Hera

Hera

Hera is the wife of Zeus, but her sacred marriage with Zeus is not the ideal of human wedlock—it is the typical one. The marriage is turbulent, and brute though Zeus was, Hera is herself tyrannic, literally a termagant woman. At Olympia, where Zeus ruled supreme, Hera had a separate sanctuary, the Heraion, much older than that of Zeus. At Argos, too, was an ancient Heraion sacred to the “ox eyed” goddess. In Thessaly, in the ancient Argonautic legend, Hera is queen and patron of the hero Jason. Of Zeus… nothing. What does it mean? Hera had been forcibly married to vulgar Zeus. She is an ancient Pelasgian divinity, and when Zeus, the god of the immigrant Achaians, conquered her land, the marriage was arranged to signify the submission of the natives, but she always defied him. The original wife of Zeus became a cipher, Dione. Dione is Diana, the female form of Zeus, and therefore his original wife.

So, Hera was the divine Queen in Greece long before the coming of the Achaian Zeus. In those early Pelasgian days, who and what was she? Her name tells us. Hera is “Yara”, the year. Hera is the spirit of the year, who brings the fruits of the year in their season. As such she has a threefold seasonal aspect. Pausanias tells us that Hera had three sanctuaries and three surnames at Stymphalos in rugged Arcadia,. While yet a girl she was called Child or Maiden, when married she was called Fullgrown, and, separated from her husband, she was called Chera, the desolate one, the Widow. Through her, the three stages of a woman’s life reflect the three seasons of the year—spring, summer, winter, summer and autumn being regarded together as one season of fruit bearing. In the spring she is Child or Maiden, in summer and autumn she is Fullgrown, and in winter she is a Widow. Her winter desolation reminds us of the mourning of Demeter. Her three seasons also reflect the moon, with its waxing, full, and waning moon. Hera is a typically divided Great Mother, for she was all these things and more.

Patriarchal Homer does not want to know any of this. Hera is a queen. The Nature goddess emerges once in Homer. Zeus the Cloud Gatherer is seated on the topmost peak of Mount Ida, and Hera, clad in all her splendour and girt with the cestus of Aphrodite, approaches him. “And as he saw her, love come over his deep heart.” He cast about her a golden cloud and clasped her as his bride within his arms.

And beneath them the divine earth sent forth fresh, new grass, and dewy lotus and crocus and hyacinth, thick and soft that raised them aloft from the ground. Therein they lay, and were clad on with a fair golden cloud, whence fell drops of glittering dew.
Homer

Here is the hieros gamos, the sacred marriage which impregnates the earth to give birth in spring. Hebe, the cup-bearer of Olympus, and the daughter of Hera, is her younger aspect as maiden.

Last uploaded: 19 April, 2008.

Blog Back

Here you can give short responses and suggestions. Considered contributions, criticisms and discussion can be made privately via email [†]

Publication Policy. Interesting general contributions will be listed anonymously, unless the contributor is happy to be named, in the discussion—E-pistle—pages of this website, or if specific to a particular article, on the same webpage, as an addendum to the article.

—click "email a comment" at the bottom of the page to bring up your emailer primed with the address and title of this page—or directly to the public by the Bravenet hosted guestbook and the message board accessible from the side menu to the left, or to Mike Magee's blog at Wordpress. In these cases you will have to say what article you are discussing.