Aphrodite
They named me goddess of love, as if that’s all I was, a flutter in the stomach, a blushing cheek, a rose held hostage in a boy’s sweaty hand. I rose from salt, from slit-shell and storm, from the gods’ own waste and want, foam-flecked and furious. I came in wet, hips first, slick with sea and knowing. You think I waited for Paris? You think I begged for beauty to be mine? I was beauty. I was the mirror they feared to look into too long. I have walked bare-footed through temples, set fire to marriages with a glance. I taught women to bloom, to bite, to bathe in their own reflection without apology. They called it vanity. I called it return. Yes, I fucked the god of war. What of it? I am the battlefield and the balm. I am hips pressed to altar, tongue dipped in honey, a body that does not ask for permission to ache. The memory of your gaze upon me clings to my skin like wet chiffon. I’ve been painted a thousand times, And when you’re done with your version of me, when you call it finished, hang it on your white gallery wall, I’ll already be elsewhere, whispering in someone else’s ear, unbuttoning her blouse, and telling her to start creating. You want me to be soft? Try touching your own hunger and tell me it doesn’t burn. I am not your Venus in a clamshell. I am not your Valentine. I am the scent that lingers on your fingers after she leaves, the wine stain on your shirt, the ache that made you reach for the pen. When you call me (goddess, girl, slut, saint) know that I will answer only to myself.
This is Playing Her Part, a special series within The Wisdom Path Podcast, where we explore the sacred feminine through myth, embodiment, and creative reclamation.
I’m your host, Rosie Peacock, feminine arts photographer, storyteller, ceremonial artist, and a woman obsessed with the power of archetypes to ignite truth in our bones.
Each of these episodes is part invocation, part storytelling, part soul medicine, and a mirror for the many faces we carry within us. If you’ve journeyed with me through Persephone’s decent, Hecate’s fire or Lilith’s rebellion, welcome back. And if this is your first time, welcome to the temple of remembering.
Today, we’re walking with Aphrodite. But not just as goddess of love, as the original Muse. The one who turned her own reflection into art. Who didn’t wait to be painted, she painted herself, with her body, her longing, her voice.
She was the art.
Aphrodite’s Origin Story
Let’s get one thing straight: Aphrodite didn’t come from love. She came from violence. Like, real primal-scream, Greek-myth kind of violence.
Picture this: Cronos, one of the original sky gods, slices off his dad Uranus’ genitals (no big deal), and chucks them into the sea. Because… family trauma. The blood, foam, and cosmic leftovers stew in the ocean like a divine soup. And out of that shimmering chaos? Aphrodite rises. Not born. Risen.
Fully grown, fully divine, already knowing she’s the hottest thing the world’s ever seen. She doesn’t crawl, or cry, or ask for permission. She emerges. Nude, radiant, standing on a seashell like it’s her damn stage. And while later poets and painters got all obsessed with how beautiful she looked, they kind of missed the point.
Because yes, she was beautiful, but she was also terrifying in that way only women who know their power can be. She wasn’t just there to inspire love, she was there to disrupt it. To make you feel something so deep it burned. To stir longing, creativity, jealousy, worship. To ruin men and liberate women.
Because yes, Aphrodite is beautiful, breathtaking, otherworldly, but she’s also terrifying in that way only women who know they are the source can be. She wasn’t made to be sweet. She wasn’t made to be chosen. She was made to stir something ancient in you.
She is the ache in your chest that turns into art. She is the moment before the kiss, the hand on the neck, the moan in the dark. She is the reason you light the candle, put on the dress, press record. Aphrodite doesn’t wait to be worshipped. She simply arrives, and the world rearranges itself around her.
She’s not the wife. She’s not the daughter. She’s not the muse who sits quietly while you paint. She’s the reason you picked up the paintbrush.
Okay, but what does her origin story mean?
From a symbolic standpoint, Aphrodite’s birth from the sea foam (Greek: aphros) marks her as an elemental goddess, she belongs to the oceanic, lunar, emotional realm, not the clean-cut hierarchy of Olympus. She’s not just a deity of romantic love, but of generative force itself, beauty, yes, but also sensuality, fertility, eros, and creation.
The severed genitals of Uranus, while graphic, are deeply metaphorical. Aphrodite is born from the end of patriarchal dominance and the beginning of something far more primal: the womb of chaos, the sacred feminine as source, not support.
Aphrodite is beautiful, but not in the way beauty has been domesticated by modern culture. She is not decoration, and she does not exist to be pleasing. Her beauty is not passive. It’s not about symmetry, softness, or perfection. It is disruptive. It makes you feel something you can’t quite name, a pull in your gut, a sting behind your eyes, the memory of a hunger you once silenced.
She is desire in its original form, before it was shaped into something transactional or romanticised. And not just sexual desire, though she holds that too. It’s the desire to create. To connect. To be seen. To become. In this way, she represents the primal energy behind all acts of creation, not just sex, but art, story, beauty, and birth itself.
Being in the presence of Aphrodite, metaphorically, mythically, archetypally is not a gentle experience. It is an unravelling. She reminds you of the parts of yourself you’ve hidden or suppressed. She awakens your longing, not as something to be ashamed of, but as a source of power. She doesn’t flatter the ego. She speaks to the soul’s ache to express itself fully, to embody its own beauty, to return to something real and raw.
And while modern mythology tried to box her into “goddess of love,” that title’s a bit… reductive. She’s not here for your Hallmark fantasy. She is sensuality, creativity, chaos, and beauty as a disruptive, generative force.
In Ancient Greek mythology, she was never just the goddess of love in the soft, romantic sense. She was worshipped because she made people feel, sometimes deeply, dangerously, uncontrollably. She brought passion and chaos into order. She complicated things. And that’s what made her sacred. She made people remember what it was to be fully alive.
In that sense, she’s not a muse in the traditional way, not the silent figure inspiring someone else’s work from a distance. She is the current that moves through the artist’s hands. She is the reason the work exists in the first place. She’s not waiting in the wings. She’s centre stage, igniting the creative process from within.
Aphrodite is not soft in the way we’ve been taught to equate softness with weakness. She is potent. Radiant. Unapologetic. And through her, we are invited not just to witness beauty, but to become it in how we live, how we love, how we create, and how we carry ourselves through the world.
She makes you want to paint. Want to touch. Want to burn your life down and start again, this time in silk. So no, she’s not soft. She’s not tame. She’s not a passive muse. She is the origin of desire itself. Literally the mother of eros herself.
Let’s talk about Eros.
In most pop culture translations, Eros gets watered down into Cupid, a chubby cherub with a heart-shaped bow and arrow, fluttering around zapping people into romance. But in the original mythos, Eros is nothing like that. Eros is not cute. Eros is primordial.
In some of the oldest versions of the Greek cosmogony, before Aphrodite was even born, Eros was one of the first forces to emerge from Chaos, alongside Gaia (Earth) and Nyx (Night). He was not a child but a cosmic principle: the binding force of attraction, the energy that pulls one thing toward another and makes creation possible.
So when later myths evolve and say that Aphrodite gave birth to Eros, it’s not just a casual family tree.
It’s saying something profound. It’s saying that desire is born from beauty. That magnetism is born from embodiment. That creation arises from sensual presence.
Aphrodite, as the goddess of love, beauty, and sensuality, births Eros, the god of erotic love, longing, and passionate connection. Not just between lovers, but between all things.
Eros is the reason cells come together. The reason we create art. The reason we hunger. The reason we reach for each other in the dark.
So when we say Aphrodite is Eros’ mother, we’re not just talking about lineage. We’re talking about origin. She is the source of the current that makes the world move.
And yet, unlike the maternal archetype often presented as selfless or sacrificial, Aphrodite’s mothering of Eros is different. She doesn’t smother or suppress him. She lets him be wild. Because eros is wild. It’s not polite. It’s not clean. It doesn’t follow the rules of polite society. It’s longing, creative fire, ache, life-force.
And it lives in all of us. When you follow what you’re truly drawn to, not what you should do, but what lights you up from within, that’s Eros. When you feel magnetically pulled toward a project, a person, a place, that’s Eros. When your body becomes a compass, not a cage, that’s Eros.
And so, when we work with Aphrodite, we don’t just awaken beauty. We awaken Eros within us. We return to the sacred knowing that desire is not dangerous, but divine. That pleasure can be a prayer. That longing is not something to suppress, it’s something to listen to. Because in the end, it’s Eros that guides us back to ourselves.
And Aphrodite, in all her rose-slick, seafoam-slicked radiance, is the one who reminds us where to begin.
Aphrodite a map of the feminine psyche
We’ve been sold a watered-down Aphrodite. Painted in pastels. Caged in corsets. Whispered about like she was fragile, foolish, or vain. But the true Aphrodite, the archetype that lives in our bones, is not one-dimensional. She is not just a goddess of love. She is a map of the feminine psyche. A multidimensional portal into beauty, power, and remembrance.
Let us reclaim her, piece by piece:
The Magnetic Muse
She is not the passive inspiration. She is the ignition. Aphrodite does not sit quietly while you paint her. She’s the one who makes your hands shake, your voice tremble, your pen move like a possessed person in the middle of the night. She awakens art not by being still, but by being fully herself. When we embody this version of her, we stop waiting for permission to be seen, and we become our own masterpiece.
The Sacred Erotic
Aphrodite is the pulse beneath the surface. The shimmer on the skin when you feel most alive. She teaches us that eros is not just sex, it’s the raw, holy current that flows through all creation. To be erotic in her sense is to be in communion with aliveness, to let beauty move through the body, to worship pleasure as a pathway to divinity. She reminds us: pleasure is not shameful, it is sacred.
The Sovereign Lover
Aphrodite doesn’t wait to be chosen. She chooses herself and by doing so, becomes magnetic. She embodies love not as sacrifice, but as sovereignty. She invites us to love from fullness, not lack. To touch from overflow. To give without grasping. She is the lover who knows her worth and won’t settle for anything less than devotion in return.
The Creatrix
From sea foam she rose, not from womb or lineage, but from the chaos of the gods. She was born of disruption, and from that moment, began to create. She births not just life, but beauty. Ritual. Rhythm. She is the part of us that knows how to shape the world with our hands, our hips, our voice, our vision. To create in her image is to make something that ripples with soul.
The Mirror of Our Own Self-Worth
More than anything, Aphrodite reflects. She shows us how we see ourselves and whether that reflection is one of reverence or rejection. She challenges us to look deeper. To see our own face as holy. To meet our own gaze and say, I am enough. She is the mirror that does not lie and does not judge. She simply asks: Are you ready to see yourself clearly?
Aphrodite is all of these, and more. She is not here to be tamed or understood.
She is here to be remembered and reclaimed.
Mythic Retelling: The Apple Was Never the Problem
A short story about Paris and Aphrodite
It starts, as these things often do, with a party no one should have been invited to. A divine wedding, everyone dressed in clouds and consequence. The gods are drunk on nectar, petty as ever, glowing in ways that make humans look like faded photos. Then Eris, goddess of discord, chaos in a dress, uninvited and unbothered, tosses a golden apple into the centre of the table. For the fairest, it reads. Because of course it does. Because nothing cracks divinity like a little beauty contest. Hera wants it. Queen of the gods, mother, ruler, majestic as hell. Athena wants it. War strategist, wisdom incarnate, with a jawline that could cut glass. And then there’s Aphrodite, all honey skin, sea salt hair, and that look in her eye like she’s already undressed you three thoughts ago. They all turn to Paris. A mortal prince. A Trojan shepherd with soft hands and a history of running from things. Pretty, poetic. The kind of boy who writes love poems on fig leaves and reads them to goats. The gods, in their infinite wisdom, decide he’ll be the judge. Not because he’s worthy, but because sometimes fate wants a bit of drama. Each goddess tries to bribe him. Hera offers power. Athena offers glory. Aphrodite? She leans in close, voice like a love song whispered between sheets. “Choose me, and I’ll give you the most beautiful woman in the world.” She doesn’t offer a crown. She doesn’t offer war. She offers longing. The kind that ruins you slowly. And Paris, being soft and stupid and twenty-something in the heart, says yes. Of course he does. Because you would too. You would choose beauty, desire, aching lips and slow moans and the way love makes you feel infinite for three minutes before it kills you. You would choose the fire that dances just out of reach. You would choose her. So Paris takes the apple, hands it to Aphrodite, and seals the kind of deal that starts wars. They never talk about that part. About how the moment he gave her the apple, the world tilted slightly. About how Helen was just the spark, but Aphrodite was the match. How desire can be sacred and messy and devastating all at once. But Aphrodite? She never looked back. She took the apple, kissed Paris on the cheek like a mother and a muse, and walked away barefoot, radiant, leaving a trail of perfume and prophecy behind her. She didn’t cheat. She didn’t lie. She just knew what he wanted. And gave it to him. Like any true goddess of love would.
Symbolic Wisdom – Aphrodite’s Sacred Tools
To walk with Aphrodite is to remember that beauty is not a surface, it is a signal. Her symbols are not static emblems of femininity or romance, but keys, alive with meaning, steeped in ancient knowing, and pulsing with the power to awaken something inside you. Each of her sacred tools offers a doorway into deeper embodiment. They are not aesthetic for aesthetic’s sake. They are mirrors. Invitations. Catalysts.
The Mirror
The mirror is perhaps Aphrodite’s most misunderstood tool. Often reduced to vanity, it’s been used as a weapon against women for centuries, the suggestion that to see yourself is to be self-absorbed. But the mirror, in her hands, is not a prison of perfection. It is a portal to truth.
To look into the mirror and really see yourself, not as others see you, not as the world tells you to appear, but as you are, is an act of devotion. It is a reclaiming of gaze. Your own. When we look into the mirror as Aphrodite might, we do not ask, “Am I desirable?” We ask, “Am I honouring my own becoming?” The mirror is not there to judge. It is there to witness.
The mirror, in Aphrodite’s hands, is not a tool of vanity, it is a sacred instrument of self-recognition. She doesn’t look into it to admire her surface. She looks to remember. This is about claiming one’s reflection as real, not just pretty. It’s the sacred act of saying, I see myself and I do not flinch.
Art & Mythic Representation
The mirror has become one of Aphrodite’s most enduring visual motifs in art, often misunderstood through a patriarchal lens.
• In Titian’s Venus with a Mirror (1555), Aphrodite is shown gazing into a mirror held by Cupid, her son, a complex image of reflected beauty and maternal power.
• In Jean-Baptiste Regnault’s Venus and Cupid (early 1800s), the mirror appears again, this time with Aphrodite seated in a moment of calm, inspecting her image. The gaze is contemplative, not seductive.
• In Antonio Canova’s sculpture Venus with a Mirror, her body is turned slightly away, almost as if the mirror is less for show, more for personal ritual.
In myth, Aphrodite does not use a mirror obsessively, but she is often witnessed through the mirror. Mortals and gods alike fall in love with her reflection, which becomes a metaphor for projection, desire, and longing. The mirror thus becomes a threshold between the divine and the earthly, between essence and perception.
To engage with the mirror as Aphrodite would is to ask:
• What do I see when I look at myself, beneath performance or performance?
• What does my reflection say back?
• Can I meet my own gaze with reverence?
Aphrodite invites you to stop performing for the mirror, and start becoming real in front of it.
The Rose
The rose, as a symbol of Aphrodite, holds the paradox of the sacred feminine: softness and danger, sweetness and edge. No flower speaks in such layers. The rose does not bloom for approval, it opens because it must. Its scent seduces. Its thorns protect. It is sensual, erotic, deeply alive… and armed.
For Aphrodite, the rose isn’t merely beautiful. It is symbolic of love’s intensity, the fullness of sensuality, and the willingness to bloom even when it costs. The rose is intimately linked to Aphrodite’s love for Adonis, the mortal man she adored.
When Adonis is killed by a wild boar, Aphrodite runs to him, her bare feet catching on thorns as she rushes through the forest. In one version of the myth, her blood mingles with his, and from that sacred grief, the first red rose is born. This makes the rose a symbol not just of love, but of love entwined with loss. Of pleasure touched by pain. Of devotion with a cost.
The red rose, in particular, is also associated with desire, menstruation, and sacred blood in later goddess traditions, including Roman Venus and Christian Marian iconography, showing how its symbolism transcended Greek myth and carried forward into archetypes of divine femininity.
Art & Mythic Representation
• In Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus (c. 1486), roses are scattered across the sea as she rises from the foam, anointing the moment of her arrival with the sacred floral signature of desire. View the painting
• In John William Waterhouse’s works, roses often appear as quiet offerings, held by maidens, strewn at feet, or climbing temple walls. Though not always directly Aphrodite, they echo her essence, soft beauty that carries weight.
• In later Pre-Raphaelite imagery, particularly Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s depictions of Venus and Proserpine, the rose becomes a metaphor for temptation and awakening, the bloom that breaks the spell of numbness.
To hold the rose as a sacred tool of Aphrodite is to ask:
• Where am I blooming too carefully, afraid of my own thorns?
• What beauty am I withholding for fear it will be misunderstood?
• Can I let pleasure and pain live in the same story?
Aphrodite’s rose is not ornamental. It is alive. It is wild. And it reminds us that to bloom fully is to say yes to the entire experience, not just the pretty parts.
The Sea
Before there were temples, lovers, or legends, there was the sea. The vast, untamed womb of the world. The sea is Aphrodite’s birthplace, not a cradle, but a crucible. She did not descend from the heavens. She rose from the foam. This makes the sea her first mother. It holds everything she is: emotional depth, sensual power, moodiness, mystery, and transformation. The sea does not ask permission to storm. It crashes. It caresses. It births. It breaks. It remakes.
To invoke the sea as a symbol of Aphrodite is to remember that beauty can be feral. Desire can be primordial. And we are not meant to stay still, we are meant to move. Aphrodite emerges from the ocean, fully formed, fully powerful. She steps onto the shore at Cyprus, or in some versions, Cythera, but her essence remains oceanic. She is not born of love. She is born of violence transmuted into beauty, chaos transmuted into creation. This is critical to her archetype, she is not sweet origin energy. She is erotic, sea-born, dangerous with depth. She is not a goddess of harmony. She is a goddess of intensity.
Art & Mythic Representation
The most famous depiction of her sea-birth is Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, c. 1486. She stands on a scallop shell, nude, long hair cascading like surf. The sea swirls around her, carrying both her sensuality and her mythic power. Though soft in style, the painting holds the moment of her becoming, from sea foam to sovereign. View the painting here
• In Alexandre Cabanel’s The Birth of Venus (1863), she is more reclined, more erotic, waves curling at her feet, sea spirits surrounding her. It’s more intimate, and yet, she remains distant, as if only partially available to the gaze. See it here
• In Waterhouse’s Miranda, The Tempest and other sea-adjacent works, the water becomes a character in itself, a portal to fate, to femininity, to wildness. His women are rarely passive in water, they’re changed by it.
To work with the sea as Aphrodite’s tool is to ask:
• Where have I tamed myself to stay dry, clean, contained?
• What am I afraid might wash over me if I truly let go?
• Can I hold the tension of my own depth, and let it move me?
The sea reminds us: Creation is not polite. It is stormy. Salty. Holy. And it will strip you bare to remake you. Aphrodite comes from that place, and so do you.
The Apple
The apple is not innocent. It never has been. In Aphrodite’s mythos, the apple does not represent temptation as it does in Christian lore. It represents something far more powerful, selection. Sovereignty. Bold, unapologetic claiming. To hold the apple is not to seduce. It is to say yes to what you know you deserve. It is also to take responsibility for what that desire awakens in the world, whether pleasure, chaos, or transformation.
Art & Mythic Representation
• In Peter Paul Rubens’ The Judgment of Paris (1636), the apple is central, Aphrodite stands confidently, her body angled toward Paris, surrounded by radiance. She does not plead. She glows. She knows. View the painting here
• In Lucas Cranach the Elder’s many renditions of the same scene, the apple is often just passed, like a subtle ritual of initiation. The moment of offering holds the tension of fate itself.
To work with the apple as a sacred tool is to ask:
• Where in my life am I afraid to name what I truly want?
• What desire do I keep hidden for fear it may disrupt the peace?
• If I were to hand myself the apple, what would I be choosing?
The apple in Aphrodite’s hand is not passive. It is a turning point. Aphrodite doesn’t ask, Do I deserve this? She simply takes the apple, because she trusts in the sacredness of her desire. And that is the invitation for you: To stop waiting to be chosen. To name your longing. To reach for what you already know is meant for you.
The Girdle/Belt
Aphrodite’s girdle is no ordinary belt. Woven with desire, laced with longing, and embroidered with enchantment, her girdle is a mystical item said to hold the power to stir love, lust, fascination, and deep yearning in all who behold the wearer. It was her most coveted possession, even among the gods.
But this isn’t about controlling others. The girdle doesn’t force attraction. It amplifies presence. It is the energetic field of someone fully embodied, fully radiant, and utterly unapologetic in their sensuality. The girdle is a metaphor for that rare frequency: Magnetism without manipulation. It represents the kind of allure that doesn’t beg, it pulls. Not by effort. But by being. To wear Aphrodite’s girdle is to walk through the world as a living invitation:
“I am here. I am home in this body. I am art.”
Art & Mythic Representation
In Homer’s Iliad (Book 14), the girdle makes a dramatic appearance. Hera, in an effort to seduce Zeus and distract him from the Trojan War, borrows Aphrodite’s girdle. It is described as being embroidered with “allure, desire, and love,” capable of “stealing the wits of even the wisest.” But even as Hera wears it, the source of its power is still Aphrodite herself, the originator of allure, the keeper of embodied magnetism. The girdle may be borrowed, but its essence is inseparable from the goddess who owns it. What’s often missed is that the girdle does not change the wearer, it simply reveals what was already latent: the power of embodiment. Aphrodite’s girdle teaches us that magnetism is not costume. It is presence turned all the way on.
• In most classical paintings, the girdle is not always visible, but that’s the point. It’s energetic. Represented as sashes, belts, or even loosened robes, its presence is implied by the soft tension between what is seen and unseen.
• In works like François Boucher’s Toilet of Venus (1751), the visual cues, a draped silk, a partially tied ribbon, suggest the girdle’s spell more than display it. She doesn’t wear it to restrain, she wears it to reign.
• Even in Pre-Raphaelite works, where women are wrapped in flowing fabrics, there’s often a ribbon at the waist, not for modesty, but to draw the eye. To suggest the pulse beneath the silk. The body as shrine.
To invoke Aphrodite’s girdle is to ask:
• Where am I dimming my own presence?
• How does my body want to move when no one’s watching?
• What part of me believes I must hide or apologise for my allure?
The girdle teaches us: You don’t have to chase. You don’t have to strive. You already carry the frequency. It’s in your hips. Your breath. Your unapologetic softness. Your fierce edges. The way you say no. The way you say yes with your whole body. Aphrodite’s girdle isn’t here to dress you up. It’s here to help you undress everything false until only your true magnetism remains.
Mythic Retelling: The Studio
It began on a Tuesday. The kind of Tuesday that carries no weight, no promise, a beige day in a blur of them.
The studio was warm with the late afternoon lull, thick with the smell of stale coffee and linen backdrops that had soaked up years of artificial light. Dust drifted lazily through the shafts of sunlight slanting in from the west-facing window. He was alone, as usual, tinkering with lighting gels that felt wrong no matter how he shifted them, scrolling half-heartedly through moodboards on his cracked iPad, wondering when he’d stopped making work that meant something.
He was in that restless place between deadlines, portfolio respectable, clients steady, but the creative hunger in him gnawed quiet and constant, like a mouth he didn’t know how to feed anymore.
And then the door creaked open. No knock. No warning. Just the low groan of the old brass hinge, and a figure stepping through it like she’d always belonged there.
She didn’t speak. Didn’t smile. She stood in the doorway as if the room had been holding its breath for her.
The light caught her first, that late golden hour kind that bathes everything in reverence. It touched her like it knew her. Kissed her skin like a lover. Like it had travelled across time to meet her here.
She wore a silk dress the colour of champagne left too long in the sun, soft, wrinkled, clinging in places that made him forget how to blink. Her feet were bare. Her hair was a wild halo of undone curls, thick and sea-salted, falling over her collarbones like a crown too soft to hold shape.
He stared, instinct pulling the camera strap into his palm without him noticing. Her eyes found his, dark, liquid, unbothered.
Then, her voice:
“You’re the one with the camera.”
Low. Sure. Like she wasn’t asking. He nodded. Something in his chest tightened. She stepped into the light.
“Then photograph me,” she said. And turned away.
No introduction. No explanation. Just the creak of floorboards beneath her as she moved deeper into the space, into the gold, into the lens.
She didn’t pose, she became.
One moment she was still, backlit and ethereal, neck arched like a swan in prayer. The next, she was in motion, turning, dipping, the silk of her dress clinging to her thighs in a way that made time stutter. Her body wasn’t performing. It was revealing. Every movement a kind of invocation.
He shot until his fingers cramped. And still, she did not ask him how she looked. She didn’t need to. She knew. He tried to speak. To ask her name. But she turned her face toward the window, caught the final kiss of light across her cheekbone, and that was the shot. The one that made his stomach drop. The one that made him feel like maybe he wasn’t just taking pictures, he was seeing something real.
She left without a word when the sun dipped below the skyline.
No goodbye. No glance back.
He stayed in the studio long after, reviewing the files with trembling hands, each frame more unreal than the last.
Her eyes. Her skin. That impossible way the light folded itself around her, like it knew her intimately. Like it belonged to her.
He didn’t sleep. He edited all night, his screen glowing like an altar.
The next Tuesday, she returned. Same hour. Same light. Same silence. And the Tuesday after that. And again. Each time, she entered like a spell being cast. No small talk. No posing. No name. Just presence.
And the way she moved, god, it undid him.
Some days she stretched languid on the chaise, one leg draped over the arm like she’d been carved from longing. Other days she stood still, straight-backed, gaze direct, daring him to look deeper than the curve of her hip. Sometimes, she laughed, a low, private sound like wind rustling silk, and the laughter slipped into his chest and stayed there.
The world outside the studio blurred. His inbox piled up. He cancelled shoots. His agent complained. But none of it mattered.
He was building something. A series. A collection. A shrine.
She never asked to see the images. Never asked how they were being used. He posted one. Just one. A candid frame of her half-turning, the light catching the downy hairs on her arm, her lips parted like she’d just tasted something sweet. The photo went viral. Comments flooded in. Magazine editors reached out. A gallery offered him a solo show.
They all asked the same thing: Who is she? He told them he didn’t know. Which was true. He also told them she was his muse. Which, somehow, felt less true the more he said it.
But still, he waited for her every Tuesday. And every Tuesday, she came. Until one day… she didn’t.
He waited. Tuesday came. The light was perfect. The studio still held the scent of her, rosewater and static, like memory clinging to the air. But she didn’t come.
He thought maybe he’d gotten the time wrong. Maybe she’d show up late. She never had before, but that meant nothing now. He stayed until the sun dropped below the city and the gold turned to grey.
Still nothing.
The next day, he opened the folder from their last shoot, hoping for a thread of her presence, a detail to hold onto. Something.
He opened the file. And blinked. Blank. No image. Just white space.
Confused, he opened another. Then another.
Empty. Corrupted.
His hands began to shake.
Maybe the card failed. Maybe the hard drive. But it didn’t make sense, he remembered seeing the previews. He remembered the images being there.
He opened an older session, one from two weeks ago.
Blank.
All of them. Every single photo he had ever taken of her… gone. It was like she’d slipped out of the pixels. Like her presence had been too much for the machine to hold. Or like she had never been there at all.
He stood, heart hammering, and began tearing the place apart. Memory cards. Backup drives. Polaroids. Nothing. The images had evaporated. Not glitched. Not blurred. Just… erased.
Clean. Surgical. As if the light had never touched the sensor. As if she had been a dream. He scrolled through the messages from his gallery contact. They were waiting. They wanted to see the full collection. They’d booked a space. People were calling her “a modern Mona Lisa.” He stared at the blank thumbnails and felt sick.
That night, he returned to the studio. Alone. He sat with the lights off, surrounded by the hollow click of the radiator and the creak of the floorboards beneath silence. He lit a cigarette, something he hadn’t done in years. Let the smoke fill the air she used to breathe. And then, he spoke out loud — to the room, to the void, to her:
“Why did you come?”
The words sounded foolish as soon as they left his lips. But in the silence that followed, something shifted. The dust caught in the air moved differently. The light, just the faintest gleam of moon through a streetlamp, bent in a strange way.
And in the mirror near the doorway, he swore, just for a flicker, he saw her reflection. Barefoot. Smiling. Not at him. At herself.
He stayed in the studio for days, trying to reconstruct the images from memory. Drawing. Writing. Desperate.
But it wasn’t the images he missed. It was the feeling. The ache of proximity to something untouchable. The stillness of being fully present. The knowing that whatever she was, woman, ghost, goddess, she had seen him.
And in return, he had tried to possess her. With his lens. With his naming. With his ambition. And she had let him, for a while. Not to be owned. But to awaken something. Because that’s what muses do.
Eventually, he stopped trying to find her. He stopped trying to fix the drives, recover the data, chase the illusion. Instead, he sat in the space where she had once stood. At the edge of the window, where golden light still pooled every Tuesday, like a faithful ghost. It was quieter now. Quieter, and somehow more full.
Because something had shifted, not just in the studio, but in him. The camera still hung by the door, untouched. But his notebooks were full. Sketches. Phrases. Scraps of poetry he didn’t know he could write. He wrote in the margins like he was afraid of his own voice, and then, slowly, with reverence. It was her, and not her, that filled the pages. Not her body. Not her face. Her presence.
He began to see her in other things. The soft curve of smoke from a candle. The way rose petals fell unevenly into a bath. The way the sun caught in the throat of a wine glass.
She was no longer a woman. She was a frequency. A current. An ache to create.
And eventually… he realised it had never been about her at all. It had been about him. About the part of him that forgot how to feel. How to see. She hadn’t come to be captured. She’d come to set something free. And it worked.
He called the exhibition “Aphrodite: The Absence of Her.”
The gallery was confused.
“Where are the portraits?” they asked.
“There’s nothing here.”
But there was. Projected across the walls were his sketches, his scribbled notes, his unfinished poems. A series of self-portraits in half-shadow, lit only by candlelight. Photographs not of women, but of altars. Hands. Fabric in motion. The places she had touched — not physically, but energetically.
And in the centre of the room: an empty frame. Lit from above. Golden light, perfectly timed to flood through a skylight at sunset.
No subject. No figure. Just the light.
People stood before it and wept. Not because they saw her. But because they saw something in themselves. Something they’d forgotten.
Embodiment & Creative Direction: Becoming Aphrodite
Embodying Aphrodite isn’t about performing beauty for others. It’s about anchoring into your own sensual power from the inside out. This process isn’t about how you look. It’s about how you feel. About the way you take up space, breathe into your body, and allow yourself to be fully present in your skin.
Aphrodite is not passive or ornamental. She is active, felt, and lived. She moves through the world with magnetism, not because she tries to, but because she’s fully rooted in herself. The goal here isn’t to replicate her image, it’s to access her essence.
Movement is a key part of this. Begin by focusing on the hips. Let your movements be slow, fluid, and responsive to your own breath and mood. This isn’t about choreography or looking a certain way. It’s about awakening sensation and letting your body move in ways that feel natural, sensual, and connected. Hip circles, undulations, and simple swaying motions are powerful ways to start. Keep your attention inward. Ask yourself, how do I want to move when no one’s watching?
Ritual can help deepen this connection. Start with mirror work. Stand in front of a mirror and meet your own gaze without judgment. The point is not to criticise or analyse your reflection, but to witness it with presence. Notice how you feel when you look at yourself with compassion and curiosity. You might follow this with anointing yourself using rose oil, placing it on your wrists, throat, heart, lower belly, and thighs. Take your time. Treat each gesture as an act of reverence for your body. Baths with sea salt or a few drops of essential oil can also evoke Aphrodite’s origin story, inviting you to soften, release, and reconnect with the element of water.
When thinking about visual creative direction, draw on Aphrodite’s mythic atmosphere. She is often surrounded by symbols that are lush, tactile, and intimate. Use soft golden light whenever possible, especially during golden hour, just before sunset. Include visual elements such as mirrors, flowing Grecian-style fabric, foam, water, flower petals, or long unbroken gazes. Choose wardrobe pieces that feel sensual and unrestrictive. Think sheer textures, draped silhouettes, bare skin balanced with softness.
Importantly, avoid creating from a place of trying to be seen in a certain way. Instead, let yourself explore what it feels like to truly inhabit your own sensuality, without performing it. A gaze doesn’t have to beg to be powerful, it can simply hold. Aphrodite’s power lies in presence, not approval.
As for location, choose spaces that reflect her essence: places where natural beauty meets intimacy. This could be the edge of a shoreline, a candlelit bedroom, a steamy bathroom, a quiet garden at dusk. It doesn’t need to be elaborate, what matters is that the space allows you to drop in and feel.
The intention behind all of this is to explore what Aphrodite feels like in your own body. Not as something external or mythical, but as something alive, intimate, and utterly yours.
The Invitation Into The Muse
Aphrodite in Your Business & Brand
So before we wrap up, I wanted to share something a little behind-the-scenes that I’ve been working on, because it’s been lighting me up and honestly, I think some of you will get it in that full-body yes kind of way. Basically, I’ve been in deep collaboration with Aphrodite.
Not just as a story or a symbol, but as an actual creative force. And I know that might sound a bit out-there, but stay with me, because it’s been powerful. You know how sometimes an archetype just starts showing up everywhere? That’s been Aphrodite for me lately.
But not in the love-heart, rom-com goddess way. This is the Aphrodite who knows her power. The one who’s fully embodied, sensual, deeply creative, totally unapologetic about being magnetic. And the more I worked with her energy, the more it started shaping this idea in my business, this offering, that I’ve now called The Muse.
It’s a shoot, yes, but it’s also kind of a ceremony. It’s this whole process where we drop into archetypal energy, work with who you’re becoming, and then translate that into images that feel like you, not curated or performative, but like a mirror to your soul. It’s really about being seen without shrinking. Like, not the branding version of you, not the polished ‘content’ version of you, but the art version. The you that’s wild and radiant and a little too much in the best way.
So yeah, I’ve basically been co-creating with Aphrodite to birth this thing into the world, and it’s honestly been the most fun, expansive part of my business lately.
And what’s wild is, the more I lean into archetypes like her, and like Magdalene, like Inanna, like Persephone, the more I realise how much they’ve shaped how I hold space, how I make things, how I show up as a creative and a guide. They’ve become collaborators in my work. Not just inspiration, but actual structure. Actual energy I work with.
So if you’ve been playing with archetypes in your own work, or if something in you is whispering yes, this is a missing piece, maybe this is your sign to follow that thread. These stories aren’t just ancient myths.
They’re creative frameworks. They’re business strategies. They’re portals. And they’re yours to use, reshape, and reclaim however you need. Okay, before we close, I want to leave you with one more piece.
If Aphrodite is the goddess of desire, then Adonis is the embodiment of what cannot last. In myth, he’s the beautiful mortal she loves so fiercely it aches, a spring god, soft and golden and doomed to die young. But his story doesn’t end with death.
After the wild boar kills him, Aphrodite weeps. Her grief spills onto the earth, and from his blood, the red roses bloom, not to preserve him, but to honour the beauty that once lived. That once loved. That once bloomed so brightly it could not stay.
But the gods take pity. And Adonis is granted a strange kind of return, allowed to descend, to spend half the year in the underworld with Persephone, and half above with Aphrodite. So even he becomes part of the cycle. Even he becomes a god of descent and return. A mirror to the seasons, and to the aching beauty of what slips through our fingers no matter how tightly we try to hold it.
Their story is one of longing, of death and rebirth, of choosing to love even when we know the ending. Because the bloom is still worth it.
Next time, we’ll be journeying with Inanna, the Queen of Heaven and the original goddess of descent. Her myth is older, deeper, and wilder than most, and I can’t wait to walk with her, and with you, into the underworld she chooses.
Thank you for listening, for walking with me through these archetypes, and for remembering the parts of yourself that are more than a brand, more than a role, the parts that are art. I’ll leave you now with this poem:
Aphrodite x Adonis
I knew what he was from the moment he bloomed, a season in skin, a soft, reckless thing with eyes full of spring and a body already fading. To love him was to bleed beauty, to kiss the petals knowing they’d rot in my hand. But gods, how could I not? He walked like sun-warmed earth, lips stained with wildberries, hands calloused from wanting. He was not carved from marble, he was carved from my ache. I took him to my garden, the one even Olympus forgot. Where roses climbed without shame, and the air was thick with bees and want. Where I was not goddess, just flesh. Just hunger. Just his. He kissed me like a prayer and fucked me like he meant it. No worship, no performance, just the devotion of skin to skin, mouth to pulse, thigh to throat. And I? I let him ruin me. I wanted to be ruined. I wanted to be mortal, just once. To love something that would not last. The gods warned me. The Fates smirked. But he held me like he was writing a hymn with his fingers on my ribs. And I said yes. Again and again and again. Until he didn’t come. I found him in the red dusk, body broken by tusk and prophecy, his blood soaking the wild grass, his breath already gone. I did not scream. I knelt. Pressed my lips to the last of his warmth, and whispered, “Let nothing of you be wasted.” Where his blood spilled, roses grew. Thorned. Red. Real. But that was not the end. I carried his soul downward, deep, through shadow and myrrh and the aching hum of everything unspoken. To her. The other Queen. The one who knows what it means to lose yourself and rise anyway. I gave him to Persephone not as surrender, but as offering. As ritual. As remembrance. “Let him bloom,” I said, “in the place where all things die.” And she took him. With hands like dusk and eyes like root-deep knowing. She took him. And I returned. Alone, yes, but not empty. For every spring, when the roses return, I smell his skin in the bloom. And in that moment, I ache. I smile. And I love him all over again. Even knowing I cannot keep him. Even knowing I never could. Because to love something that will not last is a holy act. And I am a goddess, yes. But I am also the ache. The kiss. The garden. The one who let him go and made him bloom. And now when mortals speak his name, they look to the roses, and they look to stone. The marble sculpture, chisel-marked and gleaming, stands in a temple no god claims. His face frozen mid-bloom, his lips half-parted like he might still sigh my name. A statue. A shrine. A headstone. Because even the world knew, he was too beautiful to bury without becoming myth.
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