Artemis and the Sanctity of Balance
The Feminine Divine: Artemis and the Sanctity of Balance
Artemis is a divine representation of nature’s primal force and its capacity for self-preservation. Her archetype is, as Ginette Paris has said, connected to global ecology through the cycle of life and death, and of sacrifice in the sense that death itself plays a necessary role in maintaining the natural equilibrium (Paris, 2009). A feminist goddess, she is suppliant to women in childbirth in which she holds power over life and death. Through Artemis’ intervention, as Paris asserts, abortion becomes a sacred act intimately tied to maternal love; it is not a manifestation of irresponsibility or the abrogation of motherly love.
Artemis is a uniquely feminine deity, a supernatural force that stands beyond the limiting and inherently destructive male/patriarchal ethos of the Greek pantheon. Paris’ image of Artemis as an elemental force is an important notion because, as a maintainer of balance, she possesses ultimate power. She is not a cruel and arbitrary judge or executioner; rather, she is a protector of life. Paris refers to Artemis as an “archetype of femininity that is pure and primitive,” an apt description of a divine actor with the power to aid women in childbirth, or relieve their agony with her arrows (Paris, 109). Not only is she an important figure for women, she also represents the promise of greater understanding in gender relations, a rejection of thoughtless patriarchal dogma and the restoration of balance in the natural world.
Rethinking tradition
Artemis as feminist goddess exists as a counterpoint to Judeo-Christian precepts about gender roles. The mother-responsibility that she embodies can help create a new understanding of the natural balance between the sexes (Rowland, 62). Artemis is relevant to this debate because she is more than an avenger of women wronged by predatory male characters. It is because she is profoundly chaste that she holds relevance for men. In her book The Goddess: Mythological Images of the Feminine, Christine Downing asserts that Artemis is tied to men because she has denied them (Downing, 21). By denying them she becomes a figure of uniquely feminine strength, power that is beyond the reach of patriarchal authority, which is utterly helpless and powerless from the standpoint of childbirth. The “mystery” of birth lies well beyond the influence of the domineering male, who is as dependent on Artemis’ intervention as the female when the lives of mother and child are on the line.
Paris notes that Artemis is unusual among goddesses in that she is not tied in a significant way to any male figure from mythology. In this sense she is aloof, not reliant upon male authority. “The femininity of Artemis is sealed by an inviolable and unnegotiable virginity,” Paris writes (Paris, 114). It is important that she remain so because she is a divine judge with the power of life and death. In this way, Artemis holds power that men must respect, even fear. She is prepared to exert her strength against any man who insults or seeks to violate the sanctity of her power. Admetus, who neglected to offer thanks to Artemis for his wedding, finds snakes in his bed. Bucaphagus is slain by her arrows for attempting to rape Artemis on Mount Pholoe. As such, her punishments are responses to transgressions; they are not typically meted out as the
result of petty jealousies. One has the impression that her victims are on the receiving end of justice and are not the subjects of mere vendettas. She even appears to be administering justice when she kills Apollo’s mistress, Coronis, who had been unfaithful with a mortal while carrying Apollo’s child.
Contradiction and resolution
Judicious though she is, Artemis nevertheless presents us with contradictions. In Pagan Meditations, Paris wonders at such a divergent identity being invested in a goddess. “Is it a way of saying that a woman’s protective power cannot function properly if she does not also possess full power, namely the power over life as well as death?” (Paris, 2009). This contradiction finds resolution in the cycle of life and death and the idea of the feminist goddess as protector of nature and preserver of ecological balance. Paris seeks to explain the seemingly contradictory relationship that exists in Artemis. The goddess “encourages us to become more aware of the power of death, its inescapable nature, and its necessary role in a living ecology” (Ibid).
Indeed, Artemis the huntress is inextricably linked to the natural world. She is a symbol of regeneration, of the clearing away of infirmity and the unhealthy, cruel and arbitrary as that power often seems to us. In Goddess as Nature: Towards a Philosophical Thealogy, Paul Reid-Bowen writes that “For Goddess feminists the model of the web of life is a way of speaking about the fundamentally interconnected nature of reality; for many ecologists the web of life is an appropriate model for describing the unity of life on Earth…” (110). That which Reid-Bowen calls the Goddess feminist’s motherly protectiveness toward nature “coheres so closely with models drawn from ecology as to be almost analogous” (Ibid, 110). For Paris, Artemis’ power of life and death over humans and animals preserves the cycle of life, its “birth/emergence, growth/generation, decay/degeneration and rebirth/regeneration” (Ibid, 68).
Balance and belief systems
If we are to learn from Artemis about the preservation of nature, then we must first look at what her archetype has to say about the relative theological natures of monotheism and polytheism. These two creeds represent diametrically opposite views on ecology. The domination of the Judeo-Christian ethic over the past two millennia has powerfully reinforced the Biblical proposition that nature has been bestowed upon mankind as a gift or legacy that man must order as he sees fit. “Monotheisms are neurotic, one-sided structures devoted to transcendent and triumphant powers over nature” (Rowland, 66). Artemis as feminist goddess arises from a polytheism that saw man’s relationship with nature very differently, as though all are interconnected branches of a great tree. This perspective encourages a respect for the natural order and teaches that domination is unnatural and destructive.
The idea that man should master nature is the true contradiction, part of a belief system that has led to the destruction of much of the natural world. Artemis’ seemingly contradictory nature is, by contrast, symbiotic. She is a divine maintainer of the natural world in which all must co-exist; she is also a bringer of death as a preserver of the natural order, the cycle of life. In this light, she must, as Paris has stated, have “full power” as divine protector. For Karl Jung, the Goddess is a healer of the natural world, through which all are linked, the “web of life,
connecting human, to nature, to the divine, conscious to unconscious, feminine to masculine in the psyche. The sacred is part of nature and human beings are part of that dance” (Rowland, 67). Here we return to Artemis’ relevance to men as well as women. As protector and preserver, she is a teacher who has much to say to both sexes about balance and responsibility, including procreative responsibility. Through her, abortion becomes sacred, a responsible and sacrificial act that places the feminine essence beyond the patriarchal authority that denies and endangers the balance of nature.
Conclusion
In contrast to the historic and well-documented gender inequities produced by the monotheistic tradition, Artemis stands as a singularly distinctive representation of feminine independence. She is a figure that commands respect from men and women alike because she is involved in the mysteries of childbirth and in decisions of life and death. More to the point, Artemis represents balance as a preserver of that which is healthy and vigorous and a destroyer of that which cannot survive on its own. In this sense she renders abortion into a merciful act, a sacred maintenance of the natural order and a refutation of male-oriented resistance that seeks to dominate decisions about female reproduction. As nations confront pressing ethical issues about the environment and reproductive rights, Artemisian notions of balance between the sexes and preservation of the natural order could do much to establish a broader understanding and a more open dialogue among nations and between men and women.
Works Cited
Downing, C. Mythological Images of the Feminine. iUniverse.com. 2007.
Paris, G. Pagan Meditations: The Worlds of Aphrodite, Artemis, and Hestia. Dallas, TX:
Spring Publications. 1986.
Paris, G. To Live a Psychological Life is to Live Imaginally. 2009. Web.
Reid-Bowen, P. Goddess as Nature: Towards a Philosophical Thealogy. Hampshire, UK:
Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. 2007.
Rowland, S. Jung: A Feminist Revision. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. 2002.
