such as the women in India who demonstrated against authorities who disregard rape, those who joined One Billion Rising and danced in streets to end violence against women, or took part in the Arab Spring uprisings.
Stories
In Jean M. Auel's The Clan of the Cave Bear (1980), Ayla is an orphaned five-year-old who is tolerated by people who are not like her own in prehistoric Europe. The way Ayla learns through observation and abuse, adapts and survives, and has her own goals is echoed by stories of real children and by women who see in Ayla something of themselves.
In Game of Thrones, Arya Stark is a young Artemis girl on her own in a devastated and dangerous world. Her once peaceful world was brought to an end, not by an earthquake which left Ayla orphaned, as natural disasters can do, but as a consequence of armed conflict. Wherever there are massive natural disasters and few resources, or ongoing fratricidal wars such as those in the Middle East and in central Africa now, and in Europe and Asia in the twentieth century, the psychological situation and dangers faced by these fictional girls are quite real to girls who lose parents, have no home to return to, and have the indomitable spirit and will to survive and not become helpless victims, no matter what. Anonymous to us, are the innumerable real life girls and women who are heroic and ordinary. Maybe you will recognize yourself as one.
The girl who does not give up on herself when others write her off as worthless taps into the indomitable spirit of Artemis, which is her archetype. This is the same source of indimitable will that is in the girl who devotes hours and years to master a skill or a sport or an art that takes commitment and practice. The bow and quiver of arrows which makes a sculpture or a painting of a goddess recognizable as Artemis is a meaningful symbol. To send an arrow to a target of your own choosing requires aim, intention, determination, focus and power. You can bring down game to feed yourself and others, punish enemies, or demonstrate confidence: metaphorically, you can take care of yourself.
When passion and perseverance come together day after day, the indomitable will that results can provide an energy to go beyond former limits. Diana Nyad is a stunning example of this. She was sixty-four when she became the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida in 2013, succeeding on her fifth attempt, the fourth since she turned sixty. She swam one hundred and three miles, took nearly fifty-three hours and did it in shark-infested water without a protective cage. Nyad said to Dr. Sanjay Gupta on CNN: “You have a dream that doesn't come to fruition, and move on with your life. But it is somewhere back there. And then you turn sixty, and your mom just dies, and you're looking for something. And the dream comes walking out of your imagination.” While she was swimming, she got three messages: One is “never, ever give up,” two is, “you are never too old to chase a dream,” and the third was, “it looks like a solitary sport, but it's a team.”
Stories are wonderful vehicles for images, feelings, atmosphere, and depth because they lead the readers or the audience to identify with and learn from the characters. We begin with our own experience and make a connection; something rings true and illuminates something important that we didn't recognize before about ourselves. When it reflects a deep truth, this insight is liberating. My hope for this book is that readers will find soul nourishment to grow into the people they were meant to be. By readers, I mean male as well as female readers. The ability to imagine ourselves as the main character, or even as all the characters, in a story, with no consideration as to the gender of that character makes us aware of the universality of the masculine and feminine in us all. This ability lets us recognize the qualities that are human and not gender-based.
When you feel personal and archetypal traits together, when there is a connection between you and the story that holds your attention, when you realize a truth that you have not before seen, this is an aha! moment—a moment when an unacknowleged archetype comes to life. For women in whom traditional roles and archetypes like daughter, wife, and mother (Persephone, Hera, and Demeter) coincide well with their expectations, Atalanta/Artemis may stay dormant until that moment of truth. Similarly, a woman who has been an Artemis and never wanted to be a mother, may, in her late thirties or early forties, feel that she must have a child if the maternal archetype lays a claim on her psyche.
The stories about Atalanta exemplify archetypal qualities of Artemis as goddess of the hunt. There is, as well, the meaning of Artemis as goddess of the moon, which is an affinity for mystical and meditative experiences, a sensing of subtle energies, a capacity for inner reflection. This lunar aspect is in activists who are “closet mystics,” most recently attested to in Barbara Ehrenreich's Living With a Wild God (2014). Known for her books and essays about politics, economics, social class and women's issues, Ehrenreich wrote her unexpected memoir about mystical visions she had as a teenager, the extensive reading she has done since and the sense she makes of this personal reality as a scientist and atheist. Artemis is one of the three goddesses of the moon. She is the archetype of the waxing (or young and growing) crescent moon. Selene is the archetype of the full moon, while Hecate is the archetype of the waning crescent moon. In delving into these archetypes and their meanings, women can see and appreciate them as stages in themselves.
Artemis, Athena, and Hestia make up a second important trinity; they are the three Virgin Goddesses. As archetypes, they differ in attributes and values with one important quality in common: each has a one-in-herself inner core. Intelligent strategy is Athena's gift, introverted centeredness is Hestia's.
Atalanta and Artemis are the means through which readers can drop into their own depth psychology. There are many real-life stories of women in these pages, as well as mythological and fictional examples of women who are similar to Atalanta. If Artemis is a strong archetype in your psyche, you will see reflections of yourself and will value the indomitable qualities that have sustained you. You may also realize how you may need to grow. It may also be that you are someone who has imagined yourself in the stories about indomitable girls and women, but has kept this part of yourself under wraps. If so, perhaps this book—or a vivid dream, or synchronicity—may help you to realize that an indomitable spirit exists in you. And, with right timing and courage, you will be true to the Artemis in yourself.
Chapter One
Atalanta the Myth
Stories often change with the telling and the point of view of the storyteller. In Greek mythology, there were two versions of Atalanta's origins as a famous hunter from either Arcadia (as told by Apollodorus) or Boetia (as told by Hesiod). In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Greek myths were assembled and retold in Latin verse. I describe Atalanta as being from Arcadia because it is in this version that we get the account of her birth and how she was abandoned and suckled by a bear.
Atalanta is also mentioned as wanting to enlist with Jason and the Argonauts on their search for the Golden Fleece. She is refused because her presence as a woman among men would be disruptive—the same argument that was used to keep women from serving in the military until recently. This didn't stop Atalanta, however, as told by classical scholar Robert Graves (The Golden Fleece, 1944). Graves describes how, as the Argo casts off, Atalanta jumps aboard and, invoking the protection of Artemis (for her virginity), joins the heroes. In another vignette, when two centaurs try to rape her, she kills them with her arrows.
I have taken liberties as a storyteller to combine elements from separate myths in which Atalanta is mentioned, adding some embellishments. For example, when I tell how the bear finds her, I incorporate Bernard Evslin's version of how she and Meleager meet (Heroes, Gods, and Monsters of the Greek Myths, 1968). I tell of her return to Arcadia after the hunt for the boar to provide continuity between the hunt and the footrace. Here is the story as I tell it.
The Myth of Atalanta
In the kingdom of
