I have been a Pagan for a few decades now. My focus is, and always has been, on the Hellenistic pantheon of Gods and, to some extent the practices of the ancient people of Greece even though I am not Greek myself. I am an American man, a gay man at that, of Hispanic origins, coming from the Carribean Island of Puerto Rico where my first language was Spanish.
I turned away from Christianity as a child, really. I always disliked it. I always felt a sense of fear from it, something that did not seem very holy to me at the time, though that was the perception of a child not of a fully grown adult man. It turns out that my perceptions were not that wrong. Fear of hell, fear of preachers, fear of God. It was all fear, and I find that a rather horrid way to live. A life of fear.
I chose to turn to something different. A system that did not exclude fear, for fear is part of what makes us stronger and keeps us alive, but which embraced wisdom, love, lust, passion, and the idea that a human being is not some slave of the divine powers of the cosmos, but part of the same cosmos they are, and worthy of respect. We are not lambs being lead to the sheer, we are human beings with a will of our own. Human beings who choose to worship and honor because we want to, not because we fear eternal punishment.
And that brings me to the Goddess in question in the title of this post. Aphrodite!
Most people are familiar with Aphrodite, at least the name and some vague sense of her as Goddess of Love, but they do not really know her mythos, her story, and her realm of power. A realm of emotion and physicality that, in my opinion, is almost a perfect realm for modern men (I won't speak for women, they can speak for themselves) who are very physical beings in our passions, lusts, and even loves.
Aphrodite's two most "important" aspects are Pandemos and Ourania. Of the people and heavenly, respectively. Her heavenly aspect is that of the higher forms of love. The all-consuming love of a parent for a child. The love of two people committed to each other. Love of society and nation. Love in all those forms that do not involve getting naked.
Her "lower" aspect, of the people or of the streets, if you will, is more lusty. In many ways, one could argue that it is lust, but that would be doing the goddess a disservice. She inspires lust, don't get me wrong, but the love inspired by Pandemos is a love that can be impermanent. It can make you fall in love with someone, fuck, and then the love can be over. It is a love of the physical beauty of a person. It is the love of watching a man walk as the bulge in his pants moves. It can be the love of watching a woman rise from the beach waters, wet and beautiful. It is the attraction and desire for another person that can lead you to the heavenly love, but if it does not, gives you a wonderful memory to hold on to.
For us modern men, especially those of us who are far more open to the sexuality that bubbles within us without a sense of shame, Aphrodite is a perfect Goddess. Aphrodite lets us enjoy each other even as we search for those who will bring us to her heavenly forms. Aphrodite can lead us to find the best of friends in the arms of a one night lover, or someone you dated for a short time.
Opening our hearts to her can give us the freedom to find that which we seek, and to look in places we might not otherwise be willing to look out of fear and shame, because Aphrodite wants you to love. She is not interested in who you love or what gender they are. Aphrodite is not judging you or shaming you for loving differently from most people. She is our Goddess. The Goddess of passion and romance. The Goddess of true freedom from the confines of the Judaeo-Christian sex shaming that has become par for the course in our world.
We deserve to be free of it. We deserve to love. We deserve to fuck with wanton abandon with those who desire us. We deserve Aphrodite, the Great and powerful Goddess of all loves.
IMAGE CREDIT: No restrictions, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47240852