Reflections On Artemis.

Remember this: Traveling is good for the Soul.

I traveled to an estate that had a beautiful statue of Artemis or Diana on a sloping hill facing the great house. She seemed to be staring down a beautiful lush landscape surrounded by emerging spring. As statues go, she was resting her hand and finger on the head of a hound. I touched the marbled hand that was warm and smooth. I felt comforted that she was there. I spoke to the statue not out of a sense of worship but more like reverence for the unknown. I had since then wondered why of all the things that could have represented hunting someone somewhere had settled on a woman. A woman that was a hounds woman, huntress, and archer. I don't think guns were around unless you want to count throwing rocks? This landscape seemed fitting but after some research realized that the general landscape of my home could be just as desirable due to the cypress, oak and the abundance of deer.
Once again the question presented itself. Why pick a woman when hunting wasn't necessarily the role of the female subject?
I really couldn't answer that because who knows with the ancients. They built complicated cosmologies to explain just about everything.
If you go by the pre-historic times, women were more gathers than hunters or so they say. Undoubtedly somewhere someone was not.
Over the years women were delegated more to the role of hearth keeper or child bearer. Women stayed in the house, tending it or the children and losing all respect by neglecting themselves for the benefit of others.Their respectable 'wild' side was relegated to crying babies and boredom.
Flash forward and this Roman Goddess is now a model for female hunters who want to get in touch with their inner authentic huntress. Aesthetic female hunters are more self-assertive and confident because they nurtured the wild inner child inside and turned it lose on the forest, field, and river.
If Diana reflects heavenly divinity and women use this as a role model to pattern their personas, the idea to become more spiritual would take its course. The Aesthetic Female Hunter reaches down into that place where the universe makes sense but at the same time is steeped in mysticism.
The act of hunting can be ritualized and viewed as a personal spiritual event depending on the person. I thought about the ways this could be developed or passed on.
I asked myself:

1. What female hunter was I aware of that provided a role model for myself?

I knew a couple of older women that hunted but none I was mentored by or thought to pattern my life after. My next question was:

1. What about little girls today?
2. Who would little girls look up to when they wanted to learn to hunt?
3. Where would their knowledge come from?

There are plenty of women today in the world of Hunting. My greater worry is this: if the sport of hunting is threatened to the point women are allowed access in only to strengthen numbers, what will happen when the threat is gone? Do we go back to the role of stay at home mom while men do their thing?
What would Artemis say?

Written by: W Harley Bloodworth

~Courtesy of the AOFH~