artemis brauronia, arkteia:
for the trojan war to begin, agamemnon had to sacrifice his daughter iphigenia in aulis. the time of the sacrifice, artemis put a deer in her place and took her in tauris (tauric chersonesos, ukraine). after the death of clytemnestra, her brother orestes came to find her. meanwhile, iphigenia had become a priestess of artemis and along with the statue of artemis, they came to brauron.
the trojan war was a campaign for the return of helen. ->helen is the ambassador of divine beauty, which is to the east, where the sun rises. ->menelaus is the one who claims her because she is his wife and she belongs to him. menelaus=μενέλαος < μένος + λάος/λᾶας=great stone (matter). he is the one who stays in the matter. and to the one who stays in the matter belongs divine beauty. ->the achaeans campaign through the sea of emotion. achaeans=ἀχαιοί < ἄχα/ἄχια=waters (emotion).
through the catharsis of emotion menelaus claims the divine beauty-helen.
but agamemnon is the leader. ->agamemnon (cratylus)=admirable for remaining. ->iphigenia=ἰφιγένεια<ἴφις+γένος=the power of the genus. she has to be sacrificed to artemis (according to cratylus, the deep knower of virtue).
so in order for the acheans-the people who travel through the sea of emotion to claim divine beauty, they have to sacrifice the power of the genus to virtue.
iphigenia goes to the north and to her place remains the deer=ἡ ἔλαφος<ἐλ+φάος, which is the sacred animal of artemis and represents the enlightened soul. ->in tauris: taurus is the sacred animal of the earth and it is the incarnation of the soul in the earth. ->orestes<ὀρεσίβιος, the one who hunts in the mountains the beasts (cratylus). in order to claim the peaks of virtue, you have to win the beasts of passions. ->in aulis: aulis=αὐλή/αὐλά (doric) ->βραύνα=cavity of the earth. the soul comes to the cavities of the earth to encarnate and prove that she follows arete (virtue)-artemis.
in brauron happened the celebrations of artemis brauronia, arkteia. ->ἄρκτος < ἀρκέω-ὦ=to suffice. the bear does not need food during the winter, and in the same way, the soul in the darkness and coldness of the material field has no need to feed from anywhere other than the interior world-arete. the polar arktos from the moment of birth has the ability to stand on the feet and hunt for food. artemis is the law of integrity and energy=the power to stand on my feet.
arkteia happened every 5 years. the procession began from the akropolis because entering the propylae and moving to the parthenon, the first temple to the right is that of artemis brauronia. the arktoi (young girls dedicated to artemis) with their pedagogues and the priestesses of artemis had canisters, animals for sacrifices, various other offerings. they stayed for a few days, sometimes more, athletic games happened, the arktoi danced with movements mimicking bears around the altar under the guidance of pristesses, wearing short chitons. they stayed in π shaped rooms and in the grand space in front of them happened the celebrations.
the athenians sent there their daughters to learn to honour the arete and the oikos (house) as a structured psychic state, so that they could build a healthy society in the future, because the state of a civilisation can be seen from the position of a woman. the same way behind every spartan was a strong mother, and there happened the celebrations of artemis orthias, for whom praxiteles built a statue called orthon. orthon means straight and like the cypress, the holy tree of artemis (hades-our world as well), the soul must stand straight. its strucute was an isoscelus triangle, meaning that one must honour equally the somatic and psychic nature, and stand straight to the typhonus wind and honour ὀρθὸν λόγον.
