The Orphic Hymns

Of Hera. Incense: aromatics. Seated in dark-blue hollows, formed of air, Hera, queen of all, blessed consort of Zeus, you who give mortals the gentle breezes that sustain life; mother of rains, nurse of the winds, mother of all;

The whole hymn treats Hera as the air. She is ēeromorphos, "formed of air," she sits in the dark-blue hollows of the sky, and breezes, rains and winds are her gifts and her children. Greeks heard the two words in each other: Hēra and aēr, "air," are made of the same three letters. In Plato's Cratylus Socrates suggests that whoever named the goddess was thinking of the air and hid it in her name, "putting the beginning at the end," and says you will see it if you repeat the name Hera over and over.