SPIRIT        LODGE   LIBRARY Sacred Feminine & Sacred Masculine Page 2

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The 36 pages in this Sacred Feminine & Sacred Masculine section are below.

Abomination Or Denial Of The Unbalanced Spirit	Athena	Athena/Artemis — Hecate?	Castaneda	Feminine Gender Burden Basket	Finding a Way to Live a Healed & Healthy Masculine	Gratitude	Healed Wounded Masculine Leaders	Healing From the Anger of Abuse
Initiating to the Feminine	Is Balance Obtainable or is it Illusion	Living Your Warrior Woman	Maiden, Mother, Crone	Male Gender Burden Basket	Mary Magdaline Discussion	Masculine Rite of Passage	Masculine Spirituality Request for Information	Maternal Instinct
Men in Balance	Mother Earth	One Flaw in Women	Sacred Masculine Energy	Seeing Through Soft Eyes	Speaking the Truth	Spirit Lights	Stepping Out of the Shadows	The Fisher King
The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths & Secrets	Variances Between Male & Female Medicine	Warrior Societies	Warrior Women	What Balance Is or Means to Me	What Spiritual Activities Do You Consider Masculine?	What Was Your First Indicator of What You Would Become?	Womb With A View	Woman Depression & Anger

Athena
By Wynsong

So yesterday I had one of those moments, when a curtain rose...can't say veil as with a veil I can sometimes get a hint or shape of what is behind it...This is more like a curtain, that completely blocks my view.

I've never had much of an affinity with Athena.

I have always resented her Patriarchal serving ways...coming from the head of Zeus as she did.

My path more comfortably fit with Artemis. Same skill set, different focus.

And I've known more than a few extremely Athena like women. Competent, but always staying in the shadow of a Male in Power....

So, yesterday and I'm explaining my story to a person who is about as removed from looking at their life the way I do through archetypes and story...as I used to think I was from Athena.

I realized that all I am now doing for my sons...is Athena in nature.

I am quietly putting things in place to empower them to step into their own power.

I am making it look like it is something that will be good for me....when in fact, if it were not for them, I would no more do it than bungee jump. (I get why people do it, but I never will.)

But in that instant, of explaining archetypes and totems to this man that I am getting me to help execute my plan to help my sons...didn't I just get a whack upside the head from my Athena, who wished to be recognized, thank you very much.

I love it when that kind of stuff happens.

My relationship with my totems and with my Goddesses (and no doubt Gods too, but this is after all the Sacred Feminine) is stepping into a new dimension.

Veils are dropping and lifting all over the place...I'm having trouble keeping up with the insights...

And the odd Curtain is also falling.

It was fun to get behind this one, and see myself in a new light.

Just sharing...

But would love to hear from others who are also, or have also had curtains drop.

Doesn't have to be about the Goddesses, but it is where my story here started, thus the title.

DragonHawk:
Wynsong, Strangely for a guy Athena has been in my mind of late through her association with Owl. I have also been having all sorts of eye-openers of late: but to me it feels more like mists clearing - and I don’t know if this is what you meant in terms of curtains dropping rather than veils lifting - but for me it is as if I can see through the mists now, but they are still evident: not totally clear yet, but what I have seen has made me reconsider actions I have taken in the past and the reasoning I had for those actions i.e. how we give our power away and thwart ourselves in the process because we do not recognize our own power, where it lies and how to use it.

I don’t know much about Athena and Artemis, but I wonder if there is an element of the feminine as destroyer that is linked to this somehow in how we can easily thwart ourselves in assisting others: even though our intent is positive for those others: maybe an aspect of the Law of Unintended Consequence or maybe just a failure to understand that its ok to put our own needs first. Maybe there is an aspect of if we are not strong, in the end we cannot assist others. I'm thinking outload here as I still haven’t had much of a chance to look at this myself. I’m going to go have a read on Athena/Artemis and see if anything more comes forward.

Wynsong:
I imagine that with all medicine, DragonHawk, there is a healthy expression and an unhealthy expression of the Goddess energy. If you believe, as I do, that the mythological Gods and Goddesses were embodiments of a more one dimensional aspect of human behavior...so we get to look at more of a caricature of the behavior than the more complex mix when they are applied to a total human being...then, aspects of the Gods and Goddesses will live in all of us, in some form. I was about to type out information about the two Goddesses that I spoke of here, but then I'd be doing exactly what I don't like doing, and that is giving you (anyone here) information, that is by virtue of the fact that I am giving it, slanted to my own experience of them. So I will enjoy hearing how you experience them, as you learn more about them.

There are areas of my journey that are shrouded in mist too. Then I can't always see anything, or there are hints...and I can move about, but tend to not want to, as I can't see where my feet are. It is a lost feeling I'm not so fond of. And the barriers have no substance to them...if that makes sense. The veils are more like a physical barrier...substance, that stands between me and what it is I'm trying to see beyond it. I am not able to move beyond that veil, like I can in the mist, but I can see shadows of what may be back there. I love to start creating story about that...It is when I'm most likely to lose sight of the veil, as I race to my head to make sense of what I think might be there, and why it is there, and what needs to happen for me to get beyond the veil to see it clearly, and, and, and.... But the curtains...well they have substance, and they completely block my view...No idea there is even anything there, until they open and I am for a moment, blinded by the light of realization, as all kinds of pieces fall into place, and it is like I'm seeing for the first time.

Just the way I make sense of it.

DragonHawk:
Hey Wynsong, I had a look at Athena and Artemis but only on Wiki and I'm not sure that is the best place to look! I must admit they seemed pretty similar to me: with just that distinction of goddesses of war and goddess of the hunt to distinguish them: in other respects (the virginal aspect, associations with the primordial et.c) they seemed pretty similar: though Athena reminded me of Queen Elisabeth I of England whist with Artemis being the patron of animals and a huntress spoke to me more of our animal instincts: however, that is putting a modern day mindset on a distant (time-wise) mythos based on a very cursory glance at them. I don’t know if it is because there were wide-ranging differences in the attributes given to the Greek and Roman gods, depending on where they were worshipped in city states or regions that were connected but often had different values, that has always made it difficult for me to really understand them without looking in greater detail, but I have always struggled to get to grips with them. I have the same problem sometimes with the Celtic pantheon - but in that case its easier for me to understand them as I am more aware of the cultural identities that informed the differences.

But using Queen Elisabeth I, the known as the Virgin Queen, as a model, I can see how she relates to what I am trying to express. She is seen by many (myself included) as one of our greatest monarchs from the perspective of her own reign, but her decision not to marry and bear an heir meant it was the thorn in her side, Mary Queen of Scots, who's child assumed the thrown after her thus creating the Stuart dynasty and ending the reign of her family (Tudor) dynasty. For the monarch to produce an heir had always been an issue in Britain up until the reign of Mary Queen of Scot's great-grandson's generation when the Restoration of the Monarchy after the Civil War created the constitutional monarchy merely as figurehead we have today and ended the Divine Right of Kings. In that respect she not only did not fulfill the dynastic pretentions of her forebears, but rendered futile her father's (King Henry VIII) six-wife search for an heir that generated the split with Rome that in turn led to the internal religious wars of her brother and sister's reigns before her, and brought war with Spain in her reign, but that carried on in terms of persecution of Catholics, given the fear of catholic resurgency, in the four kings and the Commonwealth Republic that followed her.

That turmoil, home and abroad, gave France the space to expand its powerbase to the point where it sought to invade England via Ireland, leading to the Battle of the Boyne that, in our modern era, led to the IRA when you add into the heady mix the dynasty of German (Georgian) Kings of the early House of Hanover that followed the Stuarts that created an un-wielding self-serving notions of parliament we have today as it was in the Georgian era that the term Prime Minister, in the figure of Robert Walpole, first appeared: a man, not unlike Tony Blair, who became exceedingly rich as a result of his endeavors in parliament and created the first stock-market crash in the South-Seas Bubble. Now no-one could blame Queen Elisabeth for all this: the point I am trying to make is that notion of the law of Unintended Consequences. How, from our lowly position as mere human's we cannot always see the consequences of our actions within the sphere of the wider energies at play and the effects our decisions and actions in one moment could have, with a slight change in circumstances, in the next. Perhaps the mists/curtains serve as a warning: a caution to remain still at times and not seek to impose our will on a situation until the mists clear or the curtains fall?

And the barriers have no substance to them...if that makes sense.

It certainly makes sense: I have begun to wonder if that is because they are self-imposed barriers? By that I mean a barrier that we have created by our previous actions: i.e. the pain Queen Elisabeth is said to have felt when she heard that Mary Queen of Scots had borne a son, given her own decision not to marry? It some circles it is said that Elisabeth's decision came almost to spite parliament at their decision not to allow her to marry the love of her life because there was some controversy surrounding his wife's death. Others say that it was because of a mistrust of men as king given the Divine Right of the Monarchy that led to her mother's execution by her father, the marriage voided and, for some time, she was considered illegitimate: all to allow her father to marry again. Yet others say it was because of an innate sense of service: she was wed to the British people as Queen. In some cases, our decisions, whilst appearing logical at the time we make them (Elisabeth's decision not to trust a man who would be king to protect herself) can bring us troubles later: particularly when we fail to act based on fear or act out of a sense of duty that inhibits our own happiness and our ability to bring forward the circumstances that create that sense of well-being we call happiness. These might be the mists or curtains that we bring forward directly but without knowing we have brought them forward. Perhaps, as in the option that Elisabeth did not marry to spite parliament, our actions create or contribute to creating stronger barriers i.e. the veils that separate us from Knowing?

Perhaps the longer we hold a view that isn’t helpful, the stronger that barrier becomes: the mists become solid, the curtains become veils: i.e. we can walk through the mist or pull down the curtains ourselves, but the veils require intercession somehow. One thing that does strike me about Athena coming from the head of Zeus: the masculine is considered the active principal, the feminine the recipient of that active principal: seed and vessel. Now regardless of whether you agree with such an analogy, it has informed our culture for thousands of years and refers to a biological state. But, if you look at Athena and Zeus, and turn that around, you get a situation whereby it is actually the feminine that is the active principal: the head in antiquity referred to thought and thought cannot actually contribute to the world of form directly: it needs action to do so. Athena is the action and the head of the Zeus is the thought that, of its own accord, cannot directly influence the world: it needs a medium i.e. action.

To me the Athena/Zeus birth mythos is a reference to ancient societies wherein the notions of male and female we have today did not exist and the notions of active and passive were not seen in the polarized sense we see them today but in a far more co-creational sense: though it is true that that differentiation started to appear in classical Greece, but if one looks below the surface of that differentiation, outwith our modern sense of male and female, the feminine was actually revered: though from the perspective of our modern era, that reverence appears stifling perhaps due to the associations that have grown up in the years between: a reverence that is often now destructive rather than creative from both the male and female perspective: another mist/curtain/veil scenario. What I do find interesting is that with both Athena and Artemis that notion of the feminine as both creative and destructive is there in the mythos. In which point, what part does the masculine play?

MonSnoLeeDra:
Seeing as Artemis is one of the goddess I honor I have to point out a few things. As Goddess of The Hunt (Agrotera) that encompasses such a small facet of her image that it really does a dis-services to her. It also paints an incredibly inaccurate picture of her in her totality. As Taurian Artemis she is the blood goddess and historically demanded blood sacrifice upon her altar. It is in this capacity that she is also associated with Hecate / Hekate and the Trojan War. It is to Taurian that Esphenyia (sp) is taken and made High Priestess after Artemis is affronted and demands sacrifice before she'll allow the fleet to set sail for Troy. This is also the persona that becomes closely tied to Athena and the City of Athens through her Sanctuary located at Burunga (sp), The girls of Athens being required to serve in the role of Arketia (Bear Maidens / Bear Dancers).

Its also important in that this is one of the more significant birthing sanctuaries where Artemis is associated with the passage from childhood to womanhood and easing the pangs of birth. Artemis is also honored in Athens as the Warrior Goddess who saved the city and had great celebrations (every 6 years I seem to recall) where larges feasts and sacrifices were done in her name. This same persona is then transported to Sparta where she is a Warrior goddess and the youth are tested in her name. Girls are tested through great dances and rituals while males are mostly recorded through the whipping and drawing of blood as they attempt to steal the cheese from the altar. It is at Sparta (Orthia) that Artemis is also associated as a Mistress of Animals. Frequently showing the winged Artemis version with a deer and lion being held in her flayed arms. As Artemis of Ephesus (Ephesos) she is also a Mistress of Animals (especially though in the so called many breasted statue). Yet she is also seen as the goddess or Harbors and Coastal areas and fisheries. The identity as Goddess of Harbors and Fisheries is an epithet that is found in a number of coastal towns where she had temples and shrines dedicated to her by fisherman and sailors.

While the Olympian Artemis does have a following of nymphs and such it is the Arcadian Artemis (Perhaps the oldest known version of her) that is truly the Mistress of wilds and wilderness. This persona pre-dates the later Olympian Artemis, sister of Apollo. To recognize Artemis only from her Olympian persona as sister of Apollo really robs her of her ancestry and attributes. In all probability Artemis is an Anatolian (modern Turkey) Goddess, somewhat similar to the Anatolian version of Hecate. When one looks to the legends and battles of the Trojan War one could see where its also a battle of pantheons and mythology as the native Anatolian Gods side with the Trojans and the Olympian Gods side with the Greeks. Yet Artemis is reduced in stature as you see her defeated by Hera and caused to flee. Yet Hecate / Hekate loses none of her strength and abilities and becomes one of the Titanesses who sides with Zeus. But to look only at her capacity as Goddess of the Hunt is to deny all that she is. In many ways it is to rob her of the probable influence she had upon the creation of The Cult of Mary that was founded in the Catholic Church and originated at Ephesus / Ephesos. It is to rob her of the strong connection and influence she shared with the Egyptian War Goddesses Bastet, Pahket and to some extent Sehkmet.

That doesn't even touch upon the early tales and fables which indicate she was probably a solar goddess and like Bastet was later shifted to become a lunar goddess. Tales that speak of her Golden arrows, Golden Hinds that drive her golden chariot and other references that later get changed to silver arrows for instance. In some tales Artemis is the sister of Apollo, in other tales they are nothing to one another. The problem when looking at Artemis is that most blindly accept the Olympian Artemis who is the eternal tomboy and eternal virgin, sister to Apollo, daughter of Leto. And none of that even touches upon the notion of how "Virgin" was used in ancient tales and stories and seldom was used to indicate a woman not known of man but more a woman not bound or beholden to a man. Sorry I get carried away when I speak on Artemis or Hekate.

Wynsong:
I`ve only just scanned those two replies, but what hit me MonSonLeeDra is your description of the Virgin Goddesses at the end. Virgin, meaning to own their own lives. That is the description that I like and use. That is where I was going when I started to describe them, and then realized that I was putting emphasis on the aspects of who they have been portrayed to be, from my own filters. I`ll come back when I have time to read both replies carefully.

There is a theory that the stories told, that became myth or even folk tales had enough truth in them to enough of the people of a specific culture, that they became enduring teaching tales. So that Artemis predates Artemis is the beauty of the archetypes...They get tweaked, through the ages, adapted to better direct the society in which they exist into a direction that is wanted...by whoever directs these things...if there is a who...and it isn`t just an evolution of the society and what it accepts.

Sambo was an accepted symbol/character in American literature at one time, and is absolutely politically incorrect now...because the society`s values changed. But archetypes endure. They may be given a new set of clothes, and have their story tweaked, but they endure. So, having sat with what is known about them...the theories...the stories before the theories... I love to use the way the feel within me. How their story tells mine, or helps me make sense of it. How I embody the energy of Artemis.... How I embody the energy of Athena... or Hestia, or Aphrodite, or Hera, or Demeter... How the values they embodied play out in my life. How the Virgin energy, the Mother/Wife energy plays out...and how the energy of Aphrodite who is neither Virgin or Mother in the classical sense, and was classified as the alchemic Goddess by Jean Shinoda Bolen rolls through me. (I'm mostly waiting on that journey). Be back soon.

DragonHawk:
MSLD, I understand that there is more to more to Artemis than the Huntress and said so in my post. There was no intent to do dis-service: I simply don’t follow the Greek pantheon, despite the fact I have visited Greece and the Med generally many times (including Ephesus in Turkey which was one of Artemis's major cult centers) and walked through the temples of the Parthenon and many more similar temples: but they just don’t call to me. Actually, Artemis's epithet as Queen of the Beasts is one of her earliest epithets both in Greece and further east in the Anatolian/Black Sea region and thus linking her with the Shamanic observances of the Indo-European cultures that informed much of later European, Middle Eastern and Indian cultures.

Wynsong, “I love to use the way the feel within me. How their story tells mine, or helps me make sense of it.”

I understand what you are saying. I think that is why I feel more attuned to the Celtic mythos than the Greek for instance: I can "feel" the Celtic particularly as sacred sites here and in Ireland, whereas the Greek I can only try and understand intellectually based on someone else's expression.

MonSnoLeeDra:
DragonHawk wrote: “MSLD, I understand that there is more to more to Artemis than the Huntress and said so in my post. There was no intent to do dis-service: I simply don’t follow the Greek pantheon, despite the fact I have visited Greece and the Med generally many times (including Ephesus in Turkey which was one of Artemis's major cult centers) and walked through the temples of the Parthenon and many more similar temples: but they just don’t call to me. Actually, Artemis's epithet as Queen of the Beasts is one of her earliest epithets both in Greece and further east in the Anatolian/Black Sea region and thus linking her with the Shamanic observances of the Indo-European cultures that informed much of later European, Middle Eastern and Indian cultures.”

I understood that it's just that so many people see Artemis and automatically equate her to the "Virgin Hunting Goddess" that I try to add additional info in the hope that it might just cause a flicker of "She is so much more than that!" Sorry, wasn't trying to imply or infer that was what you were doing. I admit I do envy you though, I would love to have had a chance to see Ephesus, Sardis or any of her other Modern day Turkey / Jordan temples & Sanctuaries. Seemed fate was that I might see some of the coastal areas from the sea but never able to actually go ashore in either Turkey or see any of her Main Land Greece temples. the best I was able to do was visit the temple on Korfu / Corfu.

DragonHawk:
MSLD, There nothing to be envious about as the Acropolis was a massive disappointment, rather like Newgrange in Ireland it was far too commercialized: partly because of the fame of the acropolis but largely because Athens is such an ugly city: its historical context completely obliterated by bad, squalidly cramped 50s/60s/70s medium-rise tenement architecture. Apart from the parliament building, the couple of hundred feet remains of a classical processional route leading to the Acropolis and a few streets of traditional Greek architecture there is nothing to see in Athens and those with expectations of seeing something of the history are funneled up the Acropolis. I felt the history at Rhodes, but that was more the Templar history.

Of all the places I have visited either on the mainland or the islands, Pythagoras's cave and the ruins of a small Christian basilica on the shoreline at Agios Stephanos at Kos have created the deepest imprint on my psyche - the latter particularly. Ephesus was a different story however. That was worth the visit and even today, despite 20 years having passed, I can easily picture myself there and how the imprints I felt at the time allowed me to easily travel back in time to imagine life back in the pre-Christian era and yes, there are places in Jordan and Syria particularly I would like to visit too: the ancient remains in Syria are amongst some of the best preserved in the world.

Something I feel very strongly and one of the reasons i find the Celtic so appealing is the importance of the land in the mythos that created it, as to me the land portrays the mythos in a way our intellect cannot: it stimulates the senses to arouses our emotions to give us access to the higher tenets of the associated lore. Maybe that’s Men's Medicine at play: the outward focus.

Wynsong may have different feelings on that coming at it from the feminine, and perhaps why she perceives the archetypes to be enduring whereas for me the energies of the different goddesses and the places those goddesses were originally worshiped at having later been incorporated into pre-eminent Greek (and Roman) goddesses and interpolated and intertwined with those earlier goddesses by interceding generations to the extent that, trying to unravel those archetypes (in the Greek and Roman mythos), and find their meaning in the land of their birth, renders them confused and meaningless.

In that respect, far from having assisted me in being able to understand the Greek and Roman Parthenon, visiting those places has had the opposite effect: and I think this is why I have no particular interest in either the Greek or Roman pantheon. The same mixing of attributes is true in the Celtic pantheon, but, having been born in a culture descended from the Celtic and were remnants of that culture remained in the folk culture, of a mother who was born and grew up in a land (Ireland) with even stronger connection to the Celtic, and having travelled a lot more extensively in these "home" lands to sense the energies that informed those archetypes than I have through Greece, I am much more able to strip down the intertwining and interpolation to find the original archetypes as a result. I have found it much easier to understand that there are goddess relating to the outpouring of the waters over the land in Ireland (Boann in the east of Ireland and Sinnan in the west) and another is relevant to the source of those waters (Brigid): rather than having three goddesses that relate to waters. I was about to say that maybe this is taking the thread off course, but I wonder if there is an aspect of this topic that is relevant: if some of the barriers we come across relate: how our own thinking and the interpolation and intertwining of concepts can sometimes obscure the principle point just as the archetypes have become intertwined over time: so we lose focus of that which is important in our lives and the mists/curtains/veils descend and the way through those mists is track the energy back to the principle points?

Wynsong:
I'd say this is exactly relevant to what I was experiencing when I started the thread, DragonHawk.

“if some of the barriers we come across relate: how our own thinking and the interpolation and intertwining of concepts can sometimes obscure the principle point just as the archetypes have become intertwined over time: so we lose focus of that which is important in our lives and the mists/curtains/veils descend and the way through those mists is track the energy back to the principle points?”

And this is also an interesting observation...

“Maybe that’s Men's Medicine at play: the outward focus. Wynsong may have different feelings on that coming at it from the feminine, and perhaps why she perceives the archetypes to be enduring whereas for me the energies of the different goddesses and the places those goddesses were originally worshiped at having later been incorporated into pre-eminent Greek (and Roman) goddesses and interpolated and intertwined with those earlier goddesses by interceding generations to the extent that, trying to unravel those archetypes (in the Greek and Roman mythos), and find their meaning in the land of their birth, renders them confused and meaningless.”

There may be something to the different focus based in gender bias ...that I'm looking at the internal and the histories and being sure I go back to the origin of the myth, etc., is less important to me than the effect the energy of the archetype has within me. That I read theories based on others experience, and then set them aside. It is sometimes years between when I read of something, and when the energy of it comes up in me, and I have a personal experience with it.

And that your focus is more external...the places, the histories, the intellect of the topic. (that may be a complete disservice to your actual experience to describe it as that, but I'm thinking more of the place from which you start...At least here, and in what I read, it seems to start in the intellect). The bringing in of other archetypes...the ones that work for you...that is completely relevant. That was my original topic...How we have those moments when veils part, mists clear and in this case for me, a curtain rises. In my case this time...it was Athena energy. Another time, it might by a totem's energy...or in this case, along with my opening up my eyes to Athena in another way, it is also my three main totems and looking at their energy as it works within me...as opposed to how it describes my behavior towards other. (I may add that journey to another topic, because it occurs to me, that it may be useful).

MonSnoLeeDra:
DragonHawk wrote:

“MSLD, There nothing to be envious about as the Acropolis was a massive disappointment, rather like Newgrange in Ireland it was far too commercialized: partly because of the fame of the acropolis but largely because Athens is such an ugly city: its historical context completely obliterated by bad, squalidly cramped 50s/60s/70s medium-rise tenement architecture. Apart from the parliament building, the couple of hundred feet remains of a classical processional route leading to the Acropolis and a few streets of traditional Greek architecture there is nothing to see in Athens and those with expectations of seeing something of the history are funneled up the Acropolis. I felt the history at Rhodes, but that was more the Templar history. Of all the places I have visited either on the mainland or the islands, Pythagoras's cave and the ruins of a small Christian basilica on the shoreline at Agios Stephanos at Kos have created the deepest imprint on my psyche - the latter particularly.”

Rhodes was both a disappointment and slap of reality to me. To see the harbor where the colossus stood really destroyed part of the fantasy myth I had built in my mind. Yet it also made me reconsider how I viewed the myths and the other area's I would visit. It also showed how history and time were so interlaced in those areas. As you pointed out today Rhodes seems to be more reflective of the Knights of Rhodes and the castle structure. It definitely showed how the illusion of both masculine and feminine places and influences was lost in the fog of time.

DragonHawk:
Wynsong I don’t think the differences are that great between the masculine and feminine as guys experience that process of something coming forward but then sitting on back-burner somewhere before the reason for it coming forward in the first place becomes resolved years later. I believe it would be the same with the intellection and historical components too: both work at the same level in those respects. Where I can see a difference is in how that information may first come to the individual: for the masculine it may be through the physical sense, whereas for the feminine it may be through internal senses. In Kabbalah there is a concept of an "Heyulie Power" which might be described as "the ability" to do something: the ability to see, the ability to hear, the ability to raise an arm etc., etc.: it is considered an innate ability that we are not conscious of in terms of our physical beingness, but is believed to be behind all physical action: i.e. the internal aspect of any external action.

Now, Heyulie Powers and action is not how I might perceive the difference in how men and woman, but I can comprehend that an inner and outer stimulus might be and why there might be an emphasis in Women's Medicine of looking within for answers and in Men's Medicine of looking outside the self. I can perceive a difference in how we gather information, but I am not sure that the difference in what we then do with the information gathered would vary that much between men and women. I read something somewhere along these lines about how energy flows and information is received within us: but not sure if I can remember the process fully now, but it was along the lines that our feminine receives information in the heart where it is breathed into word (mental process) and passed to our masculine mental process, taken to the heart of the masculine before an impression is impregnated back in the feminine via the inner masculine which is received by the inner feminine and taken back to the feminine heart and these two process are occurring almost instantaneously, in the heart of our feminine aspect and the brain of our masculine aspect like in the double helix of DNA. Perhaps our physical bias depends on the different stages in that cycle we receive stimulus and what we do with it and it is in this process that the curtains/mists/veils occur and we sense a differentiation that, if the energy were to keep flowing, we would not experience: and perhaps then we start to see things only through the stage of the process we were experiencing at the time that curtain/mist/veil descended or perhaps its opposite?

Wynsong:
I think it is interesting, that other than myself, only males responded to this thread. Just an observation. Interesting.

MonSnoLeeDra:
Sort of makes one wonder doesn't it. Now what might be interesting is to consider why do you think that is?

Wynsong:
I imagine there are any number of reasons. Busyness. No other woman who has read it, has considered the Goddesses within her own life story, or that the ones I mentioned didn't ring a resonance.. May have read, may resonate, may not want to share. I have no idea... But I think it is interesting that the two people who did share...were both male. And of course, others may share yet. I'm always glad to hear from you MonSnoLeeDra. And DragonHawk, inevitably makes me look at things from a perspective different from my own. So I am not unhappy to have you both join my journey with the Goddesses and archetypal energy or any journey I'm currently looking at, as an observer of my own story. I'm grateful that it struck a chord.

CinnamonMoon:
I've been reading along following the discussion Wyn, busy as all get out and just haven't had free time to work on a decent response. It's been holding my attention too though. So I hope to be back to it sometime this weekend if possible. I'm enjoying the male perspectives. Thank you both, MSLD and DH, for contributing. I like the different angles you're all coming at this with too. So many facets. *Smiles* I'll be back. I'm sure others will too, it's a good discussion.

DragonHawk:
Wynsong, “DragonHawk, inevitably makes me look at things from a perspective different from my own.”

Is that a bad thing? I can’t help feel that you don’t believe that to be the case: but I did for many years. I can remember being a member of various groups in the past, as a result of that thinking, were the emphasis was only on one viewpoint/attitude and what I found was that in such a situation an unhealthy "groupthink" mentality is formed whereby if one went against that viewpoint/attitude one was ostracized. For a long time I didn't share my opinion in such groups if it went against the groupthink, as I had witnessed those who spoke out against the groupthink being hounded out of the group. I kept silent in such situations. But particularly over the last say, five years, my own experiences have shown me that such groupthink can actually keep one stuck as, at least right now, it appears to me that groupthink is often formed out of a victim mentality or at least a mentality that believes that forces outside the individual are having an adverse effect on the individual that the individual cannot move beyond on their own.

A form of Fear-Caller Medicine perhaps that in the group the old adage that attack is the best form of defense maintains the groupthink? Recent history (i.e. 20th Century history) in the western world seems to have espoused that groupthink mentality of very polarized opinions in many areas of our lives. It goes back a lot further but we are perhaps not as aware of the more distant past in terms of direct effect on ourselves. In the way you discussed the fact that the feminine may leave something on the backburner for many years, I do remember the guide at Ephesus discussing the goddess who turns out to be Artemis: I just didn’t remember the name of the goddess: nor can I remember everything the guide said, but what I do remember is that in the time Athens was an in a period of Empirical expansion, the common Indo-European goddess who informed Artemis in both Greece and what is now Turkey lost favor in Athens, but retained favor in Ephesus.

Perhaps with the expansion of Greek thought through the region, the Indo-European name was replaced by the Greek at Ephesus or perhaps the name was always similar to the Indo-European goddess: perhaps the notions of the cunning, warrior goddess Athena was more apt to Athens’ expansionist pretentions and perhaps in the stoic era the notions of the more shamanic goddess Artemis were seen with distaste? Or perhaps it was merely the fact that in the inter-state factions of Greece, Artemis not being of the Athens that came to be the most powerful state, Artemis was neglected until an age when Athens became more sure of itself and could embrace more distant goddesses? Or perhaps, as the Roman Church did later, subsuming the pantheon of the lands they ruled into their own, was a means of gaining authority over the people of those lands? Just as it is said today that those who control the money supply control the people, so in ancient times it may have been that those who controlled the pantheon controlled the people?

My knowledge of Greek history is not equipped to discern why what the guide said might be the case, but there do appear to be reasons why it might from what I do know of Greek history: if the expansion of Athens' power was an aspect of fear-caller groupthink, then given Athena's association with Owl, Athena might stand as a caution about the messages we receive from Spirit and how we act upon them or our failure to see the Artemis promise of fecundity (the aspect of Artemis that is stressed at Ephesus) in a message that leads to fear that leads to groupthink? Given what I have learnt in the last few years, I think that this is another reason I don't get along well with the Greek and Roman pantheon and even that aspect of the Celtic: the associations are split into different gods and goddesses and within that lies the potential that in focusing in on a particular god or goddess we are in danger of missing aspects of a message. Perhaps that is a trap on the spiritual path and how we fall into fear and so into groupthink in the first place?

Though it is far from being a problem just on the spiritual path: politics and its many subgroups and associations shows us that. I can certainly see how fears I held led me into groupthink situations - and how breaking free of those groupthink attitudes has helped me release the fears. Questioning myself, as I do in every post I put up here at the Lodge has helped in that process: and for that I thank you for starting this thread as it has helped me to see a great deal!

Wynsong:
I'm not much of a group think person, DragonHawk. I'm pretty much a lone wolf, in the sense that I can belong to a pack, but I walk my own path. Pack mentality, despite my wolf nature, is not always a comfort to me, I need the space for self-expression and self-reflection. I understand the need for what I more likely would call a herd mentality (as in my experience, each member of a pack, usually retains their own leadership within and combines that to also belong to the pack)...but in a herd, following the leader is the nature of the group. And I do get the advantages of the herd from a predatory stand point, as many of my instinctual nature hunt the herd in some form or another. When I was raising my sons, I was consistent in my message to them, that being in a herd was fine, that it brought with it, its own safety and security, but if you are going to follow a leader, that you were responsible for that choice, and could never blame any of your outcomes on 'other' as a result... Choose the leader well, if you wish to follow. Understand that within a herd, the very young and the very old and infirmed may be sacrificed to the predator to keep the herd safe. Be prepared to set out on your own, when they are going where you don't wish to follow, and understand that in doing so, you will be outcast as part of the natural tendency of the herd/or flock, if I'm thinking Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Herd/flock mentality being the essence of political parties within my country, it is little wonder, I'm not a political animal. And all of this may be why Artemis has always appealed to me more than Athena, who is more of a good corporate girl than the more rogue style of Artemis. Exploring the way Athena is speaking to me as a mother who is launching her sons, was quite startling to me. Thus the thread.

Touching the energy of Athena was not something I was expecting. Next thing you know, I'll be touching the energy of Aphrodite. I'm most often grateful when I hear an opinion or a thought process, or when I am witness to another way of witnessing the world and creating a story, that is somewhere on the continuum of completely foreign to my own to almost the same, but with a critical difference. (Being that I am in a politically stable, and safe society from which to watch such differences. Clearly, if it was unsafe to watch such differences, I might react differently)

I don't ever have to agree with a person, to get that their way works for them. I am a great believer in mirrors. For me to see something in someone else, means that what I am seeing is a reflection of something in me. If I don't like it...then I know I have some shadow work to do. If I like it, but don't own it, then I know I am not stepping into some aspect of my self that may need to be stepped into. And clearly I feel most comfortable when I'm looking at a reflection that I know best, but I rarely learn anything new from that reflection...I just get to relax and feel seen for a bit. I have over the course of my life, rarely been accused of following a party line (although I'm better at it now than I was in my youth), and I have often been accused of being a S h i t Disturber, and indeed claim SD as the two initials I first earned after my name.

MonSnoLeeDra:
DragonHawk wrote:

“Wynsong, In the way you discussed the fact that the feminine may leave something on the backburner for many years, I do remember the guide at Ephesus discussing the goddess who turns out to be Artemis: I just didn’t remember the name of the goddess: nor can I remember everything the guide said, but what I do remember is that in the time Athens was an in a period of Empirical expansion, the common Indo-European goddess who informed Artemis in both Greece and what is now Turkey lost favor in Athens, but retained favor in Ephesus. Perhaps with the expansion of Greek thought through the region, the Indo-European name was replaced by the Greek at Ephesus or perhaps the name was always similar to the Indo-European goddess: perhaps the notions of the cunning, warrior goddess Athena was more apt to Athens’ expansionist pretentions and perhaps in the stoic era the notions of the more shamanic goddess Artemis were seen with distaste? Or perhaps it was merely the fact that in the inter-state factions of Greece, Artemis not being of the Athens that came to be the most powerful state, Artemis was neglected until an age when Athens became more sure of itself and could embrace more distant goddesses? Or perhaps, as the Roman Church did later, subsuming the pantheon of the lands they ruled into their own, was a means of gaining authority over the people of those lands? Just as it is said today that those who control the money supply control the people, so in ancient times it may have been that those who controlled the pantheon controlled the people?

My knowledge of Greek history is not equipped to discern why what the guide said might be the case, but there do appear to be reasons why it might from what I do know of Greek history: if the expansion of Athens' power was an aspect of fear-caller groupthink, then given Athena's association with Owl, Athena might stand as a caution about the messages we receive from Spirit and how we act upon them or our failure to see the Artemis promise of fecundity (the aspect of Artemis that is stressed at Ephesus) in a message that leads to fear that leads to groupthink? Given what I have learnt in the last few years, I think that this is another reason I don't get along well with the Greek and Roman pantheon and even that aspect of the Celtic: the associations are split into different gods and goddesses and within that lies the potential that in focusing in on a particular god or goddess we are in danger of missing aspects of a message. Perhaps that is a trap on the spiritual path and how we fall into fear and so into groupthink in the first place? Though it is far from being a problem just on the spiritual path: politics and its many subgroups and associations shows us that.”

That sounds like Cyebe your talking about, she was a fertility goddess but also closely tied to co-rulership with the ruling families. Her cult was pretty heavy in the area and she was an elder goddess. Probably did become closely associated with the anti-male facet of Artemis as all of her male priest were castrated in her honor.

Wynsong:
Wow...that seems a bit extreme, but then not a lot different, although the reasons may have been for the castrating of eunuchs and soprano male singers. I am often very glad I live now, and if I lived then, that I have forgotten those lifetimes.

((((Swanfeather)))) posted an article on another site about Cailleach Bheur.

“She rules the dark half of the year, from Samhain to Beltane,

“In some Irish counties, The Cailleach is a Goddess of sovereignty, who offers kings the ability to rule their lands. In this aspect, She is similar to The Morrighan, another destroyer Goddess of Celtic myth.” “Now, on the edge of Samhain, She beckons us to receive Her chthonic wisdom. In what ways is She challenging us to understand our own personal Sovereignty? “Consider these beautiful words, from Pagan author Willow Ragan: “The vocation of Sovereign requires awareness, self-control and a strong sense of personal responsibility. In an age when most of us do not bear the responsibility of the welfare of our tribe, its territory and herds of cattle, Sovereignty takes on a more personal meaning.” I am so getting that story as a way to experience the energy I'm feeling now.

CinnamonMoon:
Hello Wynsong, DragonHawk, and MSLD, as I mentioned in my post to this thread, I’ve been following you and have intended to join in but was too busy to put coherent additions to the discussion together. Now catching up and joining in seems to be my project for the day since the thread has covered a l-o-t of ground.

Let me begin by saying I was into the study and working with the Greek and Roman pantheons and began that in my mid-teens for about 5-6 years. I loved their myths and the pantheons themselves but have, since turning in other directions, forgotten more than I can recall unfortunately. I did work with the goddess Diana in relation to the Moon for the first half of my 20’s though I fell away from her and took the shamanic path at that point. So, what I can share about Athena and Artemis may or may not coincide with what wonderful insights DragonHawk and MSLD have presented. My sharing is going to come from my favorite reference for myth and deity: “The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets” by Barbara G. Walker, a magnificent composite and 1100 pages deep. *Smiles* I’ll be putting my comments in a few different posts just because of the length of material I can share with you.

Artemis: Amazonian Moon-goddess, worshipped at Ephesus under the Latin name of Diana or “Goddess-Anna.” Like the Hindu Goddess Saranyu who gave birth to all animals, she was called Mother of Creatures. Her image at Ephesus had a whole torso covered with breasts, to show that she nurtured all living things. Yet she was also the Huntress, killer of the very creatures she brought forth. In Sparta her name was given as Artamis, “Cutter,” or “Butcher.”

Artemis’s myths extend back to Neolithic sacrificial customs. At Taurus her holy women, under the high priestess Iphigeneria, sacrificed all men who landed on her shores, nailing the head of each victim to a cross. At Hierapolis, the Goddess’s victims were hung on artificial trees in her temple. In Attica, Artemis was ritually propitiated with drops of blood drawn from a man’s neck by a sword, a symbolic remnant of former beheadings. Human victims were later replaced by bulls, hence the Goddess’s title Tauropolos, “bull-slayer.”

Her Huntress aspect was another form of the destroying Crone or waning moon. Like Hecate, she led the nocturnal hunt; her priestesses work the masks of hunting dogs. Alani, “hunting dogs,” was the Greek name for Scythians who revered Artemis. The mythological hunting dogs who tore the Horned God Actaeon to pieces were really Artemis’s sacred bitches.

Classic mythographers pretended that Actaeon committed the sin of seeing the chaste virgin Goddess in her bath, and she condemned him out of offended modesty. Actually, the bath, the nakedness, and the tearing to pieces of the sacred king were all part of the drama. In barbarian Germany, the Goddess’s ritual bath could be witnessed only by “men doomed to die.” Actaeon’s deerskin and antlers marked him as the pre-Hellenic stag king, reigning over the sacred hunt for half a Great Year before he was torn to pieces and replaced by his tanist (co-king). In the first century A.D., Artemis’s priestesses still pursued and killed a man dressed as a stag on the Goddess’s mountain. Her groves became the “deer gardens” (German Tiergarten, Swedish Djurgarden), once the scene of venison feasts.

One of Artemis’s most popular animal incarnations was the Great She-Bear, Ursa Major, ruler of the stars and protectress of the axis mundi, Pole of the World, marked in heaven by the Pole Star at the center of the small circle described by the constellation Ursa Major. Helvetian tribes in the neighborhood of Berne worshipped her as the She-Bear, which is still the heraldic symbol of Berne. The city’s very name means “She-Bear.” Sometimes the Helvetians called her Artio, shortened to Art by Celtic peoples who coupled her with the bear-king Arthur. As Artio’s Lord of the Hunt, the medieval god of witches came to be known as “Robin son of Art.” According to the Irish, Art meant “God,” but its earlier connotation was “Goddess”---specifically the Bear-Goddess. She was also canonized as a Christian saint, Ursula, derived from her Saxon name of Ursel, the She-Bear.

There was a rather sophisticated astronomical reason for worshipping the heavenly She-Bear who followed her track around the Pole Star, year by year. It was probably discovered in the far east. “The months and seasons are determined by the revolution of Ursa Major. The tail of the constellation pointing to the east at nightfall announces the arrival of spring, pointing to the south the arrival of summer, pointing to the west the arrival of autumn, and pointing to the north the arrival of winter…The Great Bear occupies a prominent position in the Taoist heavens as the aerial throne of the supreme deity.” This deity in Taoist tradition is the Queen of Heaven, Holy

Mother Ma T’su P’o, with characteristics similar to those of Artemis. She protects seafarers and governs the weather, she is called a virgin, and Matron of the Measure: she is a Mother of Mercy who has been compared to the virgin Mary and to the Buddhist Goddess Maritchi.

The axis mundi was often associated with male gods, as either a Great Serpent or a World Tree more or less recognized as a phallic symbol. Similarly the Little Bear within the circle of the Great Bear was pictured by the Greeks as Arcas, her son (see Callisto). Yet among the oldest traditions may be found hints of this world-supporting tree or pole was female. Even as Yggdrasil, the World Tree of the Vikings, it showed many parallels with birth-giving, fruit-or-milk-producing mother trees of the Near East, under its older name of Mjotvidr or Mutvidr, “Mother-Tree.” Sometimes it was Mead-Tree, like “the milk-giving tree of the Finno-Ugric peoples, a symbol which must go back ultimately to Mesopotamia, and be of great antiquity.”

It was said that “the tree is the source of unborn souls,” which would give birth to the new primal woman, Life (Lif) in the new universe after the present cycle came to an end. Its fruit could be given to women in childbirth “that what is within may pass out.” The spring at the tree’s root was a fountain of wisdom or the life-giving fluid aurr, which may be likened to the “wise blood” of the Mother---that much-mythologized feminine life-source likened to the Kula nectar in the uterine spring of Kundalini, as if the maternal tree upholding the universe were the Mother’s spine with its many chakras. (See menstrual blood.)

“Many-breasted” Artemis was always a patroness of nurture, fertility, and birth. Male gods turned against these attributes in opposing the cult of the Goddess. Her own twin brother and sometimes consort Apollo made birth illegal on his sacred isle of Delos; pregnant women had to be removed from the island lest they offend the god by giving birth there. Christians continued to vilify Artemis. Titan said, “Artemis is a poisoner; Apollo performs cures.” The Gospels demanded destruction of Artemis’s Ephesian temple (Acts 19:27). St. John Chrysostom preached against this temple in 406 A.D. Soon afterward, it was looted and burned. The patriarch of Constantinople praised Chrysostom’s zeal: “In Ephesus he stripped the treasury of Artemis, in Phrygia, he left without sons her whom they called the Mother of the Gods. (See Diana.)

Athena: Here spelled ‘Athene’: Mother-goddess of Athens, worshipped as Holy Virgin, Athene Parthenia, in the Parthenon,m her “Virgin-temple.” Though classic writers insisted on her chastity, older traditions gave her several consorts, such as Hephaestus and Pan. She was united with the phallic Pallas, whose “Palladium” was a lingam, later Rome’s greatest fetish.

Athene came from North Africa. She was the Libyan Triple Goddess Neith, Metis, Medusa, Anath, or Ath-enna. An inscription at Larnax-Lapithou named her Athene in Greek, Anat in Phoenician. Pre-Hellenic myths said she came from the uterus of Lake Tritonis (Three Queens) in Libya. Egyptians sometimes called Isis Athene, which meant “I have come from myself.”

Greeks claimed Athene was born from Zeu’s head, afte he swallowed her mother Metis---i.e., Medusa, “Female Wisdom,” formerly symbolized by the Gorgoneum, Athene’s snake-haired mask, invested with the power to turn men to stone. Gorgo, or Gorgon, was Athene’s Destroyer aspect. Funerary statues of phallic pillars were her “men turned to stone,” perhaps even

identified with the pillars of the Parthenon which was seized by Christians at an unknown date in the 5th or 6th century A.D. and rededicated as a temple of the virgin Mary.

And since MSLD brought up Cybil, I’ll include her: Spelled ‘Cybele’: Great Mother of the Gods fro Ida---Magna Mater Deum Idea---brought to Rome from Phrygia in 204B.C. Her triumphal procession was “later glorified by marvelous legends, and the poets told of edifying miracles that had occurred during Cybele’s voyage.”

Her holy aniconic image was carried to Rome by order of the Cumaean Sybil, a personification of the same cave-dwelling Goddess herself. As the Great Mother of all Asia Minor, she was worshipped especially on Mt. Ida, Mt. Sipylus, Cyzicus, Sardis, and Pessinus in Galatia.

Her festivals were called ludi, “games.” A highlight of her worship was the Taurobolium, baptism in the blood of a sacred bull, who represented her dying-god consort, Attis. Her temle stood on the Vatican, where St. Peter’s basilica stands today, up to the 4th century A.D. when Christians took it over. She was one of the leading deities of Rome in the heyday of the mystery cults, along with Hecate and Demeter of Eleusis.

Other names for Cybele assimilated her to every significant form of the Great Goddess. She was the Berecynthian Mother (genetrix Berecynthia). She was Rhea Lobrine, Goddess of sacred caves, known as her “marriage bowers.” She was called Augusta, the Great One; Alma, the Nourishing One; Sanctissima, the Most Holy One. Roman emperors like Augustus, Claudius, and Antoninus Pius regarded her as the supreme deity of the empire. Agustus established his home facing her temple, and looked upon his wife, the empress Livia Augusta, as an earthly incarnation of her. The emperor Julian wrote an impassioned address to her:….“Who is then the Mother of the Gods? She is the source of the intellectual and creative gods, who in their turn guide the visible gods; she is both the mother and the spouse of mighty Zeus; she came into being next to and together with the great creator; she is in control of every form of life, and the cause of all generation; she easily brings to perfection all things that are; she is the motherless maiden, enthroned at the side of Zeus, and in very truth is the Mother of all the Gods.”

Fathers of the Christian church vehemently disagreed. St. Augustine called Cybele a harlot mother, “the mother, not of the gods, but of the demons.”

One of her names, Antaea, made her the mythical mother of the earth-giant Antaeus, who was invincible as long as his feet remained in contact with his Mother’s body, the earth. Heracles conquered him by holding him up in the air. Churchmen believed the powers of witches came from the same sort of contact with Mother Earth. Arresting officers often carried witches to prison in a large basket, so their feet would not touch the ground.

There was a Christian sect founded in the 2nd century A.D. by Montanus (Mountain man), a priest of Cybele, who identified Attis with Christ. Montanus maintained that women were agents of the Goddess, and could preach and prophesy as well as men. This contradicted the orthodox Pauline sect, which followed St. Paul’s rule that women must never speak publicly on holy subjects. During the 4th century, Montanist Christianity was declared a heresy, and many of its adherents were slain. Some Montanists in Asia Minor were locked in their churches and burned alive.

MonSnoLeeDra:
I think that while the church claimed victory over Artemis at Ephesus / Ephesos (Greek and Roman spellings though both are equally used in referring to this area) I wonder if that is really true. During Roman times Ephesos / Ephesus became recognized as a temple of Diana yet in more recent antiquity the associations to the Goddess were probably of such importance and influence that it became the point of origin for The Cult of Mary (also the Church Of Mary, one of the few dedicated to a woman) which was recognized in the Catholic religion for a couple of hundred years. Many of the titles and epatats of The Virgin Mary also shared by the earlier goddess figure at Ephesus / Ephesos. That tied in somewhat to the notion that Ephesus / Ephesos is the final resting place of Mary or at least the city that Paul took her to after Jesus was crucified. Just an aside note but many scholars still think the many breasted statue actually depicted bull testicles vice breasts. But it does tie in with the Winged Artemis figure that is known as Mistress of Animals persona that was heavy displayed at Ephesus / Ephesos and Orthia near Sparta where the actual winged image is to be found in votive offerings.

The info on Artemis from “The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets” by Barbara G. Walker, has some serious issues. In part it follows the old notion of trying to make all the various goddesses aspect of the same. For instance it mentions Artio who became associated to Diana and through that association becomes connected to Artemis. Yet in her own light Artemis is mainly seen in the guise of a Bear at her sanctuary at Brauron where her Arkatoia (Bear Maidens) dance. Yet this also ties into Athens for all girls of Athens (probabily only those of high social families actually) had to serve as Arkatoia in the Arkteia. Is is to Brauron that Iphigeneia comes after she and the cult idol is taken from Taurin, later to be taken to Orthia (outside of Sparta) along with the blood rites that accompanied it to both places. It is also from Taurin that cross associations begin to come into play with Hekate / Hecate being a High Priestess for Artemis and potential cross association of Hekate / Hecate to the moon. Even the story of Acteon is somewhat suspect as originating with Diana and later associated to Artemis as Roman influence spreads into Greece and Anatolia (modern Turkey). Probably very similiar to the associations that the Egyptian Goddesses Bastet and Pahket become associated to Artemis through the arrival of various Greek migrations into Egypt, especially centered in the areas dedicate to those two goddesses. The lower Nile Delta (Bubastis) for Bastet (Ubasti from Bubastis) and Speos Artemidos (Grotto of Artemis) near Beni Hasin for Pahket during the Middle Kingdom period. Even to Artemis' origin it is heavily in doubt.

Some try to place her point of origin as the Snake Goddess of Crete, other's to a point of origin in Asia Minor, some even equate it to the much older Arcadian goddess who was associated to the wilds and forest nymphs. At times even her later association to a pseudo brother Apollo and mother Leto is seen as an attempt to bring in a group of divine beings from the Anatolian influence and make them fit into the Olympian pantheon of gods / goddesses. While it is my own convictions I have to believe that the female goddess that appeared to me as I floated about the Mediterranean Sea and Black Sea and said she was Artemis is the Greek / Anatolain goddess. A goddess who was very forceful in stating she was not and is not Diana (That Roman!) as she always stated when I found things that were supposed to be Artemis but actually portrayed mythic scenes from Diana's lore. She had no difficulty appearing in dream time and vision as I participated in an exercise off the coast of ancient Sparta, off of the coast where Ephesos lies and Sardis lies more distant inland, even into the upper reaches of Greece and into the Black Sea. A goddess who appeared as Artemis off the coast of Africa then brought forth Bastet and Pahket on those long nights when the moon shown bright and full upon the waves as the heat, sand and winds blew in off the interior. Even when I sat at Corfu and she pointed across the waves and said Diana held sway there but she held from the waves back to Anatolia.

CinnamonMoon:
Interesting insights, MSLD. Well worth considering, thank you. I'm working on my replies in Word so coming back and forth with copy/pastes. There's more to follow. LOL

Wynsong~I’m not sure if all this information is what you were looking for but since the others have shared some I thought I’d add to it what I have readily available. Most of my books on the Goddesses are packed away at the moment (need more bookshelves! LOL). At any rate, that shared I’m just going to try to make some headway with the various aspects that have arisen in this thread and contribute where I can.

You spoke of the curtain rising and that it wasn’t a veil you could see through but a dense curtain that kept things out of view until it lifted. I can understand what you’re saying here and it makes sense. I think we all have the film over our eyes from time to time and blindness at others until we are ready to truly See Truth. I don’t look at my life in relation to the archetypes as you do, I do see certain mythos play out from time to time but don’t relate to the deity natures themselves. So I can’t really address that specific aspect. I do like it when the archetypes do step forward though, I’ve met a couple over the years just don’t focus on that association these days. I would say that if you have veils dropping and curtains lifting that it’s a good indication of what energies are coming through right now with the evolution of the Change as I call it. Give it what name you will, it is taught by the Elders that when we are ready to evolve these things will be happening, our conscious awareness will be rising (veils and curtains lifting) so that we can understand greater depths and spans of knowledge and therefore live with that wisely applied to our lives. It makes sense to me in light of that too.

I’m not at all surprised you’re having a bit of a jumble keeping up with all the insights but you’re drinking it all in and it will be absorbed as time passes. In what we’re being shown we are asked to look within ourselves, to see our reflections and make any necessary adjustments we need to so that we can be in harmony with these new energy vibrations. I’ve been getting hit with energy waves (for lack of a better term) for quite a while now and they bring with them insights and enlightenments. I’m hearing the voices of a choir singing specific songs and it’s all male voices, a celestial choir, that’s been going on since the first of the year. I’m still piecing what it all means together but my point is that we each, in our own unique ways, are being touched, guided and connected to this new vibration of energy we’re going to be dwelling in. That vibratory level that we reside in (at least initially) is going to have a frequency that is equal to where we’re at in the moment and we can rise up from there. You don’t have to accept what I’m saying, I’m just sharing what guidance has shared with me and what others are hearing in the spiritual circles and groups that I belong to as well. I know I’m not the only one being given this information. So yes, I think the sacred feminine is stepping into a new dimension and we’re asked to do the same. So is the sacred masculine. No one, no…thing, is going to be excluded from this Change.

As I go through the posts comprising this thread I’m going to leave the discussions between you and the others alone unless there’s some insight I have to share something specifically relative to it. But I will definitely comment on some of the things you have brought up.

DH brought up the question of the feminine as destroyer, though I don’t feel that’s necessarily just a feminine role, we do know the masculine nature can destroy quite well too, (just balancing here Wolfie, my friend! *Winks*)…but yes, there is a feminine destructive side. I think we can see it in many ways throughout the layers of life, the death-rebirth, end-new beginning cycles of life in all its wonder. The old must make way for the new to be entering. So how we perceive that can vary, we can see it through pantheons, through nature, or countless other archetypal symbolisms, but it’s a basic principle of life. He also brought up the issue of not recognizing our own power and submitting to others as a result, of thwarting our own path by being overly devoted to the needs of others (not that we shouldn’t help where we can of course, but over-giving is what I believe he was referring to.). All the ‘maybe’s’ he raised I believe are things that we do need to discover for ourselves by experience, again each in our own way. Certainly his point that if we are not strong then in the end we cannot assist others. I like that you noted in all Medicine teachings/spiritual foundations that there is a healthy and unhealthy expression of the energy at play. That is something I’ve come to embrace time and again over the years. And I agree, aspects of the archetypes, the gods and goddesses do live in all of us, we are part of the totality of All That Is/Great Mystery.

I also liked his expression of areas of life that have a mist that can be dense or faint at times, clearing at others. I know I’ve experienced those mists and still have them to work my way through on certain levels. There are so many layers to us and I’ve found they reveal themselves as we’re ready to accept them. Inner reflection is powerful and as we come to see our truths within we can then take them into the world to apply them or opt to change them if we don’t like what we see in ourselves. It is ultimately about us, not others. But we can share those truths with those seeking them and let them take their own inward journeys with them in mind. I believe you eluded to that somewhere in here too. Ultimately, veil, mist, or curtain, I believe it is an indicator of where we are, if we’re to proceed or wait to grow in some fashion before we are to continue forward…Divine Timing for us perhaps. Certainly I see my own journey that way, and sometimes I’m escorted by Spirit Helpers through the mists of time, escorted to where I need to be by the wayfarers that know the course mists or not. With the mists I do see archetypal entities at play in my guidance and I find them intriguing. They give rise to my curiosity and love of the myths, trigger recall sometimes to a past life, or to the moral of the myth that helps me see the essence of what I’m working through. I guess I do work along your same lines a little anyway. Hmmmmmm

And I have certainly run into what DH refers to as the Law of Unintended Consequences…both on my end of things and that of others. I do agree with him there and that there are indeed times we are to stand aside, be still, and certainly not impose our will on a situation until the mists do clear. However…I also think we have to learn that Law the hard way to become aware of it. At least it was that way for me for some time…I met it face to face on more than one occasion. Taught me to look a little farther out! Ouch!

MSLD has given a wonderful insight into the goddesses themselves, I found that so interesting and fairly well aligned with what I was able to share from my limited resource. And I like the point you brought out, Wyn, about how ‘virgin’ means owning one’s own life. I like that usage myself. I also feel the myths are teaching tales and that the symbology in them must be understood from the perspectives held in those times, not necessarily as we would interpret them today. Virgin being one of the definitions…in the past it meant an unmarried woman, a woman independently owning her life at that point. Today it means a woman who has not been bedded. B-i-g difference, and that’s just a small example of how when the perspective of the time is not understood the meaning becomes much different and misaligned. And when that perspective is considered they can then be brought to bear on the present in new terms that embrace things accordingly. As you said, getting tweaked through the ages and adapted to the society of the time. I like how you explore them and their embodiments within yourself, there is a beauty to the pattern. *Smiles*

At least for me, I have to resonate to do that sort of exploration. If I can’t grasp the deity/archetype’s mythos or way of being then I can’t explore it within myself or my life. So I think we all do this in our own unique ways and dismiss things because we struggle to grasp them. We may be missing things when we do dismiss but I have found it comes to me in another form that is much better suited to the way I process information. I don’t think we’re ever truly cheated out of things, they’re there, we just have to look in different places to find them sometimes. Like you, those I can resonate with do help me make sense of myself or my life and in that they hold a sacred purpose. It’s why the Elders continue the dramas, the telling, oral teachings, songs, and walk the pilgrimages…they carry the archetypes into the next generations that way. I discuss that in the article I did on “The Value of Myth” in the main Library.

You may be sorry you have asked why no other women joined this discussion. I seem to have more to say than I thought and you’re treated to a l-o-t of reading here! I’ll be back.

MonSnoLeeDra:
Hopefully this doesn't take it too far off track. I used to think of Artemis as a compilation of many goddesses across history but then the events on that Med float unfolded. Then later I was sitting one day when the vision of a women in white appeared before me (never really sure if it was a mind image upon the third eye or an actual image). Yet I watched that women speak for a bit then she turned into a buffalo and actually started to walk off. Had no idea of who or what she was but for the next several days I kept seeing this woman and many times I'd see a white cow or white buffalo in the fields. Heck even saw a female form in cloud shape that appeared on a clear blue sky with no other clouds present, that one was neat because my son saw it as well and commented on how she was following us. Took time but I eventually discovered it was White Buffalo Calf Woman Comes Dancing.

That convinced me that White Buffalo Calf Woman is no other and cannot be joined or mistaken for another. So if Spirit is guiding me and I am being shown things then I have to assume that each is uniquely individual and must be seen for who and what each is not what others over time have claimed to be a compilation of them. It's like one of the things that Artemis is not noted for is her vengeance and wrath against things that offend her. Yet most times that offense comes from false bravado (hubris?) on the part of those she calls to task. In that capacity her justice is swift and often destructive in its demand. She demanded the death of a daughter to appease the pride and arrogance of a king. She inflicted the death of many daughters when a mother falsely claimed she was a better mother (Niobe?) as she had many daughters and Leto had but one. But those were and are often attributes of prideful and vanity in women and men in what they have and possess.

Wynsong:
I'm glad to have all that you had to share, to read. I was not aware of the particular book you mentioned and am always interested to read what others have to say about the Gods and Goddesses of various cultures. I have just come back from two trips to my local (30km round trip- they were testing my crone energy I think) book store, to pick up a book I had ordered by Jean Shinoda Bolen, Goddesses in Older Women.

I enjoyed her take on the Goddesses in Everywoman, so I'm looking forward to reading this version, much like I looked forward to reading the Wisdom of Menopause by Dr. Christiane Northrup, after reading her Wisdom of Woman. It is nice to revisit the journeys these authors have made several decades later. Much like I revisit what I think I know as I continue to walk my journey here. I think we all touched on cycles in another thread of mine. And cycles within my journey are not new. Spirals are a comfortable home for me. I get comfortable with the energy of one archetype or totem or both, and then boom...something about how I perceive them changes and so does my relationship with them and this may be what you are referring to when you refer to the vibrational energies.

For my experience of how I journey it all, is of an upward spiral, but that may just be how I like to see it. In this case, it is the addition of one that I thought I knew only intellectually, and now have a more visceral affiliation with, that I have been acting on for some time, but just never associated with her (Athena). I'll be interested to wake up to all the time that Aphrodite has shown up that I've until then been blissfully unaware or dismissive of. I'm sure she will. Thanks for all the insights. I'll be looking forward to others that may come.

DragonHawk:
Just a quickie re the Celtic goddess and Artemis as there does seem to be some similar associations.. At Samhain, the dead of the previous year are brought to the House of Donn in the depths of the oceans at the westerns Isles of Ireland from where they start their Journey to the Otherworld. As Swanny's post elsewhere repeated here eludes to, this marks a time when we consider what must be released as the old Celtic year ends and the new begins at Samhain. The year always started in the winter/death portion of the year at Samhain as a reference to the knowledge that that which is planted needs time to grow in the dark before it can sprout into life (in spring). The goddess controlled the Land and so all living things. At Beltane (the summer/life half of the year), she is the Flower Maiden who marries the summer god, through which union life is born again/ At Samhain the summer god is slain in the Cosmic Boar Hunt, only to be reborn but then hidden away till Beltane, at Winter Solstice. At Beltane the Flower Maiden had become the Queen of Summer but at Samhain, after the summer god is slain, she resides with the (horned) winter god in his underworld abode (or in some versions of the story, wanders the baron earth as the Black Sow, searching for the summer god) having withdrawn her favour from the Tribe and the Land in order that new life can come forth again at Beltane. With the summer god powerless to effect change over winter, the only guidance for the tribe is signified by the horns of the winter god, acting as antenna, which he loses when the summer god returns triumphant and slays the winter god at Beltane. I've never really looked at phallic symbolism, but it strikes me as feasible that there could be an element the antenna aspect of the horned god of winter to it. Both the Greek and Roman myths are full of misinterpretation by later commentators of earlier mythos and it is from these "historians" such as Plutarch, sometimes writing half a millennia later, that we get much of our knowledge of those largely unwritten earlier myths and the people who followed them. Thus notions of eunuchs and tribes of women who slayed men could be misunderstandings of Artemis cults or a warning to us from history of taking things too far!! It is known that eunuchs guarded harems further east and it possible that eunuchs appeared as guardians of sacred prostitute/priestess cults that became associated with priestesses generally. Ive not come across the goddess Swanny speaks of: but then, unlike in Greece and Rome, where goddesses were collected under one name, in the Celtic, the opposite is the case and in some cases each individual community has a different name for essentially the same goddess: but given the sovereignty aspect, the one Swanny speaks of sounds rather like the chief goddess of Ireland, who I know as Eriu, who gave her name to Ireland in the form Eire, and who, in the time when the Sons of Mil (the Milesians) outsted the Tuatha De Danaan as High Kings of Ireland, drowned Donn, the Milesian military leader, and placed his house in the depth of the western seas: thus even though it is to the House of Donn that the dead are taken to at Samhain, the notion of the destroyer goddess who brings new life, is retained in the story.

CinnamonMoon:
LOL Here's some more for you then, Wyn.

Continuing: DH brought up the tie between the Celtic view of the feminine and the land. We do see the land as the Earth Mother, but there is also the masculine tie to the land in mythos with the ruling King being wed to the Land. As he prospers so does the land and therefore the people. If he falls ill he is slain so the land and people do not suffer that illness. (See the article I mentioned on the Value of Myth, I’m sure I’ve discussed it there or it’s in the Ley Line series.) In either case the land does portray the mythos of intellect, stimulation of the senses and arousal of emotion as he has pointed out. This allows us to step out of the present reality and into the more spiritual dimensions of understanding things.

I believe too, at least I found it to be true in my years of studying the myths and archetypes (about a decade of fascination with those), that there are common themes that play out in various cultures and countries. And the historic origins were born of a time when world travel was not a common activity. So there is a sort of universal aspect to the themes that stood out for me. Names, places, etc. may change or be slightly altered, but the story holds the same plots and themes of the ancient telling. This serves, as all spiritual traditions do, the many variations of resonance of the individuals that gravitate to them. There’s a mythos, archetype or path that all of us can relate to on some basic level if not deeply.

DH, you stated : “…If some of the barriers we come across relate: how our own thinking and the interpolation and intertwining of concepts can sometimes obscure the principle point just as the archetypes have become intertwined over time: so we lose focus of that which is important in our lives and the mists/curtains/veils descend and the way through those mists is track the energy back to the principle points?” And then went on to make note of the differences in perspective that men and women hold in general may or may not be so different at times. Adding in comments about the Kabbalah teaching of “Heyulie Power” or our ability to do something in relation to the masculine and feminine perspectives I can address the perceptions as they were taught to me. First let me say that our conclusions tend to be the same or along parallel lines at least. What is different is the approach, and you touched on it with a bit of confusion not knowing how to express the cycle so that’s what I’m going to share. Take the sexuality or sexual context out of things and just look at the flow. I can’t get an image up here for you so I’m going to do the best I can with words.

If you have a man and woman standing face to face, the man will take his perceptions in through his head first. If he can embrace what he sees he will then ‘own it’ and take it into his heart, the path flows down to his genitals where he would then pass the flow to the woman through her womb. She would feel that energy rise up within her, decipher the information it holds, take that into her heart and out of her head back into the world and aim it toward the man where he’d take it in through his head again. Clockwise cycle. Woman on the left, man on the right. Active/receptive principle. I’ve discussed this here at the Lodge a few times over the years but can’t for the life of me remember what threads it was in so thought I’d present it again as that may have been the reference you couldn’t recall. But definitely this is the emphasis behind Women’s Medicine being an initial focus of internalizing and the Men’s Medicine being an initial focus of externalizing. We come from polar opposites, however in the end we both end up at the center in balance with the truths we’re discovering.

I can remember when my path of learning took me into Men’s Medicine Ways, and it drove me up the walls and out the roof. I couldn’t for the life of me grasp the need to take such a long way around things when all you had to do was feel the truths within and bring them out into the world acting up on them. But that internalizing is natural to a woman and the externalizing is natural to a man. Those who are ‘two-spirited’ people as sometimes referred to in gay personas tend to have a more harmonious nature to a blending of both techniques and come easier into a state of balance between these polar opposite perspectives.

So I think this relates to your comment about how we gather information differently through our perspectives yet the information itself doesn’t very much at all. The feminine receives through her womb/base chakra, a primal sensation, up through her body to her heart. She comes from the heart to the head. The masculine is just the opposite going from the head to the heart down to the base chakra and through union they exchange this way. You did a pretty darned good job remembering this, and I like how you touched on the intertwining in relation to our double helix/DNA strands. Good point there too.

I found it interesting too that you, DH, responded to Wynsong’s comment about how you help her look at things from perspectives different than her own with the question: “Is that a bad thing?” Because I’ve never felt exploring the perspectives of another to be anything but advantageous. Either it expands my own understandings or it validates for me that my own are where I resonate and they perceive in ways that resonate for them…alike or different. It doesn’t matter but I think we need those differences for these very reasons. I totally understand what you mean about the group-mind, and being a follower, and believe we’re often conditioned to that growing up: “follow the leader, follow the rules, follow this, follow that, follow, follow.” Not until we begin to explore our authentic selves do we come to see that following takes discernment if we’re even going to follow along anymore. And if we do that we can break from the procession at any time we feel it necessary.

Like Wyn, I can walk with the pack but I need my solitary journey to be honored too. (Love the teachings you gave your sons, Wyn, beautiful!) I think the experiences you had along these lines (and your reactions) are a natural process of learning to think for ourselves and in some form or another we all pass through those lessons. (Well most of us do.). And as to the pantheons and those who controlled them (or the example of the Church’s power in religion) controlling the people, or today those who control money controlling the masses, or they who strive to control weather as a means of world dominion, yes. I feel history has shown this to be the case. But when we break free of mind-control or group-mind thinking and start to explore on our own we receive guidance that shatters those illusionary perspectives and helps us find our way to authenticity. And it’s in that authenticity that we see we need to walk our own path not follow another’s (though it may resonate for some and that’s okay too, it’s as it should be for them.).

In conclusion of this rather lengthy catch-up I’m doing, I don’t think it’s just an aspect of the feminine to have a destructive side to one’s nature any more than it is the masculine that destroys. Destruction is part of the re-birthing and it’s going to be found throughout all aspects of nature, not to fear but to understand the process, if we can see that we can embrace or at the very least accept that it is in our nature too and throughout all of life. It is where the Shadow side of things resides. And on the flip side to that we have the Constructive rebirthing abilities as well so it’s our intent and how we use it, how we express with it that matters.

Well, that silence didn't last long. LOL This is going to be short, I just wanted to address a comment you made to me, Wyn. The book is fantastic and it covers much more than Gods or Goddesses, a wonderful resource to have at hand. If you can get a copy I highly recommend it. There's so much insight within those pages, and it sounds like you've got some reading to do on

your own. But you might want to put it on your long list. I bet it is nice to revisit the journeys these authors have made and see where they've grown. We all continue to learn. *Soft smile* More to the point of this post, the cycles or spirals are indeed linked to the vibrational frequencies I was eluding to. When I speak of the energy vibrations it's like layers of energy I can feel as I rise up through the spirals or cycle through things. Jiggling perspectives a little I guess you could say but not by much. It is those frequencies (as we rise through them) that changes how we are able to perceive things. They're those booms you mentioned. *Smiles* We see things in our own ways and sometimes they're similar (frequently they are to some extent) and sometimes very different. What matters is that we get to see the things we do. IMHO to which you've been given a healthy dose today.

Ha! I really am going to be silent now. Promise!

LOL ...oh I hope when Aphrodite steps forward that you enjoy her company!

DragonHawk:
Cinn, Your notion of the king being slain if he becomes ill etc. speaks to me of the Fisher Kings. It could well be that it is in a form of this aspect that Donn was slain as, I recall, when the Milesians entered Ireland there was much devastation in the land: though its a while since I read that mythos. I do know that in commentaries of the Irish Histories I have read the general proposition is that the Milesians were of Mediterranean origin: though its commonly held they were of the Canaries, and hence linked to Atlantis mythos But in one late 19th century commentary, there was a proposition that there were both Greeks and Romans in the British Isles much earlier than we might have anticipated and in that commentary (which I think was on Google Books and I wish I could find again!) it was postulated that the Milesians were of Greek origin. It can't be by chance the the Danu element of the Irish Tuatha De Danaan myths is so closely related to the Babylonian Anu. But then all these peoples, including the Lybians mentioned in the Athena mythos, are all said tp be descended from the Indo Europeans who came down off the Russian Steppe sometime around the end of the last ice-age: and, after a sojourn in Mongolia, the Native Americans too.

More recent archeology infers that the primal link between Ireland and the eastern Mediterranean was via the Phoenicians which brings the mythos of the Middle East directly to Ireland and vice-versa going back to the Neolithic era @ 4000bc: much earlier than previously thought. I have a feeling it was in something you wrote that I came across that notion of the interaction between the masculine and feminine - but I couldn't quite remember the sequencing. If that sequences was reversing in an individual, would that bring forward the destructive cycle or would that simply be a product of the flow being stalled: say by a blockage?

Wynsong:
I've just barely started this book and oh my God...this is going to be a ride. Crone energy, YEP! Metis energy, YEP! How did we ever let her disappear. AND disappearing and invisibility....YEP...the archetype of the CRONE in western historical culture. Just another pathway on my invisibility journey And she is only the first one Bolen has talked about.

I'm barely into the first chapter. I find myself reading and then rereading bits, to fully absorb what she is saying. I can hardly wait to get to Hestia and to Hekate. This time she is not just using Greek and Roman deities, as most of the Greek and Roman Crone deities, were "eaten" or made to disappear. (See you all on the flip side of this journey) Anyway, I was sort of thinking about this thread as I walked around, slept, and otherwise puttered... And was wondering about something you said MonSnoLeeDra. For you, Artemis, is an external Goddess? Did I read that correctly. There is a difference, if that is correct, because for me, they are not external. None of them. Not from any tradition. All of them are an energy within me. They are a part of my existence as a part of me. I like what Jean Shinoda Bolen, and likely Jung have said about archetypes, as committee. I remember when my ex left, and I was sitting with my counselor for maybe the 2nd or 3rd time... I said, and I can quote because his reaction was so comical, that despite the mind bending effects of the chemo I still remember this... "I'm starting to understand what it must be like to be schizophrenic, some event happens and this whole host of parts of me start yelling at me. I feel like I'm King Arthur cringing in the center of the round table, with my warrior yelling one thing, my magician another, and for the first time I get that I have a victim.... The result is I freeze, because I can't make sense of the incoming information." He panicked because of the word schizophrenia, and that fact that I was hearing my other selves as voices....he immediately calmed down and told me that when a 'central organizing me stepped up, the chaos would end. Which is akin to Bolen's committee metaphor.

“In Goddesses in Everywoman, I suggested imagining the goddess archetypes as committee members, each speaking for her particular values. Ideally, you should have a well functioning ego chairing the committee, so that order is maintained, and all perspectives are heard." When I started this thread, it wasn't about touching the Athena energy as an external, but as a newly heard voice/energy at the pantheon of my internal universe. At my round table. I guess I sit more comfortably with the Taoist or maybe it is the Tai Chi position of as within, so without. I start with in. I might not have when I was younger, and I'm not sure I could track when it started to change, but for me, all my journeys are internal first...and then I may or may not see them manifest as an external. Most often I do...that might be what I called having mists clear...when I had hints beyond the smoke and mirror, or beyond what is in the light/conscious for me, but that I couldn't see clearly. That well-functioning ego, that Bolen talked about ... or that central organizing me, that my counselor spoke of....that is the me I've been journeying towards. I think she is sitting not at the round table, as Arthur did, but at its center. Maybe on finding her, then I'll find that external reflection of her in the outer world. Maybe not. So my pantheon is internal. I'm seeing now a need to sit with the Gods and Goddesses that make up my pantheon as they relate to me at the table. The need to sit with the totems that make up that part of my pantheon (not gods and goddesses, but a group of persons (I'll substitute energies here) that contribute to a field or endeavour. With the endeavor being me and my unique way of expressing life. I am seeing that it is likely not a coincidence that pantheons are circular. More wheel work.

So in rereading that last post, I'm seeing another possible masculine/feminine archetype difference. King Arthur, a strong male mythological figure to this rooted in the Celtic gal, sat not at the head...not at the center, but at the round table, and introduced the concept of each voice equal... But as much as I experience the Round Table, and intellectually love that each voice equal...and created that as much as possible within my family of strong personalities... Always a piece of me, or maybe ME was always sitting at the center of the table. The part of me that observes, observed me wherever I was sitting relative to the others at the table, in the external world, but the part of me that observed that, was at the center. And as I type this, I am recognizing that in my internal world, there is also a me that I observe. The part of me that is at the center of the table sees me, relative to the other aspects of my Self, around the table...so I am going to guess that that part of me that I see, is the part that at the moment, holds the most energy. This is fascinating. Got to just sit with it.

Some bits from the book, as they strike me. In the journey from the main Goddesses of the Pantheon into the invisible ones...Metis, Hestia, Hecate and Sophia

“Having to make decisions in the emotionally charged moment, trusting instinct or intuition when there isn't adequate information, coping with the situation and learning as you go from mistakes, and developing confidence and an authentic style of your own got into the process of being a mother. This is also so when a commitment is made to a craft, a skill, or work that cannot be done "by the book" or under the direction of someone in authority. When you cease to look to experts for authority and trust your own expertise, you find your own METIS. An Athena mind takes you only so far, after which what is called for it the development of Metis's wisdom."

In the chapter on Sophia: “Hagia means holy in Greek, and was once a title of respect for wise and respected older women; it has been denigrated to "hag".”

Numinous experience...what a great word or combination of words…

In speaking to women who had such experiences, she mentioned that in medieval times, women mystics flowered in communities for women...

Hildegard of Bingen....Teresa of Avila, Julian of Norwich, Clare of Assisi, Catherine of Siena, and Catherine of Genoa. ...

“Contemporary women mystics may still be drawn to religious communities and find that a Western cloister or Eastern ashram is fertile ground for mystical experience. But since mystics directly experience divinity, and women (especially older ones) no longer automatically defer to hierarchy, question dogma, and are aware of sexism, they also leave if they find the dogma and beliefs of a particular religion constriction and in conflict with that they deeply trust is true for them. Women have more freedom than ever to decide what they will do and one result is that women are inspired by their mystical insights to lead a personally meaningful life.”

(I'll add bits to this as they strike me, and it will be hard not to transcribe the whole book here....unnecessary, but hard none the less).

CinnamonMoon:
DH, With the movements in history you describe, the notion of the king being slain if he becomes ill would likely have spread.

I can't recall the origin but believe it predates the Fisher Kings by a considerable amount of time. It has to do with the people that perceived in nature-based ways...the Green Man is tied to this too. As does the symbolic wound to the side with the turning of the year and the life-death cycle with all its symbolism in the masculine teachings. To source it for you off the top of my head, well I just can't recall and I'm pressed for time today. I have a backlog of work to catch up on. (Hope to get to your email tonight or tomorrow). I believe that this was of a European origin, or Scandinavian though and if memory serves there is also a tie-in with the Fae. As for the cycle of energy flow between the masculine and feminine reversing and bringing forth a destructive cycle, I would think it could certainly be utilized in that manner for unbinding, undoing, banishing aspects of self, perhaps external work too. The flow in its natural order is clockwise with the masculine on the right, the feminine on the left...much like the Medicine Wheel weight distributions. To reverse it, it stands to reason that it would function as any act in a counterclockwise direction. Undoing is always counterclockwise. I don't think that there would be a tie to an actual blockage other than to unblock something so there could be the forward motion again. The only thing that would indicate blockage would be if the flow was stopped up somewhere, and (in whatever quadrant that pertained to) the work would need to be focused there so flow could return again.

Wyn, Just a suggestion for you to consider: The you in the center of the round table that witnesses the different aspects of yourself and is aware of them all would (in the teachings I hold to) be your authentic self, or spirit. You witnessing the central self. Again, in the teachings I hold to, our spirits are multi-dimensional beings that live in a holographic universe so this physical world of form is just one of those dimensions. Hence when we dream and journey in our dreams with consciousness we are Witness to our authentic self and those activities. Much like your round table, my Totems and Spirit Helpers circled around me as I underwent my unification process and then one by one merged. While I can still call up specific attributes as needed most of the time I function from center as a whole. Just doing what needs to be done. I'm wondering if your round table isn't a version of that with the archetypes? Just a curious thought. Toss what I share to the Wind if it's not resonating.

Wynsong:
I wouldn't be surprised Cinnamon. This is happening so fast now, that I'm mostly sitting back and allowing it to move through me, around me, and just absorbing it all. There are a couple of enduring images in my way of understanding my Self and myself, and the Round Table is one of the more central ones. I'm off to my journal to explore another one, that was blown apart by the Cancer, and has been rebuilding itself since then. One I was told, and the person who was doing the shamanic work was told, "I was not meant to understand or know" about. Maybe things have been changing as this central part of my Universe is being rebuilt.

MonSnoLeeDra:
The round table or ring makes a lot of sense to me. When the white lady called my spirit to the ring of dancers I stood in the middle of them and watched the smokey shapes as they leaped and jumped about the fire moving in a clock wise rotation. Then the Lady took my hand and I became both smoke and wolf as she led me into the smokey dancers to become one with them. Was sort of funny in that as we danced I saw a number of spirit dancers in animal form but eventually it ended up with just me and many wolves dancing about the ring of fire as I was danced into the clan.

Wynsong:
Power full MonSnoLeeDra. Little wonder that I always feel a resonance with what you speak here. May you dance the dance for all time, my friend. Wolf medicine too....of course.

Funny how a random thought that I feel like sharing here, can send me striding or tumbling or a bit of both through my journey at warp speed. I will be back, but I've got so much to process now... There is a weaving of so many fractured and separate journeys today... A coming together of my story. A bringing together of chapters that I have never seen the connection between before. And as I am weaving, I am open... As I weave each strand, I am open... Thank you Eshard for that piece of Crone wisdom.

CinnamonMoon:
What a beautiful experience, MSLD! Made me smile to read that! Wyn~ It happened fast for me at times too and at others almost painfully slow but that was my journey and the pace was unsteady for a long time. It began to level out more after the first 1/3 of it I'd say. Anyway, letting it move through you and around you as you take it in is a good approach. We learn a great deal through observations. I like your Round Table, and all that it symbolizes, always have liked that image. Enjoy the time with your journal and the rebuilding process. Rebuilding is a good sign that the worst is behind us. Interesting that one of those broken pieces was not meant to be understood or known, but that happens when it's relative to our spirits vs. the human us. Somethings we don't need to know because they would confuse us terribly. That's simply because we don't have the foundation to grasp them...yet. *Winks*

MonSnoLeeDra:
I had the sense to go back to the beginning of this thread and re-read and a few things sort of occurred to me that might be of interest perhaps. Athena is structure and format in her approach to things. It seems to be supporting of the patriarchal system but in truth I think that is sort of false. She works and inspires within the social and organized facets of energy, opinion and belief. Her motivations are directed to guide and move one through those highly structured and formatted realms. That it is the prime realm that a patriarchal system works in seems to imply she serves and stands behind it but I think it more so shows how the strong feminine is imposed upon it as cast against the hard thinking formulating of masculine energies. Yet Artemis is clearly the hard thinking feminine yet it is more so emotional and unstructured. It is the subliminal of the wilderness, the liminal spots that stand between structure and non-structure. She moves from the sense of feminine as drawn from the force of motherhood, empathy, sympthy but also a certain degree of freedom from working with and being bound to the patriarchal system. Yet she is also clearly contained within it for though she stands free of its bindings she strikes with a fury in her capacity to employee and manifest that energy in her own way.

Athena also stands for the greater emphases upon the group and the whole while Artemis is upon the individual and the one. Yet both speak to the motherhood of feminine in that one watches upon the individual and transition from child to maiden to womanhood while the other watches over the social transition. Artemis defends and punishes the individual who wrongs or transgresses while Athena does the same but to the society, city, or greater community. So one stands upon the inner ring of the round table and looks outward and see's the totality of the knighthood, society, social order from the feminine vantage point of Athena. She stands at the core and see's it outward through those eyes, senses and structure. She is the mother who watches upon the world her children will step into and judges and controls by those criteria. Yet Artemis stands upon the outer liminal section of the round table and looks inward and sees the traits of individuality of the knighthood, society, social order from the feminine point of view. She sees the strengths of the individual and weaknesses of the greater whole and strives to promote those internal strengths that derive from emotion, sensation, feelings those soft supporting emotions that derive from the heart of the feminine and not overseen in the cold logic of the mind. Athena is the strength of feminine power and energy unleashed within the masculine structure and directed somewhat towards the masculine traits of humanity and especially directed to move and function within the "Male" to connect to the feminine.

Artemis is the strength of feminine power and energy unleashed within the feminine structure but heavily encased with the detachment and individualism of the masculine energies that call upon or influence the feminine. But neither are subservient to the patriarchal social order but utilize the strengths of the feminine to move and influence within it. In many ways they are two sides of the medicine and teachings that White Buffalo Calf Woman brought as she punished the brave who attempted to exploit her feminine energy through rape and domination but rewarded the other who honored her energy and thus recognized her teachings. Athena being the feminine embodied in the masculine while Artemis is the masculine embodied within the feminine. Of course that also leaves Aphrodite / Venus as the embodiment of the feminine within the feminine. Though I admit I am not sure which goddesses might be seen as the masculine within the masculine? Or maybe none of this means anything…

CinnamonMoon:
Smiles...I'm going to sit with that and do some digesting, MSLD.

Wynsong:
I am also sitting with it. I read it twice last night and then went to sleep on it, and all that has transpired. I didn't get a particularly rest filled sleep, for me...so I'm paying attention.

CinnamonMoon:
Wyn (and all), On Shard's forum there was another discussion about Goddess Archetypes. Impervious Child posted a link that I thought might be helpful for those of you interested in looking into them. I just want to give Imp credit for posting it as one of her resources. Goddess Archetypes

DragonHawk:
Wynsong, I understand you are looking at the feminine, and why you are doing, so this post is not for you: it is however others who may read this thread and is more concerned with the wider aspects of the pantheon. As MSLD has brought it up the aspects of the masculine and feminine...

In the Celtic, the masculine is linear (as in time) and the feminine is non-linear (as in the circle/ring/wheel). The masculine is the world of form and the feminine is the Otherworld. The masculine is order and the feminine is a lack of that order: hence why at the two principal Celtic Festivals of Samhain and Beltane the natural order would be reversed - men would dress as women and vica-versa (hence we get pantomime dames and Dick Wittington usually played by a woman), masters would serve the servants etc., etc.: because at those festivals neither the summer god or the winter god were enthroned for the duration of the festival and so the Otherworldly feminine, where, to our mere mortal eyes, there was no order, had the ascendency...

But we are seeing the Otherworld through a mirror - the mirror that is our self: so from our mortal perspective things will be reversed: Athena is the goddess of strategy in war and her brother Ares the god of blood-lust in war: which is the more reasoned and orderly? Apollo is associated with the Sun to Artemis's moon association, as Artemis is seen as a protector of the people, Apollo can bring plague and other such calamities etc., etc., etc. In the early Celtic, the sun was feminine...hence why it is that when the goddess disappears into the Otherworld after Samhain (Winter half of the Celtic year) the sun's power decreases. Later, the death of the Summer God at Samhain signified the start of Winter: the old inference is still there...just a little more hidden from our reasoned view....

Perhaps the answer to MSLD's question, as to which of the goddesses is seen as the masculine of the masculine, is answered if we look for the masculine of the masculine in the god associated with the particular goddesses? Therein a sense of balance is achieved that is a common feature of the more ancient pantheons from which I believe the Greek, and most European pantheons, are derived.

Wynsong:
I'm starting to see something happening that Cinnamon said would. As I'm working through this particular journey, its pantheons and my own wheels and cycles, I'm seeing something coalesce that is more unified, and possibly carrying with it a purpose that until now, I would have rejected. I will not be running off to follow that purpose. I will sit with it... I will see how it all comes into form. It is part of my nature to wait and see...wait and hunt...wait and blend in. Now I will see what other parts of my nature come forward for me to look at the path forming before me...and I will wait and allow it to birth on its own terms through and with me. Thanks ((((Cinnamon)))), I might not have been watching for it, without the nudge.

CinnamonMoon:
Ah-ha! Love those moments. Wishing you all the best with that as it unfolds for you, Wyn.

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