Aphrodite's Dance: Part 1
The Dance of Freedom
Aphrodite’s Dance is a luminous tale set in the threshold of the Sky-Veil, where beauty leads the exile home. Through shimmer and shadow, the Rose-Bearer calls the wanderer to freedom—not in self-will, but in the golden thread of obedience, joy, and divine remembrance.
While the narrative, initial drafts, and cosmology are entirely my own, I gratefully used ChatGPT to help refine language, structure poetic phrasing, and shape stylistic coherence.
One day, I was walking through the threshold of a forest near a clearing. In the open field before me, I saw an unusual scene. There, a group of effulgent figures wreathed in smiles were dancing. In their beauty, they struck me as gods and goddesses,1 though mortals may never be sure in the liminal landscape of the Sky-Veil.2
I should say they were traveling. For they were weaving through the light as they pressed on toward a destination that remained concealed on the far side of the Veil, bathed in sky-haze. They appeared happy as they stepped into the shimmer with freedom. A mortal could sense the ease in their movements. I had never seen such a majestic chorus of hues radiating as did those shining forth from their nearness.
A young woman noticed me—appearing as a divinity—with rose-lit bearing3 and hair crowned in dawn’s light. I recognized her though we had never met. She moved toward me in the harmony of the Veil and took my hand. She was not afraid that I was darkened by exile, on the edge of the dark woods. I balked but she insisted, “Come join us.”
“Are you free?” she queried as we crossed the hush of the field toward their light.
“Of course,” I walked beside her, glancing anxiously toward the dark forest. “I have lived the way I wanted. I have traveled where I wish.”
“But are you free?” She halted for a moment to peer past me into the same darkness. This radiant one bore joy that brightened the vivid colors of the landscape around her.
I stared. “But I am free. Freedom is doing what one desires, following no design but the design of Self,” I insisted.
Not responding, she beckoned me to dance some more.
I could not help but follow her with wonder. Feeling foolish and awkward, I moved with the group’s rhythm. Though I did not know the dance, I understood it and stepped nearer in silent joy.
Swept forward with the rhythm of the dance, I rushed to meet the woman’s stride.
“But how are you so free?” I cried over her shoulder. She turned, her eyes full of a graceful shimmer of refulgent light.
“Obedience” she smiled with the aura of rosy dawn ascending her throne.
“To the forgotten course of the golden thread4 across the clearing in the Sky-Veil,” she continued. Her form spun through the Veil’s light, a hymn made visible.
“Impossible! The golden thread is a myth!” My voice pierced the hush of the Veil.
“We follow the single glittering path.” The woman, the rose5 of the threshold through the Veil, was firm. “This way we herald the appearing of the Highlands of Majesty6 on the far side and the Grove of Peace7 beyond.”
“Through appearance and concealment,” she continued, “along the lighted path and its shadowed brink, in light and in longing—we walk the woven way beneath the Veil.”
“You move as one enchained beneath the Veil’s shadow!” I was in disbelief. “That is not freedom. The golden thread may shine, but I walk by my own compass.”
“Are you not free to consent to follow?” Now along the thread, she pulled me, the pathway glittering in the sunlight. “Are you not free to choose the golden way through the Veil? Does your freedom end where the radiant shimmer begins?”
“The light calls but does not bind,” she continued. “You are free to follow—or to pass.”
The dance endured, a flame upon the field. Joyfully, through the light reflecting off the rosy mist of dawn’s flower blooms across the landscape, they journeyed through the fields my new radiant patron called the Sky-Veil.
In my confusion, the path opened, and I was already walking it. As the Veil yields what is hidden, I had been lost when I stumbled across this refulgent scene and she who dances at the threshold.
I stood alone in the broad field. I looked back into the dark forest. The place from where I had come.
I remembered how the forgetting began—when I mistook exile for freedom, rebellion for light, and called the abyss my own. In the darkness, I held to nothing, and so the thread dissolved. The Veil dimmed, and I wandered, unbound and unseen.
I wept beneath the hush, for the Veil would not choose for me.
Yes, I was free--the light opened, and I alone could step or remain.
As I wrestled within and beheld the wonder before me, another maiden cast in light, a warrior cloaked in the aegis of the Veil approached me. “It was for this that you were born!” she whispered in my ear.
Yes! “It was for this that I was born!”
I turned toward my new heralds,8 running quickly, stumbling through the grass to join them on the golden thread. I made my decision in complete freedom. I began to dance with them. The Veil thinned, and I glimpsed the far shore. As the mist rose, I saw others in the distance. Those at the front who were close broke their rhythm – and ran toward it with joy.
Enjoy “Aphrodite” from my album Mythic Canticles, available on my music site.
Lyrics ©Walter Emerson Adams. Music and vocals by Suno ©Walter Emerson Adams.
Oh smile, pure Aphrodite, lovely light Reveal like dawn in rose magnetic charm Refulgent shimmer, gleam in awestruck gaze You sing, exalt, reveal, sometimes alarm Oh laugh, deep Aphrodite, loving scent With joy ascend your herald throne divined Empathic, generous, a tempest spark Igniting wonder, dreams to be refined Oh guide, true Aphrodite, by the heart In tragedy, you watch your hero fall You hide, reveal, then vanish once again To draw, descend, and raise the hero tall Oh save, bright Aphrodite, flame of fire Imbued in borrowed light from star’s embrace Emerging through the clearing, herald bright Unheard, you speak, out of eternal grace
✦ Goddesses as harbingers - In the mythopoetic landscape of the Sky-Veil, the ancient goddesses Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite are not worshipped, invoked, or treated as divine beings, but rather received as harbingers—symbolic precursors who heralded the coming revelation fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Their presence in the Sky-Veil is neither syncretic nor nostalgic. It is sanctified memory—a poetic remembrance of the virtues they once carried in shadow and myth, now transfigured in the light of the Incarnation.
✦ Sky-Veil - The threshold of Being in this mythopoetic cosmology, representing the veil between time and eternity, symbol and reality, longing and fulfillment. It is across the Sky-Veil that hypostatic heralds of Being—embodied symbolically by the goddesses—shimmer, and through which the soul journeys in mythic contemplation toward divine encounter. The saints dwell beyond the veil; the goddesses, as “hypostatic emergences” foreshadowing divine virtues, herald from its edge.
✦ Rose-Bearer - A luminous guide, often aligned with Aphrodite in the cosmology of the Sky-Veil, who initiates the wanderer’s first awakening upon the path of the gleaming golden thread. Joyful, radiant, and full of grace, she dances ahead of the procession, scattering unseen petals of invitation toward the Veil. Her rose is not merely a flower, but a sign—fragrance of the divine, image of love’s first light, and a herald of Beauty that beckons from beyond.
She is the one who calls the wanderer to cross the threshold between forgetfulness and remembrance. With mirth and clarity, she does not command but delights, drawing the soul not by force, but by the joy of her presence. In the cosmology of the Sky-Veil, Aphrodite is not a goddess of myth alone, but a harbinger of divine love—she who makes the soul beautiful so it may be loved by Beauty Himself.
To follow the Rose-Bearer is to consent to the first echo of grace—to risk wonder, to pause in the hush before reason, and to remember the path home.
✦ The Golden Thread - A hidden tether of grace that binds the exiled soul to its divine origin, even across the abyss of forgetfulness. Though unseen, it is never severed. It glimmers beneath the surface of memory and longing, weaving through time like a whisper of the eternal in the fabric of the finite.
To follow the Golden Thread is to walk the path of return—drawn not by force, but by the ache of beauty, the stirrings of love, and the recollection of majesty once known. It is spun from Aphrodite’s first glance, carried through Athena’s flame of wisdom, and knotted at last in the crowning place of Hera’s Highlands. Each herald, each sign, each step in the Sky-Veil is bound together by its light.
✦ Aphrodite’s Rose - Within the Sky-Veil, Aphrodite’s Rose blooms as the first shimmering herald of divine beauty—the pure, unbidden call of Being that stirs the soul toward remembrance. It is neither an earthly flower nor a heavenly apparition, but the living threshold where beauty descends to meet the exile of the Grey-Beneath.
The Rose does not demand nor conquer; it reveals. In its fragrance, color, and form, it bears the silent proclamation that Being is beautiful, that existence is a gift, and that the exiled soul is still beloved. Aphrodite, as the Keystone of the Sky-Veil, breathes forth the Rose as her first and most tender offering, an incarnate whisper of the invisible Flame above.
Those who behold Aphrodite’s Rose do not simply see beauty; they are wounded by it—wounded into longing, wounded into the journey home. It is the gentle beginning of awakening, the call to cross the Veil and return to the fullness of their forgotten heritage.
✦ The Highlands of Majesty - A rise beyond the middle veil, crowned in radiant stillness and clothed in the golden mantle of sovereignty. Here dwells Hera, Queen of the Sky-Veil, enthroned in silent glory. These highlands are not a geographic place but a realm of revealed majesty—the luminous realization of one’s true name, inheritance, and destiny.
To journey to the Highlands is to rise from the grey exile below and ascend through the burning wisdom of Athena and the transfiguring beauty of Aphrodite. In these heights, the soul is not merely awakened but crowned. Here, one receives the scepter of royal remembrance: not power over others, but dignity rooted in divine origin.
The Highlands of Majesty are the culmination of the pilgrim’s passage through love and wisdom. Those who are received here are no longer nameless—they are adopted, anointed, and named. The Highlands bestow not only identity, but mission. They are the dwelling of those who have passed through the veil and returned—not as wanderers, but as heirs.
✦ The Grove Beyond the Veil - A sacred threshold within the cosmology of the Sky-Veil, The Grove Beyond the Veil is the quiet resting place where Mirelda dwells. It is not a destination one reaches, but a sanctuary into which the soul is received. It exists beyond striving, beyond explanation—a hidden region of stillness, grace, and contemplative presence.
✦ Hypostatic Heralds - Figures who bear the presence of a hypostatic form. The goddesses are hypostatic heralds: they do not possess Being, but they announce it. As heralds, they invite the soul to a deeper contemplation of divine attributes. They are real in their effect and presence, though not personal subjects or metaphysical beings.