Speaker 1: Hi, Hello, welcome. This is Let's talk about MIT's baby,
Speaker 1: and I am your host Live here with more incredibly
Speaker 1: fun and weird and interesting content on just women, real women,
Speaker 1: mythological women, something kind of in between. Did I say
Speaker 1: my name already? I'm not listening back. I'm live the
Speaker 1: only person who ever starts talking in these episodes, and
Speaker 1: yet I introduce myself every time because you never know,
Speaker 1: you never know. Today I am here, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: with a conversation episode with doctor Carla i Escu, who
Speaker 1: is the Artemis expert. Carl and I have been Internet
Speaker 1: friends for some time now and have been trying to
Speaker 1: make this work for so long, and then, like, honestly,
Speaker 1: one months ago, I was like, I want to have
Speaker 1: you on, but it's not going to air until March.
Speaker 1: And thankfully, actually we didn't record ahead of time, which
Speaker 1: sometimes is helpful because it makes things sound more relevant,
Speaker 1: like how in today's episode on Artemis, all things Artemis,
Speaker 1: but specifically Artemis in the real world. That's what I
Speaker 1: really wanted to emphasize today and what I wanted to
Speaker 1: pick Carlo's brain about. I wanted Artemis in the real world,
Speaker 1: how real women of ancient Greece worshiped Artemis. What that
Speaker 1: looked like? What we know and what we don't know?
Speaker 1: You know, how that interacted with the extremely patriarchal Athens.
Speaker 1: Because one of the main and most interesting and pull
Speaker 1: the best cult that we focus on when it comes
Speaker 1: to Artemist worship in this episode is this cult from Braweron,
Speaker 1: which is very close to Athens. It is in Attica.
Speaker 1: And so the women who were involved with worshiping Artemis
Speaker 1: at this cult like would have been Athenian and so
Speaker 1: would have been part of the incredible stricters that were
Speaker 1: put on Athenian women. And yet, and yet this cult
Speaker 1: of worship involved girls who were like coming close to
Speaker 1: marriageable age traveling to Braweron and behaving like bears. Behaving
Speaker 1: like bears, like a rite of passage kind of thing
Speaker 1: before you kind of give up your wildness for to
Speaker 1: be a woman at home, which is an enormous bummer.
Speaker 1: But we can focus on the behaving like bears part.
Speaker 1: There's a like twelve year old girls behaving like bears
Speaker 1: anyway we get into it. Oh, this was such a
Speaker 1: fun conversation. So many things Artemis and goddess worship broadly.
Speaker 1: We had such a great time, and Carla also has
Speaker 1: her own podcast and so much more to do with
Speaker 1: Artemis that is available. You can find links in the
Speaker 1: episode description and it is mentioned at the end of
Speaker 1: the episode as always, but honestly, it was such a joy.
Speaker 1: You will also hear a lot of inspiration for the
Speaker 1: episode from two weeks ago that I did on parthenogenesis
Speaker 1: in women and the Stingray. This, along with the other
Speaker 1: episodes that are coming this month and which have already
Speaker 1: been released, was heavily influential when it comes to that
Speaker 1: episode because I just started thinking about what came before.
Speaker 1: But tually, this episode is such a joy. So I
Speaker 1: will not keep rambling and I will just let you
Speaker 1: dive right into it with me and Carla and oh
Speaker 1: my god, Artemis. Maybe she's my new obsession. I don't know,
Speaker 1: like I needed another one, right, conversations better off with bears,
Speaker 1: Artemis and goddess worship with doctor Carla, I es I
Speaker 1: would love to hear mostly about like real people interacting
Speaker 1: with her, because like I can access all the you know,
Speaker 1: primary sources for the mythology itself, and I love her,
Speaker 1: but I know that she is just so ripe in
Speaker 1: terms of like the real life worship, Like I'm thinking
Speaker 1: of Broweron and the cult there and really like anything
Speaker 1: to do with you know, like how she was actually
Speaker 1: worshiped like daily.
Speaker 2: I would I would love so much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think, actually, I think that's a really great
Speaker 3: way of looking at her. I'm not sure that she's
Speaker 3: really been looked at in that way for a long
Speaker 3: long time. Like I think she's often dismissed. I mean
Speaker 3: that's one of my pet peeves, that she's often dismissed.
Speaker 3: Maiden Huntress, you.
Speaker 1: Know, I love the version virgin, love it, this Virgin Huntress.
Speaker 3: And I think when I started my PhD, I was
Speaker 3: both excited and also a little bit like shocked that
Speaker 3: she was ignored so much for so long among classicists,
Speaker 3: you know, there's a standard sort of plays and things
Speaker 3: like that. But as I dug deeper and deeper, I
Speaker 3: was like, wait, this countess like fears, She's she's magnificent,
Speaker 3: she's massive, she's all these words, you know, And I
Speaker 3: think what I realized is that she is actually a
Speaker 3: goddess that pertains to women so deeply that early scholars
Speaker 3: didn't really find much interest in her.
Speaker 1: So you know, we have sur Sorry, I'm just like
Speaker 1: oh really, I.
Speaker 3: Mean it's shocked, like, you know, so we have a
Speaker 3: Theena for warn and it's like oh, and then we
Speaker 3: have Aphrodity for love and sex and it's like ooh right,
Speaker 3: and all these other goddesses and then Artsmis is like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: like she hunts, I think.
Speaker 1: And she's a virgin, so we care a little less.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I don't know that they didn't know really
Speaker 3: where to put her. And when I started digging and digging,
Speaker 3: I thought, oh wow, she was really the people's goddess.
Speaker 3: And so I have this now almost like a life passion,
Speaker 3: a life journey. This, you know, she's become my life
Speaker 3: pretty much. And everywhere I go she tends to show
Speaker 3: up and be like, hey, don't forget to tell this story.
Speaker 3: And so I find her fascinating and yes, so now
Speaker 3: and so that led to like me trying to open
Speaker 3: this Artsmith center. And then so in the beginning, I'm like, okay,
Speaker 3: I'm opening the Artsmith Center. We're going to do courses
Speaker 3: on the goddess.
Speaker 1: Hey wait, I didn't know about this. I know you
Speaker 1: as the Artemis expert, but I did not know beyond that.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, So I wanted to build a place what's
Speaker 3: virtual now. I wanted to build a place where women
Speaker 3: can come without doing like a plastics degree or a PhD,
Speaker 3: just come and learn about the goddess, several goddesses, but
Speaker 3: Artimiths of course being central. And so that was sort
Speaker 3: of the first call. And I started that a couple
Speaker 3: of years ago online and now we're doing workshops and
Speaker 3: courses and things like that. But now more and more
Speaker 3: lately it feels like something tangible for her needs to
Speaker 3: be done. And so I'm leaving for Creed in April,
Speaker 3: and I think I'm going to build an actual temple
Speaker 3: to her live like. I think I'm going to do
Speaker 3: it like the old ways and literally build a brick
Speaker 3: and mortar space. I have like this vision of it,
Speaker 3: and bears have been plaguing me, and so it's my goal.
Speaker 3: It's my long term goal. But there's something about it,
Speaker 3: and it's not just me, like there's something in the air.
Speaker 3: There's something phenomenon of like women coming forward and saying,
Speaker 3: oh my god, Artnis. I've always connected with her or artist,
Speaker 3: I want to learn more about her. This is the
Speaker 3: right time for her to come and so so it's
Speaker 3: not just me in a sense of like I'm not
Speaker 3: just out here, although I felt like it was just
Speaker 3: me for a long time, you know, in the the
Speaker 3: isolation of academium. But now it seems that people are
Speaker 3: thirsty for this.
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean people are thirsty for goddesses, like absolutely.
Speaker 1: You know, if I've learned anything by stumbling into this career,
Speaker 1: it's that people really like to learn about Greek mythology,
Speaker 1: but particularly goddesses. Like I mean, I've spent the last
Speaker 1: ten year or not ten got close though, almost seven years,
Speaker 1: like talking about you know, women in the ancient world
Speaker 1: and Greek goddesses so specifically, and like it just keeps
Speaker 1: being proven that people want to hear that because like
Speaker 1: what you're saying earlier about you know, how she'd been
Speaker 1: kind of looked over in favor of the other goddesses.
Speaker 1: Like I just think it's so interesting to look at
Speaker 1: the goddesses that do have like a law lot of
Speaker 1: representation in terms of like classic scholarship in the last Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you said, you know, like like earlier when it
Speaker 1: was all the dudes right like because like okay, they
Speaker 1: like aprodiity ooh, big surprise, Like the men, like the
Speaker 1: sexy one who's like known for me being beautiful, but
Speaker 1: then also Athena, and like Athena's to me tracks so
Speaker 1: directly to the ancient world, Like the men loved her
Speaker 1: then too, and she was like very much the man's goddess,
Speaker 1: the hero's goddess, Like you know, they gave her all
Speaker 1: of these masculine qualities and like obviously you know there's
Speaker 1: nothing wrong with that, but then when you see the
Speaker 1: way it tied to her importance compared to others, like
Speaker 1: it's a bummer. And I think about like Artemis in particularly, well,
Speaker 1: it's actually funny. I hopping onto this call. I'd stopped
Speaker 1: finishing edits on a conversation that's going to drop on
Speaker 1: Friday actually with an author about a new novel about Demeter,
Speaker 1: because Demeter is another really good example of these god
Speaker 1: that have been kind of overlooked or in the course.
Speaker 1: In the case of Demeter, you know, it's just all
Speaker 1: about how she was like sad looking for her daughter,
Speaker 1: like she doesn't have a lot of like strength, and
Speaker 1: same with Artemis bizarrely, even though she's like iconically a
Speaker 1: strong and important goddess, right, but yeah, it was like
Speaker 1: lady problems, like keep her over there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think that for so long she was
Speaker 3: associated with she became associated with childbirth and marriage and
Speaker 3: things like that, which she was. And I don't there's
Speaker 3: no there's no shame in that, so to speak, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean. But it I think it lacked
Speaker 3: interest for a lot of early classicists. And I think
Speaker 3: what it lacked or is their ability to understand the
Speaker 3: power of that, yeah, you know, right, like the building
Speaker 3: of community among women around let's say, birthing, Like you
Speaker 3: don't have the birth to be in the community of birthing,
Speaker 3: and you don't have to birth the child to be
Speaker 3: in the community of raising children. Like, so this is
Speaker 3: a foundational goddess, you know, a goddess who's like literally
Speaker 3: on the pulse of society. And yet I think early
Speaker 3: certainly early authors were like, yeah, she's hunting in the woods,
Speaker 3: you know, with her deer and this whole sort of community, didn't,
Speaker 3: I say, a kind of hidden matriarchy or that's not
Speaker 3: the right terminology, but a hidden you know, a support
Speaker 3: group for women, a time just for women surrounding you know,
Speaker 3: whatever their experience was in the world was sort of dismissed,
Speaker 3: and I think that that was their mistake, because this
Speaker 3: is actually a very powerful aspect of both Athenian culture,
Speaker 3: who very much was centered around birthing citizens, right, but
Speaker 3: like just human culture, who you know, requires at least this,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I love when these like I recorded a
Speaker 1: conversation with someone a couple of days ago, and I
Speaker 1: just love when they they all completely end up aligning,
Speaker 1: like in these ways that I never kind of see
Speaker 1: coming because we talked about women as vessels in the
Speaker 1: ancient world and like so much like lots it to
Speaker 1: do with that, but that yeah, it reminds me of
Speaker 1: that too, just even the way you said, like, well,
Speaker 1: Thethenians were concerned with birthing citizens, Like, yeah, they weren't
Speaker 1: as concerned with you know, women, or that's maybe putting
Speaker 1: it kindly even, but they were certainly concerned with citizens.
Speaker 1: And one thing that I don't think about enough but
Speaker 1: came up the other day is like they were so
Speaker 1: concerned with with paternity, which is so interesting too, and
Speaker 1: like looking at those fears, I don't think necessarily aligns
Speaker 1: with artemists directly, but like now I kind of can't
Speaker 1: stop thinking about that. That like fear of paternity and
Speaker 1: how it how it shows itself in mythology, you know,
Speaker 1: like because you can just be like, well, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure that the kid is mine, but maybe it's zeus
Speaker 1: Is if it's not, you know, and that wouldn't be
Speaker 1: so bad.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, yeah, So this is what I mean. I mean,
Speaker 3: this is something that was central to their lives, and
Speaker 3: there's there's one godess that's in charge of that, or
Speaker 3: certainly home life and women's lives and making sure that
Speaker 3: women transit or transform from wild girls to marriage of women.
Speaker 3: You know. So these key factors and let's say in
Speaker 3: Athenian women's life, but many other Greek women's life as well,
Speaker 3: and yet for so long she's sort of disregarded. Now,
Speaker 3: for me, I tend not to lean too much on
Speaker 3: that patriarchal structure. Sometimes I'm like, yeah, okay, they gave
Speaker 3: up their wildness to Artsmis, and I feel like that's
Speaker 3: a later adaptation.
Speaker 2: Good.
Speaker 3: I think the connection between bears now, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I've been reading this fantastic book called The Woman Who
Speaker 3: Married the Bear, and it's really great. It's about mythology
Speaker 3: in Europe and in North America indigenous culture in which
Speaker 3: women literally married bears and they became the wives of bears.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. And I also just have to so I now,
Speaker 1: all I can think of is there was this book
Speaker 1: in the eighties called Bear and I think it's like
Speaker 1: Marianne Engel something like that. Yes, and it's basically about
Speaker 1: that and was like pretty controversial because I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: she almost doesn't I don't know anyway, there's a law
Speaker 1: going on with the woman romancing a bear, and so
Speaker 1: that's that's really all in that moment. But yeah, like
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess there's there's more there than I
Speaker 1: would have ever kind of put together separately.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, lived there is so much. There is
Speaker 3: so much ow Like there's literal for example, an indigenous
Speaker 3: North American culture. There's a scholar named Barbara Man. She's
Speaker 3: really fantastic and she's part of the indigenous culture and
Speaker 3: she she does a lot of writing on bears. And
Speaker 3: one of the things she talks about is this cave
Speaker 3: deitya of the cave and that women in the fifteen
Speaker 3: thousand years ago. I mean, we're talking about a long,
Speaker 3: long time ago. Ten fifteen thousand years ago, we go
Speaker 3: into the caves, and people actually in entire communities, we
Speaker 3: go into the caves and live with the bears, like
Speaker 3: in a common relationship, not an intimate sexual relationship relationship.
Speaker 3: But she says in the mythology there's overlap there, like
Speaker 3: women would give birth to bear cubs or half bear
Speaker 3: half like there's lots of mythology, and she goes over
Speaker 3: lots of mythology, and then there's another scholar that talks
Speaker 3: about similar things in the Sami culture in Northern Europe
Speaker 3: and the finn culture and all that, and again we
Speaker 3: see a ton of bears mating with women, marrying women,
Speaker 3: protecting women. This idea that bears go into the cave
Speaker 3: to hibernate a sort of study of going into the womb,
Speaker 3: the cosmic womb, and that they stay in there for
Speaker 3: like the whole winter, which is kind of like you know,
Speaker 3: the pregnancy process, and that when they come out they
Speaker 3: have cubs. So there's this kind of birthing cosmological idea, right,
Speaker 3: And this is probably I would say, the essence of
Speaker 3: Artemis the bear in Braan, because Greeks used to also
Speaker 3: have lots of bears I mean there used to be
Speaker 3: lots of bears in Greek, you know, five thousand years ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm already thinking of Calisto and in Atalanta, right
Speaker 1: like they also have these kind of bear origin stories.
Speaker 3: Yes, and so the more I read about the bears,
Speaker 3: the more I'm fascinating. Now. Glutas of course did a
Speaker 3: lot of work in with artifacts where she found a
Speaker 3: lot of artifacts that were half like head of bear,
Speaker 3: body of women or like this combination of a bear
Speaker 3: mother and that. And so you know, the word bear,
Speaker 3: for example, in Germanic culture means to burst or bear
Speaker 3: to carry.
Speaker 2: Well, but I guess it doesn't.
Speaker 1: I mean English, I mean it means the same too
Speaker 1: interesting kind of right, like to carry, but you bear
Speaker 1: a child yet it's the same spelling.
Speaker 3: Yes, or we're like oh you bear down, yeah child.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And so so the first time I went to Bern,
Speaker 3: which was like in two thousand and six, there was
Speaker 3: no one there. There was no one there, and it
Speaker 3: was very hard to get any information. They had a
Speaker 3: little museum to it. It was very hard to get information,
Speaker 3: particularly local information around that area. And so I knew
Speaker 3: the usual stuff, you know, there were rituals done here
Speaker 3: there's a connection to bears that I could never put
Speaker 3: my finger on. I was like, I don't understand. I
Speaker 3: know Artemis is connected to deer, I don't understand which
Speaker 3: this connection to bear comes from, right, And no one
Speaker 3: was really talking about this, this whole bear Well, maybe
Speaker 3: marrying bears was not really something acceptable at the time, you.
Speaker 1: Know, valid, fine, And so they were talking about these
Speaker 1: these these.
Speaker 3: Playing bears and young girls playing bears, and I thought,
Speaker 3: that's a random thing to do. Why bears? Why not goats, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, goats are quite stubborn. I love goats, right,
Speaker 3: And so so the first time it was a little
Speaker 3: bit hard to First of all, nobody knew where the
Speaker 3: site was. It was chaos. I walked for miles and
Speaker 3: miles in the heat. Anyways, I finally got there and
Speaker 3: they were really they were trying their best to help,
Speaker 3: but they didn't have as much of a rid. So
Speaker 3: then I started digging on my own and things like that.
Speaker 3: The second time I went, there was more willingness to
Speaker 3: like have a discussion with locals, and so I met
Speaker 3: a couple of locals that were talking about how this place,
Speaker 3: that vern was a place of birthing which probably is
Speaker 3: not surprising, but women would come there and they did ritual,
Speaker 3: secret rituals which we do not have written down around birthing,
Speaker 3: and I thought, okay, and then one of the locals
Speaker 3: was saying to me, you know, it used to have
Speaker 3: forty columns. There used to be forty columns around the site,
Speaker 3: one for each week of pregnancy. I was like, okay,
Speaker 3: that's really fascinating. Yeah, And so there's a lot of
Speaker 3: mystery around what exactly they did around birthing or even
Speaker 3: around the menstruation or miners or whatever. And so the
Speaker 3: idea was that there's power in this bleeding time, in
Speaker 3: this liminal time, and that the priestesses at Barn and
Speaker 3: particular Defiginia, we're not writing down or not sharing women's
Speaker 3: secret rights, which is common across right, like Demeter at
Speaker 3: rosephoniet Eleusis and other kind of stuff. Yeah, but at Baron,
Speaker 3: I think because it was seen as a birthing space,
Speaker 3: it didn't really get enough attention. And so then it
Speaker 3: leaves us now to take a look at it and go,
Speaker 3: what was going on here? What is this thing that
Speaker 3: they that young women shed at Barn and become bears
Speaker 3: and play wild things before they are sort of restricted
Speaker 3: or constricted into marriage.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, yeah.
Speaker 3: Which breaks our hearts a little bit because Artemis of
Speaker 3: the wild becomes almost Artemis of restriction. Yeah. And we're
Speaker 3: told that, you know, the Arctoi that the young she
Speaker 3: bears leave their robes for Artemis, leave their toys for
Speaker 3: arts miss. So there, and I think that's very much,
Speaker 3: of course, a patriarchal development. Perhaps in order for women
Speaker 3: to continue their secret rights, they had to blend into
Speaker 3: yeah right, make them political.
Speaker 2: Yeah right.
Speaker 1: I mean I think about that kind of stuff so
Speaker 1: often when when it comes to these things about women
Speaker 1: in the ancient world, because obviously, like you know, archaeological
Speaker 1: evidence is going to be something else, but in terms
Speaker 1: of written sources, like it's just so through the eyes
Speaker 1: and thoughts of men that we just have no idea
Speaker 1: what could have really been happening there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Mean it's interesting for that specifically because it's not a
Speaker 1: mystery cult, right, like a you know, quote unquote official
Speaker 1: mystery cult, Like it's more of just like it was
Speaker 1: just a cult of worship, right, yes, yeah, and you.
Speaker 3: Know, and they have that for every four year procession
Speaker 3: from Ran to Athens. So there is a little temple
Speaker 3: on the Acropolis to Artemis Baronia, and I've been to
Speaker 3: the Acropolis I don't know how many times, and I
Speaker 3: always miss it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was gonna say i've been.
Speaker 2: I can't. I don't even want to try to count
Speaker 2: how many.
Speaker 1: Times, how many forty euros I spent going up there, right, wow, And.
Speaker 3: I always miss it, and I haven't been up there
Speaker 3: in a few years. But but now I'm going back
Speaker 3: to Greece the summer and I'm going to go and
Speaker 3: see where this spot is because from what I've spoke
Speaker 3: to others who have been up there, they're like, I
Speaker 3: don't know, I don't think it's labeled.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's it. I don't think it's labeled.
Speaker 3: So I think I'm going to do a whole video.
Speaker 2: I can't wait.
Speaker 1: I would like to see that I was there in January,
Speaker 1: and I granted I was not, like I've been up
Speaker 1: there so many times that I don't I just kind
Speaker 1: of like go to just kind of make sure that
Speaker 1: I'm there. But yeah, now, I mean I'm very curious.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so I thought that was kind of interesting.
Speaker 3: And I've seen in other museums, you know, where they
Speaker 3: have the replicas of the Acropolis, and every single time
Speaker 3: I've seen them, I very rarely see the little spot
Speaker 3: for artiments of Baronia. Yeah, so's it's almost you know,
Speaker 3: And so I think that that's part of my mission too,
Speaker 3: is like to raise awareness at the fact that they
Speaker 3: did this. So, I mean, if you've ever been to
Speaker 3: Ravona or Roan it's they say, oh, it's just outside
Speaker 3: of Athens, but if you were walking it, it would take
Speaker 3: your whole day, if not longer.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Right, So if you have a procession of for four
Speaker 3: years that starts in Boronia, which actually just outside of Roonia,
Speaker 3: there's a town called Artemis, which is so cool, right,
Speaker 3: I recommend that everyone goes to beach town, go have fun.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, is it is Baron on the coast? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: I try to think that's such a big area and
Speaker 1: it's so mountainous too, Like yes, I think we often
Speaker 1: forget we talk about like yeah, like these processions or
Speaker 1: even like Eleusis and stuff. I mean I think that's
Speaker 1: definitely like flatter because it's mostly on that like lower coastline.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously it would have been different back then anyway.
Speaker 1: But but like all of Attica is pretty fucking mountainous,
Speaker 1: so like that takes a lot to do this procession.
Speaker 3: Yes, I have this massive procession of Athenians and like
Speaker 3: all the Greeks who wanted to participate, from Burran to
Speaker 3: you know, the acrops are climbing up to the acropolism.
Speaker 3: And so to me that seems like something that was
Speaker 3: significant and that really played a key role in the
Speaker 3: identity of Athenian women, or of young women, or all
Speaker 3: of the women that were able to participate. It's unclear
Speaker 3: who was really able to participate. We know for sure
Speaker 3: obviously citizens were non citizens. It's a little bit unclear, right,
Speaker 3: And that's I think the problem for a lot of
Speaker 3: women's history is that we don't have the data because.
Speaker 1: No one cared until now, and now world is lost.
Speaker 3: I just I think, you know, a party, me thinks that. Okay,
Speaker 3: So I have this group this we're doing this workshop
Speaker 3: called the Goddess Migration. So we've been talking about the
Speaker 3: migrating goddesses and one of my students was said something
Speaker 3: that was really fascinating, and she said, what if they
Speaker 3: had what if the women who were participating for generations
Speaker 3: in these rituals. Let's say, had assumed that we two
Speaker 3: thousand years later would know from the artifacts and from
Speaker 3: what they left us what to do. But yet no
Speaker 3: one could predict that we would be so knocked off
Speaker 3: kilter by patriarchy that we as women today have almost
Speaker 3: no connection back. Like we're now trying to reach back
Speaker 3: and figure out what happened. And I thought, yeah, maybe
Speaker 3: they took it for granted that the stories would be
Speaker 3: passed down, yeah, unbroken. Yeah, right, and that we would
Speaker 3: know what I don't know, this river positioned over here
Speaker 3: and forty columns and this kind of stuff means. And
Speaker 3: now we're kind of looking back and going, we lost
Speaker 3: a little bit of that, right, We were disconnected, and
Speaker 3: we have his men's interpretation of what was going on.
Speaker 3: They weren't even there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean Aristophanes is writing about it and he doesn't
Speaker 3: know what the hell he's talking. You know.
Speaker 1: It's also that guy that is just sometimes yeah, you know.
Speaker 3: So anyways, it's been I think it's the time. It's
Speaker 3: the time to start uncovering and start reaching back. Yeah,
Speaker 3: how accurate can we get to the rituals that were
Speaker 3: performed there, I'm not sure. Yeah, among Greek women today,
Speaker 3: they also are hesitant to share because the Greek Orthodox
Speaker 3: Church has still such influence.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, I was going to say, like, and this is
Speaker 1: less about you know, Greek Orthodox more so about like,
Speaker 1: you know, the just sort of the Western world broadly.
Speaker 1: But the combination of the patriarchy and Christianity like really
Speaker 1: just meant that we'd lose everything, right, Like, yes, you know,
Speaker 1: they lived in the patriarchy then, so they would have
Speaker 1: at least had some kind of like but yeah, like
Speaker 1: this hope though that it would have been passed on anyway,
Speaker 1: but at least they had this like grounding in what
Speaker 1: it meant to live in this patriarchal world, especially in Athens.
Speaker 1: But what they Nobody could have predicted the damage that
Speaker 1: Christianity did to anything pagan, let alone anything featuring women
Speaker 1: so prominently. Like I mean, it's just like, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not a fan of Christianity broadly, but I still
Speaker 1: think it can't be overstated, like just how much they
Speaker 1: fucked up. Yeah, yeah, like because women, they would have
Speaker 1: expected these stories to be passed down, Like I think
Speaker 1: about that so much in terms of like just what
Speaker 1: we don't know, you know, like we have all of
Speaker 1: these myths and they say all of these these things
Speaker 1: that so objectively like you just look at them sometimes
Speaker 1: and you're like, there's just no way in hell that
Speaker 1: the women believed this, you know, like like what did
Speaker 1: they believe?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 1: You know, when when they were packing all these Athenian
Speaker 1: women into the home and not letting them do anything else,
Speaker 1: Like what did they talk to each other about?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 1: Like what stories did they tell their daughters only? And
Speaker 1: like uh, just yeah, I mean I want to know
Speaker 1: so about I think about it all the time when
Speaker 1: it comes to like the Cycladic figurines, like just the
Speaker 1: I mean I feel like now there's like I don't
Speaker 1: even know if it's gotten worse or just how I
Speaker 1: learned it. But like when I was doing my BA
Speaker 1: I mean like fifteen years ago, like I just remember
Speaker 1: that the they were so openly called like goddess figurines,
Speaker 1: like and it was I was certainly taught in that time,
Speaker 1: like in an archaeology course that that you know, it
Speaker 1: was it was pretty well assumed that this suggested that
Speaker 1: you know, before you know, pre Bronze Age, like there
Speaker 1: was a matriarchal world, like this goddess worship worshiping world,
Speaker 1: and it makes so much sense when you think about
Speaker 1: like the explicit, explicit myths subjugating Gaya and every other woman,
Speaker 1: Like you can you can read where they were trying
Speaker 1: to stamp that out after the had taken power kind
Speaker 1: of you know, yes, but now I feel like I've
Speaker 1: seen them and it's just like, well, you know, they
Speaker 1: might not be boobs, they might not be women figurines.
Speaker 1: Like I just feel like I'm seeing like more alternative
Speaker 1: now than even what I learned a while ago, which
Speaker 1: is just sort of surprising because usually things seem to
Speaker 1: be getting better. But I still like to work off
Speaker 1: this idea that like, yeah, like I mean that whole
Speaker 1: of the region very likely worshiped a goddess just before
Speaker 1: they were writing things down for us to learn about,
Speaker 1: you know, But it seems so obvious to me that
Speaker 1: that's how it started, that all of most of human
Speaker 1: history would have started that way before they started to
Speaker 1: try to kill each other and then realized that they
Speaker 1: could get an advantage over women through that.
Speaker 3: Like, yes, there's this concept that tree the last ice age,
Speaker 3: the only bleeding that humans did was menstrua bly wow,
Speaker 3: that it was sort of this pastoral not pastoral, sorry,
Speaker 3: because it's tribal nomadic, but it's this idea that they
Speaker 3: didn't even hunt to kill, that they didn't even try
Speaker 3: to keep because there was so much food available. And
Speaker 3: then there's this idea that post the last Ice Age,
Speaker 3: the bleeding became like masculine bleeding. There's also been this
Speaker 3: old idea that men feel the need to bleed in
Speaker 3: order to connect to the divine, because women naturally bleed
Speaker 3: to connect to the divine. And so I think people
Speaker 3: kind of sometimes throw that under the rug as like whatever,
Speaker 3: you know, it's just natural, you know biology. But it's
Speaker 3: not about biology. Actually, it's just about power, yeah, and
Speaker 3: sort of magic, like they say, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: the ability to use whatever you have to connect to
Speaker 3: this higher power, and this higher power being more feminine.
Speaker 3: I mean, people say, well, is God gendered? Well no, okay,
Speaker 3: the divine may not be gendered, but a sacred feminine
Speaker 3: and is still important to the development of you know, nature, yeah,
Speaker 3: just humans, right, And so trying to say, well, God
Speaker 3: is non gender, that's fine, but what about this idea
Speaker 3: of the sacred feminine that protects and nurtures and feeds us,
Speaker 3: and that ties into environmental issues and women's and everybody's
Speaker 3: issues right to live sort of freely, and you know,
Speaker 3: as part of a community. And so I think Artemis was,
Speaker 3: I would argue, one of the few goddesses whose sole
Speaker 3: purpose was to protect and watch over this aspect of existence,
Speaker 3: the natural. Yes, there's a couple others with the wildness
Speaker 3: and you know, Demitter and Persephone, and there's a couple
Speaker 3: of others in that way, but she as being in
Speaker 3: the mountains and in the wild and in the all
Speaker 3: the animals and then into the birthing. Like, I think
Speaker 3: that she plays a really a role with action. She
Speaker 3: takes action in a lot of these things, and she's
Speaker 3: the only one that actually does not technically is not
Speaker 3: a mother. This never gets married. I mean they give
Speaker 3: her a Paulo later on, blah blah, right, because they
Speaker 3: had to give her something. But it's fascinating to me
Speaker 3: that they didn't marry her off like they did almost
Speaker 3: everyone else.
Speaker 2: No, that's true.
Speaker 1: I mean it always is funny to me, the apollo
Speaker 1: of it all, because he's just it's very funny because
Speaker 1: I realize I have an email after to respond to
Speaker 1: about how I need to talk about Apollo publicly, but
Speaker 1: Apollo is just really such a little shit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like have a whole episode called my Apaula sucks.
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, and it's got a lot of heat.
Speaker 3: Let me tell you, Oh, how can you like art
Speaker 3: to miss and against Apollo? And I'm like, I'm perfectly comfortable.
Speaker 1: Actually, uh huh, No, Apollo is the only god that
Speaker 1: I have ever well maybe Zeus. Definitely Apollo and Zeus
Speaker 1: where I have actually had like angry uh like modern
Speaker 1: practicers of Hellenism like which is like fine, like worship
Speaker 1: the gods, do whatever you need to do, but like,
Speaker 1: don't come tell me that Apolo is gonna come. And
Speaker 1: I've had people threaten, yes, divine assault on me, like
Speaker 1: shit talked to zuson Apolo and I'm like, okay, you
Speaker 1: know what, maybe just go look at the sources and
Speaker 1: then tell me if I'm wrong, yes, yes, I'm not
Speaker 1: exactly yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But this link to Artemis is so interesting because he's
Speaker 1: so insufferable, because he does so many bad things, because
Speaker 1: it does feel like it is making them Twins is
Speaker 1: like this way to make her less powerful. They also
Speaker 1: like they give him more things to be got of,
Speaker 1: and then of course later we get you know, when
Speaker 1: when he gets conflated with the sun, and then and
Speaker 1: then you have like he basically becomes like you know,
Speaker 1: this all powerful sun god in addition to everything else. Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it does feel like like it is a way to
Speaker 1: make Artemis less.
Speaker 3: Yes, And then the Romans, of course, who keep him
Speaker 3: as is and then change Artemis to Diana. Yeah, oh,
Speaker 3: the goddess of the moon or whatever, and you're like, well,
Speaker 3: hold on a second. This goddess has so much power,
Speaker 3: and so they slowly do try to diminish her in
Speaker 3: speaking about artifacts and the word goddess, I am finding
Speaker 3: I did a whole thing on I went to this
Speaker 3: exhibit in Chicago. So part of my work is trying
Speaker 3: to find Artemis everywhere. So lately I found her in
Speaker 3: the Balkans with the Thracians, you know, not surprising. She's
Speaker 3: up in the wilderness, so there was.
Speaker 2: She would align with three. Of course that that feels
Speaker 2: totally good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so Artemis bendis, you know, has sort of
Speaker 3: been something and writing about. And so I went to
Speaker 3: the exhibit in Chicago called What is it called something
Speaker 3: like the Kings of the first Kings of Europe? And
Speaker 3: I'm I'm Romanian, So I was born up in the
Speaker 3: Carpathian Mountains, and so I thought, oh my god, Eastern European,
Speaker 3: it's going to be so cool. I'm gonna go see
Speaker 3: a blah lah. I go into the exhibit and the
Speaker 3: word goddess has been taking out of every representation. In fact,
Speaker 3: the very first thing you see is a circle of statues,
Speaker 3: got it like half bird, half women. You can see
Speaker 3: it's a bird face and women. And in the description
Speaker 3: it says this is a group of women sitting around
Speaker 3: in a circle. And I lost my shit, Like I
Speaker 3: lost it. So I did a whole episode with pictures
Speaker 3: with anyway, I did a whole thing because I was like,
Speaker 3: what this is clearly bird goddesses. Clearly their faces are birds.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, you can't go if they are half animal,
Speaker 1: you can't just go calling them women, like well that's
Speaker 1: how that works anywhere.
Speaker 3: Yeah, these all represent the women in the village. What
Speaker 3: how do you know? These are like premiolithic pieces of
Speaker 3: any writing? So what, Yes, I do think there is
Speaker 3: a backlash, certainly there was one against Gimbuddhas as we
Speaker 3: all know for a long.
Speaker 4: Timehas Maria Gimbutas. Yeah, she Maria Gmbutas is this very
Speaker 4: famous Lithuanian archaeologist who did I mean she spoke eight languages,
Speaker 4: I don't know, she had three PhDs.
Speaker 3: She was super super fastricle, yeah, and she wrote on artifacts.
Speaker 3: So she's an archaeologist by trade, and she was allowed
Speaker 3: to go like in the back of museums and find
Speaker 3: all these statues. And basically she's saying, in short, there
Speaker 3: was a goddess culture. There's thousands and thousands and thousands
Speaker 3: of artifacts, some that are shown, some that are just
Speaker 3: thrown in the back of museums. And this is all
Speaker 3: about sort of matriarchy slash, I don't know, matrefocal, whatever
Speaker 3: word you want to stick in there, but it was
Speaker 3: female center. Anyways, as an academic, she got bashed in
Speaker 3: her time, she got bashed, bash bashed, but a lot
Speaker 3: of like first wave feminists, second wave feminists did take
Speaker 3: up her work and used it when they were, you know,
Speaker 3: working on other women's rights issues and other issues. And
Speaker 3: then she kind of disappeared for a while. And now
Speaker 3: I think there starts to be well, I don't know
Speaker 3: if everyone would agree with about her disappearing, But when
Speaker 3: I was doing my PhD, for example, I wanted to
Speaker 3: use a couple of her books because she does excellent
Speaker 3: artifact work, drawings, excellent. Wow, so like the science of
Speaker 3: archaeology she does amazing. Yeah, and my own A couple
Speaker 3: of my supervisors, both of them females, both of them women,
Speaker 3: were like, now you can't use her work, like that's
Speaker 3: god is stuff. We don't want to do God is stuff.
Speaker 3: And this is what I got my PhD in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 3: so let's say. Yeah, And so I had to cut.
Speaker 3: I still got to keep one of her books, but
Speaker 3: I had to cut a lot of scholars that were
Speaker 3: using the sort of goddess aspect out of my work
Speaker 3: because then it looked like it was incredible enough.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: And so I really So when I finish my PhD,
Speaker 3: like my mother says, you know, once they give it
Speaker 3: to you, they can't take it from you.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was able to like talk more freely about
Speaker 5: these connections. I mean, artifacts are artifacts, and none of
Speaker 5: us really have any like we have a methodology of
Speaker 5: how to identify them, but I can say one hundred.
Speaker 1: No, it's literally impossible, right, exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so what I'm seeing now all over our
Speaker 3: museums lately in the labels is that they take the
Speaker 3: word goddess out. They even sometimes take the gendered word out.
Speaker 3: They'll just be like ceramic figurine, I don't know, thirty
Speaker 3: seven hundred BCE. And you're like, and I'm okay with
Speaker 3: that to some degree, Like, you know, there has to
Speaker 3: be a balance between maybe leaning too much in one way.
Speaker 3: But I'm starry to see it as an erasure. And
Speaker 3: I'm thinking about young women who go to the museum
Speaker 3: who maybe know nothing about it, you know anything, they're
Speaker 3: just young people going or young people actually, and they
Speaker 3: don't use the terminology goddess, you know, And how does
Speaker 3: that affect, you know, the future for us, for all
Speaker 3: of us? Yeah, you don't write like it is kind
Speaker 3: of problematic, And I don't really know exactly how to
Speaker 3: fight against that or defend against that other than just
Speaker 3: talking about it as we are now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, and that's something though. The volume
Speaker 1: of people that are now talking about that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: like at the very least, that's you know, it's encouraging,
Speaker 1: and I find it so encouraging, like because like again,
Speaker 1: like that this entire the fact that my podcast has
Speaker 1: become what it has when all I do is focus
Speaker 1: on the women and how shitty men were, like blows
Speaker 1: my mind all the time. Like really, I can confirm
Speaker 1: that hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people want to
Speaker 1: hear this, and like that's really cool at least, like
Speaker 1: people want to know it, so just like you know,
Speaker 1: giving it to them I think is so good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree, I agree, And I think it helps
Speaker 3: us to imagine like a space and probably that's why
Speaker 3: I feel so driven to create a space where women.
Speaker 3: I mean, we think about women in the patriarchy and
Speaker 3: the Greco Roman times, and yes they were very much subjugated,
Speaker 3: but they also had these massive rituals just for themselves
Speaker 3: and these masks, and like I think about it today,
Speaker 3: like where would I go today to celebrate artmis or
Speaker 3: a goddess? Where would I go today where it would
Speaker 3: be only in celebration of this divinity? Because like, where
Speaker 3: do we have these spaces and like regular you know,
Speaker 3: monthly or yearly celebrations where we would gather, where we
Speaker 3: would drink, where we would dance, where we would play,
Speaker 3: you know, whatever music, We would have orgiastic rites whatever
Speaker 3: that means, you know, because there's lots of fantasy. Or
Speaker 3: when you say or what do you mean? And I
Speaker 3: think what they're asking, were they having sex?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: No? And I'm like, well, I mean they could have,
Speaker 3: because I don't think Greek men would have cared if
Speaker 3: women were having sex with one another.
Speaker 1: That is what I say far too often. At this point,
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm becoming a broken record. But I
Speaker 1: have this like whole little fantasy world in my head
Speaker 1: where every time the men were like you can't go out,
Speaker 1: you just have to hang around with your friends, the
Speaker 1: women were like, you know what, that's fine, Like my
Speaker 1: friends make me feel a lot better than you do.
Speaker 1: So like, because I really do think that they not
Speaker 1: only like I think that they wouldn't have seen it
Speaker 1: as sex because they were just so obsessed with like
Speaker 1: who penetrated whom? Yes, you know, especially in Athens and
Speaker 1: especially with the whole erastes ramanos with themselves, Like they
Speaker 1: just wouldn't have seen it as sex. They would be like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, my wife's like having a nice time
Speaker 1: with her friend. Like I just think that's so joyful
Speaker 1: to be like, well, they were probably very sad at
Speaker 1: the very least.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, I agree. I mean that's the way I
Speaker 3: see it too. That's the way I see even the
Speaker 3: you know, the main ads and all of any time
Speaker 3: that people say wild women in the forest, I think, yeah,
Speaker 3: they were probably drinking, dancing, you know, chilling, doing whatever
Speaker 3: they wanted. And other than I think the men seeing
Speaker 3: that freedom as dangerous as far as thinking, right, like
Speaker 3: women gathering, women thinking, women talking to each other about.
Speaker 1: Women getting drunk, right yeah.
Speaker 3: Right, but women talking to each other about like what
Speaker 3: is your husband doing and what is your like? Right
Speaker 3: like men have always, I guess felt in some way
Speaker 3: that that women are sharp or quicker, smarter and more cunning.
Speaker 3: Like there's all these words that are associated. And I
Speaker 3: think every time you see women gathering, even during the
Speaker 3: witch hunts of Europe, every time you see women gathering,
Speaker 3: women independence, women talking, uh, there's the authorities start to
Speaker 3: be suspicious of like what are are they doing? And
Speaker 3: it's really about power, yeah, you know, and is there
Speaker 3: a revelue? You know, there's that fear of the I
Speaker 3: guess the colonizer or the dominator, who is like oh,
Speaker 3: the people that we subjugate, maybe gathering to speak against
Speaker 3: us in some.
Speaker 2: Way or prepare yeah, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Now, for all I know, the women were just chilling,
Speaker 3: who knows, like just having a great time. Yeah, but
Speaker 3: I think not knowing caused that.
Speaker 2: Kind of threat, right, yeah, yeah, and.
Speaker 3: Then you're right drinking, partying, being naked in the wilderness,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 1: Well, And I think it's not a coincidence that the
Speaker 1: only god deeply associated with that stuff is also the
Speaker 1: most gender fluid god in Dionysus, right, Like Dionysus is
Speaker 1: the least masculine god. That's what makes him so interesting
Speaker 1: is that he was very happy to dress up like
Speaker 1: the women and participate in all of these things. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't about him being like the man in the situation,
Speaker 1: like he was just part of it. He is the
Speaker 1: divine one, but it wasn't about a divine masculinity. It
Speaker 1: was just about that he was divine. And I think, yeah, like,
Speaker 1: I mean, I I there's you know, obviously, like there's
Speaker 1: only little bits of like gender fluidity, and like there
Speaker 1: are definitely trans stories in the ancient world, but I
Speaker 1: love all of those. And just like how you can
Speaker 1: see them tying in to the patriarchal norms and how like,
Speaker 1: I mean, some are threats and some are not. And
Speaker 1: it very much depends, I think, on the where the
Speaker 1: masculinity is coming in to that fluidity. But like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I just I love that Dionysus is part
Speaker 1: of it, and then he's very much like he's not
Speaker 1: part of it as a man, he's part of it
Speaker 1: as just Dionysus, you know, yes, yes.
Speaker 3: And I think Artemis is part of that threat because
Speaker 3: she always has an entourage of women, so they are
Speaker 3: all living in the wilderness, just hanging out with women
Speaker 3: and nature and animals, a cute bunnies and cute deer
Speaker 3: being virgins.
Speaker 2: That's an air quote.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know that she very open to
Speaker 3: her having intimate relationships with her closest. I mean, if
Speaker 3: you think about it with Callisto, in order for Zeus
Speaker 3: to seduce her, Zeus has to transform into Artemis. So
Speaker 3: to me, that has always been like, well, if you
Speaker 3: have to transform into Artemist to seduce Callisto, that means
Speaker 3: that Callisto is not surprised at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it means that her and.
Speaker 3: Artemist are getting it on on a regular basis.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and yet like that's so not part of the story.
Speaker 2: Detail.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, exactly. And then you know, the focus is
Speaker 3: of course on Artemist is jealous, wrath and all that
Speaker 3: kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Because women are angry and jealous.
Speaker 3: That's right, that's right, they do, that's right. But I
Speaker 3: think about her and I think, wow, she was living
Speaker 3: like her best life, because I wouldn't mind to live
Speaker 3: in the forest with a bunch of women when.
Speaker 1: The alternative is being a woman in Athens, like, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I am down, like take me to the forest part
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: And then if a dude sneaks up on you, like Acteon,
Speaker 3: then you know, she just she is also actually a
Speaker 3: goddess that is quite unapologetic, yeah right, and so she's swift.
Speaker 3: I mean most a lot of the goddesses are quite
Speaker 3: sip swift with their vengeance, but she, yeah, she's totally unapologetic,
Speaker 3: and she just well, of course she tortures for Acteon
Speaker 3: to death and punishes him for his transgression. But that's
Speaker 3: also I think about consent, right, like, yeah, you're here
Speaker 3: without consent, and so you're going to so in a way,
Speaker 3: I don't know, Like sometimes I think there's this sort
Speaker 3: of there's a bit of a paradox about what women
Speaker 3: must have felt like living in obviously patriarchy, but having
Speaker 3: these spaces that were for them as safe spaces away
Speaker 3: from you know, patriarchal politics. And Verron is definitely one
Speaker 3: of these places. Yeah, and they came as children, so
Speaker 3: you have that from when you're very young women. Yeah, right,
Speaker 3: you must have come with your mother, you must have
Speaker 3: come with your sister. For the rights, you must have come, right,
Speaker 3: So there's this long commune. And then as you're older
Speaker 3: and you're now let's say a wife and mother, you
Speaker 3: come back and you come back, And so I think
Speaker 3: maybe that's why I like to come back, and I
Speaker 3: like to go every time I go to Greece, I
Speaker 3: go to Buran and just kind of sit there, especially
Speaker 3: if it's like a nice fall winter day when no
Speaker 3: one's there, and just kind of sit there and imagine
Speaker 3: what it would have been like when it's like just
Speaker 3: full of women and cooking and incense and whatever else
Speaker 3: you know, was going on. Yeah, it's pretty powerful.
Speaker 6: And then I think, where do we have that in
Speaker 6: a modern day period. I don't actually have a place
Speaker 6: like that. Yeah, in modernity, I feel like it's all
Speaker 6: of those things. Women often make it for ourselves though,
Speaker 6: you know, like I mean just even just like getting
Speaker 6: together as a bunch of girls, Like I feel like
Speaker 6: that's so common in my life, and it kind of
Speaker 6: feels like its own way of of like kind of
Speaker 6: making up for that a little bit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think I think those are the
Speaker 3: only spaces where we where they're sort of social gatherings.
Speaker 3: I don't know if they have religious I mean, I've
Speaker 3: been part of different groups, like every now and then,
Speaker 3: different groups will invite me to talk about Artemis, different
Speaker 3: like goddess groups or Wicked groups or whatever groups, And
Speaker 3: I really like those kinds of gatherings, But there they
Speaker 3: feel a little bit few and far between compared to
Speaker 3: the regularity that was available in the ancient world and
Speaker 3: pre Greek world even more so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, maybe.
Speaker 3: We're getting I mean, I don't know. Now there's more
Speaker 3: and more so called pagan temples that are going up.
Speaker 3: The Greeks have finally allowed Pagans now to be considered
Speaker 3: a real religion. They just posted something this year or
Speaker 3: last at the end of last year where they were
Speaker 3: like Paganism is now acknowledged as a real religion in Greece,
Speaker 3: and so a lot of the people that are practicing
Speaker 3: paid in traditions in Greece are now coming forward more
Speaker 3: and more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I don't.
Speaker 3: Know, maybe we will see a revival of those kinds
Speaker 3: of spaces, not just for women, but for everyone who
Speaker 3: wants to for the state, yeah, you know, in those ways,
Speaker 3: that would be really incredible.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, and I feel like unfortunately in the world that
Speaker 1: we currently live in, and most I mean the sort
Speaker 1: of in the English speaking world that I'm you know,
Speaker 1: most familiar with with at least, like I think that
Speaker 1: now there is so much horrible transphobia that that's all
Speaker 1: I think about when I think about like a quote
Speaker 1: unquote women's only anything, as I just immediately think of
Speaker 1: those people who don't want to open womanhood to people
Speaker 1: who weren't born into it, and like it's just sad
Speaker 1: and gross and like it's so hard because we have
Speaker 1: that that I feel like is so yeah, like it's
Speaker 1: just like a it's we're just like in a different
Speaker 1: horror now.
Speaker 3: It's true, it's it's it's a tough thing. And actually
Speaker 3: I've talked to a few of my friends about this.
Speaker 3: It's a tough thing because I feel like a lot
Speaker 3: of those let's say older women's spaces are holding on
Speaker 3: so tight to that, yeah, that it's becoming toxic in
Speaker 3: the in in that way. So I hope, I hope
Speaker 3: that conversation and moving forward will be able to open up.
Speaker 3: I mean, the point of having these spaces is that
Speaker 3: everyone can join and participate. Yeah, but it seems like
Speaker 3: the conversations that I get into every now and then,
Speaker 3: they'll be like, you know, you've fought so hard for
Speaker 3: the space, and it's like, yes, but we've fought for
Speaker 3: like the rights of everyone, you know. So yeah, It's
Speaker 3: it's sad to me too sometimes because I like a
Speaker 3: lot of the pioneers. I mean, they did a lot
Speaker 3: of work, but you're kind of now adapting the speechtriarchical
Speaker 3: conservative structure, and it's scary. It's really scary, you're like, so,
Speaker 3: so I agree. So again, another reason why I'd like
Speaker 3: to have space because I would really love to have
Speaker 3: everyone join and everyone be there in body, like in present,
Speaker 3: not zoom, but like be there and maybe share and
Speaker 3: maybe worship the goddess and all this kinds of stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and so that's sort of my vision for the future.
Speaker 3: It's open to everyone, but I know that we're in
Speaker 3: a weird space with those with those kinds of groups
Speaker 3: and that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So hopefully moving forward we can maybe even you know,
Speaker 3: for Women's months, I mean, we got we've got to
Speaker 3: figure out, you know, how do we move forward together?
Speaker 1: Yeah, like we have to, we have to. Yeah, I agree,
Speaker 1: it's so interesting. I've never really thought about it this way.
Speaker 1: But I'm not I'm not a spiritual person, so I
Speaker 1: tend to like, especially when it comes to the show,
Speaker 1: like it tends to feature very much as like there's
Speaker 1: like historical mythology to me, and there's nothing wrong with
Speaker 1: seeing it alternatively, but it's to me, like I'm just not, yeah,
Speaker 1: not in that. But I grew up in a I
Speaker 1: don't even know how to properly describe it, like in
Speaker 1: an incredibly woman centric spiritual group that sometimes when I
Speaker 1: talk about it and explain it too much, it sounds
Speaker 1: like a cult. So I don't I don't believe it
Speaker 1: is actually a cult, but it has a lot of qualities.
Speaker 1: But like I grew up like my mom was in it,
Speaker 1: and like So I'm just kind of realizing having this conversation,
Speaker 1: how much more I grew up around the concept of
Speaker 1: the goddess than other people. My mom, my mom still
Speaker 1: and like she's still in it. I just don't like
Speaker 1: deal with it, but my mom's still Every single time
Speaker 1: I'm with her in the car and she needs to
Speaker 1: find a parking space, she will say out loud, We're
Speaker 1: going to ask the parking Goddess. Like, like, I just see,
Speaker 1: I experienced things something like oh, that was just like
Speaker 1: how I grew up, and I realized that's super not normal.
Speaker 1: But like so yeah, I'm like, oh, I think I
Speaker 1: grew up in like kind of almost like what a
Speaker 1: little bit. It wasn't it wasn't explicitly to women, but
Speaker 1: it was like ninety percent women in this thing. So
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, right, that was like not totally normal.
Speaker 1: But I definitely grew up with this like concept of
Speaker 1: the goddess like everywhere all the time.
Speaker 3: That's amazing. I Mean, I grew up Catholic, so that
Speaker 3: was not really possible.
Speaker 1: But I'm almost Catholic, So then she did that instead.
Speaker 3: See I think my kids are growing up that way though.
Speaker 3: I mean I had to put my kids in Catholic
Speaker 3: school for a little bit when they were young, and
Speaker 3: I got called in the principal's office because my son
Speaker 3: was telling his teacher that the goddess created earth and
Speaker 3: the Goddess creates everything, and they were like and anyway,
Speaker 3: I called them out and public school. But no, I
Speaker 3: so I love that idea. I love that where you
Speaker 3: live like I No, that was not And in fact,
Speaker 3: this was the first year that I told my mother
Speaker 3: that I'm no longer celebrating Christmas and that I'm no
Speaker 3: longer considering myself a Christian. I mean, I haven't for
Speaker 3: a while, but I haven't said it out loud to
Speaker 3: my family. Yeah, and yeah, it's I mean, I don't
Speaker 3: know how it went over, and it's a work in progress.
Speaker 3: But yeah. So I grew up very much in the
Speaker 3: masculine world of Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well I can see Romania being very a very
Speaker 1: different time. We were like from Quebec, more Catholic than
Speaker 1: the rest of the country. True but still Canada.
Speaker 3: True. True. I think it does affect you in some
Speaker 3: way when you grow up thinking of like using the
Speaker 3: word goddess, Like even when people say, oh, my goddess,
Speaker 3: sometimes I still go oh my God. And then you know,
Speaker 3: like just different things like that, little things like that,
Speaker 3: and you realize how ingrained in you the patriarchy is. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and now that I'm I'm starting to adopt artemists also
Speaker 3: as a spirituality or certainly like the Goddess is certainly
Speaker 3: in crete where I feel a spirituality there. I don't
Speaker 3: know if it's all artimist or there's much more archaic
Speaker 3: divinities there, since there are other divinities there. But now
Speaker 3: that there's that kind of battle within yourself of like
Speaker 3: my cerebral brain going okay, like is this real? Like yeah,
Speaker 3: I know we're in a cave and I know you
Speaker 3: feel feeling feelings, but like is it really? Like can
Speaker 3: we document it? And so I'm in this weird transition
Speaker 3: space between the cerebral and the spiritual.
Speaker 7: Yeah, with the Goddess.
Speaker 3: But you know, in a way, it's a bit of
Speaker 3: a blessing because I always saw myself as an academic
Speaker 3: and for life an academic, and I think there's something
Speaker 3: about this movement that when I published my book, women
Speaker 3: just came out of the woodwork and were like, oh
Speaker 3: my God, I love Earth. And then we you know,
Speaker 3: being invited to groups and timing convers and so you're
Speaker 3: like suddenly you're like like you like you're saying, like,
Speaker 3: suddenly I'm surrounded by women who are using this term
Speaker 3: goddess everywhere, and I'm like, oh my god, this is
Speaker 3: where I want to live, This is where I want
Speaker 3: to be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love all this. I'm even remembering I in
Speaker 1: the group that my mom like was part of a
Speaker 1: lot when I was a kid. She even made a
Speaker 1: friend who had like changed her name to Artemis. So
Speaker 1: I like I'm realized, like like, oh, there's like there's
Speaker 1: recollection connections that i'd ever like fully recognized because I
Speaker 1: think I grew up with them just like No, then
Speaker 1: I just became obsessed with Greek mythology. So did I
Speaker 1: go very far?
Speaker 2: Probably not.
Speaker 1: And I think I have my own kind of like
Speaker 1: spiritual connection to it. But it is more about like
Speaker 1: this connection to like the history and the people more
Speaker 1: so than the like more explicit like divinity spirituality. But
Speaker 1: I think it is so interesting to look at like
Speaker 1: all the different levels that can and do exist within
Speaker 1: that like and it's just so about like you know,
Speaker 1: people's personal you know, choices and and interests, and I
Speaker 1: don't know, I do It's nice from the very least
Speaker 1: of just being like the world is becoming a little
Speaker 1: bit less and by the world, I mean you know,
Speaker 1: the West where I live, but becoming a little bit
Speaker 1: less Christian.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, yes, you're right. I would say that that's
Speaker 3: a that's a good assessment. Yes. This summer, I'm going
Speaker 3: to Greece and I'm starting to map all the Artemist
Speaker 3: temples in US, and so I'm doing this whole technical
Speaker 3: digital thing on Google and blah blah blah. I want
Speaker 3: to use my own pictures of my own stuff and
Speaker 3: blah blah. But one of the reasons why I'm doing
Speaker 3: that is because I want to be able to share
Speaker 3: like a visual representation of how popular these spaces were,
Speaker 3: how many of them there were. I guess in my mind,
Speaker 3: I want to sort of rebuild or reconstruct like what
Speaker 3: it would have been like in the ancient world to
Speaker 3: walk around, right, And I mean, I mean, Artemis is
Speaker 3: my boo, and so I'm here for her. I can't
Speaker 3: do all that. I can't do all of them. Yeah
Speaker 3: you throw you know, you saw a rock and you
Speaker 3: hit ale. So I can't do them. All, but I
Speaker 3: like this idea, Like I guess, I like something tangible
Speaker 3: or visual at least so that people everybody can see
Speaker 3: what it must have been like to live in a
Speaker 3: space where you had so many options to worship, right, yeah,
Speaker 3: so many personalities and that you could worship them simultaneously.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't know that we are. I mean
Speaker 3: we talk about it and we can imagine it, but
Speaker 3: I don't know that we can really contextualize it. Maybe
Speaker 3: it takes a little bit to get used to that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's so different, it's so foreign, like
Speaker 1: in such an interesting way. Yeah, yeah, sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I know, so that's so I think. That's
Speaker 3: my Yeah, that's my it's my passion, but it's also
Speaker 3: my goal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I love it. And now though I
Speaker 1: desperately want to know, like, are there more more like
Speaker 1: areas and temples devoted to Artemis where we know like
Speaker 1: kind of what what happened? Like I know, we don't
Speaker 1: know a ton about what happened at Baran, but like
Speaker 1: is there anything like that elsewhere that we know about?
Speaker 3: I mean, because it's men, we know it's Sparta.
Speaker 1: That Yeah, I was gonna say, I do remember something
Speaker 1: at Sparta, yeah.
Speaker 3: Right, that they used to whip themselves bloody and let
Speaker 3: up her statue. I don't know if you know really, Okay,
Speaker 3: so let me tell you the story and shirt. Okay,
Speaker 3: So thank you Orthea, and anybody who goes to Sparta,
Speaker 3: you can go see this temple. In fact, for a
Speaker 3: long time, I didn't even know that the Spartan's workship
Speaker 3: Artemis because it's not something they really talk about.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Anyways, so there's this little temp what looks like a
Speaker 3: little temple now, and there are a couple of stories
Speaker 3: from different historians, but basically a priestess of Artemis would
Speaker 3: stand in the middle of a circle holding a wooden
Speaker 3: statue of Artemis. They say Arthea means she's erected or
Speaker 3: stands erect So it's not the hunter goddess. It seems
Speaker 3: to be more like the Artemis of Ephesus style of goddess.
Speaker 3: But we don't know, we don't have a piece of it. Anyway,
Speaker 3: she stands in the middle holding this wooden statue, and
Speaker 3: around her all the Spartan boys that are about thirteen
Speaker 3: fourteen years old walk around whipping themselves so self flagellation, right, bleeding,
Speaker 3: bleeding and splashing the blood onto the statue, and obviously
Speaker 3: the priest is holding the statue. So they do this
Speaker 3: in two ways. They do this number one until the
Speaker 3: last man standing, so that's one, and that's how they
Speaker 3: would gain sort of honor among the boys. Or they
Speaker 3: do it until until the priestess says, okay, the statue
Speaker 3: has drank enough blood, soaked enough in blood that the
Speaker 3: goddess is satisfied. And they say that actually, this ritual
Speaker 3: is a replacement ritual to an earlier ritual of human
Speaker 3: sacrifice where a boy or a young man would be
Speaker 3: killed and his blood would be poured all over the statue.
Speaker 3: So they say that this was I don't remember who
Speaker 3: says that, if it's his, he or someone else, that
Speaker 3: this was a replacement ritual. Instead of sacrificing one person,
Speaker 3: they decided to do it communally and spriat and and
Speaker 3: you know, wa whipped themselves, whipped themselves until the statue
Speaker 3: is soaked. And so I try to imagine that.
Speaker 1: So when you're in Sparta, this most spartan thing I've
Speaker 1: ever heard, like it's I try.
Speaker 3: To imagine the priestess in the middle though, because he
Speaker 3: speak coded in blood too, right.
Speaker 1: It makes me think of if and I among the Turians.
Speaker 3: Yes, well, yes, this is where it comes from. Artemis
Speaker 3: Orthea is very much connected to the Torean Artemis. And
Speaker 3: they say that it's actually the same, the same version
Speaker 3: of this of her that arrives in Sparta. And then
Speaker 3: some someoneill say that they go from Sparta to Taurists,
Speaker 3: et cetera. Either way, there's a lot of bleeding and
Speaker 3: sacrificing on this statue. Yeah, yeah, so we know that
Speaker 3: one for sure, because we have lots of male writers. Yeah,
Speaker 3: talk about it, and it's not so secret. It's actually
Speaker 3: a public ritual because you would honor your family by
Speaker 3: how long you could stand and lead.
Speaker 2: Yourself of course. Yeah, very Sparta.
Speaker 1: I knew about that temple, but I did not know
Speaker 1: about those details. But I did know that there was
Speaker 1: like a big important temple to Artemis in Sparta, and like,
Speaker 1: oh okay, yeah, yes.
Speaker 3: The Romans tell a story in which they turned it.
Speaker 3: They made it about cheese. Eventually they make some little
Speaker 3: story like that they put cheese on the altar and
Speaker 3: as the boys are running to get the cheese, they're whipped.
Speaker 3: So whoever is able to through this whipping cycle and
Speaker 3: get the cheese. Wins, like these kind of games.
Speaker 1: That I feel like I've heard more where it's more
Speaker 1: about like them scrambling for food and getting punished. But
Speaker 1: I didn't know about that in connection with Artemith. Unless
Speaker 1: I did, I don't know. I learned so many things
Speaker 1: than they followed them by.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this is a later so I guess they
Speaker 3: sort of move away from the self whipping as the
Speaker 3: woman's once the Romans arrive, and so then they make
Speaker 3: it about food, but they're still getting whipped on the
Speaker 3: way to get the food, so there's still a sort
Speaker 3: of a bleeding aspect to it. But yeah, yes, she's
Speaker 3: quite the bloodthirsty goddess, particularly of course men's blood. She
Speaker 3: really enjoys their bleeding and suffering.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but thinking about that in connection to the fact
Speaker 1: that she is this kind of like she is a
Speaker 1: goddess of childbirth. But but I mean, I find her
Speaker 1: so interesting because she's this goddess of child birth who
Speaker 1: is notoriously childless. Yes, And so thinking about yeah, men's blood,
Speaker 1: like you're saying earlier, like men's blood in connection with that, yes,
Speaker 1: is much more interesting.
Speaker 3: Certainly, Yeah, Yeah, I like this idea that she doesn't
Speaker 3: have children of her own. I think that it really
Speaker 3: changes with the Virgin Mary because then she has children,
Speaker 3: so she becomes this mothering and yet Artemis is a
Speaker 3: mothering divinity without actually bursting from her body. I love
Speaker 3: that idea. I think there's a city there that patriarchy
Speaker 3: doesn't allow for, Like patriarchy goes, oh, you're a mother
Speaker 3: if you birth, Well.
Speaker 7: Actually that's not true.
Speaker 3: And so I really like that about her.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there are so many really interesting hold
Speaker 1: they feel like holdovers from this from the sort of
Speaker 1: the goddess worshiping time period that came before, probably came before.
Speaker 1: Like they feel like so many goddess feel like holdovers
Speaker 1: in that way, like Hestia, Artemis, Athena, Like they all
Speaker 1: have different in like points and like obviously Artemis is
Speaker 1: the most kind of in your face because she is
Speaker 1: also a goddess of childbirth. But like these these goddesses
Speaker 1: that are quote unquote virgins, but it, you know, we
Speaker 1: now have this association with that word about like it
Speaker 1: just has this Christian association, right, like the Virgin Mary.
Speaker 1: You know she's a virgin, but hers is about being
Speaker 1: pure it's about being you know, whatever all those different
Speaker 1: things are. I don't know, not a lot about Christianity.
Speaker 1: It's great, But like whereas the goddesses you know from
Speaker 1: Greek myth, it's more about them being unmarried. It's about
Speaker 1: them being like them. They don't have a husband, and
Speaker 1: like yes, they also don't have children, But it's not
Speaker 1: about purity. It's about like marital status. And I do
Speaker 1: think that's It's something that I didn't really like realize
Speaker 1: when I first started doing this because the every everything
Speaker 1: you read just uses the word virgin, and then we
Speaker 1: just put this connotation on it. But it's like that
Speaker 1: the perthenos originally meant more like unmarried. Yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: so much more fucking interesting, and I feel like it
Speaker 1: doesn't get said enough unless you're like in these you know,
Speaker 1: deep and you know, much more academic kind of circles
Speaker 1: with this like greater understanding of the contacts. I just, yes,
Speaker 1: absolutely wish what contexts existed when you're talking about any
Speaker 1: of this stuff. Absolutely, it's not about purity. It's not
Speaker 1: about time in in there, like, it's not about that.
Speaker 3: And you know what's interesting is that there's a lot
Speaker 3: of rumors. And I say rumors because they haven't been
Speaker 3: archaeologically or historically evidence. But there's a lot of rumors,
Speaker 3: let's say, in conversations among academics, that pre patriarchy goddess
Speaker 3: is like Haarra Athena Artemis had the skill or had
Speaker 3: the ability of personal geneticism. And so there's this rumors
Speaker 3: that inside the temples that the priestess's new secrets, whatever
Speaker 3: they may be, that they had these secret that could
Speaker 3: allow women to become pregnant to his female daughter or daughters,
Speaker 3: I want to say, magically, but without the association, you know,
Speaker 3: without the help of a man, and the way that
Speaker 3: Hara gives birth to Hephaestus or whatever. Yeah, and so,
Speaker 3: and what's fascinating is, I don't know if you've seen
Speaker 3: the stingray that's sort of self impregnant, the personogenetics stingray.
Speaker 1: Okay, I've seen the pregnant sting ray. I didn't know
Speaker 1: it was personal genetic and that's why it's interesting.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: I would like, why do we care about a pregnant stingray?
Speaker 2: Thank you? That's vital information.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, And I just I'm fascinated with her because
Speaker 3: it's like so she was all, no stingrays are around,
Speaker 3: just these sharks. And in the beginning, people are like, oh,
Speaker 3: maybe she's gonna have shark babies. It's not possible for
Speaker 3: her to get pregnant.
Speaker 7: On her own.
Speaker 3: Now they're actually using that word, like on TikTok and
Speaker 3: social media and use they're using the word persono geneticism.
Speaker 3: As a historian, I'm like, oh my.
Speaker 1: God, Yeah, that's exciting. Like I know that word not
Speaker 1: in modern context normally, but I love it.
Speaker 3: Exactly, you know, and so and so that's kind of
Speaker 3: exciting because it's sort of like scientific, yeah, that this
Speaker 3: is a natural occurrence. Now I'm not saying that, like
Speaker 3: I said, there's no evidence that women were you know, yeah,
Speaker 3: but there's lots of stories like Diya and Harah and
Speaker 3: other stories in which goddesses do reproduce.
Speaker 1: Let's say, oh yeah, I mean there's countless, like there's
Speaker 1: so many parthenogenic goddesses and it's yeah, but they're just
Speaker 1: they're immediately subjugated and like that's like usually by their
Speaker 1: child and so and also the childs are children are
Speaker 1: usually men. Oh okay, interesting, Now I'm thinking about so
Speaker 1: many things when it comes to that like, Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have to wreck my brain later and see if
Speaker 1: there is a parthenogenetic child that it does not immediately
Speaker 1: subjugate their mother. But regardless, there are so many and
Speaker 1: it is really interesting that but yeah, I mean you
Speaker 1: can just kind of see how these stories were transformed, right,
Speaker 1: how how something existed in the prehistoric time, that then
Speaker 1: when the stories that we now have were written down whatever,
Speaker 1: like they were, whether intentionally or otherwise, but like making
Speaker 1: these changes to benefit the current world order of the patriarchy.
Speaker 3: Yes, and that leads to the double goddess theory and
Speaker 3: the idea that So there's a couple of questions. First
Speaker 3: is why do we have so many stories of pressiano
Speaker 3: genetics goddess. It doesn't make any sense if they had already,
Speaker 3: if there wasn't something mysterious is happening before. Number one, Yeah,
Speaker 3: Number two is we have this double goddess and in
Speaker 3: archaeology we have these kind of blocks with two heads,
Speaker 3: and for a long time there were mysteries, you know,
Speaker 3: and lots of scholars today, well lot it's about three
Speaker 3: talk about how these are possibly mother daughters statues. So
Speaker 3: the idea that mother to share womb that mother daughter
Speaker 3: share secrets that mother daughters passed down mysteries, and so
Speaker 3: this imagine this world in which a goddess parsonogenetically creates
Speaker 3: a daughter through which she communicates history, ritual story. That
Speaker 3: daughter then parsono genetically connects another and this idea sort
Speaker 3: of this magical, fantastical story. But it seems that we
Speaker 3: have partial obsession, partial repetition of these kinds of stories
Speaker 3: in the each world that remain unexplained, like why did
Speaker 3: they just tell us so many of these stories? Why
Speaker 3: do we have so many double goddess things? And perhaps
Speaker 3: because women kept lots of secrets or didn't write things down.
Speaker 3: We don't really have an explanation for that.
Speaker 1: Well, but it's I think it's also I mean, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's you're a phrasing, but I want to
Speaker 1: point it out to my listeners that like they might
Speaker 1: have been writing them down, but if they did, they
Speaker 1: didn't get copied for us to have them, right, Like,
Speaker 1: it's very likely or possible at least that they wrote
Speaker 1: a ton of stuff down, but that stuff doesn't naturally last,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, like unlast, somebody's out there being like
Speaker 1: this is worthy of my copying my transcription to keep
Speaker 1: it alive, which like obviously they would never do if
Speaker 1: it was all about women because Christianity came in and
Speaker 1: fucked everything up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. I mean that's a very
Speaker 3: good point. I mean, like we only have Sapho's little pieces,
Speaker 3: but exact cent was participating. Why wouldn't others?
Speaker 1: Well, exactly, and we have her little pieces mostly, I
Speaker 1: have as far as I know, but I haven't looked
Speaker 1: that deep because of like random survival, right, yeah, like,
Speaker 1: oh the papyrus was used for something else, so we
Speaker 1: have it, and that's why she's so damn fragmentary. So
Speaker 1: like if anything sappho, is this like incredible example of
Speaker 1: how women wrote stuff down and why we don't.
Speaker 2: Still have it?
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, that's actually it may be a little more
Speaker 3: tragic in a way, right, It's true. That's a little
Speaker 3: more true. And I mean, I mean we haven't discovered everything,
Speaker 3: so yeah, it's possible that somewhere, somehow we may come
Speaker 3: across some other pieces. But yeah, you're right. I mean
Speaker 3: if the value of those things were not see it
Speaker 3: was not observed, then we have lost a lot. And
Speaker 3: you know that repetition or someone overhearing somebody talking and
Speaker 3: then writing it down and things like that. Again, we
Speaker 3: get it through men's eyes a lot, and so we don't.
Speaker 3: That is part of the frustration I think of being
Speaker 3: of looking back in history, is that we have not
Speaker 3: yet found all the documentation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean I think about it all the
Speaker 1: time because I am deeply obsessed with Euripides, in large
Speaker 1: part because I think he thought women more people worthy
Speaker 1: of describing as such. But how like, you know, so
Speaker 1: many of his plays we only have again because of
Speaker 1: like this random occurrence, not because they were deemed worthy
Speaker 1: and so and you know in some of the cases,
Speaker 1: like I think The Helen being one of them, Like
Speaker 1: it's a really interesting like way to look at both
Speaker 1: what they found to be worthy of survival back then. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but like for lots of different reasons, right, Like the
Speaker 1: most obvious being that The Helen makes Helen not to
Speaker 1: blame for the Trojan War, and so like there's not
Speaker 1: going to be a lot of support for that, because
Speaker 1: it's really nice to blame the Trojan War on Helen. Yes,
Speaker 1: But then also because it's a it's a play where
Speaker 1: Menelaist looks like a little dweeb and Helen saves everyone,
Speaker 1: and like I don't do you know offhand if if
Speaker 1: if can I among the Torreans is one of the
Speaker 1: alphabet plays because I could see it being.
Speaker 2: One, and I know it's in the right yes, yes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's in the right letters. Yeah, because because like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's another one where like Arrestes and Pilats
Speaker 1: are like complete dweves who can't do anything if if
Speaker 1: if Anaa isn't there to help them. Yeah, like those
Speaker 1: two plays are so similar. I just recently like finished
Speaker 1: The Turians after not having read it for so long,
Speaker 1: so it's sort of in my head. But I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: I just think that with everything, because we also do
Speaker 1: know that there were other women poets, like we know
Speaker 1: their names, but we don't tend to have much that
Speaker 1: survived if anything, like.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, yes, I mean you're right, you're actually right
Speaker 3: actually because women entered competitions, so we know that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't know, like it's it even more tragic now
Speaker 3: that I think of it, that we don't have.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I feel like I can name a
Speaker 1: couple that I've heard of, of, like like Sappho, but
Speaker 1: whose work just doesn't serve Like I feel like Arena
Speaker 1: is one and there's a p anyway. I know, I
Speaker 1: have a book about it, but like, yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's just so interesting to really look at the stuff
Speaker 1: that we know existed, but we don't have, let alone
Speaker 1: everything that we don't even know if it existed because
Speaker 1: it probably featured or was written exclusively like by women.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think that that's part of one of
Speaker 3: the obstacles that we are hoping to overcome with new digs.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm going on it. I'm going to dig,
Speaker 3: not on the dig in Eritrea where there's a temple
Speaker 3: to Artemist that's being excavated now, and they found some
Speaker 3: statuettes and things like that, but I'm always hoping for inscriptions.
Speaker 3: I'm always hoping for little pieces of writing. They're still digging,
Speaker 3: so it'll take a few years, but who knows. Like so,
Speaker 3: those are some of the pieces that we could then again,
Speaker 3: I mean it would be a small piece, but it
Speaker 3: would be something that would give us some ideas. So far,
Speaker 3: all we've done is we found her name on lots
Speaker 3: of pottery and lots of pots and maybe some like
Speaker 3: So when I go into museums sometimes, especially the museum
Speaker 3: at Bern they have a whole wall where they have
Speaker 3: just shards, just shards of I don't know the thousands
Speaker 3: of pots and things that were there with her name,
Speaker 3: and so they've selected the shard with her name and
Speaker 3: they put it on the wall and I just stand
Speaker 3: there sometimes and I'm like, oh, look at how many
Speaker 3: times they wrote her name.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I love stuff like that so much. I also
Speaker 1: just have like a real obsession with like regional Greek
Speaker 1: museums because they always like the lowest budget museum you've
Speaker 1: ever been into, but they have the coolest stuff and
Speaker 1: I love the combination, like no notes, They're just so fun.
Speaker 3: It's true, It's true. My only frustration with places like Koreas,
Speaker 3: for example, is that they have these massive artifact spaces
Speaker 3: and then no labels, and it drives me a little bit.
Speaker 1: No labels. And then also, like I swear nine times
Speaker 1: out of ten, like something's closed. Like I've been to Dal's,
Speaker 1: I guess only. I've been to Dallas twice, but both
Speaker 1: times the museum has been closed. Yes, and I know
Speaker 1: because they're working on it, but I want them to
Speaker 1: open it. Or I went to Samothraki, which was like
Speaker 1: quite an effort, and the museum was like mostly closed.
Speaker 1: I mean I did get it tour by the archaeologist,
Speaker 1: so I probably shouldn't complain. I knew people, but like still,
Speaker 1: you know, like just but anyway, yeah, the stuff you
Speaker 1: find of those little ones. And now though I'm upset
Speaker 1: with going to burn So is it like I don't
Speaker 1: I'm a dumb ass and I don't have a driver's license.
Speaker 1: Is it easy to get to I'm gonna look into it.
Speaker 2: I don't agree. Soon, Yeah you are.
Speaker 3: I saw that you were going on a trip with
Speaker 3: people and stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's excited.
Speaker 1: I keep kind of forgetting about that because I'm afraid
Speaker 1: of being the center of attention. But that is part
Speaker 1: of it. But I'm going to be there like probably
Speaker 1: almost a month and a half so that I can
Speaker 1: be there for those ten days with all of those
Speaker 1: people and then also have all the time alone.
Speaker 3: To nice nice or I would say, I would say
Speaker 3: you'd have to drive to it. You could take the bus,
Speaker 3: but then you have to walk. Yeah, well, I mean,
Speaker 3: well comes not bad, but I would say, like about
Speaker 3: a two kilometer walk, Oh that's not bad.
Speaker 2: I can get that. Yeah, all right, I'm taking notes.
Speaker 1: I need to add more, like places I've been like
Speaker 1: trying to market all. I'm trying to see everything, and
Speaker 1: so yeah, I got to add some to the list.
Speaker 1: I keep just going back to Naxos because it's the
Speaker 1: greatest place in the world.
Speaker 3: It really is wonderful. Yeah, it really is.
Speaker 1: But I could use more Artemis. I like, now I'm
Speaker 1: going to be way more obsessed with her, I think,
Speaker 1: but I just I think she is one of the
Speaker 1: goddesses who is kind of most affected by by the patriarchy,
Speaker 1: by the way that we are, way the way that
Speaker 1: we can view her without having the like the deep
Speaker 1: knowledge that comes with like years and years and years
Speaker 1: of study, right like like even the stuff I can find.
Speaker 1: And I am, you know, at this point, considerably more
Speaker 1: well versed in looking for this stuff and in the
Speaker 1: ancient sources specifically, like compared to just you know, any
Speaker 1: old person. But at the same time, I still, like
Speaker 1: am so limited by the ancient sources because and they
Speaker 1: were just dude, So I can do all my thinking
Speaker 1: about like what they didn't say or what got lost
Speaker 1: or whatever, and I do, but you know, like unless
Speaker 1: you're in academia. Often you just can't get deeper, and
Speaker 1: that sucks.
Speaker 3: So this is my goal, so and so, and this
Speaker 3: is my goal with the Artemis Center. But also I
Speaker 3: think you're right. I think one of the ways that
Speaker 3: I find Artemis is easy to understand is more through artifacts.
Speaker 1: And yes, yes, you mentioned Artemis emphasis and I realize
Speaker 1: I really wanted to bring that up. Uh so I
Speaker 1: just think you said artifacts. And now we have to
Speaker 1: at least just quickly talk about about the many boobed Artemis.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, I'm upsetted. Okay, live, we have to
Speaker 3: do a whole thing because I'm writing. So this is
Speaker 3: the book that I'm writing now is on Artemis Ephysis.
Speaker 3: She was part of my dissertation, and now I have, like,
Speaker 3: I don't know, a bunch of more chapters. But yes,
Speaker 3: so my argument has always been that those are actually
Speaker 3: queen d cells and they're Queen d eggs, and I
Speaker 3: have all this evidence, like all these evidence, photographical evidence
Speaker 3: and all those kind of evidence, and she actually just
Speaker 3: started getting boobs once Christianity and European male artists started
Speaker 3: doing that. So yeah, so those are not.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't think they look like them they look
Speaker 1: like them to us, but they don't look like them
Speaker 1: in terms of ancient statuary, like.
Speaker 3: They both.
Speaker 2: Don't they okay, on any fare of.
Speaker 3: The ancient copies, I mean, we don't have the originals,
Speaker 3: but we have some Roman copies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was gonna say I saw one for the
Speaker 1: first time in person. I went to the Capital and
Speaker 1: Museum in Rome in January and they have one there.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because they also though, like I mean,
Speaker 1: even nipples aside, they don't look like the way that
Speaker 1: they sculpted breasts in the ancient world.
Speaker 3: Yes, so if you google Queen Bee cells, just simple
Speaker 3: Google search, you will find a way because cream the
Speaker 3: eggs are longer and they have a shape, and you'll
Speaker 3: find a way that they sit on the hive. I
Speaker 3: don't know how to explain it. Yeah, so yeah, so
Speaker 3: this is my new Like I have so much to
Speaker 3: say about her and et Targartis and all these kinds
Speaker 3: of things that are connected to her. Anyway, it's a
Speaker 3: long story, but yes, she is. She's very special. She's
Speaker 3: so much more than a hunter goddess, and she's so
Speaker 3: much more than everything. She's very very special.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I might I might have to bring you back
Speaker 1: to talk about her, and especially in really the relation
Speaker 1: to at our Goddess, because I've never I don't know
Speaker 1: enough about beyond Greek sources to like feel like I
Speaker 1: could do anything justice, but I always want to know.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, no, she's She's really amazing. And and
Speaker 3: my argument over my thought process has been, you know,
Speaker 3: why are timists like why the name are like, Okay,
Speaker 3: we know historically, but also there's something there's lots of layers.
Speaker 3: There is what I mean that would have made that
Speaker 3: the perfect fit. And they actually just found something in
Speaker 3: Esthesis that is a small statue of the Mistress of
Speaker 3: Animals and we can trace the Mistress of Animals but
Speaker 3: to Creeds. And now I'll Creed is my place, like
Speaker 3: it feels like.
Speaker 2: Home and is amazing.
Speaker 3: It is amazing, right and so and so I'm I'm
Speaker 3: hoping to live there eventually since I had my EU
Speaker 3: password I leave.
Speaker 1: Canada jealous, I'm like watching, I'm looking at Greek places
Speaker 1: as I won't lie.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, I mean once you're so. So there's this
Speaker 3: there's this really multi layered aspect of artsmiths of Ephesis
Speaker 3: that I think really embodies her complexity, and I think
Speaker 3: it's time we talk about her as well. Like I
Speaker 3: think that there is time that we bring to life
Speaker 3: the way that ancients worshiped in these multi layered complex
Speaker 3: ways that I think we have really shrunk down or
Speaker 3: maybe these one dimensional.
Speaker 2: You know yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, especially even just the mythology like worship broadly. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: but like I mean, I think about it with the
Speaker 1: mythology all the time because and you know, if you're
Speaker 1: not deep in this, you pick up a book and
Speaker 1: you get a completely skewed view of what it is
Speaker 1: because it is almost impossible to contextualize it all in
Speaker 1: a way that is like you know, complete and not
Speaker 1: bogging down everything. So like I understand, But at the
Speaker 1: same time, like you go to a store and you
Speaker 1: just pick up a book called the Greek Mets, even
Speaker 1: if it's by like you know, a scholar of all
Speaker 1: of this stuff, and it's still like if you're just
Speaker 1: reading a quote unquote retelling of the myths themselves, like
Speaker 1: you're not getting the context of how many centuries were
Speaker 1: happening within these stories and how much they would have
Speaker 1: changed and been like regionally specific, and like you know,
Speaker 1: everyone kind of has to like pick a version and
Speaker 1: go with it. And it's why I think my show
Speaker 1: has become both very detailed and maybe sometimes annoying. I
Speaker 1: don't care. I'm not going to stop, but like, I
Speaker 1: will always tell all the different versions, and I will
Speaker 1: never pretend that like there's one answer to anything, there
Speaker 1: is no, there's no like canon.
Speaker 2: I've been reading.
Speaker 1: I've been doing a lot of research on Medusa for
Speaker 1: a book that I'm working on in yes, I mean,
Speaker 1: Medusa's like my pet, she's my artemis. Like but yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the Medusa, the trying to contextualize her stories,
Speaker 1: trying to pick out a cut and dry version, like
Speaker 1: it is so impossible. And I just keep reading the
Speaker 1: word canon in a bunch of places, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: who's canon? Like, what are we I've read twice now,
Speaker 1: some very like supposedly like fancy academic works referring to
Speaker 1: a Pseudopolyodorus as a canonical version of her story. No,
Speaker 1: I guess right, I'm like, why the why? Like I
Speaker 1: don't think that we should ever be calling anything in
Speaker 1: Greek myth canon, yes, but if we have to for
Speaker 1: some strange reason, pseudo Apollodorus is not it.
Speaker 3: No, no, anyway, you know, academia sometimes can be a
Speaker 3: little out of touch with some things, and yeah, it's
Speaker 3: it's still a field.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I mean, and I like the work that
Speaker 1: was most annoying to me. I have this, like I
Speaker 1: just found it at some used books, but it's like
Speaker 1: the Oxford Dictionary or like Encyclopedia of Greek and Rollman
Speaker 1: Men the classical myth and yeah, and I was like
Speaker 1: not going to use it as a main source, but
Speaker 1: like at least for like an inspiration for where else
Speaker 1: to look. But then it says one it's it calls
Speaker 1: Pseudopolydorus canonical, and then two says that Medusa is linked
Speaker 1: with this Mesopotamian goddess who I had never heard of.
Speaker 1: Then I googled it, and even Google can't agree with
Speaker 1: that at all and instead links her to like a
Speaker 1: different Mesopotamian divinity. Anyway, it was very interesting and only
Speaker 1: confused me more than when I started. But yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's funny the stuff you find. And then I just
Speaker 1: think about people who don't have the background knowledge that
Speaker 1: I have finding that stuff, and you just are like,
Speaker 1: this is the right answer, you know, And that's just
Speaker 1: it's too bad.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, And you know now you say that part
Speaker 3: of the reason why I started the school and I did.
Speaker 3: I have this these courses that are like little courses
Speaker 3: called Goddess Essentials. One of the reasons why I started
Speaker 3: that is because exactly this. People would come to me
Speaker 3: and be like, oh, what do you know about Hekti?
Speaker 3: And like what's true and what's not true? Or what
Speaker 3: do you know about Aphrodite and what's true in us?
Speaker 3: And I thought to myself, Yeah, like, how if you
Speaker 3: don't want to do a whole degree and you shouldn't
Speaker 3: have to, ye, Like, come on, how do you look
Speaker 3: up a source and be like, here's something that tells
Speaker 3: me about primary source, secondary source, contextualizes it a little bit,
Speaker 3: but it's short enough that I can do it and
Speaker 3: I can get it. And I thought, you know what,
Speaker 3: I'm going to do some of them, not all of them,
Speaker 3: but I'm going to do like ten goddesses so that
Speaker 3: if people are like looking for where do I start,
Speaker 3: you can find it because that has been my problem too.
Speaker 3: It's like you go digging for something, you fall down
Speaker 3: the rabbit hole, but then you also find so much
Speaker 3: stuff that's like what where did you get this from? No,
Speaker 3: this is hold on wait what and then it creates
Speaker 3: this chaos?
Speaker 1: Yes, oh yeah, yeah, I mean even in just like this.
Speaker 1: I've only been working on this Medusa piece for a
Speaker 1: little while, but like the number of places that, without
Speaker 1: any kind of explanation or or like context at all,
Speaker 1: say with their whole whole mouth, like the Greek myth
Speaker 1: of Medusa is, and then they just proceed to tell
Speaker 1: the version from the Metamorphosies, and I'm like, there is
Speaker 1: nothing wrong with the version of the Metamorphoses, but it
Speaker 1: is explicitly and categorically not the Greek myth of Medusa. Like, yes,
Speaker 1: it has value, but it doesn't have value as being
Speaker 1: the Greek myth of Medusa.
Speaker 3: Yes, that happened to me with Apollo because I had
Speaker 3: said something about him being a total douche Canoe and
Speaker 3: somebody had said to me using the metamorphosis. Oh, well,
Speaker 3: you know, he only learned about this later, he only
Speaker 3: did this, and I had to do a whole little
Speaker 3: spiel about like Roman history is not Greek history and
Speaker 3: it comes after uh, you know, Greek history, and it's
Speaker 3: you know, it rewrites the stories however they want, and
Speaker 3: it's fine, but you know, anyways, So so you're absolutely
Speaker 3: right that, and I mean, in all fairness, like how
Speaker 3: not everybody should have to get a degree to understand.
Speaker 3: We need to have a space that's just that's more
Speaker 3: clear and more easy to access, and that people can
Speaker 3: just learn what they need to learn and feel confident
Speaker 3: that Okay, I've got the basics and now I can
Speaker 3: go out there and make whatever connections might feel fun
Speaker 3: for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so maybe we're.
Speaker 3: On our way to that, but maybe we're just you know,
Speaker 3: maybe this is the movement that's happening now, right because
Speaker 3: for a long time, of course this was gatekeeping. There
Speaker 3: was a lot of great gatekeeping around classics.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, right, so now less so yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 2: getting better at least. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Uh well I clearly could talk with this forever,
Speaker 1: but I will not keep you forever, but I would
Speaker 1: love if we could. If you have got a couple
Speaker 1: extra minutes, Yeah, just finish off by telling people where
Speaker 1: they can find more about like the project you're working on,
Speaker 1: your podcast, like literally anything you want to share about
Speaker 1: Artemis and yourself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so social media is Artemis experts.
Speaker 2: And nice and easy. I love that and I had to.
Speaker 3: Think about it for a long time, and I had
Speaker 3: my one of my PhD supervisors going, well, aren't you
Speaker 3: the artemist X? But who else is working in artemists
Speaker 3: in the world academically And I was like, well, actually,
Speaker 3: no one is really working on her. And he's like, okay,
Speaker 3: well then just kick the name and you know, yeah,
Speaker 3: So I like that, and then the Artemis Center has
Speaker 3: the whole website. The Goddess Project is my podcast, also
Speaker 3: born out of this idea that I wanted to talk
Speaker 3: about goddess is the way I wanted to talk about them,
Speaker 3: And sometimes when I teach at university we have to
Speaker 3: stick to like dates and names of emperors and things
Speaker 3: like that. So I was like, no, let's talk about
Speaker 3: the tools and all the gory bits. So the Goddess
Speaker 3: Project is yeah, as the podcast, and yeah, that's good it.
Speaker 3: Otherwise you could probably find me through those three things,
Speaker 3: those three places.
Speaker 1: Yeah, wonderful. I'll link to things in the apisode description
Speaker 1: too so they can find it. But this was so
Speaker 1: much fun. Thank you so much for doing that.
Speaker 3: Thank you Live. I've been looking forward to meeting you
Speaker 3: for so long.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, say I love it.
Speaker 7: Thank you.
Speaker 1: I love it and talking with people makes me love
Speaker 1: it so much more and I needed that today specifically,
Speaker 1: So thank you.
Speaker 2: This was very fun.
Speaker 3: That makes me okay. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Oh as always, thank you all so much for listening.
Speaker 1: I just I mean, I have been having a tough
Speaker 1: go of it lately. Just now withheld tears long enough
Speaker 1: that I could record this, We're doing great. Uh you know,
Speaker 1: I started talking and I had nowhere to go. Honestly,
Speaker 1: thank you all so much for listening. Thank you all
Speaker 1: for the really kind notes that you've sent me to
Speaker 1: when it comes to the utter disaster of a human
Speaker 1: that I am in this moment while trying to put
Speaker 1: out incredible content that I've been so excited about for months,
Speaker 1: Like I have had these episodes planned four months and months,
Speaker 1: i e. Since before everything I loved exploded in my
Speaker 1: face and died. And so it's been really hard to
Speaker 1: feel like I had the ideas that I was so
Speaker 1: excited about and these people I was so excited to
Speaker 1: talk to you or in some cases people I'd talked
Speaker 1: to before, and like, oh, anyway, there's been tough moments,
Speaker 1: but it's been you know, really tough to to try
Speaker 1: to create this content and put it out when I
Speaker 1: have this this like deep desire to do it, but
Speaker 1: also an inability to function as a human being. Official
Speaker 1: depression setting in. We're looking into it. But in the meantime,
Speaker 1: I just really appreciate the supportive nature of my listeners
Speaker 1: and I just you know, thank you, thank you for
Speaker 1: not once complaining about this show being a little bit
Speaker 1: more haphazard lately, and just you know, thank you for
Speaker 1: being really nice and lovely. And that's all I've got
Speaker 1: to say. Actually, let's talk about Miss Maybe is written
Speaker 1: produced by me Live Albert MICHAELA. Smith is the Hermes
Speaker 1: to My Olympians. My assistant producer Laura Smith.
Speaker 2: Again no relation.
Speaker 1: I think it's funny every time I have to say
Speaker 1: their name is back to back, like come on, guys,
Speaker 1: really and any case, Laura Smith is the wonderful audio
Speaker 1: engineer and production assistant. The podcast is part of the
Speaker 1: iHeart Podcast Network. Listen on Spotify or Apple or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts. Uh, if you are interested in
Speaker 1: supporting this show or me, or just all the work
Speaker 1: that I do and you get to listen to for free,
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to guilty. I promise, but it's just
Speaker 1: like factual. You can subscribe on Patreon and contribute to
Speaker 1: the show. There is a ton of back bonus content
Speaker 1: for you to binge. Honestly, like I can't even I
Speaker 1: don't even know how many episodes. It's pretty wild how
Speaker 1: much I've been put out in seven years of having
Speaker 1: a Patreon. And I say all of that because I've
Speaker 1: not been very prolific lately. I haven't been able to
Speaker 1: do anything because you know, I'm barely here.
Speaker 2: But there is so much.
Speaker 1: If you want to contribute to the show, it's patreon
Speaker 1: dot com, slash myths, baby, and if I let myself
Speaker 1: continue to talk into this microphone without a script, it's
Speaker 1: just gonna go poorly. Thank you all so much. You
Speaker 1: are truly wonderful. I really, truly, honestly could not keep
Speaker 1: doing this without you. That's a that's a straight up fact.
Speaker 1: I am live and I love this shit.