moon and stars, walk on a deserted beach, or gaze across the desert
and feel themselves in spiritual communion with nature.
Lynn Thomas, writing in The Backpacking Woman, describes the
perceptions of a woman appreciating the wilderness through her
Artemis nature:
There are for starters, grandeur and silence, pure water and
clean air. There is also the gift of distance...the chance to stand
away from relationships and daily ritual...and the gift of energy.
Wilderness infuses us with its own special brand of energy. I
remember lying by the Snake River in Idaho once and becoming
aware I could not sleep...natures’s forces had me in hand. I was
engulfed by a dance of ions and atoms. My body was responding
to the pervasive pull of the moon.^3
“MOONLIGHT VISION”
The eye-on-target clarity of focus of Artemis the Hunter, is one of
two modes of “seeing” associated with Artemis. “Moonlight vision”
is also characteristic of Artemis as the Moon Goddess. Seen by
moonlight, a landscape is muted, details are indistinct, beautiful,
and often mysterious. One’s vision is drawn upward to the starry
heavens or to a vast, panoramic view of nature. In moonlight, a
person in touch with Artemis becomes an unself-conscious part of
nature, in it and one-with-it for a time.
In her book Women in the Wilderness, China Galland emphasizes
that when women walk into the wilderness they also walk inward:
“Going into the wilderness involves the wilderness within us all.
This may be the deepest value of such an experience, the recognition
of our kinship with the natural world.”^4 Women who follow Artemis
into the wilderness characteristically discover themselves becoming
more reflective. Often, their dreams are more vivid than usual, which
contributes to their looking inward. They see inner terrain and dream
symbols by “moonlight,” so to speak, in contrast to tangible reality,
which is best appreciated in the bright light of day.
Goddesses in Everywoman