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Aphrodite is an ancient Greek goddess associated with love, beauty, pleasure, passion and procreation. She was syncretized with the Roman goddess Venus. Aphrodite's major symbols include myrtles, roses, doves, sparrows, and swans. The cult of Aphrodite was largely derived from that of the Phoenician goddess Astarte, a cognate of the East Semitic goddess Ishtar, whose cult was based on the Sumerian cult of Inanna. Aphrodite's main cult centers were Cythera, Cyprus, Corinth, and Athens. Her main festival was the Aphrodisia, which was celebrated annually in midsummer. In Laconia, Aphrodite was worshipped as a warrior goddess. She was also the patron goddess of prostitutes, an association which led early scholars to propose the concept of "sacred prostitution" in Greco-Roman culture, an idea which is now generally seen as erroneous.
A goddess is a female deity. Goddesses have been linked with virtues such as beauty, love, sexuality, motherhood, creativity, and fertility.
Venus is a Roman goddess, whose functions encompassed love, beauty, desire, sex, fertility, prosperity, and victory. In Roman mythology, she was the ancestor of the Roman people through her son, Aeneas, who survived the fall of Troy and fled to Italy. Julius Caesar claimed her as his ancestor. Venus was central to many religious festivals, and was revered in Roman religion under numerous cult titles.
Aztec mythology is the body or collection of myths of Aztec civilization of Central Mexico. The Aztecs were Nahuatl-speaking groups living in central Mexico and much of their mythology is similar to that of other Mesoamerican cultures. According to legend, the various groups who were to become the Aztecs arrived from the north into the Anahuac valley around Lake Texcoco. The location of this valley and lake of destination is clear – it is the heart of modern Mexico City – but little can be known with certainty about the origin of the Aztec. There are different accounts of their origin. In the myth the ancestors of the Mexica/Aztec came from a place in the north called Aztlan, the last of seven nahuatlacas to make the journey southward, hence their name "Azteca." Other accounts cite their origin in Chicomoztoc, "the place of the seven caves," or at Tamoanchan.
Cloacina, "The Cleanser" was a goddess who presided over the Cloaca Maxima, the main trunk outlet of the system of sewers in Rome. The Cloaca Maxima was said to have been begun by Tarquinius Priscus, one of Rome's Etruscan kings, and finished by another, Tarquinius Superbus: Cloacina might have originally been an Etruscan deity. According to one of Rome's foundation myths, Titus Tatius, king of the Sabines, erected a statue to Cloacina at the place where Romans and Sabines met to confirm the end of their conflict, following the rape of the Sabine women. Tatius instituted lawful marriage between Sabines and Romans, uniting them as one people, ruled by himself and by Rome's founder, Romulus. The peace between Sabines and Romans was marked by a cleansing ritual using myrtle, at or very near an ancient Etruscan shrine to Cloacina, above a small stream that would later be enlarged as the main outlet for Rome's main sewer, the Cloaca Maxima. As myrtle was one of Venus' signs, and Venus was a goddess of union, peace and reconciliation, Cloacina was recognised as Venus Cloacina. She was also credited with the purification of sexual intercourse within marriage.
Neptune is the god of freshwater and the sea in Roman religion. He is the counterpart of the Greek god Poseidon. In the Greek-influenced tradition, Neptune is the brother of Jupiter and Pluto; the brothers preside over the realms of Heaven, the earthly world, and the Underworld. Salacia is his wife.
A mother goddess is a goddess who represents or is a personification of nature, motherhood, fertility, creation, destruction, or who embodies the bounty of the Earth. When equated with the Earth or the natural world, such goddesses are sometimes referred to as the Mother Earth or Earth Mother, who is paired along with the Sky Father deity in various animistic or pantheistic religions. In some religious traditions or movements, Heavenly Mother is the wife or feminine counterpart of the Sky father or God the Father.
A Venus figurine is any Upper Palaeolithic statuette portraying a woman, usually carved in the round. Most have been unearthed in Europe, but others have been found as far away as Siberia, and distributed across much of Eurasia.
Fortuna is the goddess of fortune and the personification of luck in Roman religion who, largely thanks to the Late Antique author Boethius, remained popular through the Middle Ages until at least the Renaissance. The blindfolded depiction of her is still an important figure in many aspects of today's Italian culture, where the dichotomy fortuna / sfortuna plays a prominent role in everyday social life, also represented by the very common refrain "La [dea] fortuna è cieca".
The Rokeby Venus is a painting by Diego Velázquez, the leading artist of the Spanish Golden Age. Completed between 1647 and 1651, and probably painted during the artist's visit to Italy, the work depicts the goddess Venus in a sensual pose, lying on a bed and looking into a mirror held by the Roman god of physical love, her son Cupid. The painting is in the National Gallery, London.
The dimples of Venus are sagittally symmetrical indentations sometimes visible on the human lower back, just superior to the gluteal cleft. They are directly superficial to the two sacroiliac joints, the sites where the sacrum attaches to the ilium of the pelvis. An imaginary line joining both dimples of Venus passes over the spinous process of the second sacral vertebra.
The Esquiline Venus, depicting the goddess Venus, is a smaller-than-life-size Roman nude marble sculpture of a female in sandals and a diadem headdress. It is widely viewed as a 1st-century AD Roman copy of a Greek original from the 1st century BC. It is also a possible depiction of the Ptolemaic ruler Cleopatra VII.
Wiccan views of divinity are generally theistic, and revolve around a Goddess and a Horned God, thereby being generally dualistic. In traditional Wicca, as expressed in the writings of Gerald Gardner and Doreen Valiente, the emphasis is on the theme of divine gender polarity, and the God and Goddess are regarded as equal and opposite divine cosmic forces. In some newer forms of Wicca, such as feminist or Dianic Wicca, the Goddess is given primacy or even exclusivity. In some forms of traditional witchcraft that share a similar duotheistic theology, the Horned God is given precedence over the Goddess.
Vulcan is the god of fire including the fire of volcanoes, deserts, metalworking and the forge in ancient Roman religion and myth. He is often depicted with a blacksmith's hammer. The Vulcanalia was the annual festival held August 23 in his honor. His Greek counterpart is Hephaestus, the god of fire and smithery. In Etruscan religion, he is identified with Sethlans.
Venus Castina from Latin castus, is claimed to be an epithet of the Roman goddess Venus; in this form, she was supposedly associated with "the yearnings of feminine souls locked up in male bodies".
In classical mythology, Cupid is the god of desire, erotic love, attraction and affection. He is often portrayed as the son of the love goddess Venus and the god of war Mars. He is also known in Latin as Amor ("Love"). His Greek counterpart is Eros. Although Eros is generally portrayed as a slender winged youth in Classical Greek art, during the Hellenistic period, he was increasingly portrayed as a chubby boy. During this time, his iconography acquired the bow and arrow that represent his source of power: a person, or even a deity, who is shot by Cupid's arrow is filled with uncontrollable desire. In myths, Cupid is a minor character who serves mostly to set the plot in motion. He is a main character only in the tale of Cupid and Psyche, when wounded by his own weapons, he experiences the ordeal of love. Although other extended stories are not told about him, his tradition is rich in poetic themes and visual scenarios, such as "Love conquers all" and the retaliatory punishment or torture of Cupid. His powers are similar, though not identical, to Kamadeva the Hindu god of human love.
Greco-Roman mythology features male homosexuality in many of the constituent myths. In addition, there are instances of cross-dressing, and of androgyny which has been grouped under the acronym LGBTQ+.
Aphroditus or Aphroditos was a male Aphrodite originating from Amathus on the island of Cyprus and celebrated in Athens.
Archons are, in Gnosticism and religions closely related to it, the builders of the physical universe. Among the Archontics, Ophites, Sethians and in the writings of Nag Hammadi library, the archons are rulers, each related to one of seven planets; they prevent souls from leaving the material realm. The political connotation of their name reflects rejection of the governmental system, as flawed without chance of true salvation. In Manichaeism, the archons are the rulers of a realm within the 'Kingdom of Darkness', who together make up the Prince of Darkness.
References
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain : Smith, William, ed. (1870). "Barbata". Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology .
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- Jennings, Hargrave (1884). Phallicism: Celestial and Terrestrial, Heathen and Christian. London: Redway. p. 234.
- Pulham, Patricia (2008). Art and the Transitional Object in Vernon Lee's Supernatural Tales. p. 58. ISBN 978-0-7546-5096-6.