Our oldest stories, those told via oral tradition for generations worldwide, hold a sort of 'mind map' that help us to understand ourselves via the landscape within which we live or have lived. When looked at symbolically, the qualities of the characters come to represent different life forces and how they affect each other within our bodies and within our world.
Somehow, in lieu of former rites we've developed a modern rite of passage that requires a child to transition to adulthood via disbelief and skepticism in these stories. No 'real' adult truly believes in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, right?
Do I literally believe that gods in a human-like form live on Mt. Olympus? Do I literally believe bunny rabbits give birth to rainbow colored eggs? No.
But, do I believe that electricity in its unadulterated form is an energetic force governing much of everything and is born of titanic energetic forces? Yes.
So, some background on Wonder Woman:
Venus Aphrodite is the wife of Vulcan Hephaestus; a merging of Beauty and Work in an alchemical process that produces new life in the form of Love. Though having many love affairs, Beauty is always attracted to the passionate side War (Aphrodite and Ares are lovers) and is always in conjugal relation to this aspect. It is the shadow side of passion. From this we learn that passion is both a creative and a destructive force.
Diana Artemis represents natural life outside the polis; the flora and fauna that inhabit the hills, streams, and forests. She refuses to have a husband and remains free of the tethers of marriage. She represents the love of sisterhood and is the protector of children, especially in childbirth.
Another virginal goddess in the pantheon, Athena, represents the polis as well as the non-passionate aspect of war. Athena, in contrast to Ares, is sovereign over the intellectual side of war, especially military strategy. She is the creative aspect of the thinking brain. She'd be the military commander sitting at a map with her comrades plotting the army's next movement.
We don't know why the writers would put Diana saying she chooses love while in mortal combat with Ares, except that it looked good to them at the time when they were writing it. Perhaps it was looking at the woman she was about to murder that helped her realize her sisterly bonds. Perhaps in the end the writers remained fearful of a woman who'd choose anything except love; they fear a Divine Woman who would choose something larger and more neutrally karmic than love, something more in tune with the larger forces of Life in the Cosmos over which her arena of Consciousness resides.
Choosing Love (Eros) in a cosmic sense could also be born of the alchemical consciousness elevating processes of Beauty (Aphrodite) and Work (Hephaestus), but those characters don't show up in any significant way in the movie so we are left with a sense of modern love being something in the end being contained within the World of Man and its regulatory confines, bound as so many man-made things are by morality taboos and behavioral restrictions (which Diana Artemis by her very nature is incapable of choosing.)
Similarly, why they'd have a war god say "Zeus is dead," while lightning bolts traveled down his sleeves and hangars below were lit via electricity does not make sense.
But, it fits the superficiality of the modern era of skepticism and disbelief to imagine that the only god left would not be an electric god of energy but instead a passionate god of indiscriminate violence. That is the mythology we've created for ourselves; and in the tradition of 'as above, so below' the gods and goddesses we venerate become the traits and attributes we most value.
Diana Artemis remains a goddess of the life outside the city; of life outside of human intervention. She remains free of domination by the World of Man and is not married to any body or any idea governed by man. This is the Diana Artemis we can venerate; and in so doing, continue a cultivation of awareness of life on the planet which is not beholden to human dominance nor entrapped by enslavement.
Somehow, in lieu of former rites we've developed a modern rite of passage that requires a child to transition to adulthood via disbelief and skepticism in these stories. No 'real' adult truly believes in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, right?
Do I literally believe that gods in a human-like form live on Mt. Olympus? Do I literally believe bunny rabbits give birth to rainbow colored eggs? No.
But, do I believe that electricity in its unadulterated form is an energetic force governing much of everything and is born of titanic energetic forces? Yes.
So, some background on Wonder Woman:
Venus Aphrodite is the wife of Vulcan Hephaestus; a merging of Beauty and Work in an alchemical process that produces new life in the form of Love. Though having many love affairs, Beauty is always attracted to the passionate side War (Aphrodite and Ares are lovers) and is always in conjugal relation to this aspect. It is the shadow side of passion. From this we learn that passion is both a creative and a destructive force.
Diana Artemis represents natural life outside the polis; the flora and fauna that inhabit the hills, streams, and forests. She refuses to have a husband and remains free of the tethers of marriage. She represents the love of sisterhood and is the protector of children, especially in childbirth.
Another virginal goddess in the pantheon, Athena, represents the polis as well as the non-passionate aspect of war. Athena, in contrast to Ares, is sovereign over the intellectual side of war, especially military strategy. She is the creative aspect of the thinking brain. She'd be the military commander sitting at a map with her comrades plotting the army's next movement.
We don't know why the writers would put Diana saying she chooses love while in mortal combat with Ares, except that it looked good to them at the time when they were writing it. Perhaps it was looking at the woman she was about to murder that helped her realize her sisterly bonds. Perhaps in the end the writers remained fearful of a woman who'd choose anything except love; they fear a Divine Woman who would choose something larger and more neutrally karmic than love, something more in tune with the larger forces of Life in the Cosmos over which her arena of Consciousness resides.
Choosing Love (Eros) in a cosmic sense could also be born of the alchemical consciousness elevating processes of Beauty (Aphrodite) and Work (Hephaestus), but those characters don't show up in any significant way in the movie so we are left with a sense of modern love being something in the end being contained within the World of Man and its regulatory confines, bound as so many man-made things are by morality taboos and behavioral restrictions (which Diana Artemis by her very nature is incapable of choosing.)
Similarly, why they'd have a war god say "Zeus is dead," while lightning bolts traveled down his sleeves and hangars below were lit via electricity does not make sense.
But, it fits the superficiality of the modern era of skepticism and disbelief to imagine that the only god left would not be an electric god of energy but instead a passionate god of indiscriminate violence. That is the mythology we've created for ourselves; and in the tradition of 'as above, so below' the gods and goddesses we venerate become the traits and attributes we most value.
Diana Artemis remains a goddess of the life outside the city; of life outside of human intervention. She remains free of domination by the World of Man and is not married to any body or any idea governed by man. This is the Diana Artemis we can venerate; and in so doing, continue a cultivation of awareness of life on the planet which is not beholden to human dominance nor entrapped by enslavement.
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