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To offer a different perspective, here's what The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets says. (I didn't write this. Barbara G. Walker did.)
"Janua Coeli
'Gate of Heaven,' title of the santuary screen in Christian churches, derived from the yonic 'gate' of Juno (Uni, or yoni) veiled by the hymen in the Goddess's own temples. As a personification of the Gate, Juno had two faces looking in both directions--the outward passage of the Gate at birth, the reverse passage at death. At her festival in early January she was addressed as Antevorta and Postvorta, the Goddess Who Looks Forward and Backward, for January was the 'gate' of the year, when the god of the Aeon died and was reborn from Mother Time.
As Roman religion became more patriarchal, Juno's gate-keeping persona became an androgynous Janua-Janus, later was wholly masculinized as the two-faced Janus to whom all gateways were sacred. He was another form of the Petra, Pater, or Peter, keeper of the keys to the Goddess's "Pearly Gate."
The Christian version of the janua coeli depicted heaven on one side, hell on the other. The 'wrong' or 'death' side of the Gate became known as janua diaboli, "the gate by which the Devil enters." Since the whole image was that of a yoni to begin with, it was almost inevitable that Christian fathers used janua diaboli as a common synonym for 'woman.'"
Jana is a later form of janua, and means 'gate'. She was the original Janus, not his wife.
Mythology stubs Roman goddesses| Politics | Business | Finance |
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