Church of Aphrodite Founder & History

By gabbyd2006

  • Founder is Born

    The founder Gleb Botkin was born this day. He was a Russian Emigre to the United States. He grew up in the Russian Imperial court and fought in the Russian Civil War.

  • Gleb Fleeing

    July 1918, the family, along with several of their closest aides, including Evgeny Botkin, were shot dead in the basement of the Ipatiev house in Ekaterinburg. His son, Gleb Botkin, retreated eastwards with the Whites, but following their defeat, fled via Japan to the United States.

  • Became an Author

    Botkin began writing a series of books, both fiction and non-fiction, including an account of his memories of the Romanovs entitled The Real Romanovs, as Revealed by the Late Czar's Physician and His Son. Many of his fictional stories also drew from his experience and involvement with the Russian aristocracy

  • Belief Started

    The book Immortal Woman shows that Botkin was beginning to have ideas about a monotheistic goddess, for instance containing a quote in which the Russian Orthodox priest Father Aristarch states that "the Supreme Deity must be a woman" whilst at another point Dirin enters a church and began "to pray fervently to Aphrodite – his beautiful and kind Goddess whom the Christian Church decried as the White She-Devil, whose worshipers the heads of the Christian Church have repeatedly anathematized.

  • Church Founding

    In 1938 he founded his own goddess-worshipping, monotheistic church, The Church of Aphrodite.

  • Church being recognized

    In 1939 the Church of Aphrodite was officially recognized by the state as the first Pagan religious group

  • Moved the Church

    Botkin later moved the church to Charlottesville, Virginia. He self-published a book arguing that Aphrodite was the supreme deity and the creation of the world was like a woman giving birth. The church was one of the earliest of its kind in the neopaganism movement in the United States.

  • Death of Gleb Botkin

    Gleb Botkin passed away at home from a heart attack in December 1969. He was buried alongside his wife Nadine in Monticello Memorial Park, Albemarle County. The church did not continue long after Botkin's death from a heart attack in December 1969, but some of his followers went on to join neopagan movements with beliefs superficially similar to those of the Church of Aphrodite.