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The human woman does give birth as the earth gives birth to the plants. She gives nourishment as the plants do. So, woman magic and earth magic are the same, they are related. And the personification, then, of this energy which gives birth to forms and nourishes forms is properly female. And so, it is in the agricultural world of ancient Mesopotamia, the Egyptian Nile, but also in the earlier planting culture systems, that the goddess is the mythic form that is dominant.
Joseph Campbell, Power of Myth with Bill Moyers, 209-210
Worshiping nature and women appears in many classical myths. Aphrodite is born from the foam of the sea, when Cronus castrates his father Uranus, and throws his severed genitals into the sea. According to some less bizarre and cruel myths, she was the daughter of Zeus and Dione. Desirable and beautiful, she restores youth, fertility, and beauty to those who respect her. She was married to Hephaestus, but was constantly unfaithful to him, kidnapping lovers, starting wars because of her arrogance, and disrupting the love affairs of those who disrespected her. During one sexual encounter with Ares, her husband Hephaestus covered them with a metal wire, so that all the gods would laugh at their adultery. Aphrodite promised fidelity to Hephaestus, but Hermes saw this act of two lovers and fell madly in love with her. From this next adultery of hers, Hermaphrodite was born, a young man with a woman's breasts and long hair. Hermaphroditism arises as an idea in the transition from matriarchy to patriarchy.
Aphrodite was constantly causing trouble, but also solving problems, granting wishes and giving back life, beauty and immortality. Paradoxically, she helped establish patriarchy, a society that James Brown describes as:
This is a man's, man's, man's world
But it wouldn't be nothing, nothing without a woman or a girl
Through the centuries that followed in this men's world, Aphrodite suffered oppression and persecution, and her followers went through metamorphosis. However, the love, fertility, and beauty she represents is found in other shapes and forms in different cultures over the history of patriarchal rule. The women-guardians of the patriarchy of Mediterranean culture are best illustrated by the line of the "Mother Goddess“ Maria Portokalos in the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002): “Let me tell you something. The man is the head, but the woman is the neck. And she can turn the head any way she wants.” Aphrodites all over the world know how to turn heads, and at the same time keep the paterfamilias order, pretending that they are only the neck and not the head of the house. Famous sentences of the baby boomer generation, including "Now I'm going to call your father" or „Just wait till your dad comes home," simulate the power of the male principle in society, while actually showing the true power of the goddess–the guardian of the order who controls and gives birth to life and love.
Aphrodite Archetypes
Joseph Campbell asserted that the deity is the personification of energy. Mythology is something that is woven into our reality but is not a fact per se. It is metaphoric and symbolic in relation to reality. Female deities around the world personify the same metaphorical energy of love, fertility, lust, and birth. The Greek Aphrodite, the Phoenician Astarte, the Egyptian Isis and Hathor, the Babylonian Ishtar or the Sumerian Inanna, the pre-Islamic Arab goddess Al Uzzi, the Nordic Freya, and the Aztec Xochiquetzal ruled the cultures of the first agricultural cities. These goddesses are imprinted with comparable and compatible archetypes of love and passion. However, the “enemy of lust” in the form of Christian teachings appeared in the Middle East and soon spread throughout Europe. Aphrodite or Venus became assimilated as the Mother of God in the new popular religion, where she remains partly until the Renaissance and partly today. In the Eastern traditions, the Indian name for a woman is Maya-Shakti-Devi, which means: "Goddess who gives life and mother of all forms."
Patience of the Goddess
These rulers of all forms, through the flexibility of the cervical vertebrae with which they turn the governing structures, show a great power of adaptation and metamorphosis throughout history. The Goddess archetypes have, incredibly in the face of patriarchal power, survived persecution throughout the ages. For example, women who had cats did not get sick during the plague epidemic. Cats eat mice, and mice carry the plague. Thus the patriarchal leaders reasoned that those women must be immune to the Black Death by conspiring with Satan, and they need to be burned at the stake. Even fairy tales, echoing this reasoning, depict witches as the proud owners of black cats.
In many cultures, the archetype of the feminine principle is demonized through conservative religious dogmas, which become expressed in explicitly patriarchal and warrior societies. Obstruction of the talents and gifts of the goddess of love and beauty, through feelings that cause joy, mirth, or happiness, originates from some sort of witch hunt on the goddesses. Just as in state systems, where oligarchies, autocracies, or dictatorships make rules, so in social systems, not tied to any particular monotheistic god, the rules for morality, behavior, and appearance in public were imposed on women. Since the flexible goddesses' necks skillfully turned and swiveled through the ages, thus guarding the order, they adapted to different forms of demonization, always knowing that survival and the source of all life was within them. So, they were patient, because even the Bible’s patriarchal slant cannot dim this truth about love:
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
1 Corinthians 13:4
Return to the Goddess
The patience of Mother Earth and persisting feminine principles in the context of morality and social arrangements will certainly be of significance in our modern society, which is on the verge of a global war. The patriarchal-warrior and profitable industrial concept of our age has already made Mother Earth, old Tiamat, very angry. Global warming, apocalyptic weather changes, meaningless patriarchal laws and rules, production of henchmen-warriors and obedient workers in our education systems, greed, corruption, destruction of nature, wars, and tensions raging among nuclear powers, are not the product of Aphrodite's whims, but of testosterone from gods of thunder and warriors, who think that by erecting fences and drawing borders, the land they conquered belongs to them.
The Goddess archetypes have, incredibly in the face of patriarchal power, survived persecution throughout the ages.
Aphrodite, no matter how capricious, forgives and grants wishes. Goddesses tend to give, not take, life. Their purpose primarily is to give birth, not to conquer. They have many faces and names and have suffered much in turning men's hot heads. Aphrodite's gift is one of the most important gifts of all the “pagan” gods: unconditional love and the birth of life. It is necessary to respect this through the understanding of the gift of life that we have, through love and unity in the desire for the beautiful and good, as well as through the preservation of nature and the respect of the Earth Goddess, which should be passed unharmed as a legacy to the next generations.
MythBlast authored by:
Dr. Lejla Panjeta is a Professor of Film Studies and Visual Communication. She was a professor and guest lecturer in many international and Bosnian universities. She also directed and produced in theatre, worked in film production, and authored documentary films. She curated university exhibitions and film projects. She won awards for her artistic and academic works. She is the author and editor of books on film studies, art, and communication. Her recent publication was the bilingual illustrated encyclopedic guide – Filmbook, made for everyone from 8 to 108 years old. Her research interests are in the fields of aesthetics, propaganda, communication, visual arts, cultural and film studies, and mythology. https://independent.academia.edu/LejlaPanjeta
This MythBlast was inspired by The Power of Myth Episode 5, and Goddesses
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In this episode of Pathways, Joseph Campbell speaks at the Cooper Union in New York City in December 1967. He explores the "mythology of love" - from eros to agape and beyond. Host, Bradley Olson introduces the lecture and gives commentary at the end.
This Week's Highlights
"The human woman does give birth as the earth gives birth to the plants. She gives nourishment as the plants do. So, woman magic and earth magic are the same, they are related. And the personification, then, of this energy which gives birth to forms and nourishes forms is properly female. And so, it is in the agricultural world of ancient Mesopotamia, the Egyptian Nile, but also in the earlier planting culture systems, that the goddess is the mythic form that is dominant."
-- Joseph Campbell