A Visit with Aphrodite and Those Gods of Love
I visited the Getty Villa in Malibu, California yesterday. Or, to put it another way, yesterday, at the Getty Villa, I experienced a visitation.
Given my life-long, preoccupation with the archetypal astrological Venus-Aphrodite, not the least of which is her to and fro astronomical movement, it seemed fitting that as this oh-so-much-more than a love goddess, prepares to exit her current six week retrograde astrological sojourn, that I’d better high tail it down to nearby Malibu and see what The Getty Villa had to show. Oh, how long I’d anticipated seeing this exhibit of Aphrodite and those other mythic members of her tribe! There’s nothing around town any classier than The Getty Villa. And, this time, as always, Getty delivered!
I hesitated, initially when trying to recount my experience of that sun-soaked, gorgeous Friday afternoon. I felt then, and still do, that I couldn’t possibly articulate, nor could I do justice to what it was like to see and experience HER as she was exhibited and portrayed in this most unusual, but highly appropriate setting.
Two main exhibit rooms displayed larger than life figures of Aphrodite. I spent most of my time there. In each room, separate figures of white, marble sculptured giant-sized, renderings of the love goddess were positioned a bit back from the entrance to their individual galleries. This placement called and/or beckoned to those far away onlookers down the museum’s ornate corridor. I was of course dying to take photos but the figures were heavily guarded while reigning over their rooms like the beautiful queens of love that they are. Seeing them like that, in those two unusually darkened exhibit rooms, each room possessing a beautiful, exquisite eeriness, gave me the feeling that I was either about to walk into a heavenly bordello where Aphrodite awaited holding court, or fall into and through some kind of cosmic portal, a la a kind of Quantum Alice!
Most of my time was spent in those two main rooms where in addition to the larger than life Venusian goddesses, there were many busts and smaller statues. Honorable mention goes to that amazing just a little bit he and a little bit she Hermaphrodite, ever so erotically positioned on that rock-like half shell. And, of course to Aphrodite’s cherubic sidekick Eros, who was to be found appropriately everywhere!
But it was the individual exhibit rooms, each with its own exquisite, larger than life Venusian Aphrodite, that got my unforgettable attention. Each emerged from a back drop of what seemed to me at first glance like a background of black, velvet. I stood mesmerized, watching . Were they waiting to receive visitors? In fact they were! In that setting, Aphrodite’s archetypal nature was never more evident. I recalled that poetic yet variant translation often attributed to Jung. “Called or not called the god will be there.” And accurate or not, on that day in the white marbled presence of Aphrodite, that often misquoted response of Jung’s stood strong!
I couldn’t help but wonder what it might mean for me personally to experience the meaning of Venus turning direct at the same time I was fortunate enough to be able to experience that exhibit. And what might She now be up to globally? Would her assumption of and preparation for her own direct movement soften the hard-edged Uranus /Pluto experience this weekend?
Reflecting now on the exhibit, I recall feeling simultaneously captured, and released, from the cosmic void of Aphrodite’s rapturous presence. In those few sacred moments I felt and knew Her as both the sculptural embodiment of an archetype, and the living presence, attractor and carrier of those very alive, very real experiences of love, feeling, and beauty.
Come to think of it, Aphrodite’s positioning close to the doorway opening in each of those two exhibit rooms was perfect . It was as if she were saying to her visitors, “Come in, please. You cannot stay forever, but yes you may stay for a little while.“
When all is said and done, was my brief sojourn into exquisite Aphrodite’s temporary lair, just another capture and possession by the mesmerizing grip of an archetype? Perhaps. But I prefer to think of my experience seeing Aphrodite that day at the Getty, and any and every other time I have been graced with her presence in my life, as akin to what D.H. Lawrence has described that one might expect when encountering any archetypal force or power.
He writes in part:
“This is what I believe: That I am I. That my soul is a dark forest. That my known self will never be more than a little clearing in the forest. That gods, strange gods, come forth from the forest into the clearing of my known self, and then go back. That I must have the courage to let them come and go. …….”
That last line. That one. That’s the hard part.
Judith Harte
June 23, 2012
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