On a woman’s path to selfhood, to freedom, to actualization, to liberation, there are many traps to sidestep and many shackles to unhook.

There are many ways, some conscious, others buried so deep in our cellular memory that we give them no thought at all, that we make ourselves prisoners of systems, societies, beliefs, and paradigms that starve the wild beauty of the soul. In a world that fears nature and will do anything to control the destructive and regenerative nature of life, it is no wonder women feel such a yearning, such a longing, to experience freedom at any and all costs.

We may seek freedom through the avoidance of responsibility, running away to distant countries across the world, refusing to commit to relationships, rebelling against the norm, clinging to our Maidenhood and not crossing the threshold, harming ourselves through behaviors that are actually recklessness disguised as liberation, or we may stifle our longing to be wild, hidden away in a private corner allowed so very little space, conforming to the appropriate standards of a good girl, terrified to step outside of the confines of one’s known little world.

But the thing is… freedom has so little to do with how anything appears on the outside, and everything to do with the spaciousness of the soul on the inside. Freedom has everything to do with how much we trust in our direct connection with the creative impulse of life and allow that wild truth to guide all that we do. Freedom is ultimately about being uncompromising, no matter how much we are tested, in devotionally trusting the love that ignites us from the inside, and not selling that essential flame for any outer promise of paradise.

Anytime we forget our indestructible connection to source, anytime we forget the truth of our nature, anytime we forget who we really are, we forget our freedom.

But this forgetting is actually a divine design on the path of a woman’s maturity, resilience, strengthening, and individuation. Our redemption often requires that we forget, in order that we remember in deeper layers than ever before. It is often through forgetting who we are and betraying ourselves at the deepest level that we plunge into the dark forest of the underworld to reclaim more and more fragments of our power.

This is the path of Artemis, the Greek virgin Goddess of the full moon, the wild woman, the one who forgets her true nature only to remember it once she has seemingly lost it all. Artemis is a powerful guide for all women in understanding the trappings and predators in a world that both fears and also hunts for the wild nature, and how we stay true to ourselves no matter how far we are tested.

Let us journey now, into Her story, into the wild forest of a woman’s own initiatory terrain, and be guided by Artemis as she become prey to the hunter, loses herself, hungers, starves, and forgets her power, just as we all do, just as we all have, and yet still finds her way home to forgiveness, to begin again, to return to her throne as Queen of the forest, daughter of the Moon, living in sacred communion with the Mother of creation, of life.

Have you ever made another responsible for the love, the wisdom, the truth, the nourishment that has always lived within you?

If yes, then you have also walked the path of Artemis. We all have. We all have forgotten our direct connection with Source and become prey to the tricksters, wolves in sheep clothing, and devils at the threshold dressed as lovers, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, mentors, religions, gurus, politicians, spiritual systems, cultural paradigms, inherited beliefs, and societal norms. We all know the feeling of reaching outside of ourselves for the fulfillment that can only truly be sourced from within and becoming victims and prisoners of whatever we have projected outside of ourselves to be God.

But Artemis does not begin this way. As we all do, Artemis begins pure, virginal, totally attuned and effortless in her relationship with her Self and her Source. (Read more about the virgin here: How to Take Back Your Virginity as a Woman Whole Unto Herself.)

As the artful huntress, wild woman of the forest, Artemis lives in pure harmony with all that is. She is whole unto herself, the true definition of virgin, and seeks for no one and no thing. She is fed, nourished, Queen of the woods, able to eat and receive effortlessly. All of her needs are met. But the path of awakening always begins with a “fall.” With a “forgetting.” With a wandering away from the true nature only to find it from a deeper space within.

As the icon of freedom, Artemis became the most prized creature of the forest among both Gods and men.

No one could hunt her, marry her, or tie her down. Many tried, and all failed. She knew the forest so well that she could hide, shapeshift, run, and outsmart any hunter who ever called her prey. Until Hercules that is. Through his own initiatory process, Hercules was challenged by the King to complete a series of seemingly impossible tasks, including to capture the beloved golden deer of Artemis. This deer was not just any deer, but Artemis herself, in her most pure embodiment of the sacred, her spirit in form.

A woman who knows that she is sacred and holy and will not sacrifice her inner light no matter how tempting the exchange, is the most tempting category of prey. Not only is she virginal, pure, which is a magnet for the darkness that has forgotten its own true nature, but she is also tricky, challenging, and considered an accolade.

Perhaps we have seen ourselves in this image at various times of life, when our chastity or our self devotion made us targets for jealousy, lust, judgement, criticism, abuse, violence, and various expressions of darkness that wanted to rob us of our light. It is particularly poignant when coming into our sexuality, and becoming fetishized by those who unconsciously long to merge with their own pure sensual nature and instead project it outwardly onto young women, girls, and really anyone who embodies the light of the divine.

Against all odds, Hercules manages to capture Artemis and her golden deer.

There are many versions and interpretations of this myth, but for the sake of our work together as women reclaiming selfhood in our wholeness and our pure sexuality, I often think of this as the moment when Artemis opens herself sexually to another. She shares her golden nectar with the masculine who has hunted her. As much as she avoided this initiation, she finally allows herself to be captured, to be entered, to be prey.

We could see this through many different lenses, some beautiful and others horrifically traumatic, and it’s important to acknowledge it all, and to honor one another in the paradox of darkness and light. Coming into our sexuality is often traumatic, and for many, if not most women, it is not really consensual. If he does not force himself upon her physically, it has become almost expected that a man pressures a woman into sex verbally and emotionally, whether she is fourteen or forty four. It has become a societal norm that men are predators and women are prey, the hunters and the hunted.

And it’s important for us all to inquire, how does this relationship between men and women mirror our relationship with the Earth? How do we as humans see ourselves as predators and Her as our prey? How do we hunt her for what we have failed to realize is already within? How is all of this a reflection of the raping of the feminine nature that lives within women, men, and those who do not biologically or soulfully fit into any category?

Once she has been captured, Artemis is a far cry from the artful huntress she once was.

She has become totally addicted to Hercules. She hates him and yet she loves him. She needs him, she hungers for him, and at once all she wants is revenge. All she wants is to capture him. But because he now possesses the golden deer, Hercules can outsmart Artemis and will never be caught by her. He comes and goes as he pleases, and Artemis is starving for him, ravaging the forest along the way.

While she was once the artful huntress, she is now the destroyer of the forest. She now lives at odds with the nature that once fed her, because she has confused her pure needs with her distorted ones. She has confused her need for Source with her hunger for Hercules. And because that kind of displaced hunger will never be satiated or properly fed, she will needlessly rape the forest, and operate in disharmony with life.

Oh how confrontationally I have seen myself in this image. On my throne as Queen only to drag myself down into the gutter once I succumbed to the begging of a Hercules, only to feel abandoned, hungry, desperate, and completely disconnected from the source of love that could never actually leave, only I could forget and deny. And this hunger does not only plague us in sexual relationships and exchanges, we see it in the ways we sell ourselves and our souls for anything when we project the Divine onto something outside of ourselves. As long as we think that love is “over there” instead of right “in here” we set ourselves up to be prey. Still, it is a very normal part of being human, and completely worthy of forgiveness.

Artemis’ redemption arrives when she has killed everything in the forest, there is nothing left for her to eat, and the God Hermes comes to show her what she has done.

As the magician, we can see Hermes within a woman’s psyche as the bridge between the worlds. The part of us that no matter how far we have fallen can see through the bullshit and remind us of what is true. We all know and access this part of ourselves when we enter into communion with the sacred through meditation, ceremony, ritual, dance, solitude in nature, poetry, song, anything that brings us out of the mundane and into the magical. This same archetype could be seen as the wise woman, or the Priestess, in the feminine sense. Whatever returns us to the Truth, beyond the illusion, through the veils, can show us the way back to freedom.

Looking now through the eyes of freedom, Artemis awakens from her ravenous haze and sees what she has done. The forest has been desecrated. The creatures she once loved have all been killed. The world that was once her Queendom has been destroyed. A confronting mirror for what humanity is also awakening to in the ways that we have harmed one another and our Earth in our own hunger and forgetting that we are God.

In one of my own most ravenous moments, desperate for the life that I had destroyed and left behind, our Mother spoke Her wisdom to me with the words “I am the source of my own fulfillment” and granted me the understanding that without that truth I would inevitably rape Her. Now I know that the only way to heal with Her is by remembering that I am Her. (More about that here: When Eve Ate the Apple: The Beginning of Our Story as Earth Daughters.)

When Artemis awakens to the damage she has created in her forgetting, she kneels on the forest floor and begs for forgiveness.

Through this humble and reverent gesture, the creatures slowly come out of hiding, the forest opens itself to her once again, and she is forgiven back into the loving embrace of the wild where she belongs. Despite what we may have learned through our religious systems rooted in Original Sin, life by nature is forgiveness. That is the truest message of the virgin, as moonlight always births out of the darkness, the sun rises every morning, Spring blossoms after winter, and all returns to love.

Perhaps the most powerful message that Artemis can offer us all at this time in our evolution is that the only way we will return to a world of peace, love, harmony, and union, is by remembering that we are the Source of our own fulfillment, and to forgive ourselves over and over and again, no matter how many times we may forget and we may fall.

Ritual for Healing with Artemis Wisdom

Bring yourself to a quiet, safe space where you will not be disturbed, if possible somewhere in nature. Sit or lay down and soften into your flesh. Feel your body surrender to the descending weight of gravity. Take some slow deep breaths in through your nose, out through your mouth.

With each breath, imagine a vast space surrounding you, a safe circle, bubble, or womb, containing only you and your energy. Nothing outside of you can enter this space. Allow yourself to take up as much of this space as you desire. Continue to breathe.

If there are any relationships, thoughts, conversations, beliefs, or memories that are taking up space within this sacred golden womb that surrounds you, allow them to be seen now. One by one ask each of them to leave and allow you and only you to inhabit your sacred space. Continue to breathe. If you’d like, you may also place a hand at your heart and your womb to connect with your sacred inner centers.

Once you feel that your space is fully clear, feeling only yourself, your energy, and your pure being, call upon and invite any fragments, pieces, aspects of yourself from past, present, or future that have been forgotten, repressed, abandoned, projected, or denied. Call and invite each of them back in. With every breath feel another part of yourself, your power, come home to you, restored within you. Continue to breathe in all parts of yourself, welcoming all that you are back home, safe, in love, with you.

Once you feel filled up with your own self, exhale deeply into your pelvic floor and sense or visualize the color red at your root. Exhale this red like a river of your own menstrual blood down, layer by layer, into the Earth. Feel this red river rooting into the Earth, connecting you like a tree. Breathe all the way down into the fiery core of the Earth. From this space, inhale and source nourishment from the core center of the Earth all the way back up into your own body, filling and revitalizing your womb space with love.

Now exhale and open up from your crown to the sky above you, visualizing a golden white light, like a halo around your head. Breathe in the white etheric light of the heavens in through your crown, drawing all the way down into your body, into your heart, into your womb. Feel these swirling red and white energies within your body connecting you in wholeness in an infinity loop. Feel yourself fully connected, fully rooted, fully anchored, as a pillar between Heaven and Earth. Stay here for a few minutes.

When you feel complete, take some cleansing breaths through an open mouth. Slowly touch your own skin. Gently open your eyes and orient yourself to your physical surroundings. Bow your head to the Earth, offer your root to the sky, and if there is anything you’d like to forgive yourself for, offer it to the Mother. Forgive yourself and let yourself be forgiven in love.