rongest identification.
The uncommon beauty of Aphrodite and the high pitch of her sexual power, for good or ill, assert a primacy of passion, desire, extreme emotion in human personality development: "When she infuses a devotee/victim with her power or presence, his or her world becomes greatly intensified" (Kinsley, 1989, p. 210). Significantly, this is a female principle of sexual power and not sexual acquiescence (p. 203). The birth of the goddess hints at such power, arising either from foaming and froth, quoted from the Homeric hymns by Kinsley (p. 185), or from the genitals of Uranus. Kinsley makes the point decisive by analogy: "Just as Athena's nonsexual, rational nature is suggested by her birth from Zeus's head, so Aphrodite's sexual, sensuous, and emotional nature is suggested in her birth from the genitals of her father" (Kinsley, 1989, p. 204). The sexual content of divine power is concretized in Greek language. Kinsley connects Aphrodite's identification with scallop shells, the outline of which resembles female genital form, as well as with the
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