Katniss Everdene, from the Hunger Games.
AP Photo/Lionsgate
Artemis/Diana the Huntress Meditation Visualisation
Visualise yourself in the form of Artemis, what does she feel like?
To help with the visualisation: you have a shorter toga on so you can move freely. You have a deer as your animal companion. You are the protector of the feminine energy. Artemis is the Goddess of the Hunt, Forests, Mountains, the Moon, Archery, and Midwifery.
Artemis is soft and smooth of limb, shapely of bone. She is strong, a huntress. Happy walking in the forest and mountains. Self wed. Belonging to no one but herself. With herself. Complete as herself. At home with herself. Happy in her skin. No one can take that away.
She is focused and has strong aspiration. She has a bow and arrow, the arrow can be seen as aspiration, and the ability to get food, nourishment, nutriment. She feels fed and supported by the natural kingdom. You can also see this as focus, aiming for your mark, and foraging for herbs and vegetation in the forrest. The bow and arrow is there for protection. Artemis is ever virginal, always pure of moonlit mind.
Artemis is a protectress: What does it feel like to protect feminine energy? Feel yourself protecting feminine energy for yourself within, in the present moment.
How does this feel in your mind? How does it want to be protected? Converse with it. How does your mind wish to be protected? Shielded.
Artemis’s bow became the symbol of waxing moon
The Deer
The deer has ears pricked listening for any danger or concern. It is in all things natural, feeling at home in the forest. Walk around awhile. The deer’s breath where it inhales, is the moist life breath of the forest, its refuge.
Each breath gives information of the environment and how the deer needs to respond. It is a natural breath, and the deer wants to breathe.
You feel the moonlight on your soft fur as you walk through the trees. The leaves of your home crunching under hoof. Imagine your hooves as very responsive, sensitised, springing, quick. You can stand very still, motionless, listening, smelling, breathing. When you move, all your muscles move as one, with you, for you. Your bones move instantly. Your organs and blood are throbbing with life power. During the day the sun is very soft, glimmering through the trees.
The deer spends time listening to the forest (your workplace/daily environment). You hear sounds, just as sounds, no naming, everything for the first time. Allow loving kindness to be present when you are listening, welcome the sounds of nature. Even if it is the sound of a photocopier, traffic or people. Allow loving kindness for what your hearing.
When you rest, visualising resting in nature. Allow your soft warm, animal body to feel the support and comfort of the earth. Smell the rich deep soil. The humus of the forest.
Deer
Deer were the only animals held sacred to Artemis herself. On seeing a deer larger than a bull with horns shining, she fell in love with these creatures and held them sacred. Deer were also the first animals she captured. She caught five golden horned deer called Elaphoi Khrysokeroi and harnessed them to her chariot
Hunting Dogs
Artemis got her hunting dogs from Pan in the forest of Arcadia. Pan gave Artemis two black-and-white dogs, three reddish ones, and one spotted one. These dogs were able to hunt even lions.
More about Artemis (from Wikipedia)
Artemis was one of the most widely venerated of the Ancient Greek deities. Her Roman equivalent is Diana. Some scholars believe that the name, and indeed the goddess herself, was originally pre-Greek. Homer refers to her as Artemis Agrotera, Potnia Theron: “Artemis of the wildland, Mistress of Animals”. The Arcadians believed she was the daughter of Demeter.
In the classical period of Greek mythology, Artemis was often described as the daughter of Zeus and Leto, and the twin sister of Apollo. She was the Hellenic goddess of the hunt, wild animals, wilderness, childbirth, virginity and protector of young girls, bringing and relieving disease in women; she often was depicted as a huntress carrying a bow and arrows. The deer and the cypress were sacred to her. In later Hellenistic times, she even assumed the ancient role of Eileithyia in aiding childbirth.
Sipriotes is a boy, who, either because he accidentally sees Artemis bathing or because he attempts to sexually assault her, is turned into a girl by the goddess.
At the age of three years, Artemis, while sitting on the knee of her father, Zeus, asked him to grant her six wishes: to remain always a virgin; to have many names to set her apart from her brother Apollo; to be the Phaesporia (pronounced face- pore -ia) or Light Bringer; to have a bow and arrow and a knee-length tunic so that she could hunt; to have sixty “daughters of Okeanos”, (Oceanus: believed by the ancient Greeks and Romans to be the divine personification of the sea, an enormous river encircling the world.) all nine years of age, to be her choir; and for twenty Amnisides Nymphs as handmaidens to watch her dogs and bow while she rested. She wished for no city dedicated to her, but to rule the mountains, and for the ability to help women in the pains of childbirth.
Little She Bears
Pre-pubescent and adolescent Athenian girls were sent to the sanctuary of Artemis at Brauron to serve the Goddess for one year. During this time, the girls were known as arktoi, or little she-bears.
Festival of Artemis in Brauron, where girls, aged between five and ten, dressed in saffron robes and played at being bears, or “act the bear” to appease the goddess after she sent the plague when her bear was killed. The oracle suggested that, in payment for the bear’s blood, no Athenian virgin should be allowed to marry until she had served Artemis in her temple (‘played the bear for the goddess’).