| Western traditions and paradigms often assume an affinity between women and peace and men and war. This gender stereotype is especially prominent in mythological studies, particularly those focused on war or feminine divinity, where idealistic and inaccurate notions equating gods with hostility and goddesses with serenity continue to oversimplify and polarize our martial conceptions. These same gender-biased concepts in turn disguise or discredit the role of martial female images in mythology, religion, and the human psyche.;Therefore, this theoretical dissertation seeks to foster an archetypal understanding and interpretation of divine female martial imagery, particularly as it manifests in Greco-Roman myth and religion. Its interdisciplinary approach draws on content from the fields of mythology, history, religious studies, warrior-science, and depth psychology. The study employs archetypal psychology's methods from a martial feminist perspective to present female Greco-Roman mythic archetypes with androgynous real-world martial manifestations, implications, and applications.;This martial feminine investigation briefly addresses the collective legitimacy and archetypal nature of these images before engaging in the specific examination of Greco-Roman mythology's premier female martial deities Hera (Juno), Athena (Minerva), Aphrodite (Venus), and Artemis (Diana). The Judgment of Paris' core "choice mythologem" is re-envisioned from a martial feminine perspective to present mythic and archetypal analyses of these goddesses and their respective martial domains: Sovereign force (Hera), Civilizing force (Athena), Emotive force (Aphrodite), and Primal force (Artemis).;This dissertation thus enhances our martial understanding by providing a feminine mode of comprehension for various abstract, physical, and psychological aspects of human conflict. It further demonstrates that these divine martial females are not anomalies or invalid patriarchal distortions, but indispensable mythic images, martial, heroic, and essential in their own right. This inquiry also reveals how these images remain relevant integral aspects of the human psyche that influence both our martial perceptions and performance thus engendering more balanced or androgynous mythological-psychological conceptions of the martial realm. |
