Emerging
Archetypal Themes:
Libra, Dangerous Beauty and The Art of
Relationship
Libra is not only about the need
for partnership, it is also about the art of partnership. This month’s Emerging Archetypal Theme
focuses on the artistry of relationship and the need for women to remember our
role in the relationship dance. In our
hurry to achieve equal rights with men and to be ‘friends’ with them, we women
have lost some of our instinctual feminine knowledge, especially the art of
attracting, charming and seducing our partners. As the heroine of our movie is taught, “…you need to understand men. No matter their
shape or size... position or wealth... they all dream of the temptress. The
irresistible... unapproachable Venus.”
Men and women have different
needs and desires. When women act like
men in a relationship, there is no balance, no good tension that increases
sexual desire, a desire that helps bond us together. Women don’t want to be friends with men on
their level, because male friendships are often competitive and they certainly
don’t call each other when they’re going to be late! Relationships aren’t meant to be competitive;
relationships are meant to enhance each partner. Good partnerships need our willingness to try
to meet each other’s needs as long as it doesn’t diminish us. This
is also true for gay couples, because each relationship needs the give and
take, the action and attraction that is energized by both masculine and
feminine energies. Whether we pursue or
are pursued, the need to attract a mate calls for some artistry.
Libra rules all kinds of
artistry. An air sign, Libra wants to
put into action the rules of engagement.
But relationship mores are changing rapidly, so I thought it might be
helpful to discuss some of the feminine characteristics that attract and engage
men and women alike. While women can be
as honest, loyal, courteous, honorable and trustworthy as any man, we need to
remember how to make those shining virtues enjoyable and attractive.
And so we turn to Aphrodite/Venus
to teach us that joy. Aphrodite is a Goddess
of wholeness, containing both masculine and feminine energies, and yet she is
also a female being and manifests the feminine virtues when in
relationship. Venus rules the sign of Libra in October, the
harvest time, the time of community and fruitfulness, when there is a balance
between light and dark, between masculine and feminine. She is interested in social relationships;
not just love relationships but the whole sphere of proper relationships
between all peoples and nations. And so
She rules diplomacy and all forms of art.
She says each of us must examine what Beauty and Truth mean to us and consciously
live it out. Venus’ Libra mission is to
teach us to have our own aesthetic, for Beauty opens us to Spirit.
So let’s take a look at the
Goddess of Beauty, Love and Wisdom who sits in the heart center of the body,
ready to become the balance point in relationship.
Aphrodite
of the Greeks, Venus of the Romans, is one of the most vibrant archetypal
images of the Goddess that has come down to us from antiquity; the aspect of
the ancient Goddess that was never totally forgotten, the form of the Goddess
written about and romanticized down through the ages until She truly embodied
'the mystery of life, and love that begets life'. Aphrodite is the Goddess who combines the
spiritual and natural worlds, spirit and body.
She does this through Her essence, which is Love. She embodies the energy of connection, for
She brings everything into relationship, from electrons to people. She is the Goddess of Love, the love that is
rooted in the body and which is playful, sensual, and erotic. As Goddess of Sexuality, she engenders all
physically passionate love: non-marital and marital, heterosexual and
homosexual. As Goddess of Beauty, she
connects us to Truth. As Goddess of
Wholeness, she drives our individuation and awakens Psyche within us.
Aphrodite of Rhodes
The
Greeks came to regard the ideal form of Aphrodite’s divinity in the beauty of
Her naked body, for ancient statues of Her show Her either about to undress -
revealing Her mystery - or already undressed.
If these forms express Her essence, then it is the realm of body that
reveals Her mystery. There is a radiant
charm in Her loveliness which draws us into relationship, because the truth of
Her Being is embodied. As the archetypal essence of love and
sexuality, Her heavenly nature clothes Her instinctual, earthy nature, thereby
uniting both realms in harmony. She asks
us to love our bodies, knowing that they are truly the temple of Spirit here on
Earth.
Aphrodite is so powerful because She connects
us to our deepest yearnings and desires, those very instincts and desires which
we have tried to control or repress for fear of the chaos which it brings to
the collective order. We fear our bodies
as much as we fear death, and so we do not give ourselves over to love
completely. Very often our sexual
desires and fantasies symbolize our deep need for union with the Divine. And if we let it, our deep union with the
Divine can open us to our senses so that the world becomes holy. As we have cut ourselves off from our sexual
needs, we have also cut ourselves off from a basic connection to the Spirit, so
that in reclaiming our sexuality, we come that much closer to Spirit.
We
have to remember that the Christian Church, from its earliest beginnings,
viewed sex as inherently evil. The early
Church fathers felt that chastity was the only means of finding sanctity, and
many of them were obsessed with the notion that sexuality was the cause of our
fall into original sin. Medieval
theologians felt that sex caused the damnation of the human race, and that
women, being the cause of carnal lust, were soulless and the ultimate source of
damnation! (They, however, rarely blamed
men for being unable to restrain themselves from raping and pillaging women and
children.)
The
Church set out to destroy paganism and the cults of the ancient Goddess, which
viewed sexuality, as well as women, with reverence and honor, and which
included fertility rites, and so women were seen as the source of all
evil. The Church condemned Eve as the
source of our fall from grace when she taught Adam about sex. The Protestants were even worse in their view
of sexuality and women, for they preached that men should beat their wives and
not take pleasure in the sexual act. The
Church’s legacy of sexual inhibitions and repression gave rise to the sexual
revolution in the ’60’s, and we are still dealing with inappropriate sexuality
in terms of sexual permissiveness and out-of-control pornography. When we react to something, we are still
bound to it. It is only when we really
free ourselves from the old that we can find a new balance.
We need
to make sacred sexuality the norm. For
too long it has not been so, and we are still experiencing the dysfunction of
our sexual history. We need to heal our
sexuality. In Raine Eisler’s book, Sacred
Pleasure; Sex, Myth and the Politics of the Body, she says that it is
important to understand how the way society uses pain or pleasure to motivate
human behavior determines how it evolves.
Our traditional Christian imagery sacralizes pain rather than pleasure,
especially in choosing Christ Crucified rather than the Risen Christ as their
central God-image. Women’s bodies and
sexuality have been demonized by Christianity and therefore rigidly
controlled. And so, we have a society
where there is mistrust between men and women because of this longstanding
religious mistrust and control over our sexual relationships.
A New Relationship with Sexuality
Aphrodite
emerges from the sea radiant in her feminine sexuality. She does not need a lover, whether man or
woman, to awaken or confirm this knowledge for her. She owns her body and knows she is a sexual
being. Aphrodite is opposed to those thinkers
who would do away with the bodily differences that have kept women second-class
citizens for millennia; who would say there is no inherent difference between
women and men. Politically and
economically men and women must be equal.
But our equality cannot be based on sameness, for it does away with the
unique vision and understanding of life that manifests through our bodily
differences. Our equality should be
based on the fact of our differences, for we are created male and female.
The
Taoist concept of Yin and Yang speaks of how these two primal energies
intermingle in all of creation, how each of us contain both male and
female. The two sexes are miraculous and
mysterious. To disregard our bodily
differences does away with a consciousness of images, for our bodies image femininity and masculinity in the
world. We need to get beyond the
stereotypes to the reality of our bodies, and when we do, we will begin to
understand the mysteries they manifest.
Aphrodite
loves our differences, for She is the dynamic that connects the opposites and
brings about transformation. In ancient
Greece, she was paired with Ares, the god of war, just as they were known in
Rome as Venus and Mars. Love and War. Make love, not war. And perhaps the most true - only love can contain war. Only love knows how to take the war out of
men, only love and compassion can give rise to true peace. Aphrodite's love for Ares is long-standing;
even when her husband Hephaestus traps them in an unbreakable chain as they lie
in bed together, Aphrodite feels no shame.
Perhaps in claiming a connection to the warrior energy of Ares, who as
the Roman Mars was concerned with grappling
hand to hand with an opponent, Aphrodite shows us that it takes the courage
and passion of a warrior to engage in sexual love, because it is through our
sexuality that we open ourselves to the Other and grapple with that Other. We connect on the most basic levels, and in
the battlefield of love, we learn that sometimes surrender can be more
pleasurable and ecstatic than victory.
And yet in surrendering to love and passion, which opens us to the
‘Unknown’, we come to know and appreciate 'Otherness'. Love seeks to unite us
with all Unknowns, bringing its light to each darkness It is through love that we stretch ourselves
and become something more, do something more.
Dangerous Beauty: A Complete Woman
Aphrodite's
companions are the Muses of music, dance and poetry, and much of our popular
music recounts the joys, passions, and sorrows of love, for it is through art
that we connect (Aphrodite’s power) with our feeling life. Her sacred priestesses were skilled not only
in the arts of sexual love but in all the arts that make for civilization –
writing, poetry, history, philosophy, music, art and dance. Knowledge and creativity in the Arts can also
teach the art of living and loving.
Aphrodite & the Muses by Burne-Jones
Throughout
the ages, the Courtesan exemplified the ideal woman: a woman who enjoyed her
sexuality, who was known for her intelligence and who was skilled in the
arts. There is a beautiful 1998 movie
about the famous Venetian courtesan and poetess, Veronica Franco, called Dangerous Beauty. This film is a tribute to Aphrodite and the
courtesans of Europe, who inspired and created much of Western art, literature
and culture since the Renaissance.
In
ancient times, when the patriarchy was just gaining power and the religion of
the Goddess and her relationship to fertility and sexuality was still
consciously valued, there were sacred prostitutes, priestesses of the Goddess,
who would make love to men as a sacred act of worship, a way of connecting men
to the power of the Goddess. As the
patriarchy took over power from the earlier matriarchy, men still recognized
and honored the power of these sacred prostitutes, and there were still
priestesses who performed the hieros
gamos, or sacred marriage, of the King to the land and the Goddess.
These
women later became the courtesans of ancient Greece. Courtesans enjoyed great personal freedom and
economic power, while the wives and female children of men were often treated
little better than slaves. These hetaira, called ‘companions to men’ were
not viewed as common prostitutes, but were often in the center of the political
and as well as the social life of Athens, as were her later counterparts in
Venice and Paris. The most famous woman
in 5th Century Athens was the hetaira,
Aspasia, who lived with the great Athenian political leader, Pericles. Plutarch claimed that Aspasia was clever and
politically astute, and noted that Socrates would bring his students to hear
her speak, for she was a teacher of rhetoric, even though she also ran a school
for courtesans.
During
the Renaissance, the courtesans of Venice, called Honest Courtesans, were as
famous for their literary talents as for their sexual artistry, and for the
next few centuries, courtesans enjoyed more power and independence – especially
economic freedom - than any other women in Western Europe. The courtesans of Europe have left their mark
on our architectural, literary and artistic heritage.
The
courtesan became the ideal incarnation of the Goddess Aphrodite, a woman who
belonged to herself, who often enjoyed the same freedom and social benefits as
men, who was the intellectual equal of men, and who was as adept at the arts of
music, poetry and dance as she was at the art of lovemaking. While the courtesan’s place and power
depended on men’s need for female companionship, the courtesan certainly is the
exemplar of the powerful influence an independent woman can have on men if we
own our wholeness.
Susan
Griffin, in her book The Book of the Courtesans enumerates the virtues
of these courtesans: Timing, Beauty, Cheek, Brilliance, Gaiety, Grace and
Charm. We modern women could learn a lot
about getting men to value and complement our standpoint if we practiced these
ancient arts.
Veronica
Franco knew how to use these feminine virtues.
Trained as a courtesan by her mother, who was also a famous courtesan,
Veronica quickly became a favorite of the power elite in Venice. From an ancient, yet impoverished, Venetian
family, Veronica was skilled in all the arts of the courtesans, for Venice was
famous throughout Europe for her courtesans.
Her literary skills were enjoyed and supported by the rulers of Venice,
and at one point, she helped Venice attain the support of the French king in
their war with the Ottoman Empire. But
when the plague swept through Venice, the Church blamed it on the
licentiousness of the courtesans and had many of them brutalized. Veronica was charged with witchcraft, but she
saved herself by standing up for herself and shaming the noble men who had used
her for their own pleasure and yet were quick to abandon her in her trouble. The character of Veronica Franc is the most
complete and whole female character in any movie I’ve ever seen.
Dangerous
Beauty is a story about Veronica’s rise to fame, as well as her enduring
love for a powerful Venetian noble, Marco Venier. When Veronica (an amazingly artful Catherine
McCormack) learns that Marco cannot marry her because he must marry for wealth
and power, her mother Paola (the beautiful Jacqueline Bisset) encourages her to
become a courtesan. The scenes where she
is taught the arts of the courtesan are both informative and delightful. The power of the courtesan is that she can be
educated, unlike the proper noble wives of Venice, who are left ignorant of
both history as well as current events.
Veronica’s friend Beatrice, sister of Marco, has to ask Veronica to come
and tell the proper ladies of Venice how their husbands fare during the war,
for as Beatrice says, they are totally inconsequential to their men.
The beauty of Veronica’s character is
that she has all the virtues of the noblemen of her time, and yet she displays
them through her femininity. While she
is wildly in love with Marco, once she becomes a courtesan she will not sleep
with him, although she enjoys – yes totally enjoys – the sex with other
men. It is Marco who finally breaks down
and comes to her after a nasty altercation with his drunk cousin, Maffio (a deliciously
evil Oliver Platt). And once they are
together, it seems nothing can separate them.
That is, until Venice needs Veronica to seduce the French King and get
his help in their war. When she does,
she wins their accolades but loses Marco.
When the men return from war, they
find a completely transformed Venice; the plague has decimated the city and
fanatical preachers assure the people that it is God’s vengeance on them for
their frivolous and licentious ways.
Courtesans are beaten and killed.
Veronica is imprisoned and accused of witchcraft by Maffio, who has
always been jealous of her beauty and power.
Marco wants her to plead guilty so she can confess and be absolved of
her ‘sins’ but she refuses because that will mean she has to deny who and what
she is. Her speech before the Church
court beautifully expresses the feminine standpoint that has been so denigrated
by Christianity and patriarchy.
Veronica Franco: I confess that as a young girl I loved
a man who would not marry me for want of a dowry. I confess I had a mother who
taught me a different way of life, one I resisted at first but learned to
embrace. I confess I became a courtesan, traded yearning for power, welcomed
many rather than be owned by one. I confess I embraced a whore's freedom over a
wife's obedience. I confess I find more ecstasy in passion than in prayer. Such
passion is prayer. I confess I pray still to feel the touch of my lover's lips.
His hands upon me, his arms enfolding me... Such surrender has been mine. I
confess I pray still to be filled and enflamed. To melt into the dream of us,
beyond this troubled place, to where we are not even ourselves. To know that
always, this is mine. If this had not been mine-if I had lived any other way-a
child to her husband's will, my soul hardened from lack of touch and lack of
love... I confess such endless days and nights would be a punishment far
greater than you could ever mete out. You, all of you, you who hunger so for
what I give yet cannot bear to see that kind of power in a woman. You call
God's greatest gift- ourselves, our yearning, our need to love - you call it
filth and sin and heresy... I repent there was no other way open to me. I do
not repent my life.
Wow! I love that speech. And yet, how many women today would think to
say those things. We are so concerned
with making our way in the world – the masculine world of commerce – that most
of us don’t value our relationships as much as our jobs. We no
longer believe that relationships are central to our lives because we’ve bought
into the patriarchal paradigm that power and money are more important than love
and commitment. I’m not advocating going back to the old
paradigm of patriarchal relationships and family values. I firmly believe, though, that women are the
heart and soul of relationships and that we need to polish up our feminine
virtues – our courtesan nature – if we want to create vibrant, loving, creative
partnerships.
Women
can find our wholeness when our sexuality is as full and as deep as our minds
have become. The centuries of shame and
sin that Christianity has projected onto sexuality must be healed and
transformed, for sexuality cannot be anything other than spiritual when it
becomes the union of body and
spirit. Before we can engage in true
union between two people, we must first bring about a union of body and spirit
within ourselves. We must be somebody if we are to love
somebody. Aphrodite can lead us to this
kind of feminine individuation.
So
if you haven’t seen Dangerous Beauty go
out and rent it today! It is a feast for
the eyes and the soul. And then consider
learning how to use those feminine virtues of Timing, Beauty, Cheek, Brilliance,
Gaiety, Grace and Charm to enliven your life and all your relationships!
From the Bard’s Grove,
Cathy Pagano
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