Hera, whom the Romans knew as Juno, was the stately, regal goddess of marriage, the wife of Zeus (Jupiter), the chief god of the Olympians. There were two very contrasting ways to see her. In her worship, she was solemnly revered as the powerful goddess of marriage; in her mythology, she was a vindictive, quarrelsome, and jealous shrew. Revered and reviled, honored and humiliated, she, more than any other Greek goddess, has markedly positive and negative attributes. Her symbols and rituals indicate that before she became Zeus’s consort, she was once the great goddess or triple goddess. She was worshiped in the spring as Hera the Virgin; in the summer as Hera the Fulfilled One; and in the winter as Hera the Widow.* These three aspects represented the three stages of a woman’s life, and were reenacted symbolically. A statue of Hera was immersed in a bath in the spring, symbolically restoring her virginity; in the summer a ritual sacred marriage took place; and in the winter a dispute and separation from Zeus were enacted, and Hera went into hiding as the widow. In the mythology of the Greeks, the triad that was associated with Hera (though very little was said about it) was Hebe the maiden, Hera the matron, and Hecate the crone.
Hera’s marriage to an archetypal philanderer and her wrath and humiliation by him was the major theme in her mythology. Time and time again, Zeus would seduce or rape a nymph, mortal, or goddess, and impregnate them, fathering the second-generation Olympians and demigods. Hera typically responded vindictively and destructively against the other woman and her offspring. Zeus repeatedly dishonored marriage that was sacred to her, shamed her further by honoring the children of his liaisons, and, in one story, abused her.
When the Hera archetype is a powerful force in a woman’s psyche, her psychological well-being and even her fate is dependent on her marriage and the character of her spouse. This archetype has the inner force of an instinct that propels a woman toward being a couple and makes it very hard for her to be single. In the sacred marriage ritual, Zeus was called “Bringer to Completion” or “Bringer to Perfection,” which is the underlying expectation that Heras project upon potential partners. Since marriage is the source of her identity and well-being, a Hera woman is deeply affected by her mate’s fidelity and the importance he places on the marriage. Thus, whether she is married and to whom are the key to the state of her fulfillment or misery. She is vulnerable to being overwhelmed by pain and jealous rage toward the other woman if her husband is unfaithful. If he divorces her, the psychological wound can be devastating and the degree of denial can even become delusional.
From the mid-sixties to the present, marriage as an institution has been in sharp decline. Living together out of wedlock, open marriage, communal living, divorce, and blended families are all trends that have been inimical for the Hera archetype, whose yearning to be a wife or at least part of a committed couple remained as strong an inner force as ever, despite societal shifts. Lesbian women differ in their sexual orientation, but the force of the archetype is the same.
Although the women’s movement supported the development of other archetypes, if Hera is the dominant archetype and she never married or married and divorced, she will feel deprived, regardless of satisfactions in other aspects of her life. Most troubled marriages tend to dissolve before a woman is of crone age, but a number of husbands do leave their older wives for younger women after decades of marriage. For a Hera woman in this situation, it is a trial by fire for her soul to come through without becoming stuck in rage and bitterness. Recovery is particularly difficult when her former spouse remarries. This can propel her into years of psychotherapy or spirituality in order to heal. To find her way through this dark night of the soul requires that she stop blaming the other woman, fully experience her grief, and accept that her marriage is over—which takes a long time.
A betrayed Hera woman can become possessed by jealousy and stuck in anger and bitterness. Taken over by the negative power of the archetype, she is in a Hera complex. When this is so, she thinks obsessively about the other woman and wants to retaliate. In the grip of her anger, she feels her humiliation rather than her sorrow, and is blind to how destructive this obsessive focus is to her own soul. Introspection does not come easily, and yet it is this that she most needs to do.
The Hera archetype is a bonding force reflected in the words of the marriage vows “for better or worse.” The depth of her bond makes it possible for many marriages to last a lifetime and become a sanctuary for both partners, after having weathered the difficulties that couples ordinarily have or a situation that would have been the end of the marriage for most. A lasting marriage can be a growth process, a source of spiritual meaning and emotional sustenance. It also is an accomplishment that fulfills the archetype. The strength of the Hera bond can also prove disastrous to the mental and physical health of a Hera wife whose spouse is abusive or has an addiction. His behavior and the Hera archetype together cause her to become a codependent or a victim. It can also be a disaster for a child when Hera’s blind loyalty to her husband is stronger than her concern for the child he abuses.
The archetype of the sacred marriage is the ideal that Hera yearns for. She wants to be in a spiritual, emotional, and physical union in which the intimacy between the couple is experienced by both as sacred. It fulfills the deepest spiritual meaning of a Hera and may be most real and possible in older, loving couples who have discovered this together.
CRONE-AGED HERA
Women who find that their crone years are golden often are content Hera women whose husbands are enjoying retirement, and both are in good health. These may be the best years of her life, a time when as a couple they enjoy recreation and travel, often in the company of other couples. Their children are grown, his work doesn’t compete for his time, they may move into a smaller house that requires very little maintenance, or even into a retirement community of other likeminded people, who share similar interests and recreation.
Some of the happiest crone-aged women are Heras who were devastated at an earlier time, and not only survived but learned and made choices that resulted in their now being in good marriages. She may have been unpartnered for a time, or the original marriage was transformed through counseling and mutual efforts to change, so that she is now in a committed relationship with intimacy and trust. Gratitude is a characteristic of such women who have known the dark side of the Hera archetype and who grew in wisdom and compassion. There are also contented Heras who are in enduring, stable marriages, whose lives seem to others to lack substance and be mainly form. For these Heras, being a social couple is enough.
When a Hera is widowed, she is at a major crossroad. Much depends next on her spiritual depth, on whether she developed other archetypes, and if she has friends and interests beyond the world of coupledom. There may be no place for a single woman in her former social world, which can be devastating to her. If being married to her husband was her only identity, and her only relationships were those in which she was half of a couple, she becomes a nobody shortly after the memorial service, and can become deeply embittered.
A widow with a soul connection to her husband is still married to him; she has lost his company but the bond remains. She misses him and may from time to time feel his presence. She may still talk to him and have a conviction that she will be reunited “on the other side.” She has bouts of loneliness, but if she becomes a wisewoman, she will be grateful for the years they had together. She knows that she hasn’t lost him or her identity.
A widow with other interests or dormant archetypes may find that these now blossom. She may travel, move, return to school, have time for creative pursuits, develop friendships, or find she has a head for business or investments. She may live for decades after his death, consider him her one and only, and have a full but different second life. When this is so, Hera has been fully lived as an archetype, leaving space in her psyche and time in her life to develop in other ways.
LATE-BLOOMING HERA
Sometimes Hera makes an appearance in a woman’s psyche in the third phase of her life serendipitously. She is not looking for a new spouse and is not feeling needy. She is not an unconscious Hera, ready to see any new man as Zeus-bringer-to-completion. But then she meets someone who becomes a soul mate first and her husband later. The deepest yearnings of a Hera for a sacred marriage is fulfilled when this happens.
Hera also can be an unfulfilled late-blooming archetype after other archetypes have taken their due and receded. This is when a woman who was identified with the virgin goddesses or with Aphrodite sees the companionship that older couples have and feels regret for the marriage that she ended, or the good men she never married. The emptiness or pangs of envy she feels now is due to a late-blooming Hera stirring in her psyche.
The Hera archetype predisposes women to be half of a couple. This applies to creative work or to projects, not just to marriage. She works best with a partner. The issue for her is her archetypal need to be a couple rather than a one-in-herself person. To maintain initiative and be faithful to the project or even to the creativity in herself, she needs a partner. In the crone phase, many Hera women are often no longer married and find that they flounder on their own, and that their creativity thrives when the work is done with a partner. When they find such a person, a man or another woman, the book can be written or the project can get off the ground, or the new business can thrive—and Hera blossoms, in this new form.