Aphrodite's Dance: Part 2
The Dance of Reason
Aphrodite’s Dance
Where beauty stirs the soul toward remembrance
This volume is part of The Sky-Veil, a mythopoetic series exploring the passage from exile to remembrance, from the shadowed world to the luminous Highlands of Majesty. Each book in the series is a self-contained revelation of that journey, yet all are bound by a common thread: the longing for the True, the Beautiful, and the Good that draws the soul homeward.
In Aphrodite’s Dance, we step onto the Veil where divine beauty first calls us. Aphrodite—the Rose-Bearer—is the herald of beauty and love awaiting us on the far side. She appears in the quiet radiance of grace. Her dance is the hidden pattern of beauty that awakens the soul to its forgotten origin and final longing.
This book is a meditation on the gentle alabaster light that glimmers behind the surface of things, calling us beyond appearances into the realm where beauty becomes remembrance, and remembrance becomes the first spark of love.
The Sky-Veil is the breath between worlds, the shimmer in the liminal space of the Being-ness of what is. It is a mythopoetic landscape, guided by luminous heralds, where what seemed lost becomes visible again—not through force, but through the quiet unveiling of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good.
Welcome to Aphrodite’s Dance.
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.
Joyously through the fields along the path of the glistening golden thread,1 the rose-bearer2 led her circle to the threshold of a bridge, and I could not step. I lingered in the hush, unmoving in the shadow of my doubt.
“What? This on the path of the gleaming golden thread?” I could not accept what I saw. “The path of the golden thread cannot contain this! No, it cannot be—I became lost in the dark forest3 longing for this very crossing.
Across the arch, the Sky-Veil4 itself had written:
“The Bridge of Reason”5
Another sign waited on the other side, but it remained hidden from me. The rose-bearer and the shield warrior with the Veil’s aegis6 walked ahead, untouched by doubt. They passed over the bridge as if it cost them nothing. But I—carrying more than I knew—could not yet follow.
I could not cross with their ease. I hesitated. For if the path of the shimmering golden thread was meant to bear the might of the Bridge of Reason, it seemed a fragile structure—beautiful, yes, but no solid foundation for what I had built my life upon.
She who dances in rose-light beckoned me from the bridge. “You must go over and beyond the Bridge of Reason to find our destination—come!” She waved me on.
“This golden thread,” I said, choking on doubt, “is too thin to hold the weight of Reason. In the beginning there was no thread, no flame—only what we decided. I have walked with you along your way of beauty, yes—but I see now that surely it has been only dreamstuff. Nothing more.”
“Tell me,” she said, her eyes wide with wonder and a flicker of mirth, “Your reason sprang from nothing?” The rose-bearer laughed, but it was the laughter of light catching on water. “Then your Reason,” she smiled, “was born of unreason—a child of the abyss! A golden measure pulled from a well of chaos?”
She twirled once through the shimmer. “Strange math, to weigh truth on a scale cast by the void.” And then—she laughed again with the joy of one who sees the veil part just slightly. “No wonder you were lost, dear son.” She gazed. “I must take you to the Highlands of Majesty.7 Hurry along!”
Her eyes found the place in my soul I had long buried—a place once rosy bright, now guarded and grey. And though her gaze brought warmth, I recoiled, for longing had become a thing I feared. I could not answer. The truth would not rise to my surface.
“No!” She cried out. “True Reason cannot be born of unreason!” She tilted her head, eyes gleaming with laughter. “You’re mad,” she chuckled—and then laughed again, the sound like petals tossed into wind.
With a radiant sweep of her hand, she beckoned me forward. “Only Creative Reason can breathe Reason into Being!” Her voice embraced the trees, rivers, and flowers like a song. “Now come—do not linger in the dark!” Her voice was refulgent with rising joy. “We shall meet Love, yes—but Love never walks alone. In meeting Love, we shall also behold Beauty—and beyond, the Highlands of Majesty!”
I hesitated no more. With breath caught in the hush, I ran to meet her—onto the bridge I had feared. And to my astonishment, it held. Stronger than shadow, steadier than doubt—the golden thread did not tremble beneath me. It had been the weight of my own fear that made it seem weak. I realized the bridge was not for me to construct but a gift to receive from what was beyond it.
Much to the rose-bearer’s chagrin, I lingered. I stood in the stillness, letting the view wash over me—a vision not of argument, but of unveiled clarity. This was Reason—the Gift—not the cold construct I had labored over. Radiant, real, and revealed.
From the bridge, I stepped onto the narrow way—the golden thread, drawn fine through shimmer and shadow. It was no ordinary road, but the way of the heralds like the rose-bearer—woven in obedience to its gleam, lit by the memory of Being. A path not broad, but true.
I gave in—not in defeat, but in longing. I crossed the span and followed the thread into the rising light of the horizon as dawn ascended her rose-hued throne. Yet something called me to turn—to look back at what had once been veiled. And there it was: the sign I had not been allowed to read, now open to my gaze.
The sign read:
“In Principio erat Verbum” “In the beginning was the Word.”
And once more, the rose-bearer of the threshold had opened my eyes with love and with beauty.
In the beginning was Verbum—not a void out of which to build a crossing—but the Word of true Reason, gifted, spoken in beauty, veiled in the flame of love.
As we danced on from our—or perhaps I should say my—harrowing ordeal, the one robed in rose-light turned with a gleam in her eyes, calling over her shoulder:
“Reason is Love, and Love is the Reason!”
She spun like flame in wind, laughter trailing behind her like petals on the breeze. And I—I staggered forward in the rhythm, not yet steady, but no longer bound.
The others pressed onward across the meadowed veil, toward a light that was no longer distant, but beckoning. I followed now, not to understand, but to behold.
Enjoy “Aphrodite’s Ascendance” from my album Mythic Canticles, available on my music site.
Lyrics ©Walter Emerson Adams. Music and vocals by Suno ©Walter Emerson Adams.
Last night the world looked west to see in warmth the sky Unveiled in roses, Aphrodite shared her smile Her borrowed light divine arranged the world to dwell The rays divine conveyed her tale for saints to tell Her rosy fingers spread across horizons far The rays of God revealed her Being, hidden star To Aphrodite, love surrenders night concealed To free, enflame, the hearts once frozen, numb, and sealed Her jealousy had vanished into grace that eve Rejoice, the world was glad to see her lightly weave A tapestry divine to lift our souls to heights Her joyous countenance sublime redeemed her rites Seraphic Aphrodite gazed with charm beguiled No anxious frown nor any woes in love reviled O Aphrodite, petal-soft and bright revealed Then faded into Being’s glow, unseen, unsealed
✦ 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.
✦ 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.
✦ Dark Forest - A shadowed place from which the journey begins—the realm of exile, estrangement, and the illusion of self-sovereignty. It is where the soul wanders beneath the weight of its own definitions, having crowned the self as first philosophy. Cloaked in arguments, speculation, and the fear of mortality, the Dark Forest is not evil in itself, but a distortion of vision—a place where Being is forgotten and beauty is dismembered.
In the Dark Forest, Reason is idolized but disfigured, cut off from Love and Majesty. The golden thread is unseen here, not absent but veiled. The soul must be awakened, often through longing, suffering, or a radiant encounter, to see the first glimmer of the path that leads across the Bridge of Reason, through the Valley of Tears, and toward the Highlands of Majesty.
It is from the Dark Forest that the wanderer is called—and it is by grace, not intellect alone, that the path beyond it is revealed.
✦ 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. St. Joan of Arc guides the pilgrim across the Sky-Veil of transformation in Christ to Magdalene’s contemplative grotto on the far side in the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
✦ Bridge of Reason - A radiant arch that spans the chasm between the first stirrings of enchantment and the deeper clearing of Being. Marked along the path of the gleaming golden thread, it is not a denial of reason, but a passage through it—honoring its integrity while moving beyond it toward what reason alone cannot unveil.
In the cosmology of the Sky-Veil, this bridge represents a decisive moment of crossing: the soul must pass not only through the logic and clarity of metaphysical structures but also beyond them, toward the mystery from which they arise. This echoes Martin Heidegger’s call to move “beyond metaphysics”—not to reject it, but to look past its formulations and toward Being itself, the unconcealed ground that first gave rise to thought, presence, and wonder.
To hesitate at the Bridge of Reason is to remain in the shadow of doubt; to cross it is to consent to the deeper unveiling of the world. The bridge does not end rationality but transfigures it, opening a path from the seen to the unseen, from conceptual certainty to poetic truth. It is the threshold where the intellect bows in reverence, and Being begins to speak.
Shield-Warrior with Aegis - The luminous figure of wise defense and discerning might who appears in Aphrodite’s Dance as a guardian of the threshold. Bearing the radiant aegis and a polished shield, she is not merely a protector, but a revealer—one who sees clearly through illusion and stands at the liminal edge where discernment must precede ascent.
She is the figure aligned with Athena, not in her classical militancy, but as a hypostatic herald of wisdom in service of love. Where the Rose-Bearer awakens desire and joy, the Shield-Warrior tempers that desire with clarity, protecting the path from disordered longing. She does not wage war in the worldly sense but guards the journey of the soul from false light and hidden snares.
Her aegis, emblazoned with the sign of divine presence, is both a warning and a shield—a symbol that dazzles and defends. She teaches the dancer in Aphrodite’s circle that joy must be fortified by virtue, and that enchantment without courage will falter at the Veil. Her appearance marks a pivotal moment in the dance: the awakening of holy vigilance and the call to heroic memory.
To receive the Shield-Warrior’s gaze is to be known in truth. To follow her is to walk the narrow path of noble ascent, where wisdom is aflame with love, and courage is guided by luminous discernment.
✦ 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.