Irisanya Moon’s Aphrodite: Encountering the Goddess of Love & Beauty & Initiation opens with a Homeric hymn to the goddess and ends with a blessing of love. The book that emerges between these ritual acts of love and magick is one of devotional worship and practical praise for this complex and multifaceted goddess. Moon’s account of Aphrodite is personal and devotional in many respects, but it is also relatable and pragmatic. Indeed, it is the relational aspect of Aphrodite that serves as the energetic center and focus of the book. Cultivation of relationship in the most intimate and sacred sense is, in fact, the essence of Moon’s encounter with Aphrodite — an encounter that she shares with the reader, in a guided tutorial of sorts for how the reader might more intimately and meaningfully engage with the gifts of love and beauty in relationship, which is especially Aphrodite’s province. Aphrodite emerges from this book as a complex personality, decidedly divine though by no means removed from ordinary mortal concerns. Where love and beauty are called forth and present, embraced and sustained through devotional practice, there is Aphrodite.
More than merely an abstraction or remote, divine figure, Aphrodite “is a love spell. She is the intention of bringing forth that which is your birthright — to know yourself as love and in love.” Throughout the nine chapters of this book (90 pages), Irisanya Moon provides practical advice and suggestions for altars and chants and other devotional activities that can bring the reader in closer and more intimate relationship with Aphrodite. As with any relationship, human or divine, “the more you get to know Aphrodite, the more you see.” Aphrodite, vitally, is also an initiator. This aspect of the goddess I found to be especially fascinating, and Moon’s account of the ways in which Aphrodite functions as initiator is by far one of the most instructive parts of the book.
Every reader will come to this book, as any other book, with a unique lens and particular ideas or expectations about Aphrodite. I know that I did. And I know that my understanding of Aphrodite has deepened and expanded and changed with every reading. Aphrodite invites that deepening of understanding and opening to the transformative power of relationship. As a goddess of initiation as well as a goddess of love and beauty, Aphrodite challenges us to find acceptance of our bodies and talents and visions, and lives. Aphrodite, in Moon’s account, is a goddess of many attributes, and many names, and many faces, and many ways of knowing, and ways of revealing knowledge and love and beauty, the knowledge of love and beauty, and the beauty and love that is knowing.
Moon’s book might be read in the spirit of other devotional records, as in the medieval mystics, for Moon’s orientation is indeed in many respects mystical, and even ecstatic, as is the core spirit of the Reclaiming tradition. As a priestess, initiate, and teacher of the Reclaiming tradition — a tradition that has deep roots in Feminism and the Goddess Movement — Irisanya Moon celebrates the divinity and sacredness of the Goddess in all her many and varied aspects, and Aphrodite is a perfect embodiment of that spirit and ethical orientation. Readers familiar with the Reclaiming tradition will find this book of particular practical value. For those encountering Aphrodite or the Goddess for the first time, there is wisdom to be gained, and certainly charm and practical magic.
If I had one unmet desire in reading the book, it is a lack of images and pictures that might have more beautifully illustrated the points established otherwise soundly in prose. Perhaps this was an editorial decision. Nevertheless, this is a very good and well-conceived book, and one that should appeal to pagans and practitioners and otherwise non-committed but curious readers alike (poets, one might think, especially). Aphrodite, certainly, has something for everyone, for whose life has not been touched by beauty and love?
Aphrodite: Encountering the Goddess of Love & Beauty & Initiation is an excellent devotional account of this complex and always-charming goddess. Irisanya Moon has written a wonderful and very practical addition to the Pagan Portals series. The book can stand alone or lead to many points and indeed portals for further exploration. A reference list is included and the book itself abounds in fruitful food for thought. Did I mention there is also poetry? Aphrodite herself could only be pleased with the result.
~review by Christopher Greiner
Author: Irisanya Moon
Publisher: Moon Books, 2020
pp. 104pp, $12.95
Editor's note: This review originally appeared in the 2021 Summer Solstice issue of Eternal Haunted Summer.
