Diana and the Metamorphoses of Ovid.

Remember this: Once a person has overstepped a boundary they knew existed, or out of ignorance did not know existed, can not escape the wrath or retribution of the offense. An insult is an insult.

The first time I met a Frenchman named Lionel, he introduces me to Ovid's book, The Metamorphoses. Lionel which means 'little lion' was true to form. I believe Lionel was thinking more of the Amores. With that I can only imagine what Ovid did in his lifetime with a chuckle. Lionel believed that every man should read this book. Why? Lionel said that men needed to learn how to treat women. Secretly, I think Lionel wanted to be Don Juan. I keep arguing to myself that maybe men need to read Ovid's Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love) or Remedia Amoris (The Cure for Love).

I pondered whether Ovid wrote something on "Womanly Indifference"? How to Hunt? No such luck.
Ovid was exiled for being risque and a little libertine but that is all in a days work for the free of heart. Sometimes you have to be a libertine. I don't mean Johnny Depp with his nose falling off from syphillis in the movie either.

I pondered the story about Diana and Actaeon. Diana's contribution to the situation seemed a little extreme to me but that is the story.The relevance here is Diana, being the Goddess of the Hunt and Actaeon was a legendary hunter. Undoubtedly, they could not come to terms for lack of discussion.
Here is the story in brief:

Diana is bathing with her nymphs in her sacred pool. Actaeon comes along and sees her naked. This vision insights Actaeon to make Diana his consort because he has 'some kind of stirrings'. Upset that he is being a peeping tom,  Diana turns Actaeon into a stag. Once changed into a stag, Actaeon's hounds chase him down and rip him to pieces. Or so the story goes......

Given translations and renditions, the story could change in motive depending on Diana's virtue lacking impunity and the questionable behavior of Actaeon. Love will drive you mad but lust will kill you dead. There is also the issue of the hunter becoming the hunted on both parts. Diana is hunted as a woman by a man with questionable thoughts in his heart. Actaeon is hunted by his dogs because he is now a stag.  Reading other stories about Diana, one comes to the realization that on more than one occasion, because of the lust of men, she is nearly raped. Diana comes to hate men based on their behavior.

There is also the story of Jupiter seducing Callisto in the form of Diana. Diana's bigger annoyance is the deception of men or their feelings of entitlement by encroaching on her sense of personal space. Men do not treat her as a goddess but  merely an approachable human woman,  which she is not. There is also the reoccurring theme of male domination and her resistance to it. In order for Actaeon to be unable to dominate Diana, she changes him into a stag from which he can't change back. Even though one account states it is only when he speaks that he will turn into the stag. If one considers the male gender asserts authority and dominance though verbal commands and body language, it would be easy to see why Diana took away his choice to speak. 

If we were to think in terms of wrath and why a woman would not want someone to speak of her obvious helplessness in a situation, is to avoid negative attention from overly amorous suitors, deception, and the idea Actaeon now knew what Diana was hiding. Even though Diana is a goddess, she is still in need of a form of protection because Diana shares human emotions. There was no shortage of treachery among the Greek gods. The issue of trust or lack thereof comes creeping into the story because of the immediate cursing of Actaeon's speech. Here one can think in terms of a wild animal that is troublesome, unmanageable, and downright fear drenched.  The animal would kill itself trying to escape but there is that one person who comes along and by some miraculous ability can appear to control the creature, when in fact it merely acquires the creature's trust, even if temporarily.  This is the same concept with training wild horses, hunting dogs, and feral cats. Take the threat and pressure away.

There is also a biblical reference to Adam and Eve in the Garden. Adam being weak minded follows along with Eve, who eats forbidden fruit. Hence, they realize the two of them are naked by the act of some sin or crime being committed intentionally or by ignorance. Here the woman is cursed. In Diana and Actaeon's story, Actaeon is cursed for committing a sin against Diana by seeing her naked. The stories are inverted to some degree. Actaeon by one account is merely walking along in the woods and stumbles upon her. Man in his ignorance meanwhile trouble ensues.

In Diana's short book of what do I do questions she is probably thinking the Holy Trinity of retribution: Do I care, curse, or kill? On the other hand, there is a tale of Acteaon stating he out performed Diana in hunting.  If you take into consideration the plot of Actaeon boasting about outdoing Diana,  you would then have the relationship dynamic of competition in a most foul way. I vote for the nude story myself. Greek tragedy and all.

As Diana  pointed her finger after changing Actaeon, she bequeath him one final thing. She planted fear within his heart. Up to this point, being the legendary hunter, I assume Actaeon did not have anything he feared. He could overcome all problems. Actaeon is outside the realm of human emotional trappings.  Once Diana turns Actaeon into a stag he is no longer protected or recognized. The hunter has now become the hunted.

This story could be an example of a cautionary tale about over stepping boundaries, forcing yourself off on someone who doesn't ask for that behavior, detailed scrutiny and the repercussions that come from such interactions.

In regards to overstepping boundaries, when put in situations where an aggressive type is pressing you to conform to their wishes, take a step back and say, "No."
No means no and you do not have to explain why. It just is.They can accept it or not.


Written by W Harley Bloodworth

~Courtesy of the AOFH~


If you would like to read more please click on the link below:
http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/Ovhome.htm

The Mistress of the Crescent Moon

Remember this: Men love beautiful women, but there is always one woman  (beautiful, ugly, good, or evil) they will love eternally. Death has no meaning for them.

Always thinking on hunting aspects that sometimes rivals my love of horses, art and all things creepy, I was looking in a book with a magnifying glass. Why do you ask? It's in the detail. I was looking at a hound, more so the hound's collar because it gives a very distinct three dimensional quality when you look at it even in a reproduced picture.

I then looked at the portrait in its entirety. The painting is cited under the School of Fontainebleau. It is called Diana (Diane de Poitiers) Hunting. c. 1550; Oil on canvas. The image itself is of a mostly naked blonde woman wielding a bow and arrow with a hound at her side.

I stared at it for a while.

I guess I could go on with the use of color, the brush strokes or the beauty and positioning of the model and hound but no.........

This was a loved woman and she loved to hunt which was how she shared her passion with her chosen one. Being a lady of the 1500s, I wondered what had happened to men and women  in our day and age  (or) people in love going hunting or anything in general? What happened? Where did it go? Has it become a mystical beast replaced by something else?

My wee brain couldn't wrap around it.

The following excerpt from the book is as follows:

"Within a few years of his marriage, Henry fell in love with Diane de Poitiers, twenty years his senior; she would openly be his mistress and political adviser for the rest of his life. Diane's sway over the king and her legendary beauty, unmarred by the passing decades, were naturally ascribed to sorcery. Gossip, however, credited the king and queen's ten children, three of whom succeeded to the throne, to Diane's practical-minded promptings.

The king and his lover shared a passion for hunting, and any references, however oblique, in any medium, to the sport or to Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt, are a tribute to Diane de Poitiers. The royal palaces, including the court facade of Henry's rebuilt west wing of the Louvre, display a curious example of the Renaissance love for codes. The vertical bars of the king's initials are entwined with the queen's own initials, backward on the left, forward on the right; however, the letter C is the shape of the crescent moon, sacred to the goddess Diana, and the crossed royal ciphers form the letter D. " (Bonfante-Warren 15-16)

After reading this I could put aside the glaring ideology of adultry here based on the extramarital affairs. I thought this sounds about right. Hunting can be an outlet to be with the one you truly love. Of course, there are other endeavors one can pursue in a non-hunting realm to be with the one you love. It's probably better if you're both free then you don't hurt anyone.

I guess back in the good ole arranged marriage days maybe it couldn't be considered your fault if you fell in love with someone else, when you didn't really love the one you were with. Shared passion can be a defining mark on two people when they decide to 'commune together' or at least give it the old college try.

Besides.....no harm ever came from reading a book.

Written by W Harley Bloodworth

~Courtesy of the AOFH~


Literature Sited:

Bonfante-Warren, Alexandra. The Louvre. China: Barnes & Nobles, Inc, 2006. pp. 15-16 Print.

Carmine on Bloodlust and Hunting Vs. Conservation.

Remember this: Everything has its dark side.

In a passage from James Carmine’s book, Hunting Philosophy for Everyone: In Search of the Wildlife, Carmine poses the argument of hunting not being conservation.  This is the following except:

“Hunting is not conservation. No hunter goes off into the woods to thin the herd. That is a lie hunters tell to mollify those who don’t hunt, and perhaps to themselves to qualm their fears about their own bloodlust. If hunting were really for the sake of conservation then early each spring we would simply use our tax dollars to pay a small army of lab technicians to go about the forests and fields with the most advanced satellite-enhanced equipment and, with relative ease, find the most fragile fawns and other animals scientifically deemed unbeneficial to the ecosystem, and euthanize then efficiently, painlessly, and silently. “(Carmine 242)

It could be said that to employ plans of conservation the hunters function in a utilitarian way. Hunters are used to address issues that conservationists may not have the man power to meet. This practice also offsets the cost of alleviating a problem though wage by relying on hunters need to track, stalk, and kill.

In the previous article I related to called Preventing the Establishment of a Wildlife Disease Reservoir: A Case Study of Bovine Tuberculosis in Wild Deer in Minnesota by M. Cartensen and M.W. DonCarlos, I surmised the necessity of the MNDNR to use sharpshooters to kill deer suspected of infection. Even though this practice was not well received over a period of time as the result of disease began to diminish people were not so against it. In the Minnesota example we do not have lab technicians going in the woods kindly putting sick animals down. Its shoot to kill without any predetermined test to prove sickness. It’s the old ‘shoot first ask questions later’ mentality. The hope here was maybe they could eradicate disease with a mass death killing. Was this hunter mentality? No. Was it conservation? You bet. Conservation has a dark side just like hunting with its good, bad, and sometimes right down distasteful but necessary.

In order to have a healthy sustainable population of deer the population had to be semi-eradicated in order for the Bovine TB to be hindered in its spread. This activity on the part of the MNDNR helped to keep Bovine TB from forming a stronghold in deer populations which would spread to others and domesticated livestock.

Once again I thought of Carmine’s excerpt and the Missouri Moose problem. Were DNR workers not fitting moose with high tech gadgetry to monitor body temperature and other pertinent data of moose physiology? It has been known that wolf populations have the random $4000 GPS and monitoring devices around their neck as well as bear.

I then thought of what Carmine said about hunters not going into the woods to thin the herd. If a hunter were to practice intentional culling that deviated from hunt-stalk activities this would imply some sort of ownership. The only way one would have ownership of wild game in America is if they ran or worked a fenced game farm where domesticated wild stock were evaluated for benefits and losses financially. This isn’t hunting. It is farming hands down. Call a spade a spade I say.

Yes hunters may see the random wounded animal whereby putting the animal out of its misery. Hunting is based on opportunity and then you pick your target if you have more than one option.

Hunting and Conservation are two different skill sets that comingle depending on the overlap of need and the situation the two ideas are applied to.

If a hunter is using conservation as his springboard platform for argument and evidence of validating the details of the hunting act then maybe they need to sit in a deer stand and get their priorities straight. Hunting and conservation can be integrated into another entity as a whole but they tend to be separate concepts with different definitions and requirements. Conservation tends to walk the line of monitoring and sustaining wildlife where hunting rides the fence as partaking of.

As for hunters ideals of bloodlust not all hunters are created equal, have the same mindset, come from the same culture, or even have the same views of death. Subtracting the fact they actuallyl do hunt one could ponder whether they have any respect for others, themselves, or decorum in general.

Blood is blood. There are several schools of thought on blood and gore in the hunting realm. Some are very adamant about being comfortable with their bloodletting while not understanding or ridiculing a fellow man for weakness and inability to perceive certain violent acts as “normal acts of nature”. Violence again each other has become so prevalent and sensationalized in the media we cringe at seeing animals doing it to one another but on the other hand some sit in front of the TV during shark week glorying in the sight of Sharks tossing seals.  Other hunters do care about not forcing visual aids off on people that would not want to see them because when it comes to social media you never know when the random boob shot is coming. I have found after actually having an intelligent conversation with non-hunting buddies that I am actually okay with not showing them my personal photos of hunting outings. My aspect of hunting is to promote life more because death is eventual and not pretty. It’s not that I ignore death. Being enamored with death and shoving it in people’s faces is almost like assault to me. There are people that get off on other people being repulsed by blood, gore, and death. It gives them an ego boost I guess that they can handle it and someone else is too fragile. This behavior doesn’t make a hunter or person is strong by no means. It just means death is on that person to the point the air he breathes is death with its sickly sweet smell. These types court death with the false illusion of adventure. If something directly threatens your life as an endeavor, it is not adventure, that my friend is a death wish.

Sometimes ideals have to be tested as to their relevance. What seems distasteful might have a far reaching benefit if no other workable option exists to resolve problems. I enjoyed getting this pot load of gold out of a small excerpt.

Written by W Harley Bloodworth
~Courtesy of the AOFH~
 

Sources Cited:
Carmine, James. Hunting Philosophies for Everyone: In Search of Wildlife. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons (2010). pp 242. Print.

Funny Experimental Deer Lure Circa My Brother.

Remeber this: Peanut butter and acorns in the hand is a worthless nut in the bush.

Yesterday I was entertaining a conversation with my brother. I had told him about my misadventures in the woods with the deer. There is this one buck I have a long standing love-hate relationship with. This buck has the ability to live on a very small acreage of land without being ambushed. I have seen him running behind his clutch of doe heading for the swamp. His usual hideout when he is alone is out near the old hog parlor during the day. One day he was stalking me from the acorn patch by the cemetery because the crow tells on him sometimes. The conversation from my brother’s side was how I could entice or lure the buck to come out. As of late I have been not using any kind of lure because of the corn harvesting, oats, wheat, or soybean. The deer have plenty to eat along with the acorns that are falling out of the tree, the persimmons, or swamp mushrooms. I figure why waste a dollar by providing corn or some other lure when there is plenty all around. Eventually winter will come and the food will be scarce.

My brother tells me to get an apple, run a string through it then cover it with peanut butter. I started to laugh while thinking, “People do the craziest things”. I asked him did he think I was out to catch a big rat down in those woods. Next he would tell me to just hang tin cans and they could eat them much like a billy goat.

I do remember over the late summer I was trying to catch a critter cam photo of elusive deer in my backyard. It would seem a couple of doe and their offspring were sneaking into the yard after dark to eat the pears on the ground. Probably smelling my scent on the camera, one of them tilted it giving me a shot of only her ear. Pretty smart I thought:  pear bandits tilting the camera.

I told him in jest that I was going to try out his theory but in my own way. We ended the call with a chuckle. I went into the kitchen and scoured the cabinets for essential ingredients into this little wilderness gourmet diatribe. I found peanut butter, salt, rice crispies, and clover honey.

I reviewed my ingredients then realized I needed something special. I had previously taken a short trip to the river to pick some acorns off the trees there because they are bigger. I had a five gallon bucket half full of these little oak seed wonders. I took a pan and mixed all the ingredients into four evenly amounted acorn butter balls. I was laughing the whole time. Why do I do these things just for fun?

After I was happy with the consistency of the balls I placed them in a covered container inside of the refrigerator.

Later that evening I collected my hunting supplies and grabbed the sandwich bag with the acorn butter ball.  I drove down to the woods, unlocked the gate, drove in and stopped amongst the trees. I went to my usual hang-out but walked across the ladder bridge to drop the acorn butter ball onto the top of this blue feeder bucket that was tilted and completely empty. I went to sit in “the box”.  Hours passed. Deer were walking all around me and calling out on the game trail right behind me down one of the man-made corridors in the woods. Goat smell waifed up through the screen. It got darker and darker but no actual deer came out. I looked down the canal ditch and saw two black shadows moving in and out of the greens. This was the side of the area that quickly got swallowed by the shadow from the dying light. 

Feeling I had no luck on this venture collected my belongings and marched to the truck.

My thought on the acorn butter ball thing was raccoon action. I figured the coons would be down there playing patty cake with that ball and it would be gone by the morning or at least half washed in the ditch.

I went back this evening on the golf cart to check things out with this acorn butter ball. Sure enough something had been gnawing on it but what that was I do not know. I felt compelled to put another one in a different location to see what my results would be.

Now I have seen some mighty strange lures put up in the woods to attract deer. One time I went down to this place to hunt. In a moderate distance inside of the woods was a tree decorated like you would see at Christmas except the decorations were tampons. These tampons were covered with buck lure. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I put my gun down and began a belly laugh like no other. If you are ever told that men have a problem buying tampons for women it is a lie. They have no problem buying them to lure deer or at least robbing the tampon box of what they need.

I have even seen full body traps set in the woods with lure and a trip wire like you could catch a bear or a dog in. The two men in question actually caught a young peg horn buck then wrestled him out to freedom.

I know they say that deer like frost bitten apples but its not that cool here and winter hasn’t hit as it normally does. It use to get really cold in August or September but now it doesn’t get really cold here until Feb, March, or April.

As for experimental buck lures I am not sure if this is working but the jury is not out yet. I’ll give it until Monday before I do a thumbs up or thumbs down.

Written by:  W Harley Bloodworth

 

~Courtesy of the AOFH~

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~