Re-Enchanting Aphrodite: The Feminine and Erotic Wisdom in Myth

Abstract

This dissertation explores problems of cultural fragmentation, meaninglessness, and oppression—effects of humanity’s profound disenchantment with life and love—as they are situated in ruptures between the masculine and feminine. Using a classical Jungian and feminist approach, along with archetypal literary criticism that emphasizes the symbolic, metaphorical nature of myths, the study demonstrates the ways that revaluing Aphrodite, the ancient Greek goddess of erotic and spiritual love, can infuse our relationships to Self, Other, the divine, and our natural environments with new vitality.

The study begins by examining our Western cultural inheritance of the erotic ideal from Greek philosophy, a tradition that subordinates embodied love and its mythic wisdom to an absolute, transcendent logos. Identifying the ways that this hierarchical model of love perpetuates patriarchal domination, the study calls for a paradigmatic shift to Aphroditic love, a resacralization of sensuality and the feminine soul as a means for healing the wasteland we inhabit on the earthly, psychological and spiritual planes.

Apuleius’s The Golden Ass and the myth of Psyche and Eros reveal the human soul as a gift from Aphrodite, one that teaches the significance of beauty and pleasure as links between earthly and spiritual mysteries. Several myths centered on romantic love demonstrate how Aphrodite’s archetypal energy initiates the individuation process, evoking radical subjectivity and relational independence on the path to spiritual wholeness. An investigation of the myth of Isis and Osiris, as well as metaphysical and romantic poetry, demonstrate how Aphrodite transforms our relationships to death in her alchemical role as soror mystica. A consideration of Aphroditic love in the mysticism of monotheistic religions demonstrates a new vision of the divine that unites the immanent and transcendent in a sacred marriage. Finally, a study of intersubjectivity and phenomenology in the Navajo creation myth illustrates how Aphrodite links us to nature and all living beings through a bond of love.

This dissertation suggests that a re-enchantment of Aphrodite offers us the possibilities for creating a new heart-centered myth, grounded in embodied intelligent love, compassion, and passion.