Artemis

It happened probably the first week of January. My decision was to create a new journal that I have purchased some time ago last year for that purpose. I love thick moleskin journal, soft cover and the size that would be easy enough to cary around. My intention was to journal every day and note the lunar and astrological positions in the sky. That day I started was not January 1st, but the day I had a dream about Sweet Annie, or sweet wormwood, if you know this herb. So I thought to journal my astrological correspondences to the herbs I happened to connect with on those days.

Along the same time I was working on a painting of a goddess, as I often do, and I was listening to a podcast on Sweet Annie, and the Genus of plants Artemisia. And of course that placed me into a wormhole about the Goddess Artemis.

It has been three weeks since that happened, and I know a lot about Artemis and wormwood right now. Needles to say, the painting of the goddess I was working on at the time turned into Artemis, the goddess of hunt, wilderness, protection, fertility and chastity. Artemis was also the daughter of Zeus and Leto, remember her being seduced by a swan, and consecutively having 2 sets of twins. One with Zeus – Apollo (Sun God) and Artemis, and the other two with her husband.

Wormwood and Sweet Annie, as I found out were the herbs used for healing (thus the protection) and in assisting in childbirth. But I could not find the reason for the hunt. As I was reading along though, I found out that since she was protective not only of her own chastity, children and generally anyone or animals in danger or despair, she needed to use her bow and arrow to pierce the enemy, be it virus, bacteria or evil intention, right through it’s core.

But I also think that the hunt came from a predecessor goddess – Inanna and Ishtar, both being goddesses of love and war. The dichotomy of this is just stunning. How do you put love and war in the same sentence, or name or a part of the same person. But truly, sometimes we have to fight for the things we love. Isn’t that the truth. But I imagine Inanna must have been fierce. I tried to imagine her and so of course I had to paint her as well…….to be continued 🙂