“Artemis’s imagination is concrete and specific, bespeaks a living respect for the unique essence of everything as it lives in its natural state. It would be wrong to mis-take her mode of perception for literalism: her response is animistic, anima-istic. Each creature-each plant, each wood, each river-is to her a Thou, not an it. Unlike Aphrodite she never confuses this I-Thou relation with merging. To know Artemis is to understand what Buber means by “distance and relation.”
Christine Downing, The Goddess: Mythological Images of the Feminine p. 167
What an interesting passage!
This makes me consider to what extent, when we talk about the feminine divine, we tend to focus on Aphrodite or Hera, each of whom defines herself in relation to Other. Hmm.