 |
Goddess Mysteries
for Today's Troubled World
by Alexis
Masters |
The Divine Lover
Held most dear from time immemorial as
the Lover of Mortals, Aphrodite is a Goddess to whom
human beings have long turned for unconditional Love and
from whom, they say, we have always received it. Today
the tragic events of September 11th loom large in our
minds and remind us that we need Love in our world more
than ever.
In my novel, The Giuliana Legacy, protagonist
Julia Giardani's destiny brings her "face to
face" with her family's hereditary Goddess,
Aphrodite. But Julia soon learns the family divinity is
not the promiscuous and wily seductress we know from
Greek myths. The Giardani Goddess is very different
indeed. She survives from a much earlier epoch in human
memory and is best described as a Divine Lover.
Although The Giuliana Legacy is an entirely
fictional story, the Giardani Goddess is not fictional.
Far from it. For seven years before finding my niche as
a novelist, I researched and studied Aphrodite's
prehistoric origins and historical development. Between
1982 and 1989, I traveled to more than fifty ancient
sites associated with Her worship across the
Mediterranean basin. As I gathered file drawers full of
archaeological reports and scholarly articles and
combined them with my experiences at Her ancient
sanctuaries and temples, a complex sense emerged of how
Aphrodite may well have been perceived among the people
of Her times, from at least 2000 BC to about 600 AD.
Evidence unearthed at Aphrodite's sacred sites
banishes our culture’s trivialized Love Goddess to the
realm of the Classical Greek poets and playwrights and
the idealized marble sculptures they inspired. It
clarifies historical developments in Aphrodite's
religious image, especially the influences from warlike
cultures to the East that eventually masked or distorted
her aboriginal meaning.
Votive statues and other gifts to the Goddess at
Aphrodite's sites seldom indicate her association with
the powers of erotic love and desire popularly ascribed
to her. More often they testify to her association with
a vast array of human concerns, including birth,
maturation, marriage, child-bearing, motherhood,
healing, community protection, crop fertility, death and
rebirth. It seems clear that in spiritual practice
throughout ancient times, this Goddess retained the
broader powers of her pre-Hellenic Divine status and was
invoked primarily by her people as the eternal power of
Divine Love omnipresent in all creation.
A Place Called Sacred Mountain
High on the steep south face of Mount Dicta in
Crete, an isolated sanctuary called Hieron Oros—Sacred
Mountain—offers insights into Aphrodite's earliest
worship. In use from the Minoan period to the early
Christian era, the sanctuary shows unbroken continuity
in the devotions practiced there. Over almost three
millennia, the ritual objects and other elements of
worship uncovered changed very little, and many of the
artifacts from the earliest period of the sanctuary
appear to have been reused throughout its long history
until its very final years.
Sacred Mountain must have been a place of pilgrimage.
It is too far removed from any known ancient city or
town to have been a center of civic worship. A large oak
shading its center, the site fills a sloping, rocky
meadow that overlooks the southern Aegean, with faint
traces of North Africa barely visible in the distance
far beyond. It is silent and peaceful there, even today,
a refuge for Divine contact and spiritual renewal beside
a cool and ageless sacred spring.
But Sacred Mountain did not exist merely for the
occasional lone pilgrim or retreatant. It obviously
served a large community for much of its history.
Excavations have revealed indications of large ritual
gatherings and structures that suggest processions,
group dancing and other forms of communal celebration.
The artifacts found, charming stone offering tables,
stone, pottery and bronze figurines, ritual chalices and
vases, and numerous horned goat and bull bucrania are
consistent with those offered throughout Minoan culture
to the ages-old Goddess of Abundance and Beauty, the
archetypal Lover of Mortals.
By the early 1990's, the site's archaeologists
further study of the artifacts had revealed that the
sanctuary was likely used primarily for seasonal
'maturation' or initiatory rites. While archaeology will
never tell us precisely how people worshipped in deep
antiquity, the work of these careful experts has given
us many clues.
Mysteries of Love
When I visited Sacred Mountain in 1989, I sensed a
forceful, almost tangible Power emanating from the core
of the sanctuary. I knew the site held in its
many layers a profound and numinous Mystery. Strong,
clear impressions flooded my mind, that the spiritual
focus of the sanctuary had been initiation, individual
and communal, that Sacred Mountain was the seat of a
spiritual tradition that could only be called the
Mysteries of Love, that the Goddess of this place wanted
to live again in the hearts of people everywhere—and
wanted her Mysteries to be known to us once more, even
celebrated in our time.
These impressions continued to grow in strength and
clarity over the years. They drove me to turn from
scholarly writing to fiction, where I could put my
intuitions to work without the constraints of empirical
proof. Eventually, it compelled me to develop the
trilogy that begins with The Giuliana Legacy. In
these stories, I could not only share my impressions of
how the Mysteries of Love might once have been
practiced, but also do my best to envision how they
might be useful for our world today.
Empedocles, a Pre-Socratic philosopher and mystic
sage offers an early explanation of our Cosmos that
resonates with my intuitions about Aphrodite and her
Mysteries of Love. In the surviving fragments of his
writings Aphrodite is the primeval power of Love
whirling in a eternal cyclical interplay with
"destructive Strife," motivating change and
growth within and through the four elements of creation
and bringing them together “in her turn” into Golden
Ages of harmony, peace, and abundance. He stated that
Strife dominated his 5th century BC world and he looked
longingly back toward an earlier era when Aphrodite—Love—reigned
supreme.
I believe the age of which he writes encompassed the
heyday of the Sacred Mountain sanctuary and the
Mysteries practiced there. I also believe the great
cycle of Love and Strife has turned and that Love again
is on the increase in our world—destined to bring us
together into an age of harmony, peace and abundance
once more.
Seeing the huge outpouring of love washing through
our global community in the wake of September 11th, I
feel optimistic. The timing of Empedocles' Great Cosmic
Cycle may not be ours to know, but I am not alone in my
optimism, for spiritual teachers and intuitive healers
the world over have predicted that we are entering a
time of global initiation.
Attunement with Love
Initiation is a distinct stage in almost every
Mystery tradition. By their very nature, initiations
involve purification and testing, and we on this planet
will doubtless be purged of our follies by whatever
force necessary and tested to the extreme.
"Destructive Strife" will not give up his
ironclad grip on us without a mighty struggle.
In The Giuliana Legacy, Julia Giardani opens
her reconstructed Mysteries of Love with this quote from
Empedocles:
"She it is who is thought innate
even in mortal limbs, because of her they think friendly
thoughts and accomplish harmonious deeds, calling her
Joy by name, and Aphrodite."
Love will indeed draw us together into another Golden
Age especially if those of us who identify with
her Divine power and wish to serve her remember to
cultivate her in our own hearts, by our own will, and
through our own "friendly" thoughts and
"harmonious" actions. Though Aphrodite is
"innate" in us, attunement is key—it is the
very purpose of initiation.
Attunement grows as we turn our minds toward our
goal, in this case, toward Divine Love. Dwell on the
thought of Love. Let your mind be saturated with that
thought, with that energy. Set aside time each day to
deepen your practice. This is the meditative aspect of
attunement. The other aspect requires action, sending
out "friendly thoughts," performing
"harmonious deeds," but also attuning our
minds to her in the midst of activity. See Love in
action, "in the whirl," to use Empedocles'
phrase, where others may not. Keep your eye
"single," focused, "gazing on Love with
your understanding" and "drawing a circle of
Love's energy all about you." And very importantly,
use your will to turn away from Strife—and don’t
permit your mind to follow the frightened crowd in his
direction.
Prayer is a powerful method for attunement, too.
Speaking to Divine Love in the language of your heart is
easier today than it was before September 11th. We have
countless things to pray for now, the souls who passed
over during that tragic morning and those who survive
them being only the most obvious. We need to pray for
peace and for wisdom for our world's leaders as they
endeavor to cope with the crisis at hand. And we must
send out Love in our prayers to all who suffer on this
planet today, from fear, illness, deprivation,
ignorance, prejudice, and hatred, for only Love can draw
them into Love's charmed and harmonious circle.
The need for prayer has never been greater. With
heartfelt prayer focused by intention, miracles can
happen. Believe it. And rest assured, the Lover of
Mortals hears our prayers and is moved by them, too. We
are not alone.
© Alexis Masters 2001. All
Rights Reserved.
Alexis
Masters, lifelong
mystic, scholar and kriya yoga practitioner, holds a
bachelor of arts in transpersonal psychology from
Antioch University, where she also pursued graduate work
in feminist theology and comparative religion. A great
lover of world travel, her research in ancient religion
and Goddess spirituality has taken her to the far
reaches of the Mediterranean. Alexis lives with her
husband, Christopher Gilmore, in Northern California,
where she is hard at work on her next novel, the sequel
to The Giuliana Legacy. Envisioned
as the second volume in a trilogy, Giuliana's
Challenge chronicles more of the adventures
of the Giardani family and the Goddess they serve.
Alexis
is also the founding director of VisionaryFiction.com,
the Internet community forum for readers,
authors, booksellers and publishers of the emerging
literary genre of visionary fiction. Created for all who
share a passion for literature with spiritual themes and
content, VistionaryFiction.com is the place to learn
more about what is causing all the buzz in the
publishing industry and to help insure that the new
genre becomes the successful, thriving one needed to
meet the demands of today's changing book market. The
site contains interactive features for announcing new
releases in the genre, for discussing genre standards
and issues of craft, and for sharing promotional ideas
and community contacts. Visit VisionaryFiction.com, cast your vote
today for your favorite visionary fiction titles, and
help shape the future of this exciting publishing trend.
BACK
TO "FEATURES" PAGE
|
