Artemis/Apollo, moon and sun team;
They roam o'er the heavens, through forest and stream.

CHAPTER XIV:  ART OR TEMPERANCE

ARTEMIS & APOLLO

Artemis is the Moon and Apollo is the Sun; this Trump represents their conjunction or unity.  An image of that conjunction is the eclipse.  Artemis, as the Amazon (or martial maid) is an adolescent stage of the High Priestess (Trump II).  She is the patroness of youth.  As a virgin, Artemis suggests that capacity of the psyche to serve as an intact vessel of containment.  The High Priestess has incorporated the Solar aspect within herself.

This is not so with Artemis, as the Amazon.  Her solar twin, Apollo, represents her spiritual animus personfied.  It is a tandem relationship where they are twins of the same mother.  Because she represents a less-mature aspect of herself, her solar component is projected as Apollo.

Apollo wants no competitors.  As an example of this, consider the introspective, but dedicated young artist or musician, whose love affairs pale in comparison with the consistency and inspiration of her creative spirit.  Her love affair is with her art; she love the inspiration.  She is an "arty-ms."

Artemis is typically in motion, darting and flitting.  However, she always seems to be moving away most of the time, gaining distance from things.  Hunting is an aspect of her supervision over the life and death of wild animals, symbolizing our untransformed instincts.  In modern life she may hunt with a camera, or hunt and gather other things, such as art collections or research.  Her sexual drive is quite natural, but Artemis as Amazon lacks the cultural refinements of a sophisticated lover.

These qualities of Artemis, the deep interiority, pristine freshness, imaginal containment, and freedom from external containment are similar to puer psychology.  Both are a movement inward, away from pragmatism and heroic acts, toward imagination.  She rules the woman's mysteries ("Ms.teries").

For these and other reason, Artemis/Apollo represents the Trump XIV, Art.  Art is a process, moving from the Lunar to Solar aspects on the Middle Pillar, from unconscious, occult or hidden forms toward full conscious awareness.  This represents a transmutation of opposites, forming an androgynous figure.  Artemis/Apollo was originally known as Temperance because when they merge with consciousness, they temper, combine and harmonize the psychic and material natures of the Moon and the Sun.

This classic twin-set joins wildness and terror on the borderline of equilibrium.  Artemis experiences phenomena androgynously while retaining her femininity.  She confers full-fledged transformations through expanding consciousness, not through a sexual role-reversal.  In the blending of opposites, Artemis presents the anima (or diffuse consciousness) and Apollo represents the animus (or logical processes).

In Greek mythology, Artemis is the daughter of Leto and Zeus, and twin sister of Apollo. Artemis is the goddess of the wilderness, the hunt and wild animals, and fertility (she became a goddess of fertility and childbirth mainly in cities). She was often depicted with the crescent of the moon above her forehead and was sometimes identified with Selene (goddess of the moon). Artemis was one of the Olympians and a virgin goddess. Her main vocation was to roam mountain forests and uncultivated land with her nymphs in attendance hunting for lions, panthers, hinds and stags. Contradictory to the later, she helped in protecting and seeing to their well-being, also their safety and reproduction. She was armed witha bow and arrows which were made by Hephaestus and the Cyclopes.

In one legend, Artemis was born one day before her brother Apollo. Her mother gave birth to her on the island of Ortygia, then, almost immediately after her birth, she helped her mother to cross the straits over to Delos, where she then delivered Apollo. This was the beginningsof her role as guardian of young children and patron of women in childbirth. Being a goddess of contradictions, she was the protectress of women in labor, but it was said that the arrows of Artemis brought them sudden death while giving birth. As was her brother, Apollo, Artemis was a divinity of healing, but also brought and spread diseases such as leprosy, rabies and even gout.

The fact that these archetypal dynamics are linked as twin-forces suggests the primal effects of both sun and moon on the motions of earth and the e-motions of human beings.  It is a well-documented phenomenon that solar flares or sunspots effect or correlate with disruptions in human behavior.  The effect of moon, and Full Moon in particular, is reflected in the term lunacy.  This effect is noted monthly by those in the medical, public safety and mental health fields.  The Twins may be considered an archetypal basis of psi phenomena or the remote sharing of information among two or more individuals.  It is a well-known anomoly that twins often perceive what is happening to their identical sibling even when they are seemingly separated.  The effects of geomagnetics, mediated by the Schumann's resonances, influenced by sun and moon, are covered here in relation to psi experiences.

PHYSICAL FORM:

ART (Trump XIV) depicts the alchemical blending of fire and water.  From a biological perspective, the active hot principle of sulphur is attributed to the left hemisphere of the brain.  The more passive, lunar principle of mercury is attributed to the right hemisphere.

There are two nitrogen-containing organic compounds in the brain called amines.  These two componds have been proposed as chemical mediators of the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems of arousal.  Noradtenalin corresponds to solar Apollo, and works through the sympathetic system.  From this perspective, Apollo facilitates adaption to external reality.  Noradrenalin produces an excited, ancious state which culminates in ecstasy.

Serotonin corresponds with Artemis and the right hemisphere of the brain.  Working through the parasympathetic system it creates a relaxed condition, like meditation.  Artemis/Apollo represents serotinin an noradrenalin being poured simultaneously into the "cauldron", located in the hypothalamus or third Ventricle of the brain.  It represents a pain-pleasure balance.

Artemis/Apollo represents the Consummation of the Royal Marriage.  In ancient times, the brother-sister union was generally reserved for royal couples, and may be the root of this metaphor.  When this chemical wedding occurs in our body, it produces the ability to remain active (noradrenergic) while inactive (serotonergic).  This is using action to attain non-action, as in Buddhist meditation.  This paradoxical state symbolizes the twin divinities.

We experience brother/sister relations at the emotional level with amazonian women.  Since they share similar activities and challenges, artistic or androgynous men and women understand one another. This type of woman may marry and even have children, but they are never dependent on a man for their fulfillment, like a maternal or clinging-vine type person.  They make terrific colleagues.

The Artemis woman is not interested in too much personal intimacy.  She can seem aloof, cold, effiient, and even self-sufficient.  She has little patience for weakness and sentimentality, and will be repugnant to the regressive side of man, with his anima possessions.  She has no tolerance for moodiness.

Artemis has a furtive and moonlit anxiety about sexual matters, but she is not prudish.  Her desire for personal privacy is territorial, not stemming from a fear of invasion.  The homosexual tone associated with hair-grooming and cosmetic weightlifting is also a part of Artemis/Apollo's correspondences.

With this androgynous nature, Artemis/Apollo woman feels confident that she can suceed in any chosen field (man's or woman's), provided she is proficient in her craft (ART).  This type dominates the equestrian field.

Specific occupations associated with Artemis/Apollo are:

 

 
 
 
 
 

CONTEMPORARY EXAMPLE: Gianni and Donatella Versace

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File Created: 3/17/02
Last Updated: 7/25/02