Goddesses in Everywoman

A New Psychology of Women

Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D.

• Publisher: HarperOne
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780061747953
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

A classic work of female psychology that uses seven archetypcal goddesses as a way of describing behavior patterns and personality traits is being introduced to the next generation of readers with a new introduction by the author.

Psychoanalyst Jean Bolen's career soared in the early 1980s when Goddesses in Everywoman was published. Thousands of women readers became fascinated with identifying their own inner goddesses and using these archetypes to guide themselves to greater self–esteem, creativity, and happiness.

Bolen's radical idea was that just as women used to be unconscious of the powerful effects that cultural stereotypes had on them, they were also unconscious of powerful archetypal forces within them that influence what they do and how they feel, and which account for major differences among them. Bolen believes that an understanding of these inner patterns and their interrelationships offers reassuring, true–to–life alternatives that take women far beyond such restrictive dichotomies as masculine/feminine, mother/lover, careerist/housewife. And she demonstrates in this book how understanding them can provide the key to self–knowledge and wholeness.

Dr. Bolen introduced these patterns in the guise of seven archetypal goddesses, or personality types, with whom all women could identify, from the autonomous Artemis and the cool Athena to the nurturing Demeter and the creative Aphrodite, and explains how to decide which to cultivate and which to overcome, and how to tap the power of these enduring archetypes to become a better "heroine" in one's own life story.

1.

Goddesses as Inner Images

A fragile baby girl was put in my friend Ann’s arms, a “blue baby” with a congenital heart defect. Ann was emotionally moved as she held the small infant and looked at her face. She also felt a deep ache in the center of her chest under her breast bone (or sternum). Within moments, she and that baby had forged a bond. After that, Ann visited the child regularly, maintaining contact as long as it was possible. The infant did not survive open-heart surgery. She lived for only a few months, yet she made a profound impression on Ann. At that first meeting, she touched an inner image imbued with emotion that lay deep within Ann’s psyche.

In 1966, Anthony Stevens, a psychiatrist and author, studied attachment bonds in infancy at the Metera Babies Centre, near Athens, Greece. What he observed happening between nurses and these orphaned infants paralleled Ann’s experience. He found that a special bond was formed between a baby and a specific nurse through mutual delight and attraction, a process that was like falling in love.

Stevens’s observations belie the “cupboard love theory,” which postulates that bonds gradually form between a mother and a child through caretaking and feeding. He found that no less than a third of the infants became attached to nurses who had done little or no routine caretaking of the child before the bond formed. Afterward, the nurse invariably did much more for the child, usually because she came to reciprocate the attachment but also because the child would often refuse to be tended by any other nurse when “his” nurse was in the vicinity.¹

Some new mothers experience an immediate attachment to their newborn; a fiercely protective love and deep tenderness toward this infant wells up in them as they hold the precious, helpless baby to whom they have just given birth. We say that the baby evokes the mother archetype in such women. For other new mothers, however, maternal love grows over a period of months, becoming obvious by the time the baby is eight or nine months old.

When having a baby does not activate “the mother” in a woman, the woman usually knows that she isn’t feeling something other mothers feel, or something she herself has felt for another child. The child misses a vital connection when “the mother” archetype isn’t activated, and keeps yearning for it to occur. (Although, as happened with nurses at the Greek orphanage, the archetypal mother-child pattern can be fulfilled through a woman who is not the biological mother.) And yearning for that missed attachment can continue into adulthood. One forty-nine-year-old woman, who was in a women’s group with me, wept as she spoke of her mother’s death, because now that her mother was dead that hoped-for connection could never develop.

Just as “the mother” is a deeply felt way of being that a child can activate in a woman, so also each child is “programmed” to seek “the mother.” In both mother and child (and therefore in all humans), an image of mother is associated with maternal behavior and emotion. This inner image at work in the psyche—an image that determines behavior and emotional responses unconsciously—is an archetype.

“The Mother” is only one of many archetypes—or latent, internally determined roles—that can become activated in a woman. When we recognize the different archetypes, we can see more clearly what is acting in us and in others. In this book, I will be introducing archetypes that are active in women’s psyches and that are personified as Greek goddesses. For example, Demeter, the maternal goddess, is an embodiment of the mother archetype. The others are Persephone (the daughter), Hera (the wife), Aphrodite (the lover), Artemis (the sister and competitor), Athena (the strategist), and Hestia (the hearthkeeper). As names for archetypes, of course, the goddesses are helpful only when the images fit the woman’s feelings, for archetypes do not really have names.

C. G. Jung introduced the concept of archetypes into psychology. He saw archetypes as patterns of instinctual behavior that were contained in a collective unconscious. The collective unconscious is the part of the unconscious that is not individual but universal, with contents and modes of behavior that are more or less the same everywhere and in all individuals.²

Myths and fairytales are expressions of archetypes, as are many images and themes in dreams. The presence of common archetypal patterns in all people accounts for similarities in the mythologies of many different cultures. As preexistent patterns, they influence how we behave and how we react to others.

THE GODDESSES AS ARCHETYPES

Most of us were taught about the gods and goddesses of Mt. Olympus at some time in school and have seen statues and paintings of them. The Romans worshipped these same deities, addressing them by their Latin names. The Olympians had very human attributes: their behavior, emotional reactions, appearance, and mythology provide us with patterns that parallel human behavior and attitudes. They are also familiar to us because they are archetypal; that is, they represent models of being and behaving we recognize from the collective unconscious we all share.

The most famous of them were the Twelve Olympians: six gods, Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Apollo, Ares, Hephaestus, and six goddesses, Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Artemis, Athena, and Aphrodite. One of the twelve, Hestia (Goddess of the Hearth) was replaced by Dionysus (God of Wine), thus changing the male/female balance to seven gods and five goddesses. The goddess archetypes I am describing in this book are the six Olympian goddesses—Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Artemis, Athena, and Aphrodite—plus Persephone, whose mythology is inseparable from Demeter’s.

I have divided these seven goddesses into three categories: the virgin goddesses, the vulnerable goddesses, and the alchemical (or transformative) goddess. The virgin goddesses were classified together in ancient Greece. The other two categories are my designations. Modes of consciousness, favored roles, and motivating factors are distinguishing characteristics of each group. Attitudes toward others, the need for attachment, and the importance of relationships also are distinctly different in each category. Goddesses representing all three categories need expression somewhere in a woman’s life—in order for her to love deeply, work meaningfully, and be sensual and creative.

The first group you will meet in these pages are the virgin goddesses: Artemis, Athena, and Hestia. Artemis (whom the Romans called Diana) was the Goddess of the Hunt and Moon. Her domain was the wilderness. She was the archer with unerring aim and the protector of the young of all living things. Athena (known as Minerva to the Romans) was the Goddess of Wisdom and Handicrafts; patron of her namesake city, Athens; and protector of numerous heroes. She was usually portrayed wearing armor and was known as the best strategist in battle. Hestia, the Goddess of the Hearth (the Roman goddess Vesta), was the least known of all of the Olympians. She was present in homes and temples as the fire at the center of the hearth.

The virgin goddesses represent the independent, self-sufficient quality in women. Unlike the other Olympians, these three were not susceptible to falling in love. Emotional attachments did not divert them from what they considered important. They were not victimized and did not suffer. As archetypes, they express the need in women for autonomy, and the capacity women have to focus their consciousness on what is personally meaningful. Artemis and Athena represent goal-directedness and logical thinking, which make them the achievement-oriented archetypes. Hestia is the archetype that focuses attention inward, to the spiritual center of a woman’s personality. These three goddesses are feminine archetypes that actively seek their own goals. They expand our notion of feminine attributes to include competency and self-sufficiency.

The second group—Hera, Demeter, and Persephone—I call the vulnerable goddesses. Hera (known as Juno to the Romans) was the Goddess of Marriage. She was the wife of Zeus, chief god of the Olympians. Demeter (the Roman goddess Ceres) was the Goddess of Grain. In her most important myth, her role as mother was emphasized. Persephone (Proserpina in Latin) was Demeter’s daughter. The Greeks also called her the Kore—“the maiden.”

The three vulnerable goddesses represent the traditional roles of wife, mother, and daughter. They are the relationship-oriented goddess archetypes, whose identities and well-being depend on having a significant relationship. They express women’s needs for affiliation and bonding. They are attuned to others and vulnerable. These three goddesses were raped, abducted, dominated, or humiliated by male gods. Each suffered in her characteristic way when an attachment was broken or dishonored, and showed symptoms that resembled psychological illnesses. Each of them also evolved, and can provide women with an insight into the nature and pattern of their own reactions to loss, and the potential for growth through suffering that is inherent in each of these three goddess archetypes.

Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love and Beauty (best known by her Roman name Venus) is in a third category all her own as the alchemical goddess. She was the most beautiful and irresistible of the goddesses. She had many affairs and many offspring from her numerous liaisons. She generated love and beauty, erotic attraction, sensuality, sexuality, and new life. She entered relationships of her own choosing and was never victimized. Thus she maintained her autonomy, like a virgin goddess, and was in relationships, like a vulnerable goddess. Her consciousness was both focused and receptive, allowing a two-way interchange through which both she and the other were affected. The Aphrodite archetype motivates women to seek intensity in relationships rather than permanence, to value creative process, and be open to change.

THE FAMILY TREE

To better appreciate who the goddesses are and what relationships they had to other deities, let us first put them in mythological context. Here we are indebted to Hesiod (about 700 B.C.), who first tried to organize the numerous traditions concerning the gods into an ordered arrangement. His major work, the Theogony, is an account of the origin and descent of the gods.³

In the beginning, according to Hesiod, there was Chaos—the starting point. Out of Chaos came Gaea (Earth), dark Tartarus (the lowermost depths of the underworld), and Eros (love).

Gaea, feminine-gendered Earth, gave birth to a son, Uranus, who was also known as Heaven. She then mated with Uranus to create, among others, the twelve Titans—ancient, primeval, nature powers who were worshipped in historical Greece. In Hesiod’s genealogy of the gods, the Titans were an early ruling dynasty, the parents and grandparents of the Olympians.

Uranus, the first patriarchal or father figure in Greek mythology, then grew resentful of the children he parented with Gaea, so he buried them in her body as soon as they were born. This caused Gaea great pain and anguish. She called on her Titan children to help her. All were afraid to intervene except the youngest, Cronos (called Saturn by the Romans). He responded to her cry for help and, armed with the sickle she gave him and a plan she devised, lay in wait for his father.

When Uranus came to mate with Gaea, spreading himself on her, Cronos took the sickle, lopped off his father’s genitals, and threw them into the sea. Cronos then became the most powerful male god. He and the Titans ruled over the universe and created new deities. Many represented elements present in nature, such as rivers, winds, and the rainbow. Others were monsters, personifying evil or dangers.

Cronos mated with his sister Titan, Rhea. From their union were born the first-generation Olympians—Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus.

Once again, the patriarchal progenitor—this time Cronos—tried to eliminate his children. Forewarned that he was destined to be overcome by his own son and determined not to let this happen, he swallowed each child immediately after the birth—not even looking to see if the newborn were a son or a daughter. In all, he consumed three daughters and two sons.

Grief-stricken at the fate of her children, and pregnant again, Rhea appealed to Gaea and Uranus to help her save this last one and to punish Cronos for castrating Uranus and swallowing their five children. Her parents told her to go to Crete when the birth time came and to trick Cronos by wrapping a stone in swaddling clothes. In his hurry, Cronos swallowed the stone, thinking it was the child.

This last, spared child was Zeus, who did indeed later overthrow his father and come to rule over mortals and gods. Raised in secret, he later tricked his father into regurgitating his siblings. With their help, Zeus embarked on a prolonged struggle for supremacy, which ended in the defeat of Cronos and the Titans and their imprisonment in the dungeons of Tartarus.

After their victory, the three brother gods—Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades—drew lots to divide the universe among themselves. Zeus won the sky, Poseidon the sea, and Hades the underworld. Although the earth and Mt. Olympus were supposed to be shared territory, Zeus came to extend his rule over these areas. The three sisters—Hestia, Demeter, and Hera—had no property rights, consistent with the patriarchal nature of the Greek religion.

Through his sexual liaisons, Zeus fathered the next generation of deities: Artemis and Apollo (God of the Sun) were the children of Zeus and Leto, Athena was the daughter of Zeus and Metis, Persephone the daughter of Demeter and Zeus, Hermes (the Messenger God) was the son of Zeus and Maia, while Ares (God of War) and Hephaestus (God of the Forge) were the sons of his royal consort Hera. There are two stories of Aphrodite’s origin: in one she is the daughter of Zeus and Dione; in the other, she preceded Zeus. Zeus fathered Dionysus in an affair with a mortal woman, Semele.

At the end of the book, a cast of characters is given: biographical sketches of the gods and goddesses, listed alphabetically for reference, to help keep track of who’s who in Greek mythology.

HISTORY AND MYTHOLOGY

The mythology that gave rise to these Greek gods and goddesses emerged from historical events. It is a patriarchal mythology that exalts Zeus and heroes, one that reflects the encounter and subjugation, of peoples who had mother-based religions, by invaders who had warrior gods and father-based theologies.

Marija Gimbutas, a professor of European archaeology at the University of California at Los Angeles, describes “Old Europe,” Europe’s first civilization.⁴ Dating back at least 5000 years (perhaps even 25,000 years) before the rise of male religions, Old Europe was a matrifocal, sedentary, peaceful, art-loving, earth- and sea-bound culture that worshipped the Great Goddess. Evidence gleaned from burial sites show that Old Europe was an unstratified, egalitarian society that was destroyed by an infiltration of seminomadic, horse-riding, Indo-European peoples from the distant north and east. These invaders were patrifocal, mobile, warlike, ideologically sky-oriented, and indifferent to art.

The invaders viewed themselves as a superior people because of their ability to conquer the more culturally developed earlier settlers, who worshipped the Great Goddess. Known by many names—Astarte, Ishtar, Inanna, Nut, Isis, Ashtoreth, A...

Table of contents

• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• Introduction to the Thirtieth Anniversary Edition
• Introduction: There Are Goddesses in Everywoman
• 1. Goddesses as Inner Images
• 2. Activating the Goddesses
• 3. The Virgin Goddesses: Artemis, Athena, and Hestia
• 4. Artemis: Goddess of the Hunt and Moon, Competitor and Sister
• 5. Athena: Goddess of Wisdom and Crafts, Strategist and Father’s Daughter
• 6. Hestia: Goddess of the Hearth and Temple, Wise Woman and Maiden Aunt
• 7. The Vulnerable Goddesses: Hera, Demeter, and Persephone
• 8. Hera: Goddess of Marriage, Commitment Maker and Wife
• 9. Demeter: Goddess of Grain, Nurturer and Mother
• 10. Persephone: The Maiden and Queen of the Underworld, Receptive Woman and Mother’s Daughter
• 11. The Alchemical Goddess
• 12. Aphrodite: Goddess of Love and Beauty, Creative Woman and Lover
• 13. Which Goddess Gets the Golden Apple?
• 14. The Heroine in Everywoman
• Appendix: Who’s Who in Greek Mythology
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author
• Praise
• Also by Jean Shinoda Bolen
• Back Ad
• Copyright
• About the Publisher