Serving the Goddess of Love with Ferocity and Compassion
Once you have made space for Aphrodite in your life and invited Her in, it is time to focus on the work of deepening your relationship with Her. Cultivating a relationship with the Goddess involves declaring your intentions, opening a dialogue, listening, practicing reciprocity, and staying dedicated and persistent.
I thought it would be nice to start off the new year with an affirmation: I trust in my joy. Do you currently trust in your joy? What is your relationship to joy and pleasure? Do you embrace joy or shy away from it? How does joy show up in your life? How does it impact the decisions you make and how you show up in the world?
I'm excited to announce the virtual Modern Temple of Aphrodite community, hosted on Discord! Over the years, I have received countless emails from spiritual seekers expressing the desire for community with other people who work with Aphrodite. This inspired me to create an online temple community where people from a variety of spiritual paths and experience levels can come together. It is my hope that together we will cultivate a supportive and vibrant community of devotees where we can share our experiences, ask questions and learn from each other, and bask in the joy that is Aphrodite.
This post is part of the Beltane ritual I led for my Pagan group last Sunday, but it is also a reflection on tides of energy and the practice of embodiment, and is applicable well beyond this particular Beltane season.
(Me. The burntout witch is me.)
As I mentioned in my last post of Priestess in a Pandemic, Isis came into my life this past year. Her arrival was unexpected but welcome. She showed up when there was need, though I wouldn’t have been able to articulate it then. Our relationship has been transformational and healing.
The pandemic brought changes to every aspect of my life, including my spiritual practice. I talked a little bit about this in my Adaptive Spiritual Practice for Pagans posts, and a smattering of other posts I’ve written throughout the pandemic, but there are some things that I haven’t had the chance to really synthesize into writing yet. Here are a few of them.
Like I said in my previous post - Even though 2020 and 2021 have been profoundly awful, it hasn’t been all bad! This is a continuation of my lessons learned, thoughts, and general musings about being a Priestess in a Pandemic.
Earlier in January was the anniversary of my oath to Aphrodite as Her priestess. After my first year of priestesshood, I wrote a perspective piece on lessons I learned in my first year of service. I was going to write one last year as well, but time got away from me, and nothing felt particularly celebratory at the beginning of 2021. Now with two years of being a priestess in a pandemic, I finally feel like I can write something.
As you can probably judge from my vastly decreased posting frequency, life has been a lot for the past few months. Riding the waves of the pandemic has left me exhausted, with very little bandwidth for things that aren’t absolutely essential in maintaining my physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual health. Here is a tale involving me, some yogurt, my cat, and some very broken laws of physics.
Priestess of Aphrodite 