Aphrodite is the power that watches over the evolution of love in man. In today’s humanity, it operates mainly through the destruction of forms.
Aphrodite on a swan – British Museum
The origins ascribed to Aphrodite, the goddess of love, differ depending on the author.
Oriented towards the practical implications of spiritual evolution, Homer presents Aphrodite as a symbol of love in evolution such as can be observed in the animal kingdom and experienced by man at different levels.
More theoretically minded, Hesiod describes Love at its highest level as it first appeared at the beginning of life at the moment of the castration of Ouranos, when limits were put to the infinite consciousness so that creation could appear.
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But the symbolic meaning of the goddess continued to degrade over time, designating progressively denser planes of the vital till it reached that of carnal love, which is very distant from the meaning attributed by the initiates of ancient times.
In Homer’s works, Aphrodite is the daughter of Zeus and Dione, herself daughter of the Titan Oceanos, ‘the principle of the natural evolution of the currents of energy-consciousness’. Dione is also sometimes known as the daughter of Ouranos, making her a symbol of union at the highest level above even the forces of creation (the Titan Oceanos).
By the structuring characters of her name, Dione, (ΔΙ+Ν), represents ‘evolution towards a conscious union’. If we consider the genitive of Zeus, (ΔΙος), she is therefore ‘Zeus in evolution’, which is to say the feminine aspect of the same energy. Her alliance with Zeus, ‘consciousness turned towards intelligence’, indicates ‘an evolution towards union and Love through the progression of the widening of consciousness and discernment’.
In fact, even if we can already see as ‘love’ the movement of life aimed at the reproduction of species – pollination in plant species, the dispersal of semen in a watery environment in most species of fish, etc., followed by the first forms of amorous exchange in more highly evolved animals, which seem more similar to human love – Homer only takes such movements into consideration when the reflective mental consciousness proper to man enters the scene.
For as expressed by the Mother, the evolution of love beyond the needs of procreation evolves in the following way:
‘At first one loves only when one is loved…
Next one loves spontaneously…but one wants to be loved in return.
Further on, one loves even if one is not loved…but one still wants one’s love to be accepted.
And finally one loves purely and simply without any other need or joy than that of loving. ’ (Mother’s Agenda, Volume 7, entry of April 16, 1966)
In another instance she also states:
‘Very rare and exceptional are the human beings who can understand and feel divine Love, because divine Love is free of attachment and of the need to please the object loved. ‘ (Mother’s Agenda, Volume 6)
The story of Aphrodite’s origins recorded by Hesiod, who was more metaphysically-minded than Homer, considers Love at its root as the fertilisation of life by the Spirit. He relates the birth of Aphrodite in the following way:
Gaia, Mother Earth, grew tired of carrying within her breast her children the Titans, who Ouranos refused to allow into the light. She therefore presented a sickle to the youngest of her sons, the Titan Cronos, who severed the genital organs of his father while he lay sleeping and flung them far into the ocean tide, Pontos. From the sea foam that formed around the severed genitals emerged the goddess Aphrodite.
As a couple, Gaia and Ouranos represent the relationship between matter and spirit. The genitals of Ouranos are thus symbolic of the power of fertilisation of the Spirit. In a holocaust turned upon himself – the castration carried out by his son Cronos – Spirit accepted certain limits so that Love could emerge and progressively manifest itself in life (Pontos, the ocean tide, is a symbol of life). According to Hesiod, Love is therefore the result of the c