Sacred Bees

In the article below, the reader will see further confusion of the relation bees have to particular goddesses. Aphrodite has mentions to sacred bees but there is a connection to Artemis, Diana, Demeter, and Persephone. My theory in The Goddess Aped is that the latter four goddesses are one human female.

When I was in high school, my first coven’s priestesses were called bees. I would guess that this was tied to the “Melissa’s,” or Melissae, which were noted to be the what the high priestesses of Diana, Demeter, Artemis and Aphrodite were called. In reading the mythology, I can see the migration of the bee symbolism/Melissa’s from Aphrodite to the mortal “goddess”-regardless of what her name was. I imagine this was because the human “goddess” was able to promise or provide something to the human priestesses that they felt the actual goddess could not or it was an attempt to redirect power and attention from the goddess to the mortal/human priestesses.

Given that Artemis was also called the “bee keeper,” I would postulate that she was a mortal high priestess of Aphrodite who went on to try to rival the goddess or was a high priestess of Apollo and viewed Aphrodite as an enemy.