Πυριστεφης

It is time to share the little known statuette of Hekate that happens to be her oldest depiction in Greece! It is a terracotta figure, dated from the 6th century BCE and found at Athens. As you can see, it doesn`t show any of the famous Hekatean attributes that make the goddess recognizable in later statues and reliefs, but it can be identified thanks to a votive inscription.

In line with my previous big essay on the cosmic role of Hera as a goddess demonstrating the perfect completeness of Zeus’s restructured universe, I have encountered in Walter Burkert’s « Greek Religion » a most interesting claim that made me think about a new angle through which one could view her:

« Hera represents the normal order of the polis – the inversion of this order is her anger. And yet it is in this inversion that Dionysos fulfils his true nature »

I believe that Hera’s mythic and cultic opposition to Dionysus is an allegorical representation of normal Ancient Greek society opposing and resisting the topsy-turvy-ness that must be repressed or controlled for the proper functioning of the world. Moreover, I propose that we must understand Hera, before all the qualities famously ascribed to her, as a goddess of normalcy and established social order, and that all other attributes and qualities traditionally given to her derive from this function.

I’d like to start with Hera’s opposition to Dionysus, which in line with the quote from Burkert, could represent the firm opposition of the regular social order to the loosened or inverted social mores incarnated by Dionysus, which are then integrated in the social order (Olympian society) after much contending. This can be seen by a few cultic restrictions where one’s cult excluded the other, and sometimes even temporarily stopped when the other was celebrated. Hera’s and Dionysus’s priestesses were not allowed to greet each other, no ivy was allowed in Hera’s sanctuaries and temples, and her Athenian temples would temporarily close during the Eleusinian Mysteries due to Dionysus-Iakkhos’s presence during their celebration. The goddess of normalcy, of « everything is going well », withdraws when the god of « turning everything upside down » is out in town. Moreover, this polarized hostility could be justified in the Orphic tradition whereby Dionysus is destined by fate to become Zeus’s successor, causing the goddess to go out of her way to prevent this from happening. Hera refuses and vehemently resists the major change of divine hierarchy that would be the divine succession of Dionysus. Her efforts succeed of course, but only temporarily, as Dionysus is still later reinstated as part of the divine society with Hera’s consent and following Zeus’s plan. This view of Hera could be one explanation for why Hera’s myths involve temporary chaos, a tremor in perfect divine society, which ultimately ends with reconciliation and the reinforcement of the established social order; the forces of the irrational are brought back into the fold and all is well in the perfect society ruled by Zeus.

Additionally I would also further argue that Hera’s dominion (to the extent agreed with by scholars) over marriage but neither sex and love (the domain of Eros and Aphrodite), childbirth (represented by Eileithyia and Artemis) nor motherhood (which is the role of Leto and Cybele), is an extension of her role over the regular social order. Bruce Lincoln in The Rape of Persephone: A Greek Scenario of Women's Initiation says of defloration:

« The defloration of a woman is not, in the same sense that menstruation and childbirth are natural events, a natural event. It involves a deliberate human act to induce it. It is thus the point at which control by the society of the physical power of women is greatest, for the timing and circumstances can be socially determined in a way that the other physical events in a woman's life cannot be. In a male-dominated society such as that of the Gisu [and that of the Greeks] this is vitally important and is, I suggest, the reason why defloration, rather than other events, is made the focus of the most important rite de passage for women. »

The fact that Hera commands marriage and by definition, the chief rite of passage for women in Ancient Greece (as it is literally what made them women, gynaikes) could be understood as her presiding over and reinforcing the control of social order upon women, their reproductive abilities, and the most basic microcosm of human society, the family which perdures via social reproduction enacted through the birth of legitimate children aware of their place in society. That this incarnation of regular social order be represented by a goddess, the queen of the gods, and thought of in the form of a married woman upon whom the bonds of social control are the tightest, is no coincidence; a bride is a matron-to-be, and brides carried the heavy eye of society the hardest. Hera is the goddess who assists brides in taking their proper place in Ancient Greek society as wives to proper men (whose transition to adulthood she oversaw in some areas), then through the action of her daughter Eileithyia, as mothers to proper citizens. Rinse and repeat for a few hundred years, and society perdures as is, forever and ever, a never-ending cycle of predictable events.

This prerogative of Hera to watch over social reproduction and order in the polis must have been partially why the Greeks made her a goddess of political power. As wife of Zeus she enjoys the privilege of using her husband’s power and giving prosperity and power to whoever she chooses, making her a prime ally to Greek colonies in Magna Graecia who must have needed to make their mark among the people around them and be functional enough to act autonomously. By securing the grace of Hera, these colonies effectively « married » the countries they were settling in and maintained good relations with their neighbors. Failure to keep that favour - or worse, angering the goddess - could threaten the very existence of a city previously under her protection. This was the case for example, in Sybaris which according to some Ancient Greek writers, fell because they angered her by murdering ambassadors, bringing down her incendiary rage and paving the way for their sudden and violent destruction. The anger of the goddess takes the nature of a city (ie exist and stay standing) and flips it upside down, which in the Ancient Greek mind meant nothing but dissolution, chaos, war and destruction.

However strong is Hera’s anger, her benevolence is greater in that it brings about new life and new growth. This could be why (if we give credence to this hypothesis) Hera was possibly viewed as a goddess of the earth and of blossoming nature. She is, after all, called Horolytos (« who releases the Horae ») at Camirus, and we know that the Horae are goddesses connected to time (whether hours or seasons or both, that is up to you). Hera then, in presiding over the Horae which have nursed her in some traditions, is the guarantor of the smooth running of the earth’s cycles, of bringing forth the seasons at the right time, in line with the right and perfect order that she is so fond of. By her action, she preserves and perpetuates not just human society, but also provides smooth continuation for the natural world (which was often used as a metaphor in wedding-songs for metaphors on married life, but that’s another topic altogether).

Hera as we ought to understand her, is a goddess of boundaries and thresholds; she stands over them, making sure that everything is in its right place and preventing any improper breaching, whether that be in the bounds of marriage, the growth of children, or the turning of the seasons. My argument was not to say that Hera as order is purely rigid and strict, but we see in multiple examples from myth that although the patterns she operates in are fixed, she leaves space for nuance and flexibility. We see her adopt many of Zeus’s children as her own despite them initially being contemptuous to her; she famously suckles baby Herakles (less famously baby Hermes) and lets him marry her daughter Hebe after death, accepts Dionysus after he proves himself to her by doing what he does best and freeing her from the bonds of her throne (a very nice allegory if you ask me), and takes in Athena and countless others without issue. Hera’s order can feel restrictive for those who are in it, but just like our own society, it is flexible and eventually provides space for previously anarchical elements to reside in, so long as they prove to be a net positive for the universe as it stands.

Hera Teleia, the fulfilled goddess, is in a sense a reflection of what has been fulfilled by Zeus, but also a fulfiller herself in that she brings people and things to their proper conclusion, their perfect ending, their teleios telos. The order she watches over is manifold and is what provides us with a semi-functional society. She presides over transitions and the sanctioned crossing of boundaries, but does not create or control them; that is our prerogative, our right and our duty as citizens and humans. We should therefore make sure that society as it stands does all of its members fairly and without exclusion, that we may all share in the fruits provided by Demeter and the Horae without any of us being treated as an outsider or undesirable. Thank you for reading, and may Hera bless your year

Sources and further reading:

• Walter Burkert - Greek Religion

• Lewis R. Farnell - Cults of the Greek States, vol.1

• Bruce Lincoln - The Rape of Persephone: A Greek Scenario of Women's Initiation

someone will remember us

I say

There’s other instances of people randomly punching slaves that they didn’t even know because they got in their way or something. This was just normal behavior.

And slaves didn’t rebel en masse because if even one slave committed an act of violent rebellion it was common practice to kill every slave and former slave in the household.

People only took notice for posterity when these mass executions got into the hundreds of people. One of the few recorded for the history books is of over 400 people being killed because one guy stabbed his enslaver.

Isis-Hecate, mistress of magic, riding a dog. Terracotta, 1–2 Century AD

Engraved Scaraboid with Aphrodite Riding a Goose, about 400 B.C.E.

Aphrodite riding on a goose. Terracotta from Locri, Calabria, Italy. Made in Boeotia c. 470 – 460 BC. [this actually looks like a swan to me; look at the upper beak?].

Aphrodite on a goose, 2nd-1st Century B.C.E.

Aphrodite riding on a goose, 380 BCE, Taranto.

Relief of Aphrodite on a goose, 50 BCE-100 CE, Italy.

Gracious Hekate, roamer of the streets, protector of laypeople, I pray to you. Cast your gaze upon those in need And guard them, With all of your wonderous might. Goddess of witchcraft, I implore you, If ever I've spoken good of your name, To aid and watch over those Who cannot do so themselves. Bless them with the touch of your hand And let your light be a guide to them. You, Hekate, who sees the stars in the shadows, See us now.

- Most people “know” Astarte as a goddess of love and war, usually framed as the Near Eastern blueprint for Aphrodite, whose war aspect was supposedly scrubbed out when she reached Greece because of misogyny. (And by “most people,” I mostly mean Overly Sarcastic Productions and their viewers.)

The problem is that this isn’t actually true.

First of all, the neat Ishtar → Astarte → Aphrodite lineage is heavily disputed. I’m planning to read Stephanie Lynn Budin’s The Origin of Aphrodite to get even deeper into the scholarship, but even at a basic level, the comparison starts to fall apart once you look at who Astarte actually was. She doesn’t line up very well with Aphrodite at all.

More importantly, Astarte was not a goddess of sex, love, marriage, or reproduction in the way Aphrodite was. As Rüdiger Schmitt puts it, she was “not a fertility goddess, but rather a goddess of war, apotropaic magic, and kingship” (p. 10 of Athtart). Treating her as a flattened “love-and-war Aphrodite prototype” does a disservice to both goddesses, and seriously distorts the ancient evidence.

- Should we even call her Astarte? Her Ugaritic name was Athtart, and in Phoenicia it was Ashtart; Astarte is simply the romanized version of her name. In recent years, translators have largely abandoned the custom of using Roman names for Greek gods. I remember reading the Iliad, Oedipus Rex, Antigone, and similar works in high school and having to buy editions that referred to Jupiter, Minerva, and Ulysses—a practice that has thankfully fallen out of use. So why don’t we extend the same courtesy to Canaanite gods?

- In a complete shift of tone, here’s my favorite art of her:

- Her relationship with her sister Anat is genuinely fascinating. They’re siblings (daughters of El in Ugaritic religion, Ptah in Egyptian), and their bond is oddly beautiful. Despite both being war goddesses, they’re not teaming up for carnage—instead they’re healing poisonous bites, curing their dad’s hangover, and hyping up Baal. Soft, supportive lethal sisters 🫂

Hekatean prayer beads with twenty-nine beads of bone, four brass rattlesnake vertebrae, eight volcanic stone beads, twelve garnet beads, and a brass central medallion, flower bell, and antique key.

Each piece is hand made with unique variations. No two keys, flowers, vertebrae, or beads are identical, and the hand casting techniques that produce the Hekatae talisman (the same two-sided Hekate talisman I sell individually) likewise produce unique results.

These talismans are not consecrated. That task is yours, in accordance with the instructions provided by your gods and familiar spirits.

Each piece comes with a box to store the talisman in while it is sleeping.