Witchcraft~APHRODITE STATUE 13+" Venus Greek Goddess Mythology LOVE BEAUTY DESIRE

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Aphrodite, one of the twelve Olympians of the Greek pantheon, was depicted as a beautiful woman, often shown nude. Her attributes included an apple, scallop shell and mirror. The rose, myrrh, and myrtle, apple tree, lettuce, anemone and pomegranate, shellfish, cockleshell, hare, goose, dove, sparrow and fish were held sacred to her. So was the pearl. Her jewel-encrusted, golden chariot was drawn through the sky by a team of doves. She also rode a goose side-saddle. She was a goddess of the sea as well as the heavens, and according to one author, she also possessed a sea-going chariot drawn by fish-tailed Tritones. She had a magical girdle (or cestus) woven with the irrestistible powers of love and desire. Her attendants included the Horai (Seasons), Erotes, Kharities (Graces), and Nymphai. Only the three virgin goddesses, Artemis, Athena, and Hestia, were beyond her powers. 

She is associated with the Roman goddess Venus and the Syrian goddess Astarte. Her cult centers included Attica (Athens), Kypros, Megaris, Delos, Salamis, Megalopolis, Kyrene, Pharos, Olympia, Abydos, Metropolis, Thebes, Argos, Rome, and Sparta.

The most common version of the birth of Aphrodite describes her born in sea-foam from the castrated genitals of the sky-god Ouranos. According to Hesiod, "Ouranos (the Sky) came, bringing on night and longing for love, and he lay about Gaia (the Earth) spreading himself full upon her. Then the son [Kronos] from his ambush stretched forth his left hand and in his right took the great long sickle with jagged teeth, and swiftly lopped off his own father's members and cast them away to fall behind him . . . and so soon as he had cut off the members with flint and cast them from the land into the surging sea, they were swept away over the main a long time: and a white foam spread around them from the immortal flesh, and in it there grew a maiden. First she drew near holy Kythera, and from there, afterwards, she came to sea-girt Kypros, and came forth an awful and lovely goddess, and grass grew up about her beneath her shapely feet. Her gods and men call Aphrodite, and Aphrogeneia (the foam-born) because she grew amid the foam, and well-crowned (eustephanos) Kythereia because she reached Kythera, and Kyprogenes because she was born in billowy Kypros, and Philommedes (Genital-Loving) because sprang from the members. And with her went Eros (Love), and comely Himeros (Desire) followed her at her birth at the first and as she went into the assembly of the gods. This honour she has from the beginning, and this is the portion allotted to her amongst men and undying gods,--the whisperings of maidens and smiles and deceits with sweet delight and love and graciousness." Said Homer, "the gold-filleted Horai (Seasons) welcomed her joyously...And when they had fully decked her, they brought her to the gods, who welcomed her when they saw her, giving her their hands. Each one of them prayed that he might lead her home to be his wedded wife, so greatly were they amazed at the beauty of violet-crowned Kythereia."

In the Iliad and Odyssey, Homer describes Aphrodite as a daughter of Zeus and the Okeanis Titanis Dione, as do a few other writers. Aphrodite and Dione both had temples in the sanctuary of Zeus at Dodona. Aphrodite is sometimes depicted driving the chariot of Ares into battle. When the Greek gods fled to Egypt from the monstrous Typhon, she was said to have concealed herself in the shape of a fish. She once challenged Athena to a contest in weaving and was easily defeated. She challenged Hermes at the Pythian Games and won. Her prize was a zither, which she later gave to Paris.

At the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, all of the gods were invited, all except Eris, the goddess of discord. When she appeared at the festivities, she was turned away, and in her anger cast a golden apple amongst the assembled goddesses addressed "To the Fairest." Three goddesses laid claim to the apple--Aphrodite, Hera and Athena. Zeus was asked to mediate and he commanded Hermes to lead the three goddesses to Paris of Troy to decide the issue. The three goddesses appearing before the shepherd prince, each offering him gifts. He chose Aphrodite, swayed by her promise to bestow upon him Helen (Helene), the most beautiful woman in the world, for wife. The subsequent abduction of Helen led directly to the Trojan War. There she was on the side of the Trojans.  She protected the body of the Trojan hero Hector until his father King Priam could raise the ransom. After Achilles slew the Amazon Penthesileia, Aphrodite avenged her death by causing the hero to fall in love with her post mortem. At one point, she was wounded by Diomedes while attempting to rescue her son Aeneas. Because of this, she caused his wife, Aigialeia, to go to bed with many lovers, and when Diomedes arrived in Argos, she plotted against him. Ovid wrote that she later changed Diomedes' companions into birds. She protected Aeneas in the final battles and helped him escape the fall of the city. She also rekindled Menelaus' love for Helen when he found her upon the fall of Troy, protecting her from his angry retribution.

 It was Aphrodite who gave Hippomenes three golden apples and instructed him to cast them before Atalanta in the suitor's race, slowing her enough to allow for victory. When Pygmalion fell in love with the ivory statue of a maiden he had crafted, and prayed to Aphrodite for love's fulfillment, the goddess granted his wish, making the statue flesh and blood. She is believed to personally intervene as the goddess of love in a number of historical stories, for example, the tale of Ladike, the Greek wife of an Egyptian pharaoh.

As kind and generous as Aphrodite could be to those who had her favor, she could be as cruel to those who angered her. She cursed Eos, Goddess of the Dawn, with an unquenchable desire for young men as punishment for lying with the goddess's lover Ares. When Polyphonte of Thrake scorned the activities of Aphrodite and went to the mountains as a companion and sharer of sports with Artemis, Aphrodite made her fall in love with a bear and drove her mad. She caused the mares of Glaukos to tear their master apart when he prevented them from mating. When she became irritated with the handsome Akhilleus, she turned him into a shark. When the princess Smyrna did not honor her, Aphrodite caused her to develop a lust for her own father and later changed her into a myrtle tree.

Eros was usually called the son of Aphrodite. Some say that the goddess was born pregnant with him, others that Ares was his father. "Eros once failed to notice a bee that was sleeping among the roses, and he was wounded: he was struck in the finger, and he howled. He ran and flew to beautiful Kythere [Aphrodite] and said, ‘I have been killed, mother, killed. I am dying. I was struck by the small winged snake that farmers call "the bee".’ She replied, ‘If the bee-sting is painful, what pain, Eros, do you suppose all your victims suffer.’ " (The Anacreontea) 

Psyche was so beautiful men came to worship her in place of Aphrodite, abandoning the shrines of the goddess. Aphrodite demanded Eros make her fall in love with a monster. Instead the god fell in love with her himself and took her to live in her palace. When she betrayed her lover's trust, she sought Aphrodite's help, and the goddess imposed upon her many cruel labors which ended in a journey to the underworld. In the end, Eros and Psyche were reunited and wed before the gods.

The age of heroes ended with Zeus deciding to put an end to Aphrodite's practice of mating gods with men. To this effect he caused her to fall in love with a mortal man, and suffer the shame and strife of bearing a mortal son (Aeneas), the last mortal child born to be born of a divine parent.

 Hephaestus was her husband, who later divorced her following her adulterous love affair with Ares. She had been given to him by Zeus, for releasing Hera from the bonds of the cursed golden throne. Ares, the God of War, had a lengthy love affair with Aphrodite which lasted for the duration of her marriage to Hephaestos and beyond. She bore him four divine sons: Eros, Anteros, Deimos, Phobos; and a daughter: Harmonia. "..."...first they lay together secretly in the dwelling of Hephaistos. Ares had offered many gifts to the garlanded divinity and covered with shame the marriage bed of Lord Hephaistos. But Helios (the sun-god) had seen them in their dalliance and hastened away to tell Hephaistos; to him the news was bitter as gall, and he made his way towards his smithy, brooding revenge. He laid the great anvil on its base and set himself to forge chains that could not be broken or torn asunder, being fashioned to bind lovers fast. Such was the device that he made in his indignation against Ares, and having made it he went to the room where his bed lay; all round the bed-posts he dropped the chains, while others in plenty hung from the roof-beams, gossamer-light and invisible to the blessed gods themselves, so cunning had been the workmanship. When the snare round the bed was complete, he made as if to depart to Lemnos... Ares, god of the golden reins, was no blind watcher. Once he had seen Hephaistos go, he himself approached the great craftman’s dwelling, pining for love of Kytherea [Aphrodite]. As for her, she had just returned from the palace of mighty Zeus her father, and was sitting down in the house as Ares entered it. He took her hand and spoke thus to her: ‘Come, my darling; let us go to bed and take our delight together. Hephaistos is no longer here; by now, I think, he has made his way to Lemnos, to visit the uncouth-spoken Sintians.’

So he spoke, and sleep with him was a welcome thought to her. So they went to the bed and there lay down, but the cunning chains of crafty (polyphron) Hephaistos enveloped them, and they could neither raise their limbs nor shift them at all; so they saw the truth when there was no escaping. Meanwhile (Hephaestus) approached; he had turned back short of the land of Lemnos, since watching Helios (the sun-god) had told him everything. Cut to the heart, he neared his house and halted inside the porch; savage anger had hold of him, and he roared out hideously, crying to all the gods: ‘Come, Father Zeus; come, all you blessed immortals with him; see what has happened here - no matter for laughter nor yet forbearance... You will see the pair of lovers now as they lie embracing in my bed; the sight of them makes me sick at heart. Yet I doubt their desire to rest there longer, fond as they are. They will soon unwish their posture there; but my cunning chains shall hold them both fast till her father Zeus has given me back all the betrothal gifts I bestowed on him for his wanton daughter; beauty she has, but no sense of shame.’

Thus he spoke, and the gods came thronging there in front of the house with its brazen floor. Poseidon the Earth-Sustainer came, and Hermes the Mighty Runner, and Lord Apollon who shoots from afar; but the goddesses, every one of them, kept within doors for very shame. Thus then the bounteous gods stood at the entrance. Laughter they could not quench rose on the lips of these happy beings as they fixed their eyes on the stratagem of Hephaistos, and glancing each at his neighbour said some such words as these: ‘Ill deeds never prosper; swift after all is outrun by slow; here is Hephaistos the slow and crippled, yet by his cunning he has defeated the swiftest of all the Olympian gods, and Ares must pay an adulterer’s penalty.’ . . . Apollo asked Hermes, "‘Hermes Diaktoros (Messenger)... would you be content to be chained as fast if then you could lie abed with golden Aphrodite?’

And Diaktoros (Messenger) Argeiphontes (Radiant One) answered him: ‘O Lord Apollon of darting arrows - would that it might be so! Though desperate chains in thrice that number were to enclose me round - though all you gods were to have full sight of me, and all the goddesses too - I would even then choose to lie with golden Aphrodite.’

So said Hermes, and laughter arose among the immortal gods." - Homer 

Subsequently, she cursed Helios to fall in love the Persian princess Leukothea and unwittingly bring about her demise. 

Hermes seduced Aphrodite with the help of his father, Zeus. She bore him a son, Hermaphroditos (and some say Eros). Dionysus  had a short affair with Aphrodite. Hera cursed the goddess to bear a horribly ugly child, Priapos, as punishment for her promiscuity. One version has it that she did this because the father was Zeus.

 Nerites, young sea-god, was her first love. When he refused to leave the sea to join her on Olympos, she transformed him into a shell-fish for his betrayal. Poseidon also had an affair with Aphrodite, who was grateful for his talking Hephaestus into releasing Ares and her from his chains. She bore him two daughters, Rhodos and Herophilos.

Her mortal lovers included Ankhises, father of Aeneas and Lyros; Boutes, father of Eryx; Phaethon, father of Astynoos, and most famously, Adonis.  She bore him a daughter, Beroe, before he fell before the tusks of (some say, the jealous Ares disguised as) a boar. From his blood, she made the flower, the anemone, to grow.