essential intelligence of Gaia herself,

home of the Feminine incarnate

in a feminine star system

And he who dares look too boldly upon my face,

trapped in the exiguity of his own hubris,

turns himself to stone

for he cannot contain me,

but the reverse

I, like the sun,

am a weaver,

while she who is my illuminated sister,

weaves on the tapestry of my being

day after endless day

and I,

mother of nations, begetter of myself,

birther of equals, strategists,

priestesses, queens

have, in truth, never left home

Child of Gaia, in whose likeness

you

create

me

sing loudly now my names

sprung in plenty from the wells

of your own deep wisdom;

I forget not my own

Dance your way across the aeons-spanning bridge

built through the misguided dreams

of your errant elder brothers,

reclaim your knowledge * wisdom * power

buried like treasure

in the spiral chordings of your genes

and place no other gods

before You

      

Athene Parthenogenesis: Reclaiming the Feminine Standard

          Her name, Parthenia, means “I have come from myself,” while the meaning of Athene has been lost in antiquity.  Her stories have been traced to Mycenaea, Northern Africa including Egypt, Anatolia and the Minoan culture.  Originally, to our knowledge, she represented the bond existent among family members, symbolized by the hearth and home. Her tools were those implements associated with domesticity: the spindle, loom and cooking utensils. Her realm grew to include not only individual family units but finally the entire community, and it was thus that she became known as the Goddess of civilization.

          According to Robert Graves, Athene also invented the flute and the trumpet, and agricultural implements such as the plough and rake. Her gift to humanity extended to the realm of mathematics, the arts and, of course, the “womanly arts” of spinning, weaving and needlework. She introduced more sophisticated means of transportation by inventing the ship, chariot and bridle for horses.

          Classical Greek myth tells us that Athene sprang, fully grown, from the head of her “father” Zeus wearing full battle regalia.  She became known as a goddess of war, although her stories suggest that she was more a strategist and negotiator than an actual warrior. Her reputation as a warrior may have arisen from her identification with the Amazons, women who lived in communities independent of men save for the purposes of expansion.

          One myth tells us that Athene took the name Pallas upon the inadvertent death of her friend by that name during a sparring match.  Pallas was a pre-Hellenic Goddess whose name means “great maiden.”  Another Pallas, a tribal protector-Goddess of Greek origin, was introduced to the indigenous followers of Athene, and the two concepts of the Goddess became fused together, indicating the emergence of a new society.  Other sources suggest that Pallas was a phallic god whom Athene took as a lover but did not marry.  However, “Pallas” may derive from “palladium,” a statue of the Goddess purported to have fallen from the sky and which was paraded through the city streets during her festivals.

          She was once assaulted by Hephaestos, the lame son of Zeus, husband of Aphrodite and god of the metal forge. Though she was triumphant in her resistance, the smith-god managed to ejaculate upon her leg. Athene wiped his semen from her with a bit of fleece and flung it upon the earth, which became fertilized and birthed the serpent Erichthonius.  Athene took responsibility for the serpent and his image was finally placed in the constellation of the charioteer (Auriga).

          The serpent, however, has long been associated with both feminine wisdom and the life force itself, chi or kundalini (most often represented as a serpent coiled at the base of the human spinal column).  The serpent and owl are two of the iconic animals affiliated with the concept of wisdom, and both appear with representations of Athene as her familiars.

          No examination of Athene can be undertaken without consideration of the Gorgon Medusa, the roots of whose story lie in the myths of the Sun Goddesses of pre-Hellenic Anatolia, Africa, Assyria, Crete and even the Sumer-Akkadian cultures (21^st century, B.C.E.).

          Medusa is most familiar to us from the Classical Greek story of the beautiful woman who took Poseidon (whose name means “husband of earth”) as a lover and offended Athene by making love with him in the precinct of one of the Goddess’s temples.

          Enraged, Athene turned Medusa’s hair into snakes and cursed her with a gaze which could turn humans to stone should they chance to look upon her.  She then banished Medusa to the end of the world, there to live with the two other Gorgons until the Achaean hero Perseus, equipped with a mirror-like shield from Athene herself, beheaded Medusa.  Upon her death, the winged horse Pegasus and the boy-child Chyasoar were born from the blood of her severed head.

          Perseus quickly put Medusa’s head in a bag and brought her head back to the Goddess.  Thereafter, Athene wore Medusa’s snake-haired head upon her shield.

          Perhaps it was not the head of Zeus from which proud Athene sprang forth, but the solar head of Gorgon Medusa herself, representative of intellectual prowess and enlightenment, and example of the rebirth of the self. Myths of the dismemberment of female deities, called “demons” by the conquering patriarchs, abound. These are a testament of the often brutal subjugation of earlier female-based or egalitarian cultures by the “heroes” of the incoming hierarchical social order, and hence, the psychological paradigm whereby the feminine aspect is violently repressed within the masculine psyche.

          Or perhaps Medusa is the third aspect of a Triple Goddess pantheon, maiden/mother/crone: Athene as the youthful maiden, the brilliant and energetic guardian, Metis as the wisdom-bearer and birther of civilizations and Medusa as the crone, her light spreading generously over all the world and from whom her maiden self emerges again and again at the winter solstice. Athene, surviving the age of the patriarch, brings them all together under her aegis.

          We see the rebirth of  aspects of Athene in the women’s movement, in feminist theory and the visibility of women if all sectors of public life. As her influence grows, every one of us will recognize her in our own personal integrity, sovereignty, respect for the family bond and care for our community, which is the world.  Ultimately the work of women as builders and preservers of true civilization will be recognized for that which it is: part of the creative expressions of Gaia, planet earth.

© Jessica North-O’Connell