“The Goddess Companion”
The golden one has left us, gone to her island,
gone to her temple there, gone to her shrine
with its incensed altar. She has left us behind
and closed the door. If we could see her now
how beautiful she would be: imagine her there,
the Graces bathing her ~ those lovely handmaids ~
and oiling her with fragrant sweetness, covering
every curve of her bountiful body with sacredness
and the green scent of olives, and dressing her
in filmy silken robes, and roping her neck
with golden chains, dropping gold from her ears,
ringing her fingers with gold. She is laughing.
How our darling loves to laugh! And now
look! She is leaving her temple again, coming
back to bring us more joyous trouble, laughing
and laughing, cutting a path right through the stars.
~Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite
When love and human connection are absent from our lives, we feel impoverished and dry. Life seems less than full. Our senses seem dulled. The world seems to lack the lively spark of life, to be less beautiful and less compelling. It is as though we are in a desert, where the water of life seems to have retreated under the harsh sand.
The force of love, which the Greeks represented with the magnificent figure of Aphrodite, transforms us and the world at the same time. It need not be an intimate partnership, for friendship and family bonds are also forms of love that sustain and enliven us. But to live without intimacy is to live in a desert of the heart. Opening to others entails risk ~ the risk of being hurt ~ but unless we take that risk, we do not truly live.
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By Patricia Monaghan
Witches Of The Craft® 