The Goddesses of Vision & the Alchemist of Love
Goddess Aphrodite (Venus) & Queen Persephone
Both Aphrodite and Persephone are linked in their mythologies by the Pomegranate ~ the aphrodisiac fruit of sublime pleasure.
Aphrodite is said to be the mature aspect of Persephone, and Persephone the innocent or immature "shadow" of Aphrodite. They are two sides of the same . . .
The Independent Goddess - Venus
Aphrodite is truly connected to the world and the material pleasures it offers. Moreover, she accesses a profound well of power, potentially from her counterpart, Queen of the Underworld: Persephone. This power allows her to ignite the inspiration of the muse, captivating and enchanting all who come into contact with her.
This is Aphrodite's gift: her medicine to infuse all she gazes upon with exquisite beauty. To truly adore the subject of her focus. Her love is undeniably heartfelt and radiates around her wherever she journeys. This, however, can also be the very venom that leaves a path of shattered hearts in her wake, and her own intoxication with the essence of love and beauty may become her own obstacle and demise.
Venus is not attached and, like the muse, can come and go without warning. It's like an enchanting pink cloud of smoke that mysteriously appears and then fades away like a mirage, leaving behind the bittersweet sensation of what once lingered!
Sexual Empowerment
Aphrodite/Venus is not considered a vulnerable Goddess. She is very much in control and her own source of empowerment. She chooses who she wants to be with and when she will leave. She honors connection and union, but she is not attached to it. She fully involves herself but does not become utterly vulnerable to the connection. She longs for and deeply craves the profound power of love, which is discovered in the beautiful and soul-stirring exchange of emotions.
She values the emotional exchanges and experiences with others far more than permanent bonds. She is not interested in “forever” or “death do us part”. She lives in the moment where the magic is and she is deeply passionate and focused on that which is personally meaningful to her. She will give all of herself wholeheartedly as if each lover and object of her attention were the only one, and when it is time for her to go she goes whole with all of herself confidently intact.
She leaves behind her essence but always walks on completely in her independence and sexual autonomy.
In the mythologies, she is linked to male deities and having children, but she did not suffer and was not victimized like the other ‘Vulnerable Goddesses’ ~ Demeter – the Mother, Hera – the Wife, and Persephone – The Mother’s Daughter.
Aphrodite represents relationship: to relate, to be known, and to know the other. Sexuality is one of her direct channels to this knowledge. She enjoys being the muse as her offering. To inspire another's dream, shape it into form, believe in it, and bless it with her love, inspiration, and magic.
She carries the power of vision and positive expectation...
Aphrodite’s Shadow & Her Addiction to Love
When the Aphrodite type of woman (or Man) cannot say no to his/her own appetite or particular susceptibility of desire in the moment, she/he risks falling into the addiction to love. From this loss of independence to be in control of her own life course she risks falling into her shadow. Like Persephone, she will go into the underworld and reveal the dark seeds of obsession, compulsion, and possession to another. Usually not in her own self but projected at her by the other.
Compassion & Humility
Aphrodite possessed great compassion and humility even amidst her independence and infidelities. The one she married was Hephaestus, the hunched-backed clubfooted rejected son of Zeus and Hera. He was a creative genius with great impressive skills and he manages to win her as his wife. She was not, however, loyal to him as her only sexual consort because as the story goes Hephaestus was a creative genius with deep tumultuous emotions stirring within, however, he was incapable of acquiring the skills to express them and was not able to hold the love and attention of such a feminine creature.
In the birth chart, strong Aphrodite and Venus symbols will express dynamics of this complex nature.
The combination of Persephone and Aphrodite seen as one entity of two shades is an expression of the feminine that is powerfully tantric in its nature. It is the union of the mature sexually independent Goddess centered within herself, and the powerful Shamaness of the most vulnerable and intimate emotions provoked from deep within the depths of the heart and soul of oneself.
Persephone: The Story of Tantric Union
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The Mythology of Persephone is the story of the young and naive maiden carefree in a field of flowers when suddenly the Earth splits open and up comes Hades. Earth symbolically represents the body and the instinctual and even carnal qualities. Earth as our bodies serves as the vessel for our personal growth and transformation, guiding us through our individual journeys of evolution and self-development.
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Hades abducts her down to the Underworld to become his wife. She eventually earns her own power as the rightful Queen of Darkness and the hells; symbolizing the neuroses of the psyche. Her age was at the time of first menses; symbolizing awakening sexuality.
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The violation of rape of the young maiden expresses the horrors of the dominating masculine over the innocent feminine, initiating her virgin sexuality into the raw instinctual trespasses of the shadow masculine underdeveloped desires. He claims her as his wife, bonding her into sexual partnership and union.
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Persephone's story goes deeper as her strong bond with her Mother, Demeter, becomes a defining journey of her life. Because of her abduction, her mother goes into complete rage and despair over the loss of her child. Demeter, the Goddess of Grain refused to continue to provide nourishment to the world. She went into the Lilith of her own soul and refused to feed her children if this one child was not released. Woman who have strong Persephone signatures will often have mother's who have fallen deep into their own shadows and live in an underworld of pathologies.
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Her partnership with Hades represents the next stage of her passage; her journey to becoming the Tantric Goddess through her willingness to transmute the darkness and return to her true divine nature.
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Although she remains immature in the innocence and naivety of her youth, she eventually becomes wizened through the deep power that is innately within her. She is the ‘mother’s daughter’ that is claimed and remains to be taken care of and kept. However, what she becomes as her destiny is the guide and the keeper of the secrets of the dark, as an initiate of her suffering and the alchemy of tantric union.
First the ‘Mother’s Daughter’ and then the abducted 'Wife’ – she lives through the experience of being ever bonded and powerfully affected by others.
Her Destiny is as the Queen Shaman; the alchemist who turns the ashes of the hellish realms into gold and makes peace out of war and makes love out of hate ~ a resurrection from suffering into her divinity.
Her magic is the mastery of mixing her own energies with those of another and transfiguring the whole into a greater aspect of the Self.
In union with another, she takes whatever is available and alchemizes it into pure source energy and gives the same in return. She is the Tantric Queen; daughter and midwife of the psychic realms.
Though the story begins with the tale of the “Earth opening and Hades pulling her in” it is revealing the story of the journey of the masculine and feminine from their lowest to their highest potential. Moving from the innocence of instinctual sexuality into the eventual evolved quality of sacred sexuality. It shows how we are initiated into this path through the swallowing depths of being exposed to the raw truth of the spirit of human desire, and later through the gateway of an open heart – the experience of true union with another.
Desiring the Forbidden Fruit of Knowledge
As the story goes she was instructed not to eat anything while in the Underworld, otherwise, she could never return home. However, when offered the aphrodisiac pomegranate seed from Hades she willingly accepted and ate it. This shows her own natural desire to taste that which was forbidden and to commit herself to the abduction of the underworld.
When she returned to her Mother (which she was later granted partial time throughout the year) she lied to her Mother and said Hades had forced her to eat the fruit.
Her lie to her Mother shows her immaturity to take responsibility for herself and to claim her own identity and independent power; to remain in the image of the victim role of "abducted one."
Her hesitance to claim her own self-identity is her greatest weakness…
Persephone Symbol in the Astrological Birth Chart
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Persephone is the “Kore.'” She symbolizes that aspect of the feminine that is innocent or naive; the eternal child. It represents the area where we struggle to “grow up” and face authority standing confidently in our own maturity.
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It is the place where we are susceptible to becoming “abducted” and taken down into the shadows of that particular underworld (which is represented by her place in your chart.) It is where we can perpetuate pathology and suffer in it.
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This is where we may become the victim of the neuroses of that particular shadow dynamic and remain immature, victimized, and like the powerless child.
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The evolved expression of the Persephone archetype is in a character who has risen from the depths of relational suffering and victimization, who recognizes their power to transmute and alchemize the "led into gold", and who is a vehicle and a channel into higher states of tantric alchemy and union.
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They are empowered by deeply merging and "giving all of themselves" to others. As they reveal and expose the depths of heart and soul and they open to be filled by another on deeply intimate levels, they become facilitators of transformation, catharsis, and metamorphic evolutionary leaps in consciousness.
Extreme Vulnerability and Femininity
Persephone, unlike Aphrodite, is not independent, self-centered, and in control. In her undeveloped expression she is extremely vulnerable, irresponsible with her own care, complacent, and extremely submissive-feminine in her nature.
She is extremely vulnerable to the human neurosis of the psyche caused by overwhelming emotions such as depression, anxiety, and emotional, mental, and nervous breakdowns.
In her apparent helplessness to take responsibility, she can appear selfish and childish, however, she is actually selfless in her nature as she gives all of herself and allows herself to be taken: to be taken down into the underworld of herself and that of another. There is egolessness in her self-focus as she provides herself as the body or the container for transmutation to happen.
The risk associated with her willingness is the possibility of abandonment and lack of support, leading to feeling completely overwhelmed by the profound emotional depth which is her domain. This often manifest as being partnered with the non-devotional masculine or the psychotic mother.
She is the ultimate receptacle and the expression of a humble sacrifice of oneself for allowing herself to be a conduit for another's transformation to occur through her. She uses her receptivity and ultra-sensitivity to guide others into those realms within themselves.
The Loss of Self
But unlike the independent and self-centered Hestia, Persephone can become desperate in her loss of self and need to connect with someone in order to continue to be the vessel. A Persephone woman can lose touch with knowing how to maturely support themselves, as their identification is so deeply involved in serving another as the “processor of the inner realms.”
She is extremely powerful as the Shamaness that she is: the alchemist of powerful energies ~ the Queen of the Underworld and Wife of Hades/Pluto. She holds space with the demons and ghost of our psyche and is Queen over them.
Persephone is the Queen Alchemist and in her true essence and power, she is naturally attracted to the powerful transformational quality of the Dark Shadow and at home in the Underworld.
Like Chiron ~ When one is no longer victimized by the wounds and overcomes the oppression of pain, it allows for the experience to serve as a healing medicine, revealing the inherent wisdom within our soul.
So it is with Persephone. When we have reached a point of understanding our own naivety and personal responsibility, we acknowledge the inherent power within the psyche realm, embodying the role of Queen Guide. Moving through the shadow, we can gently guide our spirit on the journey of reclaiming our inheritance, rediscovering the alchemical power housed within ourselves.
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Persephone in the birth chart shows where we are susceptible to being abducted into our own helplessness and shadow, where we can give up our own power and remain immature. When the shadow is honored and the inherent alchemical power of this area (as shown in the chart) is allowed to be publicly claimed we can see where a great wealth of deep wisdom as the guide of this terrain exists.