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Many heroes and gods have many consorts but are still popular and worshipped and good examples of these are Zeus of Greek Mythology and Arjuna of Hindu Mythology. Are there any females similar to them? I am only aware of the heroine Draupadi but I am mostly looking for goddesses as compared to humans(although human examples will also be appreciated), but I am not looking for goddesses like Aphrodite and Ishtar, whom just take and discard lovers as they are extremely lustful. Note that I am not just looking for any females but ones that are celebrated.

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I would just like to explain what I mean. This female must be celebrated despite having many consorts and this female's consorts could probably be obtained due to lust. What I was trying to say was that unlike Aphrodite and Ishtar, this female can be lusty, but like, not evil, e.g. pursuing lovers who scorned them, flunging curses for nothing, etc

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    I'm puzzled as to why Aphrodite and Ishtar don't fit, but Zeus does.
    – femtoRgon
    Commented Apr 10, 2017 at 16:13
  • @femtoRgon I think your question is a central preoccupation for many contemporary scholars (certainly the majority under whom I studied;)
    – DukeZhou
    Commented Apr 10, 2017 at 17:52
  • @femtoRgon I just gave Zeus as an example as a character having many consorts(despite the fact that he is lusty). Should i change it to make it clearer?
    – user1385
    Commented Apr 10, 2017 at 22:23
  • @femtoRgon i mean to say that most,or if not, all of the consorts should not have been married/mated with due to lust or for lust and for something like "the greater good"(e.g. Idk, true love?)
    – user1385
    Commented Apr 10, 2017 at 22:33
  • Well, I certainly know that Ishtar pursued Dumuzid, but how is Aphrodite evil? The myth changed to Aphrodite and Adonis and that is a very different myth. Can you point me to a myth where Aphrodite is shown as evil? Also, the word "evil" is probably not correct. Ishtar was rageful, but some time after she killed Dumuzid she regret it.
    – rus9384
    Commented Jan 22, 2019 at 0:59

2 Answers 2

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Artemis famously had consorts (although, at least by the time of the Greeks, these relationships were understood to be chaste.)

Consorts of Artemis:

  • Actaeon: "[According to] Lamar Ronald Lacey's The Myth of Aktaion: Literary and Iconographic Studies, the most likely original version of the myth is that Actaeon was the hunting companion of the goddess."

  • Hippolytus: A devotee of Artemis who vowed to pursue a chaste life as a hunter and was undone by Aphrodite in revenge.

  • Orion: A favorite companion of Artemis, who was also undone.

  • Callisto: The most famous of Artemis female companions.

Artemis was definitely celebrated, and cannot be claimed to be lustful.

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The two examples that I can think of a goddess who has multiple partners are the Norse goddess Freyja and the Irish goddess/heroine Medb. Since we know of them mainly from Christian writers, the view we inherit of them is an ambivalent one.

Freyja is probably the more respected of the two; Snorri Sturluson says in the Prose Edda that she is the most glorious of the goddesses, and shares the honours with Odin's wife Frigg as highest-ranked goddess. She is also the only goddess who has her own story in the Poetic Edda, the poem Hyndluljod, which tells how she went to the giantess Hyndla to get help for one of her followers. There are hints that others had a different view. Hyndla insults her for being promiscuous, and a man in Iceland was had up for blasphemy when he called Freyja a bitch.

Medb, as she is portrayed in the Cattle Raid of Cooley, is a formidable but unattractive character, who never "had one man but in the shadow of another" and behaves with the same greed and arrogance as the male characters. However, her name suggests that she is a form of the Irish sovereignty goddess, which would explain her many partners, and her willingness to fight for what is hers.

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  • Could uou provide a few examples of these goddesses consorts?
    – user1385
    Commented Apr 9, 2017 at 6:37
  • Isnt Medb potrayed as a villian?
    – user1385
    Commented Apr 14, 2017 at 23:52

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