Goddesses in Everywoman:: Powerful Archetypes in Women's Lives

by Jean Shinoda Bolen

Hestia’s way of perceiving is by looking inward and intuitively sensing what is going on. The Hestian mode allows us to get in touch with our values by bringing into focus what is personally meaningful. Through this inner focusing, we can perceive the essence of a situation. We can also gain insight into other people’s character and see the pattern or feel the significance of their actions. This inner perspective provides clarity in the midst of the confusing myriad of details that confront our five senses. The inward Hestia may also become emotionally detached and perceptually inattentive to others in her surroundings as she attends to her own concerns. Again, this detachment is characteristic of all three virgin goddesses. Moreover, adding to her tendency to withdraw from the company of others, Hestia’s “one-in-herselfness” seeks quiet tranquility, which is most easily found in solitude.

With Hestia, hearthkeeping is a means through which a woman puts her self and her house in order. A woman who acquires a sense of inner harmony as she accomplishes everyday tasks is in touch with this aspect of the Hestia archetype.

Tending to household details is a centering activity, equivalent to meditation. If she were articulate about her inner process, a Hestia woman could write a book entitled Zen and the Art of Housekeeping.

Melynas Namas, Vaiva Rykstaite

When Hestia is present, a woman goes about her household tasks with a sense that there is plenty of time. She doesn’t have one eye on the clock, because she is neither on a schedule nor “putting in time.” Consequently, she is in what the Greeks called kairos time—she is “participating in time,” which is psychologically nourishing (as are almost all experiences in which we lose track of time.)

With Hestia as an inner presence, a woman is not “attached” to people, outcomes, possessions, prestige, or power. She feels whole as she is. Her ego isn’t on the line. Because her identity isn’t important, it is not tied to external circumstance. Thus she does not become elated or devastated by whatever happens. She has The inner freedom from the practical desire, The release from action and suffering, release from the inner And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving. T. S. Eliot, The Four Quartets4

Hestia’s detachment gives this archetype a “wise woman” quality. She is like an elder who has seen it all, and has come through with her spirit undampened and her character tempered by experience.

The Self is what we experience inwardly when we feel a relationship to oneness that connects us to the essence of everything outside of us. At this spiritual level, “connecting” and “detachment” are, paradoxically, the same. When we feel ourselves in touch with an inner source of warmth and light (metaphorically, warmed and illuminated by a spiritual fire), this “fire” warms those we love in our households and keeps us in touch with others who are far away.

From Greek times on, Western cultures have emphasized duality, a splitting or differentiation between masculine and feminine, mind and body, logos and eros, active and receptive, which then all became superior and inferior values, respectively.

When Hestia and Hermes were both honored in households and temples, Hestian feminine values were, if anything, the more important—she received the highest honors. At that time, there was a complementary duality. Hestia has since then been devalued and forgotten. Her sacred fires are no longer tended, and what she represented is no longer honored.

When Hestia’s feminine values are forgotten and dishonored, the importance of inner sanctuary—going inward to find meaning and peace—and of family as sanctuary...

Hestia and Hermes represent archetypal ideas of spirit and soul. Hermes is the spirit that sets the soul on fire.

Hestia can be found in the quiet solitude and sense of order that comes from doing “contemplative housekeeping.” In this mode, the woman can be totally absorbed in each task, unhurried in doing it, with time to enjoy the resulting harmony.

For example, a day taken to clean out a closet may involve discarding and keeping clothes, remembering and anticipating events, sorting both belongings and self.

Hestia to be present, a woman needs to focus on one task at a time, one area or one room at a time, whatever feels easily manageable in the time available.

She is describing an experience of the archetype of the Self, which always feels beyond ego and effort, a gift of grace.

She tries to be unobtrusive in all situations and cultivates solitude in the midst of others. Hence she becomes virtually “persona-less,” like the goddess herself.

More recently, Hestias have been attracted to various Eastern religions that have flourished in the United States since the 1970s.

Hestia represents the Self, an intuitively known spiritual center of a woman’s personality that gives meaning to her life.

When “male” scientific skepticism is allowed to penetrate spiritual experience and to demand “proof,” the invasion invariably violates a woman’s sense of intactness and meaning.

Alternately, if a Hestia woman is “carried away by Poseidon,” she is being overwhelmed by the God of the Sea. Poseidon represents the danger of being flooded by oceanic feelings or by contents that well up from the unconscious. When this flood threatens her, she may dream that a huge wave is bearing down on her.

In waking life, preoccupation with an emotional situation may keep her from feeling centered. If the turmoil leads to depression, Poseidon’s watery influence can temporarily “put out the fire at the center of Hestia’s hearth.” When threatened by either Apollo or Poseidon, a Hestia woman needs to seek her one-in-herselfness in soli...

When Hera, Demeter, or Persephone are dominant archetypes, the motivational pull is relationship, rather than achievement and autonomy or new experience. The focus of attention is on others, not on an outer goal or an inner state. Consequently, women identified with these goddesses are attentive and receptive to others. They are motivated by the rewards of relationship—approval, love, attention, and by the need of the archetype to mate (Hera), to nurture (Demeter), or to be dependent (Persephone as the Kore).

Diffuse awareness explains the scanning consciousness that allows a parent to hear a child whimper through the din of conversation, or that enables a wife to know that her husband is upset, feeling ill, or under pressure when he walks in the door (sometimes even before he may be aware of it himself). This receptive, diffuse kind of consciousness can take in the whole or “gestalt” of a situation. (In contrast, the “focused consciousness” characteristic of Artemis, Athena, and Hestia—the three virgin goddesses—concentrates on one element to the exclusion of everything else.)

The Hera archetype first and foremost represents a woman’s yearning to be a wife. A woman with a strong Hera archetype feels fundamentally incomplete without a partner. She is motivated by a “goddess-given” instinct toward marriage. Her grief at being without a mate can be as deep and wounding an inner experience as being childless is for a woman whose strongest urge is to have a baby.

Evidence that Hera might not be solely a creation of a patriarchal culture—a culture that devalues a woman unless she has been chosen by a man (the more powerful the man the better)—is suggested by a similar drive in many lesbian women.

Many lesbians feel the same urge to have a mate, the same need for fidelity, the same expectation that fulfillment will come through her partner, and the same pressing desire for a ritual ceremony that will provide an outer acknowledgment of being paired.

The Hera archetype provides the capacity to bond, to be loyal and faithful, to endure and go through difficulties with a partner. When Hera is a motivating force, a woman’s commitment is not conditional. Once married, she means to stay so, “for better or worse.”

The goddess Hera did not express anger at Zeus for his public infidelities. The pain she felt at being rejected by him and at being humiliated by his affairs she channeled into vindictive rage directed at the other woman or at children fathered by Zeus. The Hera archetype predisposes women to displace blame from her mate—on whom she is emotionally dependent—onto others. And Hera women react to loss and pain with rage and activity (rather than with depression, as is typical of Demeter and Persephone). In my analytic work, I’ve found that vindictiveness is a mental sleight of hand, which makes a Hera woman feel powerful rather than rejected.

Hera woman takes pleasure in making her husband the center of her life. Everyone knows that her husband comes first. The children of a Hera woman realize well the order of her universe: the best is always saved for him. Other people quickly get the picture, too: she puts them “on hold” until she checks with him.

If a Hera woman has children and can’t form an archetypal mother-child bond, her children will sense her failure as a lack of love and protection. Even if she is a full-time wife and mother and is physically very much present in their lives, they will feel a lack of closeness and will sense some emotional abandonment.

Hera women also bloom after marriage. The radiant bride becomes the happy wife. If her husband is a devoted Zeus who loves her, the marriage will be a deeply meaningful center of her life. Other goddess aspects may find expression, although always secondary to her role as wife.

When a woman identifies with Hera, she often assumes that she and her husband will be transformed by marriage, unconsciously expecting her husband to become Zeus Teleios, or Zeus who fulfills.

Many Hera women project an image of an idealized husband onto a man and then become critical and angry when he does not live up to expectations. Such a woman then may become “shrewish” (Homer’s view of the goddess Hera) as she urges him to change. Another type of woman might see the man more clearly in the first place, might not expect that marriage would transform him, or might be able to leave him.

Demeter is the maternal archetype. She represents maternal instinct fulfilled through pregnancy or through providing physical, psychological, or spiritual nourishment to others. This powerful archetype can dictate the course a woman’s life will take, can have a significant impact on others in her life, and can predispose her to depression if her need to nurture is rejected or thwarted.

A woman with a strong Demeter archetype longs to be a mother. Once she becomes a mother, she finds it a fulfilling role. When Demeter is the strongest archetype in a woman’s psyche, being a mother is the most important role and function in her life. The image of mother and child—most often represented in Western art as the Madonna and child—corresponds to an inner picture that deeply moves her.

The mother archetype motivates women to nurture others, to be generous and giving, and to find satisfaction as caretakers and providers.

The Demeter archetype is a compelling force toward getting pregnant. A woman may be quite conscious of how strong the instinct is and may be able to decide when she will fulfill this deep desire. But if unconsciously motivated by Demeter, she may find herself “accidentally” pregnant.

Feeding others is another satisfaction for a Demeter woman. She finds nursing her own child tremendously satisfying. It gives her pleasure to provide ample meals for family and guests. If they enjoy her food, she basks in the warmth of feeling like a good mother (rather than—as Athena might—like a gourmet chef).

Similarly, women who move to the country to grow their own food, bake bread, can fruits, and share their bounty with others are expressing the Mother Nature aspect of Demeter.

These expressions of bountifulness are all found in Demeter women. Some naturally provide tangible food and physical care, some provide emotional and psychological support, while others give spiritual nourishment.

These three levels of giving also parallel what Demeter women give their own children. First their children depend on their mothers to take care of their physical needs. Then they turn to their mothers for emotional support and understanding. And, finally, they may look to their mothers for spiritual wisdom as they cope with disappointments and grief or seek to find some meaning in life.

Much more common than these extreme forms of withholding are Demeter mothers who withhold approval as their children grow more independent of them. While the mother’s depression is less evident in these circumstances, withholding approval (which a child needs for self-esteem) is also connected with depression. She experiences her child’s growing autonomy as an emotional loss for herself. She feels less needed and rejected, and as a result may be depressed and angry.

Unlike Hera, whose primary bond was the wife-husband relationship, the strongest bond of these Earth-Mother goddesses was mother-child.

Real life parallels the Demeter myth when maternal women are married to unpaternal men. In this situation, a Demeter daughter grows up closely identified with her mother and unconnected to her father.

Or, a Demeter daughter’s maternal qualities may result in her reversing roles with immature or incompetent parents. As soon as she’s old enough, she may look after her parents or become a surrogate parent for younger siblings.

In contrast, if a young Demeter has a father who is affectionate and approving of her, she will grow up feeling his support for her wish to be a good parent herself. She will view men positively and will have positive expectations of a husband. An archetypal susceptibility to become victimized will not be enhanced by her childhood experience.

Within families, mothers and daughters who are all Demeter women may remain close for generations. These families have a decided matriarchal cast. And the women in the family know what is going on in the extended family, much more than the husbands do. This mother-daughter pattern may also be duplicated with peers. She may take the Demeter maternal role with a Persephone-like friend who is inexperienced and indecisive. Or, if both are Demeter women who also share Persephone qualities, they may take turns mothering each other, and at other times can both be Demeters, sharing details of their lives and talking about their joys and difficulties. Or, yet again, they may both be playful, giggling Persephones.

A Demeter woman attracts men who feel an affinity for maternal women. A true-to-type Demeter woman does not do the choosing. She responds to a man’s need for her and may even be with a man because she feels sorry for him. Demeter women don’t have high expectations of men. More often they feel that “men are just little boys.”

A common type of couple where the woman is Demeter fits the pattern of Great Mother mated to a son-lover. This archetypal mother-son relationship does not refer to a difference in chronological years, although the man may be younger. Usually he is a talented, sensitive man who feels unappreciated or misunderstood by others who do not value his specialness (as she does) and who won’t overlook his irresponsibility (as she does). He is an immature, self-absorbed boy with a sense of specialness, more than he is a man. She agrees with his self-assessment and repeatedly overlooks behavior toward her that others consider selfish and thoughtless.

As far as she is concerned, the world is unkind to him. It should make exceptions for him, as she does. His thoughtlessness often hurts and angers her—but if he then tells her how much he appreciates her, or how she’s the only person in his life that really cares about him, all is again forgiven. Like a mother of a handsome son, who wonders how she could have given birth to such a young god, the Demeter woman playing Great Mother to his son-lover role may also be in awe of his appearance (or his talent). She may say, as one Demeter woman said to me, “He looked ...