For men, this oil stimulates desire and prowess. In a favorite bottle or jar, ideally red or pink, mix together the following recipe with a silver spoon:
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5 drops rosemary oil
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Salts have been used to purify the body, by way of ritual rubs, since ancient times in the Mediterranean and Mesopotamia. Beauties from the biblical era utilized this simple curative of natural salts to exfoliate the skin and enhance circulation, vital to overall body health. There are wonderful imported Dead Sea salts readily available at most bath and beauty stores, or you can make your own using Goddess Glow recipes, one of the kitchen cupboard cures that follows.
To prepare for your body glow session, light a white candle, step out of your clothes and into your tub or shower, and hold the salts in the palms of both hands, praying:
Aphrodite, in your wisdom, help me reflect your image;This is one in a series of posts about our pantheon. Find the full list of the whole series here.
Up this week: the goddess Antheia, one of the triplicity of goddesses who are daughters of the Three Mothers in our pantheon. You can read about the other two daughter goddesses: Ariadne and Arachne. And of course, the Mothers have sons as well. We'll get to them as we move along in this series.
...UPDATE: In the time since I originally wrote this post, we've connected with the goddess who could be described as the Minoan counterpart to Aphrodite. We call her Antheia. I've included clarifying notes in square brackets throughout this post to update the information.
I'm regularly asked if there's a counterpart in the Minoan pantheon to some foreign deity or other. It's a game many of us play, trying to make connections and see where beliefs and practices were similar around the ancient world. Even the ancients did it, especially the Greeks and Romans, trying to figure out which of their deities each foreign one was equivalent to.
One of the most common ones I'm asked about is Aphrodite. If you think about it, she is pretty likely to have some kind of Minoan connection: She dates back at least to the Bronze Age, the time the Minoans flourished. Her mythos tells us that she's from Cyprus or Kythera, both islands within the Minoan sphere of influence (Cyprus even had a script that derived from the Minoans' Linear A), places we know they traveled to and traded with. This "early Aphrodite" was probably much more complicated than her later depiction as a shallow sex/love/beauty goddess suggests.
...An Aphrodite of the people is not separate from the culture of the people. While some deities prefer to float around in the sky stroking their long white beards, and others like to stay classically enshrined in pristine and historically-accurate temples, Aphrodite is a party girl who gets bored if you try to keep Her dressed in the same old chitons and flowing gowns all the time. She is not stuck in history, nor in any single vision of beauty and adornment. She is Beauty in all its forms.
I envision Aphrodite in many different social and cultural contexts, and She always has impeccable style for the occasion. She helps me see the beauty of the unexpected.
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