2.
Activating
the Goddesses
In ancient Greece, women knew that their vocation or their stage
in life placed them under the dominion of a particular goddess whom
they honored: weavers needed Athena’s patronage, young girls were
under the protection of Artemis, married women honored Hera.
Women worshipped and made offerings at the altars of the god-
desses whose help they needed. Women in childbirth prayed to
Artemis to deliver them from pain; they invited Hestia onto their
hearths to make a house into a home. Goddesses were powerful
deities, to whom homage was paid with rituals, worship, offerings,
and sacrifices. Women also gave goddesses their due because they
feared divine anger and retribution if they did not.
Within contemporary women, the goddesses exist as archetypes
and can—as in ancient Greece—extract their due and claim dominion
over their subjects. Even without knowing to which goddess she is
subject, a woman can nonetheless “give” her allegiance to a particular
archetype for either a phase of her life or for a lifetime.
For example, as a teenager a woman may have been boy-crazy
and easily infatuated; she may have engaged in early sexuality and
been at risk for an unwanted pregnancy—without knowing that she
was under the influence of Aphrodite, Goddess of Love, whose drive
toward union and procreation may catch an immature girl unaware.
Or she may have been under the protection of Artemis, who valued
celibacy and loved the wilderness—and may have been a horse-
crazy ado-