Drawing Down the Moon Read Free Page B

wise and definitely female. I can’t describe it any closer than that, but I felt that this presence, this being, was looking down on me, on this church and these people and saying, ‘The poor little ones! They mean so well and they understand so little.’
    â€œI felt that whoever ‘she’ was, she was incredibly old and patient; she was exasperated with the way things were going on the planet, but she hadn’t given up hope that we would start making some sense of the world. So, after that, I knew I had to find out more about her.”
    As a result of her experience, Harlow began a complex journey to find out about the history and experience of goddess worship. This search led her, through various readings, into contact with a number of Craft traditions, until she ended up writing a column on feminism and Witchcraft for the Neo-Pagan magazine Nemeton (now defunct). It is perhaps only fair, at this point, to describe my own entry into this same world.
    When I was a small child, I had the good fortune to enter an unusual New York City grammar school (City and Country) that allowed its students to immerse themselves in historical periods to such an extent that we often seemed to live in them. At the age of twelve, a traditional time for rites of passage, that historical period was ancient Greece. I remember entering into the Greek myths as if I had returned to my true homeland.
    My friends and I lived through the battles of the Iliad; we read the historical novels of Mary Renault and Caroline Dale Snedeker 1 and took the parts of ancient heroes and heroines in plays and fantasy. I wrote hymns to gods and goddesses and poured libations (of water) onto the grass of neighboring parks. In my deepest and most secret moments I daydreamed that I had become these beings, feeling what it would be like to be Artemis or Athena. I acted out the old myths and created new ones, in fantasy and private play. It was a great and deep secret that found its way into brief diary entries and unskilled drawings. But like many inner things, it was not unique to me.
    I have since discovered that these experiences are common. The pantheons may differ according to circumstance, class, ethnic and cultural background, opportunity, and even chance. There are children in the United States whose pantheons come from Star Wars, while their parents fantasize about Star Trek 2 and their grandparents remember the days of Buck Rogers. The archetypal images seem to wander in and out of the fantasies of millions of children, disguised in contemporary forms. That I and most of my friends had the opportunity to take our archetypes from the rich pantheon of ancient Greece was a result of class and opportunity, nothing more.
    What were these fantasies of gods and goddesses? What was their use, their purpose? I see them now as daydreams used in the struggle toward my own becoming. They were hardly idle, though, since they focused on stronger and healthier “role models” than the images of women in the culture of the late 1950s. The fantasies enabled me to contact stronger parts of myself, to embolden my vision of myself. Besides, these experiences were filled with power, intensity, and even ecstasy that, on reflection, seem religious or spiritual.
    As I grew up, I forced myself to deny these experiences of childhood. At first I missed them; then I did not quite remember what I missed. They became a strange discarded part of youthful fantasy. No one told me directly, “People don’t worship the Greek gods anymore, much less attempt to become them through ritual and fantasy,” but the messages around me were clear enough. Such daydreams did not fit into the society I lived in, and even to talk about them was impossible. It became easier to discuss the most intimate personal, emotional, or sexual experiences than to talk of these earlier experiences. To reveal them was a kind of magical violation.
    Religion had no official place