. But I wonder if this is also a way to incorporate Aphrodite and Eros more fully into the Greek pantheon and also to make them more personal, to give them a more particular character. This is kind of important to understanding Aphrodite in particular because as the goddess of love, she is the goddess of romantic love, that is love for particular people and places and things. She is not a grand abstract principle, at least not in practice.
It’s also possible that this incorporation felt necessary to the Greeks because they were in contact with a lot of people all around the Mediterranean. There was a lot more back and forth then I think we sometimes imagine, and Aphrodite did come from elsewhere like Dionysus. She probably was imported from cultures to the east of the Greeks, and there are, there is another creation myth that links her to other goddesses from these other cultures, goddesses who had a much broader portfolio, if you will, than romantic love. Inanna, Ishtar, and Astarte.
For example, when the Greeks came into contact with the goddess Astarte, they saw Aphrodite there and they sometimes told a creation story that they borrowed from Astarte, which is that Aphrodite was born out of an egg. Apparently an egg of wonderful size was floating in the Euphrates River. And some fish rolled it onto the bank and it was hatched by doves. And from this egg emerged the most beautiful goddess of love and joy and justice who brings life and transforms all that she touches. Interestingly, there’s a similar story that Eros was born of a primordial egg that was laid by Night. And when it opened, it split into two halves and one half was. Eros and the other half was Gaia.
Now there aren’t a lot of myths, you know, longer stories about Aphrodite and Eros, like a lot of very important energies or forces in life. They appear in many stories because there are not a lot of stories that don’t contain love in some way or another. But in terms of background myths that I can share with you, um, they’re fairly limited and a lot of Aphrodite stories in particular deal with her love affairs, with various gods and mortals. Each one of these myths tells us something particular about a kind of relationship. So what I want to share with you is the story of her most famous affair, and that was her affair with Aries, which is also connected to her marriage. Aphrodite is not the goddess of marriage and yet she did end up being married to Hephaestus, who was the Greek God of fire and the forge and gold and Hephaestus could really make just about anything. I mean, no technical miracle was impossible for him. And he was the son of Zeus and Hera, but I’m getting ahead of myself here.
Aphrodite’s most famous and long lasting affair was with Aries, the god of war. Aries was repellent to most of the other Olympians. Some even say that Zeus, his father had a really hard time being around him, and yet Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty was paired up with him for a very, very, very long time. Some even say that Eros brought this about. According to one story, one day Aries, the God of War came in from the battlefield brandishing his big, huge spear, and he came across Aphrodite and Eros and Eros was there with his arrows and a much smaller spear, maybe a javelin, of some sort.
Aries started to make fun of the size of Eros’s weapon and Eros said, “Well, this one is heavy,” and pointed to one of them lying on the ground. “Aries, why don’t you try it and then you’ll see.” Aries went over to the javelin and took it up- or tried to!—as it was really very heavy. With a groan, he put it back down on the ground and said, “Yes you’re right, it’s heavy. You can keep that one.” Through out this whole time, Aphrodite was sitting there smiling quietly to herself and Eros said, “No, no, no, you go ahead. You keep it.” And presumably in this gift of the javelin bound Aries and Aphrodite in love.
Now this was no problem until Aphrodite found herself married to Hephaestus. And how did this happen? Well, Hephaestus, the god of fire and the craftsmen of the gods was the son of Zeus and Hera, and he was lame. He had a crippled foot. There are various stories about how this came to be. Some say that Hera threw him off of Mount Olympus because he was ugly. And there are others who say that Zeus threw him off Mount Olympus because he got into an argument with Hera and Hephaestus, the son, sided with his mother. But in any event, Hephaestus had kind of a complex about this and he spent a lot of time, uh, in a cave where he was befriended by ocean Titanesses, you know, working at his forge. One day he made a golden throne as a gift, supposedly for his mother Hera. And he sent it up to a Mount Olympus and it very, very, very beautiful and Hera was delighted. She sat down on it and then she couldn’t get up. There were some hidden chains or something that Hephaestus had cleverly, uh, installed in this throne. And so Hera couldn’t get up and this caused a great deal of consternation there on Mount Olympus.
So Zeus told all of the gods that he would give Aphrodite to whichever one of them could convince Hephaestus to come back and release his mother. Aphrodite agreed to this plan because she thought that Aries would definitely win, and Aries did go down to the cave to talk to Hephaestus. But as the god of war, his diplomacy skills were somewhat lacking and so he came back empty handed and eventually Dionysus went to visit and he told Hephaestus about Zeus’s bargain and suggested that he might go back up there of his own free will and free his mother, and win Aphrodite as wife for himself. Hephaestus thought this was a good idea. So that’s what he did. And Zeus gave Hephaestus Aphrodite to marry.
Hephaestus gave Zeus many beautiful betrothal gifts of gold and jewels and the marriage got off to a lovely start. It was a beautiful wedding and honeymoon, but Aphrodite was not well suited for an eternal union like marriage, and she did already have a very passionate connection with Aries. So according to Homer in Book 8 of the Odyssey, Aries and Aphrodite continued their affair and they tried to be discreet, but Helio’s the sun sees everything and he went and told Hephaestus that the two were still getting together. Hephaestus got very bitter and angry about this and decided that he wanted revenge.
He went to his workshop and forged a net of golden chains that were so light, light as feathers, and so thin as to be essentially invisible, and so strong that no one mortal or immortal could break them. He took this net into his bedroom and hung it from the roof beams high above the bed and then he put some other chains on the floor beside the bedposts. Then he went to Aphrodite and told her that he was going to go away for the weekend to visit some old friends. Well, Ares was always kind of watching the house, you know, hoping to have a liaison with Aphrodite. He saw Hephaestus leave and immediately went in the house to Aphrodite and urged her to make love in her husband’s absence, and she liked the sound of that and took him to bed. But as soon as they laid down, the chains dropped down from above and they rose up from below and they were bound so tightly together that they couldn’t even lift a finger.
Helio’s tells Hephaestus that his plan has worked and Hephaestus turns around, returns to Mount Olympus, and begins shouting to the other immortals to follow him to his house to see this spectacle. In fact, Hephaestus stood out on the porch and he yelled that Aphrodite’s behavior is unacceptable. He claims that she doesn’t love him properly because he is lame and not surefooted like Aries, and he also says that he’s not going to let the lover’s go until Zeus has returned all of the fine betrothal gifts. Then the marriage will be over. She will be divorced and good riddance to this goddess of love and beauty.
All of the gods came to gather around the bed and gawk. (The goddesses did not out of modesty). They gathered around the great bed pointing and laughing and feeling varying degrees of sympathy for Hephaestus. It did seem strange that he was so upset, as if he didn’t know Aphrodite’s nature, and also strange that he kept bringing up his crippled foot. Hermes joked that any one of them would be happy to lie in the arms of golden Aphrodite after all. Eventually Poseidon intervened and tried to bargain with Hephaestus on Aries behalf, but Hephaestus had a very low opinion of Aries and wasn’t willing to make any of those deals. And finally Zeus said, “You know, let them go and you’ll have your gifts back and that’ll be the end of the marriage.” And that was that.
Now, Hephaestus went on to have affairs and eventual marriage to other beautiful goddesses. He was married to Charis who was Grace personified. Aphrodite and Aries continued their affair. They were not monogamous but they did have several children together, a son named Terror, a son named Fear, and a daughter named Harmony. Now you might be wondering about this attraction to Aries and yet we recognize this pairing of love and war, right? There’s something about the way in which they’re different and also the ways in which they are the same, namely that these are two uncontrollable passions. So you can imagine that they easily met each other in something very intense and personal, and Aries as the god of war had a tremendous physicality.
If you think about battle, the heat of battle and Aries, well Aries was the god of the type of war that takes place hand to hand, you know, face to face, very personal. He had a tremendous amount of courage. We’re not talking about war in the way that it is often conducted now with drones; that would be a very Apollonian way of fighting. That would be following the god Apollo. And parenthetically, let me just add that although Aphrodite is the goddess of love and Eros, the god of love and desire, all of the members of the Greek pantheon have a style of loving, a perspective on love, even if it’s not to engage in it very much.
This is true of all of the primary energies in our lives. So although Aries is the god of war, he’s not the only one who fight and there’s a range of views and styles of fighting and loving offered by the Greek pantheon. And yet Aphrodite is the goddess of what we would call romantic love, that passionate and all consuming, exciting and mysterious connection to one other. And here is a little kernel that I take from this story about Aphrodite and her marriage to Hephaestus.
Aphrodite shows us the power of love for a specific individual or thing, and she shows us that attention can become care, devotion and love– a love that brings out the beauty in the beloved and the lover. It seems to me that Hephaestus may have missed that. It’s interesting don’t you think, that he is also a great creator of beauty? He is the master craftsman of the gods and yet he doesn’t seem to understand that seen through the eyes of Aphrodite there is something beautiful in him. Even in that lame foot. He insists that must be the reason why she rejects him and it’s true that Aphrodite is beautiful, because she personifies beauty and our deep need for it in our lives. And yet she is not the goddess of beautiful people. She doesn’t tell us that love is only for the beautiful. Rather, she tells us that through tender attention and regard for ourselves and for others, we can see and bring out the beauty in each other and express our own beauty more fully.
In her book, The Goddesses In Every Woman, Jean Shinoda Bolen calls Aphrodite the “alchemical goddess” because love has this effect. It has the effect of lending value and beauty to everything that it touches. This is an act of creation that is available to each of us, my friends, and it’s one that is desperately needed in our world today. Aphrodite was known as the golden goddess because gold represents the essence, the highest expression of something. She was also known as the smiling goddess, and there is no simpler way to connect to her essence and bring beauty to yourself and the world and by sharing your smile.
That’s it for me. Catherine Svehla and Myth in the Mojave, soon to be Myth Matters, for this week. Feel free to contact me if you have questions or comments about today’s program. I am very grateful to all of you who support Myth in the Mojave by sharing it with others and spreading the word about what we’re doing here and I am deeply, deeply grateful to those of you who are members of the community on bandcamp. As I’ve been mentioning, changes are coming, the new name Myth Matters, and there will be changes to the online platform that will make it easier for you to find the podcast, listen to it, and for me to share transcripts and some other goodies. I will keep you apprised of my progress on this front. The wheels do turn a little slowly sometimes, but in the meantime, the archives and the community on bandcamp are viable and available. There is nothing that you need to do other than listen.
And thank you so much for listening. Please tune in next time and until then, happy mythmaking and keep the mystery in your life alive.
