The Temple of Artemis

I have always struggled with the idea of how Gods and Goddesses fit into the framework of our Soul reality, the Source, Life between Lives, etc. For instance, I know that Gods and Goddesses are constructs, a way of us to personalise certain forces, forces that make up our created world. But when I started doing the Gaia Method, I found that aspects of those Gods/Goddesses were being anchored in the people receiving the attunement, and often I would ‘be’ a Goddess, energetically, like a channel for her, while she passed the attunement.

Trying to understand this intellectually was a problem. I’m not a believer, or follower, of Gods/Goddesses. I don’t believe in altars and rituals, although I have no issue with people who do. I was brought up as a Catholic, so for me at least, Jesus and Mary were IT! We didn’t do Gods and Goddesses. I didn’t even know that they existed. We had saints, which of course are the same thing! I know that now!

I also do not ‘worship’ deities. I learned that lesson early, while in the Hare Krsna’s during my teens. Physical idols were just that, physical idols, not Gods. Although, again, I understand that they provide a focus for people to connect to a particular energy.

However, while working with these Goddesses I can feel their ‘personality essence’ and how they work in our lives. They contain a history of all the ways in which we honoured them in the past. But I still had trouble rationalising them. Working with them is like working with pages of the past, in the present, and they feel like real people to me, but with a knowledge and way of acting that is not mine.

Then I found more Seth material on this subject and I suddenly felt ‘aaahhhh’. Here is what he says:

“I am trying to tell you that if you look inward, and study your own sacredness and creativity and blessedness, and joy and power, as closely as you study the sacred books of the gods, then you would realize that all those books of the gods were based upon the great reality of the individual, the individual soul, and therefore based upon your own reality.

Do yourselves just honor, and in doing yourselves that honor, you will see within yourself, the ‘gods-in-becoming’ that you are.

Now the idea of the gods has been set up before you, by yourselves as ideals for you to follow – projected outward from your own souls into physical reality as guides for you to follow – that you yourselves have set up. And so they have followed the thesis and the times and the historical context of their mortal birth.

But behind and within those myths are the realities of your being – the Christ and the Buddha are both within you, for they are symbols of what you are. Pray to them and you pray to the hidden gods within you. You do not need to kick them aside like a child irritated with his toys!

Understand the nature of the gods as they come down to you, through your histories, and in them always you will find the unspoken but real nature of the hidden god within each of you.

All That Is is beyond your intellectual ideas of personhood. Any concepts you use to personify that idea can be useful. But only in seeing beyond them can you release the power, and the energy, and to some extent, the knowledge of what you are, and only through understanding that, can you hope to have any idea of All That Is. For All That Is materializes through your flesh and being.”

That made total sense to me, especially as the Gaia Method is about anchoring aspects of Feminine Divinity and manifesting those qualities and energies in the world. It is about re-learning the way we trained in past times, so that the energies of the Goddess, which have been lost in us, is found again. We are re-birthing these awarenesses into this world.

As they move through us, we acknowledge them as part of us, and we live that reality in our everyday world. The world of feminine power and wisdom. We are the Goddesses, incarnated in the world, to bring back the awareness of her love and kindness, wisdom and power to a very ailing world. But we are human beings living in a physical world, so that Divinity is acted on in our reality. We manifest her wisdom through our bodies and our actions. That doesn’t mean we run around acting like a princess, it means learning to channel that part of ourselves, when it is required, into our art, our lives, our writing and our Being; into our relationships, with each other and with the natural world. We move, quietly through the world of humanity, bringing our gifts and sharing our knowledge.

We don’t ‘smite’, as much as we might want to sometimes! We have lived a long time, not knowing this part of ourselves, and getting to know it again, and to channel it again, is going to take time. But there are many great teachers out there who are here to help us do just that. So we are indeed blessed. And remember too, that we are not seeking perfection either, We are seeking to do our best and to Be Divine Humans. We have plenty of room to grow. And one day, hopefully, our world will be populated with the Gods and Goddesses again…US! It is time to reconnect.

“Artemis was the most renowned patron of the Bee in all of Greece. As the daughter of Zeus and twin sister to Apollo, Artemis was the goddess of nature, particularly forests, hills, rocky outcroppings and rivers; all natural habitats of Bees. Artemis’s Roman equivalent was the goddess Diana, and statues of Artemis | Diana from the Anatolian city of Ephesus portray her covered in eggs, which some have identified as Bee eggs given that a typical Queen Bee will lay tens of thousands of eggs in her short lifetime. Alternatively, others believe that the abundance of small spherical objects represent bull testicles. In either case, the connection between Ephesus and the Bee is irrefutable, for “Ephesus” is thought to derive from the word “Apasas”, which was the name of the city in the Bronze Age and a pre-Greek word meaning Bee. Bees are often depicted on statues of Artemis | Diana and her headdress frequently hints at a Beehive style design.”

Often when I am working at a site, opening up vortices in the earth, bees are part of it. In Tel el Amarna, Egypt, I opened the vortex, or Gate, which had been closed when they shut down the energy of the city before Horemheb moved everyone back to Thebes. When I opened the vortex, which was in the form of a link lotus, millions of bees flew out and flew all over Egypt, collecting pollen.

On another occasion, while connecting Luxor temple with the Temple of Khonsu, bees appeared, which then turned into priestesses, who then helped me to anchor the energies. After that I saw lots of related bee energies and would often see a woman dressed in white, offering me a honey-comb, dripping with honey.

Artemis is Goddess of Nature, her nymphs inhabiting streams and rivers. Where the waters meet with the sea, an energy shift occurs. The meeting place of these waters is significant as the sea energy is different to that of the land. The river water goes through an energetic transformation as it passes into the sea.

“Archaeologist Marija Gimbutas (1921 – 1994) writes of this passage by Porphyry: “…we learn that Artemis is a bee, Melissa, and that both she and the bull belong to the moon. Hence both are connected with the idea of a periodic regeneration. We also learn that souls are bees and that Melissa draws souls down to be born.”

This I found very interesting!

“We also learn that souls are bees and that Melissa draws souls down to be born”. One of the things I do is I work with newborn babies. I am often in communication with them before they are born and if I am to play a part in their life purpose then they tell me how they are faring inutero. Sometimes if they have had a difficult time, I give them healing, so that they can manage this new situation. My guides explained, saying that the new souls being born into this region, are being born into new frequencies and need some help adjusting to them. Because the energy of the Earth is changing they need to be physically aligned to its newer energies. Up until the point they told me this I had been wondering why I was healing so many new-born babies. Often the babies had been born in traumatic circumstances, either prematurely, or unexpectedly, and had often not been expected to survive. Sometimes I connect my energy to the soul of the child and ‘remind’ it of what it is has come to do. This is a particularly lovely feeling and it connects me to the child on a soul level, so that we remain connected. Artemis is also Goddess of childbirth and protector of women in labour and of young girls. Other Gaia Method healers, who have also been initiated into the Artemis temple, speak of the same experiences, of helping younger women during labour and assisting with animal birthings. It is as if we play the dual role of physical midwife and energetic midwife, birthing these new souls. I find that I play a role in the girl-child’s life up to a certain point. It is as if I am giving them the energies they need as a foundation, and then they are on their way. But I keep an eye on them from a distance!

She is the Goddess of the Wilderness and of Wild animals. But is this the natural wilderness or our human wilderness, as spoken of in the initiation into her temple? Perhaps is is both; as a reflection. Although many of us seem to become more involved in the care of animals or birds, or both.

She is a Lunar Goddess, and on the first level of her temple initiation, we are given a lunar god/goddess aspect to work with. This perhaps reflects the energies which we most need to work on in ourselves, as we shine a light into our darkness.

My very first experience of Artemis at a British site was in the North of England. You can read about that here. I was a little surprised that it was a Greek Goddess, but perhaps it was because she represented a Goddess that we no longer have a name for.