Goddesses of love

Hesiod’s Theogony tells how Aphrodite was born: the severed parts of Uranus fell into the sea, “a white foam spread around them from the immortal flesh, and in it there grew a maiden”, and gods and men call her “the foam-born goddess” because she grew in it. Britannica adds that her public cult “was generally solemn and even austere”, that she was also worshipped as a goddess of the sea and of seafaring, and that the cockle shell is one of her symbols. Her Greek page is Aphrodite.

In Mesopotamia, people prayed to Inanna about impotence and unrequited love, and she was the patron goddess of prostitutes (Heffron, for the Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses project). In her astral aspect she is the planet Venus, the morning and evening star, and Britannica describes her symbol as “a star with 6, 8, or 16 rays within a circle”: the star of Ishtar. Her own page is Inanna and Ishtar.

Hathor’s principal animal form was a cow. Britannica calls her goddess “of the sky, of women, and of fertility and love”; for E. A. Wallis Budge, writing in 1904, she was the patron goddess “of beautiful women, and of love, of artists and artistic works, and also of the vine and wine, and ale and beer, and, in fact, of joy and happiness”.

Freyja, whose name is Old Norse for “Lady”, was in Britannica’s words “in charge of love, fertility, battle, and death”. Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda says she drives a car drawn by two cats, and that “she is fond of love ditties, and it is good to call on her in love affairs”.

Xochiquetzal was the Aztec goddess of beauty, sexual love and household arts. In the myth Britannica summarises, she was first the wife of the rain god Tlaloc until Tezcatlipoca carried her off and enthroned her as goddess of love. Mexicolore’s account says flowers and colourful feathers were her emblems, that she was patroness of lovers, prostitutes, weavers and craftspeople, and that unlike other fertility goddesses “she encouraged love-making as a means of pleasure, not reproduction”.