Goddesses in Everywoman by Jean Shinoda Bolen

Author:Jean Shinoda Bolen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers

TRANSFORMING RAGE AND PAIN INTO CREATIVE WORK: THE HEPHAESTUS SOLUTION

When a Hera woman is in a bad marriage or must struggle to get free of being vindictive, victimized Hera herself, one possible solution is suggested by the myth of Hera’s son Hephaestus, God of the Forge. He symbolizes a potential inner strength, which the goddess herself rejected but which is still available to Hera women. (Hera favored her other son, Ares, God of War. “Like mother, like son”—Ares’s uncontrolled fury on the battlefield mirrored Hera’s out-of-control vindictiveness.)

Hephaestus—known as Vulcan to the Romans—had his forge inside a volcano. Symbolically, he represents the possibility that volcanic rage can be contained and changed into creative energy to make armor and works of art.

A spurned and angry Hera woman can choose between being consumed by her rage or containing her hostile impulses and reflecting on her available choices. If she can see that she is becoming crippled and limited by her rage and jealousy, she could channel her anger into work. She might literally follow the example of Hephaestus (whose wife Aphrodite was repeatedly unfaithful to him) and become a craftswoman. She could work with clay, firing what she makes in the kiln, and in the process become changed herself—metaphorically transformed by the fire of her emotions into an artisan rather than being consumed and destroyed. Or she might channel the intensity of her feelings into painting or writing. Work of any kind, mental or manual, can serve as a means of sublimating rage. And sublimation is much more healthy than allowing rage to feed on itself and destroy her.

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