I’m entranced by the myth of Sedna… the patriarchal elements of cruelty and betrayal, the welcoming embrace of the healing Neptunian waters, the world of non-human care and comfort. It’s a story of loss, resurrection and sovereignty. It’s a story of finding one’s true identity and place, of belonging. I love this myth. It’s prominent in my natal chart and in my heart. It speaks directly to so many elements of my personal life.
Thank you for sharing, Dianne! I am curious if your connection to Sedna came from discovering the myth first or the natal chart placement. When we feel resonance with an archetypal dynamic, it is not uncommon to find it reflected in many areas of life.
Deities of the sea also connect symbolically to the unconscious and its primordial waters, to the shifting tides of our inner depths, to the calling we feel to submerge ourselves for renewal, cleansing and exploration. Do you feel any resonance with these themes as well?
The myth came first… I immediately recognized the resonance but it has taken much time and deep diving to come to any real understanding of personal connection. She’s my core myth… the one that unifies all my other myths, the overarching organizing principle of this incarnation. I am her daughter.
It’s fascinating to me that I instinctively used nautical metaphors in my journal entries for years before I came upon the myth. I still find myself speaking in nautical terms sometimes. I’m a child of the New England shores and feel rather bound up and lost when I’m deep inland for too long. It’s a claustrophobic sense that leaves me looking for air. As for primordial deeps, I have Neptune, Moon, and the South Node conjunct at the very bottom of my chart with Cancer rising and a Pisces MC. What’s odd to me is that it took me so long to recognize my personal Goddess. I guess we see it when we’re ready.
That's beautiful, Dianne. To discover a core myth can be such a powerful and expansive experience. It really can put so much in to context.
I do think it takes time to see all the pieces together. Or, for me, the most obvious thing can be so inherent to our outlook and disposition that we don't think to call it out or name it; it just is!
The Cancerian and Piscean connection is quite interesting. Cardinal and mutable water feels very balanced, the grounding and initiating energy balanced with the shape-shifting, transitional energy.
I felt lit up when I first learnt about Artemis. The fact that she made her home in the woods and the wilderness, despite not being from there. And especially that she was a protector of young girls. There was a festival in her honour where young girls would go into the forest to dance, run and dress as bears. I grew up in a big city and was a shy and sensitive kid, so I find the idea of a wild feral girlhood and this kind of coming-of-age, confidence-building ritual very compelling!
Artemis is a powerful invitation to explore the wildness of nature and its reflections within ourselves. I think I've continued to contemplate how to exist in both worlds, because my draw to the wild is really strong, almost too strong at times (I daydream of leaving city life behind and being in the mountains).
Do you feel drawn to her other expressions as well (a lunar deity, huntress, etc)?
Katniss, yes! She is very much an Artemisian figure. Especially when you consider her relationship with young Rue. Hunger Games is a retelling of Theseus' story, but I like the perspective that its one with an Artemisian twist.
The myth of Persephone has long been one I relate to. There have been so many times in life that I was overwhelmed and saddened by the dichotomy of my life situations. Able to fit in but never belonging, nor reconciling the forces that had created such dichotomy, the way seems to be not resisting but being fully present and a help to others who find themselves in a place, often unwillingly, that seems opposite to what they have known before, away from a place they love, something like that. Time and again, I have found clues in the myth of Persephone that made some sense of being one, in two worlds, cycling through.
I think one of the most powerful aspects of Persephone's descent is her evolution into a liminal being - someone who moves from upper world to lower world, contains elements of both life and death, etc. For that reason, I see her psychologically as a psychopomp, one who can help us move between psychic realities.
I appreciate the links. Tracking Persephone, wow, very insightful and the illustrations and quotes are marvelous. Comparing and contrasting with the hero’s journey has often been disheartening but you shed new light here!
I'm glad to hear that! The heroic journey can seem so powerful and expansive in its courageous developments and obvious transformations, but I think the subtle evolutions found in other mythic figures tales are equally dynamic. It may just take a bit of contemplation to see how that other lens offers perspectives of growth and change.
I’ve loved Vasalisa the Wise since I first heard Clarissa Pinkola Estes tell it. I love seeing the entire span of feminine presence from initiation as we allow the too good mother to die and receive the gift of our own intuition, face the dark and speak with wild mystery, finally bringing fire back in a skull, standing in full power of our own presence. I relate to Baba Yaga too as the crone in the forest, living on the edges of acceptability, a force to be sought and respected but also kept apart from daily living. The whole picture feels so powerful to me.
I agree, it is a great depiction of the archetypal feminine with the expressions of the great mother and the individuating heroine's journey. Women Who Run With The Wolves does a wonderful interpretation. I also really enjoy von Franz's take in The Feminine in Fairy Tales. Have you seen the class I taught on Vasilisa? https://www.theartemisian.com/p/vasilisa-the-beauitful
Btw, I notice that Clarissa refers to that story as a myth and your class refers to it as a fairy tale. What's the difference between a myth and a fairy tale? Is a fairy tale a class of myth, or a different thing?
I like to follow von Franz's lead here where she sees myths as having more explicit cultural material and influence, and the fairytale as having less. For example, the structure we see in Vasilisa (although having some Russian elements) is much more neutral than the myth of Psyche who shares the same general outline but with more Greek cultural influence.
Another point is that myths have been in the collective for longer and sometimes lose their more fantastical elements, where fairytales often keep them.
I'm currently reading Women Who Run with the Wolves and that's exactly the chapter where I'm at at the moment. It's so powerful and I've made so many notes while reading it! It's a true gem.
Oh Circe is such a complex, beautiful mythic figure. Do you feel drawn to her role in Odysseus' story, her powers as a sorceress or herbalist, or maybe her connection to Helios the Sun god?
I also really enjoyed Madeline Miller's retelling in the novel Circe.
Thor and Loki's visit to Niphelheim delights me. Thor's failure to throw the old nurse and to drain the horn of mead both turn out to be Mighty Deeds, in that he is not trounced by Time itself, and then does succeed in drinking the sea down by a measurable amount.
Though he slinks out with a feeling of defeat, he soon discovers that his prowess has intimidated the giants who dwell there.
This transformation of the humbleness of our best efforts into extraordinary deeds that intimidated the nature-beings rings true to me. When I succeed in simple things, like resting in quiet during times of temptation, I find mighty rewards appear in subtle realms, and I am glad, thus to be gifted.
Love that interpretation. Do you feel particularly drawn to Thor and Loki (or just one of them)? They are a classic shadow pairing; together, they have a balance of cunning and endurance, chaos and order, mischief and heroism.
It interests me to discover relationships between these characters and the Greek or Roman gods. Thor as Jupiter reveals a while other emphasis on that planet-god's role in our lives. The names of the seven days of the week, for example, place them as central in our weekly rituals.
I feel very drawn towards Cassandra lately (and not just because it's my favorite song on The Tortured Poet's Department 😊). I've always felt that she was dealt a really rough hand through no fault of her own (same as Medusa) but starting Women Who Run With The Wolves shed some different light on her. I think Cassandra represents that inner voice that we choose to ignore because we don't particularly like the messages she's bringing. She tells us what we don't want to believe.
Love that interpretation! When we receive intuitive insights (which are often in impressions, gut feelings, symbols) it can be difficult to take seriously. Cassandra’s prophetic view of the fall of Troy shows what happens when we don’t listen!
Another way to look at Cassandra and Medusa is what happens when we interact with powerful, bi-valent archetypal forces. For Medusa, it was the wrath of Athena, for Cassandra it was Apollo. On a greater symbolic level it makes me wonder about being in relationship to these principles within ourselves and how we can become overwhelmed or persecuted by them. I explored this idea in the Mythic Inner Work guide: https://www.theartemisian.com/p/mythic-inner-work
This is the oldest descent myth that we have and I think it powerfully shows the sacrifice and stripping away that is required when we descend to the underworld. I symbolically link that to deep experiences of the unconscious and how the chthonic aspects of the psyche are often transformational. This myth also shows the faces of the Great Mother archetype through both Inanna (the upperworld manifestation) and Ereshkigal (the shadowed, underworld manifestation).
I would say Orpheus and Eurydice for the power of moving people and Gods through music. The power of love that can conquer death. But also the power of grief and surrender that turns what we loved sacred as an ultimate rite of passage of being human.
Then Odysseus for how hardship and the persecution of a god can teach us that the only way to survive and go back home is by the power of the mind (intuition also, as he was an descendant of Sisyphus and Prometheus) and wisdom (as he was helped by Athena). And the quest of longing for home. And that all the decades of detours and fights and encounters seemed to be a preparation for his return to Ithaca.
I love that part of Orpheus' story as well. His ability to channel creative expression allows a bridge to be formed to the unconscious. Do you feel particularly drawn to Orpheus since he is a musician?
Both Odysseus and Orpheus are non-typical hero types in Greek mythology. Unlike Heracles or Theseus (who approach these stories with sword and bravado), they approach challenges and adventures through cunning and strategy, through art and human connection. Does that approach resonate more with you?
Well yes, music is a big part of my life and I think we all wish we could reproduce that one moment when we honoured the mystery to remind people of a way to live that transcends what is familiar. Pure Magick!
Regarding the commonalities, yes. But it feels like for Odysseus he is already gifted through his lineage of Sisyphus and Prometheus, AND supported by Athena. And life is still harsh and he has to learn to integrate grief and the wrath of Poseidon multiple times. The fact that ultimately he owes it to his storytelling skills that charmed people that built him a boat, at the cost of making Poseidon even angrier.
For Orpheus, I learned how after losing Eurydice again, he clung on his misery to the point where Bacchantes come to beat him up as if to say that's enough sadness and rumination, "you have to move on and celebrate life."
Lately I've been thinking about Narcissus and how he was trapped inside himself, how the self-image was to powerful to act or to live.
My favorite one would be Sisyphus. I feel like we can relate to how things feel in the world currently (this is probably recency bias) and how I can distinguish the rock from the task and how I can feel the the power of knowing that I can let the rock go when I need rest.
Narcissus is an interesting one for sure. You sum it up well in the self-image being too powerful. I think it's interesting how he has become associated with vanity or grandiosity, but that there can also be positive narcissism. Having a firm sense of self, normal levels of self-esteem, a cohesive identity...these too are elements of Narcissus, of seeing ourselves reflected powerfully in the world.
My favourite myth must be the one about the selkie. I don't know exactly what it is about it but I don't doubt the fact that it's ocean-related is a big reason why I'm so enamoured by it. I have always been incredibly drawn to the sea and its creatures.
I’m entranced by the myth of Sedna… the patriarchal elements of cruelty and betrayal, the welcoming embrace of the healing Neptunian waters, the world of non-human care and comfort. It’s a story of loss, resurrection and sovereignty. It’s a story of finding one’s true identity and place, of belonging. I love this myth. It’s prominent in my natal chart and in my heart. It speaks directly to so many elements of my personal life.
Thank you for sharing, Dianne! I am curious if your connection to Sedna came from discovering the myth first or the natal chart placement. When we feel resonance with an archetypal dynamic, it is not uncommon to find it reflected in many areas of life.
Deities of the sea also connect symbolically to the unconscious and its primordial waters, to the shifting tides of our inner depths, to the calling we feel to submerge ourselves for renewal, cleansing and exploration. Do you feel any resonance with these themes as well?
The myth came first… I immediately recognized the resonance but it has taken much time and deep diving to come to any real understanding of personal connection. She’s my core myth… the one that unifies all my other myths, the overarching organizing principle of this incarnation. I am her daughter.
It’s fascinating to me that I instinctively used nautical metaphors in my journal entries for years before I came upon the myth. I still find myself speaking in nautical terms sometimes. I’m a child of the New England shores and feel rather bound up and lost when I’m deep inland for too long. It’s a claustrophobic sense that leaves me looking for air. As for primordial deeps, I have Neptune, Moon, and the South Node conjunct at the very bottom of my chart with Cancer rising and a Pisces MC. What’s odd to me is that it took me so long to recognize my personal Goddess. I guess we see it when we’re ready.
That's beautiful, Dianne. To discover a core myth can be such a powerful and expansive experience. It really can put so much in to context.
I do think it takes time to see all the pieces together. Or, for me, the most obvious thing can be so inherent to our outlook and disposition that we don't think to call it out or name it; it just is!
The Cancerian and Piscean connection is quite interesting. Cardinal and mutable water feels very balanced, the grounding and initiating energy balanced with the shape-shifting, transitional energy.
Thanks, Alyssa. It’s like fish not recognizing the waters they swim in. I often miss the most obvious elements of my own reality.
I felt lit up when I first learnt about Artemis. The fact that she made her home in the woods and the wilderness, despite not being from there. And especially that she was a protector of young girls. There was a festival in her honour where young girls would go into the forest to dance, run and dress as bears. I grew up in a big city and was a shy and sensitive kid, so I find the idea of a wild feral girlhood and this kind of coming-of-age, confidence-building ritual very compelling!
I really relate to this, Susannah. I touched on some of those themes in this older post: https://www.theartemisian.com/p/hiking-with-artemis
Artemis is a powerful invitation to explore the wildness of nature and its reflections within ourselves. I think I've continued to contemplate how to exist in both worlds, because my draw to the wild is really strong, almost too strong at times (I daydream of leaving city life behind and being in the mountains).
Do you feel drawn to her other expressions as well (a lunar deity, huntress, etc)?
Oh my goodness, I'm going to savour this article - thank you!!
Very much drawn to the huntress aspect. This may also speak to my other fantasy life as Katniss Everdeen :)
You're welcome :)
Katniss, yes! She is very much an Artemisian figure. Especially when you consider her relationship with young Rue. Hunger Games is a retelling of Theseus' story, but I like the perspective that its one with an Artemisian twist.
The myth of Persephone has long been one I relate to. There have been so many times in life that I was overwhelmed and saddened by the dichotomy of my life situations. Able to fit in but never belonging, nor reconciling the forces that had created such dichotomy, the way seems to be not resisting but being fully present and a help to others who find themselves in a place, often unwillingly, that seems opposite to what they have known before, away from a place they love, something like that. Time and again, I have found clues in the myth of Persephone that made some sense of being one, in two worlds, cycling through.
I think one of the most powerful aspects of Persephone's descent is her evolution into a liminal being - someone who moves from upper world to lower world, contains elements of both life and death, etc. For that reason, I see her psychologically as a psychopomp, one who can help us move between psychic realities.
I touched on some of these themes in my article Tracking Persephone (https://www.theartemisian.com/p/tracking-persephone) and the recent workshop, Descent to the Underworld (https://www.theartemisian.com/p/descent-to-the-underworld).
I appreciate the links. Tracking Persephone, wow, very insightful and the illustrations and quotes are marvelous. Comparing and contrasting with the hero’s journey has often been disheartening but you shed new light here!
I'm glad to hear that! The heroic journey can seem so powerful and expansive in its courageous developments and obvious transformations, but I think the subtle evolutions found in other mythic figures tales are equally dynamic. It may just take a bit of contemplation to see how that other lens offers perspectives of growth and change.
I’ve loved Vasalisa the Wise since I first heard Clarissa Pinkola Estes tell it. I love seeing the entire span of feminine presence from initiation as we allow the too good mother to die and receive the gift of our own intuition, face the dark and speak with wild mystery, finally bringing fire back in a skull, standing in full power of our own presence. I relate to Baba Yaga too as the crone in the forest, living on the edges of acceptability, a force to be sought and respected but also kept apart from daily living. The whole picture feels so powerful to me.
I agree, it is a great depiction of the archetypal feminine with the expressions of the great mother and the individuating heroine's journey. Women Who Run With The Wolves does a wonderful interpretation. I also really enjoy von Franz's take in The Feminine in Fairy Tales. Have you seen the class I taught on Vasilisa? https://www.theartemisian.com/p/vasilisa-the-beauitful
Btw, I notice that Clarissa refers to that story as a myth and your class refers to it as a fairy tale. What's the difference between a myth and a fairy tale? Is a fairy tale a class of myth, or a different thing?
I like to follow von Franz's lead here where she sees myths as having more explicit cultural material and influence, and the fairytale as having less. For example, the structure we see in Vasilisa (although having some Russian elements) is much more neutral than the myth of Psyche who shares the same general outline but with more Greek cultural influence.
Another point is that myths have been in the collective for longer and sometimes lose their more fantastical elements, where fairytales often keep them.
Oh, that makes sense. I can feel the difference when I read them but couldn’t have articulated that. Thank you!
You’re welcome!
Oh my gosh, no, I didn’t know about that class!! I’ll go check it out. 😍
I'm currently reading Women Who Run with the Wolves and that's exactly the chapter where I'm at at the moment. It's so powerful and I've made so many notes while reading it! It's a true gem.
What a synchrony! I love that. 💕
Enjoy!
My favourite is Circe story this week ;]
Oh Circe is such a complex, beautiful mythic figure. Do you feel drawn to her role in Odysseus' story, her powers as a sorceress or herbalist, or maybe her connection to Helios the Sun god?
I also really enjoyed Madeline Miller's retelling in the novel Circe.
Thor and Loki's visit to Niphelheim delights me. Thor's failure to throw the old nurse and to drain the horn of mead both turn out to be Mighty Deeds, in that he is not trounced by Time itself, and then does succeed in drinking the sea down by a measurable amount.
Though he slinks out with a feeling of defeat, he soon discovers that his prowess has intimidated the giants who dwell there.
This transformation of the humbleness of our best efforts into extraordinary deeds that intimidated the nature-beings rings true to me. When I succeed in simple things, like resting in quiet during times of temptation, I find mighty rewards appear in subtle realms, and I am glad, thus to be gifted.
Love that interpretation. Do you feel particularly drawn to Thor and Loki (or just one of them)? They are a classic shadow pairing; together, they have a balance of cunning and endurance, chaos and order, mischief and heroism.
It interests me to discover relationships between these characters and the Greek or Roman gods. Thor as Jupiter reveals a while other emphasis on that planet-god's role in our lives. The names of the seven days of the week, for example, place them as central in our weekly rituals.
I feel very drawn towards Cassandra lately (and not just because it's my favorite song on The Tortured Poet's Department 😊). I've always felt that she was dealt a really rough hand through no fault of her own (same as Medusa) but starting Women Who Run With The Wolves shed some different light on her. I think Cassandra represents that inner voice that we choose to ignore because we don't particularly like the messages she's bringing. She tells us what we don't want to believe.
Love that interpretation! When we receive intuitive insights (which are often in impressions, gut feelings, symbols) it can be difficult to take seriously. Cassandra’s prophetic view of the fall of Troy shows what happens when we don’t listen!
Another way to look at Cassandra and Medusa is what happens when we interact with powerful, bi-valent archetypal forces. For Medusa, it was the wrath of Athena, for Cassandra it was Apollo. On a greater symbolic level it makes me wonder about being in relationship to these principles within ourselves and how we can become overwhelmed or persecuted by them. I explored this idea in the Mythic Inner Work guide: https://www.theartemisian.com/p/mythic-inner-work
Thanks, Alyssa! That was an enlightening read. I'll definitely check out the workshop as well!
The Descent of Inanna
This is the oldest descent myth that we have and I think it powerfully shows the sacrifice and stripping away that is required when we descend to the underworld. I symbolically link that to deep experiences of the unconscious and how the chthonic aspects of the psyche are often transformational. This myth also shows the faces of the Great Mother archetype through both Inanna (the upperworld manifestation) and Ereshkigal (the shadowed, underworld manifestation).
a true initiation myth
Agreed!
I would say Orpheus and Eurydice for the power of moving people and Gods through music. The power of love that can conquer death. But also the power of grief and surrender that turns what we loved sacred as an ultimate rite of passage of being human.
Then Odysseus for how hardship and the persecution of a god can teach us that the only way to survive and go back home is by the power of the mind (intuition also, as he was an descendant of Sisyphus and Prometheus) and wisdom (as he was helped by Athena). And the quest of longing for home. And that all the decades of detours and fights and encounters seemed to be a preparation for his return to Ithaca.
I love that part of Orpheus' story as well. His ability to channel creative expression allows a bridge to be formed to the unconscious. Do you feel particularly drawn to Orpheus since he is a musician?
Both Odysseus and Orpheus are non-typical hero types in Greek mythology. Unlike Heracles or Theseus (who approach these stories with sword and bravado), they approach challenges and adventures through cunning and strategy, through art and human connection. Does that approach resonate more with you?
Well yes, music is a big part of my life and I think we all wish we could reproduce that one moment when we honoured the mystery to remind people of a way to live that transcends what is familiar. Pure Magick!
Regarding the commonalities, yes. But it feels like for Odysseus he is already gifted through his lineage of Sisyphus and Prometheus, AND supported by Athena. And life is still harsh and he has to learn to integrate grief and the wrath of Poseidon multiple times. The fact that ultimately he owes it to his storytelling skills that charmed people that built him a boat, at the cost of making Poseidon even angrier.
For Orpheus, I learned how after losing Eurydice again, he clung on his misery to the point where Bacchantes come to beat him up as if to say that's enough sadness and rumination, "you have to move on and celebrate life."
Lately I've been thinking about Narcissus and how he was trapped inside himself, how the self-image was to powerful to act or to live.
My favorite one would be Sisyphus. I feel like we can relate to how things feel in the world currently (this is probably recency bias) and how I can distinguish the rock from the task and how I can feel the the power of knowing that I can let the rock go when I need rest.
Narcissus is an interesting one for sure. You sum it up well in the self-image being too powerful. I think it's interesting how he has become associated with vanity or grandiosity, but that there can also be positive narcissism. Having a firm sense of self, normal levels of self-esteem, a cohesive identity...these too are elements of Narcissus, of seeing ourselves reflected powerfully in the world.
My favourite myth must be the one about the selkie. I don't know exactly what it is about it but I don't doubt the fact that it's ocean-related is a big reason why I'm so enamoured by it. I have always been incredibly drawn to the sea and its creatures.