The Year of Artemis

I'm writing a book! It takes up most of my writing time. It's an idea I've had for probably ten years, to cover the utterly fascinating period of Classical Greece during the Persian and Peloponnesian wars. This is amazing stuff. Impossibly complicated and intertwined families and connections. Intrigue and drama. Kings and tyrants and overthrown governments. Betrayals and manipulations. Incest and adultery. An imprisoned king who goes mad and commits suicide by stripping off his own skin. How is possible that the name of Kleisthenes is more or less unknown in our culture when he's literally the man who implemented the first democracy? 

So, yeah. I am super excited about this. I've wanted to write one portion of this for years, but it occurred to me that the entire story, the pre-and post-, has a whole cast of characters and stories that I want to tell. It's outlined and I have the first three chapters in the works. 

Anyway. It was just Halloween, a holiday I like a lot even though I'm indifferent about wearing costumes. There's something about this time of year that has always evoked something strong in me. The chill in the air, the smell of wood smoke, the leaves crunching underfoot. It's a magical time. 

In some pagan traditions, Halloween marks the end of the year. It's the end of the growing season, the harvest is in, the nights are dark and full of terrors. Well, not until we turn the clocks back and extend the evenings even longer. But it's the time to honor those who have gone before, and also to recognize our own mortality, laughing in its face as we dress up as the things that frighten us. 

There's a tradition that calls for a dedication of a year and a day before pledging oneself to the old ways. Probably dates from the '50s like most Wiccan traditions. I think the concept is valid, though. Take a year to think about what you believe and how you want to practice that belief. 

Two years ago I started a journal to document my year-and-a-day. I've always liked to write down my thoughts, even if I don't often read through it afterward; the act of writing just helps me sort out my beliefs. As Joan Didion put it, I don't know what I think until I write it down.

Turns out I have a lot of thoughts and a year later, this was a 400 page document that was taking a while to open. I started a new year-and-a-day and decided that if I kept doing it, moving the date one additional day each year, it would begin on my birthday the year I turn 80, which I'm thinking is my probable lifespan. Then I realized that I'd done the math wrong and leap years are a thing, so it wouldn't work out like I'd thought. Oh well. I aspire to 100 anyway. 

In any case, it's time to start a new year. Instead of the uncreative name "Year and a Day (3)" I've decided to take a page from the ancient Greeks, who named their year after the eponymous archon, the top man elected to the office (there were several archons). The Romans did this too, naming their years after the two consuls elected to office that year. 

Diana of Versailles, Roman copy of a Greek original
 by Leochades of Athens 

(A one-year term only, not to be repeated. Let's take a moment to appreciate some of the better ideas of our democratic forebears.)

I've decided this will be the year of Artemis. Being a single woman without children, I've always been drawn to the solitary goddesses. Artemis is the sister of Apollo and the daughter of Zeus. She's a virgin goddess who is oddly also a goddess of childbirth. The huntress of the forest. She had a cult in Sparta whose yearly festival involved a flogging game/ritual that became such a huge spectacle, the Romans eventually erected a theater to hold the massive crowds that would come to watch the event. 

History is so interesting. It's my dream to write something where this resonates to everyone. 

As to the gods...

"As to the gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or do not exist. For many are the obstacles that impede knowledge, both the obscurity of the question and the shortness of human life." - Diogenes Laertius

Rationally speaking, the only belief that makes sense is agnosticism. That is, admitting that we really cannot know, definitively, if there are such things as gods, or if the world around us was created by some deliberate hand. There's no real proof of it. It seems as likely as anything that it's our awareness of our mortality that drives us to seek some deeper meaning to our brief lives, some broader purpose. If god did not exist, the saying goes, man would have to create him.

On the other hand, we don't have any proof that the gods do not exist. Science tells us the universe began with a great explosion; but where the matter came from, or what set it to motion, remains an elusive theory.  I believe in science, and the scientific method - hypothesis, observation/experiment, conclusion. I also believe that there is knowledge we can scarcely fathom, much less measure. In that realm lie the gods, magic, and mystery. For that reason, I choose to believe in the gods.

Growing up, I was taught there was only one god, Yahweh, god of the Jews. (Even so, many sects have him split into three aspects.)  This belief is presented as an axiom, accepted by (or forced upon) most cultures in the Western world as simple truth for hundreds of years.

Yet from very early childhood, I was called by the gods of ancient Egypt and Greece. I became fascinated with their stories, the forces they represent, the activities on Earth that they set into motion, and their integration with the Earth itself - river nymphs, tree nymphs, the gods and goddesses of the ocean, of the forest, of the underworld. The gods are everywhere, manifest in everything we see. 

Pantheism? Perhaps. Yet I also believe that the gods are distinct entities, beings we can approach. Beings that hear us when we call to them, and reply at their whim, as unpredictable as nature itself.

The role of the gods is not to serve as our parents, indulging our every request. They watch over us, but their purposes are their own, and they take the long view. Some paths suggest that the gods are not to be bothered often, particularly not regarding trivial things, and that every approach to them should bear a gift - an offering or a sacrifice in exchange for what is requested.

They do not give without expecting us to work, in return.

The philosophy is succinctly summed up in one of Aesop's fables, that of "Hercules and the Waggoner." It goes like this:

A Waggoner was once driving a heavy load along a very muddy way. At last he came to a part of the road where the wheels sank half-way into the mire, and the more the horses pulled, the deeper sank the wheels. So the Waggoner threw down his whip, and knelt down and prayed to Hercules the Strong. “O Hercules, help me in this my hour of distress,” quoth he. But Hercules appeared to him, and said:

“Tut, man, don’t sprawl there. Get up and put your shoulder to the wheel.”

The gods help them that help themselves.