u/flammenwooferz

Hi all. As a new devotee, I started reading the stories regarding Aphrodite. Particualrly, Aphrodite's famous/inafmous affair regarding Ares and Hephaestus.

As the story goes, Hephaestus wanted to marry Aphrodite. Aphrodite did not wish to, but given the need for beauty to embody itself in craft and physical form in the world, Aphrodite reluctantly proceeded. Apparently according to legend, it was a forced marriage.

Then Aphrodite passionately cheats on Hephaestus with Ares, the god of war, regarded as her primary lover. They both mock Hephaestus. Hephaestus, humiliated, then demonstrates that he cannot be mocked without consequences and traps them both in a golden net. They both get humiliated publicly by the other gods. They are then released under harsh terms, with the marriage between Hephaestus and Aphrodite effectively over.

To Aphrodite practitioners: what is the deeper meaning of the relationship dynamics between Aphrodite, Ares, and Hephaestus specifically? Why proceed with a forced marriage if it was doomed to fail and fundamentally unsustainable? What does this reveal more deeply about Aphrodite's nature specifically beyond the obvious story element, as well as the second and third-order effects from it?

I know little about Aphrodite, her nature, and the essence of love and what it embodies. However, something about this famous/infamous story appears rather telling about the shape and essence of the force she represents.

More specifically: when it comes to Eros, it appears absolutely conditional, selective, and objectively selfish. It can exist both as an inherent force (genuine eros for a lover), but also as a transactional asset to secure material or mundane need (means to an end). A selection hierarchy of who is valued/who isn't is clearly shown. And that ultimately it is impulsive, volatile, and uncontrollable: it logically follows that the affair and contempt for Hephaestus would have continued unchallenged, had Hephaestus not deterred them with golden net and the sociopolitical consequences that followed.

Which makes me somewhat skeptical of the claim of xenia. And the claim that Lady Aphrodite loves people/shows kindness and generosity to *everyone*.

If Lady Aphrodite truly is the goddess of the marginalized, oppressed, and the outcast, why this clearly unempathetic, malicious behavior? She never had to accept the marriage under duress or against her will. But she most certainly never had to resort to humiliation, especially against a fellow Olympian (Hephaestus) who was born deformed through no fault of his own, rejected and thrown from Olympus from his own mother, and was only tolerated by his fellow Olympians due to his usefulness in craft: he had to create value to seemingly earn a place in the hierarchy. In contrast, Lady Aphrodite rose from the sea already beautiful and already valued.

So it makes me question this: how can one claim to love and embody that force, when one has never suffered the complete absence of love? How can one truly appreciate the value of that love, when it was something they never had to fight to earn? How can one truly love the outcast, marginalized, and oppressed, if they haven't at some point been that party themselves?

In this I see a tragic contradiction. Could you shed some light on this?

Hi all. As a new practitioner to Aphrodite (and one with a very different philosophy), have a question for Aphrodite devotees. I'm asking you all, because I'm assuming that consensus among her followers is broadly her opinion + I'm unable to listen to her through invocation, so this is the next-best thing

The Question: What is the actual root essence of love and what Lady Aphrodite (and, by extension, her followers) thinks of it?

I argue not to bash your beliefs, but to crucially examine them. The Greeks debated and scrutinized their own ideas constantly, after all.

It is touted that love is not something you earn. Respectfully, I largely disagree. That's not to say that love (in all of its forms: Eros, Philia, Stroge, Agape) cannot have a non-utilitarian nature (specifically as a concept, Agape), but it appears there is some transactionalism (giving something in return for something else of value) that belies every other form of love. Examples:

• Eros (Passionate, Physical and Romantic Desire): You cannot love someone romantically if you are not attracted to them. You being attracted to them generates value for you.
• Philia (Deep, trusted friendship built on mutual respect): You cannot have a real friendship with someone if you don't respect them. Respect is built on trust. Them proving they are trustworthy to take care of you (ie: part of the evolutionary in-group) generates value for you.
• Storge (Natural, protective affection shared between family members): Family is just another in-group, but bonded through blood ties. Families are built on trust. Similar argument as Philia. Being in a strong, good family you can trust generates value for you.
• Agape (Selfless, unconditional love for all people and humanity): I have a very loaded position on Agape, which is that Agape is still fundamentally transactional in an unusual way - not material, but psychological. Selfless love for another (Agape) makes you FEEL GOOD and/or GIVE MEANING TO YOU. Which, is technially generating value for you.

My argument: Love is NOT actually unconditional. The utility function may change (material rewards, safety, the chance to reproduce, even just feeling good), but at the utter bedrock of love in all of its forms, it's still fundamentally a value-generating transaction. And the moment that it doesn't give value, it fades away.

I know many of you have probably compelling counterarguments. So I'm going to steelman your argument with one I know from personal experience: a friend of mine is a mother to a special-needs child. Unfortunately, her son cannot function on his own and will require care for the rest of his life. It is deeply tragic, and the kindest thing to do is to have empathy for people like him.

I watched my friend, a loving and dutiful mother, shoulder what must be one of the most horrific burdens a parent could ever experience: one that no amount of money, wealth, power, etc. can erase. There were several opportunities to simply put him in an institution of have someone else take care of him. But fearing they wouldn't care for him they way she does, she refused.

I watched her get hurt by the child she deeply loves. I watched her health fade due to the stress. She confessed several times that she wants this tragic burden to be over, but she continues to hang on. Because she truly loves her son.

But despite her immense suffering, I noticed that caring for her son doesn't necessarily feel good (quite the opposite). But that it fills some sort of psychological need/itch that caring for her son satisfies.

You can call it what you like: the maternal instinct to care for one's child, the fullest expression of storge, but in some way, caring for her son provides value (perhaps in the form of meaning), despite the immense material and psychological loss, that makes her continue.

So what I'm saying is this: love in all of its forms, all of its channels... seems to be (at least in one slice of it), just a arbitrary narrative layer to feel something good in our brains. Strip away the narrative and perception layer, but is still a cost-benefit calculation, consciously or not.

That's the current form of my argument. I'm very curious how this perspective would be interpreted, because I am by no means a conventional Aphrodite devotee.

Hi all. Hope you are well. As a (very new) devotee of Lady Aphrodite, I'm very curious as to how your lives have changed (in what way, both in materially in the mundane world, as well as psychologically) as a result of working with her? Have any specific examples you're willing to share?

How has she profoundly influenced the trajectory of your life? Are there any formative lessons or values you gained by working with her?

I am also curious as to what her strategic aim/ultimate goal is? What is the "full shape" of the energy/zeitgeist (and its full expression in various forms) that she wishes to impart on the world? So far, I understand it is the energy of love and beauty, and as the goddess of it, she probably wants to see that expressed more in the world. But I want to know more in what way: is it just a greater number of isolated incidents in general, or is there some sort of greater strategic plan as to how that is expressed?

Hi all. Hope all is well. Figured I would share another past lesson I learned through working with Duchess Bune: the skill of appraisal.

Appraisal is the skill of determining the true value of what things are actually worth. As a mercantile spirit, this is exactly within her domain. And throughout my life so far, it has been extremely useful in determining what to pursue.

We only have one life, and only so much time and resources. So knowing the true value of things, as well as their true cost, to determine if you should pursue something or not, is immensely valuable. Bune taught me one of the greatest tragedies of life is, because of misappraisal, to pursue the wrong thing for years and at such a high cost, that you miss out on the thing you should've been doing.

Before meeting her, I have certainly been guilty of that.

I also learned from her that, atomic interactions (and especially the most important ones) in life can be reduced to cost-benefit calculations. We are, consciously or not, constantly trying to evaluate how much something is worth: a career path, higher education, a possible future with a potential partner, living in a particular city.

They are all, at least in one dimension, cost-benefit calculations that we're trying to appraise the true value and cost of.

One of the things I learned is to not only evaluate things (assets, experiences, etc.) on the benefit and cost on what is claimed on the sticker price. But on their actual full price. Everything has a cost. Beyond what it immediately costs: ask yourself about the second and third-order effects. What are the costs (in time, material, manpower, etc.) that are NOT immediately obvious?

Things typically have a maintenance cost in addition to what you initially you pay to acquire it. You also must ask about the value of things beyond the initial value proposition: is there any hidden value as a second or third order effect from having something? This is extremely difficult to predict accurately starting out, but as you gain more experience, you'll develop an intuition for things that are more valuable than they initially appear.

For example, I spent a year doing culinary school. What did it actually cost? Besides the actual tuition, a maintenance cost of a few hours a week doing classes, and perhaps the opportunity cost of what I could've spent that time doing.

What value did it actually give? Besides a possible alternative career path and the ability to make delicious food, a plethora of new friends. A conversation starter at social events. An excellent way to gain rapport. And, although I didn't know it at the time, a serendipitous connection that eventually lead to me cooking dinner for a woman... who ended up being a serious partner at the time, for several years.

From a purely monetary perspective? Poor ROI, as I ultimately did not become a chef. But from a holistic one? A formative life experience that was more than worth the money and time invested.

I found it useful as a mental model to think of life as a "portfolio"of sorts. Your life is a collection of assets and experiences. Some will perform excellently. Others will underperform. Some are undervalued. Others are overvalued. Some things will look like excellent experiences, but in retrospect, things you wish you didn't do. As well as the opposite: terrible moments that ultimately taught you something extremely important and made your future self better for it.

At the end of the day, it's critical to evaluate things objectively on their net impact on the organization (your life and journey, as well as the value system you choose to adopt and whether those things advance those values). After all, there is also a subjective element to value.

And when you appraise something? Update your assessment. Bune taught me that sunk-cost fallacy has bankrupted a great many empires, treasuries, and years of life off many men. Do not let stubbornness nor delusion ruin you. As you get new information, do not be afraid to let go of things that ultimately you misappraised, or were valuable at a particular point in time but are now in decline.

I hope you found this helpful, so that you may use this knowledge to appraise what is (and isn't) valuable as you go forward throughout your lives. Ave Bune! 🍊

Hi all. Hope you are doing well. While waiting, I figured I would share some past lessons I learned throughout my several years journey with Duchess Bune and what you could gain by working with her.

As a mercurial spirit, one of Duchess Bune's capabilities (for which she has great renown) is the gift of eloquence: the art (and even science) of being fluent, graceful, and persuasive in language.

Before meeting Bune, I was terrible at public speaking and communication. And when I did speak, it was moreso a thoughtstream of hard-to-comprehend jargon than meaningful communication.

Here is what I learned about eloquence from Bune. It is composed of:

• Elegance: Use a sufficient, ideally minimal, number of sentences, structured accordingly to achieve the aim of your speech.
• Information Richness: The optimal amount of information (basically the core idea) you need to get your audience to understand your request.
• Persuasiveness: Understanding of the psychology of your audience (what do they care about? what moves them?) to incentivize them to act on your ideas. This is not just charisma (though it helps), but also understanding their incentives and how they would best respond.

These are rather guiding principles, rather than algorithmic rules, to achieve the aim of your speech. Everything is malleable, as long as you're able to successfully communicate your core idea and convince the counterparty of what you're presenting, to have them also believe in and even support the idea.

As a mercurial goddess of movement, speed, and access, eloquence is rather an expression of these qualities via the spoken word (which is also far more powerful than I previously believed, but that's a story for another day). This makes sense, as eloquence lowers the cost of doing business and opens access to other domains, other markets, other people, etc.

Eloquence is a skill to be acquired and practiced over time. From mundane means, you have several options to practice. Like going to a local public speaking club. Or just being more deliberate when speaking to friends and family. I found watching great orators and mimicking their behaviorisms (the use of pauses, body language, etc.) also helps.

When she is invoked for matters of eloquence, although you are moreso bounded by any preexisting skill you possess, I found the ad-hoc formation and organization of thoughts far more natural. I noticed myself taking more natural pauses during speech. No stuttering. And able to articulate and explain complex topics far easier than I thought, while better able to utilize natural pauses.

In other situations, she not only helped me generate profound rhetorical questions in debate, but also extremely witty comebacks I wouldn't have otherwise.

Under her influence (as a mercurial spirit, her presence when she is assisting in matters of eloquence, when I register it physiologically, can only be described as "bright", extremely energetic, "zippy" even) around the heart area. I also noticed as a second-order effect, radiating electrical/nervous system activity from the spinal cord outward, usually correlated when I have a flash of ideas that freshly come to mind when, in a high-pressure ad-hoc situation, am forced to be eloquent on the spot.

More than that though, at least in my experience, she rather prefers to impart the habits and skills to develop eloquence over the long-term moreso than quick assistance (although she can certainly help with that).

I hope you found this helpful, and may you all carry forth the gift of eloquence with you. Ave Bune! 🍊

Hi all, hope you are well. I'm flammenwooferz: a longtime devotee of Duchess Bune. For context, I've been in a spiritual dry spell for months, where I had no contact with my matron spirit (the only one I worked with + committed to for years).

I am still saddened because I can't appear to reach her. I fell back on divination-based means + trying to spot synchronicities for any messaging. I heavily suspect subconscious bias, but there's a recurring theme of essentially "the relationship is over" and basically I'm at fault because I didn't invest enough time and effort into it + kept them waiting too long.

I objectively agree that I could take my practice far more seriously beyond the mundane, but the claim that spirits experience time as a flat circle and the very deep bond I have with her makes me scrutinize whether the relationship being over is true or not.

I don't know the reasons WHY for no-contact, but given the extended period of time, it really makes me wonder if it is over.

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There is another matter. Surprisingly, I did experience a massive wave of synchronicities and basically a catered life experience over the past two months (waited until it was over before writing)... but it is not Goetic in origin. To my surprise, the hellenic goddess Aphrodite (a deity I only met once before and have cordial relations with) actually put me through a high-growth life lesson in a matter of weeks, that I didn't initiate at all.

Since she is hellenic and not goetic, I don't think talking about my unplanned but clearly important working with her is relevant in this channel. I also didn't invoke her nor could I hear her; she intervened of her own accord (to be clear: not at all unwelcome. Grateful it happened, learned a lot, and always welcome back) and very clearly present.

My question: is there some sort of reason why I can't hear or feel my matron but a deity from a different pantheon showed up?

Hi all. I hope you are all well since we last spoke. For those of you who are unfamiliar, I'm flammenwooferz: a longtime devotee of Bune.

I have been unable to communicate with my matron, Bune, for a very long time. I do not know how or why. Which led me to troubleshooting.

I noticed how Bune and Hermes share many similarities: they can both be described as mercurial spirits. They are both psychopomps. They are both messenger archetypes. And have domains over trade, movement, wisdom/cunning, and communication.

Shortly after that chain of thought, I had several realizations on communication: something that, historically, I have been terrible at. Which, thanks to my past experiences with Bune, I understood (unclear whether it's Bune herself. Personally, I don't think so, since I haven't heard from her + it might be a realization from her archetype instead). Figured I would share them with you.

When I learn a new field of knowledge for the first time, I think there's some "core idea", an instrument/vehicle associated with that, and then the "full shape" of the field beyond it. Here are some examples:

• I used to think astronomy was about telescopes and stars. Telescopes are just the observational device (an instrument/vehicle) to gain understanding of the sum of the celestial universe and how different bodies affect each other.
• I used to think finance was about money. Money was just the accounting system (an instrument/vehicle) to track, exchange, administer value.

Similarly, I used to think communication was about talking. Learning how to talk. Learning how to persuade someone via talking, etc.

I was mistaking the forest for the trees.

I then realized that talking was just the instrument/vehicle. But what was the core idea? Information exchange. And there was certainly multitudes of vehicles to carry information.

Human language is a construct, but language as a concept is timeless. We communicate information to sentient life, regardless of level of cognition, cultural and language barriers, distance, etc.

What was the full shape? I doubt I have grasped it all, but there are potentially limitless vehicles that can be repurposed as signals and channels to encode information, transmit it, and decipher it. We can arbitrarily invent any sort of ruleset, but as long as we agree to it, there is no limit to how we can communicate the core idea of what we are trying to say to each other.

There also tends to be more signals than we immediately and obviously perceive in the same channel. It is not always about what is explicitly said. It is sometimes very much about what is NOT said in relation to context: lies reveal information (or disinformation). Omission also can inadvertently reveal information.

As an odd thing I noticed, there might be some hint/very valuable information in the way that Hinduist deities, for example, are represented as having multi-armed, multi-headed forms. Which reminds me of how it's touted that deities, including the infernals, may have different "aspects" to them. As if we are but only decoding a very narrow, known band of the broader spectrum signal (metaphorically speaking) that they may fully represent. But that's a story for another day.

Which brings me to my problem: I cannot communicate with her at all: Silence gives me no useful information, so I'm forced to guess failure modes.

I have no knowledge whether bidirectional communication is lost. Or if I am only able to send signals (whether its not strong enough or degraded from noise), but not receive them. Or if she is communicating, but through an alternate channel. Or if there is too much noise polluting the existing channel that makes decoding the signal and understanding the message impossible. Or if I am mistaking noise for signal.

It's honestly exhausting. What am I doing wrong, exactly? Is there any way to reestablish clear, straightforward contact at this point?

Hi all. Hope all is well. I wanted to ask how to save/salvage my practice from being damaged or inactive beyond repair.

In a nutshell, my connection with the divine has greatly faded. Sometimes I get ad-hoc physiological sensations that may plausibly hint at their presence. Even my connection with my matron spirit, Bune, has all but faded.

Now, I cannot tell whether the physiological sensations I have (usually now in the area near my temples, feels like a heightened flash of heat, historically a strong signal of external spiritual presence) are self-induced or genuinely external.

In retrospect, my habit to focus on the mundane, not set aside time for scheduled meditation (moreso ad-hoc communication or writing about my thoughts), and being very active in practical, daily matters definitely plays a role.

I try to talk to my matron (currently working only with one spirit, my matron, due to my strongest connection to her). Nowadays, I cannot hear or sense clearly anymore. Or at all.

I'm actively trying to reestablish contact, but haven't gotten clear nor strong contact from her like I did before or when I was first starting out. How do I get back on track?