The Realms of Artemis: Mythology, History, and Archetypal Symbology
by John K. Lundwall
Artemis was one of the twelve gods of the Olympian pantheon. She was goddess of the moon and of woman and child-bearing; she was a huntress and fierce foe, an eternal virgin, and twin sister to the sun-god Apollo. She loved wild animals and favored the deer and stag. Her favorite tree was thought to be the cypress. Artemis was the daughter of Zeus, king of the gods, and Leto, the daughter of the titans Coes and Phoebe. Zeus had an affair with Leto who became pregnant with twins. Leto sought a place of safety to bear her children, but every place turned her away for fear of Hera’s wrath. Finally, landing on the island of Delos, Leto promised its inhabitants a great temple would be built there for the future sun-god Apollo if they would harbor her pregnancy. They agreed and Leto bore her children in safety, though in distress. In the Homeric Hymns, Leto clings to a palm tree as she gives birth to Apollo first. In other accounts it is Artemis that is birthed first, and she acts as a midwife aiding the delivery of her twin brother over the course of nine days. In either event, Leto gives birth to the sun and the moon.
Moon Goddess. As twins Apollo and Artemis share many things in common. Clearly their cosmological identities form this bond. Both gods are archers because both gods are celestial luminaries–the sun and moon–which shoot forth arrows of light over all creation. Artemis shares the moon goddess distinction with Hectate (goddess of the new moon) and Selene (goddess of the full moon). Artemis is generally associated with the half moon or the moon in phase, or in other words, the moon in transition from one state to another. Many images of Artemis in antiquity show her wearing a crescent moon as a crown. The moon provided safety and protection at night, and also, according to ancient custom, was the catalyst for the life sustaining dews which nurtured crops in the absence of rains. For this reason Artemis was seen as a fertility goddess in nature, but not of sexuality. Finally, as moon goddess Artemis was closely associated with woman and childbearing whose characteristics are tied to that orb.
Huntress & Fierce Foe. With her bow and arrows Artemis was known as the goddess of the hunt, and was the patron deity for hunters. In Greek myth two forms of hunting stories emerge: heroic hunters such as Heracles and Orion, whose stories retell great deeds and principles of valor, and the hunters who “describe the closed world of young male and female hunters who absent themselves from society and abstain from sex” (Barringer 125). Hunters such as Kallisto and Hippolytus were thus the followers of Artemis. Artemis hunts only as part of the natural cycle, and not for gain, glory, or fame, such as Heracles had done. Yet this kind of hunter is no less apt or lethal. In fact Artemis never missed her target; thus, both the Spartans and the Athenians made sacrifices to Artemis before war or to commemorate a battle won (Barringer 12).
Artemis was in fact a fierce foe because she was known to deal out death in an instant. Thus, while her mother Leto had been pregnant a giant Tityus tried to rape her. After being born, Artemis immediately sought revenge and with her brother shot the beast down. Artemis also slew all the daughters of Niobe, Apollo all the sons, because Niobe had boasted that she had more children than Leto. Apollo did not escape the anger of his sister’s bow either. When Apollo’s lover Coronis was caught being unfaithful to him Artemis slew her, even though she was pregnant. Likewise, Artemis cursed or killed a series of mortal kings, such as Oeneus, Admetus, and Broteas, all because they had forgotten to make the appropriate sacrifices to her in the appropriate season. Artemis was thought to be a goddess of death, especially when the death was from an unknown cause (Murray 121). Thus Artemis was feared and respected for her swift aim, judgement, and seriousness with which she oversaw her domain.
Virgin Goddess. When Artemis was still young she entreated her father Zeus to remain a virgin. Zeus consented and Artemis remained an eternal virgin, and had a party of virginal nymphs generally accompanying her. Artemis was very demanding in her expectations of virginity, cursing or even slaying any of her attendants who had lost theirs. Thus, when Callisto was raped by Zeus, Artemis grew angry at her and turned her into a bear; in other accounts Artemis simply slays her.
Artemis considered her own naked beauty sacred, and a famous story is told of a hunter named Actaeon who stumbled upon her in the woods while she was bathing. For looking upon her nakedness, Artemis cursed Actaeon, turning him into a stag. His own hunting hounds chased him in this form, catching him and tearing him to pieces. In another version, Actaeon actually tries to woo Artemis, in an attempt to marry her. In either case, Artemis causes the death of Actaeon for seeing her nakedness or attempting to dissolve her of her virginity.
Goddess of Woman, Children & Child Bearing. Artemis as the moon goddess was often seen as the goddess of transitions, and this was especially the case in the life of women. The moon itself describes the life of a woman: in crescent phase it is young and virginal; in half moon phase it represents young adulthood and perhaps puberty; in full moon phase it represents motherhood with a swollen, fertile belly; in waning moon phase it is dark and barren. Because of this relationship with the moon and Artemis’s power over and through it, woman of all ages paid homage to this moon goddess.
Young girls dedicated their toys to Artemis at the time of puberty (Goff 30). This exemplified the transition of one life (childhood) into another (young adulthood). Generally, puberty meant marriage, and in Athens and Cyrene young brides had to visit the bride room in the temple of Artemis and make a sacrifice. This sacrifice was generally an animal, but also a swatch of their own hair was often required, as well as their belt. The latter was offered as a sign
of “loosening of the belt”, or the transition from maidenhood to young woman and wife (Goff 30). These rites extended throughout Greece, such as in Sparta where mothers of daughters about to be wed also sacrificed to Artemis, and in Hermione widows who wed again likewise made sacrifices asking for a blessed and fertile marriage (Goff 30).
Likewise pregnant women made visits to Artemis’s bride chamber making sacrifices for a quick and sure birth. Women who were barren, or women suffering from difficult pregnancies also made such sacrifices (Goff 27). After childbirth, women offered beautiful garments to the temple of Artemis in gratitude for a successful birthing. Women who perished birthing a child also donated such clothing via their surviving relatives who believed that Artemis’s swift arrow had taken the mother, not out of cruelty, but as part of the cycles of nature (Goff 29). Thus Artemis could be inserted into that old Christian proverb as: “Artemis giveth and Artemis taketh away.”
It seems ironic that a profoundly virginal goddess should be the patron diety of marriage, childbirth, and fertility. Perhaps this feature of the virgin goddess can be explained both by her hunting persona and by the bear ritual which celebrated Artemis in festival. According to Barringer, Artemis as hunter provides “a metaphor for eroticism and amorous pursuit.” Thus to become a bride was to be part of the hunt (Barringer 126). A successful hunter catches his prey, but also only kills what is exactly needed. In marriage and fertility terms, Artemis cherishes virginal children who are pure, unencumbered by social prejudices, and who like to play. But in the cycle of nature this phase in life only lasts temporarily. Thus Artemis requires virginity of her followers only when they remain in a virginal psychological and cultural state–when they are children. Eventually they will become part of the biological hunt and be caught, but in proper terms, through ceremony or marriage. Thus Artemis is always their to lead and guide children into the next phase of their life at the exact and appropriate time.
In Attica, a festival to Artemis was celebrated called the Brauronia, where little girls in yellow dresses named the arktoi–little bears–performed the arkteia–the bear dance. This rite was performed in likeness of a myth which declared that long years ago a bear walked into a sanctuary of Artemis and surprised the people who were there. The people stoned the bear to death. As punishment for slaying an innocent creature sacred to Artemis, the goddess required a ritual re-enactment wherein atonement is made. In exchange for the bear’s life, Artemis asks of her people to provide daughters to serve the goddess. This obligation was upon the people for all time and served as the foundation for the priesthood of Artemis (Goff 105-106).
Another interpretation of the bear dance, besides providing a mythic basis for a religious and ritualistic system, was that it also provided a ritual of transition. By becoming bears, the little girls are “purging their inherent wildness, their female alignment with savage nature, in order that they may assume the conduct of the tamed and domesticated adult woman” (Goff 107). In other words, the ceremony was part of a preliminal and postliminal stage of development in the critical transition of young girl’s lives. In this sense, Artemis incorporates both her virginal and huntress qualities when attending her followers through the course of childhood, young adulthood, courtship, and childbearing.
Sacred Space of Artemis. As a goddess of wild things, of hunting, and of transition in the lives of girls and women, Artemis’s nature was underscored in her temples and sanctuaries throughout Greece and especially in Asia Minor. Nearly 200 such sanctuaries have been catalogued, and the great majority of these sacred places have been constructed away from settled areas, near boundaries between two territories, or on a road between two cities (Cole 180). Even when sanctuaries to Artemis are built within a city these places were not prominent or striking (the temple at Ephesus the one notable exception). Thus in urban areas her temples were not on the acropolis, but in an agora or part of the natural landscape. It could be said that when Artemis came to town, “she brought the wilderness with her” (Cole 183).
Many scholars have commented on the typological feature of these sanctuaries, suggesting that they are representations of transitions, wilderness, hunting (as game is to be found in the wilderness), boundaries, and spatial order. As has been noted, Artemis is the goddess of transitions, and this too is part of her worship in stone and mortar. Goff writes:
The theme that unites the most distinctive sites of Artemis is the idea of dangerous or threatened passage. She was particularly associated with places of narrow access, both straits of water and mountain passes.... Artemis was imagined to dwell in the mountains, but her sanctuaries were not peak sanctuaries. It is not the mountains themselves that were sacred to her but the narrow passes in between. Mountains associated with Artemis were the mountains located at borders. (Cole 184)
Her sanctuaries being placed on the borders they were also the places of defense and attack; the first place to encounter an enemy invasion. Thus Artemis was associated with turning back the enemy and was named Astrateia or “she who disperses invasion”. As such, “Artemis was a god of turning points” (Cole 187).
Names of Artemis. Artemis had many names and was worshiped in different forms by different cultures. In Rome she was known as Diana, and her myth and lore was pretty much the same as it was in Greece. As already described, she was also associated with the moon goddesses Selene, and sometimes these titles were synonymous, one was the other. As a huntress Artemis was known as Agrotera, and was named such especially by the huntsmen in Arcadia. The Arcadians also called her Calliste, the bear, and boasted their descent from her. She was also named Brauronia, which was a bear, and was represented as such on the Acropolis of Athens. By fishermen and people of the sea she was called Dictynna or Britomartis, and was worshiped under these names by people living on the island of Crete. As the guardian of children and childbirth she was called Eilithyia or Eleutho in Messenia, Laconia, Elis, and elsewhere in Greece. Peoples of the Black Sea, and specifically Crimea worshiped Tauric Artemis, and made human sacrifices to her. Likewise, Sparta called her Orthia or Orthosia and at one time also made human sacrifice to her. As goddess of marshes she was named Limnaea. As a river goddess she was called Potamia.
Archetypal Artemis. Artemis portrays the powers and influences of pure femininity. She is a goddess whose womanly nature is not defined by a man, that is by a lover (Aphrodite), a child (Demeter), a father (Athena), or a husband (Hera) (Paris109). Artemis is purely virginal, not because she has never known a man, but because she is untamed and untamable, and furthermore, undefinable in relationship to a man. Artemis is the personification of the grand and vast wilderness at the very borders of civilization. She is the virgin forest, the towering glacier, and the roar of the river which man cannot utilize in his own machinations. This aspect of Artemis can be seen in her crescent moon symbol often found with her image. The crescent moon appears as a feminine smile in the sky, standing over mountaintops and associating with fields, flowers, and wild animals. This lunar phase is “complete unto herself, and stands apart from committed relationships” (Guttman and Johnson 67).
Even when Artemis administers over childbirth she does so not as a mother, but as the bear coming forth from hibernation, linking the worlds of the civilized with raw nature. At the moment an infant crowns and the labored mother pushes there is a moment of frenzy, of both pain and pleasure, where the woman howls and screams like a bear in a forest. Here, Artemis has come either to deliver a new life or a swift death (Paris 117).
The archetypal influences of Artemis relate virginity and wilderness to chastity and solitude: “Contrary to the values symbolized by Aphrodite, who relates and unites creatures through sexuality, Artemis personifies a force which urges us to withdraw from human relationships and to seek elsewhere, in solitude, another kind of self-realization” (Paris 129). Thus the archetypal Artemis seeks the monastic life, a life dedicated to worship through other means than sexuality or sensuous symbols. This kind of person feels “turned on” smelling the sweet dews of a summer rain or standing on a precipice that borders mountain, forest, and plain, or is very comfortable being alone, meditative, without the encumbrances of multiple, social demands. Most often, however, the tensions between the powers of Aphrodite (and for that matter Athena and Hera) and Artemis co-exist within a person. This tension provides wholeness if resolution is made and if a person gives space, energy, and time to each of the voices within. Artemis asks of us to be mindful of nature: respecting borders, boundaries, animals, and peoples in transition. She asks of us to respect our feminine side for femininity’s sake. To be a virgin as a child, and even to be a proper bride or groom, mother or father, within the realm of our duties, homes, and wildernesses.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barringer, Judith M. The Hunt in Ancient Greece. Baltimore, MD: Johs Hopkins U P, 2002.
Cole, Susan G. Landscapes, Gender, and Ritual Space: The Ancient Greek Experience. Ewing, NJ: U P of California, 2004.
Goff, Barbara E. Citizen Bacchae: Women’s Ritual Practice in Ancient Greece. Ewing, NJ: U P of California, 2004.
Guttman, Ariel and Kenneth Johnson. Mythic Astrology: Archetypal Powers in the Horoscope. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 1998.
March, Jenny. Cassell’s Dictionary of Classical Mythology. New York: Sterling Publishing Company, 1998.
Murray, Alexander S. Manual of Mythology. New York: Tudor Publishing Company, 1936.
Paris, Ginette. Pagan Meditations: Aphrodite, Hestia, Artemis. Dallas, TX: Spring Publications, 1986.
Posted by john at May 6, 2005 12:22 AM
