or Hera the Virgin). She was celebrated as Hera Teleia in the summer
and autumn (Hera the Perfected One, or Hera the Fulfilled One),
and became Hera Chera (Hera the Widow) in the winter.^1
These three aspects of Hera represented the three states of a wo-
man’s life, symbolically reenacted in various rites. In the spring, an
image representing Hera was immersed in a bath, symbolically
restoring her virginity. In summer, she achieved perfection in a
ritual wedding. In winter, another ritual emphasized a dispute with
and separation from Zeus, which ushered in the phase of Hera the
Widow, during which she was in hiding.
HERA THE ARCHETYPE
Hera, as Goddess of Marriage, was revered and reviled, honored
and humiliated. She, more than any other goddess, has markedly
positive and negative attributes. The same is true for the Hera arche-
type, an intensely powerful force for joy or pain in a woman’s per-
sonality.
THE WIFE
The Hera archetype first and foremost represents a woman’s
yearning to be a wife. A woman with a strong Hera archetype feels
fundamentally incomplete without a partner. She is motivated by a
“goddess-given” instinct toward marriage. Her grief at being without
a mate can be as deep and wounding an inner experience as being
childless is for a woman whose strongest urge is to have a baby.
As a psychiatrist, I am well aware of the suffering a Hera woman
feels when she has no significant man in her life. Many women have
shared their private grief with me. One attorney sobbed, “I’m thirty-
nine years old and I don’t have a husband, and I’m so ashamed.”
An attractive nurse, divorced, age thirty-two, said mournfully, “I
feel like I have a big hole in my psyche, or maybe it’s a wound that
never quite heals. God, I’m lonely by myself. I go out enough, I
suppose, but none of the men I meet want to get serious.”
When a woman with a compelling need to be a mate
Goddesses in Everywoman