An Aphrodite Initiation | Venus In Taurus And The Philosophy of Sacred Embodied Desire | S2 Ep.2

The Embodied Astrology of Venus and Archetype of Aphrodite Meet in the Philosophy of Sacred Desire

The emotion of wanting, yearning, desire has been getting a terrible reputation for a long time, and this week’s astrology makes it impossible to keep pretending that’s harmless. I’m opening a Venus-led portal where pleasure, worth, and love stop being performance and start being truth in the body. With Venus coming home to Taurus and a Libra full moon lighting up self and other, we’re invited to look directly at what we’ve been sacrificing just to be easy to be with.

I walk with Aphrodite as teacher, archetype, and initiator, starting with the two origin stories that reveal a patriarchal pattern: power that can’t be held gets rewritten into something manageable. We move through the myths of her “domestication,” her arranged marriage, and the way her name gets flattened into vanity and blame. I also reframe the Psyche story from an archetypal psychology lens, where Aphrodite’s so-called cruelty reads as initiation, a demand for capacity, and a pathway to transformation rather than punishment.

Then I offer one of my favorite restorations: Aphrodite Urania and Aphrodite Pandemos, the celestial and the earthly faces of the same goddess. Patriarchy ranks soul hunger above body pleasure (or flips it), but Venus in Taurus asks us to hold both without hierarchy. I guide a short somatic practice with one hand on the heart and one on the lower belly to help you meet the desire you’ve been shrinking, and I name Pluto square Venus for what it is: a threshold where the version of you that made desire small can finally die.

Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs their desire back, and leave a rating and review so this work reaches the people it’s meant for.

Transcript

Welcome To Priestess Initiations

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome to Priestess Initiations, the Goddess Coven. I'm Casey Dunn, educator, priestess, and professional somatic therapist. In April 2025, I went through a Priestess Initiation of Old and launched the Priestess Initiations podcast six months later. Whatever brought you here today, I invite you to drop into the spiral with me. Let's begin. Welcome back to Priestess Initiations. I'm Casey. This week I'm releasing two episodes. And if you've been with me for a while, you know that I did that once before when life got in the way and I got very sick and I needed to catch up. But this week is different. This week I'm releasing two episodes intentionally. One on the sacred masculine, one on the divine feminine. Because the astrology demanded both, and I couldn't, I couldn't choose. And so Venus is coming home to Taurus. That's her home sign. And we have a full moon in Libra on Wednesday. This is Venus's week, fully, unambiguously hers. And I couldn't talk about the King archetype with Matt. That's the other episode. It's an interview episode. Without also giving Aphrodite a solo episode. She deserves that. And these episodes, they work together. The King episode features my partner Matt. And if I'm being honest with you, I had more feelings of vulnerability come up around sharing our real relationship on this show than I expected. I went back and forth about it, and ultimately I chose to share it because I believe the conversation is valuable. And because Matt showing up here on this podcast, a podcast that is not exclusive to women, but is definitely a little more feminine focused, is itself an act of the very king energy that we're discussing. So what I'm releasing publicly for that episode still feels really genuinely vulnerable to me. And for those of you who are part of the Patreon coven, the new moon and full moon initiates who have signed up for bonus podcast content, I'm releasing an extended version this week with the edges I held back, the places where it gets even more tender. That's my way of saying thank you. Your support is what makes this show possible and what allows me to keep going deeper. And I want to honor that with more of myself. And honestly, to everyone who listens, who follows, who leaves ratings and reviews that help this show reach people who need it, thank you. That support matters so much, and this show exists because of this community that we're building. Okay, so let's talk about Aphrodite. And actually, she would have had something to say about all this because Aphrodite understood reciprocity. She understood that love, real love, sacred love, is not a one-way street. It's not a one-way pour. It's not pouring your cup until it's empty. It's love that flows in both directions. It's tended by both people. What you give to something, it gives back to you. And that's the energy we're stepping into this week. Um, before we get into her story, and she kind of has two stories, and I'll give you both of them, but I want to anchor us in what's happening in the sky. Um, because this week's astrology is the teaching. And you're getting astrology in the other episode. I'm framing it slightly differently. Obviously, the planets are the same, um, but I want to I want to do it in this one as well. And so at the opening of this week, Venus moves into Taurus and Venus rules Taurus. This is her home sign, the place where she is most fully herself. In Taurus, Venus gets to slow down. She gets embodied, she stops performing and starts feeling. She remembers that love is not an idea, it is something you experience in your actual body with all of your senses. Pleasure, beauty, worthiness that doesn't have to be earned. This week is Aphrodite coming home to herself. And there's still so much fire energy, so much fire horse, so much Aries happening. So this might feel a little refreshing at moments to have Venus coming back into her home sign. And Venus and Aphrodite are the same. Aphrodite is Greek and Venus is Roman, kind of like how we talked about Hestia and Vesta being the same. And that said, their stories end up being a tiny bit different culturally, and we'll get to that. Um, but on Wednesday evening, if you're listening to this episode when it drops tonight, we have the full moon in Libra. And Libra is also ruled by Venus. So this entire week, this entire moon cycle this week is living inside her domain. The full moon in Libra is illuminating the axis of self and other. But it's the planet of the underworld, of death and transformation and what cannot stay buried. And Pluto's square Venus isn't gentle, unfortunately. It reaches into your relationship to desire, to worth, and asks, what is this actually built on? What are you still carrying that needs to die? Is there a version of love that you're still believing in that requires you to make yourself small? It's time to let that go. This is the full arc of the week. So Venus comes home to her body, the full moon asks what you've been sacrificing, and Pluto demands transformation. That is an Aphrodite initiation, and this is exactly what we're going to talk about today. So I want to start at the beginning because there's two versions of Aphrodite's origin story, and the difference between them actually tells you a lot about what happened to her over time, um, and a lot about culture and patriarchy and all of that. But the older story, the one that predates the Olympian pantheon as we know it, goes like this. Kronos, the Titan, remember Kronos, he is um Saturn. We talked about him, he had his own episode. He takes his his sickle, that's his like scythe that made him people think he's death, and he severs Uranus, his father, from the sky. And where the severed flesh of Uranus falls into the sea, foam gathers. And from that foam, from that primordial churning of sea and sky and ancient violence. And it was violence, if you remember, that was an act by Kronos to protect his mother. Um, but from that, Aphrodite is born. She steps out of the sea foam, out of the ocean, fully formed. No mother, no father, no one who made her or owns her or gets to claim her. She belongs to the deep, and she belongs to herself. This is the original Aphrodite. Pre-Olympian, not entirely pre-patriarchal, but a little less. And she is not a daughter here. She's not a wife, she is desire itself arising from the body of the cosmos before the gods had sorted themselves into harsh hierarchies. And then there's the other version. Umer gives us a different Aphrodite, a tidier one. And in this version, she's the daughter of Zeus and a sea goddess um named Dion. And she has a father here. She's legible, she fits inside the structure. And I want you to sit with that for a moment, this change in her story, because this is exactly what patriarchy does to power. It cannot metabolize. It doesn't always destroy it outright. Sometimes it just rewrites the origin story, gives her a father, makes her manageable, turns something that arose from the primordial deep into Zeus's daughter. This is the first wound of Aphrodite, and it doesn't stop there. So the Olympian Aphrodite, the one most of us learned about, is given a husband. Um, Hephaestus, the god of the forge, the craftsman, he makes beautiful, intricate, exquisite things. Um and Zeus arranges the marriage. So the goddess of love and desire, the one who was born belonging to no one, is handed to a husband she did not choose. And here's the hard part: she's in love, she is already in love with Aries. Aries, the god of war, of passion, of raw embodied aliveness. And oh my gosh, I'm just realizing as I'm talking about this, how much Aries energy is around right now. Ah, okay, so Aries, the god, is A-R-E-S, and that's a little different than the sign, but there's definitely overlap, right? War, passion, raw embodied aliveness. That is Aries in astrology, too. Um, and so that's fun. That's fun that they're both having so much energy this week. Anyways, um, Aphrodite fell in love with Ares before her marriage was arranged, and she did not stop seeing Ares. And the mythology frames this as betrayal, as adultery, as shameful. Um, Hephaesthius catches them together and the gods laugh. And there is there is truth that when you make a commitment to someone, um trust is vital. But the thing is, is Aphrodite didn't really make the commitment. So that's why I want to read the story a little differently. Um she keeps choosing the one who makes her feel alive in a marriage she didn't consent to. She keeps returning to the love that actually moves through her, her body that meets her at the level of her actual nature. And I want you to think back in cultural context to what arranged marriage was at that time in ancient Greece, there was no choice, one did not say no to their father, and Aphrodite did not say no to Zeus, he was the king of Olympus. And so when we're talking about her cheating on Hephaastas with Ares, I want you to think about what cheating really means to you. Because for most people, what it actually means is a betrayal of trust, a betrayal of a vow, an agreement, a sacred agreement that two people have entered into. It's not the act of being with someone else, it is the betrayal of that trust of that agreement. Aphrodite didn't enter into the agreement. And so that's why I want I want to reframe the story as Aphrodite as a goddess that's refusing to let herself be fully domesticated. And then there's what gets done to her reputation. So somewhere along the way, Aphrodite, the goddess whose power reshapes civilizations, who moves desire through the world like a hurricane, becomes reduced to vanity, to caring about who is most beautiful, to being the reason men go to war. Um, the golden apple, the judgment of Paris, the Trojan War, that's considered her fault. It's also considered the goddess Heiress's fault, which we could totally get into at some point. She has, she could have her own episode. But let's look at what's actually happening in those stories for a moment. Aphrodite's power, the power of desire, of beauty, of profound magnetic force, moves through the world, and life blooms, empires rise and fall. Men make catastrophic choices, hearts break open, wars begin. And instead of reckoning with the enormity of what she actually is, the patriarchy makes her small, calls her vain, blames her for what human beings do in response to the force of love she carries. The goddess of soul-level longing becomes the goddess who cares too much about her looks. This is the second wound. And then there's Psyche and the myth of Psyche. Um, and we will probably almost definitely do an episode on Psyche at some point. Um, but if you know the myth at all, you know that Aphrodite's often cast as the villain of Psyche's story. And if you don't, that's okay. Um, I'm gonna give you just enough here that you can understand Aphrodite's role in it. But she's painted as jealous, cruel, um, giving Psyche impossible tasks to punish her. But let's read it again. So Psyche is so beautiful that mortals have begun worshiping her as Aphrodite. They're bringing offerings to the mortal girl instead of the goddess herself. And Aphrodite's temples are growing cold. There used to be this belief that God's power comes from those who worship them. In archetypal psychology, this is kind of true because an archetype is something that has collective meaning. So that as we lose collective meaning for what Aphrodite is, what an archetype is, right? What any specific archetype is, it loses its power as an archetype. And at some point, might even lose the word archetype to describe it. Um so Aphrodite's anger is not just petty jealousy. It's a goddess watching her sacred role, her actual function in the cosmos, be transferred to someone who wasn't built to hold it. There's something real here being lost. And the tasks she gives Psyche: sorting seeds, descending to the underworld, gathering golden fleece, these are initiations. They're brutal, but they're asking Psyche to develop capacities she didn't have. They're asking Psyche who was mortal and could not hold these functions, these sacred functions of a goddess, yet. They're asking her to develop capacities she didn't have. And Psyche emerges from them divine. She becomes immortal. She gets to marry Eros. Her love is Eros. And she ascends. And so Aphrodite is the villain in the patriarchal reading. But I view it as Aphrodite as the initiator, as the force that broke Psyche open so she could become who she actually was meant to be, so that she could become an immortal goddess who could hold the power that was being bestowed upon her. That's the older, deeper reading. And that's the Aphrodite who belongs to the mystery traditions. Her power was never the problem. It was always the power they couldn't hold. And so I also want to introduce you to something that I think changes how you can relate to Aphrodite, how you might relate to Aphrodite, and maybe how you relate to yourself. And there are two Aphrodite in the ancient tradition, not two separate goddesses, but two faces of the same one. This is separate from what we talked about earlier. There's, yes, like Aphrodite and Venus, that's one thing. But what I'm talking about here is more in alignment with the powers that Aphrodite holds, two different roles that she plays. And so, and I'm going to probably mispronounce these, but there's Aphrodite Urania, which is celestial Aphrodite. And she, she is the one who governs soul-level love. The love that moves you toward your own becoming, the longing that's actually spiritual hunger, the desire that isn't really about another person, but about something deeper in yourself that is trying to emerge. This is the love that initiates you, that breaks you open, that asks everything of you and gives you yourself in return. And then there's what's what is called Aphrodite Pandemos, which is essentially earthly Aphrodite. And that doesn't mean earthly as in not divine. That means earthly as in the one who governs embodied, carnal, sensory love, appetite, pleasure. Think Taurus energy here. The way sunlight feels on your skin, the taste of something you actually want, the desire that lives in your body before it lives in your mind. And so patriarchy took these two and ranked them spiritual love as elevated, pure, and acceptable, and bodily desire as base, shameful, something to be managed or transcended. But Aphrodite was never split, and she was never meant to be split. She holds both. She was always both. And this is exactly what Venus in Taurus is asking us to reclaim this week. Aphrodite Urania and Aphrodite Pandamos together, held without hierarchy, soul level longing and body pleasure as equally sacred, your desire, all of it as sacred devotion. And this is also where Aphrodite becomes Venus, right? So when let's go back for a second. So when Rome absorbed Greek religion, Aphrodite and Venus merged. They're not identical. Venus had her own older Roman qualities. In fact, a lot of the sea foam myth comes from Venus. Um and she's more connected to gardens and abundance and the fertile, generous earth in a lot of ways. But what we carry now in the astrological Venus is both of them: the celestial and the earthly, the soul and the body, the longing and the pleasure. So Venus in Taurus this week is Aphrodite fully embodied. It is your body as altar, pleasure as devotion, worth that doesn't have to be earned or justified or made easy for anyone else. Worth that isn't dependent on anyone else. And so I want to offer you a practice this week. And you can do this right now if you're somewhere you can close your eyes or you can save it for later this week. Um if you want to do it around the full moon on Wednesday night, that would be awesome. But full moon energy is carrying throughout the week, Venus energy is carrying throughout the week. So just taking a moment when you're ready to find a comfortable position, rooting your feet on the floor if you're sitting, or you can lay down if that's available to you. And just take a moment to bring a hand to your heart and one to your lower belly. So take a deep breath. And as you do so, just feel the hand on your belly first.

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Breathe in and out. Really letting yourself feel your belly without judging it.

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Just letting this be a place of groundedness. This is pandamos, earthly embodied here. This is the womb. The womb is earthly, the womb is Aphrodite's realm, too.

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Feel the weight of your hand. Feel the temperature of your hand and feel your breath moving into that space. Your body. The altar. Now breathe up into the hand on your heart. Letting letting your heart be warm. Picturing a glowing light there. Letting the heat from your hand and your chest radiate into each other. This is urania. The longing.

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The soul level desire.

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The love that is reaching towards something. That's opening. Divine sacred love.

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And then let yourself feel both hands at once. Both alive, both sacred.

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Neither one more holy than the other. Stay here for a few breaths.

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And then ask yourself gently without pressure. What do I desire that I've been making small? Not what's reasonable, not what's appropriate or timed right or fair to ask. What do I actually want? What has this heart been quietly reaching toward that I keep talking myself out of? You don't have to answer out loud. You don't have to do anything with what arises. Just let yourself feel it. And maybe, maybe right now it's just a feeling. Maybe the answer is not clear in words, and that's okay. Either way, I invite you to close with this. Either aloud or internally. My desire is not vanity.

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My pleasure is not shameful. I am the altar. And I am the flame. Aphrodite was never the problem.

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She was the power they couldn't metabolize. She was born from the deep, belonging to no one, and they gave her a father. They gave her a husband she didn't choose. They called her vain when her power moved through the world. And humans reacted to the energy of love and chaos. They made her the villain of Psyche's story when she was an initiator. And we've internalized all of it. Every time you have made your desire small so someone else would be comfortable. Every time you've called your longing vanity or neediness or too much. Every time you have ranked your soul's hunger above your body's pleasure, or the other way around, as if you had to choose, as if both couldn't be sacred.

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You were internalizing the patriarchy.

Retreat Invite And Closing Blessing

Subscribe And Important Disclaimer

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You were internalizing the wounds that have been inflicted upon Aphrodite, upon the sacred feminine. And so Venus and Taurus this week says slow down. Feel your body. Let yourself want what you want. And the Libra full moon is asking, what have you been withholding from yourself in service of being easy? In service of being easygoing, of not causing trouble. Stop withholding from yourself. And then Pluto, square Venus, on Friday says, the version of you that made desire small, let her die. She was never the truest version of you, anyway. Aphrodite is not asking you to be more beautiful or more lovable or more anything. She's asking you to stop apologizing for what and who you actually are. That is the initiation. And speaking of initiation, if this transmission's landing in your body and you want to go deeper in person, I'm guest teaching at a goddess initiation retreat on May 3rd at the Star House here in Boulder, Colorado. And the Starhouse is a sacred space on sacred land, and this is going to be a full initiatory experience, likely with the goddess Isis. The link to register is in the episode description and also on Patreon. I would love to be on sacred land with you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being part of this coven, whether you're a longtime listener, someone who just found the show, someone who leaves reviews and ratings that help this reach people who need it, or someone who supports on Patreon and goes deeper with me there. All of it matters. All of it is the reciprocal love. Aphrodite understood. Blessed be. Subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss an episode. Trust the spiral. This podcast offers spiritual and psychological education and priestess wisdom. This is not therapy, counseling, or mental health treatment. If you need mental health support, please contact a licensed provider and in a mental health emergency in the U.S., call 988.