dess Ceres) was the Goddess of Grain. In her most important myth,
her role as mother was emphasized. Persephone (Proserpina in
Latin) was Demeter’s daughter. The Greeks also called her the
Kore—“the maiden.”
The three vulnerable goddesses represent the traditional roles of
wife, mother, and daughter. They are the relationship-oriented
goddess archetypes, whose identities and well-being depend on
having a significant relationship. They express women’s needs for
affiliation and bonding. They are attuned to others and vulnerable.
These three goddesses were raped, abducted, dominated, or humi-
liated by male gods. Each suffered in her characteristic way when
an attachment was broken or dishonored, and showed symptoms
that resembled psychological illnesses. Each of them also evolved,
and can provide women with an insight into the nature and pattern
of their own reactions to loss, and the potential for growth through
suffering that is inherent in each of these three goddess archetypes.
Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love and Beauty (best known by her
Roman name Venus) is in a third category all her own as the alchem-
ical goddess. She was the most beautiful and irresistible of the god-
desses. She had many affairs and many offspring from her numerous
liaisons. She generated love and beauty, erotic attraction, sensuality,
sexuality, and new life. She entered relationships of her own
choosing and was never victimized. Thus she maintained her
autonomy, like a virgin goddess, and was in relationships, like a
vulnerable goddess. Her consciousness was both focused and recept-
ive, allowing a two-way interchange through which both she and
the other were affected. The Aphrodite archetype motivates women
to seek intensity in relationships rather than permanence, to value
creative process, and be open to change.
THE FAMILY TREE
To better appreciate who the goddesses are and what relationships
they had to other deities, let us first put them in mythological context.
Here we are indebted to Hesiod (about 700 B.C.), who first tried to
organize the numerous traditions concerning the gods into an
ordered arrangement. His major
Goddesses as Inner Images