Artemis is one of the major Olympian deities, daughter of Zeus (Jupiter) and Leto (a Titaness), and twin sister of Apollo. Most likely pre-Hellenic, perhaps originating in Crete, she is known as a Moon Goddess. The Greeks and Romans turned to her for help in hunting, protection of the young, and support during childbirth, which are reflected in her titles: Divine Huntress, Lady of Wild Things, Lady of the Beasts or of Creatures, Mistress of the Woods, Lucina (Goddess of Childbirth, of Bringing to Light).

         From birth she exhibits the powers of an immortal. The first-born of twins, Artemis immediately sets to aiding her mother Leto during her difficult nine-day labor to deliver Apollo. Thereafter, women prayed to the Divine Midwife to ease their pain. At the age of three, she climbs upon her father's knee and states what she wants: a silver bow and arrows, a pack of hunting dogs, a knee-length tunic that would allow her to run through the forest, the mountains and woodlands as her sacred places, eternal chastity, and attendant nymphs. Zeus, delighted, grants her wishes: "Little daughter, you shall have all you desire."

         The bear is one of the goddess' totem animals, and Artemis is attended by the arktoi, her "she-bear" priestesses. She is associated with Ursa Major, the Great She-Bear in the sky and ruler of the axis mundi, Pole of the World.  Artemis also shoots the hunter Orion with her arrow (some say inadvertently, others say to punish him), and then places him in the sky. The deer is another of her totem animals, and she is often depicted accompanied by a deer.  In the myth of the hunter Actaeon, it is said that he stumbles upon the virgin goddess bathing in a stream.  To prevent him from reporting on her nakedness, she changes him into a stag, and his own hounds then chase him and tear him to pieces. This story may refer to ancient, pre-Hellenic rites in which the Stag King is pursued and killed at the end of his rule. The priestesses of Artemis would have performed this drama, part of which was the ritual bath of the goddess/priestesses. Later, during the time of classical Greece, Artemis' shrine at Ephesus is so magnificent, it is considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

         Artemis is the archetype of the independent feminine spirit. She runs freely through the woods at night, guided by moonlight and her intuition, and confident in her unerring aim. At home in the wild, she needs no man to protect her. On the contrary, she is Divine Protectress of all Creatures. As a symbol of feminine competence, in modern times she has been championed by feminists as well as lesbians. Although our conceptualization of her focuses on her virgin aspect, she was likely originally a triple goddess: the Moon Goddess as Maiden (the virgin), Mother (who oversaw the orgiastic cult at Ephesus), and Crone (who brought death with her arrows and brought in new life with her midwifery).

§§ To further contemplate the Triple Goddess, see also: "The Trinity"

 

 

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        Demeter/Ceres, with the title of Goddess of the Grain, is an Earth Goddess who comes to us from our primeval past. Indeed her name may have evolved from Gaia --> Ga --> Da --> DaMater (Earth Mother) --> DeMeter, or the Greek (De=grain) Meter (=Mother). She is the consummate Mother, the most complete manifestation of the Great Goddess in classical Western mythology.

         The daughter of Cronos (Saturn) and Rhea, she is one of the original twelve Olympians.  Although she bears Persephone (Proserpine) by Zeus (Jupiter) and has occasional affairs, she is not associated with any particular man. Known for her generosity, the Barley Mother bestows upon mortals the knowledge of agriculture - the cultivation of fruits and grains, the principles of sowing and reaping, and the disciplines that establish order in civilization. The Romans called her Ceres Legifera, "the Lawgiver", and her priestesses founded the Roman legal system.

         Her rites coincided with natural cycles.  During the October celebration of the Thesmophoria, a Greek fertility festival, women re-enacted the descent of Persephone to the Underworld. When Demeter's daughter Persephone (Proserpine) is abducted by the Lord of the Underworld, the Grain Goddess searches for her in vain. High and low she searches, with maternal persistence.  In her depression, she neglects the Earth's crops, and there are no harvests. During this time, her divine radiance disguised by her grief, she is taken in by Celeus and Metanira of Eleusis, where she works as a nurse to their young son Demophoon. Lovingly caring for the baby, she bathes him in the fire of immortality, until Metanira comes upon the scene and screams, breaking the spell. At this point Demeter resumes her true appearance, leaving the household awestruck that they have been harboring a goddess. Demeter commands them to build a temple and altar to her. This they do. When the temple is completed, Demeter retreats into it to mourn her daughter, while the Earth suffers drought and famine. After a retinue of immortals plead with Demeter to no avail, Zeus realizes he must satisfy the Earth Goddess in order to save humanity. He dispatches Hermes (Mercury) to the Underworld to fetch Persephone and manages a compromise: Persephone may dwell with her mother two-thirds of the year but must return to Hades for one third of the year.  Persephone's yearly return to Earth, of course, is springtime. Mother and daughter rejoice in their reunion. Trees burst forth in bloom, seeds sprout in the ground.

        The worship of Demeter centers in Eleusis. There she teaches mortals her sacred rites and initiates them into the mysteries of life and death. Since participants were sworn to secrecy, we do not know many details of the actual Eleusinian Mysteries. After seven years of preparation, initiates could undertake the Mystery of Demeter in her temple. It seems that this rite involved drinking a special (trance-inducing?) drink of fermented barley, descent into darkness (as Persephone faced the Underworld) and finding one's own inner light (just as Demeter's life-giving power could sprout grain). It is said that once an initiate passed the Eleusinian Mysteries, they would never again fear death. Perhaps the initiate was able to directly experience the immortality of the eternal soul, or the bliss of nondual Emptiness/the Void. According to Sophocles [Triptolemos, fr. 837], "Thrice happy are they of men who looked upon these rites ere they go to Hades house, for they alone have true life."

        The parallels between the mythic stories of Isis (Egyptian) and Demeter (Greek), even down to the details of a depressed goddess being splashed by the well, suggest that they refer to one Earth Goddess.  Likewise, the rituals of their Mysteries seem to be nearly identical.  We may suppose that Demeter descended from Isis.

         Demeter, viewed as Triple Goddess, becomes the Holy Trinity of Maiden (Kore), Mother (Demeter), and Crone (Hecate). Ceres, in Latin, is likely a cognate of the Greek Core/Kore.  Kore is the virginal aspect of Persephone. Together they illustrate the cycles of Nature as well as the fruitfulness of the Earth.

         Because her worship persisted even into Christian times, Demeter became known as St. Demetra. Legend had it that a wicked Turkish wizard kidnapped her daughter and locked her in a tower. When a young man, in trying to rescue the maiden, is dismembered by the wizard, St. Demetra puts him back together and resurrects him, so that he can free her daughter. The Church never officially recognized St. Demetra but in the Middle Ages did canonize St. Demetrius, a (male) warrior saint.

§§  See also: BAUBO, ISIS, PERSEPHONE.
§§  To further contemplate the Triple Goddess, see also: "The Trinity" (in The Birthing of Venus and Her Lover)
§§  The chapter, "Crete and the Great Reversal" (in The Birthing of Venus and Her Lover), describes our experiences at Eleusis, Demeter's temple complex in Greece.

 

 

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        Green Man comes to us in many guises, perhaps because he is closer to a raw archetype than most other mythological characters.  He is Spirit of the Forest, the intelligence inherent in Nature, the repeating cycles of birth, growth, death, and decay.  Most often he is depicted as a tree, or a foliate head.  In pre-literate cultures of Northern and Central Europe, he was celebrated on the spring equinox, midsummer, and at harvest time, though his influence was strongest on Beltane (May Day) throughout the Middle Ages.  Beltane revels included the erecting of the May Pole (reminiscent of a phallus, the axis mundi, or World Tree), the crowning of the May King and May Queen, games, dances, and freer sexual liaisons . . . celebrations of the fecundity of Nature.

        In the story of John Barleycorn, the Corn King is killed and plowed into the earth.  His three murderers are certain he is dead.  With the rains, however, John Barleycorn awakens from his sleep and emerges from the soil as a green sprout.  The hero who is killed and resurrected takes a more anthropomorphic form in the myths of Tammuz, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Odin, and Jesus Christ (the latter three meeting death on or in a tree).

        During Roman times, the King of the Wood fought to be the worthy consort of Diana, the Goddess of the Animals.  Together they protected the forest and its creatures.  Similarly in Celtic rites, the old Stag King was killed, so the new Stag King could couple with the High Priestess in a ritual hieros gamos (sacred marriage), to insure the fertility of the land.  Green Man is sacrificed, only to appear in a different form, all the time affirming the abundance of Nature.  Cernunnos, the Celtic Horned God, is depicted holding a tore (large ring) and a serpent, symbolizing female and male genitalia respectively.

        Herne the Huntsman, from Saxon lore, is a horned wild man who gallops on horseback through the woods, leading a pack of hounds, to round up the souls of the dead and take them into the Underworld.  Here, Green Man plays the role of psychopomp.  Like a tree, he lives on Earth but connects the depths (through his roots) with the heavens (through his branches).

        English and Scottish ballads from the 14th century tell the story of Robin Hood and his band of Merry Men, who would rather live in the wilderness (Sherwood Forest) than in civilization.  In response to the oppression of the Christian Church (in the form of the Abbey of St. Mary’s) and Norman overlords (in the person of the Sheriff of Nottingham),  Robin Hood, a trickster aspect of Green Man, champions the common people by stealing from the Abbot and outwitting the Sheriff.  Robin and his sidekick Little John win the Sheriff’s archery contest, and Robin also succeeds in wooing his May Queen, Maid Marian. 

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        Green Man, ever a popular pagan motif, was incorporated in the architecture of churches in Europe, perhaps as a way to bring pagans into the Christian fold.  His carved face appeared as a foliate head (made of leaves), a disgorging head (spewing out local vegetation from his mouth), or bloodsucker head (sprouting plants from facial orifices). 

        The capricious nature of the woodland spirit can also be found in characters such as Sylvanus, Jack in the Green, Robin Goodfellow, Puck, the Green Knight (of King Arthur lore), and Peter Pan, who appeared in 1904 in a play by J.M. Barrie and was widely popularized in an animated feature film by Walt Disney (1953).

        Invoked at various festivals, Green Man is enjoying a resurgence in Europe now, at a time when world deforestation and ecological threats have reached unprecedented heights.  Green Man is a positive male archetype exemplifying the power and wisdom of Nature.

§§ To compare with other Dying & Resurrecting Deities, see ADONIS, INANNA, DIONYSUS, DUMUZI, JESUS CHRIST, ODIN, OSIRIS, and PERSEPHONE.

Appears in:                        Green Man & the High Priestess