RE-AIR Conversations: Better Off With Bears, Artemis & Goddess Worship w/ Dr Carla Ionescu

This episode originally aired in March 2024. Liv speaks with "The Artemis Expert" Dr Carla Ionescu, about Artemis, bears, goddess worship, and so much more (because Liv has ADHD, you know the drill). Find Carla on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/artemisexpert/, Twitter https://twitter.com/artemisexpert?lang=en, and at the Artemis Centre https://l.instagram.com/?u=https%3A%2F%2Flinktr.ee%2Ftheartemiscentre&e=AT1R08Si8iIAAbNFjFtqUoxFaMXnADZ21nrDqc5Ij08Mqs2O6MD8999Y1mMgYaFGS-pkB6tit8OwNQwGdpqBxBhoY2T74jNEpT1zqg. AVAILABLE NOW! The Odyssey: a Modern Retelling. https://geni.us/TheOdysseyBook Submit your question for the next Q&A via email http://mythsbaby.com/questions or a voice note https://www.speakpipe.com/LTAMB. Get ad-free episodes and so, so much more, by subscribing to the Oracle Edition at patreon.com/mythsbaby http://patreon.com/mythsbaby. Enter ourpodcast guest https://www.mythsbaby.com/contact form if you'd like to be on the show as a conversation guest! CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. I try to provide direct warnings when there is reference to anything with overtly traumatic themes but be aware that Greek mythology regularly features assault, death, and many other potentially triggering events. Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here:mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions http://mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions. Learn more about Liv's next group trips https://travelbugxlivalbert.my.canva.site/ to GREECE! Application deadline is November 30 (Subject to change due to demand). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Liv Albert?

  Hey nerds, really quick note from me. I want to tell you that we now have the applications open for the next set of listener group trips. This is us going back to the original, the trips that we have held in the past that have been so much fun, so successful, and pretty affordable in terms of wandering around Greece with a bunch of nerds. So check out the details and get your applications in at mythsbaby.com/groups.

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• 2:01Liv Albert?

  Hi, hello, welcome. This is Let's Talk About Myths, baby, and I am your host, Liv, here with more incredibly fun and weird and interesting content on just women, real women, mythological women, something kind of in between. Did I say my name already? I'm not listening back. I'm Liv, the only person who ever starts talking in these episodes, and yet I introduce myself every time because you never know, you never know. Today I am

• 2:40Liv Albert?

  here, oh my gosh, with a conversation episode with Dr. Carla Ionescu, who is the Artemis expert. Carla and I have been internet friends for some time now and have been trying to make this work for so long. And then like honestly, even months ago, it was like, I want to have you on, but it's not going to air until March. And thankfully, actually, we didn't record ahead of time, which sometimes is helpful because it makes things sound more relevant. Like how in today's episode on Artemis, all things Artemis, but specifically Artemis in the real world. That's what I really wanted to emphasize today and what I wanted to pick Carla's brain about. I wanted Artemis in the real world. How real women of ancient Greece

• 3:23Liv Albert?

  worshipped Artemis, what that looked like, what we know and what we don't know, how that interacted with the extremely patriarchal Athens, because one of the main and most interesting and the best cult that we focus on when it comes to Artemis worship in this episode is this cult from Bauron, which is very close to Athens. It is in Attica. And so the women who were involved with worshiping Artemis at this cult, like, would have been Athenian, and so would have been part of the incredible strictures that were put on Athenian women. And yet, and yet, this cult of worship involved girls who were like coming close

• 4:06Liv Albert?

  to marriageable age, traveling to Bauron, and behaving like bears. Behaving like bears, like a rite of passage kind of thing before you kind of give up your wildness for to be a woman at home, which is an enormous bummer, but we can focus on the behaving like bears part. Those are like 12-year-old girls behaving like bears. Anyway, we get into it. Oh, this was such a fun conversation. So many things Artemis and goddess worship broadly. We had such a great time. And Carla also has her own podcast and so much more to do with Artemis that is available. You can find links in the episode description, and it is mentioned at

• 4:47Liv Albert?

  the end of the episode as always. But honestly, it was such a joy. You will also hear a lot of inspiration for the episode from two weeks ago that I did on Parthenogenesis in women and the stingray. This, along with the other episodes that are coming this month and which have already been released, was heavily influential when it comes to that episode because I just started thinking about what came before. But truly, this episode is such a joy, so I will not keep rambling, and I will just let you dive right into it with me and Carla. And oh my God, Artemis, maybe she's my new obsession. I don't know. Like I needed another one, right?

• 5:43Liv Albert?

  Conversations: Better Off With Bears: Artemis and Goddess Worship with Dr. Carla Ionescu.

• 6:05Liv Albert?

  I would love to hear mostly about like real people interacting with her because like I can access all the, you know, primary sources for the mythology itself, and I love her, but I know that she is just so ripe in terms of like the real life worship, like I'm thinking of Bauron and the cult there, and really like anything to do with, you know, like how she was actually worshipped, like daily. I would, I would love so much.

• 6:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, actually, I think that's a really great way of looking at her. I'm not sure that she's really been looked at in that way for a long, long time. Like, I think she's often dismissed. I mean, that's one of my pet peeves, that she's often dismissed. Maiden huntress, you know?

• 6:49Liv Albert?

  They love the word virgin, virgin. They love it.

• 6:53Speaker 02

  This virgin huntress. And I think when I started my PhD, I was both excited and also a little bit like shocked that she was ignored so much for so long among classicists. You know, there's a standard sort of plays and things like that. But as I dug deeper and deeper, I was like, wait, this goddess is like fierce. She's magnificent. She's massive. She's all these words, you know? And I think what I realized is that she is actually a goddess that pertains to women so deeply that early scholars didn't really find much interest in her. So, you know, we have-

• 7:32Liv Albert?

  Surprise, surprise. Sorry, I'm just like, oh, really? Oh, wow.

• 7:36Speaker 02

  I mean, it's shocking. You know, so we have Athena for war, and it's like, woo-hoo, and then we have Aphrodite for love and sex. And it's like, woo-hoo, right? And all these other goddesses. And then Artemis is like, oh yeah, like she hunts, I think.

• 7:51Liv Albert?

  She's a virgin, so we care a little less. Yeah.

• 7:54Speaker 02

  And I don't know that they didn't know really where to put her. And when I started digging and digging, I thought, oh, wow, she was really the people's goddess. And so I have this now almost like a life passion, a life journey. You know, she's become my life, pretty much. And everywhere I go, she tends to show up and be like, hey, don't forget to tell this story. And so I find her fascinating. And yes, so now she's, and so that led to like me trying to open this Artemis center. And then, so in the beginning, I'm like, okay, I'm opening the Artemis center. We're going to do courses on the goddess.

• 8:29Liv Albert?

  Okay, wait, I didn't know about this.

• 8:32Liv Albert?

  I know you as the Artemis expert, but I did not know beyond that.

• 8:36Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. So I wanted to build a place, it's virtual now, I wanted to build a place where women can come without doing like a classics degree or PhD. Just come and learn about the goddess, several goddesses, but Artemis, of course, being central. And so that was sort of the first call and I started that a couple of years ago online and now we're doing workshops and courses and things like that. But now, more and more lately, it feels like something tangible for her needs to be done. And so I'm leaving for Crete in April and I think I'm going to build an actual temple to her live. Like I think I'm going to like

• 9:12Speaker 02

  do it like the old ways and literally build a brick and mortar space. I have like this vision of it and she bears have been plaguing me and um, so it's my, it's my long-term goal, but there's something about it a- and it's not just me, like there's something in the air, there's some, there's a phenomenon of like women coming forward and saying, oh my god, Artemis, I've always connected with her. Or Artemis, I want to learn more about her. This is the right time for her to come. And so so it's not just me in the sense of like, I'm not just out here, although I felt like it was just me for a long time, you know, in the isolation of academia. But now it seems that people are thirsty for this goddess.

• 9:53Liv Albert?

  I mean, I mean, people are thirsty for goddesses, like absolutely, you know, if, if I've learned anything by stumbling into this career, it's that people really like to learn about Greek mythology, but particularly goddesses, like I mean, I've spent the last ten year, or not ten, god, close though, almost seven years, like talking about, you know, women in the ancient world and Greek goddesses so specifically. And like i- i- it just keeps being proven that people want to hear that because like what you're saying earlier about you know, how she'd been kind of looked over in favor of the other goddesses, like I just think it's so interesting to look at the goddesses that do have like a lot of representation in terms of you like classic scholarship in the last, yeah, like you said, you know, like, or like earlier when it was all the dudes, right?

• 10:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:37Liv Albert?

  Like, because like, okay, they like Aphrodite, ooh, big surprise, like the men like the sexy one. Who's like known for be- being beautiful, but then also Athena and like Athena's to me tracks so directly to the ancient world, like the men loved her then too.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:54Liv Albert?

  And she was like very much the man's goddess, the hero's goddess, like, you know, they, they gave her all of these masculine qualities and like, obviously, you know, there's nothing wrong with that, but the, when you see the way it tied to her importance compared to others, like, it's a bummer. And I think about like Artemis and particularly, well, it's actually funny, I, I hopping onto this call, I'd stopped finishing edits uh on, on a conversation that's gonna drop on Friday, actually, with um, with an author about a new novel about Demeter, because Demeter is another really good example of these goddesses that have been kind of overlooked, or in the course, in the case of Demeter, you know, it's just all about how she was like sad looking for her daughter, like she doesn't have a lot of like

• 11:38Liv Albert?

  strength and same with Artemis bizarrely, even though she's like iconically a strong and important goddess.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  Right.

• 11:45Liv Albert?

  But yeah, it was like lady problems, like keep her over there.

• 11:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I think that for so long she was associated with, she became associated with childbirth and marriage and things like that, which she was, and I don't, there's no, there's no shame in that, so to speak, you know what I mean? But it, I think it lacked interest for a lot of early classicists and I think what it lacked, or is their ability to understand the power of that.

• 12:09Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 12:09Speaker 02

  You know, right? Like the building of community among women around, let's say birthing, like you don't have to birth to be in the community of birthing. And you don't have to birth a child to be in the community of raising children, like, so this is a foundational goddess, you know, a goddess who's like literally on the pulse of society and yet I think early, certainly early authors were like yeah, she's hunting in the woods, you know, with her deer and this whole sort of community dare I say, a kind of hidden matriarchy, although that's not the right terminology, but a hidden, you know, a, a support group for women, a time just for women. Um, surrounding, you know, whatever their experience was in the world

• 12:53Speaker 02

  was sort of dismissed. And I think that that was their mistake because this is actually a very powerful aspect of both Athenian culture, who very much was centered around birthing citizens.

• 13:05Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 13:06Speaker 02

  For like just human culture who, you know, requires at least this, you know?

• 13:11Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Yeah, oh, I love when these, like I recorded a conversation with a, with someone a couple of days ago and I just love when they they all completely end up aligning, like in these ways that I never kind of see coming. Cause we uh, uh, talked about women as vessels in the ancient world and like so much, like lots it to do with that. Um, but that, yeah, it reminds me of that too, just even the way you said, like, well, Athenians were concerned with birthing citizens. Like, yeah, they weren't as concerned with, you know, women, or that's maybe putting it kindly even. Um, but they were certainly concerned with citizens. And one thing that I, I don't think about enough, but came up the other day is like, they were so concerned with, with paternity,

• 13:54Liv Albert?

  which is so interesting too, and like looking at those fears. Um, I don't think necessarily lines with Artemis directly, but like I, now I kind of can't stop thinking about that, that like fear of paternity and how it, how it shows itself in mythology, you know?

• 14:08Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 14:08Liv Albert?

  Like, cause you can just be like, well, I'm not sure that the kid is mine, but maybe it's Zeus's if it's not, you know, and that wouldn't be so bad.

• 14:16Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. Yeah. And so this is what I mean. I mean, this is something that was central to their lives. And there's, there's one goddess that's in charge of that, or certainly home life and women's lives and making sure that women transit or transform from wild girls to marriage of women, you know? So these key factors in, let's say, an Athenian woman's life, but many other Greek women's lives as well. And yet, for so long, she sort of disregarded. Now, for me, I tend not to lean too much on that patriarchal structure sometimes. I'm like, yeah, okay, they gave up their wildness to Artemis and I feel like that's a later adaptation.

• 14:54Liv Albert?

  Good.

• 14:55Speaker 02

  Um, I think the connection between bears, now, I don't know, I've been reading this fantastic book called, um, The Woman Who Married the Bear. Uh, it's really great. It's, it's about mythology in Europe and in North America indigenous culture, in which women literally marry bears. And they became the wives of bears.

• 15:15Liv Albert?

  That, tha- that's amazing. And but I also just have to, so I, now all I can think of is, um, there was this book in the eighties called Bear. Um, and I think it's like Marianne Engel, something like that.

• 15:30Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 15:31Liv Albert?

  And, and it's basically about that and was like pretty controversial, because I'm pretty sure she almost, she doesn't, I don't know, anyway, there's a lot going on uh, with the woman romancing a bear. And so that's, that's really all I could think of in that moment. But yeah, like I g- I mean, I guess there's, there's more there than I would have ever kind of put together separately.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  Oh, my god, Liv, there is so much, there is so much.

• 15:55Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 15:56Speaker 02

  Like there's literal, uh, for example, in indigenous North American culture, uh, there's a scholar named Barbara Man, she's really fantastic and she's part of the indigenous culture and she, she does a lot of writing on bears. And one of the things she talks about is this cave, the idea of the cave and that women in the fifteen thousand years ago, I mean, we're talking about a long, long time ago. Ten, fifteen thousand years ago, would go into the caves and people, actually in power communities would go into the caves and live with the bears. Like, in a common relation, not, not an intimate sexual relationship, but in a common relationship. But she says in the mythology, there's overlap there, like women would give a birth to bear cubs.

• 16:35Liv Albert?

  Hmm.

• 16:36Speaker 02

  Or half bear, half, like there's lots of mythology and she goes over lots of mythology. And then there's another scholar that talks about similar things in the Sami culture in Northern Europe and the Finn culture and all that. And again, we see a ton of bears mating with women, marrying women, protecting women, this idea that bears go into the cave to hibernate, it's sort of this idea of going into the womb, the cosmic womb. And that they stay in there for like the whole winter, which is kind of like, you know, the pregnancy process. And that when they come out, they have cubs. So there's this kind of birthing cosmological idea, right? Um, and this is probably, I would say, the essence of Artemis the bear in Buran.

• 17:21Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 17:22Speaker 02

  Greeks used to also have lots of bears, I mean, there used to be lots of bears in Greece, you know, five thousand years ago.

• 17:27Liv Albert?

  Yeah, well, I'm already thinking of Callisto and uh, and Atalanta, right? Like they also have these kind of bear origin stories.

• 17:35Speaker 02

  Yes. And so

• 17:36Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 17:37Speaker 02

  The more I read about the bears, the more I'm fascinated. Now, Givitas, of course, did a lot of work in, with artifacts, where she found a lot of artifacts that were half like head of bear, body of woman. Or like this combination of a bear mother. And that, and so, you know, the word bear, for example, in Germanic culture means to birth or to bear, to carry.

• 18:00Liv Albert?

  But I guess it doesn't, I mean, English, it, it, I mean, it means the same too. Interesting.

• 18:05Speaker 02

  Kind of, right? Like to carry, like to bear weight.

• 18:07Liv Albert?

  But you bear a child and it's the same spelling.

• 18:10Speaker 02

  Yes, or like, like if you bear down, you need to give birth to a child.

• 18:14Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 18:15Speaker 02

  And so, so the first time I went to Buran, which was like in two thousand and six, there was no one there, there was no one there. And it was very hard to get any information. They had a little, um, museum to it and it was very hard to get in information, particularly local information around that area.

• 18:30Liv Albert?

  Hmm.

• 18:31Speaker 02

  And so I knew the usual stuff, you know, there were rituals done here, there's a connection to bears that I could never put my finger on. I was like, I don't understand, I know Artemis is connected to deer. I don't understand what this connection to bear comes from, right? And no one was really talking about this, this whole bear, well, maybe marrying bears was not really something acceptable at the time.

• 18:54Speaker 02

  Valid.

• 18:58Speaker 02

  And so they were talking about these, these, these playing bears and young girls playing bears. And I thought, that's a random thing to do. Why bears? Why not goats? Right? I mean, goats are quite stubborn. I love goats.

• 19:11Liv Albert?

  They're certainly all over Greece. Greece knows goats.

• 19:16Speaker 02

  And so, so the first time it was a little bit hard to, first of all, nobody knew where the site was. It was chaos. I walked for miles and miles in the heat. Anyways, I finally got there and they were really, they were trying their best to help, but they didn't have as much information. And so then I started digging on my own and things like that. The second time I went, there was more willingness to like, have a discussion with locals. And so I met a couple of locals that were talking about how this place at Varon was a place of birthing, which probably is not surprising, but um, women would come there and they did ritual, secret rituals, which we do not have written down around birthing.

• 19:56Speaker 02

  And I thought, okay. And then one of the locals was saying to me, you know, it used to have forty columns. There used to be forty columns around the site. One for each week of pregnancy. I was like, okay, that's really fascinating. Um, and so there's a lot of mystery around what exactly they did around birthing, or even around menstruation or menarche, whatever. And so the idea was that there's power in this bleeding time, in this liminal time, um, and that the priestesses at Varon, and particularly at Fijanea, were not writing down or were not sharing women's secret rights, which

• 20:39Speaker 02

  is, is common across, right? Like Demeter, Chrysophony, Atalus and other kind of stuff. But at Varon, I think because it was seen as a birthing space, it didn't really get enough, um, attention. And so then it leaves us now to take a look at it and go, what was going on here? What is this thing that they sh- that young women shed at Varon? And become bears and play wild things, um, before they are sort of restricted or constricted into marriage. Right? Which breaks our hearts a little bit because Artemis of the wild becomes almost Artemis of restriction.

• 21:23Speaker 02

  And we're told that, you know, the archtoy, the, the, the young she-bears leave their robes for Artemis, leave their toys for Artemis. So there, and I think that's very much, of course, a patriarchal development. Perhaps in order for women to continue their secret rights, they had to blend into. Right? Make them political.

• 21:44Liv Albert?

  I mean, I think about that kind of stuff so often when, when it comes to these things about women in the ancient world, because obviously, like, you know, ar- archaeological evidence is gonna be something else, but in terms of written sources, like, it's just so through the, the eyes and thoughts of men that we just have no idea what could have really been happening there. And yeah, I mean, it's interesting for that specifically because it's not a mystery cult, right? Like a, you know, quote unquote official mystery cult. Like it's more of just like, it was just a cult of worship, right?

• 22:19Speaker 02

  Yes, and, and you know, and we, they have that for every four year procession from Varon to Athens. Uh, so they, so there is a little temple on the Acropolis to Artemis Veronia. And I've been to the Acropolis, I don't know how many times, and I always miss it.

• 22:35Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, I've been, I can't, I don't even wanna try to count how many times, how many forty euros I've spent going up there.

• 22:44Speaker 02

  And I always miss it. And, uh, I haven't been up there in a few years, but, uh, but now I'm going back, uh, to Greece this summer. And I'm going to go and see where the spot is because from what I've spoke to others who have been up there, they're like, I don't know, I don't think it's labeled.

• 23:00Liv Albert?

  I don't think it's, I don't think it's labeled.

• 23:03Speaker 02

  So I think I'm gonna do a whole video.

• 23:06Liv Albert?

  I can't wait. Uh, I would like to see that. I was there in January. And granted, I was not, like, I've been up there so many times that I don't. I just kind of let go to just kind of make sure that I'm there. But yeah, now I'm, I mean, I'm very curious.

• 23:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so I thought that was kind of interesting. And I've seen in other museums, you know, where they have the replicas of the Acropolis. And every single time I've seen them, I very rarely see the little spot for Artemis of Veronia. So it's, it's almost, you know? And so I think that that's part of my mission too, is like to raise awareness at the fact that they did this. So, I mean, if you've ever been to Verona or Varon, it's, they say, oh, it's just outside of Athens. But if you were walking it, it would take your whole day, if not longer. Right? So if you have a procession over four years that starts in Veronia, which actually just outside of Veronia, there's a town called Artemis, which is so cool, right? So I recommend that everyone go to Beach Town, go have fun.

• 24:02Liv Albert?

  I was gonna say, is it, is Varon on the coast?

• 24:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's right on the water, right?

• 24:08Liv Albert?

  I'm trying to think, I mean, that's such a big area and it's so mountainous too, like, I think we often forget, we talk about like, yeah, like these processions or even like Eleusis and stuff. And I mean, I think that's definitely like flatter because it's mostly on that like lower coastline. I mean, obviously it would have been different back then anyway, but, but like, all of Attica is pretty fucking mountainous. So, like, that takes a lot to do this procession.

• 24:31Speaker 02

  Yes. And have this massive procession of Athenians and, and like all the Greeks wanted to participate from Varon to, you know, the Acropolis, climbing up to the Acropolis. And, and so to me, that seems like something that was significant and that really played a key role in the identity of Athenian women or of young women or all of the women that were able to participate. It's unclear who was really able to participate. We know for sure, obviously citizens were, non-citizens, it's a little bit unclear.

• 25:05Speaker 02

  And that's, I think, the problem for a lot of women's history is that we don't have the data.

• 25:11Liv Albert?

  Because no one cared, until now, and now we're all just lost.

• 25:16Speaker 02

  But you know, a part of me thinks that, okay, so I have this group, this, we're doing this workshop called the Goddess Migration. So we've been talking about the migrating goddesses. And one of my students was said something that was really fascinating. And she said, what if they had, what if the women who were participating for generations in these rituals, let's say, had assumed that we, two thousand years later, would know from the artifacts and from what they left us, what to do. But yet no one could predict that we would be so knocked off kilter by patriarchy, that we as women today have almost no connection back, like, we're now trying to reach back and figure out what happened. And I thought, yeah, maybe they took it for granted that the stories would be passed down. Unbroken.

• 26:02Speaker 02

  Right? And that we would know what, I don't know, this river positioned over here and forty columns and this kind of stuff means. Um, and now we're kind of looking back and going, we lost a little bit of that, right? We were, we were disconnected. And all we have is men's interpretation of what was going on. They weren't even there. You know, A- I mean, Aristophanes is writing about it and he does not know what the hell he's talking, you know?

• 26:31Liv Albert?

  That guy. That guy does, sometimes.

• 26:37Speaker 02

  So anyways, it's, it's been, I think it's the time, it's the time to start uncovering and start reaching back.

• 26:45Speaker 02

  How accurate can we get to the rituals that were performed there? I'm not sure.

• 26:51Speaker 02

  Um, among Greek women today, they also are hesitant to share because the Greek Orthodox Church has still such influence.

• 26:58Liv Albert?

  Yeah, well, I was gonna say, like, and, and this is less about, you know, Greek Orthodox, more so about like, you know, the, just sort of the Western world broadly, but the combination of, of the patriarchy and Christianity, like, really just meant that we'll, we'd lose everything, right? Like, you know, they, they lived in the patriarchy then, so they would have at least had some kind of like, but yeah, like this hope though, that it would have been passed on anyway, but at least they had this like grounding in what it meant to live in this patriarchal world, especially in Athens. But what they, nobody could have predicted, the damage that Christianity did to, to anything pagan, let alone anything featuring women so prominently.

• 27:43Liv Albert?

  Like, I mean, it's just, like, I mean, I'm not a fan of Christianity broadly, but I still think it can't be overstated, like, just how much they fucked up.

• 27:53Liv Albert?

  Yeah, or like, uh, uh, because women, they would have expected these, these stories to be passed down. Like, I think about that so much in terms of like, just what we don't know. You know, like, we have all of these myths and, and they say all of these, these things that so objectively, like, you just look at them sometimes and you're like, there's just no way in hell that the women believed this, you know? Like, like, what did they believe? What, you know, when, when they were packing all these Athenian women into the home and not letting them do anything else, like, what did they talk to each other about? Like, what stories did they tell their daughters only? And like, ugh, I just, yeah, I mean, I wanna know so about, I think about it all the time when it comes to like the cyclical figurines.

• 28:35Liv Albert?

  Like, just the, I mean, I feel like now there's like, I don't even know if it's gotten worse or just how I learned it, but like, when I was doing my BA, I mean, like fifteen years ago, like, I just remember that

• 28:49Liv Albert?

  That they were so openly called like goddess figurines.

• 28:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:53Liv Albert?

  Like, and it was, I was certainly taught in that time, like in an archaeology course, that, that, you know, like, it was, it was pretty well a- assumed that this suggested that, you know, before, you know, pre Bronze Age, like, there was a matriarchal world, like this goddess worshipping world. And it makes so much sense when you think about, like, the explicit myths subjugating Gaia and every other woman. Like, you can, you can read where they were trying to stamp that out after the men had taken power, kind of, you know?

• 29:32Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 29:33Liv Albert?

  But now I feel like I see them and it's just like, well, you know, they might not be boobs. They might not be women figurines. Like, I just feel like I'm seeing, like, more alternative now than even what I learned a while ago, which is just sort of surprising because usually things seem to be getting better. But I still like to work off this idea that, like, yeah, like, I mean, that, that whole of the region very likely worshipped a goddess just before they were writing things down for us to learn about, you know?

• 29:58Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 29:59Liv Albert?

  But it seems so obvious to me that that's how it started, that all of, most of human history would have started that way, before they started to try to kill each other and then realized that they could get an advantage over women through that, like...

• 30:10Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 30:11Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 30:12Speaker 02

  There's this concept that, um, pre the last Ice Age, the only bleeding that humans did was menstrual bleeding.

• 30:19Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 30:20Speaker 02

  That it was sort of this, this pastoral, like, not pastoral, sorry, because it's tribal nomadic, but it's this idea that they didn't, they didn't even hunt to kill, that they didn't even try to kill, because there, there was so much food available.

• 30:32Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 30:33Speaker 02

  And then there's this idea that post the last Ice Age, the bleeding became, like, masculine bleeding.

• 30:39Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 30:39Speaker 02

  Um, there's also been this old idea that men feel the need to bleed in order to connect to the divine, because women naturally bleed to connect to the divine.

• 30:48Liv Albert?

  Huh.

• 30:49Speaker 02

  And so I think people kind of sometimes throw that under the rug as like, ah, whatever, you know, it's just natural, what, you know, bio- biology. But it's not about biology, actually. It's just about power.

• 31:00Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 31:01Speaker 02

  Um, and, and sort of magic, like they say, you know what I mean? The, the ability to use whatever you have to connect to this higher power, and this higher power being more feminine.

• 31:27Liv Albert?

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• 32:10Liv Albert?

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• 32:51Liv Albert?

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• 34:37Speaker 02

  I mean, people say, well, is God gendered? Well, no, okay, the divine may not be gendered, but a sacred feminine is still important to the development of, you know, nature.

• 34:47Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  Not just humans, right? Um, and so trying to say, well, God is non-gendered, that's fine, but what about this idea of the sacred feminine that protects and nurtures and feeds us, and that ties into environmental issues, and women's, and everybody's issues, right? That, to, to live sort of freely and, you know, as part of a community. And so I think Artemis was, I would argue, one of the few goddesses whose sole purpose was to protect and watch over this aspect of existence, the natural. Yes, there's a couple others with the wildness, and, you know, Demeter and Persephone, and there's a couple of others in that way. But she has been in the mountains, and in the wild, and in the

• 35:31Speaker 02

  all the animals, and then into the birthing. Like, I think that she plays a really, a role with action. She takes action in a lot of these things. And she's the only one that actually does not technically, is not a mother, is never gets married. I mean, they give her Apollo later on, blah, blah, right? Because they have to give him, her something. But it's fascinating to me that they didn't marry her off like they did almost everyone else.

• 35:57Liv Albert?

  No, that's true. I mean, I'd always, it's funny to me, the Apollo of it all, because he's just, it's very funny, because I realize I have an email I have to respond to about how I need to talk about Apollo publicly. But Apollo is just really such a little shit.

• 36:14Speaker 02

  Yes. I have a whole, a whole episode called, My Apollo Sucks.

• 36:17Liv Albert?

  I mean, yeah.

• 36:18Speaker 02

  And it got a lot of heat, let me tell you. People were like, how can you like Artemis and be against Apollo? And I'm like, I'm perfectly comfortable, actually.

• 36:27Liv Albert?

  Uh huh. No, Apollo is the only god that I have ever, well, maybe Zeus. Definitely Apollo and Zeus, where I have actually had, like, angry, uh, like, modern practitioners of, of Hellenism, like, which is like, fine, like, worship the gods, do whatever you need to do, but like, don't come tell me that Apollo's gonna come. And I've had people threaten

• 36:52Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 36:53Liv Albert?

  divine assault on me.

• 36:55Speaker 02

  I could imagine.

• 36:55Liv Albert?

  Because I've shit talked to Zeus and Apollo. And I'm like, okay, you know what? Maybe just go look at the sources and then tell me if I'm wrong.

• 37:02Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 37:03Liv Albert?

  Because I'm not.

• 37:04Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 37:05Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 37:06Speaker 02

  Exactly. Yeah.

• 37:07Liv Albert?

  But this link to Artemis is so interesting because he's so insufferable, because he does so many bad things, because it does feel like it is, making them twins is like this way to make her less powerful. They also, like, they give him more things to be god of. And then, of course, later, we get, you know, when, when he gets conflated with the sun, and then, and then you have, like, he basically becomes like, you know, this all-powerful sun god, in addition to everything else. Like, yeah, it does feel like, like it is a way to make Artemis less.

• 37:41Speaker 02

  Yes. And then the Romans, of course, who keep him as is, and then change Artemis to Diana. She becomes sort of, oh, the goddess of the moon, or whatever. And you're like, well, hold on a second, this goddess has so much power. And so they slowly do try to diminish her. And speaking about artifact and the word goddess, I am finding, I did a whole thing on, I went to this exhibit in Chicago. So part of my work is trying to find Artemis everywhere. So lately I found her in the Balkans with the Thracians, you know, not surprising, she's up in the wilderness. So there was this exhibit.

• 38:12Liv Albert?

  She would align with Thracian so well. That, that feels good.

• 38:15Speaker 02

  Totally would.

• 38:16Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 38:17Speaker 02

  Um, and so Artemis Bended, you know, has sort of been something I've been looking into and, and writing about. And so I went to this exhibit in Chicago called, what was it called? Something like the Kings of, the First Kings of Europe. And, and I'm Romanian, so I was born up in the Carpathian Mountains. And so I thought, oh my God, Eastern European, it's gonna be so cool, I'm gonna go see it, blah, blah. I go into the exhibit, and the word goddess has been taken out of every representation. In fact, the very first thing you see is a circle of statues, got it, like, uh, half bird, half women. You can see it's a bird face and women. And in the description, it says, um, this is a group of women sitting

• 38:58Speaker 02

  around in a circle. And I lost my shit. Like, I lost it. So I did a whole, like, a whole episode with pictures, with, anyway, I did a whole thing. Because I was like, what? This is clearly bird goddesses. Clearly, their faces are birds.

• 39:15Liv Albert?

  I mean, yeah, you can't go, if they are half-animal, you can't just go calling them women. Like, that's not how this works anywhere.

• 39:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. These all represent the women in the village. What? How do you know? These are like preneolithic pieces. How, you don't have any writing. So, what?

• 39:34Speaker 02

  Yes. I do think there is a backlash. Certainly, there was one against Gambutas, as we all know for a long time. Gambutas, Maria Gambutas.

• 39:44Liv Albert?

  Oh, no.

• 39:45Speaker 02

  She's she Maria Gambutas is this very famous Lithuanian archaeologist. Who did, I mean, she spoke eight languages. She had three PhDs. She was super, super. Yeah.

• 39:57Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 39:57Speaker 02

  And she wrote on artifacts. So she's an archaeologist by trade and she was allowed to go like in the back of museums. And find all these statues. And basically, she's saying, in short, there was a goddess culture. There's thousands and thousands and thousands of artifacts, some that are shown, some that are just thrown in the back of museums. And this is all about sort of matriarchy slash, I don't know, matrifocal, whatever word you wanna stick in there, but it was female centered. Anyways, as an academic, she got bashed in her time. She got bashed, bashed, bashed. But a lot of like first wave feminists, second wave feminists did take up her work. And used it when they were, you know, working on other women's rights issues and other issues.

• 40:41Speaker 02

  And then she kind of disappeared for a while. And now I think there starts to be, well, I don't know if everyone would agree about her disappearing, but. When I was doing my PhD, for example, I wanted to use a couple of her books because she does excellent artifact work. Drawings, excellent.

• 40:55Liv Albert?

  Oh, wow.

• 40:56Speaker 02

  So like the science of archaeology, she does amazing.

• 40:59Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 40:59Speaker 02

  And my own, a couple of my supervisors, both of them females, both of them women. Were like, no, you can't use her work. Like, that's goddess stuff. We don't wanna do goddess stuff. And this is what I got my PhD in twenty sixteen, so let's say. Yeah. And so I had to cut, I still got to keep one of her books. But I had to cut a lot of scholars that were using the sort of goddess aspect. Out of my work because then it looked like it was incredible enough.

• 41:31Liv Albert?

  Oh, my god.

• 41:32Speaker 02

  And so I really, so when I finished my PhD, like my mother says, you know, once they give it to you, they can't take it from you. I was able to like talk more freely about these connections. I mean, artifacts are artifacts and none of us really have any. Like, we have a methodology of how to identify them, but no one can say a hundred percent.

• 41:54Liv Albert?

  No, it's literally impossible.

• 41:57Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 41:58Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 41:59Speaker 02

  And so what I'm seeing now, all over museums lately in the labels, is that they take the word goddess out. They even sometimes take the gendered word out. They'll just be like ceramic figurine. I don't know, thirty seven hundred BCE. And you're like. And I'm okay with that to some degree, like, you know, there has to be a balance between maybe leaning too much in one way, but. I'm starting to see it as an erasure. And I'm thinking about young women who go to the museum who maybe know nothing about it, you know, anything. They're just young people going, or young people, actually. And they don't use the terminology goddess, you know, um, and how does that affect? You know, the future for us, for all of us.

• 42:45Speaker 02

  We don't, right? Like. It is kind of problematic and I don't really know exactly how to.

• 42:53Speaker 02

  Fight against that or defend against that, other than just talking about it as we are now.

• 42:57Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's something, though. The volume of people that are now talking about that kind of stuff, like, at the very least, that's, you know, it's encouraging. And I, I find it so encouraging, like. Because like, again, like the, I, this entire, the, the fact that my podcast has become what it has when all I do is focus on the women and how shitty men were. Like, it blows my mind all the time, like. Really, I can confirm that hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people want to hear this and like. That's really cool, at least, like, people wanna know it. So just like, you know, giving it to them, I think is, is so good.

• 43:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I agree. I agree. And I think it helps us to imagine like a space and probably that's why I feel so driven to create a space where. Women, I mean, we think about women in the patriarchy and the Greco-Roman times, and yes, they were very much subjugated. But they also had these massive rituals just for themselves. And these mass, and like, I think about it today, like, where would I go today? To celebrate Artemis or a goddess? Where would I go today where it would be? Only in celebration of this divinity. Because, like, where do we have these spaces? Um, and like regular, you know, monthly or yearly celebrations where we would gather.

• 44:14Speaker 02

  Where we would drink, where we would dance, where we would play, you know, whatever music, we would have orgiastic rites, whatever that means, you know, cause. There's lots of fantasy around. I get a lot of people asking me, when you say orgiastic rites? What do you mean? And I think what they're asking is, were they having sex?

• 44:30Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 44:30Speaker 02

  You know, and I'm like, well, I mean, they could have because I don't think Greek men would have cared if women were having sex with one another.

• 44:38Liv Albert?

  That is what I say far too often at this point. I feel like I'm becoming a broken record, but I have this. Like, whole little fantasy world in my head where every time the men were like, you can't go out. You just have to hang around with your friends. The women were like, you know what? That's fine. Like, my friends make me feel a lot better than you do. So, like, cause I really do think that they. Not only, like, I think that they wouldn't have seen it as sex because they were just so obsessed with, like, who penetrated whom. You know, especially in Athens and especially with the whole Erastes or Romanos with themselves, like. They just wouldn't have seen it as sex. They would have been like, I don't know, my wife's like having a nice time with her friend. Like, I just think that's so joyful to be like, well.

• 45:22Liv Albert?

  They were probably very satisfied at the very least.

• 45:25Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. I agree. I mean, that's the way I see it too. Uh, that's the way I see even the, you know, the main ads and all of, anytime that people say wild women in the forest. I think, yeah, they were probably drinking, dancing, you know, chilling, doing whatever they wanted. And other than, I think, the men seeing that freedom as dangerous as far as thinking, right? Like, women gathering, women thinking, women talking to each other about.

• 45:54Liv Albert?

  Women getting drunk.

• 45:57Speaker 02

  Uh, but women talking to each other about like, what is your husband doing and what is your, like, right? Like, men have always.

• 46:04Speaker 02

  I guess felt in some way that, that women are sharper, quicker, smarter, more cunning, like, there's all these words that are associated. And I think every time you see women gathering, even during the witch hunts of Europe, every time you see women gathering, women independence, women talking. Uh, there's the, the authorities start to be suspicious of like, what are they doing? And it's really about power.

• 46:26Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 46:27Speaker 02

  You know, and is there a, you know, there's that fear of the, I guess, the colonizer or the dominator who is like. Oh, the, the people that we subjugate may be gathering to speak against us in some way or compare against us, you know?

• 46:41Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 46:41Speaker 02

  Now, for all we know, the women were just chilling, who knows, like, just having a great time.

• 46:45Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 46:46Speaker 02

  But I think not knowing caused that kind of threat, right?

• 46:49Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 46:51Speaker 02

  And then you're right, drinking, partying, being naked in the wilderness, you know?

• 46:56Liv Albert?

  Well, and I think it's not a coincidence that the only god deeply associated with that stuff is also the most gender fluid god in Dionysus, right? Like, Dionysus is the least masculine god. That's what makes him so interesting is that. He was very happy to dress up like the women and, and participate in all of these things and it wasn't about. Him being like the man in the situation, like, he was just part of it. Sure, he was the divine one. But it wasn't about a diva- divine masculinity. It was just about that he was divine. And I think, yeah, like, I mean, I, I, I, the, there's, you know, obviously, like, there's only little bits of, like, gender fluidity and, and like.

• 47:39Liv Albert?

  There are definitely trans stories in the ancient world, but I love all of those and just like how you can see them tying in. To the patriarchal norms and how like, I mean, some are threats and some are not and it. It very much depends, I think, on the, where the masculinity is coming in to that fluidity, but like. Yeah, I mean, I just, I love that Dionysus is part of it and that he's very much like, he's not part of it as a man. He's part of it as just Dionysus, you know?

• 48:05Speaker 02

  Yes. And I think Artemis is part of that threat because she always has an entourage of women. So they are all living in the wilderness, just hanging out with women and nature and animals and cute bunnies and cute deer.

• 48:18Liv Albert?

  Being virgins, that's an air quote.

• 48:22Speaker 02

  I don't know that she, I, I'm very open to her having intimate relationships with her closest. I mean, if you think about it with Callisto. In order for Zeus to seduce her, Zeus has to transform into Artemis. So to me, that has always been like, well, if you have to transform into Artemis to seduce Callisto, that means that Carla- and Callisto's not surprised at all.

• 48:43Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 48:44Speaker 02

  Means that her and Artemis are getting it on on a regular basis.

• 48:47Liv Albert?

  Yeah. And yet, like, that's so not part of the story. Yeah, it's still like this little detail.

• 48:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly, exactly. And then, you know, the focus is, of course, on Artemis's jealous wrath and all this kind of stuff.

• 49:01Liv Albert?

  Women are angry and jealous.

• 49:03Speaker 02

  That's right, that's right.

• 49:05Liv Albert?

  Do.

• 49:06Speaker 02

  That's right. But I think about her and I think, wow, she was living like her best life. Because I li- I wouldn't mind to live in the forest with a bunch of women.

• 49:16Liv Albert?

  When the alternative is being a woman in Athens, like, yeah, no, I am down. Like, take me to the forest, Artemis.

• 49:23Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. And then if a dude sneaks up on you, like Acteon, then, you know, she just, she is also actually a goddess that is quite unapologetic.

• 49:32Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 49:33Speaker 02

  Right? And so she's swift. I mean, most, a lot of the goddesses are quite swift with their vengeance. Um, but she, yeah, she's totally unapologetic and she just, well, of course, she tortures poor Acteon to death. And punishes him for his transgression. But that's also, I think, about consent, right? Like, you, you're here without consent and so you're going to. So in a way, I don't know, like, sometimes I think there's a sort of, um, there's a bit of a paradox about what women. Must have felt like living in, obviously patriarchy, but having these spaces. That were for them a safe spaces away from, you know, patriarchal politics.

• 50:16Speaker 02

  Um, and Braron is definitely one of these places.

• 50:20Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 50:21Speaker 02

  And they came as children, so you have that from when you're a very young woman.

• 50:24Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 50:26Speaker 02

  Right? You must have come with your mother, you must have come with your sister for the rights, you must have come, right? So there's this. Long commute and then as you're older and you're now, let's say, a wife and mother, you come back and you come back. Um, and so I think maybe that's why I like to come back and I like to go every time I go to Greece, I go to Beron and just kind of sit there, especially if it's like a nice fall, winter day when no one's there and just kind of sit there and imagine what it would have been like when it's like just full of women and cooking and incense and whatever else, you know, was going on.

• 51:00Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 51:01Speaker 02

  It's pretty powerful. And then I think, where do we have that in a modern day period? I don't actually have a place like that.

• 51:07Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 51:07Speaker 02

  Um, in, in modernity, um.

• 51:12Liv Albert?

  I feel like it's one of those things, women often make it for ourselves though, you know, like, I mean, just even just like getting together as a bunch of girls. Like, I feel like that's so common in my life and it, it kind of feels like its own way of, of like, kind of making up for that a little bit.

• 51:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think, I think those are the only spaces where we, where they're sort of social gatherings. Um, I don't know if they have religious, I mean, I've been part of different groups, like every now and then, different groups will invite me to do a talk about Artemis, different like goddess groups or wicked groups or whatever groups. Um, and I really like those kinds of gatherings. Um, but they're, I, they feel a little bit few and far between compared to the regularity that was available in the ancient world.

• 52:00Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 52:01Speaker 02

  And pre-Greek world even more so.

• 52:04Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 52:06Speaker 02

  You know, maybe we're getting, I mean, I don't know. Now there's more and more so-called pagan temples that are going up. Um, the Greeks have finally allowed pagans now to be considered a real religion. They just posted something this year or last, the end of last year, where they were like paganism is now acknowledged as a real religion in Greece. And so a lot of the people that are practicing pagan traditions in Greece are now coming forward more and more.

• 52:31Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 52:32Speaker 02

  So I don't know, maybe we will see a revival of those kinds of spaces, not just for women, but for everyone who wants to participate.

• 52:42Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 52:42Speaker 02

  You know, in those words, that would be really incredible.

• 52:47Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Well, and I feel like unfortunately in the world that we currently live in and most, I mean, I live the sort of in the, the English speaking world that I'm, you know, most familiar with, with at least, like, I think that now there is so much horrible transphobia that that's all I think about when I think about like a quote unquote women's only anything is I just immediately think of those people who don't want to open womanhood to people who weren't born into it. And like, it's just sad and gross and that like, it's so hard because we have that that I feel like is so, yeah, like, it's just like a, it's, we're just like in a different horror now.

• 53:32Speaker 02

  It's true. It, it's a, it's, it's a tough thing. And actually I've talked to a few of my friends about this. It's a tough thing because I feel like a lot of those, let's say, older women's spaces are holding on so tight to that.

• 53:47Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 53:47Speaker 02

  That it's becoming toxic in the, in, in that way. So

• 53:53Speaker 02

  I hope, I hope that conversation and moving forward, we're able to open up. I mean, the point of having these spaces is that everyone can join and participate.

• 54:03Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 54:04Speaker 02

  Uh, but it seems like the conversations that I get into every now and then they'll be like, you know, you fought so hard for the space. And it's like, yes, but we fought for like the rights of everyone, you know, so.

• 54:14Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 54:15Speaker 02

  It's, it's sad to me too, sometimes because I like a lot of the pioneers, uh, uh, I mean, they did a lot of work, but you're kind of now adapting this patriarchal conservative structure and it's scary. It's really scary. You're like, so, so I agree. So again, another reason why I'd like to have space because I would really love to have everyone join and everyone be there in body, like in present, not zoom, but like be there and maybe share and maybe worship the goddess and all those kinds of stuff.

• 54:52Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 54:54Speaker 02

  And so that's sort of my vision for the future. It's open to everyone. But I know that we're in a weird space, um, with those, with those kinds of groups and that.

• 55:03Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 55:04Speaker 02

  Um, yeah. So hopefully moving forward, we can maybe even, you know, for women's month. I mean, we gotta, we gotta figure out, you know, how do we move forward together?

• 55:12Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 55:13Speaker 02

  Like we have to, we have to.

• 55:16Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 55:16Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 55:18Liv Albert?

  It's so interesting. I, I've never really thought about it this way, but I, I, I'm not, I'm not a spiritual person. So I tend to like, especially when it comes to the show, like it, it tends to feature very much is like, this is like historical mythology to me. And there's nothing wrong with seeing it alternatively, but it's to me, like, I'm just not, yeah, not in that. But I grew up in a, I don't even know how to properly describe it, like in an incredibly

• 55:44Liv Albert?

  woman centric, spiritual group that sometimes when I talk about it and explain it too much, it sounds like a cult. So I don't, I don't believe it is actually a cult, but it has a lot of qualities. Um, but like I grew up, like my mom was in it and like, so I'm just kind of realizing having this conversation, how much more I grew up around the concept of the goddess.

• 56:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:09Liv Albert?

  Than other people. My mom, my mom's still and like, she's still in it. I just don't like deal with it. But my mom's still, every single time I'm with her in the car and she needs to find a parking space, she will say out loud, we're going to ask the parking goddess. Like, like I, I just see, I, I experienced something. Oh, that was just like how I grew up and I realized that's super not normal. Um, but like, so yeah, I'm like, oh, I think I grew up in like kind of almost like what? A little bit. It wasn't, it wasn't explicitly to women, but it was like ninety percent women in this thing. So I'm like, oh, right. That was like not totally normal, but I definitely grew up with this like concept of the goddess, like everywhere all the time.

• 56:49Speaker 02

  Well, that's amazing. I mean, I grew up Catholic, so that was not really possible.

• 56:53Liv Albert?

  My mom was Catholic, so then she did that instead. You see?

• 56:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. I think my kids are growing up that way though. I mean, I had put my kids in Catholic school for a little bit when they were young and I got called in the principal's office because my son was telling his teacher that, um, the goddess created earth and the goddess creates everything. And they were like, and anyway, I pulled him out and put him in public school.

• 57:18Speaker 02

  But, uh, but no, I, so I love that idea. I love that for you live. Like I, I know that was not. And in fact, this was the first year that I told my mother that I'm no longer celebrating Christmas and that I'm no longer considering myself a Christian. I mean, I haven't for a while, but I haven't said it out loud to my family.

• 57:36Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 57:36Speaker 02

  And, uh, yeah, it's, I mean, I don't know how it went over and it's a work in progress. But yeah, so I grew up very much in the masculine world of, uh, yeah.

• 57:51Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Well, I can see Romania being very, a very different time. We were like from Quebec, yeah, more Catholic than the rest of the country.

• 57:58Speaker 02

  True.

• 57:59Liv Albert?

  But still, Canada.

• 58:03Speaker 02

  True, true. I think it does affect you in some way when you grow up thinking of like using the word goddess, like even when people say, oh, my goddess. Sometimes I still go, oh, my God. And then, you know, it's like just different things like that, little things like that. And you realize how ingrained in you, uh, the patriarchy is.

• 58:22Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 58:23Speaker 02

  And now that I'm so, I'm starting to adopt Artemis also as a spirituality, or certainly like goddess, certainly in Crete where I feel a spirituality there. I don't know if it's all Artemis or there's much more archaic divinities there since there are other divinities there. Um, but now that I, there's that kind of battle within yourself of like, my cerebral brain going, okay, like, is this real? Like, yeah, I know we're in a cave and I know you feel feeling feelings, but like, is it really? Like, can we document it? And so I'm in this weird transition space between the cerebral and the spiritual.

• 58:59Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 59:00Speaker 02

  With the goddess, yeah.

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• 1:01:05Speaker 02

  But you know, in a way, it's a bit of a blessing because I always saw myself as an academic and for life, an academic. And I think there's something about this movement that when I published my book, women just came out of the woodwork and were like, oh, my God, I love her. And then we, you know, being invited to groups and having commerce. And so you're like, suddenly you're like, like you, like you're saying, like, suddenly I'm surrounded by women who are using this term goddess everywhere. And I'm like, oh, my God, this is where I want to live. This is where I want to be.

• 1:01:34Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I I love all this. I even remembering I in the group that my mom like was part of a lot when I was a kid. She even made a friend who had like changed her name to Artemis. So I like, I'm realizing like, oh, there's like, there's more collection connections than I'd ever like fully recognized because I think I grew up and then was just like, no. Then I just became obsessed with Greek mythology. So did I go very far? Probably not. And I think I have my own kind of like spiritual connection to it, but it is more about like this connection to like the history and the people more so than the the like more explicit like divinity spirituality. But I think it is so interesting to look at like all the different

• 1:02:17Liv Albert?

  levels that that can and do exist within that. Like, and it's just so about like, you know, people's personal, you know, choices and and interests. And I don't know, I I do, it's nice. It's from the very least of just being like, the world is becoming a little bit less. And by the world, I mean, you know, the West where I live, but becoming a little bit less Christian.

• 1:02:37Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, yes, you're right. I would say that that's a that's a good assessment. Yes. I this summer, I'm going to Greece and I'm starting to map all the Artemis temples in Greece. And so I'm doing this whole technical digital thing on Google and blah, blah, blah. I want to use my own pictures and my own stuff and blah, blah. But one of the reasons why I'm doing that is because I want to be able to share like a visual representation of how popular these spaces were, how many of them there were. I guess in my mind, I want to sort of rebuild or reconstruct like what it would have been like in the ancient world to walk around. Right. And I mean, I I mean, Artemis is my boo. And so I I'm here for her. I can't do all I can't do all of them.

• 1:03:20Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:20Speaker 02

  There's a ton. You throw, you know, you throw a rock and you hit a temple.

• 1:03:25Speaker 02

  So I can't do them all. But I like this idea. Like, I guess I like something tangible or visual at least, so that people, everybody can see what it must have been like to live in a space where you had so many options to worship.

• 1:03:43Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:44Speaker 02

  Right?

• 1:03:44Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:45Speaker 02

  So many personalities and that you could worship them simultaneously. You know, I don't know that we are, I mean, we we talk about it and we can imagine it, but I don't know that we can really contextualize it. Maybe it takes a little bit to get used to that.

• 1:04:01Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I mean, it's so different. It's so foreign, like in a in such an interesting way.

• 1:04:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:11Liv Albert?

  Sorry, go ahead.

• 1:04:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know. So that's I think that's my, yeah, that's my, it's my passion, but it's also my goal.

• 1:04:17Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I mean, I love it. And now, though, I desperately want to know, like, are there more? More like areas and temples devoted to Artemis where we know, like, kind of what what happened? Like, I know, we don't know a ton about what happened at Varan, but like, is there anything like that elsewhere that we know about?

• 1:04:36Speaker 02

  I mean, because it's men, we know at Sparta that

• 1:04:39Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, I do remember something at Sparta. Yeah.

• 1:04:42Speaker 02

  Right, that they used to whip themselves bloody and and blood up her statue. I don't know.

• 1:04:46Liv Albert?

  Really? No.

• 1:04:48Speaker 02

  Okay, so let me tell you the story. Sure. Okay, so it's Artemis Orthea. And anybody who goes to Sparta, you can go see this temple. In fact, for a long time, I didn't even know that the Spartans worshipped Artemis because it's not something they really talk about.

• 1:05:01Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:02Speaker 02

  Anyways, so there's this little temple, well, it looks like a little temple now. And there are a couple of stories from different historians, but basically, a priestess of Artemis would stand in the middle of a circle.

• 1:05:14Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:15Speaker 02

  Holding a wooden statue of Artemis. They say Orthea means she's erected or stands erect. So it's it's not the hunter goddess. It seems to be more like the Artemis of Ephesus style of goddess.

• 1:05:28Liv Albert?

  Okay.

• 1:05:28Speaker 02

  But we don't know. We don't have a piece of it. Anyway, she stands in the middle, holding this wooden statue. And around her, all the Spartan boys that are about thirteen, fourteen years old, walk around whipping themselves. So self flagellation, right?

• 1:05:43Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:44Speaker 02

  Bleeding, bleeding and splashing the blood onto the statue. And obviously, the priest is holding the statue. So they do this in two ways. They do this, number one, until the last man standing. So that's one. And that's how they would gain sort of honor among the the boys. Or they do it until the until the priestess says, okay, the statue has drank enough blood, soaked enough in blood, that the goddess is satisfied. And they say that actually, this ritual

• 1:06:15Speaker 02

  is a replacement ritual to an earlier ritual of human sacrifice, where a boy or a young man would be killed and his blood would be poured all over the statue. So they say that this was, I don't remember who said it, if it's Hesiod or some someone else, that this was a replacement ritual. Instead of sacrificing one person, they decided to do it communally and spray and and, you know, whack, whip themselves, whack themselves, whip themselves until the statue soaked. And so I try to imagine that. So when you're in Sparta,

• 1:06:49Liv Albert?

  The most Spartan thing I've ever heard, like.

• 1:06:52Speaker 02

  It's

• 1:06:54Speaker 02

  I try to imagine the priestess in the middle, though, because she must be coated in blood, too. Right?

• 1:07:00Liv Albert?

  It makes me think of Ifgenai among the Torians.

• 1:07:03Speaker 02

  Yes. Well, yes, this is where it comes from. Artemis Orthea is very much connected to the Torian Artemis. And they say that it's actually the same, the same version of this of her that arrives in Sparta. And then some some will say that they go from Sparta to Taurus, etc. Either way, there's a lot of bleeding and sacrificing on this statue.

• 1:07:25Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. So we know that one for sure, because we have lots of male writers.

• 1:07:32Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:32Speaker 02

  Talk about it. And it's not so secret. It's actually a public ritual, because you would honor your family by how long you could stand and bleed yourself.

• 1:07:40Liv Albert?

  Of course, yeah, very Sparta. I knew about that temple, but I did not know about those details. But I did know that there was like, a big, important temple to Artemis in Sparta. And like, oh, okay.

• 1:07:53Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. The Romans tell a story in which they turned it, they made it about cheese, eventually. They made the story like that they put cheese on the altar. And as the boys are running to get the cheese, they're whipped. So whoever is able to make it through this whipping cycle and get the cheese wins, like this kind of games.

• 1:08:12Liv Albert?

  That I feel like I've heard more, where it's more about like them scrambling for food and getting punished. But I didn't know about that in connection with Artemis, unless I did. I don't know. I learned too many things. Then they followed them.

• 1:08:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. So this is a later, so I guess they they sort of move away from the self whipping as the Romans, well, no, once the Romans arrive. And so then they make it about food, but they're still getting whipped on the way to get the food. So there's still a sort of a bleeding aspect to it. But yeah, so she's, yeah, she's quite the blood thirsty goddess, particularly, of course, men's blood. She's she really enjoys their their bleeding and suffering.

• 1:08:49Liv Albert?

  Yeah. But thinking about that in connection to the fact that she is this kind of like, she is a goddess of childbirth, but but I I mean, I find her so interesting because she's this goddess of childbirth who is notoriously childless.

• 1:09:01Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:09:02Liv Albert?

  And so thinking about, yeah, men's blood, like you're saying earlier, like men's blood in connection with that.

• 1:09:09Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:09:10Liv Albert?

  Is much more interesting, certainly.

• 1:09:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. I like this idea that she doesn't have children of her own. I think that idea really changes with the Virgin Mary, because then she has children. So she becomes this mothering. And yet Artemis is a mothering divinity without actually birthing from her body. I love that idea. I think there's a conflict city there that patriarchy doesn't allow for, like patriarchy goes, oh, you're a mother if you birth. Well, actually, that's not true.

• 1:09:41Speaker 02

  And so I really like that about her.

• 1:09:44Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I mean, there there are so many really interesting hold, they feel like holdovers from this, from the the sort of the goddess worshiping time period that came before, probably came before. Like, they feel like so many goddesses feel like holdovers in that way, like Hestia, Artemis, Athena, like, they all have different in like, points. And like, obviously, Artemis is the most kind of In your face because she is also a goddess of childbirth, but like these goddesses that are quote unquote virgins, but you know, we now have this association with that word about like, it just has this Christian association, right? Like the Virgin Mary, you know, she's a virgin, but hers is about being pure.

• 1:10:27Liv Albert?

  It's about being, you know, whatever all those different things are. I don't know a lot about Christianity. It's great. But like, whereas the goddesses, you know, from Greek myth, it's more about them being unmarried. It's about them being like, they don't have a husband. And like, yes, they also don't have children, but it's not about purity. It's about like marital status. And I do think that's,

• 1:10:54Liv Albert?

  it's something that I didn't really like realize when I first started doing this because everything you read just uses the word virgin and then we just put this connotation on it, but it's like, that the Parthenos originally meant more like unmarried. It's just so much more fucking interesting and I feel like it doesn't get said enough unless you're like in these, you know, deep and, you know, much more academic kind of circles with this like greater understanding of the context. I just,

• 1:11:18Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:11:18Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I wish more context existed when you're talking about any of this stuff.

• 1:11:21Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:11:22Liv Albert?

  It's not about purity. It's not about like some hymen in there. Like it's not about that.

• 1:11:26Speaker 02

  And you know, what's interesting is that there's a lot of rumors and I say rumors because they haven't been archaeologically or historically evidence, but there's a lot of rumors, let's say in conversations among academics that pre patriarchy goddesses like Hera, Athena, Artemis,

• 1:11:46Speaker 02

  had the skill or had the ability of parthenogeneticist. And so there that there's this rumors that inside the temples that the priestesses knew secrets, whatever they may be, that they had these secrets that could allow women to become pregnant with female daughter, with daughters.

• 1:12:06Speaker 02

  I want to say magically, but without the association, you know, without the help of a man and the way that Hera gives birth to Hephaestus or whatever. Yeah. And so, and what's fascinating is I don't know if you've seen the stingray, that sort of self impregnated, the parthenogenetic stingray.

• 1:12:20Liv Albert?

  Okay. I've seen the pregnant stingray. I didn't know it was parthenogenetic and that's why it's interesting. Thank you. I would like, why do we care about a pregnant stingray? Thank you. That's vital information.

• 1:12:30Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. And I just, I'm fascinated with her because it's like, so she was all, no stingrays are around, just these sharks. And in the beginning, people are like, oh, maybe she's going to have shark babies. It's not possible for her to get pregnant on her own. Now they're actually using that word like on TikTok and social media and news. They're using the word parthenogeneticist. And as a historian, I'm like, oh my God.

• 1:12:52Liv Albert?

  Yeah, that's exciting. Like I know that word, not in modern context normally, but I love it.

• 1:13:00Speaker 02

  Exactly. You know, and so, and so that's kind of exciting because it's sort of like scientific. Proof that this is a natural occurrence. Now, I'm not saying that, like I said, there's no evidence that women were, you know,

• 1:13:13Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:14Speaker 02

  But there's lots of stories like Gaia and Hera and other stories in which goddesses do reproduce, let's say.

• 1:13:20Liv Albert?

  Oh yeah. I mean, there's countless, like there's so many parthenogenic goddesses and it's, but they're just, they're immediately subjugated and like that's like usually by their child. And so, and also the child or children are usually men. Oh, okay. Interesting. Now I'm thinking about so many things when it comes to that. Like, okay, I'm gonna have to rack my brain later and see if there is a parthenogenetic child that it does not immediately subjugate their mother. But regardless, there are so many. And it is really interesting that, but yeah, I mean, you can just kind of see how these stories were

• 1:14:02Liv Albert?

  transformed, right? How, so something existed in the prehistoric time that then when the stories that we now have were written down, whatever, like they were, whether intentionally or otherwise, but like making these changes to benefit the current world order, the patriarchy.

• 1:14:24Speaker 02

  Yes. And that leads to the double goddess theory and the idea that, so there's a couple of questions. First is why do we have so many stories of parthenogenetic goddess? It doesn't make any sense if they had already, if there wasn't something mysterious happening before, number one.

• 1:14:40Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:40Speaker 02

  Number two is we have this double goddess and in archaeology, we have these kind of blocks with two heads. And for a long time they were mysteries, you know, and lots of scholars today, well, lots, about three, talk about how these are possibly mother daughter statues. So the idea that mother daughter share a womb, that mother daughter shares secrets, that mother daughters pass down mysteries. And so this imaginative world in which a goddess parthenogenetically creates a daughter through which she communicates history, ritual, story. That daughter then parthenogenetically connects another, and this idea, this sort of this magical fantastical story.

• 1:15:23Speaker 02

  But it seems that we have partial obsession, partial repetition of these kinds of stories in the ancient world that remain unexplained. Like, why did the ancients tell us so many of these stories? Why do we have so many double goddess things?

• 1:15:39Speaker 02

  Perhaps because women kept lots of secrets or didn't write things down. We don't really have an explanation for that.

• 1:15:45Liv Albert?

  Well, but it's, I think it's also, I mean, and I'm sure it's just your phrasing, but I want to point it out to my listeners that like, they might've been writing them down, but if they did, they didn't get copied for us to have them, right? Like it's very likely or possible at least that they wrote a ton of stuff down. But that stuff doesn't naturally last. And so, yeah, like unless somebody's out there being like, this is worthy of my copying my transcription to keep it alive. Which like, obviously they would never do if it was all about women because Christianity came in and fucked everything up.

• 1:16:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, you're absolutely right. I mean, that's a very good point. I mean, like we only have Sappho's little pieces, but certainly if Sappho was participating, why wouldn't others?

• 1:16:26Liv Albert?

  Well, exactly. And we have her little pieces. Mostly as far as I know, but I haven't looked that deep because of like random survival, right? Yeah. Like, oh, the papyrus was used for something else. So we have it. And that's why she's so damn fragmentary. So like, if anything, Sappho is this like incredible example of how women wrote stuff down and why we don't still have it.

• 1:16:49Speaker 02

  Yes. Oh, yeah, that's actually, it may be a little more tragic in a way. Right?

• 1:16:59Speaker 02

  It's true. That's a little more. And I mean, I mean, we haven't discovered everything. So it's possible that somewhere, somehow we may come across some other pieces. But yeah, you're right. I mean, if the value of those things were not see, was not observed, then we have lost a lot. And you know, that repetition or someone overhearing somebody talking and then writing it down and things like that. Again, we get it through men's eyes a lot. And so we don't, that is part of the frustration, I think of being, of looking back in history is that we have not yet found all the documentation.

• 1:17:35Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think about it all the time because I am deeply obsessed with Euripides in large part because I think he thought women were people worthy of describing as such. But how like, you know, so many of his plays, we only have again, because of like this random occurrence, not because they were deemed worthy. And so, and, and you know, in some of the cases, like I think the Helen being one of them, like, it's a really interesting like way to look at both what they found to be worthy of survival back then. But like for lots of different reasons, right? Like the most obvious being that the Helen

• 1:18:14Liv Albert?

  makes Helen not to blame for the Trojan War. And so like, there's not going to be a lot of support for that because it's really nice to blame the Trojan War on Helen.

• 1:18:21Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:18:22Liv Albert?

  But then also because it's a, it's a play where Menelaus looks like a little dweeb and Helen saves everyone. And like, I don't, do you know offhand if, if, if Gnaia among the Torians is one of the alphabet plays? Cause I could see it being one. And I know it's in the right.

• 1:18:37Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 1:18:38Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Cause it's in the right letters.

• 1:18:39Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:18:40Liv Albert?

  Because like, yeah, I mean, that's another one where like, Orestes and Pilates are like complete dweebs who can't do anything. If, if Gnaia isn't there to help them. Like those two plays are so similar. I just recently like finished the Torians after not having read it for so long. So it's sort of in my head, but I mean, yeah, I just think about that with everything. Like, cause we also do know that there were other women poets, like we know their names, but we don't tend to have much that survives if anything like.

• 1:19:07Speaker 02

  Yes. Yes. Yes. I mean, you're right. You're absolutely right. Actually, because women entered competitions. Uh, so we know that. Yeah. I don't know. That makes it even more tragic now that I think of it, that we don't have.

• 1:19:21Liv Albert?

  Yeah. I mean, I feel like I can name a couple that I've heard of, of like, like Sappho, but whose work just doesn't survive. Like I feel like Irina is one and there's a P. Anyway, I know I have a book about it, but like, it, yeah, it's, it's just so interesting to, to really look at the stuff that we know existed, but we don't have, let alone everything that we don't even know if it existed because it probably featured or was written exclusively like by women.

• 1:19:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. I think that that's part of, one of the obstacles that we are hoping to overcome. With new digs, I mean, I'm going on, I'm going to a dig, not on the dig in Eritrea where there's a temple to Artemis that's being excavated now. And they found some statues and things like that, but I'm always hoping for inscriptions. I'm always hoping for little pieces of writing. They're still digging, so it'll take a few years, but who knows? Like, so, so those are some of the pieces that we could then, again, I mean, it would be a small piece, but it would be something that would give us some ideas. So far all we've done is we found her name on lots of pottery and lots of pots and maybe some, like, so when I go into museums, especially the museum at Barad, they have a whole wall.

• 1:20:36Speaker 02

  Or they have just shards, just shards of, I don't know, but thousands of pots and things that were there with her name. And so they've selected the shard with her name and they put it on the wall. And I just stand there sometimes and I'm like, oh, look at how many times they wrote her name.

• 1:20:49Liv Albert?

  Yeah. I love stuff like that so much. I also just have like a real obsession with like the regional Greek museums because they're always like the lowest budget. Museum you've ever been into, but they have the coolest stuff and I love the combination like no notes. They're just so fun.

• 1:21:07Speaker 02

  It's true. It's true. My only frustration with people, places like Carla's, for example, is that they have these massive artifact spaces and then no labels. And it drives me a little bit.

• 1:21:18Liv Albert?

  No labels and then also like, I swear nine times out of 10, like some things closed. Like I've been to Delos. I guess only I've been to Delos twice, but both times the museum has been closed.

• 1:21:28Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:21:28Liv Albert?

  And I know it's because they're working on it, but I want them to open it. Or I went to Samothraki, which was like quite an effort. And the museum was like mostly closed. I mean, I, I did get a tour by the archaeologist, so I probably shouldn't complain. I knew people, but like still. You know, like, but anyway, yeah, the, the stuff you find at those little ones. And now though I'm obsessed with going to, to Braron. So is it like, I don't, I'm a dumbass and I don't have a driver's license. Is it easy to get to? I'm going to look into it now. I'm going to Greece soon. Yeah.

• 1:21:58Speaker 02

  You are. I heard, I saw that you're going on a trip with, with people and stuff.

• 1:22:02Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:03Speaker 02

  So that's, that's exciting.

• 1:22:05Liv Albert?

  Who, I keep kind of forgetting about that because I'm afraid of being the center of attention. Uh, but that is part of it, but I'm going to be there like a probably almost a month and a half. Um, so that I can be there for those 10 days with all of those people and then also have all the time alone to.

• 1:22:19Speaker 02

  Nice, nice. I would say you, I would say you'd have to drive to it. Uh, you could take the bus, but then you have to walk.

• 1:22:26Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:27Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, walking's not bad, but I would say like about a two kilometer walk.

• 1:22:30Liv Albert?

  Oh, that's not bad. I can do that. Yeah. All right. I'm taking notes. I, I need to add more like places I, I've been like trying to mark it all. I've tried to see everything. And so, yeah, I gotta add some to the list. I keep just going back to Naxos because it's the greatest place in the world.

• 1:22:44Speaker 02

  It really is wonderful. Yeah. It really is.

• 1:22:48Liv Albert?

  Uh, but I could use more Artemis. I, like, now I'm going to be way more obsessed with her, I think, but I just, I think she is one of the goddesses who is kind of most affected by, by the patriarchy, by the way that we are, way, the way that we can view her without having the like, the deep knowledge that comes with like years and years and years of study, right? Like, like even the stuff I can find and I am, you know, at this point considerably more well-versed in, in looking for this stuff. And in the ancient sources specifically, like compared to just, you know, any old person, but at the same time, I still like, I'm so limited by the ancient sources.

• 1:23:28Liv Albert?

  Because, and they were just dudes. So I can do all my thinking about like what they didn't say or what got lost or whatever. And I do. But, you know, like unless you're in academia often, you just can't get deeper and that sucks.

• 1:23:43Speaker 02

  So this is my goal. So, and so, and this is my goal with the Artemis Center, but also I think you're right. I think one of the ways that I find Artemis is easy to understand is more through artifacts. Um, and yes, yes.

• 1:23:58Liv Albert?

  You mentioned Artemis of Ephesus and I realize I really wanted to bring that up. Uh, so I just think you said artifacts and now we have to at least just quickly talk about, about the many boobed Artemis.

• 1:24:09Speaker 02

  Oh my gosh, I'm obsessed. Okay, Liv, we have to do a whole thing. Because I'm writing, so this is the book that I'm writing now is on Artemis of Ephesus. Uh, she was part of my dissertation and now I have like, I don't know, a bunch more chapters. But yes, so my argument has always been that those are actually queen bee cells. And they're queen bee eggs. And I have all these evidence, all this evidence. Like all this evidence, photographical evidence and all this kind of evidence and blah, blah, blah. And she actually just started getting boobs once Christianity and European male artists started doing that. Um, so yeah, so those are not breasts.

• 1:24:46Liv Albert?

  Well, I don't think they look like them. They look like them to us, but they don't look like them in terms of ancient statuary.

• 1:24:54Speaker 02

  And they have no nipples.

• 1:24:56Liv Albert?

  Like, don't they?

• 1:24:57Speaker 02

  No, there's no nipples on any of the ancient copies. I mean, we don't have the originals, but we have some Roman copies.

• 1:25:05Liv Albert?

  Yeah. I was going to say, I saw one, for the first time in person, I went to the Capitoline Museum in Rome in January. And they have one there and it's interesting because they also though, like, I mean, even nipples aside, they don't look like the way that they sculpted breasts in the ancient world.

• 1:25:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. So if you Google queen bee cells, just simple Google search. You will find a way, because queen bee eggs, uh, are longer and they have a shape. And you'll find a way that they, they sit on the hive. I don't know how to explain it.

• 1:25:36Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:36Speaker 02

  So yeah, so this is my new, like I have so much to say about her and Etergortis and all these kinds of things that are connected to her. Anyway, it's a long story, but yes, she is, she's very special. Um, she's so much more than a hunter goddess and she's so much more than everything. She's very, very special. Yeah.

• 1:25:52Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:53Liv Albert?

  So I might, I might have to bring you back to talk about her and especially in related, relation to Etergortis. Cause I've never, I don't know enough about beyond Greek sources to like, feel like I could do anything justice, but I always want to know.

• 1:26:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26:07Liv Albert?

  So.

• 1:26:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. No, she's, she's really amazing. And, and my argument or my thought process has been, you know, why Artemis? Like why the name Artemis? Like, okay, we know historically, but also there's something, there's lots of layers there is what I mean, that would have made that the perfect fit. Um, and they actually just found something in Ephesus that is a small statue of the mistress of animals. And we can trace the mistress of animals back to Crete. And now I, well, Crete is my place, like feels like home and I'm obsessed with it.

• 1:26:37Liv Albert?

  Crete is amazing.

• 1:26:37Speaker 02

  It is amazing, right? Uh, and so, and so I'm, I'm hoping to live there eventually since I have my EU passport and leave Canada.

• 1:26:45Liv Albert?

  Jealous. I'm like watching, I'm looking at Greek places. I won't lie.

• 1:26:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, once you're, so, so there's this, there's this really multi-layered aspect of Artemis, of Ephesus that I think really embodies her, her complexity. And, um, and I think it's time we talk about her as well. Like, I think that there, that it's time that we bring to light the way that ancients worshipped in these multi-layered, complex ways that I think we have really, um, shrunk down or we created this one dimensional, you know?

• 1:27:23Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 1:27:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:25Liv Albert?

  Yeah. I mean, especially even just the mythology, like worship broadly, absolutely. But like, I mean, I think about it with the mythology all the time because and you know, if you're not deep in this, you pick up a book and you get a completely skewed view of what it is because it is almost impossible to contextualize it all in a way that is like, you know, complete and not bogging down everything. So like, I understand, but at the same time, like you go to a store and you just pick up a book called the Greek myths, even if it's by like, you know, a, a scholar of all of this stuff. And it's still like, if you're just reading a quote unquote retelling of the, the myths themselves, like,

• 1:28:07Liv Albert?

  you are not getting the context of how many centuries were happening within these stories and how much they would have changed and been like regionally specific. And like, you know, everyone kind of has to like pick a version and go with it. And that's why I think my show has become both very detailed and maybe sometimes annoying. I don't care. I'm not going to stop. But like, I will always tell all the different versions and I will never pretend that like, there's one answer to anything. There is no, there's no like canon. I've been reading, I've been doing a lot of research on Medusa for a book that I'm working on and

• 1:28:44Liv Albert?

  I mean, Medusa is like my pet. She's my Artemis. Like, but yeah, I mean, the, the Medusa, the, the, trying to contextualize her stories, trying to pick out a cut and dry version, like is so impossible. And I just keep reading the word canon in a bunch of places. And I'm like, who's canon? Like, what are we? Multi, I've read twice now, some very like supposedly like fancy academic works referring to a pseudo Apollodorus as a canonical version of her story.

• 1:29:14Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:29:15Liv Albert?

  I guess, right? I'm like, why though? Why? Like, I don't think that we should ever be calling anything in Greek myth canon.

• 1:29:21Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:29:22Liv Albert?

  But if we have to, for some strange reason, pseudo Apollodorus is not it.

• 1:29:27Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 1:29:29Liv Albert?

  Anyway.

• 1:29:31Speaker 02

  You know.

• 1:29:33Speaker 02

  Um, academia sometimes can be a little out of touch, um, with some things and.

• 1:29:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's still a, it's still a field. I don't know what to say.

• 1:29:44Liv Albert?

  No, I get it.

• 1:29:45Speaker 02

  My fellow colleagues.

• 1:29:46Liv Albert?

  Yeah. No, I mean, and I like the, the work that was most annoying to me, I have this like, I just found it at some used bookstore, but it's like the Oxford Dictionary or like encyclopedia of, of Greek and Roman myth, of classical myth. And yeah, and I was like, not going to use it as a main source, but like, at least for like an inspiration for where else to look. But then it says, one, it's, it calls pseudo Apollodorus canonical. And then two, says that Medusa is linked with this Mesopotamian goddess who I'd never heard of. Then I Googled it and even Google can't agree with that at all. And instead links her to like a different Mesopotamian divinity. Anyway, it was very interesting and only confused me more than when I started. But yeah, it's, it's funny, the stuff you find.

• 1:30:31Liv Albert?

  And then I just think about people who don't have the background knowledge that I have finding that stuff. And you just are like, this is the right answer, you know? And that's just, it's too bad.

• 1:30:40Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. And you know, now you say that, Liv, part of the reason why I started the school and I did, I have these, these courses that are like little courses called Goddess Essentials. One of the reasons why I started that is because exactly this, people would come to me and be like, oh, what do you know about Hecate? And like, what's true and what's not true? Or what do you know about Aphrodite and what's true and what's not true? And I thought to myself, yeah, like how, if you don't want to do a whole degree and you shouldn't have to.

• 1:31:04Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:05Speaker 02

  Like, come on. How do you look up a source and be like, here's something that tells me about primary source, secondary source contextualizes it a little bit, but it's short enough that I can do it and I can get it. And I thought, you know what, I'm going to do some of them, not all of them, but I'm going to do like 10 goddesses. So that if people are like looking for, where do I start? You can find that because that has been my problem too. It's like you go digging for something, you fall down the rabbit hole, but then you also find so much stuff that's like, what? Where did you get this from? No, this is, hold on, wait, what? And then it creates this chaos. Yes.

• 1:31:38Liv Albert?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:31:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:31:39Liv Albert?

  I mean, e- even in just like this, I've only been working on this Medusa piece for a little while, but like the number of places that without any kind of explanation or, or like context at all, say with their whole, whole mouth, like the Greek myth of Medusa is, and then they just proceed to tell the version from the Metamorphoses. And I'm like, there is nothing wrong with the version in the Metamorphoses, but it is explicitly, categorically not the Greek myth of Medusa. Like.

• 1:32:14Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:32:15Liv Albert?

  Just I, it has value, but it doesn't have value as being the Greek myth of Medusa.

• 1:32:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. That happened to me with, that happened to me with Apollo, because I had said something about him being a total douche canoe. And somebody had said to me, using the Metamorphosis, oh, well, you know, he only learned about this later. He only did this. And I had to do a whole little spiel about like, Roman history is not Greek history and it comes after, uh, you know, Greek history and it, you know, it rewrites the stories however they want and it's fine. But you know, anyways, so that, so you're absolutely right that, um, and I mean, in all fairness, like how, not everybody should have to get a degree to understand.

• 1:32:52Liv Albert?

  No.

• 1:32:52Speaker 02

  We need to have a space that's just, that's more clear and more easy to access and that people can just learn what they need to learn and feel confident that, okay, I've got the basics and I can go out there and make whatever connections might feel fun for me.

• 1:33:06Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:06Speaker 02

  You know?

• 1:33:07Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:08Speaker 02

  So maybe we're on our way to that, but maybe we're just, you know, maybe this is the movement that's happening now, right? Cause for a long time, of course, this was gatekeeping. There was a lot of great gatekeeping around closets.

• 1:33:18Liv Albert?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:33:19Speaker 02

  Right? So now less so.

• 1:33:22Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah, it's getting better at least. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, well, I clearly could talk with this forever, but I will not keep you forever. But I would love if we could, if you have got a couple of extra minutes, um, just finish off by telling people where they can find more about like the project you're working on, your podcast, like li- literally anything you want to share about Artemis and yourself.

• 1:33:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, so social media is Artemis expert. Um, and.

• 1:33:45Liv Albert?

  Nice and easy. I love that.

• 1:33:47Speaker 02

  And I had to think about it for a long time and I had my, one of my PhD supervisors going, well, aren't you the Artemis expert? Who else is working at Artemis in the world academically? And I was like, well, actually no one is really working on her. And he's like, okay, well then just keep the name and be great, you know?

• 1:34:01Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:01Speaker 02

  Uh, so I, so I like that. And then the Artemis Center has the whole website. Uh, The Goddess Project is my podcast. Um, also born out of this idea that I wanted to talk about goddesses, the way I wanted to talk about them. And sometimes when I teach at the university, we have to speak to like dates and names of emperors and things like that. So I was like, no, let's talk about rituals and all the gory bits. So The Goddess Project is, yeah, is the podcast and yeah, that's better. Otherwise you could probably find me through those three things, those three places. Yeah.

• 1:34:32Liv Albert?

  Wonderful. I'll link to things in the app description too, so they can find it. But this was so much fun. Thank you so much for doing this.

• 1:34:38Speaker 02

  Thank you, Liv. I've been looking forward to meeting you for so long.

• 1:34:42Liv Albert?

  Oh, my God, same.

• 1:34:43Speaker 02

  I love it.

• 1:34:44Liv Albert?

  Thank you. I love it. And talking with people makes me love it so much more and I needed that today specifically. So thank you. This was very fun.

• 1:34:54Speaker 02

  That makes me feel good. Thank you.

• 1:35:12Liv Albert?

  Oh, as always, thank you all so much for listening. I just, I mean, I, I have been having a tough go of it lately. Just now withheld tears long enough that I could record this. We're doing great. Uh, you know, I, I started talking and I had nowhere to go. Honestly, thank you all so much for listening. Thank you all for the really kind notes that you've sent me to when it comes to the utter disaster of a human that I am in this moment, while trying to put out incredible content that I've been so excited about for months. Like I have had these episodes planned for months and months, i.e. since before everything I loved exploded in my face and died.

• 1:35:55Liv Albert?

  Um, and so it's been really hard to feel like I had these ideas that I was so excited about and these people I was so excited to talk to, or in some cases, people I'd talked to before. And like, oh, anyway, there's been tough moments. Um, but i- it's been, you know, really tough to, to try to create this content and then put it out when I have this, this like deep desire to do it, but also an inability to function as a human being. Official depression setting in, um, we're looking into it. But in the meantime, I just really appreciate the supportive nature of my listeners and I just, you know, thank you. Thank you for not once complaining about this show being a little bit more haphazard lately.

• 1:36:39Liv Albert?

  And just, you know, thank you for being really nice and lovely. Uh, and that's all I've got to say, actually. Let's talk about Myth Baby is written and produced by me, Liv Albert. Michaela Smith is the Hermes to my Olympians, my assistant producer. Laura Smith, again, no relation. I think it's funny every time I have to say their names back to back, like, come on, guys. Really? In any case, Laura Smith is the wonderful audio engineer and production assistant. The podcast is part of the iHeart Podcast Network. Listen on Spotify or Apple or wherever you get your podcasts. Uh, if you are interested in supporting this show or me, or just all the work that I do and you get to listen to for free,

• 1:37:23Liv Albert?

  I'm not trying to guilt you, I promise, but just like factual. Um, you can subscribe on Patreon and contribute to the show. There is a ton of back bonus content for you to binge. Honestly, like I can't even, I don't even know how many episodes. It's pretty wild how much I've put out in seven years of having a Patreon. And I say all of that because I've not been very prolific lately. I haven't been able to do anything, um, cause you know, I'm barely here. But there is so much, if you want to contribute to the show, it's patreon.com slash Smiths baby. And if I let myself continue to talk into this microphone without a script, it's just going to go poorly. Thank you all so much. You are truly wonderful. I really, truly, honestly could not keep doing this without you. That's a, that's a straight up fact.

• 1:38:07Liv Albert?

  I am Liv and I love this shit.

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