The Shell That Chose the Depths

Reflections on Love, Duty, and the Paradox of Beautiful Immobility

Nerites and the Radical Act of Staying

But even this favour he counted as nothing. And so the daughter of Zeus was moved to anger and transformed his shape into a shell, and of her own accord chose in his place for her attendant and servant Eros (Love), who also was young and beautiful, and to him she gave the wings of Nerites.

— Aelian, On the Characteristics of Animals

In the course of personal transformation, we encounter a paradox (Because of course we do!). Now, we are familiar with the fact that in the process of growth, we are met with elements of self that resist transformation. Rare is the path that undergoes change without pain or resistance of some kind. But what is that core element of the soul that anchors us in the depths?

Today, we examine the narrative and function of Nerites, it is a tale that challenges every assumption about spiritual evolution, and it tells us that sometimes the most radical act is choosing not to change. This realization first struck me not in the pages of some esoteric treatise, but while sitting and staring at a spiral shell. That glorious Fibonacci-esque spiral that has come to overlay so much of my perspective. It is embedded into the harmony of the cosmos, the signature of Nerites, the god who refused heaven for the sake of the depths.

As we continue our exploration through Aphrodite's sacred constellation, having previously encountered the transformative fire of Eros, we now descend into more ambiguous waters. Where Eros embodies love as cosmic movement, perpetual transformation, and boundary dissolution, Nerites presents us with love's most challenging teaching: that authentic devotion sometimes manifests not through metamorphosis but through the courage to remain constant, to choose what is over what might be.

---

---

Orphic Hymn

O beautiful Nerites, son of ancient depths,
Whose form outshone the gods' immortal light,
You who chose the sea's embrace over heaven's heights,
And found in steadfast stillness your delight.
Guide us to recognize perfection's face,
And know when transformation must give way
To preservation of inherent grace,
As shell preserves the pearl in salt-drenched bay.

---

The Myth That Refuses Easy Answers

And they say that he was named Nerites and was the most beautiful of men and gods; also that Aphrodite delighted to be with Nerites in the sea and loved him. And when the fated time arrived, at which, at the bidding of [Zeus] the Father of the gods, Aphrodite also had to be enrolled among the Olympians, I have heard that she ascended and wished to bring her companion and play-fellow.

But the story goes that he refused, preferring life with his sisters and parents to Olympos. And then he was permitted to grow wings: this, I imagine, was a gift from Aphrodite. But even this favour he counted as nothing. And so the daughter of Zeus was moved to anger and transformed his shape into a shell, and of her own accord chose in his place for her attendant and servant Eros (Love), who also was young and beautiful, and to him she gave the wings of Nerites.

The narrative comes to us primarily through Aelian's On the Characteristics of Animals, a text that preserves fragments of maritime folklore often overlooked by more canonical sources. In the crystalline depths of pre-Olympian consciousness, when Aphrodite still moved as a purely oceanic force, she found love with Nerites, the singular masculine offspring among the fifty daughters of Nereus and Doris. His beauty, we are told, surpassed even that of the gods, radiating a perfection that seemed to crystallize the very water around him into structures of impossible clarity.

The crucial moment arrives when Zeus summons Aphrodite to Olympus. She offers Nerites wings, literal, transformative appendages that would carry him beyond the gravitational pull of familial obligation into the rarefied atmosphere of divine transcendence. His refusal reverberates through the mythic imagination like a stone dropped into still water. Not from fear, not from incapacity, but from a love that recognized depths as more sacred than heights.

Let me offer this retelling as it emerged during my own contemplative work with this narrative:

In spiral chambers beneath the foam-white surge,
Where pressure builds the pearl and carves the stone,
Dwelt one whose beauty made the depths converge
Around a grace that claimed no heavenly throne.

Nerites, beloved of the foam-born queen,
When offered wings to breach the azure dome,
Spoke words that cut through fate's bright, sharp machine:
"My love, the sea itself has been my home."

"These waters hold my father's truthful word,
My sisters' songs that calm the sailor's fear.
To abandon depth for flight would be absurd—
What I am most, I choose to cherish here."

She wept, and in her tears the salt took form,
A shell that holds the spiral of his choice.
In this refusal, beauty weathers storm,
And constancy becomes love's truest voice.

The transformation that follows, Nerites' metamorphosis into a shellfish, reveals itself not as punishment but as preservation. The spiral shell becomes a mathematical mandala, simultaneously bounded and infinite, embodying the profound mystery that some forms of limitation are actually movements toward a center that transcends the polarities of transformation and stasis.

But this isn’t the only narrative around our beloved shellfish man…

Poseidon’s Lover…

But the other account proclaims that Poseidon was the lover of Nerites, and that Nerites returned his love, and that this was the origin of the celebrated Anteros (Mutual Love).

And so, as I am told, of the rest the favourite spent his time with his lover, and moreover when Poseidon drove his chariot over the waves, all together great fishes as well as dolphins and Tritones too, sprang up from their deep haunts and gambolled and danced around the chariot, only to be left utterly and far behind by the speed of his horses; only the boy favourite was his escort close at hand, and before them the waves sank to rest and the sea parted out of reverence to Poseidon, for the god willed that his beautiful favourite should not only be highly esteemed for other reasons but should also be pre-eminent at swimming.

But the story relates that Helios the Sun resented the boy's power of speed and transformed his body into the spiral shell as it now is: the cause of his anger I cannot tell, neither does the fable mention it.

The Poseidon narrative establishes a crucial dialectical counterpoint that reveals Nerites not as a figure of simple refusal, but as an archetypal complex capable of manifesting radically different modalities of divine relationality. Where the Aphrodite account positions him within a vertical cosmological register, choosing filial constancy over transcendent transformation, the Poseidon narrative illuminates his capacity for horizontal reciprocity, generating Anteros as the principle of mutual love through erotic participation rather than ethical resistance. This dual manifestation suggests that Nerites embodies what we might term the phenomenological multiplicity inherent in authentic divine love: the capacity to actualize fundamentally different relational configurations depending upon the cosmic context and the nature of the divine partner encountered.

Love shifts and presents differently depending on the relationship. It is ever in flux and never constant.

Helios's intervention as the agent of transformation in the secondary narrative introduces a third theological perspective that prevents the dialectic from resolving into a simple opposition between transcendence and immanence. His motivation, whether competitive jealousy over Nerites' extraordinary gifts or cosmic concern for proper divine placement, remains deliberately ambiguous, creating what Nicholas of Cusa would recognize as a coincidentia oppositorum where preservation and transformation, constancy and change, devotion and desire intersect without synthesis. This hermeneutical complexity reveals Nerites as simultaneously the beloved who chooses depth over height and the companion whose gifts exceed celestial boundaries, a theological paradox that illuminates the irreducible multiplicity of divine love itself, which cannot be contained within any single relational framework but requires the preservation of contradictory narratives to maintain its apophatic dimension.

The Phenomenology of Conscious Limitation

My first sustained engagement with Nerites emerged during a particularly turbulent period when every spiritual teacher, self-help guide, and well-meaning friend insisted that transformation was the only appropriate response to crisis. The cultural mythology of perpetual change, that therapeutic ethos demanding we constantly evolve, optimize, and transcend, began to feel like its own form of violence. In this context, encountering a deity who chose preservation over transformation felt revolutionary.

Working with Nerites requires developing what I have come to understand as aesthetic discernment, the capacity to recognize essential beauty that deserves protection from the corrosive effects of indiscriminate change. This is not spiritual stagnation masquerading as wisdom, but rather the recognition that authentic evolution often demands we identify and preserve certain qualities as fixed points around which transformation can meaningfully occur.

The theological implications are profound. Within the Neoplatonic framework that informs much of our understanding of ancient theurgy, divine entities typically embody principles of emanation, procession, and return, the fundamental movements through which consciousness evolves toward henosis with the One. Nerites represents something more paradoxical: the divine principle that establishes what must remain constant for evolution to maintain coherence rather than dissolving into chaos.

This function becomes particularly significant within Aphrodite's retinue.

Where most of her associated deities encourage boundary dissolution, metamorphosis, and the fluid interchange between states of being, Nerites provides the gravitational center, the spiral shell around which transformative energies can organize without losing their essential character. He teaches that love sometimes manifests not through change but through the radical act of bearing witness to what already exists in perfect form.

The Alchemical Dimension

In practical theurgical work, I have found Nerites most accessible during the phase of Calcination, that initial alchemical operation where matter is reduced to essential salts through the application of intense heat. The correspondence initially puzzled me; how could a figure associated with watery depths relate to a fiery purification process? The insight emerged through direct practice: Calcination succeeds not by destroying everything, but by reducing matter to its imperishable essence, those crystalline salts that endure after all volatile elements have been driven off.

Nerites embodies the salt principle in psychological terms, those aspects of selfhood that constitute irreducible essence rather than changeable accident. Working with his energy during transformative processes helps practitioners distinguish between what requires modification and what represents core identity deserving protection. This discernment proves crucial for avoiding the spiritual bypassing that can occur when transformation becomes an unconscious attempt to escape rather than authentically evolve.

The spiral shell serves as both symbol and practical focus for this work. Its mathematical perfection, the golden ratio expressed in calcium carbonate—demonstrates how limitation can encode infinity. Each chamber of the shell represents a stage of development, yet the spiral form ensures that growth never abandons its center. The shell grows larger by adding new chambers, but each new addition maintains perfect proportional relationship to what came before.

Practical Engagement: A Ritual of Recognition

The following practice emerged from my own work with Nerites and has proven effective for practitioners seeking to understand the relationship between love and duty, transformation and preservation, in their own lives:

Materials Needed:

• A spiral shell (if possible, one you have found yourself)

• Clear spring water in a shallow bowl

• Sea salt or crystalline salt

• A small mirror

• A white candle

Timing:

Dawn or dusk, preferably during the waxing moon when tidal forces mirror the tension between movement and stability.

Procedure:

Begin by creating sacred space in whatever manner feels appropriate to your practice. Place the shell at the center of your workspace, surrounded by the bowl of water. Light the candle and position the mirror so that it reflects both the flame and the shell.

Dissolve a small amount of salt in the water while contemplating Nerites' choice, his preference for depth over height, constancy over transformation. As the salt dissolves, recognize this as an image of how essence can be preserved even within processes of change.

Hold the shell and gaze into the mirror, asking yourself: "What aspects of my essential nature deserve preservation? What qualities, if transformed, would result in the loss of something irreplaceable?" Allow these questions to settle into contemplative silence rather than forcing immediate answers.

Speak aloud to both Nerites and Aphrodite:

Nerites of the depths, keeper of the spiral way,
Teach me the wisdom of conscious limitation.
Show me what in myself deserves preservation,
What beauty should remain unchanged
Even as I grow toward greater wholeness.

Aphrodite, lover of transformation,
Help me understand when staying
Serves love more truly than leaving,
When constancy becomes
The most revolutionary act.

Place the shell to your ear and listen to whatever sounds emerge: the ocean's echo, the blood's pulse, the breath's rhythm. These sounds represent the constant movements that can occur within apparent stillness.

Conclude by making a commitment to honor one specific aspect of yourself that you recognize as essential and worthy of preservation, even amid whatever changes life may bring. This commitment becomes your offering to Nerites, the recognition that some forms of beauty are too precious to risk in the gamble of transformation.

The Integration of Opposites

What makes Nerites particularly valuable for contemporary practitioners is his refusal to fit neatly into our inherited spiritual categories. He is neither the transcendent deity who calls us upward nor the chthonic power that draws us into dissolution. Instead, he occupies that ambiguous middle realm where love must negotiate between competing loyalties, where spiritual growth must account for responsibilities that cannot be transcended.

This positioning makes him an essential guide for practitioners attempting to integrate contemplative practice with the demands of embodied life. The fantasy of spiritual escape, whether imagined as departure from family obligations, professional responsibilities, or the messy complexities of intimate relationship, finds little support in Nerites' example. His choice suggests that authentic spiritual development often requires deepening our engagement with what we have rather than seeking what we lack.

The relationship between Nerites and Eros within Aphrodite's theological system provides a particularly illuminating framework for understanding how preservation and transformation can work together rather than in opposition. When Nerites refuses the wings Aphrodite offers, she transfers them to Eros, suggesting that the capacity for transcendence denied in one context becomes available in another. This is not loss but redistribution, not failure but the recognition that different forms of love require different expressions.

---

Check out more of my posts with this complimentary free trial to peek behind the curtain. Including the ritual practica related to Nerites below!

---

Contemporary Implications

Living in a culture obsessed with optimization, disruption, and continuous improvement, Nerites offers a necessary corrective. His example suggests that the contemporary equation of growth with change may be fundamentally misguided, that authentic development sometimes requires the courage to resist transformation in service of preserving what is already perfect.

This teaching proves particularly relevant for practitioners working within traditional spiritual frameworks that emphasize gradual development over revolutionary change. The monastic commitment to stability, the marriage vow's promise of constancy, the artist's lifelong dedication to craft, all these find theological support in Nerites' example.

Yet his myth also warns against the romanticization of stagnation. Nerites chooses preservation not from fear of change but from a sophisticated understanding of what deserves protection. His discernment emerges from deep knowledge of his own nature and the nature of the relationships that define him. This kind of choice requires the very wisdom that spiritual practice aims to develop.

The Spiral Return

As I write this, the shell I mentioned gazing at earlier sits on my desk, its surface worn smooth by countless tides yet maintaining the perfect mathematical precision of its spiral form. It serves as a daily reminder that some of the most profound spiritual teachings emerge not from exotic sources but from the patient contemplation of simple forms that encode infinite complexity.

Nerites teaches us that love sometimes calls us not to ascend but to descend, not to transcend but to preserve, not to become but to remain. In a world that often confuses movement with progress, his example provides the gravitational center around which authentic transformation can organize itself.

The god who chose the depths over the heights continues to dwell in the spiral chambers of contemplative awareness, offering his particular wisdom to those willing to consider that staying might be more revolutionary than leaving, that preservation might serve love more faithfully than transformation. In the end, perhaps this is Nerites' greatest gift: the recognition that authentic spiritual life requires not only the courage to change what must be changed, but the wisdom to preserve what deserves protection, even if that preservation requires its own form of transformation.

In the depths of our own becoming, may we find the discernment to know the difference. We’ve discussed the depths, but what of the heights?

What of those wings that were bestowed and taken?

The Wings as Anagogic Dynamis

In the Platonic mode, I believe the wings in this narrative constitute the soul's fundamental instrument of transcendence, as articulated in the Phaedrus where Plato describes the soul's primordial capacity to follow the gods in their celestial procession through contemplative participation in divine beauty and wisdom. The wings represent what Iamblichus would term the anagogic dynamis, that specific power within the soul through which it can ascend beyond material limitation toward henosis with the divine principles.

When Aphrodite bestows wings upon Nerites, she offers him direct access to this transcendent capacity. Yet his refusal reveals a crucial pneumatological principle:

not all aspects of the soul can or should participate in transcendent movement without compromising the integrity of the soul's total structure.

Nerites' choice represents what we might term the stabilizing ousia, that essential core of the soul that must remain constant, rooted in its proper ontological position, for the soul's other faculties to function coherently.

The Transcendent Capacity

The transfer of wings from Nerites to Eros suggests a sophisticated understanding of how transcendent capacity must be distributed across the soul's composite structure rather than concentrated in a single faculty. Drawing upon the Platonic tripartition articulated in the Republic and refined by subsequent Neoplatonic analysis, we can interpret this mythological transaction as representing the soul's recognition that:

The logistikon (rational faculty) requires certain aspects to remain anchored in contemplative stability, for example, what Nerites represents, while other aspects must be mobilized for active engagement with divine beauty, or what Eros embodies.

This distribution prevents the soul from either becoming trapped in static contemplation or dissipating its essential nature through ungrounded transcendent aspiration.

The wings' migration from the figure of constancy to the figure of transformative desire illuminates a fundamental principle of Iamblichean theurgy: authentic spiritual ascent requires the coordination of preserving and transforming forces within the soul, rather than the simple dominance of transcendent over immanent principles.

Yes, that hallowed argument between Plotinus and Iamblichus is rearing its head

Chariot Allegory and Pneumatological Balance

Plato's chariot allegory from the Phaedrus provides a crucial hermeneutical framework for understanding this mythological transaction. The charioteer (nous) must coordinate two horses: the noble horse (thymoeides) that aspires upward toward divine beauty, and the dark horse (epithymetikon) that pulls toward material satisfaction. The wings belong properly to the chariot as a unified system rather than to any individual component.

Nerites' refusal and Eros' reception of the wings suggests that transcendent capacity functions optimally when it serves the soul's total integration rather than facilitating escape from material engagement. The wings transfer from the figure who chooses depth to the figure who embodies movement, indicating that authentic anagoge requires both grounding principles (Nerites) and mobilizing principles (Eros) working in coordinated relationship.

Plotinus might say, Nerites' refusal of wings acquires profound significance: his choice to remain in the depths represents not limitation but recognition that the soul's deepest essence already abides in perfect relationship with divine principles and requires no additional capacity for transcendence.

BUT

Iamblichus might say, Nerites' refusal represents not the preservation of undescended contemplative capacity but rather the soul's recognition that certain structural elements must remain stable within complete material engagement to prevent psychological disintegration during theurgical ascent. The wings transfer to Eros because anagogic capacity cannot function through static preservation but requires dynamic engagement with divine powers through ritual mediation.

I can personally see the value in both positions, whether approaching this work from a contemplative mode such as Plotinus, or a ritually active mode like Iamblichus. In my own work with Aphrodite and her retinue, Nerites has been an anchor for the flighty nature of my intellect and a welcome counterweight to my propensity to become lost in the clouds.

And as one works with the winged sons and the daimonic retinue of Aphrodite, I can say that having an anchor in the depths of matter is a boon.

---

What lies behind the sanctum of this line is of course as usual the Practical Elements of engaging with Nerites in a Theurgical Context. You’ll find a little bit of everything behind the curtain; how to bring Nerites into your sphere of sensation, talismanic instruction, synergestic relationships with others in HER constellation. And much more as the weeks pass and we continue our dive into Venusian Theurgy.

Knock and Enter if you dare!