The One Where Aphrodite Loses Her Power
A few years ago I was deep in the goddess reawakening. I had spent several years quietly extracting the roots of the patriarchal religion I had given the majority of my youth to (and by given, I mean laid my soul at the alter of) and dedicated myself to doing my due diligence of painfully, curiously wondering what was mine and what was programming. On that path, I had started reading books that were helping me resonate deeper with the truth that I had always known: there was more to the feminine that I had been sold.
Somewhere along the way I stumbled on a piece about Aphrodite.
The goddess of love and beauty and how she was known in other parts of Greece as so much more. I started to wonder at the erosion of her story, my own, and the feminine as a whole. Because, the Aphrodite we know today is not the Aphrodite of origin. Where today she a symbol of sexuality, desire, beauty and love she was once also known as:
Aphrodite Areia – The Warlike, depicted in armor at Sparta and Taras
Aphrodite Skotia – Dark or gloomy
Aphrodite Melainis / Melaenis – Black/night
Which makes sense, considering her origins as a syncretic goddess, inheriting the complexity and dual nature (both lover and destroyer, erotic power and political sovereignty) of goddesses like Innana, Ishtar, and Astarte.
See, Aphrodite was never just a goddess of love and beauty. No, she entered the scene endowed with erotic compulsion, warlike force, and an undeniable power rooted in the underworld. She was born of the ocean. The primordial mother. Salt. The unknowable depths. An uncontainable power. In symbolic terms, she was born of the unconscious and the uncivilized. But more than that, she was born of violence.
When Uranus’ genitals were severed from his body and thrown into the sea— a necessary act initiated by Gaia to stop his domination of her— Aphrodite emerged from the foam. Rupture was her doorway into the world. She was born of force, strategy and uprising and with her came a necessary aspect of the feminine: desire (read: not merely sexual) that will not stay polite, manageable, or convenient for the systems it threatens. Aphrodite was no stranger to the darker aspects of being, or the cycles of death, transformation and rebirth; she was actually born of them.
But, as time went on, she became less and less of what she was. Men wrote her into domestication; her darker, more powerful aspects flattened into something easier to digest— something easier to control. Where once she was a force that compelled gods and mortals alike, now she is presented as a very safe representation of love, beauty, pleasure and procreation.
We see this erosion reflected in the world today in so many ways. In this moment, I’m thinking specifically of this new wave of re-wilding. You know the one: aesthetically pleasing, anchored only to the light, spiritually bypassing anything deemed “low vibration.” We reclaim titles like wild woman and mystic while keeping them sanitized. Shame becomes a cleverly disguised scepter, pointing to the very aspects of being human that make us miraculous— rage, fear, jealousy, grief, desire— as the reasons we can’t call in millions, go viral, or manifest our dreams. What’s emerged isn’t a reclamation or liberation, but an inheritance of Aphrodites erasure. Shackles dressed up as power. A reframing of what is true toward what is pleasing.
We want the power without the process. We want the image and status without the process of integration and embodiment. Because integration is slow and embodiment is messy. It’s painful and often terrifying. It brings out the most uncomfortable parts of us in order to be integrated into the whole. It requires us to embody our range, without shrinking for the comfort and safety of others. But when we bypass the process we end up performing power instead of inhabiting it. Real power is forged in contact, born from the conditions that bring it into being.
I don’t know about you, but I find it exhausting, deflating and quite honestly boring to cast my gaze out into the world in search of resonance and be met with watered down images of the feminine. Palatable versions. Having grown up in a world that was severely lacking in them, I also find it dangerous. Young women (and, women in general) need images of powerful, embodied women who are not afraid to stand in their fullness. To be complex. To wield a sword. To pursue their desires. To lead men. To challenge the gods. To embody their sexuality. To befriend their darkness. To be whole unto themselves. If you're curious about how specific archetypes carry this kind of complexity, The Mystic and The Maiden Archetype hold some of these tensions.
We need women unafraid of what it means to be jealous— and by that I mean unafraid to feel the things we have been told are “bad”. Because it is only through our honesty that we have agency. Denial begetts powerlessness. The truth is: we already know how to be soft, nurturing, and accommodating. That’s never been in short supply. What we are missing are images of women allowed to be dangerous. Untethered. Uncontrollable. Wild in it’s truest sense. Uncivilized. We need space for this aspect, too. The feminine doesn’t need more permission to be gentle, it needs permission to be whole and complete unto herself.
I want to close by saying, I take heart knowing there are so many incredible women out there writing strong, complex, empowered mythic female leads on grand adventures. We need those. We need to see ourselves mirrored back in wholeness, encouraged to expand the horizons of self. This is the work of the Heroine's Journey, and it's already underway in many places. So, thank you to those of you who are out here living this journey. Those of you with your hands thrust deep into the soil of your becoming, embracing the mess, tending the slow unraveling of what you’ve been taught in order to embrace the current of truth you feel beneath. Thank you for cultivating a new way for the rest of us.
xt
Hey! I’m Taren.
I'm a somatic practitioner and guide for women reclaiming power after religious, relational, and systemic conditioning.
My work weaves mythology, embodied trauma healing, and specific frameworks for transformation knowing that understanding what happened isn't enough.
I help people navigate the thresholds of identity, healing, and personal transformation through depth-oriented psychology, nervous system work, and mythic storytelling. But more than that, I help you build a foundation you can actually live from.
If you're in the middle of your unraveling and ready to meet yourself, join my email community. I share writing on power, the feminine, embodiment, and what it costs to come home to yourself.
