Aphrodite is born from the foam of the waters, the lady of the sea. Never has definition been more reductive for a deity that covers all aspects of life and seasons. To reveal it is her priestess, Maya Vassallo Di Florio, founder with her husband Diego of the Temple of the Great Goddess in Rome, in the book “Afrodite Svelata – Introduzione ai misteri della Grande Dea” (Aphrodite Unveiled – Introduction to the mysteries of the Great Goddess, Venexia, 2022), the fruit of fourteen years of research. The deity of seven hundred names has a tradition that is a spirituality and not a religion because it is not dogmatic and does not bind people to the observance of strict rules. It is a creative spirituality that invites you to express your art, emotions, and pleasure.
Aphrodite is also linked to sacred sexuality, and the goal of Maya in her training is to help people become “masters of their Sexual Energy to evolve and develop their Leadership, their Sovereignty and their full potential through the activation of the fiery fire of Aphrodite and her Art”. In his new book “Sesso e Afrodite – Trasforma la tua vita con la sessualità sacra e il piacere” (Sex and Aphrodite – Transform your life with sacred sexuality and pleasure, L’Età dell’Acquario, 2024) she reminds us that “when the Goddess was banished […] intimate pleasures and the language of love have not had a follow-up in people’s lives”. The aim is to live sex as if it were a prayer in pleasure, not rushed but “savoured, explored and honoured”.
You can find the live interview in Italian language on my Instagram profile.
How did you approach the spirituality of Aphrodite?
I was about eight or nine years old, and I had an intense yearning for spirituality since I was a child. A spirituality connected to Mother Nature. I didn’t know how to express it, but I took care of my Mother’s body: I went with bare hands to clean the woods and beaches. I had a solid awareness and memory that there was something else. I was raised as a Catholic Christian, but my paternal grandmother enchanted the bread and taught me the formulas of southern Italy to remove the evil eye. Ancient feminine knowledge was then stolen by men, who deprived it of its soul, called ‘science’ or ‘medicine’ and locked it in the universities (accessible only to the male gender). I knew every vegetable, animal and mineral creature had a spirit.
How was the Temple of the Great Goddess born?
Together with my husband, we started building the community and teaching and transmitting our vision in 2014; in March 2015, we opened the Temple as a space for online cultural outreach and as a sacred pop-up space. In 2016, we finally opened the temple as a physical place. From the beginning, there was interest in collaborating with us, and several professors of the Sapienza University of Rome have always brought their groups to visit the Temple. Over the years, I have been invited to lecture, and my research has reached Oxford University. Now, the study of the Temple is part of the study program in History of Religions and Anthropology. We have always ensured the temple was perceived as welcoming and inclusive. We are not a sect: the locals are on the street, open and visible to everyone. Therefore, people in the neighbourhood sometimes peek. Now that I am in Bali, a group of students formed by me physically continues the activities of the Temple in Rome and Diego and I participate from afar in the organizational part. We offer collective ceremonies in which all are invited (the next will be the Celebration of Halloween, Samhain, that in the Aphroditical tradition we call “Time of the Dark Dawn”, ed) and many other activities such as the interpretative reading of the tarot, meditation sessions to supplement and reduce stress, healing sessions.
How did Aphrodite come into your life?
I started with Wicca, which is like most pagans today. The approach was triggered by a traumatic event, my granddaughter’s death from acute leukaemia. A strong event that shook me to the core and called me home, like the tarot card Maison Dieu in French (The Tower in English, La Torre in Italian), for me instead, the House of the Goddess. Slowly, I started studying, doing my research, attending courses and training. Many people in the spiritual sphere told me I had many aphrodithic qualities and that I had to work with this deity. It was a terrible annoyance because I had on her the prejudices that most people have. Then, I had a very intense experience while swimming in the sea of the Amalfi coast, my land, belonging to the Sirens, according to mythology. I had a moment of ocean fusion with Aphrodite that triggered an awakening. I said to myself: “I am penetrating her body; her body is the sea, that of all waters and the cosmic one where all planets were born, and she is penetrating me with the water molecules, supporting me and cradling me”. It was a moment of immense love and ecstasy, or pain and pleasure kneaded together. It was when the name of the Great Goddess came out, referring to Aphrodite, and I began to study her origin fourteen years ago.
So was born ‘Afrodite Svelata’ (Aphrodite Unveiled).
I have reconstructed archeomythologically the greatness of this goddess and recreated the wheel of Aphrodite with all its epithets as tools for people of any kind. This deity goes beyond gender, culture, geographical boundaries and time. It is a portentous instrument because it helps to recover integrity, to put together the fragmented pieces of our psyche, and to live a whole life, following all kinds of pleasures, living as sacred, as an act of devotion to her. Thanks to my studies on sacred sexuality, I have therefore given life to a priestly training for all. Training that has just reopened its doors, and now, for years, I teach people from all over the world in both remote mode, in the presence of Rome, visiting all the places sacred to the Goddess. It is an incredibly transformative path in which I have accompanied many people to achieve themselves at a relational, sexual, work and, of course, spiritual level. However, I believe the path of evolution lasts all life and beyond. Professionals and my students have used the Aphrodite wheel as a psychological tool for their work. The goddess teaches us that following a spiritual path does not mean sacrificing or cancelling oneself but putting care, commitment and devotion into it, which gives you pleasure. It is not only the fulfilment of a desire that matters but what you become on the path to achieve it.
How did sacred sexuality make a difference in your way of living sex?
In the beauty and power of the sensations experienced. I had a very early initiation into sex life and was lucky because I was engaged to a much older guy who loved me, so we explored freely so much. From the very beginning, I had these moments of oracle that came to me during sexual ecstasy with him, suggestions of practices that years later, through the study of tantra and other partners, I discovered to be the same as the priestesses of sacred sexuality, the daikini and tantrikas, they put into action in antiquity. They came to me, especially in the moments when the pleasure was incredible. It is not only a matter of chemistry but also of a union of souls. With the same stimulus, you can only have mediocre experiences with one person and the most potent pleasure of your life with others, perhaps in an elementary position. Some sexual practices that I teach inform our bodies of an entirely different type of pleasure than the one they have “educated” us to, in quotation marks, because there is no actual sex education. Either there is pornography – which causes very significant damage to the brain, hormones and relationships – or there are medical or anatomical instructions.
What else has changed in you?
My personal energy has also changed: quality and quantity. There are various types of orgasm, as I teach in the training and in the book “Sex and Aphrodite”. Some take away energy, others enhance it. Most people I listen to report that after sex, they feel tired or tend not to redo it because they are exhausted. In fact, good sex gives us incredible energy. We become able to move mountains, we can make love for hours and then take a shower and go dancing all night. It helps to keep a constant physical activity: my husband and I go to the gym frequently, and now that we are in Bali, we have also resumed surfing. The most significant changes in my life came when I learned to master my sexual energy. And when I started teaching it, I also found beautiful transformations in my students.
How can you heal from sexual wounds?
First, understand the type of sexuality and affective patterns we have been exposed to. If our parents were always fighting and not touching each other, it’s not a healthy model. The same applies if we grew up with pornography or were abused. We recorded wounds and a vision of sexuality that should be treated by competent people. I deal with the sexual, bioenergetic and spiritual side. I help people to heal from the point of view of bodily memories. However, I always suggest accompanying a psychological path, depending on the intensity of the wound. The first step is to expose yourself to healthy models of sexuality, to be in the presence of people who are at that point where you would like to be. I always invite you to start the creative process in our unconscious through the therapeutic power of questions that are a fundamental tool of autocoaching. I have a closed door: I become aware of it but then wonder how to open it and go to the other side where I desire. When faced with a sexual problem, it is vital to acknowledge the trauma and then understand that there are different sexual styles and that porn is not the only possible one. So, I’ve created a test that allows people to understand what their own sexual language of love is.
How does it work?
It’s free, and you can find it at the bottom of the bio in my Instagram account description [I did it, and my sexual style was sensual ed]. The style does not mean ‘you can make love well’ but refers to the fact that each person has his own yoni (vulva) or lingham (penis) shape and has his own lived experience, so “making love well” depends on a myriad of factors. Yes, the right fit can help with the right size (which, however, doesn’t mean to coincide with having a big penis, it also depends on how deep the woman’s vagina is). Knowing our style changes our lives because it allows us to understand and find a meeting point that both likes and live a satisfying life. Imagine how the practice of sacred sexuality can change the lives of individuals, couples and an entire community. Aphrodite says: ‘Make love, don’t make war’. Sexually and emotionally satisfied individuals have no time or desire to make war. For the moment, I have identified four sexual styles, but I will develop them in more detail.
What kind of mental or physical resistance do you find when teaching sacred sexuality?
Resistance is due to thinking you already know everything or can’t learn anything because you are a disaster. In sexuality, nobody already knows everything, and nobody is born a ‘disaster’. But when a person wants to do a course with me, I know he is on his way to working on his own resistance. People come to me because they want to improve their sex life. Not always for a problem or trauma. I have many sexually satisfied students who wish to discover even more. The spiritual path of sacred sexuality is endless. My husband and I have been experimenting and studying together for a lifetime. Every time you think you’ve reached the maximum pleasure, then you learn a new technique that takes you to the next level. Not by chance, it is called ars amandi. Women especially turn to me because they have difficulty reaching orgasm or for the perception of pain in the relationship, often due to incommunicability with their partner. It’s all the fault of porn, which focuses on the goal and makes think that those who watch it have something wrong. It’s an incredible pressure that can inhibit so much.
The man also has his own insecurities.
Many men and it is essential that they are freed from the patriarchal yoke. Having always attended the gym, I met several muscular men with their pelvis blocked. They physically show a virility – toxic – but in reality, they are insecure children. Even beautiful men have a motionless pelvis. This shows how superficial the sexual revolution was.
What are the sexual benefits of the Aphrodite path?
Aphrodite’s priestly path and sex coach training are different. The first one instils incredible empowerment and gives pleasure and awareness. The second includes wild pleasure, female empowerment, awareness of women’s rights, and abundance. At first, when I heard the other mentors say this last thing, I was annoyed because Christianity makes us believe that the spiritual path must mean abnegation, limitation, sacrifice and poverty. Aphrodite does not teach us this, as the Lady of abundance. I do not believe in new-age spirituality: life has ups and downs. However, people who work in the sacred must prosper in the sense of true economic abundance because they are doing something immense: helping others to be happy. As the semiologist Genevieve Vaughan says, you can not be generous from a shortage point. How much economic abundance we can manifest in our lives has to do with how worthy we feel to have sexual pleasure and to receive and deserve love.
In your first book, Afrodite Svelata, you call the vulva/vagina in the Sanskrit term “yoni” because it has a more positive meaning than the Italian name. What Italian term would you choose to do justice to female genitalia?
Yoni means ‘sacred portal’ and ‘sacred temple’ and is a term that includes female genitalia in their entirety, such as lingham. I have adopted the word yoni since it is short and sweet. Despite having done many examinations of Italian linguistics and research in anthropology and archeomitology, finding short words encapsulating a whole concept is problematic. Unfortunately, our language is slow and takes a long time to change. In comparison, English has a much richer vocabulary because it is a generative language. If we think of the sensation caused by the invention of ‘petaloso’ ( meaning ‘with a lot of petals’), which was awarded by the teacher of the child who invented it but opposed by the language teachers! To find a new term for the vulva, we’ll have to invent a new sound. It would be nice if we thought about it together.
What does it mean to be a priestess of Aphrodite today, and what are her duties?
She works daily on herself to keep ‘clean’ and help other people. You have to take care of yourself and love yourself. The priest of Aphrodite must have clear values of divinity: love, pleasure and devotion. In my book, ‘Aphrodite Unveiled’, I recommend specific practices to be carried out seasonally to harmonise with nature. One must care for spirituality, sexuality, physicality, relation, nutrition, intellectual sphere, culture, and mental. Create love, beauty and care in your home and in the temple of the goddess.
In your opinion, why is it no longer possible to practice sacred prostitution in our present?
In ancient times, prostitution was not to make a woman a commodity. She was the priestess who stood in front and protected, even from wars in the patriarchal era. She had the ability of Aphrodite alchemist to transmute. One of the representations of the goddess, the anasyrma, the gesture of lifting her skirt and exposing her vagina to the enemy, had such power that it stopped wars. It was the use of sexual energy to bring love, well-being and abundance into the community. Sacred prostitution had the function of sympathetic magic. It acted as a fertilizer, like bodily fluids spread over the earth. Perhaps there is no need to return to the sacred prostitution of the old days. Today, there is sex work, and there are those who do it on a holy level, even if it is not the one I deal with because I made the choice to undertake the Aphrodite path with my husband. However, I give people the skills they need to do this independently. The priestesses of sacred sexuality can have an active role in which they completely clean up people on the energy level through sexuality, but you must have the tools to manage and transform the energies. Otherwise, you get sick. Sex has three values: the first is spiritual and ecstasy, the second is medicine to heal, and the third is oracle.
We belittle love a lot in the modern age: how can we believe in it again?
I think it’s worth a bit of the talk about exposure to people. Beauty calls beauty, and degradation calls degradation. Be careful of the people we accompany. If we like certain people more and tend to be better, they are the right ones to see. We must review our passions and habits: they are all intertwined. It is necessary to have an integrated view of everything and understand that the way we live, our emotions, and our lives depend on what happens to us, but also how we try to react and our habits, which may be unhealthy for ourselves and the negative people we hang out with. When we no longer believe in love, we must ask ourselves: am I loving myself? Let’s start from here.
What is your next significant project?
Coming to Bali was dictated by a vision as strong as opening the Temple. The intention is to unite the worlds, especially to get in touch with women who work in the sacred as the priestesses of ancient lineages from various places, such as Thailand, Bhutan, the Mosuo community in China, the Miko in Japan, the women who heal by singing in Uzbekistan. I hope to energetically join forces to bring together that wound of separation between women that was created by patriarchy and bring back all the beauty we have been able to develop over millennia. If I succeed in my goal, I hope to make a documentary. I also have a book in English about the goddesses with a prolific German university professor who lives in Finland, the linguist Harald Haarmann, who is considered the heir of Marija Gimbutas because he did extraordinary research on the Goddess. Finally, I will carry out the Temple of the Great Goddess’s training of Aphrodite.
Fiore Avvelenato 
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