Which is all very well and good, if I were a middle schooler who didn't know how to use Wikipedia. But since this is pretty much the first and most obvious information I was able to find on my own with the very limited resources I have (Wikipedia aside, a bit of Googling brings up some reliable academic sources and a few articles by modern Pagans as well)... it is kind of frustrating. Sometimes it seems that these kinds of general all-purpose responses triggered by key words (virginity? I know I have my pre-formulated reply about virginity in here somewhere...) are used by modern Pagans to prop up a semblance of expertise while covering a multitude of inconsistencies and downright contradictions.
In my short time looking into this, I've found "hard" polytheists who insist on interpretations of the virginity of Greek goddesses to mean everything from "since women in patriarchal ancient Greece were not allowed to have sex outside of marriage, virginity today means you literally have to abstain from sex" all the way to "virginity was about female empowerment, and therefore today it means you should have tons of sex because sexual liberation is how we express our female power." Since I happen to think both of these extremes are poor excuses for feminism and female empowerment, I'm baffled that somehow this whole debate has been carefully managed by resorting to the same basic response, "ancient Greeks thought about virginity differently than we do today." That response leaves me asking, And.....? It's a masterpiece of social cohesion in the face of mind-boggling diversity. It's basically a way of avoiding confronting the fact that your theology says you worship distinct, separate deities, and yet these same deities seem to manifest to you (plural) in such incredibly different ways that from an outside perspective it seems odd to claim that Greek-Virgin-Goddess-X-let's-have-sex is really the same as Greek-Virgin-Goddess-X-no-seriously-cut-it-out, but Goddess-Y-let's-have-sex-oh-by-the-way-I'm-Norse just simply can't be the same deity at all, no way, no how. What I'm saying is, as someone who is not a hard polytheist in any way, the lines that get drawn seem pretty arbitrary.
Hard polytheists crack me up sometimes.
Since I'm not a hard polytheist, I don't have much of a problem is there's a huge diversity in how people relate to and interpret deities that they call by the same name. But it's seems to be that intellectual integrity could be better served by asking hard questions and laying bare that diversity in a way that can give us insights and spark new ways of relating to deity, instead of trying to act the expert. I used to buy the line that Hellenic Recons had so many more sources and resources available to them for their efforts at reconstruction than those interested in CR. But now I'm starting to think that's a load of bull and HR folks are just as deep in the process of cobbling things together from half-understood academic sources as CRs are.
In any case, here are some of my remaining questions about virginity in ancient Greek society (keeping in mind the answer could be and most likely is, "ancient Greek society was diverse and evolving, so the answer to your question is going to be complex"):
- Why would a goddess choose to be virginal? (Is the act of choosing significant, or only the state of being virginal itself? Is there a connection between the two?)
- What is the spiritual or theological significance of virginity in both goddesses and human worshippers?
- If the ancient Greeks merely equated virginity to "being unmarried," then why do so many of the myths involve women who lose their virginity through rape or trysts outside of the context of marriage?
- Why did the Greeks use the same word (nymphe) to describe both "nature spirits" of a local landscape and its features, and a "bride," i.e. a woman who is married but has not yet had children?
- In light of the answer to that question, what is the theological and/or ritual significance of descriptions of Artemis as having nymphs as companions and priestesses?
- How do modern Pagans approach and understand stories of Artemis punishing not only rapists but also the victims of rape and sexual assault?