Running with Artemis by Mut Danu

“Free!  

In the green, in the gladwood  

leaping like a deer who fears no hunter.  

There I will dance with no men watching,  

There I will find wisdom written in the forest shadows.  

Is there any gift greater than feeling such joy?” 

- Song of a Maenad from ‘Bacchae’, by Euripides -

Trying to get closer to Artemis, it sometimes felt like chasing after the Goddess with my boots weighed down by mud. There she was, way ahead, beautiful, powerful, but I couldn’t see her clearly. So many obstacles in the way! Reading mythology, I discovered thousands of years of jumbled messages from many cultures; some of whom who loved this goddess so much that they wanted to add her to their local worship and local goddess. Then there were the others. Classical Greek writings were colored by the often misogynist culture of classical Greece; followed by deliberate misinterpretation and patriarchal thought in the Christian era. Really Seeing Her meant reading between the lines and a lot of intuition.  

This is what intuition says…I need to scrape the muck off my boots, or better yet thow them off and run barefoot, finding a way to run with Artemis…mother of the wild things, wild animals, wild you and wild me. How did the Amazons run with Artemis ? What was the sound of their songs and the rhythm of the drums as they praised her?

If only the Amazon chants, rites and arts had been carefully passed down to us, if they had survived fires, war and fashion, what a treasure it would be for those of us living right now! What survived were myths and legends, often written by others. Great Temples survived into recorded history, and now herstory. Though I mourn the loss of the first person stories, there is a note of hope --- the legends did make it to us, with pages missing yes, but we can piece them together and read between the lines. Scholars can re-evaluate old theories. We can intuit, go deep within our ancestral memories and intuition to find answers: we can communicate across time with our ancient mothers in the temples. 

Going way back before we had even given her a name, She was the Wild Mother, and in the Paleolithic and early Neolithic, everything was wild and we were right in the middle of it. There was no concept of “wild” or “civilized”. We had not really started domesticating animals, or plants and we human children were not separated from Her other children. Back then we knew that Mother gave all and she took all, she gave food in the form of animals and plants, and she took back. Hunting was not mass slaughter but the receiving of a gift from the Mother and from the animal spirit which after death, went back to live with the Mother. Ritual began as a re-enactment of the circular path of life-death-life. Life was circular, seasonal,like the Mother. 

Then things speeded up, the flow of Time began to go one way; in a straight line, of course… Once sacred creative arts like pottery and weaving began to be mass produced; commerce began, trading and migration followed. People and tribes and their domestic animals were on the march, discovering new countries, fighting for resources and pushing indigenous people out of the way. This all began over 5,000 years ago, and though our modern techniques are more destructive, and we are billions more numerous, the patriarchy really hasn’t invented any new techniques of conquest. (It just destroys more quickly.) 

Yet! Amidst all of the new world of clamor and confusion, Artemis continued to send her promise of abundance like milk overflowing from a mother’s breasts. It seems like the first accounts mentioning the cult of Artemis where those that speak of the Amazons bringing her cult from Macedonia and Thrace to Ephesius. The image that has survived of this aspect of the goddess is the Ephesian Artemis Polymastos, of Many Breasts. She is the all-providing and all nurturing power of nature, a milk- and- honey goddess. Her body was covered with breasts and carved relief of animals. Her feet came together in the pointed stance that seems like a call back to our ancient Great Goddess of the caves, whose pointed feet could be pushed into the soft earth. 

The Arcadians built temples to Artemis all over that part of ancient Greece. They saw Her in a different way, the young, independent Mistress of the Animals and it is this image that her name brings to mind for most of us today. This is where the patriarchal overlays begin to cover the image. Much of our mental constucts of Artemis have been formed by Homer in the Illiad, of Callimachus of Nonnus, and additional overlays were added by European court painters of the 18^th century who rendered giant wall and ceiling murals, as well as large scale secular art based on the rediscovered Greek and Roman myths. 

They really carried her with them all over the Mediterranean basin, our foremothers and fathers. The Great Goddess Artemis was worshipped from the shores of Anatolia (modern day Turkey) to the Iberian Coast (modern Spain), north to Thrace (Bulgaria), south to North Africa. Everywhere she went, her name reflected the people who worshipped her, so she became Diana, Artemis-Britomartis-Lady of the Nets, Artemis Ephesia, Artemis Nematona, Titanis Phoibe and so many others. 

Over the millenia, she was changed by cultures that had much more interest in an all-powerful Father god than a Mother goddess. Artemis thus was seen as a child of Zeus, her right to keep her virginity granted by Zeus, her passion the hunt rather than protection of the fauna, her figure “tall and manlike”. Her temple priests demanded blood sacrifices. She was great and feared, and people saw her in the context of their time and place, political demands and religious trends. 

And so goes the human experience of Goddess. The Great Goddess of the Paleolithic and Neolithic in image and mind was remodeled and subdued with the tidal wave of patriarchal culture, but she remained, always, Lady of the Wild Things, too powerful to disappear, too wild to be domesticated. It is this Wild Artemis, forever free, Goddess of the Amazons, Milk and Honey Mother who can teach us what it feels like to be a Wild Woman, or a Wild Man. 

We can think of Artemis as influencing only three spheres of our lives: the end, the middle and the beginning! Artemis was known for bringing life to a sacred ending and women especially called upon her to loose her arrows so they could enjoy a ‘swift death’. As midwife, newborn infants were under her care. What seems most interesting though is the possibility to know this goddess during the space between beginning and end. 

Wild, ferocious animals were tame when near Artemis. Nature is her element, and She is wild, so the animals sensed this belonging. We have wild natures, too. When we find ourselves caught in a constrictive job situation, when we revolt against a too tightly regimented lifestyle or expectations on our behavior, that is our wild, natural self beating against the bars of it’s cage, or chewing it’s leg to escape the trap. It may take a change of job, relationship, or lifestyle to bend the bars far enough to squeeze out. You may have to give up something valuable, but it is possible. It takes courage and quiet listening to your inner animal. Once you have set yourself free, your spirit can run, expand, explore and you will have the ability to tame any environment be it desert or urban jungle. 

There is a wildness in women that can and should be explored… have you heard of the Maenads?  

Discounted as “crazy, mad women”… well of course they were! Doesn’t forcing ourselves to be too civilized, for too long make us all crazy?! Long left in the realm of myth, the Maenads were real, live women who found that ‘democracy’ of classical Greek era life, was really only a good deal for free, white men. The women left. Either for short periods of time, or perhaps forever, the women left ‘civilization’ and went and lived in the wild places. Artemis was their Goddess, Dionysus their hermaphroditic God. Safe in the mountain forests, the women danced ecstatically, with the joy of true freedom. Rumor spread across the countryside, far and wide. May no man disturb these women for fear of being ripped to shreds! Groups of women banded together all over ancient Greece and were written about by authors of the time, sometimes favorably, often not. They were certainly left alone. 

Women need to tap into this ancient wisdom of our foremothers who worshipped Artemis. We need time to ourselves! Never in history have women been so isolated as today. In the past, even in living memory, women spent much more time together. In American history there were the sewing bees and quilting, cooking together and much more communal time to share our stories. In Europe, every town had a communal washing area, where women scrubbed the dirt from the clothes and worked out a lot of problems as well. Ever since the Industrial Age, when women went to work in factories and offices in droves, there has been a need to control women’s work. But being together in the workplace, doesn’t necessarily mean we are sharing anything positive. Being together outside the workplace is suspect. It makes husbands and boyfriends nervous. But, being together for fun is exactly what we need. A little freedom, and we too will begin dancing ecstatically. Let ‘em sweat. 

There were and there are Goddes- loving men who follow/ed Artemis as well. Men in ancient Greece couldn’t imagine that the women were doing anything but engaging in wanton sex outside of marriage… so they imagined up the ‘satyrs’. Likely as not, the women were not in the woods having orgies with satyrs, but just wanted to be LEFT ALONE. But, intuition says that there were also men living in the wild places. These were men who did not want to live as slaves, were not part of the democratically priviledged class or hermits who rejected civilization in favor of the wilderness. Feminist men living in our modern world may have a harder time of it that women. Like Dionysus, they are Sons of the Mother. They feel in touch with the Divine Feminine inside themselves. The dominant culture certainly does not support men having anything to do with the Divine Feminine. Traitors! … and Feminist women are not sure what to think about these men either. Do we trust them? 

We should. We should trust them and encourage them to seek the Goddess if that is where their hearts are leading them. It is when we are all running with the Goddess, wildly, freely that we will find joy. (Even if just for a few hours on the weekend !) When we are dancing barefoot and running with abandon, we can take some of that joyful energy and put it into our daily lives. 

Now stop running.

What you are seeking is here. 

Listen.  

Listen to your quickly beating heart, 

really listen. 

Artemis is whispering, 

“If you want to come with me then…

go beyond the working,  

and get to the Living.”

Mut Danu, HPS The Apple Branch, A Dianic Tradition

Winter Solstice 2007 

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