Dark Goddesses

The Dark Goddess

Artemis

Artemis was adamant that She could never be seen by a man, even by male worshippers. The penalty for glimpsing Her was death. The hunter Actaeon discovered the Goddess bathing naked in a stream. Accounts differ as to whether he meant to ogle Her or simply came upon Her by accident. With a single word and gesture, the enraged Goddess turned him into a stag. His own hounds tore him to pieces while She watched. She could be equally savage toward the very forest animals She protected; like many another Goddess, She not only protected life but took it away. With Her nymphs and hounds She hunted in the deepest wilderness, slaughtering stags and lions.

Artemis was often no more merciful to women than to men or animals. So insistent was She on absolute virginity among Her huntresses that if they were compromised -- even if they had been raped -- She turned them into beasts to be hunted. The deaths of adolescent girls in childbirth were attributed to Her -- because She was enraged by their loss of virginity
"Virginal maidens such as Maira and Kallisto may have taken part in Artemis' chaste band of huntresses, but once they explored their sexuality, willingly or unwillingly, they became the targets of Artemis' arrows in the manner of young animals old enough to be hunted....Once any of her virginal companions indulged in sexuality, however, Artemis immediately regarded them as prey...."
- Pandora: Women in Classical Greece, Ellen D. Reeder.
Kallisto, one of Artemis's favorite nymphs, had the bad luck to be seen by Zeus. He lusted after her, so he assumed the form of Artemis to seduce her, then raped her. To her horror, she found herself pregnant. She concealed it until one day when Artemis and the nymphs were bathing, and she had to take off her clothes. Enraged, Artemis turned her into a bear, then hunted her down and shot her with Her favorite weapon, the bow.
When Niobe boasted that she had fifty children while Leto, Artemis' mother, had only two, the enraged Goddess and her brother Apollo systematically shot them all down. Artemis slew the daughters as they were in their house, Apollo the sons as they hunted on Mount Cytherea.

Hel

The Northern Goddess of Death

Hel's body was half that of a beautiful woman, and half a rotting, decaying corpse. Her's was the realm of Niflheim, a large black canyon in icy mountains, where those who did not die with the honor of battle went when their lives were over.

The Christians applied her name to that of their terrible afterworld of guilt and punishments. Yet in the lands She ruled over, there was no heat, just snow, slush, and mud.

The gate entrance was guarded by the hound Garm, whose breast was splattered with the blood of the dead. Her hall was called Damp-With-Sleet. Her knife famine, Her plate hunger; Her two servants both called Slow-Moving.

Her's was the Sick-bed, and the stone at the entrance to her hall read "Drop-to-Destruction. This is under the Vikings account of Her and Her home.

The Vikings were terrified by Hel, yet the common people worshipped Her. There were many sites sacred to Her name in Holland.

Hel holding tightly a dead infant-Picture by Robin M. Weare. May be distributed freely with due credit but not sold.

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