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Hera, Queen of Heaven
Hera (Ήρα) is goddess of women and marriage, and queen of the heaven. Her name may be a feminine version of Eros (Ἔρος). A better meaning may be 'the earth alloted' from Indo-European 'er-', 'Earth' and 'ai-1', 'To give, allot'. This would bring Hera in line with Rhea and Gaea.
Every goddess has a realm or domain over which she rules and Hera's realm is the domain of marriage. She is the wife of Zeus and quite active in the Iliad. She seemed jealous of Zeus and his power and often seemed to be getting back at people. But jealousy is not a suitable attribute of a goddess and it would be best not to interpret Hera's acts in this way. The fact is that as a goddess she has access to all knowing and would have no reason to be jealous. As an immortal she has little reason to fear anything. She was free to move through space and she knew the future before it happened. But her seeming jealousy and rocky relation with Zeus made her seem fallible and this made her more endearing to her worshippers. She seemed much more accessible than the perfect Athena, Artemis, or Aphrodite. Another aspect of this jealousy is that it might be interpreted as a characteristic of married women in ganeral in the ancient Greek times. Since it was a fact of domestic life it may have been logical to attribute it to Hera.
Hera was one of the children of Cronus and Rhea as was Zeus. The Samians held that she was born in Samos on an island by the river Imbrasus under a very old willow tree. The Titans Ocean and Tethys brought her up. Zeus courted her unsuccesfully. He then turned to trickery, changing himself into a disheveled cuckoo. Hera, feeling sorry for the bird, held it to her breast to warm it. Zeus then resumed his normal form and taking advantage of the suprise he gained, raped her. She then married him to cover her shame. She wedded Zeus and had by him three children. She was called the Queen of Heaven and the queen of the immortals. But Zeus was not a faithful husband and had affairs with numerous other women. Hera proved to be vengeful even when the women Zeus dallyed with were forced against their will. She was capable of goodness, though, and it is to her that married women turned for help. Hebe, Ilithyia, Hephaestus, and Ares were her children by Zeus.
Classical Greeks had her as the sister and wife of Zeus, however, her worship predates the worship of Zeus. She seems to be an image of the ancient mother goddess that Zeus never quite conquered. The ancient Greeks did not understand why marriage between a brother and a sister was a bad thing so they tolerated it in their deities. It is bad because it allows recessive genes to dominate and produces a greater proportion of babies with genetic diseases such as hemophelia. Though they were not from the same mother or father, Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite were treated as sisters. They form a group which is much like the Charities, a triple goddess group. Sometimes Artemis is included in this group as a fourth goddess.
At first Hera felt it seemed like fun to be married to the most powerful man in the universe. But he was not a very faithful husband. He kept raping beautiful damsels. Was it his fault or theirs? Hera, of course, was concerned and often jealous. Though Hera was as perfectly beautiful as any other goddess Zeus seemed quickly tired of her conquest. Hera often had to resort to the tricks of Aphrodite to get him involved in sex. But when she did, she was able to get her way. See book XIV of the Iliad for details. Her physical beauty was of course perfection as was the beauty of most of the goddesses. It is really not possible to assign one goddess the title of most beautiful even though Paris, son of Priam pretended to do just this. One of the points of the judgement of Paris that is often missed is the notion that beauty involves other gifts beside physical appearance.
Hera is designated as the queen of heaven and this seems important but there are other goddesses that are similarly situated. Rhea has more important children and seems more justly called the mother of the gods. Gaia has a similar situation. As mother of the Titans she is the mother of the earlier generation of gods. Hera, Rhea and Gaia are often confused for this reason. The name of Zeus is related to the Indo-European word for sky god and Jupiter comes from the same word plus father. Many believe that the Minoan pantheon was dominated by females and that the Zeus marriage with Hera actually represents a conquest of the Minoan pantheon by the Indo-European. An interesting notion, along these lines is contained in the myth of Europa. In the Myth Europa is carried from Tyre to Crete on the back of a bull. This could be a story about Hera coming from that region to Crete. This is supported by the importance of the bull in Minoan religion. But Europa would have to be equated with a triple goddess of which Hera is a part. Aphrodite and Athena also have precedents from the area of Tyre. But the name "Hera" is Indo-European. It comes from the Indo-European word "ser-1" meaning to protect. Hera is a female hero.
Hera has several symbols. A peacock is a symbol of her pride. Her pride comes from her strong marriage and the family it provides. A cow is a symbol of her role of giving birth to children that she raises with her milk. Another symbol is the pomegranate, symbol of marital love and fruitfulness. She is usually pictured with a crown and scepter which represent her position as the queen of heaven. This means essentially that she is the wife of Zeus, the head god.
Hera is an immortal goddess. This means that though she was born, she will never die. A goddess cannot be killed, though she can be confined. Zeus confines deities in Tartarus who should no longer be active. All goddesses have a number of attributes which Hera shares. They can move through the air and are often symbolized with wings because of this. They can change their shape so they can appear to mortals as a bird, a beast, or another mortal. They know what has happened and will happen. They can fortell the future and they live outside of time and are not bound by time. They are, however, bound by fate, and necessity. Every goddess is assigned a realm at conception. Some realms are small, such as a spring, or a tree. Others are much larger and can be a natural process. Hera was assigned the realm of marriage. This means that she is the personification of marriage. This means that she is not different from the marriage institution and her personality can be directly derived from it. It is her realm because her thoughts determine the natural laws of that marriage. She also listens to prayers on that subject and issues modifications where desirable. It is here that her main power lies. A goddess has no real enemies, but Zeus encourages them to strive against one another. In order to bring about action in another realm a goddess will have to make a deal with the deity that controls that realm.
She was a beautiful goddess, but she was vindictive. She was jealous of the women Zeus had affairs with even when he had tricked or deceived them. She considered each of these affairs a personal injury to herself and she punished the women, sometimes even to their decendents. What follows are some quotes from the Iliad that suggest her nature:
"Then said Hera all crafty and full of guile...."
"...white-armed Hera...."
"Apollo made her no answer, but Zeus's august queen was angry and upbraided her bitterly. 'Bold vixen,' she cried, 'how dare you cross me thus? For all your bow you will find it hard to hold your own against me. Zeus made you as a lion among women, and lets you kill them whenever you choose. You will find it better to chase wild beasts and deer upon the mountains than to fight those who are stronger than you are. If you would try war, do so, and find out by pitting yourself against me, how far stronger I am than you are.'
"She caught both Artemis' wrists with her left hand as she spoke, and with her right she took the bow from her shoulders, and laughed as she beat her with it about the ears while Artemis wriggled and writhed under her blows. Her swift arrows were shed upon the ground, and she fled weeping from under Hera's hand as a dove that flies before a falcon to the cleft of some hollow rock, when it is her good fortune to escape. Even so did she fly weeping away, leaving her bow and arrows behind her."
"Zeus, Poseidon, and Zeus's grey-eyed daughter, who persisted in the hate which they had ever borne towards Illium with Priam and his people; for they forgave not the wrong done them by Paris in disdaining the goddesses who came to him when he was in his sheepyards, and preferring her who had offered him a wanton to his ruin.$quot;
"I shall have trouble if you set me quarrelling with Hera, for she will provoke me with her taunting speeches; even now she is always railing at me before the other gods and accusing me of giving aid to the Trojans." "Wife," said Zeus, "I can do nothing but you suspect me and find it out. You will take nothing by it, for I shall only dislike you the more, and it will go harder with you. Granted that it is as you say; I mean to have it so; sit down and hold your tongue as I bid you for if I once begin to lay my hands about you, though all heaven were on your side it would profit you nothing."
"On this Hera was frightened, so she curbed her stubborn will and sat down in silence."
The Samians held that she was born in Samos on an island by the river Imbrasus under a very old willow tree. The Titans Ocean and Tethys brought her up. The ancient Greeks believed that she was an immortal goddess who will never die. In fact she is as alive today as she was during the time of ancient Greece.
According to myth Hera was literally born twice. Her father Cronus had learned that one of his children would overthrow him so he had take to swallowing them as soon as they were born. Cronus is a god and can change his shape and size to accomodated his task. Cronus might have changed himself into a blue whale, for example, before he ate the baby Hera. Hera, for her part, is immortal and cannot be killed. When she was a baby she was able to be confined. All Cronus did was to confine Hera inside his body. There she matured and when she came out she was full grown, but unfortunately naked as the day she was born.
Hera was one of the children he swallowed. Later, when Zeus had overthrown Cronus, he was able to recover the siblings who had been swallowed. He caused Cronus to regurgitate the now full-grown siblings. It seems as though Hera was born full-grown and naked the second time because Zeus could not contain himself and he had to have her for his wife. They were married shortly afterward. As the goddess of marriage she quickly learned all the worst of what a marriage could be by having to deal with Zeus's former affairs and many yet to come. For mankind this does not turn out so bad because she then could advise mortal women on the very worst that men could be. She even had to endure being strung up and beaten with anvils hung from her legs. As a result of this difficult birth she seems to have been a very understanding goddess who real women could turn to for help.
My best guess as to the date of her birth relates to the date of the Venus of Willendorf, which is about 24,000 BCE. This means that I assume that Hera was born about the time humans first seemed to be aware of goddesses. Her relation to childbirth connects her to other goddesses and the Moon in particular. This connection with women suggests that she was an important part of Minaoan Culture as their religious was more focused on women and goddesses.
More than likely some aspect of her came from Phoenicia to Crete with Aphrodite. The Phoenicians had contact with Crete far into the distant past. The Phoenicians had two goddesses who shared many traits: Astarte and Anath. The myth of Europa seems to relate to this transfer thoughonly one female, Europa, is involved. The myth as we have it was constructed more recently. The fact that Zeus rapes Europa probably relates to the domination of Zeus over the religion dominated by the goddess.
If we strip Zeus out of the picture what we have is the story of a woman riding a bull over to Crete. We can then see that the bull is related to the religion of the Minoans. That the bull was important to the Minoans is strongly suggested by the archeological remains from that culture. But the many stories about Cretan religion seem to confirm this. This is especially true of the story of Pasiphae giving birth to the Minotaur. We can then interpret the story of Europa as a Female goddess riding the Bull of religion over to Crete.
The next step in the process involves the transfer of Hera and Aphrodite to the Mainland. But by this time Athena had come to Crete, possibly from Africa. In much ancient Greek art these three goddess Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite are treated together. The Greeks, probably the Mycenaeans, were fond of tripling goddess and there were several such goddesses even in classical times, including the Fates, the Graces, the Charities, and the triple-triple, the Muses. Most remnants of the tripling of Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite relate to the judgement of Paris. It is important to note that early on this was not a beauty contest, but rather a sharing of gifts. The story that seems to relate to this transfer is Theseus and the Minotaur. Unlike the previous step where two goddesses are represented by Europa, now three, or even four goddesses are represented by Ariadne. Like Europa there is symbolism in the story, but it is not clear what the symbolism is.
Theseus goes to Crete in the company of children to be served up to the Minotaur. This does not sound like an invading army. And the Minotaur is only half a bull. That Theseus defeats the Minotaur with the help of Ariadne might suggest that Theseus has realized the value of both Aphrodite for having Ariadne fall in love with him and Athena for using the wisdom of the string so he could find his way out. The role of Hera is not yet clear.
Why Ariadne is lost on the island of Naxos is also not clear either. But this does bring another goddess into the story. In the Odyssey, when Odysseus visits the Kingdom of the dead in book XI, Odyssesu states "I saw ... fair Ariadne, the daughter of grim-hearted Minos, whom Theseus carried off from Crete; he was taking her to Athenian soil, but he had no joy of her, for Artemis slew her first on the island of Dia because Dionysos told tales." What we know from other myths was that she was not just slain but was transformed to the wife of Dionysus.
Athena, Aphrodite and Hera, and maybe even Artemis, are taken to Athens by Theseus. Now the Europa story is rewritten so that Zeus no longer is seen to rape Hera, but she never becomes a very willing bride. Now in the Odyssey, Book XX to the daughters of Pandereus: "And Here gave them beauty and wisdom beyond the lot of women" and "Athene taught them skill in all famous handiwork." It is possible that Hera provided the wisdom at this time and Athena was only involved with handiwork.
As a result of these observations the timeline of Hera starts in Ancient Crete and is joined by an aspect from Phoenicia. The other move to the Greek mainland occurs at the time of Theseus just before the Trojan War. The final collapse of the worship of Hera occurs about 125 AD.
Some support to this is given by a study of the names of the gods and goddesses. Of the major Greek deities only the derivation og the name of Zeus is clear. Guthrie points out that the name for Zeus comes from the Indo European word for shining. This name is better related to Dionne and it is know Zeus and Dione were consorts. The name 'Hera' is better related to the word "Herakles' and some believe that Hera and Herakles were once consorts. Guthrie points out (p. 66) that A. B. Cook proposed the present arrangement that seemed to be a result of the merger of two tribes. From Guthrie we can also conclude that Hera had Mediterranean roots and Zeus came with the Indo-Europeans. We know the Mycenaeans were that Indo-Europaean culture because Michael Ventris was able to prove that their writing, linear A, was Greek amd Greek is an Indo-European Language. We do no know where the names of the other goddesses came from. Phoenician is unlikely because their writngs containg no mention of these gods. The Minoan culture is a distint possibility but we cannot know the truth of this until their writing, linear A, is translated. At present Hera has not been found amoung either Minoan or Mycenaean remains.
In should be noted that pairing of a goddess and consort seems to have been originally a factor of fertility festivals. The mating of these two provided the fertility. And it was in the ogiastic ritual that the human participants were able to achieve ectacy and union with their divine counterparts. According to guthrie the orgy was more generally celebrated and was not confined to Dionysus. The worship of Hera may have originally involved such things.
One other note is that the nature of Hera obviously involved a transformation over a fairly short time. We consider ourselves cultured and civilized and quite different from the savages such as the American Indians and the Aborigenes. If we trace our culture back through the Greeks we can say we are quite distant from the culture of the savages. Yet the Greeks achieved a very high level of culture is a very short time and were not at all distant in time from the savages and their culture. In fact the immediate ancestors of the the Greeks had similar aspects in their culture to the cultures of the North American Savages. It is not surprising to find that what we consider savage culture to have been transformed into Greek culture. What is more surprising is that our culture has regressed into savagery and is some ways less cultured than that of the Greeks. Perhaps the study of Hera can cause a reconsideration of what is culture and what should be pursued and what should be dropped about our culture.
Hera is an immortal goddess and will never die.
Hera was the daughter of Cronus and Rhea and the sister of Hestia, Hades, Poseidon, Zeus, and Demeter. Ares, Hebe, and Hephaestus were her children. Uranus and Gaea were the parents of Cronus and Rhea.
Hebe, Ilithyia, Hephaestus, and Ares were her children. Eris, Hecate, and the Charities might also have been her children. The children who married are as follows:
Goddesses are born to their realm, normally as a result of the personifications of their parents. Hera, the queen of heavens, was the daughter of father time and mother of the gods. She became the wife of Zeus quite naturally since he was the king of earth and heavens.
Request: heras festivals held in honor.
Answer:in Harrisons's Prolegomena p. 315 she says: "At Samos, at the curious festival of the Tonea, it is the image of a woman goddess that is carried out of town and bound among the bushes,.." reffering to Hera. Later festivals to Zeus also included Hera.
Question: What type of events were included in the festival of Hera
Answer: One or more processions were done, perhaps carrying an image of Hera. Sacrifices and their associated festivities were done including a celebratory banquet where the roasted victims were eaten. One festival included a footrace of maidens.
Question: why were the festivals in ancient greece held in honor of hera
Answer: Hera ruled and important realm and it is always helpful to obtain the favor of a powerful goddess.
Question: What are Hera's symbols??
Answer: The cow and the peacock are sacred to Hera.
Question: Why were the cow and peacock her symbols? I understand the cow because it has been sacred in many other cultures previously but how did the peacock some to play in her mythology?
Answer: Pausanias, Description of Greece 2.17.1 "but the peacock dedicated by the Emperor Hadrian is of gold and gleaming stones." He dedicated it because they hold the bird to be sacred to Hera." Homer and Hesiod make no mention of a peacock so it may be a later development.
Answer: "...but the peacock dedicated by the Emperor Hadrian is of gold and gleaming stones. He dedicated it because they hold the bird to be sacred to Hera." Pausanias, Description of Greece, 2.17.1
"According to their mythologies, Hera created the peacock from the eyes of her one hundred-eyed guard, Argus. There are two versions of this myth. In one, the jealous Hera sets Argus to guard Zeus's secret lover, Io, whom he has disguised as a heifer in a vain attempt to protect her from his wife's wrath. Eventually, Zeus has Argus killed and Hera rewards the faithful guard by turning ndhim into a peacock. In another version of this story, Argos falls asleep on the job and Hera plucks out every one of his eyes and sets them in the peacock's tail. Needless to say, Hera was quite the zealous protectress of marriage and the home." Click here
Question: How was Hera associated with a cow
Answer: The uterus of a woman is shaped a lot like the head of a cow with horns. The Minoans and Mycenaeans worshipped the bull for this reason. When the Indo-european people came into Greece their god was a bull so he was married to a cow. The bull became Zeus and the cow became Hera.
Question: why is the cow and peacock sacred to her
Answer: For the cow see the previous. She was associated with a peacock because of her vanity.
Question: What does the symbol of the peacock stand for?
Answer: Royalty, colorfulness, and pride.
Question: things that were sacred to hera
Answer:
Question: Is the peacock sacrid to Hera because of her incounter with Io?
Answer: We like to see connections because it gives us confidence in the ordiliness of the Universe. So the encounter with Io is important but not everything. Hera has a more involved plan for us. Thus Hera's vanity is also related to the peacock. Does this vanity somehow relate to marriage? Is the peacock related to marriage in some way. Does a good marriage require many eyes? You may find many reasons for the peacock to be sacred to Hera.
UP TO INDEXFor a mortal their uniqueness involves the makup of their body and the way they behave. We talk about an individual personality of a mortal. A goddess is different. A goddess is tied up more with a realm which in fact determines the personality of a goddess. A goddess is pictured with a body but this is only for convenience. A goddess presents herself to a mortal as a body for the purposes of communication. Actually the body of the goddess extends to all parts of her realm. This is what allows the goddess to respond to every event in her realm at once. And the nature of the realm determines the nature of the response to guarantee that the response is appropriate. The nature of the realm is in turn determined by the decisions the goddess has made regarding the realm from the beginning. So the response of the goddess in her realm is what mortals see as her personality.
Hera is the goddess of marriage and married women. Marriage and married women are the way they are because of decisions that Hera has made. So Hera is much like marriage and married women and she knows how to respond to them and does this easily. That she is seen as jealous is perhaps because jealousy benefits married women. Because of her realm Hera acts like a married woman. That is part of her personality. Artemis must be a maiden because she is the goddess of maidens. Hestia must have the personality of the hearth in a home, etc.
UP TO INDEXHera was a goddess by birth. She gained more power by being born than by being married to Zeus. She was conceived as the goddess of marriage and this was her birthright.
As with all goddesses she had the power to prophecy, The power to move through the air, and the power to change her shape. A goddess could also negotiate with other deities for other temporary powers. She was the goddess of heaven and the goddess of marriage and the life of married women and so she had most of powers in these realms. Within her own realm she could set the natural law and provide fixes when her law went awry. Most of these fixes were transformations which she performed with the aid of a wand. She could change the nature of a marriage and what happened to the two partners, including how the woman's birth goes and whether the husband is faithful.
Zeus is the King of the gods and Hera is his wife. Zeus is more powerful than all the other gods and goddesses combined, but hera is just a major goddess. Hera was respected but not that powerful. The story of the Trojan war seem to make Aphrodite the most powerful goddess with Athena second with Artemis and Hera third or forth. It takes Hera and Athena to defeat Aphrodite in the Trojan war.
It is possible that Hera once was truely queen and the most powerful goddess, but Zeus overcame her and made her subserviant to him. This relates to the way she was worshipped in Crete, and what she was before she came. It was after she came to Crete that Zeus married her. Zeus may have raped her and she was forced to marry him.
Question: why did the greeks make up her?
Answer: Neither Hera nor any of the Greek myths are fictions. Myths are not made up. The truth of myths are revealed to one or more people in the culture and they convince others of the truth. We think they are myths because we do not see them as true. The ancient Greeks were very logical people and they thought the stories about Hera went a long way to explaining the world as they found it.
Question: If the goddesses of ancient greece were highly respected and honored by the other male gods and most importantly, the mortal men, why weren't the mortal women more respected and treated more fairly?
Answer: The truth seems somewhat different. Goddesses were not that highly respected, and mortal woman were more respected than you indicate. Thetis was captured against her will by Peleus. Zeus did not respect Hera enough to be faithful. Zeus is not recorded as raping a goddess yet the story of Europa may represent this concept. The woman in this story may have been demoted from goddess to mortal just because she was raped. Poseidon was not very respectful of Athena when he raped medusa in the temple of Athena. On the other hand stories of the rape of women by men can have some complimentary connotations. The women of Greece were so beautiful that the Gods were driven to acts of passion. This meant that many mortals could trace their lineage to the deities.
Athough the argument that the women of ancient Greece were treated unfairly is quite strong, there is also reason to believe that they were much better off in Greece than elswhere. The women of ancient Greece seem to be relatively free of the taboos that are quite cripling of the women of many primitive societies, and others that are not even that primitive. Furthermore, the practice of isolating the women did serve to protect them from many vulgar acts and conversation. The incidence of rape was greatly reduced and adultery was fairly uncommon. Unfortunately, the education of women was ignored, so women tended to be illiterate and the stories of their experience were not written down for posterity to evaluate.
Question: How can you say what the Greeks and the Romans did were true?
Answer: Consistencies support truth and inconsistencies take that support away. Consider the following quote from Pausanias, Description of Greece, 1.14.1. "Above the Cerameicus and the portico called the King's Portico is a temple of Hephaestus. I was not surprised that by it stands a statue of Athena, be cause I knew the story about Erichthonius. But when I saw that the statue of Athena had blue eyes I found out that the legend+ about them is Libyan+. For the Libyans have a saying that the Goddess is the daughter of Poseidon and Lake Tritonis, and for this reason has blue eyes like Poseidon. Hard by is a sanctuary of the Heavenly Aphrodite; the first men to establish her cult were the Assyrians, after the Assyrians the Paphians of Cyprus and the Phoenicians who live at Ascalon in Palestine; the Phoenicians taught her worship to the people of Cythera. Among the Athenians the cult was established by Aegeus, who thought that he was childless (he had, in fact, no children at the time) and that his sisters had suffered their misfortune because of the wrath of Heavenly Aphrodite. The statue still extant is of Parian marble and is the work of Pheidias. One of the Athenian parishes is that of the Athmoneis, who say that Porphyrion, an earlier king than Actaeus, founded their sanctuary of the Heavenly One. But the traditions current among the Parishes often differ altogether from those of the city." Other contemporary literature makes statements which are consistent with these statements. But more importantly this passage makes statements about physical objects. Sometimes these objects can be identified through archeological techniques. This also provides consistency.
UP TO INDEXQuestion: What did Hera do before she was married?
Answer: Goddesses are born to their position, so she was the goddess of marriage without being married. In Crete durin Minoan times she may have even been the queen of heaven without Zeus. Zeus reduced her from a ruling queen to a blushing princess. In Phoenicia before Crete she was most likely the goddess of love and sex the same as Aphrodite.
Question: what does she do
Answer: Hera was very jealous and vindictive and caused much suffering as a result. If Zeus was sexually attracted to a mortal woman then Hera punished the woman even though is was usually Zeus who was at fault. She did good when she protected marriages.
Question: who did Hera marry
Answer: Zeus and Hera were husband and wife.
Question: was hera married to anyone else besides Zeus?
Answer: No. There is no record of any other marriage by Hera.
Question: Why did Hera marry Zeus?
Answer: My guess is that he raped her and she wanted to make sure he took care of the child. She also probably felt that as king of the gods that she would obtain some status through this marriage.
Question: did hera ever love zues?
Answer: She thought she did, but I doubt it.
Question: did hera have any affaires?
Answer: The goddess of marriage probably would not have affairs.
Question: relationships with zeus
Answer: Stormy.
Question: how are hera,zeus,and theseus related?
Answer: Theseus probably arranged the marriage of Hera and Zeus and brought Zeus to Crete and Hera to Athens.
Question: When did Hera marry Zeus?
Answer: As soon as she knew she was pregnant by Zeus.
Question: was she sexy
Answer: Since the relation bewteen Zeus and Hera was based on lust, she must have seemed very sexy to Zeus.
Question: why was hera jealous
Answer: She was very proper and concerned about her social status.
Question: How old was Hera when she was raped by Zeus?
Answer: She was old enough to become pregnant, but not too old to be a beautiful bride.
Question: is she gay
Answer: No. Hera, the goddess of marriage, is not gay.
Question: How many times did Hera have sex
Answer: As the goddess of marriage she must have sex almost once a day to maintain the perfect marriage. Since she is an immortal goddess she must still be doing it. But now she may not have as many petitioners to consider. Though the end of her worship may not mean the end of her work. After Christianity took over many of the goddesses were transformed into angels. She may be doing her work now as an angel. Even today there are sculpures of what are termed angels which are really goddesses. You can tell by their sexiness and their iconography. Angels are sexless. But harps, doves, geese, and ivy are icons of of the ancient Greek religion.
Question: why was she hang by zeus
Answer: Zeus wanted Hera to behave so he hung her up so he could whip her. He wanted to punish her for tormenting Herakles and prevent further torment. All he did was to prove that he and Hera were codependent. This is part of a cycle of violence and deceit which is no foundation for a good marriage. The relation between Zeus and Hera is a disfunctional marriage which serves to illustrate who will benefit from marriage counseling and how. Perhaps her main contribution to marriage is what not to do.
UP TO INDEXUnder their clothes everyone is nude. They are born nude and their nudity must be dealt with by their mother. Often the mother is nude when she gives bith, and must use her nudity to become pregnant. Nudity is a part of the marriage realm and has both good and bad aspects. Nude beauty is an aspect of sex, but it is also a symbol of purity. The beauty of a naked prostitute is a symbol of evil temptation while the beauty of a naked newborn babe is a symbol of innocence. Beauty is also associated with the love that a mother provides. Because a mother must bare her breasts to nurse her baby, this love is also associated with nudity
Hera was swallowed by her father. Cronus had learned that one of his children was destined to dethrone him. He did not know which one so he swallowed all his children. He tried in this way to alter fate. But this act of swallowing enraged Rhea so she hid one of her children from Cronus. This turned out to be the very one that would dethrone Cronus. Also Hera was swallowed when she was a naked, newborn baby. We have no stories about what happened during her time in Cronus but she probably grew and remained naked. When she was disgorged she was a beautiful, naked, full-grown young woman. Perhaps the sight of Hera at that time is what attracted Zeus to Hera. He did not seem to be able to contain himself and he deceived her so he could rape her.
The swallowing of Hera by her father has a sexual connotation. This is not being a good father. A good father will demonstrate how a man will relate to a woman in terms of respect and care. He will leave her sex organs alone. More than likely the myth can be interpreted in this way. What Cronus does in swallowing his daugter is to restrict her to his realm. He protects her and provides for her there until she is born again in marriage. The regurgitation is actually a second birth. The ancient Greeks took this to be the death of the maiden and birth of the married woman. Her nakedness may refer to her state on her marriage night.
The rape of Hera by Zeus is easily missunderstood. This may refer to and early time when men had to seize women they wanted to marry to get them away from their families. The custom of carrying a bride over a threshood sems to hearken back to this time. This was not as bad as it seems because usually a man needed the help of a willing woman to accomplish this. Unfortunately on occaision an unwilling woman was obtained. This story may also refer to the domination of the Hera Cult by the Zeus Cult. The suggestion is that this domination was an act of force.
As a goddess Hera was perfectly beautiful naked, but this was not enough to keep Zeus focused on her. There are no stories indicating that she withheld herself in this way. And so the stories of her jealousy of women Zeus was interested in seem easy to understand. But they may reflect more what an ancient Greek woman had to do to preserve her marriage than anything Hera really had to do.
Hera is a very beautiful woman. She looks like any other beautiful woman naked. But she is also very vengeful. Acteon saw Artemis naked and she arranged his death. If you deserve to see the naked beauty of Hera, then she will arrange it for you, but if you do not deserve it she may vengefully take your life if you see her that way. The Ancient Greeks were not inclined to portray a nude Hera. A person is judged by the quality of their clothes so they would be inclined to portray her dressed in fine clothes because they respected her. But they had the concept of the heroic nude so they often portrayed heros nude. Later artists had difficulty with pinting nude men and clothed women. In fact it came to be considered immoral. You could paint the gods and goddesses nude, but only if they were all nude. Other humans had to be clothed. This was the rule from about 1300 to 1850. Lately that rule has broken down. A nude Hera is a common image in pictures relating to the Judgement of Paris.
Nude Hera:
One can wonder if the behavior of Hera was representative of the women of Ancient Greece. The ancient Greek men were very concerned to have the men seem to own the women so they could be sure they also possesed their proper offspring. But does this mean that the women were slaves of the men? There is one story which deals with Hera in a particularly humiliating way.
"Once when Zeus was being partcularly overbearing to the other gods, Hera convinced them to join in a revolt. Her part in the revolt was to drug Zeus, and in this she was successful. The gods then bound the sleeping Zeus to a couch taking care to tie many knots. This done they began to quarrel over the next step. Briareus overheard the arguements. Still full of gratitude to Zeus, Briareus slipped in and was able to quickly untie the many knots. Zeus sprang from the couch and grapped up his thuderbolt. The gods fell to their knees begging and pleading for mercy. He seized Hera and hung her from the sky with gold chains. She wept in pain all night but, none of the others dared to interfere. Her weeping kept Zeus up and the next morning he agreed to release her if she would swear never to rebel again." Referernce
While the Iliad (Book I) Achilles states to Thetis:
"Ofttimes in my father's house have I heard you glory in that you alone of the immortals saved the son of Kronos from ruin, when the others,
400] with Hera, Poseidon, and Pallas Athena would have put him in bonds. It was you, goddess, who delivered him by calling to Olympus the hundred-handed one whom gods call Briareus, but men Aigaion, for he has more force [biê] even than his father;
[405] when therefore he took his seat all-glorious beside the son of Kronos, the other gods were afraid, and did not bind him."
Later in the Iliad (Book XV) Zeus states to Hera:
. "I see, Hera," said he, "you mischief-making trickster, that your cunning has stayed Hektor from fighting and has caused the rout of his host. I am in half a mind to thrash you, in which case you will be the first to reap the fruits of your scurvy knavery. Do you not remember how once upon a time I had you hanged? I fastened two anvils on to your feet, and bound your hands in a chain of gold which none might break, and you hung in mid-air among the clouds. All the gods in Olympus were in a fury, but they could not reach you to set you free; when I caught any one of them I gripped him and hurled him from the heavenly threshold till he came fainting down to earth; yet even this did not relieve my mind from the incessant anxiety
[25] which I felt about noble Herakles whom you and Boreas had spitefully conveyed beyond the seas [pontos] to Cos, after suborning the tempests; but I rescued him, and notwithstanding all his mighty labors I brought him back again to Argos. I would remind you of this that you may learn to leave off being so deceitful, and discover how much you are likely to gain by the embraces out of which you have come here to trick me."
I do not find and ancient reference to Hera drugging Zeus. I do find a reference to Zeus being bound but he does not punish Hera for this. Rather he punishes her by hanging her for annoying Herakles. This whole busines raises questions about marriage and the role of a man in it. Is he allowed to string her up and thrash her any time he wants? Many sites on the web suggest the sexy thing to do is strip her, hang her up naked, and then whip her. This would be beneficial for her because it gives her sexual pleasure they say. They even suggest that it is sexy because her nipples vibrate each time she is thrashed. But Hera does not thank Zeus for her whipping. In fact she "trembled as he spoke" and Themis later asks of Hera "has your husband the son of Kronos been frightening you?"
Zeus does not seem to be whipping Hera for her sexual pleasure while he might be doing it for his own. In the meantime he is causing her a lot of pain.He also seems to be trying to control her, but his method seems ineffective. It is so ineffective that it seems unlikely that a normal husband would want to follow his example. Zeus is lucky because Hera is a goddess and she always heals to perfect beauty. A mortal woman would probably be badly damaged, both physically and psychologically.
Since this is not good behavior for a husband to inflict on a wife, one has to wonder how Zeus gets to do it. Is it possible that it is the relic of a defeat of one group by another? Such acts are common in the context of a war.
UP TO INDEXQuestion: when hera die
Answer: Hera is an immortal goddess and will never die. Her worship stopped for the most part about 125 AD.
Question: how and why did the Greeks worship/feared Hera
Answer: First the Greeks had the idea that evil came from unhappy deities, whether male or female. Second, they knew Hera was quite troublesome to Zeus and thus quite likely to be troublesome to humans.
Question: around what time period, did she live
Answer: Hera is an immortal goddess and will never die. She was worshipped from about 25,000 BCE to about 125 AD
Question: When was Hera a Godess?
Answer: An immortal goddess lives forever. She was worshipped as a goddess from about 25,000 BCE to about 125 AD. Question: What culture and religeos things was she into Answer: Ways of worshipping Hera: The most important way is to be a good family member.
Question: was Hera ever nice?
Answer: A goddess acts according to her divine plan. Whether it is nice or mean depends upon human interpretation. An many humans have interepreted some of her acts as nice.
UP TO INDEXAn index to images of Hera is at: Click Here
An index to ancient information on Hera is located at Click Here
Hera's Symbols and Associations
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