Desire Along the Witches’ Road

“The great and amorous sky curved over the earth,

And lay upon her as a pure lover.

The rain, the humid flux descending from heaven

For both man and animal, for both thick and strong,

germinated the wheat, swelled the furrows with fecund mud

and brought forth the buds in the orchards.

And it is I who empowered these moist espousals,

I, the great Aphrodite.“

Aeschylus, The Danaïdes Fragments (translator unknown)

Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, beauty, and desire, presides over the union of earth and sky, according to Aeschylus. She is the procreative force animating these primordial beings. No wonder love is considered divine. This powerful and sometimes destructive energy pulsates throughout the universe.

The Lover archetype seeks connectedness at its deepest and most profound. It seduces us towards that which makes us feel most alive, daring us to see more within ourselves, giving us the courage to defy boundaries we could not see beyond, and thus expanding us into the possibilities of who we might become. At its fullest, the Lover archetype allows us to feel utterly alive and at one with the very fabric of being.

Epic cinematic love stories like Titanic, The Notebook, or A Star is Born capture glimpses of the force of the Lover archetype, showing how lovers change each other’s lives. Their desire for one another moves them toward different aspects of themselves, expanding the possibilities they had before and, at times, challenging class, society, and circumstance in its attempts to contain this sacred force. Even amidst the tragic aspects of these movies, we can witness how powerful love can be for those who are captured by its thrall. But can the story of a Marvel villain contain aspects of the Lover archetype? While it is an unlikely place to find love, I believe it is here as well.

*The following content contains spoilers.

This blog was written for and published by The Joseph Campbell Foundation on February 9, 2025