CATRIONA GLAZEBROOK is an attorney who holds an M.S. and J.D. degrees. She is also a photographer and writes on environmental science and policy issues.
Oh, what a catastrophe for man when he cut himself off from the rhythm of the year, from his unison with the sun and the earth. Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it made a personal, merely personal feeling, taken away from the rising and setting of the sun, and cut off from the magical connection of the solstice and the equinox. This is what is wrong with us. D.H. Lawrence
Artemis first came into my life when I was practicing law in Philadelphia. At that time I was becoming aware that my dissatisfaction with my “career” reflected not that there was something wrong with me, but that there was something inherently wrong with the work I did and the organizations I worked for. Initially reading the works of D.H. Lawrence and Henry Miller supported my disillusionment with industrialized society for its role in forging our dehumanizing existence. I also started reading works by feminists and psychologists about women’s unique burdens and roles in society as well as texts about the Goddesses of old and that culture they embodied. It was not uncommon that I would find myself reading several books a week as well as working the demanding hours required of me at my job as one of two hundred attorneys at a Philadelphia law firm.
The more I discovered about the goddess Artemis the more I started to identify with her as a positive role model and incorporate her into my world. Artemis meant freedom from the mechanized work environment and the hierarchal patriarchal organization of which I was “not” a part. At work I started to name my computer files Catriona Artemis and sometimes just plain Artemis: A reminder to me of my connection to something greater than a floppy disk, a humming screen, and billable hours. Artemis grew in my life from those first few seeds by reminding me how inhumane it is to be expected to PRODUCE a mountain of meaningless paperwork with the help of technology and a large support staff. Documents like, Interrogatories, Answers to Interrogatories, Summons, Complaints, Briefs (agonizingly long), Motion after Motion (an odd name for a rather stagnant device which in all reality usually seeks to avoid dealing with the primary concerns in dispute).
During this time I not only read about Artemis I took in Artemis’ beautiful image as represented by the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gauden. His “Diana” (Diana is the Roman version of Artemis) is suspended in the grand entranceway of the Philadelphia Art Museum which is located at the other end of the parkway from my old office. It was no accident that from my large office window on the 28th floor the Museum was the most prominent building in sight. I took comfort during those exhausting long and stressful work days by looking out at the very doors behind which Artemis stood or rather floated. It was easy for me to imagine her seemingly warm, soft yet immensely strong body poised with her long bow (two thirds the length of her own body) which she held effortlessly. Sometimes I would “escape” from the tower-like office building and sit on the steps of the museum near the exotic looking Tulip tree, bask in the warmth of the Sun, and listen to the sparrows and the wind on top of what used to be called Fair-Mount (once the highest point in the early colonial Philadelphia).
On these occasions I would take a nourishing book like The Goddesses In Every Woman by Jean Shinoda Bolen and dream of Artemis’ world. To the Greeks Artemis was the Goddess of the wild places; not of pavements, streetlights and noisy intersections but of grassy fields, woods, and streams. My identification with Artemis helped to affirm my discomfort with city life and more. The celebratory treatment of Artemis’ wild nature and Artemis’ description as the “personification of an independent feminine spirit. The archetype she represents enables a woman to seek her own goals on terrain of her own choosing”, unleashed a dawning realization that a strong affinity for the natural world and an independent spirit had validity in spite of being trivialized, ignored or mocked at work and by traditional society. In fact, by practicing law, a profession constructed upon manmade artifice by a multitude of “objective” rules, I had wandered far indeed from nature and my own independent spirit. The very basis of legal work is suspect because of its attempt to neatly resolve disputes as if there really was a right and a wrong, a black and a white. And the day-to-day grind of billable hours determined solely by money motives without regard to essential human needs such as free time and family time creates nothing more noble than factory work for the mind, work more focused on maintaining a law firm’s bottom line than on creating a just and ethical world.
The more accepting I became of the “wilder” aspects of my inner nature the more I looked outward at the cause of my discomfort at work. I was convinced that I could find “terrain of my own” far from the heavy steps of partners walking down the long carpeted hallways towards my office.
Artemis’ role in my life at that time was to lead me back to myself. Disconnection and later reconnection to inner intuitive feelings is apparently a phenomenon that happens quite frequently with women. In Women’s Ways of Knowing, the authors’ document, through case studies, that many women move away from external-objective perspective of truth into a personal, private and subjective perspective of truth.
Our reading of the women’s stories leads us to conclude that as a woman becomes more aware of the existence of inner resources for knowing and valuing, as she begins to listen to the “still small voice” inside of her, she finds an inner source of strength.. . . Women’s growing reliance on their intuitive processes is, we believe, an important adaptive move in the service of self-protection, self-assertion, and self-definition. Women become their own authorities.1
Through sculpture and photography I began to explore visually the truths about the world as I saw them. Doing so freed a long untapped side of myself. It was no surprise that the images and figures which appeared represented ecological truths and highlighted a deep connection and intuitive understanding of the natural world. These images became more than creative expressions, they were sign posts, directionals of truth-physical manifestations of reality as I saw it, as I knew it and experienced it. These objects worked to balance out the overwhelming designations of reality posted by the rigid patriarchal order. Daily I would see the grim authoritarian portraits of the previous founders and managers of the firm (which always seemed to stare disapprovingly), the hugely large conference tables where attorneys would sit, feet apart, and without a trace of emotion discuss their cases and clients, as well as evidence of the pecking order from senior partners to “lowly” secretaries. (I was always aware that the partners were men and the secretaries were women.)
Artemis, often referred to as the “solitary huntress,” is sometimes considered the ultimate femininity, “one defined neither by relationship to a lover, nor to a child, nor with father, nor to husband.”2 Thus following Artemis’ lead also meant acceptance of independence for me not only in society, and at work, but in my most intimate relationships. The fact that I could be whole unto myself was liberating. Thus it made perfect sense that the man I ultimately married loves me, in part, for my free-spiritedness.
To say that people who worshipped the Goddess were deeply religious would be to understate, and largely miss, the point. For here there was no separation between secular and the sacred. As religious historians point out, in prehistoric, and to a large extent, well into historic times, religion was life, life was religion.3
Another important horizon which opened was my strengthening commitment to spirituality. I knew from the time that I was a tiny child, probably before I could even speak, that “nature” was more than the physical manifestation of trees, grass and animals—that it encompassed—well . . . EVERYTHING! Yet, growing up in a world devoid of examples of “natural” spirituality. I became outcast and apart from society like the floating island of Delos, the isolated birthplace of Artemis and Apollo. It was not until the concept of a feminine Goddess, one who worshipped the wilds, worked its way into my consciousness that spiritual convictions really took root. Thus an integral part of my identification with Artemis is her spiritual based feminine identity as well as her connection with the natural world.
A Greek story which recounts Artemis turning herself into a white doe reflects Artemis’ inherent sacred dimension. Albino animals have often been associated with sacredness. Artemis’ spirituality, however, is also firmly rooted in the Earth and thus she becomes a doe, a creature very much of the Earth, not an angel from some removed sky-realm.
Artemis’ earthy-spiritual base is where she derives much of her strength, her endurance and her power. It is also the wellspring of her great compassion and love. Since Artemis finds transcendence in the Earth itself her spiritual base is always evident, always there to rejuvenate her in times of upheaval and defeat. Artemis need not wait to get to heaven to partake of the boon of the sacred here on earth.
Marija Gimbutas recounts how in the neolithic village of Catal Huyuk religious/spiritual objects and depictions were spread throughout the village. The people of this village mimicked the natural world by providing opportunities for connecting with the sacred at every turn. No doubt this connection to sacredness formed the backbone of many of their ideologies and beliefs. I have found that no matter where I have turned, and often on the most unexpected occasions, I have seen the reflection, gotten a glimpse of the face of this all encompassing spiritual vision. This very prevalent “connection” has fueled my beliefs and my hopes and dreams.
This is in sharp contrast to today’s traditional world where work (largely defined by industrial and post-industrial forces) shapes not only our day-to-day existence but our belief systems. According to Paul Hawken in The Ecology of Commerce:
We have elevated the ideology and mores of corporate life into a belief system before which we pay homage, and we have allowed it to take over the political system. We may spend an hour in church or temple every week, but we spend forty, fifty or sixty (in my case sometimes eighty hours) at the workplace, in a job that demands and receives the greatest devotion we bestow on anyone or anything outside of (and sometimes including) our families.4
This is a far cry from the rich spiritual lives of the inhabitants of Catal Huyuk where spirituality was inextricably intertwined in their daily existence.
My identification with Artemis then helps me to bring my spirituality “out into the world” rather than leaving it outside the formidable entranceways of towering office buildings. Instead, I, like members of the community of that ancient neolithic village, bring signs of my understanding of spirituality into my daily world. From minor acts like faithfully etching onto the face of my glassy eyed computer screen: ARTEMIS, to deeper experiences like eventually moving to live in a small cottage in a country town in New Hampshire where I can bundle my son up in my arms open the front door and point at the vast sky stretched before us while saying “This is how much I love you.”
During my pregnancy I did not think much about Artemis. But she visited me most unexpectedly when I was in labor. My husband and I wanted to have our baby naturally but since it was our first birth experience we wanted the security of a hospital. We chose a Hospital in Philadelphia which had a birthing suite run by mid-wives. It seemed to offer the best of both worlds, modern and natural childbirth methods, however, we soon found that there is no “best” about modern hospital birthing practice and procedure.
I was one of those 20 to 30 percent of women whose water breaks before labor so I was told that as part of “hospital procedure” I would have to go into the modern birthing suite “for only an hour or so” to make sure I did not have an infection. (This was just the beginning of the medical profession’s treatment of my perfectly normal labor as something gone awry.) I was brought into the hospital (not the birthing suite but the traditional delivery ward) at midnight. At seven in the morning I was finally brought tearfully home. The labor which had begun soon before reaching the hospital stopped in response to the inhumane treatment I received there.5 I was shaken and exhausted after lying uncomfortably strapped down flat on my back fighting for my right to a natural childbirth and my own dignity.6
After this experience I was not ready to bring a new life into the world. I had no confidence in myself nor the process of birth. Luckily under the guidance and care of the mid-wives my labor started once again and my husband and I drove back to the hospital. This time our destination was the birthing suite run by the midwives. In spite of the wonderful care and understanding I received from the two mid-wives and their assistants, I was exhausted from my previous sleepless and upsetting night and was having a difficult and slow labor. The following morning as I lay engulfed in what seemed like never ending pain, a searing, knife-like pain, that left me almost delirious, I had an inspiring vision. I saw as clear as day the cool white of Artemis’ ankles. Each pass of her silken gown over her smooth ankles of the purest whitest skin soothed my pain, cooled the molten feeling heat of it. This vision eclipsed all sensations and even thoughts. I followed her. My son was born soon after, healthy and curious, ready to be here.
Artemis’ presence during my labor helped lead me back to the great oneness of The Creative. A path I had lost sight of after my encounter with the traditional hospital procedure which at its very core is suspicious and fearful of childbirth, solely a woman’s domain. Artemis who is known as the “goddess of childbirth”7 is in essence a guide to the creative process. For after all what more creative act is there than bringing life into the world? Artemis also represents, as does the birth experience itself, the unfathomable force, ingenuity and compassion of the natural world. The force that moved through me to enable the birth of my son was miraculous. Being in touch with this miraculous force, taking part in the creation of a human being, is at once humbling and empowering. In Homebirth: The Sacred Act of Creation,8 Sydney Amara Morris speaks of how, in childbirth, women are brought to glimpse the essential nature of the universe. She believes that this is only possible since the moment of creation is inextricably tied to the possibility of death.
As part of our everyday life, of what it is like to be a woman and have a baby—we struggle with death itself. Sometimes we win, sometimes we do not win. Sometimes the baby is lost, and sometimes we are lost. But when we survive, there is triumph. Initially created by an act of love—or deep affinity, even if only physical—life is manifested only by wrestling with death. If you are looking for metaphors for the nature of reality or the ground of being, if you are looking to see the face of the Goddess, here is a clue: love brings us face to face with death, and then beyond into life. This is the sacredness of everyday, the common life of a common woman, who as a matter of course fights with death in the side of life.9
Our connection to this force is necessary to sustain all creative endeavors. Artemis’ gentle but confident guidance, as well as her innate connection to all things, makes her well-suited to lead others to experience and meet with this creative force. Artemis is the eternal muse that has been written about and doted upon throughout the centuries. She leads past misconceptions, fears and nay saying of rational reality. She leads us past our egos, and in some cases, past our very own selves through death directly to the heart of the mystery of The Creative itself.
Artemis is depicted in several stories as the protective and maternal mother of wild bear cubs. Her willingness to mother an animal child reflects her understanding of her innate connection to all living things. Sometimes Artemis is depicted as transforming herself into the mother bear. In many cultures and in ancient stories bears are depicted as excellent mothers. A she-bear will fight to the death to protect the well fare of her children. Unlike Demeter, who has been assigned the “mothering role” by the Greeks,10 Artemis is not a martyr mother. Artemis is not depicted as watching helplessly as the underworld steals her child (Persephone)—which is in a sense what patriarchy does, for example, by cutting off matrilineal lines of descent. Instead, Artemis is a model of a powerful mother with a fierce protectiveness towards her children that cannot be overlooked or undone.
My experience of mothering did not begin with my human son. One of my earliest memories is being a child of four or five carrying home a nest of tiny, pink, baby birds that our neighbor had accidentally dislodged from her window shutter. I remember embracing the little nest with those vulnerable lives as one of my first maternal moments. One of my most memorable “children” was a Sparrow hawk that I raised from a baby chick. My connection with this “child” was so great he sometimes seems as if he is my son’s older brother. The fact that such little ones needed constant care in hourly feedings did not phase me. I fit them into my life which was first comprised of play, soon school and finally even work.
For three weeks, behind my large mahogany desk at the first law firm where I worked, sat a baby robin in a shoebox who could not wait for me to return each work day. So the highly conflicting needs of the demands of mothering and the demands of work became evident early on. Yet somehow it all seemed so much easier when dealing with offspring that become fully fledged in a few weeks. While these experiences proved to be great training for the coming of my son Joseph, the ultimate reality is that a woman cannot do both: give a young child the constant care it needs as well as meet or exceed the demands of a male dominated profession like law. I did try to do both, however, which lead to some rather unique situations while I grappled with pulling together the split worlds of work and family. For example, when Joseph was only six weeks old, he attended a court appearance with me before the judges of the Second Circuit Court. Joseph slept. Luckily the judges did not. I am aware that to the extent I was successful in melding these worlds, it has only been possible due to the support of my non-traditional husband. And even then the toll on our lives was unsustainable.
I believe that tapping into this “maternal” aspect of ourselves (which men can experience as well) is one of the most important traits that we can bring to the world. And I believe that our greatest role, our greatest endeavor, that of being a mother is belittled and in some ways stolen by patriarchal society. I recently read a report that most children in the United States spend most of their first few precious hours, days, weeks, months and years in a day-care center away from their parents. While I am fully and painfully aware that this most often occurs because most employers and society as a whole does not “accommodate” the needs of children, and their mothers and fathers. This usually impacts directly upon women. They must make that difficult choice to either suffer in their jobs and their pocketbooks, or to send the children away so that they can make a living. While I do not oppose some use of a day care center or alternative childcare, I do oppose relying upon such alternative care to such a great extent that even very young children spend most of their waking hours away from their parents. I also believe that rather than sleeping like Demeter, surrendering our greatest gifts, we must fight and fiercely protect what is ours for ourselves and for the children.
In Forcing the Spring, author Robert Gottleib (1993) says that the experience of mothering has equipped female environmental leaders to turn arguments against environmental degradation from science and policy to one of personal experience. He believes that this is a good turn of events. So do I! I believe that the very often trivialized “NIMBY” complaint reflects a rootedness, a personal will to survive and that such highly personal human motivations just might end up saving the planet. Terry Tempest Williams speaks of this same personal dimension in her essay “The Wild Card”11 :
It may just be that the most radical act we can commit is to stay home. Otherwise . . . Who will be able to tell us if the long-billed curlews have returned to the grassy plains of Promontory, Utah? Who will be there to utter the cry of loss when the salmon of the McKenzie River in Oregon are nowhere to be seen?
What is not so well known are the successes of this type of personal involvement and motivation in many social and environmental movements. The anti-toxic movement for example, was a movement of housewives fighting for their children’s health. Their “digging in the heels doggedness” was responsible for creating the political climate needed to pass SUPERFUND, one of today’s most important environmental laws. Long live the fierceness of mothers!
Artemis’ voice was nurtured by the wind, by her direct experiences in nature, beginning in her childhood. Artemis’ voice to me is confident, strong and compassionate since she is aware of the great interconnection of all things. Her voice encompasses four primary characteristics which I believe are important for a leader.
1. Artemis’ voice reflects her power. Her power, as explained by Rianne Eisler in The Chalice and the Blade, is “actualization power” as distinguished from the “domination power” with which we are all too familiar today. Actualization power is simply the ability to become what one is capable of becoming and of enabling others to become self-actualizing as well. By tapping into this self-actualization power Artemis is a teacher/mention leader. I believe that this “actualization power” is possible only when one taps into both masculine and feminine characteristics. By drawing from the wellspring of this power source, a source which effectively integrates male and female elements, one is taping into the very essence of the universe. As Marija Gimbutas has explained:
The world of myth was not polarized into male and female.. . . Both principles were manifest side by side. The male divinity in the shape of a young man or male animal appears to affirm and strengthen the forces of the creative and active female neither is subordinate to the other: by complementing one another, their power is doubled.12
The patriarchal Greeks could not accept this perfection of duality and strength existing in one Goddess so they slip her in two: Artemis and her twin brother Apollo.
2. Artemis’ voice is compassionate. Artemis is fully aware of others’ feelings and needs so decisions concerning others are never made inconsequentially. For Artemis conflicts are never one-sided. She is aware of the sorrows, motivations and disappointments of others. She can put herself in another’s skin whether human or animal. Thus Artemis’ association with hunting is in accordance with the almost mystical identification between hunter and hunted which existed or continues to exist in cultures which rely for their survival upon wild animals. Some anthropologists refer to this as “mystical participation” when the hunter becomes one with the animal hunted. No life is taken without great devotion.
I believe that the perception of Artemis is trained by a patriarchal interpretation of what hunting is all about. Thus she is sometimes depicted as the “revengeful hunter.” Our primary understanding of Artemis comes from the Greek and Roman periods when patriarchy was as prevalent as it is today. A true understanding of Artemis can only be gleamed by looking past some of the Greek interpretations of Artemis to the days of her birth from the womb of a matrilineal culture. Marija Gimbutas tells us that Artemis existed long before the Greeks and Romans.
In tablets found in both Knossos and Pylos names of divinities are listed. To the profound satisfaction of those who had long contended there was continuity between Crete and classical Greece, these reveal that the deities of the later Olympian pantheon (Zeus, Hera, Athena, Artemis, Hermes, etc.) were already worshipped, albeit in different forms and contexts, centuries before we hear of them in Hesiod and Homer.13
I believe that Artemis is The Goddess herself, The Goddess that brings us into the world and the Goddess which embraces us in our death. Her feared and misunderstood connection with death by patriarchal society has led to a distortion of Artemis’ essence. While images of death are indeed humbling and frightening, who are we to make judgment of its ultimate meaning? The patriarchal world, which later defined The Goddess and eventually Artemis, feared death and chose to represent her connection with death in a negative way. In one story Artemis is depicted as turning the youth Actaeon into a stag, when he spies her bathing in the nude. Once he was transformed his hunting dogs ripped him to pieces.14 By focusing only upon death, without acknowledging death’s connection to the cycle of life, the Greeks distorted the meaning of Artemis’ powers as they distorted the meaning of The Goddess herself.
3. Artemis’ voice embraces unity and integration. Artemis also represents unity with one’s body in the sense of the physical abilities of the body and the inherent beauty and goodness of the female body for its many capabilities from nurturing and giving warmth to durability and strength. Artemis’ connection with her entire body and her body’s connection to nature are reflected in her voice. She speaks with her whole body not just her head or her heart. Thus while Artemis appears to reflect qualities of radical ecofeminism, she embraces aspects of all the branches of ecofeminism such as liberal, Marxist and socialist ecofeminism.15
4. Artemis’ voice is direct. Artemis’ bow and arrows represent her as a messenger, a communicator of truth as she knows it. While Cupid sends out arrows filled with Eros, Artemis sends out arrows filled with direct knowledge of nature and the interconnection of all beings. Artemis likes to convey her very essence without artifice.
Artemis’ directness also reflects her focused nature and her ability to achieve her goals in spite of obstacles. But of greater importance, Artemis’ directness in communication, the use of words, language to cut through confusion, artifice and deception is an ethical statement. She will speak the truth in spite of recrimination.
It is no accident that we are told that Zeus once excluded Artemis from a ceremony dedicated to the Gods and Goddesses. Or that Artemis and her twin brother Apollo were born on the isolated island of Delos. While directness, strength and autonomy are some of Artemis’ most important traits, these traits are considered “unbecoming” for a woman in a male dominated society. Moreover, Artemis’ powerful presence which is independent from patriarchal society is seen as threatening. Therefore Artemis is cast out from society and this is why Artemis is often depicted as “The lonely Huntress”.
I believe that I have also been excluded from society for two primary reasons:
1. My perception of the world is not incorporated into traditional society. Consequently, the interests that I have often take me away from the interests of mainstream society.
2. I am cast out from conventional society. I am disregarded and sometimes punished for traits such as autonomy and directness.
This exclusion began when I was a young child and grew from experiences, for example, of being called “Nature Girl,” in a derogatory teasing manner by my junior high school peers. My intense interest in animals and birds often led me to prefer their companionship to that of my own kind. At that young age it was Rima from Green Acres that I dreamed of being like, a girl more like a bird than a human. She too was misunderstood by the society that surrounded her but she was also a martyr. She was killed for her unappreciated and even feared differences. Today, I still find myself alone, forced to take a different path. For example, by choosing to focus on raising my young son versus building my career, I have been set apart from many of my peers and I suffer economically for my choice.
It takes a great deal of work and reflection to solidify one’s unique view of the world, especially when this view is not supported by The Mainstream. While in the past my loneliness and isolation always seemed “unfortunate”, I now understand that the solitary strength that Artemis embodies helps guide and support me to achieve my life’s goals. In Mother Country Marilynne Robinson writes that
There is a real world that is really dying, and we had better think about that. My greatest hope . . . is that we will at last find the courage to make ourselves rational and morally autonomous adults, secure enough in the faith that life is good and to be preserved, to recognize the grosser forms of evil and name them and confront them. Who will do it for us?
To be able to stand alone (apart from traditional society or accepted schools of thought) is in many ways one of the most difficult and most important actions we can take. If we understand the origins and the need for our autonomy and independence, we could feel further empowered to take a stand. If we can take that stand with other likeminded people, kindred spirits, we can change the world.
Disillusionment with my career and society in general has led me far from Mainstream society and the traditional world of work. Living on the fringes, we have little resources and little contact with Mainstream society. Our solitary existence has been healing. But I am now at a point in my life where I want to “re-enter” traditional society, to return to the patriarchal world where I used to eke out my existence. I do not wish to pursue a legal career, but I do wish to communicate with lawyers and others involved in setting policy for our society and our institutions. This time, however, instead of quietly and desperately surviving, I wish to speak out about my values and beliefs, the ones nurtured by Artemis and nature. This time then, rather than leaving the “wilds” inside of me, I see myself making “pilgrimages” to patriarchal society voicing my perception of the world while working towards its transformation. This is new terrain for me and for my independent image of Artemis.
Perhaps Artemis in society could help to recreate the creative, non-violent partnership society of Catal Huyuk. That “culture had custom not laws, religious authority not military authority, and the cohesion of the collective.” (Emphasis added.) Today’s world no doubt calls for a new twist on this ancient culture. It has been suggested that woman’s very close connection to home and garden helped to lead to her decreased prominence when trading and commerce began to grow—promoted primarily by the world-traveling males.
Catal Huyuk was a brilliant achievement, but it also represents the maximum development of traditional, matrilineal society . . . As a town becomes a cosmopolitan city it grows too complex to be ruled by the close the intimate mores and custom of matrilineal society . . . Agriculture and the rise of sedentary villages and towns were feminine creations. But civilization and warfare were not; they spelled the end for the Great Mother.16
But who is to say that a new concept of custom, one which can incorporate global considerations, could not be embraced?
I recently read an article about a genetic study, a massive effort fifty years in the making, which concludes simply that there is more genetic difference between individuals than there is between races; that the different skin colors, facial features and body characteristics are simply superficial adaptations to things like climate; that when one delves beneath the surface to the deepest levels of one’s being these differences melt away like an illusion. A new understanding of the old adage “beauty is only skin deep.” Why could not a global custom reflect this reality, this understanding of the similarity of the entire human race in spite of our superficial differences? If each person could carry this thought, this concept, this feeling in their bodies, their hearts, heads, hands and souls, what a world we could make! Such weighty concepts make it easy to believe that the legal profession could be transformed from an adversarial to a mediation based practice, while work hours for everyone are reduced to account for the time needed to nurture and care for the children and ourselves.
I believe then that Artemis’ role in society and at work is to voice this understanding of the world, as well as to show by example the truth—the underlying connection of all people and all living things and non-living things. With her masculine-feminine duality Artemis is an excellent spokesperson to cross over those patriarchal lines, and she needs to do so by using not only her intellect and analytical ability but her intuitive feeling voice. Her voice speaks from personal experience as well as from logical deduction. She has the resources, a reserve of strength direct from the Earth itself, and she has fierceness for she is fighting for nothing less than all of the children.
Before, in the heart of traditional society, I felt as if I was there as an imposter denying my very being. In Split Culture, Susan Griffin speaks of this experience in some detail. She asserts that,
[W]e learn to disown a part of our own being. We come to believe that we do not know what we know. We grow used to ignoring evidence of our own experience, what we hear or see, what we feel in our own bodies.
This past experience brings doubts. Doubts of my ability or even my role model, Artemis’, ability to work towards transforming our world. I find myself asking elementary questions like: Can I make a living? Can I be with my son? Will I remember Artemis? And then I picture myself running my hand upon a wall that will soon hold a drawing of the Goddess, sleeping in a dwelling that is more like a womb than a fortress, existing in a world of community and cohesion where men and women hold each other around the waist and laugh.
Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger. 1986. Women’s Ways of Knowing: The Development of Self, Voice, and Mind. Basic Books, Inc. New York.
Bolen, Jean Shinoda. Goddesses in Everywoman: A New Psychology of Women. New York: Harper Perennial, 1985.
Diamond, Orenstein, eds. 1990. Reweaving the World. The Emergence of Ecofeminism. San Francisco, Sierra Club Books.
Gimbutas, Marija. 1981. Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe. San Francisco, U. of California Press.
Gottleib, Robert. 1993. Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the Environmental Movement Washington, D.C. Island press.
Gray, Elizabeth Dodson (Editor). 1988. Sacred Dimensions Of Women’s Experience. Wellesley. Massachusetts.
Heigesen, Sally. 1990. The Female Advantage: Women’s Ways of Leadership. New York: Doubleday.
Plant, Judith. 1989. Healing the Wounds: The Promise of Ecofeminism. Philadelphia, New Society Publishers.
Thompson, William. 1981. The Time Failing Bodies Take to Light. NewYork, Saint Martins Press, pp. 153-155
Woogler, Jennifer Barker. 1989. The Goddess Within: A Guide To The Eternal Myths That Shape Women’s Lives. New York, Ballantine Books.
1. Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, Women's Ways of Knowing: The Development of Self, Voice, and Mind. (Basic Books, Inc. New York, 1986), p. 54.
2. Woogler, Jennifer Barker. The Goddess Within: A Guide To The, Eternal Myths That Shape Women's Lives. New York, Ballantine Books 1989, p. 11.
3. Eisler, Riane. The Chalice and the Blade: Our History Our Future, (San Francisco. Harper & Row, 1987), p. 23.
4. Hawken, Paul. The Ecology of Commerce. (New York, Harper & Row, 1993), p. 17
5. Plant, Judith. Healing the Wounds: The Promise of Ecofeminismm. Philadelphia, New Society Publishers, 1989.
6. This strong, psychological aspect of childbirth was something I had never been prepared for by my birthing classes nor the reading that I had done. I recently read an article about a woman whose labor actually stopped during the pushing stage when a bomb was dropped near the hospital where she was giving birth in Israel. She had decided (or her body had decided) that she would not bring a child into such a world.
7. Artemis was first a midwife to her mother Leto who labored for nine days on the deserted island of Delos to give birth to Apollo. Jean Shinoda BoIen in Goddesses In Every Woman makes the interesting observation that Artemis is the only Goddess who is depicted as repeatedly coming to a mother's aid.
8. Sydney Amora Morris, Homebirth: The Sacred Act of Creation.
9. From Sacred Dimensions of Women's Experience, edited by Elizabeth Dodson Gray, (Wellesley, Massachusetts. Roundtable Press, 1988).
10. I believe that the Greeks, a highly patriarchal society, did not feet comfortable with a Goddess with too many abilities so they assigned specific abilities to certain Goddesses.
11. Williams, Terry Tempest. "The Wild Card," Wilderness (Summer, 1993), pp. 26-29.
12. Gimbutas, Marija. Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe, San Francisco, U. of California Press, 1981, p. 57.
13. Ibid., p. 13.
14. Of course, Actaeon is depicted as a harmless youth but there is always the underlying question: Was he considering raping the naked Artemis who stood before him prior to meeting his demise? After all women and Goddesses were often depicted in Greek myths as being raped.
15. Some feminists have also separated these schools into different categories such as rational ecofeminist versus cultural ecofeminism. See Plant, Judith. Healing the Wounds: The Promise of Ecofeminism. Philadelphia, New Society Publishers, 1989. Many of the differences between different ecofeminist theories seem merely superficial for me. Like Artemis I know the world in so many ways and I want to be able to speak about the world and reflect upon it by using intellect, intuition, compassion, and free thinking as well as heart, head, hands, and soul.
16. Thompson, William. The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light. (New York, Saint Martins Press, 1981), pp. 153-155.
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