These Pagan Portals are all current works in progress, serialised here on the Pagan Collective blog with each chapter being open for comment. In due course the entire script will be published as a Pagan Portal book.

Chapter 6: Calling to Athena in Everyday Battles

Of Pallas Athena, guardian of the city, I begin to sing. Dread is she, and with Ares she loves the deeds of war, the sack of cities and the shouting and the battle. It is she who saves the people as they go to war and come back. Hail, goddess, and give us good fortune and happiness!
Homeric Hymn 11 to Athena, translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White

One of the first times I called Athena during the creation of sacred space for a ritual, I felt her energy and power flow into me. Without any coaxing, I could feel her burst forth from my head and my body felt as though it was shapeshifting into the form of a tall, powerful warrior. My voice changed, my posture changed, and my mind shifted to victory. From that moment, I knew Athena would be the one to call on for battle, the one who would understand the best weapons for any struggle.

Goddess of the Motherless
While the birth of Athena is a powerful story, it downplays or dismisses one detail: this story leaves Athena without a mother. She is born into the world, the daughter of Zeus, while Metis is left behind. “In Olympian mythology Athena is firmly established as the cold, rigid Goddess of war. So suppressed and/or forgotten are her matrifocal Cretan origins that she is represented as a daughter born without a mother, having sprung fully from the head of Zeus” (Spretnak 97).

Like many of the stories of Greek godds, scholars debate the influence of patriarchy on the translation and interpretation of stories. The ongoing conversation about the shift from matriarchy (pre-Hellenic) to patriarchy (and its influence on myth) makes it challenging to understand deities in their context and their relevance to the modern day. For me, I want to consider all of the possibilities and call forth the pre-Hellenic possibilities as part of modern worship and relationship-building.

What I found interesting about Athena is her position with her father. “[Athena] was Zeus’s favorite child. He trusted her to carry the awful aegis, his buckler, and his devastating weapon, the thunderbolt” (Hamilton 29). In addition, there are descriptions of the people favoring Athena over Ares in ancient Greece, a compelling addition to her reputation as a virgin and motherless child.

With this background in mind, I would suggest calling on Athena to reconnect with missing parents or familial connections. While she might not offer answers, she can offer an example of strength and power beyond the influence, or missing influence, of strong parents or guardians.

If you are trying to heal family history or your relationship to family in general, I suggest:

Add Athena to a family altar
You might find an image or figure of Athena to place alongside ancestors or in place of missing family members. Building a relationship with her (which will be outlined in detail later) can help to bridge the energetic and emotional gap. She is a being who can hear about challenging family dynamics and offer validation and support. Athena might also be a wise energy to call on when you are faced with difficult family decisions or when you need to talk to a missing family member. She might offer to act as a stand-in figure, a place of safety to battle with any demons of your past or present.

Meditate on or act out the birth story
When you are trying to heal an old story of a missing parent, it can help to place yourself into the story of Athena during her birth. Envision yourself in that place, in that action to see how things feel and what you might learn as you move along the same storyline. You might also draw or paint the story to give yourself a way to engage with it, which can reveal new insights into your own familial relationships.

The Ongoing Battle for Feminism
Unsurprisingly Athena is often connected to the battles of women to secure the same rights and privileges as men. And while the stories about Athena may speak to her victory over Poseidon, and the wrath incurred, what happened after that event is not often shared. Multiple texts refer to all of the women of the time voting for Athena, while the men voted for Poseidon. And as there were more women, Athena won. But the men were angry about this result, and took their revenge on the women at the time. Spretnak describes the women as getting a “triple punishment” (30) as they lost their right to vote, their children could not longer have their mother’s name, and they were no longer called Athenians. (Scholars believe the sculpture of women losing their right to vote and their citizenship is found on the pediment at the Parthenon in Athens. )
The shift from pre-Hellenic to patriarchal society shows up in stories about Greek deities, shifting from matriarchy to something revisionist, prioritizing patriarchal concepts, stories, and victors. Without addressing this shift, the stories can become normalized for readers of modern society, offering a template of sorts for those who want to maintain the unyielding power of men.

Call on Athena to Empower Women
(Before I continue, I want to make it clear that when I speak about women, I am speaking to all who identify as women. More directly, transwomen are women.)
Whenever you might be entering a space that might be dangerous to women, it can help to call on Athena for protection and safety. You can create a short invocation to repeat to yourself or you might draw a spear on your body (either with a pencil, pen, or other marker) so that you are ‘armed’ before you walk into that situation.

I offer this:
Athena, protector, defender, and warrior,
I call on your strength and your cunning to guide me and support me.
I call on your power to shield me from those who wish harm,
Athena, be by my side in all of these battles.

Feel free to write your own or adjust this to a particular situation. In my experience, it can also be helpful to create something you use in all situations since spells like this gain power the more consistently they are used.

Sigils and Shields
If you’d like to create a physical spell to support you in places where you feel vulnerable (and gender or gender history), a sigil can help. There are a number of ways to create sigils, but I will share the process I learned from my first Reclaiming core class teacher, Copper Persephone. Write out a powerful sentence or statement. This could be something specific to your needs or it could just be Athena’s name.

Once you write that out, cross out all of the vowels. Then cross out any duplicate letters that remain so you have a few letters left, no vowels and no duplicates of consonants. With these remaining letters, move them around so they create a symbol. They can overlap each other, they can be attached to each other, or they can be turned around and upside down. No matter how you choose to put them together, the goal is to create a symbol that holds power, but you are the only one that knows what it means. Feel free to add symbols and colors as you like.

This sigil can be something you write on your body, on a piece of paper you carry around, etc. I will put sigils on doors, entryways, clothing, or whatever else might be in the spaces that need more protection. You can also leave the sigil on an altar to Athena for a broader protection spell.

Love & Friendship
In the stories of Greek goddesses, Athena and Artemis tend to be portrayed as the tough, love-less deities while Aphrodite is the lover. As mentioned in the following quote, there is also some writing that suggests Athena doesn’t really care for women.

“Athena was the one goddess who particularly scorned females, except for their surrogate organ, the uterus. Artemis, fiercely virginal, murderous in the defense of her virginity, represented one side of femininity, the Asian point of view. Aphrodite represented the other side of femininity: the joys of physical and spiritual love between man and woman. Homer’s hero Odysseus, the favored survivor of the Trojan War, represented the triumph of Athena over Aphrodite
(Goodrich 41-42).

However, while I think this is important to note, I think it’s also worthwhile to remember Athena’s role as a battle strategist. She counseled others on war plans and was seen to have value in that role. As such, it makes sense that she might not be the one who focuses on love or even friendship. Her power comes from her fierceness and skill.

Athena once had a friend named Pallas (or Iodama), who was described as being like a sister to the goddess. When the two were competing in a game together, Athena’s spear struck and killed her friend. According to Jean Shinoda Bolen’s Goddesses in Everywoman, this story shows Athena as a heartless person, someone who is willing to kill in order to win (90). One might also look to this story as a warning to women who seek to establish power and dominance over the value of friendship.

I wonder about the patriarchal influence in how Athena’s actions are interpreted. After all, even in today’s world, a woman who is confident and straightforward can be labeled as heartless, while a man is celebrated for those qualities.

Creating Boundaries
Calling on Athena to help you with protection is one part of her power, but she can also be someone to help you reclaim your power by setting boundaries. Boundaries are the agreements you make with yourself about what you will and will not tolerate in your life. Though pop psychology often makes boundaries sound like they are meant to control others, these are actually about stating what you will do when certain things happen. How others respond is their choice, which gives you back your power.

To call on Athena here, create sacred space and talk with Athena about problems you might have in your life right now. Sit with her and explain what you want for yourself and what you do not want for yourself. As an example, you might have a person in your life who does things to indicate they do not trust you, but then also wants to grow a friendship with you. This is confusing and can leave you feeling powerless, especially if this is a relationship that once mattered to you.

With Athena’s support, drop into what you want from the relationship. In this example, you might want clarity and until you get clarity, you won’t pursue or reciprocate friendship. All her energy to fill you and spread across your chest like a breastplate that will follow you into a conversation you might have with that person. In that conversation, you can tell them that you will discuss a relationship if they give you clarity about their behaviors and their intentions. You can also state that if they do not offer clarity, then you will not be in relationship with them. This offers a way for you to interact in integrity with what you want, which is just what Athena would do too.

Healing a Friendship
Athena is also an ally for those who want to restore a friendship after a mistake or misstep. By stepping into the story of Pallas and Athena, begin to see how it would have felt for Pallas to be stabbed by their friend. What would that have felt like for Pallas? Why didn’t Pallas get out of the way? And then step into the role of Athena. What would Athena have felt like? What would Athena have wished would happen?

By placing yourself into both perspectives, step into the story of your friend. Write out the story of how you caused harm and what it might have done to your friend. Consider what you wish you would have done and how you intend to move ahead. Consider how you would remove the spear from your friend and what you are willing to do to repair the friendship. When you feel you have embodied the lessons, reach out to your friend and call on Athena to sit beside you when you talk.

Strategy over Reactivity
In a world that seems to incite big emotions and reactions, it can be hard to remember how to remain cool and collected. But Athena knows how.

Athena makes the perfect cool-headed counterpart to Achilles, one of the angriest men in Greek mythology (and Greek heroes were hardly known for controlling their temper). As soon as he begins to draw his sword, Athena descends from the heavens. She dissuades a rageful Achilles from stabbing his superior, Agamemnon, when they have a heated argument over who gets ownership of Briseis, a young woman captured during the war. Athena encourages the hot-headed young warrior to think tactically and not act on a violent whim. However, she does allow him to abuse Agamemnon with an onslaught of insults instead. (Matyszak 118).

Though Athena is a warrior, she is not a warrior in the same way that Ares is. She is thoughtful and discerning. And she can help you do the same.

Cultivating the Warrior’s Heart
To call on Athena for wisdom, I encourage you to set out in the early dawn hours or the early dusk hours. Travel to a wild place to follow the movement of animals to see how they engage with each other. Sit for long enough that the animals aren’t disturbed by your presence. If this is a remote place, you may need to go out and sit for five or ten minutes before the animals return to their movements and noises. In some instances, you may need to visit for a while and then come back again and again until the animals know you are not a threat.

Witness what happens when the animals engage with each other. See what they do when one gets closer. Slow down to see what is happening all around you and how you often don’t see animals reacting loudly. They watch and wait to see what the other animal might do before taking action. Think about how you could do the same thing. Ask Athena to sit with you to give you advice about how to slow down and figure out a strategy before acting.

Creating Space
A practice I created as I became more involved in activism, and thus became more angry, was the 13-second rule. This practice is just as easy as it sounds. Every time I want to react to something, I have to count to 13 seconds before I can do anything. During this time, I have to stop whatever I am doing and breathe. I don’t have to do any special breathing, just breathe and come back to a more grounded state. When I do this, I am able to create some distance between me and the situation, as well as distance between me and the reaction I want to have. And usually when I have created this space, I will not respond in the way I initially thought I had to respond.

To make this even more Athena-themed, you can choose a few of her epithets (see the next chapter) and chant them to yourself until you feel calmer. Once you feel calmer, you can make a decision about how you want to act.

The Struggles We Face Today

“Despite their character failings, which were abundant, the gods were what stood between humanity and chaos.”
(Matyszak 119).

Calling on the godds is one of the many ways I engage with this world and its overwhelming ways. While I may not have the answers, I do work with deities that can offer perspective. By engaging with deities, I can tap into their wisdom (and also their learnings from past mistakes) to help me show up better. Sometimes, it’s not about solving anything, but rather being able to be present to what is happening. When I can remain calm and steady, I can engage in ways that align with my values and my integrity. This leads to better relationships and better magick.

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