AmberLou2 
Village Jester
Posts: 92
(1/16/04 9:15 am)
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Hera
HERA-Dignity
She's the only goddess who apperars weelkly as the villian of a television drama. A generation of young Americans now have a vivid vision of Hera, an evil stepmother if ever there was one, constantly sending that kindly hunk Hercules off to perform some impossible feat or to torment some poor nymph whose only crime was dallying with her husband Zeus. And all this just because Zeus had too good a time with Hercules's human mother! When Hera apprears in the small screen, her cow eyes peeking through peacock feathers, even hercules shudders in fear of that she'll demand next.
It's a wildly inaccurate, to say nothingof insulting, portrait of the chief goddess of ancient Greece. But we can't fault the scriptwriters for this slanderous depiction of the ancient goddess of womanhood. For the image of Hera presented weekly in the Hercules: Legandary Journeys is pretty much the same one painted by the Greeks themselves: Hera is vicious, spiteful, arrogant, but very powerful. Married to the higest god, she does nothing by rage about his infidelities, persecute nymphs, and-and, oh yes, invent tortures forhercules, who the greeks saw as a muscular like our contemporary hero, if not nearly so endearingly thoughtful and sweet.
What you won't learn from television is that Hercules is the Roman translation of the greek name Heracles-"glory of Hera," an ancient hero who originally served a much different goddess, founding shrines to her all across the land that became Greece. This erased goddess was the dark-eyed sky queen we call Hera, although that title means only "Our Lady" and was probably not the goddess's original name.
Long before Zeus entered Greece, the people there had their own chief divinity.
She was their queen and ancestral mother, and she ruled alone, needing no king to back her up. (television viewers should note that Hera was, among many otherduties, goddess of winds, a job stripped fromher buy the Hellenic invaders and given to a newcomer, Aeolus-Hollywood Hercules's companion-at-arms.)
Ancient Hera needed no consort. But one was on his way. When the patriarchal tribes of the north descended into Hera's land, they brought with them their sky god, Zeus. Because Hera's religion was too strong to utterly destroy, a marriage of convenience was forged between the two predominant divinities. From this forced joining of the pre-Hellenic goddess of women witht he newly arrived thunderbolt wielder, the Hera of classical times emerged.
This new Hera was not a very attractive figure, a jealous and petulant wife who hounded her unfaithful husband and his lovers. Of course, the myth admits, Hera never wanted the marriage to begin with-in this, apparently reflecting the political realities of that turbulent time. For one thing, Zeus was her brother; the Greeks had revealed, for she was born third-after Hestia, the fire goddess, and Demeter, the earth mother-while Zeus was born last of the Olympians.
In spite of Hera's objections, Zeus so desired the statuesque goddess that he transformed himself into a cuckoo-the bird for which Hera had a speical fondness-and flew bedbraggled into her lap. Soothing the pitiable bird, Hera suddenly found herself being raped by Zeus. Shamed by the violation, the goddess agreed to restore her dignity by joining in marriage with Zeus. She gave birth to several children: the smith Hephaestus, the war god Ares, and the maiden Hebe. Some sources say that all three were born parthenogenetically, which would be in keeping with Hera's earlier identity as a goddess who needed no husband.
And Zeus didn't really need, or want, a wife. It wasn't long before he was off again, looking for other goddesses to rape. With Leda he pretended to be a swan, with Semele he turned into a shower of gold-and the goddesses generally wound up diminished, if not pregnant with an unwanted godling. Here again, scholars detect political reality disguised as myth, with the elimination of various goddess cults appearing as the seduction or rape of the central divinities, and the goddess's parthenogenetic children assigned proper fathers.
Finally, the myths tells us, Hera wearied of Zeu's ceaseless pursuit of other goddesses and organized a heavenly revolution against the tyrant. She and the other Olympians tied him to his bed-his favorite place of work-and gathered to mock him. Working himself free, Zeus took his revenge on the instigator of the place revolt by stringing Hera from the sky, her wrists tied to golden bracelets and her ankles weighted by anvils.
Once freed from this humiliation, Hera resumed her persecution of Io, Semele, and other paramours of Zeus, siding against him in the Trojan War and otherwise making a mythic nuisance of herself to the father figure of the patriarchy. Eventually, little remained of the ancient threefold goddess of dignified womanhood except the insistence, within Greek mythology, on the periodic retreat of Hera into solitude. This bit of lore makes little sense for the figure of Hera in Classical times, but it was vital to the ancient goddess, representing the last stages of her development.
The ancient Hera passed through three life stages: youth, prime, and age. First, she was the madian Hebe or Parthenia, called virginial not because she avoided intercourse but because, having no children, she was free of responsibility. In this stage, she was also called Antheia ("flowering one"), symbol of both the flower of human youth and the budding earth. Next, she revealed herself as the mature woman, Nymphenomene ("seeking a mate") or Teleia ("perfect one"); she was the earth in summer, themother inthe prime of life. Finally, she showed herself as Theria ("crone"), the woman who has passed through and beyond maternity and lives again to herself.
In all these stages, Hera represented the epitome of woman's strength and power. Far from being spiteful and malicious, she was generous and self-assured. The ancient Hera was sufficiently beloved that, even after being recast in such a negative way, she was still worshiped and revered. Symbolized the inner essence of feminine development, Hera is a goddess who never deserved the indignities heaped on her. Has she not been so powerful and beloved, she would have been simply raped and discarded. As it was, she was demonized-but she lived on.
Symbols of Hera
Hera has three symbols, which can be connected with her three ancient phases. The first of these is the cuckoo, the bird whose form Zeus assumed in order to rape and disempower the goddess. As her myth shows, Hera had a tender spot for the cuckoo, a bird that was depicted atop her scepter in ancient times. At Mycene, a Cretan colony onthe Greek mainland, minituretemples mounted with cuckoos have been found buried in the rubble along with statuettes of a naked goddess holding the same bird on her arms. As Hera's worship gpes back to that period these statues may represent her most ancient worship.
It is not known what the cuckoo represented in Hera's originial regilion but birds generally refer to a union of body and soul, for the bird can walk on land or fly into the sky. As the great archaeologist Marija Gimbutas has pointed out, the bird is one of the greatest ancient symbols for the heavenly goddess. The cuckoo is, in many places, connected tot he springtime, so this bird may indicate Hera in her youngest phase.
The peacock's meaning is connected to that of other birds, with the additional symbolic meaning of it's blue color. Because blue is the color of the sky, many peoples have connected it with the devine. A blue bird, being the color of the sky where it can soar, is like a multiplied heavenly symbol. Both these images reinforce the connection of Hera with the heavens, of shich she was queen. In addition, the peacock is often associated with summer, and therefore this bird may symbolize Hera's second phase.
Her third phase, as the crone of autumn, is symbolized not by a bird but by a fruit: the pomegranate, which she shares with Persephone. She is often depocted holding the pomegranate, but there is no reference in her myth to its significance. Ripening late in the year, the leathery-skinned pomegranate, so full of juicy seeds, is a marvelous image for the woman inher late years. The deep red juice of the pomegranate was often likened to blood and, in some areas in Greece, was designated as food for the dead; it was the fruitof the underworld in the myth of Persephone, heightening the connection of this phase of thegreat hera to age and death. However, in thehands of these gentle goddesses, the symbol of death was also a promise of resurrection, for both were regularly reborn in spring.
Another symbol, although less frequently used for Hera than these three, is the cow. She was said to have cow eyes and disguised herself as a cow in one myth; cows were often sacrificed to her. Other cow goddesses are associated with celestial phenomena, as is the case of thesun goddess Hathor in Egypt. Thus Her's cowidentity shows her to bed a heavenly goddess, ruling the celestial vault and its luminaries.
All information was taken from the book The Goddess Path written by Patricia Monaghan
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