Kimberly Steele

One of the reasons I was a lousy Christian is I am far too eclectic to worship only one god.   The colorful pageantry of polytheistic religions can seem extremely foreign and a little scary to a born-and-bred Protestant Midwesterner... not this Midwesterner.  From nearly day one, it looked like the other religions were having a great deal more fun than Protestants.  One of the reasons I made a lousy atheist is that even Protestant Christians appeared to have much more fun than atheists.  If I had a twenty for every bitter, lonely, childless, vegan, apocalypse-immanentizing atheist I ran into in my first decade of being vegan, I could easily buy a building to house my music studio again... in cold, hard cash.

Technically I am a Druid of about six or seven years ever since starting a daily habit of discursive meditation, the Sphere of Protection, and Ogham divination.  I started these practices under the aegis of the Ancient Order of Druids in America but quickly siphoned my energy into my own little corner as usual and did my thing.  Nobody was more surprised than I was when the Greek pantheon entered my life via the Orphic Hymns.  I still tend to think I did not entirely have a hand in it.  Considerable meditation leads me to believe that my past experiences as a musician, including possible experiences in past lives, have led to this.  

To make a long story short, I have come to believe it is time for a revival of the Greek gods and Greco-Roman ideals of balance, discourse,  respect for nature, and beauty, including the prioritization of beauty in our built environments.  We have gone too long as a civilization into extremes and the fetishization of extremes.  We have allowed the collective conversation to fall into utter disrepair, and the ugly result is stark division among class lines, normalized violence, and broken families and friendships.  Our disrespect for nature has rendered the average person an atheist drudge no matter how religious they claim to be -- this is why we have Catholic priests who have no idea how to banish a demon and Hindu devotees of Dhanvantari getting themselves shot up multiple times with government subsidized MRNA-hijackers at Walgreens.  

Hating on all of these problems and imbalances is unproductive at best and toxic at worst, so the remedy is not to try to stop the violence but to throw energy into nonviolent pursuits.  Enter Aphrodite.  The benefit of multi-god worship is the specific tailoring the lowly human can use the relationship with the god to remedy his or her own particular problems.  Astrology can easily pinpoint the specific troubles of any one human incarnation with laser accuracy and the human can take it from there, throwing energy into the god or goddess best suited to overcoming those issues.  The gods of the Greek pantheon are reaching out to us in this demonic age of collective astral trashiness to lift us out and heal us, one by one.  Just as collapse happens one person at a time, redemption happens one person at a time.  Through the gods we can broaden our perspectives to include better things than the pursuit of material impulse-gratification and false transcendence.  We can learn how not to be so small and petty.  

Of all the gods and goddesses, including many deities outside the Greco-Roman tradition, Aphrodite is by far the easiest to work with and the hardest to piss off.  This is not to say that she has no wrath: it is my opinion that Christianity and other monotheistic sects are doomed to obscure, fringe religion status in a few hundred years because of what their followers did to piss off Aphrodite over the last couple of millennia.  The virgin/whore complex and the uglification of the built environment were two biggies that ensured Aphrodite's wrath, and though she is very forgiving, there is a rubicon that was crossed long ago that I believe wrote the doom of monotheistic dominance into the package.  Aphrodite plays the long game.  Of course I could be wrong, but I don't think Christianity, Islam, or Judaism will be the big bullies on the playground when the twilight of industrial civilization fades permanently to black.

With that in mind, I get to the point of this article, which is how I believe we humans can at least attempt to please Aphrodite.  

Cooking and Cleaning

These two very mundane tasks may not seem to suit the Goddess of All Beauty, but when you scratch the surface, the alchemy of cooking and cleaning is the creation of harmony, beauty, and health within the home.  All of the above are sacred to Aphrodite.  Learning to cook a healthy, well-balanced meal while keeping it affordable, simple, and seasonal is no small task and I think Aphrodite recognizes the effort.  The good cook has a knack for using what is on hand and improvises hearty meals and delicious snacks at a moment's notice.  The energy brought to the kitchen and put into the food heals all who are lucky enough to eat it.  True health begins with food and the appreciation of the etheric labor necessary to provide nourishment.  

Cleaning is a form of gratitude.  A spoiled child leaves his toys strewn on the floor or sloppily crams them into an overflowing closet or under the bed, not caring about them once their newness has worn off.  When we leave our piles of stuff lying all over the desk and let the bathtub walls become caked in scum, we are nothing more than overgrown, spoiled children who not appreciate their wealth of toys.  Everything is sentient, including the plants I eat as a vegan, the car I drive, the cats in the yard and the squirrels they chase, and the computer, keyboard, and mouse I am writing this article on.  If everything is sentient, it can all be thanked and appreciated.  There is no better way of thanking a door for keeping you safe than oiling its squeaky hinges and cleaning off the scuff marks and dirt from filthy human hands.  Aphrodite is the queen of the sentient home.  When you clean the door and put your shoes away on a special shelf, you engage in a form of conversation with Aphrodite: "I thank you, Aphrodite, for all of these wonderful gifts."  Whether you say it aloud or simply put it into practice by thinking it while you clean your living space, the result is the same.

Pets

Aphrodite is the queen of domesticated animals, especially cats.  I believe Aphrodite and Bastet may be the same deity or potentially have some overlap.  To care for animals in your home is another recognition of non-human sentience.  Anyone who has properly cared for domesticated animals knows that even the allegedly low-maintenance ones take a huge amount of energy, time, money, and love to thrive.  Every time you train your dog to do a new trick or buy a new, improved sun lamp for your lizard's habitat, it can become an expression of adoration for Aphrodite.  

Beauty

Modern civilization and the legacy of monotheism has earned Aphrodite's ire because of its embrace of the hideous and the ugly.  From the ugliness of 20th century "art" to sprawling one story malls and office parks to the horrific results of too much plastic surgery, tattoos, body mods, and piercings, our culture has a lot to answer for.  Once again, the sheer ingratitude of not appreciating what one has is responsible for the new strip mall (the old one could have been rehabbed, or never built in the first place) and the body mods (the perfectly healthy, attractive person did not appreciate intact, functioning ear and nose cartilage).  Putting honest effort into improving the appearance of things in ways that don't involve massive overhauls are the domain of Aphrodite, and she is often kindly willing to help out if your self-improvement efforts come from a place of humility.  The person who takes a wrecking ball to an already palatial kitchen in order to replace a builder's new $625 stove and oven range with a $5000 designer oven range is not showing gratitude for the gifts of Aphrodite.  I tend to think people who do that create terrible karma for themselves, but again, I could be wrong.  To my mind, it is far more appreciative to keep remodeling costs to the minimum necessary, always using what you have and only buying what you need, not what you need to show off to snobby neighbors and people on Instagram.  Making the most of what you can by leaning into the good things already present in the space makes far more sense.  A coat of paint or stick on tiles can work wonders, and by not going gonzo, you show that you appreciate Aphrodite by not trying to start over by clearing out all she has provided for you.  When you beautify a space by cleaning it up and giving it some modest decoration, it shows you care.  You aren't blind to the details of what Aphrodite has generously provided for you.  You invoke her through your use of color, your creative re-use of what you have, and your eye for design.  

The same conservative principle holds when it comes to improving your appearance.  There are many ways to lose weight, and one of them involves reducing the stomach to a tiny pouch and getting pounds of cellulite sucked out and turned into biowaste using a cannula.  The other one is eating fewer calories and exercising.  I believe Aphrodite wants us to be healthy, and surgically quartering and re-routing the stomach is not a road to health.  The dysmorphia of our age, once again, is the legacy of monotheism and its hatred of the flesh.  When the flesh is a source of temptation that only exists to damn the soul to eternal hellfire, it follows that some will react by mortifying their flesh as they still live.  This is the secret reasoning of obesity and anorexia both: they are extreme sides of the same coin of mortification.  Aphrodite wants you to find a balancing force in your flesh and even take pleasure in it on occasion.  

Courtesy

We live in a rough age.  Since I stopped swearing a couple of years ago, I cannot help but notice that everybody swears except me.  Everybody in my family swears, including the members of the tribe who are technically elderly.  My husband often swears.  My teenage students swear.  If I listen too carefully or engage them in conversation, the store workers swear.  Every time my husband swears, I silently give thanks for three things.  I counter his curse with three blessings.  This often becomes exhausting, but it is far less tiring than swearing myself.  By carefully limiting my language, I am the change I want to see in the world.  I want a more genteel world where traditions are maintained and not a source of anxiety and hysteria.  I want to go back to a time when you didn't see certain things in polite society.  It is easy to be rude.  It is much harder to be deferent, kind, and polite.  When grandma starts talking a blue streak about an old, half-remembered scene, we can either correct her (rude) or let her go on at length so she can get the benefit of whatever fractured memory she has left.  When I am cut off by another driver on the road, I can either honk at them and chase them down into a parking lot somewhere in order to make them pay (rude) or I can mentally walk away from it and curb my anger, which after all emanated from the fear of being hurt.  Every time I do a considerate act, such as cleaning up a household mess or doing something gracious, it is an opportunity to devote myself to Aphrodite.

Literally Devoting Yourself to Aphrodite

Sometimes the best way of working with a god or goddess is to do magic in order to get their attention.  Aphrodite seems to like candles and incense, so if you want to work with her, grab a candle, preferably green, and burn it during the hour of Venus on a Friday while focusing your thoughts on Aphrodite.  You could recite the Orphic Hymn to Aphrodite, or if you want to one-up your approach, you could listen to the Orphic Hymn to Aphrodite.  If you want to up your approach even further, you could go full throttle and learn to play and/or sing the Orphic Hymn to Aphrodite yourself.  Interestingly, the Orphic Hymn to Aphrodite is the most popular arrangement among all of the Orphic Hymns I have arranged so far.  At the time of this writing, it has 39,000 views on YouTube. 

Music in general is sacred to Aphrodite, and as a musician, I can guarantee that you need to make practicing a daily habit if you want to be any good at music.  Music, as I will assert in my upcoming book Sacred Homemaking, is one of the easiest and best ways for a human to pray.  

Plants

Aphrodite seems to love green, especially in the form of plants.  Growing a garden, helping in someone else's garden, and caring for indoor plants are all ways you can beautify a space and worship Aphrodite at the same time.  Being in gardens and in wild and semi-wild spaces opens the door for Aphrodite to enter your life.  The Japanese have a practice of shirin-yoku or forest-bathing that uses the awareness of the plant ecosystem to cleanse the aura.  Shirin-yoku is not rocket science: just go to the garden, the forest preserve, or the wild space and take a deep breath while opening yourself to the other consciousness around you.

Speaking of Bathing...

People often misconceive Aphrodite as being entirely about sex and sexuality, specifically feminine sexuality.  She certainly has sexual aspects, but you don't have to be sexual whenever you are thinking about her.  Dedicating your bath to Aphrodite could involve some self-pleasure, but it does not require it.  All that is required is an appreciation of how wonderful it is to have running water inside the home or a clean lake or pool in which to take a dip.

All Etheric Labor is Sacred to Aphrodite

Etheric labor, often called emotional labor, is the mundane work that makes life bearable.  Skeptics like to dismiss the flurry of planning, cooking, cleaning, and organizing that is mainly handled by women as unimportant, but a world that has a problem with etheric labor also has a problem with etheric starvation, and etheric starvation happens to be the most common malady of our times.  For this reason, the simple act of folding clothes and linens is one of those basic etheric labors that puts you in the good graces of Aphrodite.  Beautifying anything that would otherwise be disheveled, plain, and thrown in a corner shows your love for both the object and Aphrodite herself.