Artemis, by Gail Warning

Following the historic launch of NASA’s Artemis 1 space programme, in which the space agency sent the Orion craft into lunar orbit in preparation for sending astronauts to the moon for the first time in half a century, I find myself embracing more and more the beautiful, liminally hypnotic Artemis, from US singer songwriter Gail Warning’s album Season of the Soul (2008). 

Artemis has been a firm favourite since I first heard the song more than a decade ago, and this lyrical lunar love letter owes as much to moon mythology as it does to the phenomenon of space exploration.

“Artemis, daughter of the wilderness,” sings Gail with tender melancholy, “your moonlit vision, cuts through the night…” and indeed, this enchanting album, listened to by moonlight or looking out into the night, does feel like a sort of nocturnal voyage of discovery.

Identified by the Romans with Selene, the Greek goddess of the moon, the mythical Artemis was the sister of Apollo, and in Roman mythology gradually took on the mantle of moon goddess. In Plutarch, for example, Artemis leads the Athenians to triumph in the Battle of Salamis by shining with the full moon. But her role in Gail Warning’s ethereal song is a world away from the combative, and more akin to that of a longed for mentor -  “Sister protector” – as the singer entreats this celestial “daughter of the wilderness” to “take me through these tangled woods, into the light.”

Artemis the goddess is no stranger to the musical. As recounted in the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, "Dances of maidens representing tree nymphs (dryads) were especially common in Artemis’s worship as goddess of the tree cult … bearing such epithets as Limnaea and Limnatis (Lady of the Lake), Artemis supervised waters and lush wild growth, attended by nymphs of wells and springs (naiads)."

The heartfelt words of Gail Warning’s song are woven in and out of a shapeshifting tide of shared identity, as the narrator’s pain seems to mirror the silver beams of the moon - “Night after night, I leave a trail of tears” – before locking firmly back into an earthly focus: “I need a guide to help me ease my fears.” Later, the song is even more forthright - “I’ve lost my way, I need a helping hand” 

The mythic Artemis, eventually named Diana by the Romans, fiercely defended her own virginity, and came to be regarded as a symbol of feminine independence.  Gail Warning’s song, against a musical backdrop that somehow sounds both Ancient and space-age, frames this spirit of strength and self control in a soothing and empowering way, as the synthesized notes whisk the listener into a dream-like state of meditative calm.  In a correspondence about the song, Gail told me that she came to write it after reading the book Goddesses in Everywoman, by psychiatrist and Jungian analyst Jean Shinoda Bolen, in which, among others, Artemis is featured as one of the subjects.  According to Google Books, "Jean Shinoda Bolen … offers reassuring, true–to–life alternatives that take women far beyond such restrictive dichotomies as masculine/feminine, mother/lover, careerist/housewife. And she demonstrates in this book how understanding them can provide the key to self–knowledge and wholeness." In paying homage to the inner patterns of existence which underpin the book’s philosophy, Gail Warning has created a richly tapestried paean to both the conjured spirit of an Ancient goddess, and the search to find this spirit within one’s self.

There is yet another reason to listen to Artemis, and to add the music of Gail Warning to your collection as soon as possible. This is, because it is simply such very, very fine music. 

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