Artemis is one of the three Greek goddesses of the moon, along with Selene and Hecate. Each represents a phase in life: Artemis symbolizes the waxing, or young and growing, crescent moon; Selene is the full moon; Hecate is the waning crescent moon. The phases of the moon are often seen as reflections of the three phases of women's lives—as maiden, mother, and crone. These are also the three phases of the pre-patriarchal Great Goddess or Triple Goddess, who was worshipped in her three aspects. However, Selene, as the full moon, is full in herself and is not a mother goddess. She symbolizes the reality that maturity and motherhood are not the same, but rather separate aspects of a woman in her prime. Hecate, as the waning moon, is the archetype of the crone, the mysterious one who phases into the dark of the moon. For millennia, divinity was seen as the Great Mother and earth was sacred. Indigenous humans lived in a sacred world (which they still do). In pre-patriarchal Old Europe, successive waves of invaders imposed powerful male divinities upon the goddess-worshipping people. Female divinities were either diminished or incorporated, becoming consorts or daughters for the new gods. Greek mythology tells about the struggle for power among the gods. Zeus prevailed and established himself as chief god on Mount Olympus. Rape became a common theme. Under the Romans, the mythology remained similar, although many of the names of divinities were changed.
The Western world was pagan and patriarchal; male gods and men ruled. With the ascendency of Christianity under the Roman Emperor Constantine, pagan divinities were replaced by monotheism—by one male god—although Christianity has a mystical Trinity of father, son, and holy spirit, and Catholics venerate the Virgin Mary. In medieval times, rulers claimed they had been given the divine right to rule over others from God. Only men could be priests, because they were created in the image of God. The theologians not only upheld male superiority; but they also maintained for many centuries that men had souls and women did not.
It is relevant to the status of women to learn that, prior to patriarchal religions, humans worshipped the Great Goddess, mother goddesses, and the sacred feminine, although by many different names. The function of men and sperm in procreation was not known. What was known was that all life came through female bodies and that women were embodiments of the goddess in bringing forth new life. Pregnant women became initiates into the mystery and dangers of childbirth, aided by midwives, older women who recognized the stages of labor. The sick also turned to midwives for their knowledge of remedies to ease pain, lower fevers, and heal wounds. They could see signs of recovery and know when a person was getting close to death. They were respected and possibly feared because of their proximity to the great mysteries of birth and death. These wise women, midwives, and healers, who were the first to be burned at the stake during the Inquisition as witches, expressed the archetype of Hecate.
Where there was reverence for the sacred feminine, the relationship between a woman's cycles and the moon were clear and the stages in women's lives honored. The first menstruation and its cessation were important, and there were rituals to honor the onset of these new stages. Our language still reflects the connection between women and the moon: mens means “moon” in Latin. Menstruation, pregnancy, and menopause reflect the three stages of the moon, and the three phases of the Great Goddess as maiden, mother, and crone.
A girl became a maiden when she first began to bleed and came into her “moon time.” In North American indigenous traditions, women retreated into the moon lodge with other menstruating women, as women who live together and are exposed to moonlight menstruate at the same time. This was a powerful time for dreams, especially for archetypal rather than personal dreams. Women continued to have their monthly menses, until they became pregnant and nursed a child, after which they resumed menstruation until they either became pregnant again or entered menopause. It was thought that menstrual blood was retained either to make a baby or to make milk. At menopause, when monthly bleeding stopped, it was thought that the blood was retained in the body, this time to make wisdom.
Atalanta is a myth about a human woman whose archetype is Artemis, and her story is analogous to the first stage—the waxing crescent moon phase—of an independent woman's life. When Hippomenes brings Aphrodite into the story, Atalanta comes under her influence and a second archetype becomes active in her psyche—as it often does in women who are like her. Until they fall in love, their passion may be for a cause—for animals or the outdoors, or as a competitor with good male friends and even lovers. Atalanta's myth ends either when she loses the race and will marry Hippomenes, or when she is turned into a lioness harnessed forever to the chariot of Cybele. In the lives of real women with the Artemis archetype, however, there are many chapters beyond the end of the race.
I describe characteristic patterns when Artemis remains the dominant archetype and major influence throughout a woman's life in Goddesses in Everywoman. However, another or other archetypes often do become important and, when they do and are in conflict with Artemis, anxiety arises over decisions that will alter her life. Usually these involve someone else, another archetype, and a loss of autonomy. It may be a relationship choice about commitment or whether to have a child. It could be about making a career change, taking a creative risk, making a geographic move, or in response to unexpected responsibilities. These are big decisions that set the direction a woman's life will take next.
In the first half of life, the metaphor of the inner committee with a well-functioning ego chairing the process is an excellent model. Inner conflicts occur when there are strong archetypal forces and voices competing within a woman; these can arise over love, an opportunity, or a loss. A competent chair (you—a centered, a well-functioning ego) allows all to be heard. However, important decisions should not be determined by a committee vote. The inner committee may bring up the issues and questions, but which path engages your soul? When Artemis is the archetype, an inner one-in-herself certainty can set a young woman on her course early through a life-shaping soul decision.
Another metaphor from mythology about consciousness and choice starts with the question: Which goddess gets the golden apple marked “For the Fairest?” This question comes up at a wedding banquet to which all of the Olympian divinities are invited except Eris, Goddess of Discord. She comes anyway, and rolls a golden apple into the midst of the guests on which is written “For the Fairest.” Three goddesses, each representing one of the three categories in Goddesses in Everywoman, claim it is meant for her! Will it go to a virgin goddess and represent goals and focus, a profession, a business, or academic life? Will it go to a vulnerable goddess and represent the desire to be married, to become a wife or mother? Or will it go to the alchemical goddess, the lover and creative woman whose love for beauty, passionate intensity, and immediacy will be decisive? In the myth, Zeus declines to make the decision and passes it on to Paris, a shepherd and a prince of Troy. His choice leads to the Trojan War. Until the Women's Movement, men did the choosing and society's values decided not only what was important, but also what was possible.
Which goddess gets the golden apple? That is the question you must answer when the archetypes in your psyche determine what will be meaningful to you—which may change at different times in your life. Outside influences, including pressure to do what “everybody” does, come into the decision. But the depth of a commitment made and the joy that may come of it in your life depend upon the strength of the archetype, which only you can know.
Selene, Goddess of the Full Moon, is called Luna by the Romans. While Artemis and Hecate are associated with the moon, Selene is the moon incarnate. She is a Titan—the generation of Greek divinities that ruled prior to the Olympians. Horse-loving women who already see themselves as following an Artemis pattern will be delighted with the image of Selene, the mature next stage of the moon. She is depicted as a woman riding side-saddle on a horse, or in a chariot drawn by a pair of winged horses. She wears a crown with the lunar sphere or crescent on it, or has these moon images on her cloak. Her full-moon nature is not that of a maiden or a pregnant woman, but that of a full woman.
With the description of Selene as the full moon incarnate, I was struck with the realization that it was her fullness as she is that needs emphasis. A virgin-goddess woman is one-in-herself. In the maturity of midlife, a woman with Atalanta/Artemis qualities can come into her fullness through her own inherent qualities being brought to maturity, and not as a consequence of pregnancy. Her passions and dedication, her perseverance and development, may result in a body of creative work, a profession, or the maturity of an organization, which she recognizes would not have developed had she had children. She can say: “I am a full woman.”
This affirmation of self appears in a healing chant by Rachel Bagby that came to her in a dream that seemed to last all night (hosted at www.vimeo.com). In it, women of all ages, colors, sizes, heights, and ethnicity sing and chant: “I am a full woman, I am a full woman” as they dance in circles and in spirals. At the end of the chant, women from all over the world turn to declare their fullness. This dream came to Rachel when she was “feeling anything but full.” It was a healing song for her and, since then, has been so for countless other women who dance and chant and take this message to heart.
Although Greek mythology is patriarchal, its cosmology—its “in the beginning” story—is very different from that of the monotheistic god of the Old Testament, who created heaven and earth by his word. Hesiod's Theogony is a metaphoric telling of the Greek story.
At first there was Chaos, Eros, and Gaia. Chaos was formless and primordial; Eros was an energy that may either have emerged from Chaos or been simultaneously present. Eros is the Greek word for “love,” for the energy of attraction (from molecules to masses to people) that leads to the creation of something new. At first, this energy was not personified. Much later and down the genealogical line, however, we meet Eros the god, son of Aphrodite, in the story of Eros and Psyche. In his further devolution, Eros has become Cupid, the baby in diapers with the bow and love arrows.
After Chaos and Eros, Gaia (the Earth) took form, becoming matter (from Latin mater, for “mother”). She gave birth through parthenogenesis to Uranus (the sky), and then mated with him to bring forth the Titans, the elder divinities that personify elements in nature. Hyperion (God of Light) and Theia (or Thea, meaning simply “goddess”) became, in turn, the parents of Selene (the moon), Helios (the sun), and Eos (dawn). Thus the Titan divinities of the sun and moon are brother and sister, the same as Apollo and Artemis.
Very little is said about Selene in myths, other than as genealogy, with one notable exception—the story of Selene's love for the sleeping handsome youth, Endymion, that captivated poets and painters. Keats wrote his epic poem Endymion, substituting Cynthia for Selene (Cynthia, like Diana, is another name for Artemis). Tintoretto, Van Dyke, and Rubens all painted the pair with Diana/Artemis in the place of Selene.
In the myth, Selene comes upon Endymion as he sleeps in a cave on Mount Latmos and falls in love with him. She kisses him and watches over him as he sleeps. She is so attracted to him that she is absent from the night sky and becomes paler and paler. When Zeus discovers that Endymion is the cause of her strange behavior, he gives him the choice between death in any way he prefers or perpetual sleep together with eternal youth. Endymion chooses the immortality of perpetual sleep and youth in his cave on Mount Latmos, where he is still visited in the night by Selene. In another version, Selene herself is so overwhelmed by his beauty that she puts him into a deep sleep so she can kiss him without his knowledge.
This myth doesn't always come to mind when we say that someone “moons over” another person, but it certainly does describe that state of obsessive longing, which is often accompanied by loss of appetite and getting paler and paler metaphorically. This one-sided state of being in love with someone who does not even know of your existence sounds like a freshman girl with a crush on the high school star, or the swooning fans of the current androgynous singer—which are Aphrodite awakenings in teenagers. Or it sounds like Wolfgang von Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther, the classic German romantic novel of unrequited love. Or it could be Dante, who saw Beatrice only once—an encounter that inspired him to write the Divine Comedy. One glimpse of her stirred him deeply and had a profound effect on his creativity.
A woman who finds herself being Selene to an Endymion may go through a phase in which she is deeply enamored, and yet wants the beloved on whom she gazes to remain asleep or unconscious of her passionate fascination. In the myth, Selene goes to the cave on Mount Latmos to gaze upon and kiss Endymion, who remains asleep. By the time a woman who is an Artemis reaches midlife or beyond, energies that may have gone into her connection to nature and animals, into a cause, or into being a competitor can become intensely focused on the beauty of one person whom she sees in her own “moonlight” vision. She may hold the image of this beloved person in the cave—in the privacy of the depth of her heart—because it is not like her, she who never fell in love easily, to be moonstruck over someone.
A woman in a Selene/Endymion situation may be married, may have children, may have advanced in her career and be at a plateau, all of which are elements in her ordinary life. Whatever the outer circumstances, she is entering the full-moon phase of her inner life by enacting this myth. It is like an enchantment. She is taken over by the intensity of what she feels and probably does not express this to the person who evokes these feelings—quite possibly because it seems so inappropriate or is a threat to her work, relationships, and sense of identity. The beloved may be a gay man or a far younger man, a public figure, a priest, a spiritual leader, her therapist, her student, her client, her patient, or perhaps a new friend. Her Endymion may be a woman or a man.
In Freudian theory, libido, the psychic energy of attraction, can only be sexual—either heterosexual or homosexual. In the depth psychology of Jung, libido includes this, but is more. It is Eros—love, vitality, psychic energy that attracts, transforms, and heals. In the vessel of Jungian analysis, Eros must be present for there to be alchemy. In patriarchy and in the minds of most men, attractions are defined and dismissed as sexual. Jungian theory and analysis, on the other hand, differentiates between “homoerotic” and “homosexual” attractions and relationships. The power of patriarchy and psychology to pathologize and categorize is losing its power as a younger generation accepts that boys and men can have “man crushes” and “bro-mances” that don't define their sexual orientation. Same-sex crushes in young girls on older girls and young teachers was never pathologized, perhaps because they went unnoticed and were mostly about being drawn to something in another girl or woman that was their own growing edge. Projections are often positive, occurring when qualities and abilities that are coming into consciousness are projected onto a role model. We may see the other person in the magical light of who we may become through knowing them.
Patriarchy's assumption of male phallic sexual superiority, together with the inferior status of women, made virginity—followed by sexual exclusivity, bearing children, and maintaining a household—what was expected of women and what matters. Men did the choosing. This underlies the traditional form of marriage, which is still the norm. In egalitarian marriages, both members consider themselves equals, friends, and partners. When owning a home and having children, the couple often focuses upon practical issues like communication about schedules and sharing household tasks or children's needs. When both partners focus on work goals and functioning well as a couple, the smoothly running household is not threatened. What may be going on in a woman's head or heart or in relationships with anyone else may be of little consequence for many husbands. It may be his disinterest in a depth connection with her or her own disregard of what her soul thirsts for—which may be spiritual, psychological, aesthetic, creative, or intellectual—that can set the emotional stage for someone to enter her psychic life as an Endymion.
The woman may not reveal her feelings for reasons that have to do with roles, age differences, inhibitions, or her own lack of understanding or misinterpretation of the attraction. How possessed she is by her feelings may be embarrassing to her; to realize the other person isn't attracted to her in the same way or with the same intensity may be humiliating—even if no one else knows any of this. The depth and irrationality of her feelings can make her vulnerable, especially if exposed. When this is the case, like Selene, she may just as soon prefer that the beloved one stay asleep—remain unconscious of how often she goes inside her private world, her inner cave, to be with her Endymion. As a result, she who had been shining so brightly in the outer world may now be drawn into her inner world. She may become moody, introspective, or dissatisfied with the outer world that once captured her attention.
There is something mysterious or mystical about Selene's obsession with Endymion. The word “mysterious” is derived from mystes, the name for the initiates into the Eleusinian Mysteries of ancient Greece. These initiates were likely in an altered state. We don't know what their experiences were. But we do know that, as a result of their initiation, they did not fear death. Spiritual transformations, ecstatic epiphanies, and profoundly deep feelings are all beyond the usual or ordinary, but well within human experience. They seem to have in common a mystical dimension of enhanced meaning. When a one-in-herself mature woman becomes obsessed by another person, she may intuitively know that this attraction is about something stirring in her that has been evoked. She may be able to see and describe the person as anyone not obsessed would, and yet still feel this other, unreasonable, mysterious attraction. She may be unaccountably emotional and tearful. She may have powerful archetypal dreams. All this may mystify her or be distressing; and yet something in her is now also vividly alive.
Women with Selene as an active archetype should ask themselves: Who is this symbolic, archetypal, mystical someone as an inner figure? What yearnings for healing, for wholeness, or for living an authentic life does he or she bring, or touch in them? And who is it in their psyche that is responding?
When a reasonable, mature woman falls in love and is obsessed, her usual ego is unseated as chief executive officer of the psyche by the range and depth and sensitivity of her feelings and by her obsessive thoughts. Even so, she may be able to choose what she does. She is in the grip of emotions and uncertainties that, if shared with significant others—including whoever is her Endymion—may cause outer drama as well. Like other midlife crises, this situation can test everyone involved and shake up assumptions and relationships. A woman whose strong archetypes are the virgin goddesses may grow in depth through this experience. She may gain compassion for others, learn humility, and become connected with feelings and emotions she had walled off in herself.
Passion is about intensity—not necessarily about a physical drive for sex. Passion plays are, for example, about Jesus Christ. There may be something vaguely familiar about Selene going into the cave each night to gaze adoringly upon sleeping Endymion, whom she kisses without his being aware. It's like a mother who tiptoes into a dimly lit room at night to gaze upon her sleeping child, kissing him or her lightly so as not to disturb sleep, stirred by deeper feelings than she has ever felt for anyone. She may catch her breath in awe and wonder. At that moment, the sleeping child or young adult is a miracle, a divine child.
John Keats' famous first line in his epic poem Endymion—“A thing of beauty is a joy forever”—speaks to these precious moments when joy is the response to beauty. These are timeless, forever moments, totally out of ordinary time. A Selene/Endymion attraction begins in the soul with an “Ahh, how beautiful!” For one-in-herself women, this attraction to beauty—of form or of soul—allies with her own soul's need to love more and love more deeply, which conspires against her independence.
Selene's nightly visit to the mountain cave to gaze at Endymion has qualities of a meditative or contemplative spiritual practice in which a mystical passion for the beloved is at the center of worship. When it is an inner experience, it holds the image in her heart and fills her with feelings for her beloved. This mystical passion for the beloved is what Rumi speaks to in his poems. It may be similar to the ecstatic mysticism of Teresa of Avila, who experienced the rapture of union with God as she prayed in her cell at night. Viktor Frankl could fill himself with bliss by deeply remembering his wife, who was killed along with all of his family in the Nazi concentration camp in which he survived; he did this in the midst of misery and with atrocities all around him. It is a deep active-imagination experience that is real in the invisible world of images imbued with presence.
The myth of Selene brings in a mystical, interior receptivity that can emerge in the psyche when Artemis is an archetype. Just as the Artemis archetype makes sisterhood natural or idealized, the moon aspect of Artemis is the tendency in the archetype to be a contemplative or mystic.
It is heart-opening or heart-deepening to acknowledge loving someone as Selene loved Endymion and then risk not knowing where it will lead. In real life, the “Ahh” moment between two people passes, unless it is held in the soul or cave of the heart. Effort to possess it again leads to longings. And it requires courage of a different kind than that needed to face down a boar to go voluntarily into the cave—the ancient entry into the underworld of the dark feminine—and find your way by moonlight, which is a different way of seeing. In moonlight, the world of nature is mysterious and rich in potential meaning; there is beauty and a felt sense of the original oneness with everything. It is the realm of the poet; in neuroscience, it is right-brain perception.
To feel yourself behaving out of character (even if no one else sees it), to be infatuated, to be vulnerable, to have your sense of well-being dependent on someone else is not a comfortable state. It is uncharted and unfamiliar emotional terrain for independent one-in-herself women, who find themselves in a tension of opposites between their independent old way of being and the intensity of the attraction and what it may represent. Here, psychological reflection is called for. Who—as if a dream figure—is this unconscious person who does not know or can not return your feelings? Is there some value to feeling so intensely? For those who think concretely, it can be very hard to see beyond the person to the powerful symbol that may be promising wholeness or healing, which is the real attraction. Selene's attraction to youthful, beautiful, and unconscious Endymion may, then, be more than a compelling fascination for a person; for these women, it may be something more that is missing in themselves.
There are masculine, feminine, and androgynous inner figures that appear in dreams that can shimmer like the iridescent colors on the chest feathers of a hummingbird or kingfisher. They may seem to be intermediaries, guides to numinous contents in the collective unconscious. This is a more comfortable lure than a real person who is really a symbol. But, just as a figure in a dream comes uninvited, a fascinating, magical person in the outer world can unexpectedly show up in your life and become an obsession. A Selene may not want a real relationship with the person who is her Endymion. She is not blind to realities in the outer world that has been familiar terrain. Her inner wisdom knows that she is being drawn into deeper spiritual feelings in her own psyche by his (or her) beauty—which is not just in the eye of the beholder, but is a response in her soul or her subtle heart. When this happens, like Selene, she may not feel a need to wake whoever it is who has the role of Endymion.
When, however, both people in a Selene/Endymion attraction are awake to the existence of a mutual mystical attraction between them, the spiritual tasks are to hold the tension between them and to feel, express, and describe the feelings and images that arise. They must be honest and authentic with themselves and with each other, which means becoming known and vulnerable to the other. They will then be in an individuating relationship that fosters soul growth, compassion, and wholeness. This is hard to do, unless it is important to both and a priority. One or the other may acknowledge the mutuality of attraction, but not want to explore the depth or meaning of it. One or both may be in a committed relationship that this attraction will threaten. And in most people's lives, there are competing demands for time and attention.
When an Atalanta/Artemis woman realizes that she is now Selene and that this relationship is alive in her inner world but is not real in the outer world, she can consciously decide to stay with her feelings anyway. By enduring the mystery and seeking meaning and clarity—through creativity, dreams, synchronicity, or therapy—her subtle heart grows in its capacity to hold and know (gnosis). The temptation is to reduce the attraction by claiming that “it's only sexual tension,” or “it's only a projection,” defining and dismissing the attraction as a trick of the mind or a figment of the imagination. Or perhaps acknowledging and then minimizing it as a soul connection—“maybe a previous life,” a just-so story—just the way it is.
In midlife Selene/Endymion attractions, elements of all three are likely present. There is libido—passion that may or may not have a sexual goal; there is an element of projection; and there is likely a soul connection. The attraction can result in friendship or marriage. In some situations, as in depth psychology or spiritual work, the relationship may be limited and defined by ethical boundaries that make expression of feelings safe but acting on them unethical. When so contained, projections and transference can be analyzed and feelings sublimated, which can lead to psychological and spiritual growth.
It would be a mistake to assume that a Selene/Endymion attraction is only about the relationship between the two people. This may be similar to the mistake that Jung described in his letter to Bill W., the founder of Alchoholics Anonymous, of turning to alcoholic spirits when the thirst is really for Spirit and community. The initial high from alcohol or drugs may lead to addiction in place of a spiritual or mystical experience that is the true yearning. The absence of this experience may be the source of pain, just as drugs or alcohol may have initially created a false sense of ease with people when the yearning is for a deep emotional connection to others. Turning to Spirit and to other AA members who are there for each other provides what was missing before the addiction. In Selene/Endymion relationships, the meaning of the attraction is always a puzzle worth understanding, no matter how it ends, whether it ever began, or whether it continues to grow. Being drawn to beauty is a soul response. It can lead to healing and forgiving ourselves and others, as well as bring new depth, even if it takes you through a broken heart—which for Atalanta/Artemis is an initiation into becoming more human and less the archetype.
Hecate, Goddess of the Crossroad and of the Waning Moon, was the third, crone, aspect of the moon. In ancient Greece, Hecate was present where three major roads came together, represented by a statue or pillar with three faces. One face looked down the road that brought the traveler to the crossroad. The other two could see where each of the other two paths would lead. Hecate can see where you are coming from, and what your choices are. This may relate to a decision that will affect the direction your life will take. Or it may be a major inner crossroad, a soul decision.
Hecate wears a gleaming headdress or headband of stars and holds a flaming torch in each hand. She walked the roads of ancient Greece accompanied by her black hounds. In some symbolic representations of Hecate, instead of three faces or heads, she is accompanied by three animal symbols—the dog, the snake, and the lion, or the dog, the horse, and the bear. At her crossroads, usually during the dark of the moon, people left food called “Hecate suppers” as offerings to her. Hecate is a Titan, the only one of this earlier generation of Greek divinities that Zeus greatly honored. She is the sister of Leto, the powerless mother of Artemis and Apollo.
Hecate is a liminal presence. She is found at twilight, between night and day. She is at home in caves, places between the upper world and the underworld, the world of the living and that of the dead or of the spirits. She is the archetype of the medium or psychic, the healer, the midwife, and the witch. Hecate's archetypal three-way vision refers to her intuitive ability to make connections between past, present, and future. Intuition is a perception of patterns—a way of seeing how present circumstance and relationships grew from the past and the direction they may move in the future.
Hecate presides over times of transition—that in-between time when what you decide (or what happens) determines the direction your life will take. As midwife, she knows the stages of labor, and in particular the stage of transition, the last and most dangerous stage just before delivery. She also knows the stages of dying and is the archetype of hospice workers. In recognizing the relationship between past, present, and future, Hecate is also the archetype in intuitive therapists and in us—if we learn from experience and grow wiser as we grow older. I used to say that I had to become old enough before I could write about Hecate. When I was old enough and did, she was the inspiration and prod to writing Goddesses in Older Women: Archetypes in Women Over Fifty (2001).
Hecate is the third goddess in the story of Demeter and Persephone. She makes only two cameo appearances in this long and famous myth, but they are very significant in understanding this archetype. When Persephone is abducted by Hades into the underworld, her grieving mother Demeter searches everywhere on earth for nine days and nights and can not find her anywhere. Finally, she returns to the meadow where Persephone was last seen. Hecate comes to her and says that she didn't see what happened because she was in her cave, but that she heard Persephone's screams. She is supportive and wise when she says to Demeter: “Let us go to see the god of the sun, he was overhead, he saw what happened, he can tell us.” She knows that it is important to seek the truth. She doesn't just feel sympathy for Demeter; she takes compassionate action and stays with her.
Hecate is the supportive friend who says: “I'll go with you to the oncologist about that lump in your breast.” Or: “I'll accompany you to the Alcoholics Anonymous or the Al-Anon meeting.” Hecate is the wisdom in women who know that denial and wishful thinking harm rather than help when the truth must be faced. She is the archetype in you or your friend that knows this.
The second time Hecate appears in the myth is in a one-line comment toward the very end. After Persephone returns to the upper world and is reunited with her mother, Hecate greets her and, as we learn, from that day on, “precedes and follows” Persephone. Some translations just say “accompanies.” Hecate represents the wisdom we can learn through descents into the metaphoric underworld if we return.
Hecate is a vague, dimly appreciated, and dimly seen goddess who is not paired with a god. Nor is she overpowered in her mythology. When classical myths describe the Olympian goddesses in triads, Hecate is the crone in all of them. Persephone is the maiden, Demeter the mother, and Hecate the crone; Hebe is the cupbearer and maiden, Hera the wife, and Hecate the crone. Artemis the waxing moon, Selene the full moon, and Hecate the waning moon who passes into that mysterious phase, the dark of the moon.
Usually, Hecate is the archetype of the wise woman/crone who comes into prominence in a woman's psyche in the third, post-menopausal phase of life, which used to be around fifty. As fifty becomes what thirty-five used to be, the middle active years stretch out after menopause for many women. As women live longer, they develop more than their one dominant archetype and spend more years in active middle life as older mothers or in careers. They may reinvent themselves and start new relationships, entering new areas of education, work, or creativity. Hecate can be an inner companion or the major archetype when growing older means growing wiser.
Hecate in her cave differs from Hecate at the crossroad. Her cave is a threshold or entryway into the underworld. This is a threshold between the space/time outer world, where people agree on what reality is, and the non-ordinary reality of a spirit world. In Greek cosmology, the underworld is not a hell, but rather a place where occasional visitors can see and communicate with the “shades of the dead.” In this manifestation of Hecate, a woman is a medium or psychic between these worlds. Many quite ordinary people have had paranormal experiences that I am beginning to think are quite ordinary and usually comforting. They have sensed the presence of someone who was close in life—a parent, spouse, or child, or someone who loved them—someone whose presence after physical death feels like that of a guardian spirit or angel. Some see spirit forms that sound similar to what Odysseus saw when he went to the underworld to seek counsel from Tiresias, the blind seer in The Odyssey. He could recognize individuals, but they had no physical substance. If you go to Disneyland and see holograms of people in the Haunted House, you can see right through them and yet the details of their features and clothes are distinct, much as the shades of the underworld could be.
Hecate develops early when there are no trustworthy adults around or when a young girl has no one to turn to for protection much of the time. Atalanta has to find her way by observation, learning from experience what to pay attention to as she makes her way through uncharted forests—a hunter/gatherer who could become prey for a large predator. She is responsible for her own safety; she has to develop and trust her instincts. She often needs to pause and think through what direction to take, to take stock. And over and over, she has to make decisions about where to go and what to do next. A girl on her own in the city who makes her way through city schools and streets also has to make decisions continually about what routes to take, where to go, and whom to trust. When youngsters are on their own, Hecate can become an inner companion early in life. A child who is not looked after by adults learns to stay observant—to learn by watching, to avoid drawing attention to herself, and to learn from mistakes. To become wise beyond her years, or to become street-wise, is to develop the Hecate wisdom of seeing patterns and consequences, and seeing into character and soul qualities.
Onnolee Stevens, still called Onzie although now in her mid-eighties, amazes people when they learn that she goes wilderness camping by herself in a camper truck with only her “sweet dog” as her companion. She got a camper when pitching her own tent got to be too hard on her knees, both of which are now bionic thanks to knee-replacement surgery. She took up tent camping only when she could no longer carry everything she needed on her back. Before that, she used to go backpacking by herself. She backpacked alone across the Inca Trail from Cusco to Machu Picchu in Peru, hiked into the wilderness of eastern Belize, and into the mountains of Communist Yugoslavia. Onzie's love of the wilderness and of being on her own in it are Artemis qualities that other goddess archetypes don't share.
When I asked Onzie how old she was when she first went backpacking by herself, I was surprised when she said she had begun at fifty-five, after divorcing her husband—going into the wilderness alone hadn't fit with a long marriage and eight children. Onzie has a degree in social work, was a therapist, founded non profits, taught and led workshops, and was politically active in causes and for candidates concerned with social justice and women issues. She remains in touch with her grown children and adult grandchildren via email and visits.
After years of being comfortably single, Onzie fell in love and married a second time. She and her husband actively partnered in their work for several years. When they divorced, Onzie moved to a new community to live close to the elements in nature that she most loves—water, sky, and trees. Finally, she settled there. She remains on friendly terms with both former husbands—something Artemis women tend to do, at least after a time. Her most recent work was to follow an intensive hospice training which is, of course, very much a Hecate calling—to work in the liminal time between life and death.
In The Feminine Mystique (1963), which along with the report about job inequality from President John F. Kennedy's Commission on the Status of Women (1963) laid the groundwork for the Women's Movement, Betty Friedan wrote about Onzie's generation of women. They had gone to college, married, had children, and were supposed to have everything they needed to be happy by living through their husbands and children in the suburbs. Women were expected to live out the archetypes of the wife and mother and were idealized when they did. Friedan wrote about women who had it all according to role expectations, but who suffered from “the problem with no name”—their unhappiness, compounded by the certainty that they should be happy.
When marriages ended for this generation, divorced women were in a social wilderness where each had to make her way. With the indomitable spirit of Artemis, these women could follow their inner compasses as they set out to answer the question: What now? At first, they often knew only which direction to take. Then, as if on a trail that is criss-crossed by other trails, they found they had to decide time and time again which path to take. Each choice was a Hecate moment, each step a reaffirmation—an everyday decision to stay on their own course, one that could take them farther away from what other people in their lives wanted for them. When you exercise your autonomy and are on a self-chosen path, a life that is meaningful to you becomes possible. But you also run the risk of becoming lost or discouraged as you are finding your way.
Your story may feel like Ayla's, the protagonist in The Clan of the Cave Bear (1980), and in subsequent novels by Jean Auel in which Ayla ventures out to find people like herself. This is what goes on in a newly single woman who sets out on her own. How long a journey and how difficult will it be? Can she move on? Will she find support to be herself? Will she find what her heart desires?
For women whose inner lives have been nourished by ideas and stories, there are many possibilities: Go to a lecture with a subject that intrigues you. Check out organizations with principles similar to your own. Sign up for an adventure. Travel to help others or go on a pilgrimage. Go on a trek. Move to where the beauty and changes in the natural world feed your soul. Reach out to old friends in other parts of the country and the world with whom you once had a heart-connection. Choose to stay home with yourself as good company or with a good book, and say no to social invitations that will drain you.
When you are expected to play a role, which is the understanding when you accept some invitations, it takes energy. This is in contrast to authentic meetings between individuals who have a heart or soul connection, who are real to each other. In such good company, energy is generated not consumed; you feel more centered, true to yourself; you feel more love. This can happen between two people or in circles with a sacred center that support the individuals in them to share what deeply matters. These circles nurture creativity and heart-activism. Some circles with a spiritual center support projects that make a difference. The configuration of a circle with a center is that of the mandala, the geometric form that C. G. Jung calls a symbol of the Self.
Onzie was a convener of the Millionth Circle initiative, a women's circle that began in 2001 that has a bigger mission, in addition to supporting the lives of the women in it. A circle of women with a sacred or spiritual center like this one supports and witnesses its members—we stay in contact via a monthly conference call and group emails that keep us aware of each others' “lives in progress.” We hold a retreat—or Deepening Gathering, as we call it—once a year when we meet face to face in circle. Women who want to be together share the sister archetype of Artemis and, in this circle, Hestia and Hecate are archetypes held in common as well. This is especially so for those of us who live alone. The majority of members are married, with husbands who—like Meleager or Hippomenes—value their wives' competency and support their participation in circles of women.
When Onzie left the mainstream pattern for women of her age, she became an outlier, a now-positive designation for being on the edge rather than in the mainstream. Times have changed since Onzie was in her fifties. When the boomers, the Millennials, and those in between enter their eighties, most will have been at the crossroad with Hecate many times and thereby have lived many “lifetimes,” with each major change another “incarnation.” Each time, the choice may have been between the broad road of conventional expectations or the trail that takes the direction of personal authenticity. Authenticity rather than conformity has become a cultural value, which was not always the case.
When Onzie first moved to Port Townsend, she knew no one. Having a sense of place, however, she saw an announcement of a Native American event that was open to the public and she decided to go to it. When she arrived and looked around, she found she was the only white person there. She was warmly welcomed. This is a culture in which “grandmother” is a title of respect, where the wisdom of older women is welcomed and even a white-haired, older, white woman then in her late seventies who came on her own was treated as an honored guest.
This tradition of valuing the grandmothers was embedded in the governance of the Iroquois Confederacy, also called the Seneca Nations. This culture trusted the collective wisdom of the council of women elders to decide the priorities for the people, including whether to go to war. They, in effect, honored the wisdom of Hecate, of women beyond the age of childbearing whose own children were now adults. Their concern was for the well-being of all the children of the six tribes. Like Hecate, they were expected to see three ways: into the past, into the present, and into the future. They weighed the likely effect of their decisions upon seven generations to come.
In 2004, a group indigenous grandmothers from around the world were brought together. They met in circle and became the Council of the Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers. Each was, in age and wisdom, an embodiment of Hecate. As individuals, each had precognitive experiences—mediumistic, psychic, intuitive foreknowledge—that they would someday have this role, even though it was unimaginable logically. Together and individually, they pay attention to the visible and invisible worlds. They easily inhabit the liminal threshold between these worlds. They may have appeared different from one another when they were young, as the ancient Greek goddesses seemed in their earlier aspects, but their final common pathway was Hecate. As they are honored and invited to meet with leaders and be present at peace conferences, the Thirteen represent wisdom from the sacred feminine, from the indigenous spirituality that recognizes humans as two-legged members of a world in which all forms of life are part of a totality imbued with spirit.
Humanity is at the crossroad with Hecate, because we have consciousness and choice and are at a time when climate change and weapons of mass destruction threaten to turn this beautiful planet into a wasteland. The beauty and ongoing life of the planet comes from Mother Nature's bounty of mountains, forests, oceans, lakes, and wildlife that—from microbe to honey bee, salmon to polar bear and wolf, earthworm to eagle—lives instinctively and unconsciously in ecological interdependence. Wilderness beauty is sacred to Artemis. This is her landscape. To honor her requires taking care of the planet and halting the excesses—from over-population to over-fishing the ocean. We must limit our excesses as a sacrifice to honor the sacred feminine.
It was the failure of the king to honor or sacrifice to Artemis that brought the Calydon boar down on his realm. I think of the boar as a metaphor for the destructiveness of nature—which is indiscriminate. Whatever or whoever is in the path of an avalanche, a flood, a wildfire, a tornado, or a tsunami knows this all too well. These calamities of nature are becoming increasingly common as a consequence of climate change, which is our own Calydon boar. If the king, a symbol of patriarchy, had honored nature and made sacrifices, the boar would not have ravaged his realm. The boar was stopped by Atalanta's arrow and Meleager's sword. One of these mythic figures represents women with the indomitable spirit of Artemis, who can confront danger clearly and close up, hold their ground, take aim at the vulnerable spot, and let the point they are making hit the target. One represents men like Meleager, whose sword symbolizes the power and discernment to act decisively in concert with an empowered feminine in women and in themselves. We need to take aim at the causes of our own destruction—climate change, weapons of mass destruction, war—and then follow up with strong decisive actions.