CULTIVATING ARTEMIS
Artemis-idenitified women immediately recognize their affinity
with this goddess. Other types of women may also become aware
of their need to make her acquaintance. And yet other women know
that Artemis exists in them and realize the need for her to become
a more influential part of themselves. How can we cultivate Artemis?
Or strengthen this archetype? And how can we encourage the growth
of Artemis in our daughters?
Sometimes the goal of developing Artemis requires drastic
measures. For example, one talented woman writer, whose work
was significant to her, repeatedly abandoned it whenever a man
came into her life. Every man was initially intoxicating. Soon he be-
came a need. Her life would revolve around him, and if he became
distant or rejecting she would get increasingly frantic. After a friend
commented that she was addicted to men, she saw the pattern and
decided that if she were going to take her writing seriously, she
would have to go “cold turkey” and “swear off” men for a period
of time. She moved out of the city, only occasionally seeing old
friends, while she cultivated solitude, work, and Artemis within
herself.
A woman who marries young often goes from being a daughter
to a wife (archetypally Persephone and then Hera), and may discover
and value Artemis qualities only after a divorce, when she lives
alone for the first time in her life. Such a woman may go on a vaca-
tion by herself and find that she can have a good time; or discover
the satisfactions of running several miles each morning; or enjoy
being part of a women’s support group.
Or a woman may have a series of relationships, may feel worthless
in the intervals between men, and may develop Artemis only after
she “gives up on men” and seriously concludes that she may never
marry. Once she has the courage to face this possibility and to organ-
ize her life around her friends and what matters to her, she may feel
a one-in-herself sense of wholeness, an unexpected well-being that
comes from developing the Artemis archetype.
Wilderness programs for women evoke Artemis, especially
Artemis: Goddess of the Hunt and Moon, Competitor and Sister