or nuts, extracted without heat (metaphorically, untouched by the
heat of emotion or passion). Virgin metal is what occurs in native
form, and is unalloyed and unmixed, as in virgin gold.
Within a religious system and an historical period dominated by
male gods, Artemis, Athena, and Hestia stand out as exceptions.
They never married, never were overpowered, seduced, raped, or
humiliated by male deities or mortals; They stayed “intact,” inviolate.
In addition, only these three of all the gods, goddesses, and mortals
were unmoved by the otherwise irresistible power of Aphrodite,
the Goddess of Love, to inflame passion and stir erotic yearnings
and romantic feelings. They were not moved by love, sexuality, or
infatuation.
THE VIRGIN GODDESS ARCHETYPE
When a virgin goddess—Artemis, Athena or Hestia—is a dominant
archetype, the woman is (as Jungian analyst Esther Harding wrote
in her book Women’s Mysteries) “one-in-herself.” An important part
of her psyche “belongs to no man.” Consequently, as Harding de-
scribed it: “A woman who is virgin, one-in-herself, does what she
does—not because of any desire to please, not to be liked, or to be
approved, even by herself; not because of any desire to gain power
over another, to catch his interest or love, but because what she does
is true. Her actions may indeed be unconventional. She may have
to say no, when it would be easier, as well as more adapted, conven-
tionally speaking, to say yes. But as virgin she is not influenced by
the considerations that make the nonvirgin woman, whether married
or not, trim her sails and adapt herself to expediency.”
1If a woman is one-in-herself, she will be motivated by a need to
follow her own inner values, to do what has meaning or fulfills
herself, apart from what other people think.
Psychologically, the virgin goddess is that part of a woman that
has not been worked on, either by the collective (masculine-determ-
ined) social and cultural expectations of what a woman should be,
or by an individual male’s judgment of her. The virgin goddess as-
pect is a pure essence of who the woman is and of what she values.
It remains untarnished and uncontaminated because she does not
reveal it, because she keeps it sacred and inviolate, or because she
expresses it without modification to meet male standards.
Goddesses in Everywoman