After hitting the Bible pretty
hard, let’s move on to lighter fare. I have been putting off a deep analysis of
the goddess of love, Aphrodite. Every treatment I’ve seen of her in articles,
film, and fiction has tended to treat her as somewhat vapid and very
one-dimensional, but that portrayal is similar to many analyses of Zeus.
However, like Zeus, when we look at the totality of her myths, a bigger, more
revealing picture of her begins to emerge.
Aphrodite has two birth myths,
which is not unusual for the Olympians, really. The first is that she is the
child of Zeus and Dione, a fairly mundane story no different than the births of
most other Olympian deities.
The second, however, is much more
interesting, and definitely not a typical story. When Cronus dethroned his
father, Uranus, he also castrated him, and tossed the leftover bits into the
ocean. Now, if we remember, Uranus’s wife was Gaea, the earth. So there in the
ocean, Uranus’s leftover bits combined in the sea and sea foam to make
Aphrodite.
She emerges from the ocean on the
half shell. The old Hercules
television show cheekily has her windsurf the shell into the shore, which
actually seems fitting. I believe this is the story that more closely matches
Aphrodite’s nature. She is the goddess of love, the act of love, and desire.
She was created out of a pure sex act. There are no feelings or anything else
involved.
It’s also important to note that
she is of titanic origin in this story rather than Olympian. This makes her the
sister of Cronus and Zeus’s aunt. However, Zeus adopts her as his daughter,
putting her on part with his other children, yet we’ll see that titanic, wild
nature of Aphrodite manifest often throughout her stories.