Herakles battles the Hydra, a snakelike beast with between seven and nine heads, identified with the earth goddess, Hera.
Hera is Zeus’s jealous wife. Herakles is not Hera’s son.
Kles in Old Attic Greek comes from the verb kleio. It means ‘to shut up, close or block.’ Might it not also be the root of key? as in German, Das Klee?
Hera it is alleged removes Herakles from her immortal breast before he can attain immortality. He is barred from the breast of which the milk would grant him immortality. Locked out.
Herakles spends his life set on by Hera’s jealousy. The madness she sends him leads him to kill his family. His famous tasks are undertaken to restore as much as claim the immortality he might have had at Hera’s breast if it not been placed under lock and key.
Upon the completion of his tasks and his apotheosis at Olympus the breast is restored to Herakles and he becomes Hera’s glory, Hera-kleos. Kleos means heroic fame and glory.
– here’s Hera giving suck to Herakles on the back of an Etruscan mirror (‘look but in‘…)
Hera is the original of the punishing phallic mother, a monster mama. John Key has identified her with a ‘left-wing five-headed monster.’ He encourages us to take his side in the battle so that he may claim the fame and glory he might have had at her breast if she, in her jealousy, had not denied it him.
– John is milk fed
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