What the world needs are Amazons

I was reading an article on a news website today. “Women’s Rights curtailed the world over” read one of the headlines, and a part of me felt very sad. I turned to my faith, as I usually do. Oh, I don’t immediately pray about everything, but from time to time, reflecting on the Gods, on their influence in the world, their mythos, their power in the very myths that are part of our daily lives, and in doing so, another story crossed my path. It was the story of the writer and artist of Wonder Woman and their final arc on the series.

Now, obviously, Wonder Woman isn’t part of my religion, but Wonder Woman, as a character, is enmeshed in daily battles with evil, with trickery, even with the Gods themselves in order to persevere against injustice, and she is an Amazon.

An Amazon!

See, in my religion, the Amazons are seen as a bit of a problem. To the ancient Greeks, women of such ferocity and power were seen as a threat. The story of the Amazons ends with their defeat, and it is a defeat that ends with the notion that Greece, or at least those parts of Greece involved, are saved from them. To the patriarchal culture of the West, these barbarian women with their immense talent with the sword, on the horse, and as an army were not just a military threat, but a threat to the established order of things. A threat to the power of men over women.

This lead me to consider that, maybe, what Hellenismos needs to do is encourage the rise of a new tribe of Amazons. Not an army of women laying waste to the world around them, but rather, a culture of power emanating from within, with the support of the men around them, to not allow themselves to be mistreated.

In the West we often speak of helping women in the world, and Hellenismos is, for the most part today, a religion that seems to encourage the exploration of both masculine and feminine power not only in the divine, but in humanity, so perhaps, just perhaps, what the world needs is more Hellenismos and less Abrahamic chauvinism. Perhaps what the world needs is Amazons, born to a myriad of cultures but all screaming Hail Artemis in the face of any man that tries to cow them.