Here is an anthology from Neos Alexandria! I contributed a few pieces to this anthology!
Here is Shield of Wisdom: A Devotional for Athena and Minerva
Shield of Wisdom (Athena and Minerva Book) now Available!
Category: Athena
I have published!
Divine Beings, Earthly Praise is now available for purchase!
For more information: Divine Beings, Earthly Praise
Lulu Store
Paperback: Divine Beings, Earthly Praise
PDF Ebook: Divine Beings, Earthly Praise
Update
I have sent the Wepwawet book, Lord of Strength and Power to the formatters! I decided to take the Anubis section out since I wanted this to be just about Wepwawet. I can send the Anubis material to Bibliotheca Alexandrina and see if they need it.
I have also sent another poetry book to the formatters. This is a companion to Divine Words, Divine Praise. It has poems to Athena, Athena and Zeus, Athena and Poseidon, Hestia, Hela, Hekate, Frigga, Hera and Zeus, and many Orisha (Oya, Yemaya, Oshun, Osanyin, Shango, Obatala, and Nana Buruku). I’m calling it Holy Words, Holy Praise. I’m hoping to come up with a better title. It sounds pretentious to me.
Divine Words, Divine Praise is Now Available!
My new book is now available for purchase!
Here is a collection of poems about various Goddesses, Orisha and Gods from around the world.
Within Divine Words, Divine Praise, you will find poetry of:
- Asherah, Lady of the Sea.
- Athena, the Bright-Eyed.
- Brighid,Fiery Arrow.
- Brigantia, Heavenly Queen.
- Frigga, Queen of Asgard.
- Hela, Queen of Helheim.
- Hera, Queen of Olympos.
- Hestia, Hearth Goddess.
- Isis, Queen of Heaven and Sarapis, Lord of the Sea
- Oya, Queen of Wind and Rain.
- Skadhi,Ski-Goddess and Odin, Lord of Asgard.
Here is the information page: Divine Words, Divine Praise.
Here is the link to the Paperback on Lulu: Divine Words, Divine Praise
Here is the link to the PDF on Lulu: Divine Words, Divine Praise
Updates on Projects
In case you missed it, I have published Magician, Mother and Queen.
I have finished and am preparing to publish another poetry book. The title of this now is Divine Words, Divine Praise: Poetry of the Holy Powers. I have sent it in to the formatters.
I have sent in the permissions for Lady of the Sky: Ancient Hymns of the Goddess Aset from the Temple of Dendera. We’ll see what they say. I’m still waiting.
I have been compiling all the material for this book She Who Speaks Through Silence: An Anthology of Nebet Het (Nephthys). I am still waiting on some submissions.
I am compiling a compilation of scholarly papers I wrote in Graduate school (and afterward) about various goddesses, Orishas and a saint (Mary); and I have one other essay about women’s healing and talismanry (I know it doesn’t fit, but I have no idea where else I could publish it. I may take it out and publish it by itself. I’m not sure.). I’m thinking of making this into another book. My working title is Holy Lady, Holy Queen: Papers on the Feminine Divine.
Athena’s Relationship with Other Gods and Goddesses
Athena’s Relationships with Other Gods and Goddesses
by JewelofAset
Relationship with Zeus
At Athena’s birth, she sprung forth from Zeus’s head in full armor, her war cry resounding through the Heavens and Earth. Zeus bestowed upon her these honors: his Aegis and she alone save Zeus can wield the power of the Thunderbolt.
Both of them can bring storms to those at sea. Zeus and Athena shared many epithets and spheres of expertise.
Deacy states them as (Athena/Zeus):
Savior (Soteria/Soter), Of the Council (Boulaia/Boulaios), Of the Olive Tree (Moria/Morios), Founder of the City (Archegetes/Archegetis), Of the City (Polias/Polieus) and patrons of Phratries (Phratria/Phratrios) (1).
Relationship with Hera
Hera as the wife of Zeus would be Athena’s “Mother” (Step-Mother in our parlance). In Hera’s Temple at Olympia there was a statue of Athena wearing a helmet and carrying a spear and shield (2). Within the Illiad, Hera’s dress was hand woven by Athena for her (3).
At the Proteleia Festival, a Priestess of Athena gave Athena a sacrifice or offering to aid in the marriages, fertility and childbearing of young brides. Hera as the Goddess of Marriage par excellence would have most likely been given a sacrifice as well (4). This is an example of where their cults may have intersected.
Both Goddesses are also patrons of housewives, domestic work and the tending of the home.
Relationship with Ares
Athena is a deity of war. She is both the goddess of just war and the horrors of war. Ares is the god of war, par excellence, while Athena is a goddess of war when it is necessary. She is the goddess of war and has many other attributes. At Olympia, Athena Hippia and Ares Hippios were honored together as deities associated with horses (5). Both of these deities were associated with war. Athene was more associated with just or defensive war, while Ares was more linked to the bloodshed, carnage and chaos of war.
Relationship with Hygeia
Pausanias in his Description of Greece mentions that the goddess Hygeia (Health) is the daughter of Asklepios (Healing God) and Athena Hygeia (Health) (6).
Relationship with Poseidon
Both Athena and Poseidon wanted Athens to be their patron city. Each offered a gift to the city, Poseidon offered a body of water and Athena planted the first olive tree. The sea water would offer fish and some shipping expeditions at certain times of the year, and Athena’s olive tree would offer fruit, oil and wood. Athena was awarded the city. In anger, Poseidon flooded the plains (7). In another version of this myth, Poseidon offered the horse instead of the sea. He still lost to Athena (8).
On the Hill of Kolonos, Poseidon Hippios and Athena Hippia were worshipped together as deities related to horses (9). In one Libyan myth, Athena was blue-eyed as she was the daughter of Poseidon and Lake Tritonis (10).
Athena’s maritime attributes include building of ships, piloting vessels and navigation (11). She could brew up storms upon command; she destroyed ships returning from Troy after they had committed sacrilege in her temple (12).
Relationship with Hephaistos
Athena was a goddess who weaved her own clothing. As the patron of women who worked at the loom, she aided women in domestic chores in their homes or those who sold their woven crafts at the market (13). Hephaistos on the other hand was a god of the forge, metal working and smiths.
According to Deacy, the difference between Athena and Hephaistos was that the goddess’s crafts were made from wool and other animal parts while Hephaistos’s crafts were things made in a forge. They share a festival (the Chalkeia) where they are honored together as Holy Powers associated with blacksmiths and artisans (14).
Relationship with Hestia
Athene was associated with the work women did in the home. Hestia is the goddess of the home and hearth itself. These two have over-lapping influence here.
Both Goddesses had fires associated with them. Athena’s cult also contained a flame within an eschara vessel which was re-lit by a Priestess every day. The difference here between flame of Hestia and this flame of Athena was that Hestia’s was a perpetual flame while Athena’s was re-kindled daily (15). Also Athena’s name may mean “vessel containing a flame” which is what an eschara does while Hestia’s name means “hearth” which is where the fire was lit in the home (16).
Relationship to Erichthonois
After being rejected by Aphrodite, Hephaistos tried to have sex with Athena. His sperm ended up on her leg. In disgust, she wiped it off with some wool and threw it to the ground. In some versions of the story, the goddess Gaia came up from the earth and gave the baby Erichthonois to Athena. Athena gave him to some of her priestesses to raise in Athens. Erichthonois was kept in a box with a snake; the Priestesses were never to open it. Athena was trying to make her son immortal. Two of the priestesses opened the box.
The two women who opened the box were either killed by the snake or were driven mad by the goddess herself and flung themselves off the Akropolis (17). Athena then raised the child in her own temple. According to myth, Erichthonois placed the first statue of the goddess there and founded the festival of Panathenaia for Athena (18).
There was a snake-spirit who was the guardian of the Akropolis. Each month he was given a honey-cake to elicit his protection. There is a statue of Athena with a serpent. This serpent is believed to be the guardian-spirit.
Pausanias describes the snake of Athena Parthenos statue as Erichthonois. Erichthonois was both a ancestor raised by Athena and an guardian serpent spirit of the Akropolis who was petitioned to for protection (19).
Relationship with Hades
In the town of Koroneia in Boeotia, Athene was worshiped with Hades. Strabo says that it came about because of a spiritual or religious mystery. And in Plato’s Laws, the Athenian names Athena as “our Kore and Despoina” which means “our Persephone” (20). Kerenyi also states that both Persephone and Athena are associated with the pomegranate (21).
Sources
(1) Deacy, Susan. Athena. (Routledge, 2008), 78-79.
(2) Pausanias, Description of Greece 5. 17. 2
(3) Neils, Jenifer. “Pride, Pomp and Circumstance,” in Worshiping Athena: Panathenaia and Parthenon. University of Wisconsin Press, 1996), 196-197.
(4) Connelly, Joan Breton. Portrait of a Priestess: Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece. (Princeton University Press, 2007), 200.
(5) Kerenyi, Karl. Athene: Virgin and Mother in Greek Religion. Translated by Murray Stein. (Spring Publications, 1988), 46.
(6) Pausanias. Description of Greece: Books 1-2. translated by W. H. S. Jones. (Loeb Classical Library, 1918; Harvard University Press, reprint), 117.
(7) Deacy, Susan. Athena. (Routledge, 2008), 79-80.
(8) Kerenyi, Karl. Athene: Virgin and Mother in Greek Religion. Translated by Murray Stein. (Spring Publications, 1988), 46.
(9) Kerenyi, Karl. Athene: Virgin and Mother in Greek Religion. Translated by Murray Stein. (Spring Publications, 1988), 46.
(10) Pausanias. Description of Greece: Books 1-2. translated by W. H. S. Jones. (Loeb Classical Library, 1918; Harvard University Press, reprint), 75. 1.14.6; Pausanias says that this was at a Temple of Hephaistos where the statue of Athena had blue eyes.
(11) Deacy, Susan. Athena. (Routledge, 2008), 49.
(12) Deacy, Susan. Athena. (Routledge, 2008), 49.
(13) Deacy, Susan. Athena. (Routledge, 2008), 51.
(14) Deacy, Susan. Athena. (Routledge, 2008), 52-53.
(15) Kerenyi, Karl. Athene: Virgin and Mother in Greek Religion. Translated by Murray Stein. (Spring Publications, 1988), 35.
(16) Kerenyi, Karl. Athene: Virgin and Mother in Greek Religion. Translated by Murray Stein. (Spring Publications, 1988), 30.
(17) Deacy, Susan. Athena. (Routledge, 2008), 80-83.
(18) Deacy, Susan. Athena. (Routledge, 2008), 85.
(19) Deacy, Susan. Athena. (Routledge, 2008), 88.
(20) Kerenyi, Karl. Athene: Virgin and Mother in Greek Religion. Translated by Murray Stein. (Spring Publications, 1988), 32.
(21) Kerenyi, Karl. Athene: Virgin and Mother in Greek Religion. Translated by Murray Stein. (Spring Publications, 1988), 31-32.
Proklos Hymn to the Goddess Athena
Hymn to Athena
by Proklos
Daughter of ægis-bearing Jove, divine,
Propitious to thy vot’ries prayer incline;
From thy great father’s fount supremely bright,
Like fire resounding, leaping into light.
Shield-bearing goddess, hear, to whom belong
A manly mind, and power to tame the strong!
Oh, sprung from matchless might, with joyful mind
Accept this hymn; benevolent and kind!
The holy gates of wisdom by thy hand
Are wide unfolded; and the daring band
Of earth-born giants, that in impious fight
Strove with thy fire, were vanquish’d by thy might.
Once by thy care, as sacred poets sing,
The heart of Bacchus, swiftly-slaughter’d king,
Was sav’d in æther, when, with fury fir’d,
The Titans fell against his life conspir’d;
And with relentless rage and thirst for gore,
Their hands his members into fragments tore:
But ever watchful of thy father’s will,
Thy pow’r preserv’d him from succeeding ill,
Till from the secret counsels of his sire,
And born from Semele through heav’nly fire,
Great Dionysius to the world at length
Again appear’d with renovated strength.
Once, too, thy warlike axe, with matchless sway,
Lopp’d from their savage neck the heads away
Of furious beasts, and thus the pests destroy’d
Which long all-seeing Hecate annoy’d.
By thee benevolent great Juno’s might
Was rous’d, to furnish mortals with delight:
And through life’s wide and various range ’tis thine
Each part to beautify with arts divine:
Invigorated hence by thee, we find
A demiurgic impulse in the mind.
Towers proudly rais’d, and for protection strong,
To thee, dread guardian, deity belong,
As proper symbols of th’ exalted height
Thy series claims amidst the courts of light.
Lands are belov’d by thee to learning prone,
And Athens, O Athena, is thy own!
Great goddess, hear! and on my dark’ned mind
Pour thy pure light in measure unconfin’d;—
That sacred light, O all-protecting queen,
Which beams eternal from thy face serene:
My soul, while wand’ring on the earth, inspire
With thy own blessed and impulsive fire;
And from thy fables, mystic and divine,
Give all her powers with holy light to shine.
Give love, give wisdom, and a power to love,
Incessant tending to the realms above;
Such as, unconscious of base earth’s control,
Gently attracts the vice-subduing soul;
From night’s dark region aids her to retire,
And once more gain the palace of her sire:
And if on me some just misfortune press,
Remove th’ affliction, and thy suppliant bless.
All-saving goddess, to my prayer incline!
Nor let those horrid punishments be mine
Which guilty souls in Tartarus confine,
With fetters fast’ned to its brazen floors,
And lock’d by hell’s tremendous iron doors.
Hear me, and save (for power is all thy own)
A soul desirous to be thine alone.
Source
and found here:
Orphic Hymn to the Goddess Athena
[31] XXXI. TO PALLAS [ATHENE]
A Hymn.
Only-Begotten, noble race of Jove, blessed and fierce, who joy’st in caves to rove:
O, warlike Pallas, whose illustrious kind, ineffable and effable we find:
Magnanimous and fam’d, the rocky height, and groves, and shady mountains thee delight:
In arms rejoicing, who with Furies dire and wild, the souls of mortals dost inspire.
Gymnastic virgin of terrific mind, dire Gorgons bane, unmarried, blessed, kind:
Mother of arts, imperious; understood, rage to the wicked., wisdom to the good:
Female and male, the arts of war are thine, fanatic, much-form’d dragoness [Drakaina], divine:
O’er the Phlegrean giants rous’d to ire, thy coursers driving, with destruction dire.
Sprung from the head of Jove [Tritogeneia], of splendid mien, purger of evils, all-victorious queen.
Hear me, O Goddess, when to thee I pray, with supplicating voice both night and day,
And in my latest hour, peace and health, propitious times, and necessary wealth,
And, ever present, be thy vot’ries aid, O, much implor’d, art’s parent, blue eyed maid.
Source:
The Hymns of Orpheus. Translated by Taylor, Thomas (1792)
Athene’s Orphic Hymn from Theoi.com.
A more modern translation can be found here: Orphic Hymns translated by Apostolos N. Athanassakis
Offerings for the Goddess Athena
Offerings of Athena
Some of these offerings are from historical sources and others are from my personal experience with the Goddess.
Liquid Offerings
Water
Milk
Oil (Olive Oil)
Wine
Honey
Food Offerings
Bread
Cakes
Grains
Fruit
Olives
Meat Offerings
Various kinds of Meat
Fish
Non-Food Offerings
Scents: Aromatic or Sweet-Smelling Herbs; Myrrh
Light: Oil Lamp; White or Blue Candles
Colors: Blue, Sea colors
Flowers: Roses, Sweet Smelling Flowers
Taboos
Things or events that would cause miasma.
Sources
Homer. The Homeric Hymns: A Translation, with Introduction and Notes. translated by Diane Rayor. University of California Press, 2004.
The Orphic Hymns. trans. By Apostolos N. Athanassakis. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013.
Connelly, Joan Breton. Portrait of a Priestess: Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece. (Princeton University Press, 2007) 180.
Homeric Hymn to the Goddess Athene
HOMERIC HYMNS, TRANS. BY H. G. EVELYN-WHITE
XXVIII. TO ATHENA
[1] I begin to sing of Pallas Athene, the glorious goddess, bright-eyed, inventive, unbending of heart, pure virgin, saviour of cities, courageous, Tritogeneia.
From his awful head wise Zeus himself bare her arrayed in warlike arms of flashing gold, and awe seized all the gods as they gazed.
But Athena sprang quickly from the immortal head and stood before Zeus who holds the aegis, shaking a sharp spear: great Olympus began to reel horribly at the might of the bright-eyed goddess, and earth round about cried fearfully,
and the sea was moved and tossed with dark waves, while foam burst forth suddenly: the bright Son of Hyperion stopped his swift-footed horses a long while, until the maiden Pallas Athene had stripped the heavenly armour from
her immortal shoulders. And wise Zeus was glad. And so hail to you, daughter of Zeus who holds the aegis! Now I will remember you and another song as well.
XI. TO ATHENA
[1] Of Pallas Athene, guardian of the city, I begin to sing. Dread is she, and with Ares she loves deeds of war, the sack of cities and the shouting and the battle. It is she who saves the people as they go out to war and come back. Hail, goddess, and give us good fortune with happiness!
Source
From here: Homeric Hymn to Athena
The other Homeric Hymn to Athena
Short Homeric Hymn to Athena
Fiercely Bright One 