ARTEMIS * Boundary Boss

So he was right. There w e r e voices behind the bushes. Gushing voices of actual nymphs, in water! Actaeon, the hunter, told his 50 hounds to wait a second and approached the thicket of willows and holly bushes that grew right next to the spring. Careful not to make any sound, he pushed leave after leave aside, a basic hunting skill. His excitement grew. So did the impatience of his 50 hounds. Careful, careful, it’ll be worth it. And there she was, playing in the water with her nymph friends: Artemis, virgin goddess of the wilderness, fully naked like her companions, lighthearted, giggly, splashing them with water. He knew it! He got dizzy. One thing to long for the sight of a goddess in front of you, another thing to actually be exposed to the full power of her presence.

He was unprepared. He tried, but he slipped. A twig cracked below his elbow. Instantly the master huntress leaped to grab her silvery bow and arrow. „Who’s there?“ Tension. One of his 50 hounds started panting. She looked over. „Actaeon. Ha! Dirty Bastard! Peepin’ at virgin goddesses, you needy little sh1t? Did you ask? Did you ask for consent, little fv€4er? I don’t think so. Did he? Nymphs, what do you say? Nereids? Right: he didn’t. Just coming by to objectify some nature beings, right? The good old extractivist mindset in full display: first coming to the forest to grab some animals and while I’m at it, why not quickly have a cheap w@nk watching some innocent girls in the pond, huh? Anything to your defense?“ Actaeon was too baffled to speak, too taken by the presence of the goddess. He had org@smed three times already while she was speaking to him. So embarrassing! „Okay. Then die, scum. But die in style…“ She mumbled some ancient Anatolian spells, then pointed her laser eyes onto him.

The next thing he felt was the softness of the moss below his hoofs. Two toes. That’s what he saw when looking down to where that gentle sensation came from. „Ai, the antlers got stuck in one of the bushes. Aiiiii, but feels nice. So the goddess transformed me in the most beautiful way! Wow! She does love me in the end! She made me the king of the forest. I am beautiful! I am strong! I need to thank her…“ The first growl from one of his hounds. No more thoughts. Instinct screams: run! Hearing the teenage dream goddess giggle again, he skipped past the pond. His 50 dogs dashing right behind. Artemis and her gang started cheering for the animals. „Go get him. Eat him slowly! Lol.“

They kept running for ages, across the forest and beyond. The stag, still full of the goddess, had mustered bizarre stamina, so did his hungry dogs. But finally he collapsed in the shade of another willow. A lush meadow, a blue sky, a bee… Surrender. They tore him apart in seconds. Delicious every bite. He dissolved in bliss. And that was the end of him, severely punished for a transgression. Just like so many poachers, rapists, abusers of children before him. The master avenger with her moon bow and arrow, protector of innocence, was very precise with her boundaries.

Artemis was the guardian not just of her personal boundaries towards men, she watched over all kinds of liminal spaces back then, the passageways from youth to adulthood, the places where wilderness and civilization merged and blurred. She was not simply a goddess of the hunt. She was Boundary Boss*. And she was wilderness impersonated. A heroine we might urgently need these days, someone to defend innocent life and protect a planet under siege by the patriarchal death cult, these days more apparent than ever.

GOOD GOD!

On days like these, it becomes clear to me why humans would invent a „good god“. A god like APOLLON, who would represent the human potential to bring light into darkness with art, the potential to heal, to bring order, to do the right thing. An extremely handsome god who would midwife civilization, found beautiful cities and intervene with his precise arrow whenever justice is undermined. A protector to every shepherd's sheep.

With war breaking out right around the corner from my home, I realize with a screaming heart how fragile the construct of a culture is, how easily it can break, how easily violence can be unleashed and take innocent lives if it serves powerful interests. It seems to be part of who we are as humans. At least one could get this impression just by the sheer amount of war gods I've come across in my research. Very few gods who weren't also gods of war in some way (including Apollon himself, passionately involved in the Trojan war). What a relief it must have been to run into a figure like Yeshua at the end of classical antiquity, finally a "prince of peace" at the Mediterranean after all these blood thirsty entities who were venerated here!

As the ecstatic child I grew up to be, I always used to be a big fan of Dionysos and would look down upon Apollon as "the boring god" who stands for mastery and skill in art, the mathematics of music and harmonic shapes. Yawn. No chance against the god of wine, the wild, primordial, seemingly less patriarchal non-binary trickster who leads whole groups of women into the forest and goes crazy with them on wine and shrooms. Way more cool. And after reading Nietzsche’s entrancing poetic praises of the god of madness, it seemed even more clear to me: I want to be Dionysian when I grow up, I won't suppress my beast qualities, my raging lust for life. Western culture had been about suppressing this wildness for way too long. A great reason to over-identify with this archetype, right? In the myth, a mother ends up tearing apart her own son in ecstatic fury. Catharsis, drama, a little too much maybe? Definitely easier to long for this kind of intensity in times of peace and stability. Maybe a privilege.

These days I take a closer look at Apollon and I do not find him so boring anymore. The word that comes to mind is Ecstatic Mastery. The capacity to be both polarities at once, to be the God of wolves a n d shepherds, to be the bringer of the plague a n d its greatest healer. And to use the energy that flows between these poles for the greater good.

I also think of the sanctuary of Delphi and its famed oracle. Yes, Apollon killed a monster snake here, a python, just like the Christian hero saints and angels did with the European dragons later on, symbolizing the victory of faith and discipline over pagan passions, lust and violence. In both cases also a triumph of male dominance over the Earth and her keepers.

But the python of Delphi did not really die by Apollon's hands in my reading. Instead, after a long period of cleansing himself from the deed, it became part of him. His priestesses, called Pythia, might have been using the snake technology of their spines to access the realm of truth and to speak in his voice in an ecstatic trance state... (enhanced my some magical fumes from the Earth). The inner python not suffocated but cultivated. What made them into oracles might have been just this: mastery.

What an achievement to master the fiery magma of artistic inspiration and safely guide it all the way to the point of crystallization in the shape a flawless art piece - without losing the urgency, the snake passion, the aliveness on the way! Or to bring peace without just numbing down, without suppressing the passions or denying the suffering. To be touchable while present.

We'll sense into some of these "Appolinian" qualities of self-mastery this Sunday at HANG WITH THE GODxS! * You are all that * Weekly Archetypal Playtime (Online)

Fun fact: the whole conflict between the "Dionysian" and the "Apollinian" principles actually was mainly an over-simplified reading of German philosphers from the 19th century. In actual ancient Greece, the oracle of Delphi was left to Dionysos during Apollon's yearly absence during the winter time. In many ways they were two sides of the same coin, their mythological beings intertwined in a tale of ecstatic mastery of the polarities. That's why we will be meeting Dionysos two weeks after Apollon. And, to complete this triangle, we'll hang with Apollon's twin sister Artemis, guardian of innocence and of the forest, in the session in between:

I hope that in all these sessions, we will not turn our hearts away from the ongoing suffering and just distract ourselves with some self-development. The invitation is to widen hearts and imaginations ever more so they can touch ever more precisely what is worrying and scaring most of us these days.

STAY HUNGRY

For almost two days I didn't hear a word from her, my mysterious, meta-er(o)tic telegram penpal whom I have never met ...and who arouses me like nothing else these days. For the last weeks there was at least one message each day, from both of us. I awaited hers eagerly and set it aside as a reward, so that I could dive into her voice after my daily business would be done. So when she didn't write me for one day, and then another day, I witnessed an internal eruption of raging desire: a longing I had not known for a long while. So intense.

I could have told myself that I need to work on my neediness (for sure some mother wound, heal it fast!). I could have made this longing wrong, label it unevolved, immature. I could have feared for my independence. Or try to somehow contact her from that place and try to get a reaction, just so that I could taste another drop of that delicious nectar of her presence and feel less like an abandoned child.

Instead I just decided to have a date with my longing. I invited it onto my bed, gave it all the space it wanted. And it came, and it wallowed, screamed, showed me its monstrous desire. It almost tore me to pieces - and I enjoyed every second of it. Rarely have I felt so alive, so aroused than when I decided to enjoy the fact that I didn't get what I wanted.

Very often, frustration arises within me when I tell myself that I am not supposed to feel sad, angry or disappointed when a wish of mine didn't come true. By censoring these "negative" sensations, I seem to lose the primal energy of the initial desire as well. It leaves behind a feeling of stuckness and emotional draught.

So, note to Self: When there's no pleasure available, try getting off on your yearning for it. Even if there is a full buffet available, not filling your belly rightaway might be even more ecstatic. Maybe the entry point into the longest lovemaking ever. Longing/Anticipation is a core er(o)tic theme for many people and it sure works for me! It also was so delicious to tell her all about my date with myself the day after...

What's your experience with almost unbearable longing? How do you deal with it?