Maya Vassallo Di Florio is the founder of the No-Profit Organization “Tempio della Grande Dea” in Rome (Temple of the Great Goddess dedicated too Aphrodite), a research center / association / community / sacred place that she created with the intent of making culture, educating to a new social paradigm and to the creation of new and more balanced models of existence. For years she has been collaborating with the La Sapienza University of Rome for her studies and work as a Priestess. She is a teacher for those who feel the urgent need to restore the matricentric philosophy of care, nourishment, peaceful communication and interaction between people, partnership between women and men, attention to needs, respect for the balance of the planet and all the creatures that inhabit it, centrality of mothers, the elderly, boys and girls within society.

On the 4th of March 2020 she was invited at the La Sapienza University to hold a conference about the Temple she founded, the Goddess and the archaic and contemporary Matriarchal Societies, enjoying great and lively interest and obtaining numerous awards for this epic event: it was in fact the first time in history in which these themes have been openly brought in the italian academic environment.

She was also invited by Christian Raimo, councelor for culture from the III Municipality of Rome, to hold a conference on past and present Matriarchies in the Council Chamber. The interest of the cultural and political world and the official declaration of this conference, represented another event of extraordinary importance.
In addition to La Sapienza University, Maya Vassallo di Florio’s work has been mentioned by various universities in Italy and around the world, such as the University of Turin, John Cabot University and Oxford University.

Since 2019 she has also collaborated with the International Women's House, which recently offered her a space in the structure to be used as a Research Center and a branch office of the Temple.
For several years she has been training Priestesses and Priests of Aphrodite and Sacred Sexuality in an intense three-year course of study and offers other training courses, both philosophical and practical, to which students from all over Italy and the world take part enthusiastically.

She weaves the project of Re-Activation of the ancient Temples and Sacred Places of the Goddess, with the aim of enhancing them in tourism and culture, restoring their dignity and life also through a dialogue with the directors of the sacred archaeological sites.
She is invited in various parts of Italy and the world to hold workshops and conferences concerning Feminist and Aphroditic Philosophy and Spirituality and Sacred Sexuality and the need to recover a Matriarchal structure in our society.

She is the creator and founder of the Roma Goddess Conference, the first in Italy on the model of that of Glastonbury in the UK, to which the BBC has dedicated several documentaries.
After having achieved with full marks a degree in Communication and Journalism with a thesis on the Belle Epoque and its influence on mass culture, a second degree in Publishing and Journalism with a thesis on Spirituality, Magic and the mass media and finally one in Theatre and Performing Arts with an experimental thesis entitled “Eros and Thanatos in Shakespeare”, she perfected the study of Shakespearean acting in the original language, deepening her studies in London with actors from the Royal Shakespeare Company.
As a Priestess, she trained at the Glastonbury Goddess Temple, the world's first modern Goddess Temple and a thirty-year reality that has been periodically narrated by BBC documentaries for years.
Her travels through many Holy Lands such as Cyprus, Glastonbury, India, Thailand and Mexico and her studies with internationally renowned teachers have been a very important part of her education.

She i salso a writer and published a feminist book about Aphroditic Philosophy and Spirituality, bestseller in Italy. Another book about the Temple of she founded, Feminist Philosophy and Spirituality and Matriarchal Societies (with appendices written by the most authoritative researchers, feminist philosophers, university professors and priestesses in the world ), is about to be published by the La Sapienza University publishing house. And more books are on the way to be published.

The fervour of her studies, the sense of urgency for the social and environmental crisis in which we find ourselves, combined with a profound optimism, led her to be a pioneer, founding the first modern Goddess Temple in Italy, in Rome, over 2000 years after the destruction of all the Temples dedicated to female divinities by the patriarchy.

The Temple is today the most important research center in Italy in the philosophical, anthropological, archaeological and spiritual fields for spreading Feminist and Matriarchal Philosophy and Spirituality.