5.4: The Goddess Divided

A good deal of Greek myths, Robert Graves argues, “is politico-religious history,” (xxix) composed to memorialize invasions, conquests, and regime changes. Yet, Elizabeth and Paul Barber reason that early people were reasonably conscious of heresy and the innate risk of offending a deity. With Zeus’ defeat of the serpent monster Typhoeus–an avatar of the Great Goddess–he secures the ascendancy of the patriarchal rule in Olympus.

Zeus is an incarnation of the ancient Sky God, a figure who often served as consort to the Mother Goddess. Early people feared and sacrificed to the Sky God, but he was remote, a supernatural force that could bring death from his lightning strikes, but didn’t transcend that role by offering nurturing and renewal in the manner of the Mother. The ancient Sky Gods, from which Zeus is descended, existed in a liminal space, distant enough to not affect the daily lives of people. This, Karen Armstrong explains, very early understanding, “makes it clear that mythology will not succeed if it concentrates on the supernatural; it will only remain vital if it is primarily concerned with humanity” (Armstrong Myth 21). Thus, mythology and likely religion, wouldn’t have endured had it only focused on the spectral masculine powers, which qualified the value of a maternal goddess. However, Ouranos, Kronos, and Zeus’ rule depended upon mastering the properties of the feminine. Yet, rather than tread heavily upon the territory of a goddess who oversees both life and death, ancient peoples, perhaps wisely, transferred her valuable properties to lower-tiered goddesses, those who served directly under Zeus or slightly to his side, and who regularly worked within his agency.

During family succession challenges in the Theogony, Hesiod describes the resentment Kronos generated amongst his offspring, a simmering pot of fear and hatred that led to the plot between his wife and her youngest child, Zeus resulting in his primal act of violence: castration of his father, the act that secured his place as leader and allowed him to allocate the dominions. Like a later medieval king, he separated the powers and spread apart the divisions to focus each of his siblings’ energies upon their divergent constituencies.

The divisions worked well for the male powers, but left women in vulnerable places. Having largely lost status and autonomy, women became chattel and subject to rape as a means of conquest and a way for men and gods to establish their legacy through progeny. To further subject women, and reject the sexual ceremonies of the Goddess, the cult of virginity was sanctified to seal discrete male possession. Rape was weaponized within warfare as a means to demoralize the conquered civilizations, a reversal of previous practices: “In ancient Sumer rape had been punishable by death; later Semitic peoples in the Fertile Crescent executed married women who were raped. The old, once sacred mysteries of womanhood were mythologically transformed into negative entities like Harpies, Sirens, and witches” (Leeming 157-58).

The Olympian goddesses were born and assigned the duties of the retired Goddess. On Olympus they would serve under the familial corporate structure, deferring to Zeus in all matters of importance.