Perform the rites of the Goddess

A beautiful poem from Ovid's Fasti, encouraging the women of Rome to honour the Goddess's ritual of preparation for the Hieros Gamos (sacred marriage). 

Hieros Gamos refers to a sexual ritual that plays out a marriage between a god and a goddess, especially when enacted in a symbolic ritual, where human participants represent the deities. It is the harmonization of opposites.

The notion of hieros gamos does not presuppose actual performance in ritual, but is also used in purely symbolic or mythological context, notably in alchemy and hence in Jungian psychology. 

"Perform the rites of the goddess, Roman brides and mothers,

And you who must not wear the headbands and long robes.

Remove the golden necklaces from her marble neck,

Remove her riches: the goddess must be cleansed, complete.

Return the gold necklaces to her neck, once it’s dry:

Now she’s given fresh flowers, and new-sprung roses.

She commands you too to bathe, under the green myrtle,

And there’s a particular reason for her command (learn, now!).

Naked, on the shore, she was drying her dripping hair:

The Satyrs, that wanton crowd, spied the goddess.

She sensed it, and hid her body with a screen of myrtle:

Doing so, she was safe: she commands that you do so too.

Learn now why you offer incense to Fortuna Virilis,

In that place that steams with heated water.

All women remove their clothes on entering,

And every blemish on their bodies is seen:

Virile Fortune undertakes to hide those from the men,

And she does this at the behest of a little incense.

Don’t begrudge her poppies, crushed in creamy milk

And in flowing honey, squeezed from the comb:

When Venus was first led to her eager spouse,

She drank so: and from that moment was a bride.

Please her with words of supplication: beauty,

Virtue, and good repute are in her keeping.

In our forefather’s time Rome lapsed from chastity:

And the ancients consulted the old woman of Cumae.

She ordered a temple built to Venus: when it was done

Venus took  the name of Heart-Changer (Verticordia).

Loveliest One, always look with a benign gaze

On the sons of Aeneas, and guard their many wives.

As I speak, Scorpio, the tip of whose raised tail

Strikes fear, plunges down into the green waves."

                                                                     

                                                                             Ovid's Fasti, April

Aphrodite and the Erotes