There are many rituals revolving around coming of age and discovering sexuality in folklore. Psychoanalytic interpretations stresses these broad themes of understanding human behavior through psychological, social, and sexual development. This is especially true for young girls through folktales such as Bloody Mary, representing a girl's first menses (Sims & Stephens, 2011). In Ancient Greece, girls would visit temples of Artemis and donate their childhood clothing and toys to represent their transition into womanhood and their preparation for marriage. There is an idea that much like Apollo did with young men, Artemis aided in the transition during this ritual by teaching them that their sexuality was their own. They are more than vessels for childbearing and male gratification, but open to sexuality in their own right (Sherwood, 1996).
Hylas and the Water Nymphs
Henrietta Rae 1909
Callisto: One of Artemis’s nymphs, a minor female deity of brook and forest, she swore the same oath as the others to remain virginal and dedicated to Artemis. Given that she was named, it shows us her importance to Artemis. Through our modern concept of virginity, it would be assumed that nymphs never explored their sexuality, but the story of Callisto gives us insight as to virginity being freedom from men. As the story goes, Zeus came upon her alone in the forest and immediately desired her, but he knew she would refuse him. He disguised himself as Artemis and when Callisto sees him in disguise, she warmly welcomes him and embraces and kiss him. When she pulled back, Zeus was as himself again and while she fought him with all her strength, she was unable to overcome him. As Ovid wrote, “But what god is weaker than a girl?” Having been the one to grant Artemis her eternal virginity, he would have had to know what that meant for her and the nymphs. If Callisto and Artemis were not lovers, why would Callisto have so warmly welcomed Zeus’s advance (Downing, 1994)?
Amazons: To the Greeks, the Amazons were an all-female society that threatened and killed men and treated their sons as the Greeks did their daughters. It was said that their queens were the daughters of Ares, god of war, and they were imagined as Ares-like women. Once a year, they would seek out men from neighboring tribes for the sole purpose of reproduction. While nothing was explicitly stated in their tales, it is assumed their sexuality was lived out amongst each other. They were virgins in the sense that they were self-sufficient and independent of men. They were often seen and described as man-like – masculine – and harbingers of war, embodying the male fear of the terrifying mother (Downing, 1994).
Maenads: These groups of women left society temporarily for a ritual period where they were free to release their ordinarily suppressed energies. For this period, they were free of their domestic duties – of their husbands and their children to be with one another. They became a temporary community known as a thiasos. There is almost nothing known about these groups because men were not permitted anywhere near them, but it is thought that it represented an initiation of women by women into women’s own sexuality and into arousal for its own sake, rather than for procreation (Downing, 1994).
Thesmophoria: A major festival associated with Demeter and is an extremely ancient all-women rite. The purpose of the festival is the dissolution of the family, the separation of the sexes, and the constitution of a society of women. The festival lasts for three full days and nights and men, children, and virgins are excluded, similar to the maenads. Abstinence from sex with men was required before and during the festival and the event gave women the opportunity to vent their anger, share difficulties and sorrows associated with motherhood, and honor Demeter and her own struggles with losing her daughter. The ritual is thought to remind women that they are more than wife and mother and still have sexuality and life in them (Downing, 1994).
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