Hera
Oh faithful Queen, I do call you.
Send unto me a mate of strong character.
Bless us with your loving touch, and guard our union.
Oh mighty Queen of heaven.
Let none who live judge us unworthy.
Let none who live interfere.
Let none who live deny our devotion.
Bless me oh Queen, with a mate as faithful as you.
The Bitch of Olympus
Hera was a very highly maligned deity in ancient times. From Homer on, it seems the role of Hera was, in literature at least, that of bitch, and not in any good way. Nagging, vindictive, vengeful shrew, and little else. There is nothing worth worshipping in these representations of her, nothing, yet worship her we do, why? Because most of us can see that the reputation of Hera is not deserved. That this goddess was the center of a great religion that included cults throughout Greece, and especially in the Argolid.
Hera, the Great Goddess
Hera is the Queen of Heaven. She is a Great Goddess in every sense of the word, and then some, yet something odd happened in Greece. Something that lead to the fall of Hera from her status as the third Great Queen of Cosmos to the screeching shrew wife of the father. What happened was a strengthening of the patriarchal nature of Greek society. The more matrilineal aspects of the pre-Hellenic society, or at least the more mixed society of Hellenes and non-Hellenes, was left behind, and many of the trappings of that society fell with it. The Hellenes assimilated the non-Hellenes and their religions, and Hera's public image suffered the most of any goddess worshipped in Greece.
The simple fact of her wide spread cults, however, and she was worshipped far and wide, leads to a very important question. Why did the cults of Hera remain so strong and so wide spread even when the poetic image of Hera became so essentially detestable? I, personally, think that the poetic image and the religion split at some point prior to Homer, and went their very divergent paths into history. To our chagrin, it was the poetic form that survived into our times with a modicum of clarity, while the religious system that was Hera's religion has become the subject of speculation and Neo-Pagan 'fluffy bunnyism.'
So, if Hera was a Great Goddess of earlier times, what does that mean, exactly?
Well, it means on the one hand that Hera's religion can be partly extrapolated from the religions of the great ladies (Hera means Lady) of Minoan religion, the great mistresses such as the great mistress of the labyrinth or mistress of the citadel, etc, but so what? What we know of these religions is due largely to artistic rather than written remains of Minoan Civilization, and thus can never truly give us a real idea of what the Great Goddess Hera was seen as by the ancients that followed her and built her the greatest temples in all of Greece. We therefore run into feeling and speculation of our own, or I should say "My Own," as this site is intended to convey my ideas, not the ideas of a group.
All deities are, in my humble opinion, omnipotent and omniscient. You can ask any deity to bless any thing, but in the ancient world as well as in modern pagan systems, Gods tend to be seen as specialized because of the special patronage they pay to particular things. A 'great goddess' however, is different. A 'great goddess' is seen as mother of the universe or its queen, and as such holding power over all, man and god alike. Thus must we see Hera, who was, after all, the Queen of Heaven, the wife of Zeus, and the mistress of mighty Olympus itself. It is a role that though mentioned often in myth, is never put to much use in literature.
To the worshippers of Hera in her homeland, Hera was the Goddess. Not in a monotheistic way, no, but in the way that the people relate to her and pray and offer their sacrifices and offerings to her. They prayed to her for protection from the storms, during childbirth, at times of great need and disaster. They prayed to her to bless homes and protect cities, and they prayed to her in matters of death. Thus was she a "Great Goddess," all encompassing and ever present. They prayed to her, I dare say, in much the same way that Catholics pray to the Mother of God, as a protector and blesser of all things, and so it was that her religion, its many cults, sanctuaries, and some of the most magnificent temples in all of Greece, were dedicated to her, the blessed Queen of Heaven.
Hera, the Wife
The Olympian Mythos of Hera is somewhat limited, and one of the most glaringly obvious aspects shown within it is that of wife. Hera is an example of both a good wife and a bad one, but not in the strict sense. Hera was wife of Zeus, the King, and her vows were sacred to her. She would not breach those vows, no matter that no one today would blame her for having done so. She was a lady of honor, and honor demands that one respect ones vows. Yet strangely enough, Zeus was a God who was a benefactor and protector and even avenger of vows. One imagines, of course, that in ancient times the man was under no vow of matrimonial fidelity but that the woman was, at least in Hellenic times, but Hera's cult goes back even further than Hellenism, and so one can see here the trace of what must have at one time, in pre-Hellenic times, have been a case of the male indeed being expected to be faithful in marriage.
Hera, the Avenger
Hera's most vicious representations are those seen from the aspect of the Avenging goddess. Hera punished those women who gave in to Zeus' advances, and most particularly to those women who bore him children. The most famous of these was Herakles (Hercules) the son of Zeus and Alkmene. She hounded and sought to destroy Herakles, even driving him to madness and the murder of his own family, for which he was then punished and given the famous twelve labors.
What, exactly, does this accomplish? Well, I think that the system of honor in ancient Greece did not stop at people keeping their vows, but extended to those people around you who knew of your vows yet worked to hinder them, and so, as a goddess that avenges the wrongs done to marriage, not only does Hera punish the unfaithful, but those who knowing of the bond of marriage between two people, still work to interfere in it.
Hera, the Queen
Hera is the Queen of Heaven. If the Christians took up many of the aspects of Zeus/Jupiter and imbued their god with them, so too did they imbue Mary, the Queen of Heaven, with many of the aspects of Hera/Juno. Aspects that are sorely missing from the mythology of the patriarchal Greeks, but which was likely still very much alive in the common mind of the people of ancient Greece and Rome.
Hera, the consort of the great Sky God, was thus linked not only to earth, but to sky, and thus her power over both was manifest. The Queen of heaven, then, as the King, has some rights and power over the other forces of the universe. That is to say, she represents the power and the interests of the goddesses in the royal marriage, and in her role as queen is capable of directing those goddesses. She is, after all, their queen.