Mission, Beliefs, Values and Activities
Here we describe what we believe and do…
Mission
The Artemiseum is an International Center for scholarship, education and empowerment for women and girls founded on Dianic feminist religious, Goddess and women centered principles. We provide coordination, activities, and initiatives that support religious and spiritual growth, education and scholarship, and women’s health. We fight patriarchal social forms held within ourselves as well as in the social and cultural spheres. Our mission is to: Provide Goddess and women centered education Support spiritual education, personal growth and community activities for women and girls Understand, critique and challenge patriarchal social forms to promote women’s sovereignty, health and healing Our vision is a world where the sovereignty of women is an unquestioned reality.
Beliefs
Goddess is the web of energy that connects all beings on the earth and throughout the universe.
She is the creator and She is the void. She has within Her the light, the darkness, the known and the unknown, the seen, the unseen and all of the realms.
Women are female persons who claim their integrity as female persons. Women are the mirror of Goddess on this earthly plane, and are capable of creation through their female bodies.
Goddess works Her will through women on earth.
Feminism is the recognition of the interconnected social, cultural, and spiritual engagement that restores and maintains women’s sovereignty.
Sovereignty is experienced as strength, integrity, wholeness, integration, autonomy, and agency.
Patriarchy is a social form that is worldwide, is enacted by women, men and society, and is recognized by beliefs and practices that violate women’s sovereignty.
Values
The Goddess is creator and our spiritual center.
It is through our experiential connection and spiritual understanding that we affirm and enact our sovereignty.
Goddess has been worshipped through ages, societies, and cultures.
As Her mirror on earth, many Goddess centered religions were carried out in female specific spaces and in female specific forms.
We seek to rediscover and recreate these forms in female sacred space to glean understandings, and restore our knowing.
Consistent with our sovereignty, we affirm our right to female specific spaces. Goddess and women centered space support the reclamation of sovereignty, which is experienced as healing from the harm caused by patriarchy.
As Goddess here on the earth, we act to protect that which she has created, rediscover what we have forgotten, and live in ways that are consistent with Goddess’ will.
Patriarchal social forms exist within communities of women. We value processes that uncover, challenges, and remedy these within ourselves and our communities.
Ethical practice is engaging in activities and behaviors that affirm women’s sovereignty.
Patterns of thinking and interaction that diminish this goal is personally and socially challenged.
Ways of being that support Goddess’ will and women’s sovereignty are developed and practiced.
Activities
Provide a virtual temple as a platform for spiritual education and growth.
Evaluate materials and create structured experiential activities to achieve a systematic curriculum so that women can develop a foundational set of safe principles and practices to organize her spiritual practice.
Carry out accessible scholarship related to Goddess and women centered practices through ages, cultures, and societies. These include experiential tours, publication, online salons, and educational materials.
Carry out scholarship and education that identifies, dismantles, and remedies patriarchal social forms within women’s communities. This scholarship includes understanding how women enact patriarchy, the implications of this in women’s health and healing, and the importance of these in the health and functioning of women centered spaces.
Bring women from around the world together in virtual spaces to study interacting dimensions of Goddess and women centered religious practices. These five dimensions include: Leadership and community; Tradition and folklore; Magick and spellcraft; Healing and the veils; Ritual and sacred arts. We conceptualize these as Goddess and women centered Guilds, and define guilds as “an association of women for the pursuit of a common goal.” Many women have special knowledge, training, and skills in one or more of these dimensions. Accessing this wisdom and talent is often constrained by proximity. This virtual guild gives women opportunities for study and interaction.