*the following is my UPG in regards to Hera as guardian of queer safe space for me. These writings are not intended to speak for any tradition or path but my own*
I never would have imagined in my wildest dreams that Hera, whom I previously had only understood as the queen of Olympus who fought against her husband's bastard children, would be a defender of my queer body. But I realized after sessions of meditation and devotional journey work with a figure who appeared to me as Peacock Boy (a child who chooses the word boy, but identifies as everything and nothing at all) that she has children beyond those we only hear about in the myths.
While writing a devotional poem for Peacock Boy, I began to realize that there was a figure near his cavern where he would go to bathe and let the feathers from his skirt fall into a pool, wherein they transformed into hammer head sharks and swam in and out of the transparent nexus of him stationed in his torso. Here he would beckon me to join him, to let my own feathers and fur and skin fall away to be reborn in cthonic waters. It was during this journey work that I felt her, like a blade in the dark, watching from the cavern's entrance, and when I came to her naked, reconfigured and riotously alive, she smiled and said, FIDELITAS, the latin word for fidelity (I think she has done this since I am more acquainted with the sound of latin words rather than greek).
She was challenging me to remain loyal to myself. And that is when I realized she is queen for a reason. She fights so virulently in the myths to maintain her house and it's power because she knows that she is wholly worth it. She is an overseer of goodness and abundance and as Zeus goes down as Ktesios throwing out his seed as he goes, she keeps him by the horns and throws him down when he goes against their agreement, calling him out on not keeping their relationship in truth and transparency.
It is my UPG that Hera and Zeus have come to have a polyamorous relationship. I don't know if it is after centuries of waking in monogamy or that they have never subscribed to monogamy all together & we as humans just tried to harness their relationship within more socially respectable standards of engagement in the past (Zeus' behavior certainly indicates he has never been monogamous, although he used to never be honest about it far as the myths are concerned,). Poly relationships require absolute truth, trust, and transparency to thrive, and Zeus, being the father of Hermes and son of Kronos that he is, often does not conform to those values, which is a source of great consternation for his Queen. So that is why I say she grabs him by the horns, and doesn't hesitate to hold him accountable. She is the keeper of family and the destroyer of those who would interfere with her loved ones, and those who would threaten to take away her agency and power as queen of the Theoi.
With that sort of history, its not surprising to see that I was surprised when she took the time to show me and point out quite firmly, that she exists outside of her husband as goddess of fertility, as a guardian of women, and as mother to multiple, beautiful beings beyond those mentioned in the myths. Zeus spreads his seed, and Hera, with a sweep of her hand, summons the children of the world out of Ge, to rise up to the brush of her feathers. She calls the rejected, protects the unloved, while smites those who rise up to threaten her sacred palace.
When Zeus did not lie with Hera for sometime, she felt an urge, a need to create, with a sweep of a peacock feather which she handed to Hephaestus, her child, the queer psychopomp who leads the lost gender variant souls to their bodies, was born. Hephaestus made a key in the shape of a peacock boy, and so I must, with great honor and respect, honor the mother of Peacock Boy who has set me onto the path of self love.
Thank you Hera. Libations and offerings shall be given in honor of what your fecundity has encouraged in this world. We are the unborn family Zeus did not give to you, but you firmly took, summoned, and grew for yourself out of the myriad, ever changing tides of Earth.
The barley blows in the wind, you walk by, and Demeter threshes from your rain and feathers bodies that shine like gold.
As always, thank you for reading,
Ecco
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