30 Days of Devotion: Day 4

Or, Our Heroine Breaks the Rules To the Surprise of No One

So the 30 Days of Deity Devotion format wasn't working for me. It was essentially asking me to regurgitate facts. In this information age, what's the point? Go to the library or consult the Google.

No, today I want to talk about archery and hunting season. Deer season starts next Saturday, September 13. I am, of course, in a fever of anticipation. Here in North Carolina, archers have their very own hunting season before anyone else gets started. This is my favorite time of year. Just before Mabon, harvests are coming in, summer is ending and fall seems both tantalizingly near and impossibly far. Today, for example, it's approximately eleventy million degrees outside.

But still. The magic of the bow and the allure of the hunt work powerfully upon me. It doesn't matter how hot it is, how many bug bites I will get or how busy I am. It doesn't matter that this year, I truly have nowhere TO hunt. It's almost hunting season!

I've gotten a fair amount of practice in this summer, mostly while teaching students. A few times, I have gotten out with peers to bend the bow. I belong to a traditional archery club - they have several
hundred acres of wooded land and a whole passel of 3-D targets. In August, I took second place in the women's division*. My favorite hunting buddy and I shot together for four hours one afternoon. Fantastic training in a beautiful place with good company. A new archery buddy invited me to a BBQ, at which we took a walk down by the river for some stump shooting**. Not too shabby!

Fist-sized group shot with my longbow.

Meanwhile, I finally broke down and bought myself a practice target. There's a lot of backstory to this fact, but it's not important here. I'm so excited to be able to shoot whenever and wherever I want! It's a dense foam block rated up to crossbow. More than enough stopping power for my bows. This week I'll be sure to practice every day.

But what does this have to do with deity devotion? Everything, when you're a priestess of Artemis. I truly don't know how other people's Artemis-centric traditions work, but in my tradition…skill with a bow is mandatory. The practice of hunting is mandatory, though harvesting an animal is optional.

Practicing these skills is an embodied form of devotion. I choose that word, embodied, deliberately. One of the things that drove me batty about the religion of my birth (Catholicism), is that it is so dis-embodied. I have no interest in denigrating that faith, but I think it's safe to say that deep down, the church fathers wish we didn't have these messy, demanding vessels of sin (by their lights, not mine). Especially us dangerous female bodies!

Artemis, though, she's fully embodied. It's hard not to be when your main activities are hunting, shooting bows, exploring the wilderness, sporting with nymphs and kicking it with Dionysus. She is also into music and dance. This isn't some theoretical, discorporeal deity you're dealing with here. This Goddess can run as fleetly as any deer all day and dance and play the lyre all night.

As of now, there are seven days to hunting season. Seven days to train. Seven days to purify my spirit so that I may be prepared for what, to me, is a truly sacred time. A time when normal rules don't apply. It helps that I live in an area where nearly everyone is crazy for deer hunting. I may be the only one who is performing a sacred devotion when I hunt, but they needn't know that. All I have to say around here is "I can't come, it's bowhunting season", and all is forgiven. This is the one time of year that I'm totally justified in my endless wandering through the woods. That I don't stand out when I have to stop at the gas station in knee high boots and camouflage clothing. That no one takes it amiss when I jabber on with buck fever.

This is the time of year when I feel most myself. This is Artemis's time.






*Don't get me started on the fact that they HAVE a women's division. Let's not go into feminism and human rights today, it's too hot. I'll just say this: I don't like it.

**Using blunted arrows to hit random targets like stumps, leaves, discarded bottles, etc.