Aphrodite

Culture: Ancient Greek   Domain: Love, beauty, desire, fertility

Aphrodite's birth is told two ways: as a daughter of Zeus and Dione, or, in Hesiod's older and stranger account, born from sea foam after Uranus was overthrown. She presides over romantic and sexual love, beauty and desire, and her intervention (and occasional mischief, as in the Judgment of Paris) drives much of Greek myth's romantic plotting.

Associations

Love, beauty, desire, the sea, doves, roses, myrtle.

Ways people honor her (modern)

• Practice self-love and body confidence as devotional acts
• Keep flowers, especially roses, on the altar
• Take a ritual bath as an act of self-care
• Read Hesiod's Theogony for her older, sea-born origin story

Approach any deity with respect and do your own research. Practices vary widely between traditions, and modern devotional practice often goes beyond what survives in ancient sources.