Take me by the hand

Being born a woman. Since I was a child, I felt it was the most beautiful thing I could have dreamed of experiencing. A strange alchemy made of beauty, kindness, freedom, courage and strength. I was happy, but it wasn’t easy. Growing up in Croatia in times of war conditioned my possibility of fully expressing the sweeter and more welcoming aspects of femininity. Even though, being an Istrian, I did not experience the bloodiest and most difficult phases of the conflict, in those years, my world was dark and hostile and it was difficult to feel safe.

It was basically a masculine world of soldiers. I received the first initiation into being a woman from my mother, certainly not from the environment around me. I learned a lot from my mother. She gave me not only life but also the strength to face it. Even though for me, as for all women, the transformations of my body were strong events, there was no space to even take them into consideration. There were other priorities and things that occupied minds and hearts.

My conception of being a woman changed a lot when I came to Damanhur. I have found new concepts and visions that have profoundly transformed the way I experience being a woman, opening new spaces of trust within me. I understood that, through the connection with the divine dimension, I can access the experience of all Femininity, transforming the effects and interpretations of my past, and finally having the confirmation that being a woman is really a gift, just as I felt when I was a child.
Through the Goddess Artemis, goddess of feminine initiations, I would like to share a part of what I have discovered and how these insights have changed my life.

Having access to all experiences

“Do not consider divinities only from the point of view of faith. Divinities can also be understood from the point of view of spiritual technology.” This is what they told me at the beginning of my path as an Initiate. What? Excuse me?!?
Over time I have understood this Damanhurian vision. A divinity is also a container of individual and collective experiences, so it can be used as a world wide web of experiences connected to its characteristics, functions and memories.

Getting close to Artemis, the goddess of this month, the sensation that arises within me is that she is the most expansive expression imaginable of all feminine characteristics. Many divinities like Artemis, in all the peoples of the world, guide the different initiations of a woman. What would happen if we could put all these experiences from all women into a single energetic container?

Take me by the hand and guide me

For example, all girls in their experience of becoming women could access this container to receive advice, intuitions, and dreams that are useful for navigating in places where their experience is still not sufficient. Artemis, with a sure and knowing step, takes them by the hand and gives them the strength to reach a new level of awareness.

As Stambecco writes in his article, Artemis touches our hearts for the completeness of the values ​​she represents, for the universality of which she is a symbol. If we knew how to access her container, we would make fewer mistakes, or at least we could make new ones and not repeat those that our mothers made, and our grandmothers…

What better wish could we offer our daughters than to be able to transform themselves into women with vigor, determination, intelligence, beauty and energy, all of which can be used when necessary to protect themselves and to make their lives worthwhile?

I am rich because you are there

Artemis is the goddess of the hunt and of wild animals. This indicates a psyche that has learned to manage its wild aspects and tame them.
Artemis is the goddess of archery. She knows how take aim at the goal.
She is the goddess of forests because she has learned how to communicate with beings that are different from her: plants, nature spirits and animals.
Although, she is also the goddess of the fields cultivated by humans. This characteristic indicates that she knows how to value culture, not just nature. After all, Artemis is the twin of Apollo, and a part of God is also within her.

All this is the beauty I felt in being a woman when I was a child. Thank you Artemis! And when I say thank you to Artemis, I am really saying thank you to all the women who offered their lives, their experiences, their mistakes and their achievements, directing them toward Artemis, so that she could be an inspiration and a guide for all young women of the future.

For you too, whether you are a woman or a man, Artemis can inspire you to desire freedom and give you the strength to create it.

Bertuccia Bietola