Jean Shinoda Bolen is a psychiatrist, Jungian analyst, author, and speaker who is profiled in our Living Spiritual Teachers Project. Her focus in this book is on Artemis, the Greek goddess of the Hunt and Moon. She represents the archetype of the activist. She is associated with a predisposition toward egalitarian-brotherly relationships with men, a sense of camaraderie with women, and a preference for the country over the city.
Bolen is interested in the Artemis spirit, which she characterizes as perseverance. It is evident in the "indomitability" of girls and young women who are able to survive any tests they are put through and come out victorious as worthy heroines.
Artemis is the only goddess who comes to the rescue of women in peril. Those who carry her spirit lead demonstrations to seek justice for raped girls in India or lobby the United States Congress to pass the Violence Against Women Act.
To Artemis, the land of the soul is in the natural world. The artist Georgia O'Keeffe carried this earth-cherishing spirit in her life and in her art.
Artemis as a girl is filled with intense energy and purpose. Bolen claims to see this same fearlessness in Katniss in The Hunger Games books and movies and Princess Miranda in the animated movie Brave.
The author admires enthusiasm and vitality as "signs that we are living the life we were meant to live or are being who we were meant to be."
