Divine Retribution
What pissed off Artemis?
Pagans love mythology. Yesterday I listened to the Stephen Fry’s version of Atalanta and the Calydonian boar hunt. [He does a series on Greek Mythology that’s light and fun.] It’s a gruesome tale. Or perhaps we should say, cautionary.
Very, very cautionary.
If you don’t know the story, the two main characters are Atalanta and Meleagar. Atalanta is a young woman who was nursed by a she-bear because her father didn’t want female children and abandoned her in the woods. She was found and raised by woodsmen. As a result of this upbringing, she’s an incomparable hunter, and devotee of Artemis. Meleagar is the prince of Calydon with a strange prediction [that he doesn’t know] about the end of his life.
The story begins with the Calydonians neglecting the worship of Artemis, she who was the protector of young children and virgin girls, as well as being a goddess of the wild. In her anger at this slight, she sent a massive boar to ravage the countryside. The beast was efficient at this and tore up crops, and gutted and trampled the farmers.
The king was either stupid or blind. When he could have begged for mercy and redirected his subjects to the worship of the goddess, he instead declared a great hunt, with the right to keep the tusks and hide of the boar as prizes. [Given how dangerous pigs can be, let alone one that is huge, this seems stingy. But then it’s also probably in character.]
Artemis sent Atalanta to sow chaos among the hunters. Which she did. After besting the king’s representatives in an archery challenge, she joined the hunt. The body count was high, and very messy. When Atalanta drew first blood, prince Meleagar [who was no doubt smitten with her] insisted she should have the trophies of the hunt. His uncles [on his mother’s side] objected, saying a girl shouldn’t have such things. Yet more blood was spilled as Meleagar killed multiple family members in Atalanta’s defense, and then died himself by his mother’s hand. She then hung herself.
A truly messy and depressing story. But then one possible purpose of tragedy is to tell us what NOT to do.
Artemis isn’t the only Greek deity to exact punishment on those who didn’t give her what she was due. Zeus and Poseidon would send storms if humans were not sufficiently devout. Apollo would send diseases, and Dionysus would make one go mad. Even the goddess of love and beauty, [and in some places war,] Aphrodite, was happy to administer her own brand of justice.
All of this might make the gods seem petty and cruel. The same complaint is often leveled against the Bible. The Torah - the first five books of the Old Testament - is full of demonstrations of Yahweh delivering consequences to the Israelites because they fell away from proper worship. The complaint that such consequences are cruel happens both among those who are secular, and those who discover Paganism.
Pagans are good at ignoring the so-called cruelty of the old gods and working only with those aspects that seem reasonable to a ‘harm none’ ethic. But then we’ve had a couple thousand years of being taught that the myths of ancient cultures are just stories. Perhaps we can be forgiven for not taking them seriously. In my Christian education, there wasn’t a good explanation of why God was - well - mean.
This is a problem. Myths didn’t exist in a vacuum and the stories we have are just the bones of what bards and priests shared with audiences. The ancient stories existed to share the values of a culture. A story makes us feel emotion. Without emotion, there’s no motivation to change. We have to feel the reason to conform.
Sometimes that feeling is fear and horror.
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Some things that we do are bad for us: anything that feels good can produce a dopamine rush. But such things are transient. A dopamine rush feels good but doesn’t create long-term happiness or satisfaction. The dark stories in the Torah and in mythology are cautionary tales about what happens when we give in to those urges. The problem is while those stories spoke to the ancient people, they seem obscure and even confusing to modern eyes.
Stylistically, they don’t make sense. The art of storytelling has changed. We want different things from our stories than our ancestors did. Or perhaps, what was written down is simply lacking because originally these stories were told by human beings that could speak directly to an audience, bringing the characters alive, making them real, and addressing the immediate challenges the community was experiencing.
It’s hard to get that when reading Hesiod, the Bible, or Plato. Plus, these are all translations from the originals. [Ovid is easy to read, although still strange.] Especially when we’re used to the elaborate and expensive storytelling that is modern movies.
While a dopamine rush feels nice, it’s not supposed to be the thing we hunt after for it’s own sake. Surrendering to the urge to do so leads us to the gods punishing us. Rules of behavior, whether they are clearly articulated - like the Ten Commandments - or are virtues to seek - like wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice - keep us from falling prey to those urges. A dopamine rush doesn’t lead to long-term happiness.
The only thing that does that, is finding meaning to one’s existence and building a life based on that meaning. Building something out of nothing isn’t easy to do. It’s hard work and a day-to-day commitment in the face of all the things life throws at us, and we still have to do the dishes and negotiate the mundane necessities that come with being embodied.
It’s easier when there’s a group of other humans to do it with.
That requires agreements about people doing things together, and the sacrifice of some time and individual preference. That’s what conservatism is: the willingness to put aside some [not all!] individual preference for the purpose of negotiating mutual agreements that allow each person to build something. This also allows people to build systems and instututions that outlive individuals that - hopefully - continue to serve the group.
But it takes much less energy to tear things down than it does to build them. That’s why the cautionary tales are filled with horror. Since Artemis was the guardian of children, and young girls in particular, ignoring her worship could have meant that the people of Calydonia were abusing their children. Childhood abuse leaves scars [assuming the child survives] and makes it hard to focus on what’s important or to have faith that good thing are even possible. Too much of that and a culture can collapse because no one is building anything.
In that light, the boar that shreds the countryside and hunters feels justified.
I was inspired to write my version of this myth. It will be a short story on my fiction blog soon.
If you’re curious about Paganism/Heathenism/Wicca/Druidry, please feel free to message me and I’ll be happy to answer questions.
Selina Rifkin, M.S. [Nutrition], LMT, has been Pagan since she was 14 [which was a long time ago] and been to Hades in a handbasket. More than once. This has given her some opinions. She has direct communication with her gods and they’ve always given her answers when she asks. [One does have to ask.] Like most of her generation [X] she’s okay with snark. Most days she tries for good writing. But the snark, and side comments creep in. Be warned.
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