girl4music:

Ares and Aphrodite were the only two Olympian Gods left after the Twilight of the Gods.. Now it’s pretty obvious to see why the Goddess of Love is important to planet Earth. Obviously it’s because love is what keeps the peace and keeps harmony and communication between humanity going so that it can evolve. But why is the God of War important to planet Earth? Why is Ares necessary at all?

Surely planet Earth without war would be a great thing right? No hate, no violence, no anger. Evil itself wouldn’t even exist. How could that be negative? Well, it ultimately comes down to balance, which is a theme the show brings up very frequently. What with Gabrielle’s evolution and struggle with violence and bloodlust. Another with Xena losing her sense of self if the dark side of her life never happened. The experience of life would be totally different for her if she had no awareness of her evil self. A very key way they talk about balance is through Ares and Aphrodite and they go into detail as to why both love and war is needed. It’s dualism. You see polarity is a spectrum. Consider the polarities of dark/light and hot/cold for instance…

Dark/Light is contrast

Hot/Cold is temperature

They are not two seperate things. They are two extremes of the same thing.

So love and war works like two sides of the same coin. If one side was not there, either the other wouldn’t exist, or it would not function properly without it

When you work against something, you have reason and motivation to do it because it’s effect over you bothers you enough to care enough to. You would not have that will to go against it without it actually being there. Even if it is a terrible, horrible thing that hurts you or causes you pain or even ends your life. The negative works with the positive in the sense that one balances the other. Also consider joy and sadness…. Again, there is a polarity. If you only experienced happiness, you would not recognize it or appreciate it because you’ve never been upset or angry, so you don’t know why it’s significant and valuable. Watch the Disney film ‘Inside Out’. It explains this really well.

So to recap: Why are Aphrodite and Ares the most important Olympian Gods to Earth? They are forces of energy that keeps the planet balanced. No side triumps without the other anyway. As awful as war, violence, hate and pain is, would love, peace, compassion and forgiveness be needed in the world if the dark side didn’t win the battle sometimes? No… and how much more awful would that be? That’s why Xena sent both Aphrodite AND Ares back to Olympus. They play pivitol roles to nature and humanity. Without both, we would not know the meaning to anything. Pretty profound, isn’t it?

The next time you experience darkness in your life, remember that it’s always darkest before the dawn and that you need a certain darkness to see the light.