Artemis

Myth and origin

Hesiod's Theogony (lines 918-920) and the Homeric Hymn to Artemis (27) name her as the elder twin born on Ortygia or Delos, who immediately assisted Leto in delivering her brother Apollo—which is why pregnant women invoked her at childbirth. Callimachus' Hymn to Artemis (third century BCE) gives the famous scene of the three-year-old goddess perched on her father's knees, asking him for eternal virginity, a bow and arrows from Hephaistos, a chorus of sixty nymphs, all the mountains of the world, and a single city to honour her especially. Zeus granted all her requests with delight and gave her thirty cities instead of one.

Her origins seem to reach deep into pre-Greek substratum. Linguistically her name is not securely Indo-European, and her cult at Brauron in Attica preserved archaic rites in which adolescent girls served as "she-bears" (arktoi), suggesting an ancient mistress-of-animals deity (Potnia Theron) honoured since the Bronze Age. The Mycenaean tablets from Pylos already mention an A-ti-mi-te. Apollodorus (Bibliotheca 1.4.1, 3.4.4) preserves the canonical narratives, and Pausanias documents the rich variety of her sanctuaries from Sparta to Ephesus, where the Anatolian mother-goddess fused with the Greek huntress.

Attributes and stories

You recognise Artemis by her short tunic, sandals, silver bow and quiver, the crescent moon on her brow, and her companion animals: the deer, bear, hunting dog, and quail. She is the eternal parthenos, a virgin not in the modern moralised sense but in the older meaning of being self-possessed, unmarried, sovereign to herself. Her sanctuary at Brauron, her temple at Ephesus (rebuilt around 550 BCE), her shrine on the Aventine in Rome, and her oracular site at Aulis attest to her continent-wide importance.

Her myths defend her solitude fiercely. The hunter Actaeon, who accidentally surprised her bathing, was transformed into a stag and torn apart by his own hounds (Ovid, Metamorphoses 3). The giant Orion, who pursued her, was slain (in some versions accidentally by Apollo, who tricked her into shooting at a distant target that proved to be Orion swimming). Niobe boasted of having fourteen children against Leto's two; Artemis and Apollo shot down all the daughters and sons. Agamemnon offended her by killing a sacred deer and was forced to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia at Aulis to obtain favourable winds for Troy. Yet she also saved heroines: she rescued Iphigenia at the last moment, transporting her to the Tauric peninsula to serve as her priestess.

Modern reception

Jean Shinoda Bolen's Goddesses in Everywoman (1984) places Artemis among the virgin archetypes, the woman whose centre is in her own pursuits, not in relation to a man. Bolen reads her as patron of feminists, athletes, and women whose work demands solitude and focused aim. Jungian commentary emphasises both her gifts—autonomy, embodied wildness, sisterhood—and her shadow: ruthless punishment of intrusion, inability to soften, the cold accuracy that wounds those who approach unbidden. Esther Harding's Woman's Mysteries (1935) is a foundational text on the moon-goddess as image of female self-relation.

Astrologically, Artemis corresponds to the Moon in her virginal-huntress aspect (Selene being the moon's personification while Artemis carries its sovereignty), and to Cancer as the sign of protective maternal feeling. The asteroid 105 Artemis (discovered 1868) bears her name, and NASA's Artemis Program (announced 2017) sends astronauts back to the Moon under her aegis. In contemporary goddess movements, she is invoked by women reclaiming wildness, by midwives, by victims of trauma seeking the fierce protector. The mythological deity test can show whether her energy is calling.

Symbolic depth

In the tarot, Artemis maps onto The Moon (Arcanum XVIII), with its wild dogs, its hidden pool, its uncanny lunar wilderness. She also informs The High Priestess in her aspect of sovereign feminine knowing untouched by patriarchal compromise, and the Queen of Pentacles when read as the lady of forests and beasts. The Eight of Wands carries her swift arrows. On the Kabbalistic Tree of Life she resonates with Yesod, the lunar foundation, and with Binah's wild dark mother.

Symbolically, Artemis asks you to defend your sacred solitude, to honour the parts of yourself that cannot be domesticated, and to take aim with precision rather than scatter your energy. Her bow is the tension of intention; her crescent is the shape of becoming. Her shadow asks where you punish those who come close, and where you mistake wildness for cruelty. The bear-girls of Brauron remind you that growing into womanhood is a passage through wildness, not a flight from it. Continue with Apollo, Hecate, and Persephone, or return to the main glossary.

Also known as

• Diana
• Cynthia
• Phoebe
• Artemis Brauronia
• Potnia Theron