Church of Aphrodite

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Church of Aphrodite
Formationc. 1939
TypeReligious organization
Purposestructural Monotheistic Church, based off a singular female goddess, who is named after Aphrodite, the ancient Greek love goddess.
HeadquartersCharlottesville, Virginia, US
Location

The Church of Aphrodite was a religious group founded in 1939 by Gleb Botkin, a Russian émigré to the United States. Monotheistic in structure, the Church believes in a singular female goddess, who is named after the ancient Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite.

Having grown up in the Russian Imperial court, Botkin fought in the

New York State Supreme Court
.

Beliefs and practices

The only known printed source concerning the doctrine of the Church of Aphrodite is the treatise In Search of Reality written and published by Gleb Botkin in the 1960s. The treatise opens with the opinion that "prevalent religious beliefs and standards of morality . . . are based chiefly on . . . fantasies . . . of primitive people of an ancient past”, and he “to develop morally and intellectually, as well as enable us to lead happier lives.”[1]

The central concept in Botkin's metaphysics is

being. The only “inexhaustible Generator of Love—its Prime Source and Ultimate Object—is the Supreme Deity and Creator.” According to Botkin, the Deity is Creator by the very reason it radiates love, which creates the cosmos. The process of this emanation is “an organic one,” and therefore “the cosmos must be regarded as a fruit of the Divine Organism—not an arbitrarily created artifact.” This is why the Supreme Deity should be visualized “not as a Father God, but the Mother Goddess,” since “it is only the feminine organism which is capable of bearing fruit.”[1] Since Botkin considered love an eternal flow, he based the hopes for the immortality of human beings with the fact that they were consciously capable of love towards each other and the Deity. "The Beyond" or "Paradise" is a place where evil – the antithesis of Love and its concomitants Beauty
and Harmony – is absent.

The relationship between the Goddess Aphrodite and the visible world may be illustrated by that between a mother and her child. Having given birth to a child organically, a mother proceeds to take care of it with both her body and her mind. So the Goddess in Her relation with our world is both the Universal Cause and the Universal Mind.[2]

As it espouses a

Hellenism but closer to those of [Dianic] Wicca
.

As Neopagan scholar

Second Wave feminist movement.[3]

History

Gleb Botkin and the Church's founding

Ekaterinburg. His son, Gleb Botkin, retreated eastwards with the Whites, but following their defeat, fled via Japan to the United States.[3]

Subsequently gaining employment as a commercial illustrator, Botkin began writing a series of books, both fiction and non-fiction, including an account of his memories of the Romanovs entitled The Real Romanovs, as Revealed by the Late Czar's Physician and His Son (1931).

Catherine I, the wife of Tsar Peter the Great, which portrayed her as a particularly lustful figure,[5] whilst Immortal Woman (1933) dealt with the story of fictional Russian composer Nikolai Dirin, who after being persecuted by the Bolsheviks flees to the United States where he settles in Long Island, the very place that Botkin himself had settled into.[6] Immortal Woman shows that Botkin was beginning to have ideas about a monotheistic goddess, for instance containing a quote in which the Russian Orthodox priest Father Aristarch states that "the Supreme Deity must be a woman" whilst at another point Dirin enters a church and began "to pray fervently to Aphrodite – his beautiful and kind Goddess whom the Christian Church decried as the White She-Devil, whose worshipers the heads of the Christian Church have repeatedly anathematized."[7]

Later years

Botkin later moved the church to

neopaganism movement in the United States. Botkin's church is mentioned in Her Hidden Children: The Rise of Wicca and Paganism in America, by Chas S. Clifton.[8]

See also

References

Footnotes
  1. ^ a b Botkin, Gleb. In Search of Reality. Charlottesville, Va.: The Church of Aphrodite. pp. 13, 15–18.
  2. ^ Botkin 1967. p.
  3. ^ a b Clifton 2006. p. 139.
  4. ^ Botkin 1931.
  5. ^ Botkin 1934.
  6. ^ Botkin 1933.
  7. ^ Botkin 1933. p.197.
  8. ^ ""Donald D. Harrison," an obituary at Witchvox". witchvox.com. Archived from the original on November 27, 2019. Retrieved February 25, 2007.
Bibliography
  • Botkin, Gleb (1931). The Real Romanovs, as Revealed by the Late Czar's Physician and His Son. New York: Fleming H. Revell.
  • Botkin, Gleb (1933). Immortal Woman. New York: Macauley.
  • Botkin, Gleb (1934). Her Wanton Majesty. London: Putnam.
  • Botkin, Gleb (1967). In Search of Reality. Charlottesville, Va.: Church of Aphrodite.
  • ISBN 978-0-7591-0202-6
    .
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