With the ability to bring new life into the world, women became closely associated with the power of life and death. This generative and creative power linked women symbolically to the earth—the mother of the natural world. Ancient earth-mother deities arose from these associations, figures of immense power tied to creation.
Figures such as Gaia and Hannahanna remind us that feminine power was once foundational to humanity's understandings of creation, authority, and the natural world.
Inspired by the myths detailed below surrounding Artemis—a goddess defined by her demand for independence—Fifty Hounds explores what has been lost in the modern understanding of female power.
A glimpse of Diana’s virginal body seals the fate of Actaeon, the hunter. The goddess transforms him into a stag—killed by his own fifty hounds.
“They gathered round him, and fixed their snouts deep in his flesh: tore him to pieces, he whose features only as a stag appeared.”
Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book III, trans. Brookes More (1922)
Envious of Orion and Diana's bond, Apollo tricks her into shooting a distant figure in the ocean—unknowingly killing Orion. In grief, she casts him into the stars.
“The waves brought his slain body to the shore, and Diana, mourning his death, placed him among the constellations.”
Hyginus, Astronomica Book II, trans. Mary Grant