Modern Goddesses for the Pagan World

0 Comments | Insight on the News, March 13, 2000 | by Stephen Goode

There's no end to the silly stuff for the people receives in the mail, but surely one of the silliest was a recent flier advertising a new book by "actress and speaker" Agapi Stassinopoulos, who has joined the popular pagan bandwagon of our time to write something she calls Conversations With the Goddesses: Reveal the Divine Power Within You.

"They're sexy. They're powerful. They're wise, adventurous, loving and courageous," the flier shouts at the reader. "They're the Greek goddesses" and the author promises to bring them "into modern life" and reveal "what their myths can tell us about operating as a woman in the world today."

There's Athena, for example, "goddess of wisdom, justice, the arts, mercy and compassion," and her modern-day counterpart (according to the flier) is none other than ... Gloria Steinem.

There's Persephone, goddess of death, rebirth and transformation, whose lesson is the very contemporary (and nonsensical) sounding: "If you admit and own your negative feelings, you can have authority over them." Her modern-day counterparts, it says here, are Madonna, Cher and Roseanne.

But for the people's favorite is easily Hera, goddess of marriage. Her counterpart (according to the very, very with-it flier) for our times is (who else?): Hillary Rodham Clinton! An interesting choice if you really know the Hera myths (which Stassinopoulos doesn't seem to). Hera spent an awful lot of her time raging against the many other gals beloved and seduced by her hubby, Zeus, and was known as a particularly vengeful and spiteful deity, whose husband on one occasion changed a girlfriend into a cow to protect her (unsuccessfully) from Hera's wrath. Now, if he had just changed a cow into a girlfriend....