 From wanton to virgin, a pretty good trick  Artemis is the only female we know, deity or mortal, who proceeded from wanton to virgin. In one of her pre-Hellenic rural aspects she was a maenad, an orgiastic spirit of the wild affiliated with Dionysus – one of the band wrought to delirium by the shrill music of the flute and the clash of cymbals. Later devotees perceived her as virginal, perhaps because of the scandalous nature of the maenads, and a virgin she remained throughout most of her long cult life. But Artemis was never depicted as a gentle maiden; her nature reflected the ferocity of the animals she lived among.
Yet she is a contradictory goddess, this Lady of Wild Things, one of the most beloved Greek goddesses and primary deity of the Amazon women. Artemis flashes through the forest flanked by hounds, stags, and swift nymphs, on her back a quiver of silver arrows – with her twin brother Apollo a lover of the frenzied chase. Like her predecessors Isis and Ishtar, Artemis represents paradoxical ener-gies. She is at once a hunter and the divine game warden of the gods, careful to pre-serve the young – “protector of dewy youth” both animal and human. Artemis is also the virgin goddess of childbirth – a bundle of gender-tuned possibilities. |