In Part 1 of this article, we looked at how the Western world has shifted away from pursuing wisdom and now pursues what some call self-actualization. The essence of wisdom, we said, was morality. As the Roman statesman Cicero wrote, it is the ability to distinguish between right and wrong, and this ability pervades all our activities.
Athena’s Origins
Athena’s father Zeus was the king of the gods and the supreme ruler of the cosmos. But he was not always the supreme ruler. His grandfather, Uranus, the original sky god was dethroned by his son, the Titan Kronos (or the Roman deity, Saturn), who in turn was dethroned by his son, Zeus. This progression was not simply a changing of the guard: It involved a fundamental shift in the nature of the universe. The Titans, whom Kronos ruled, were primeval and chaotic beings; whereas Zeus and the Olympians brought to the cosmos order and justice: They completely redefined and reformed the cosmos.
Let’s speculate that this change of power represents a process of big-banging, massive movements of gas, explosions, black holes and all the rest; and yet from it, order, organization and life appear. We never sense in Uranus or his son, Saturn, that they are thinking. They act and re-act, and that’s all. But with the appearance of Zeus, we sense a mind to grasp it all, to rule and to hold things together, including the destruction of evil (for example, Typhon the dragon).
When Zeus is about to marry Hera, queen of the gods, he is dallying with Metis, the Titaness, whose name means “guile,” “cunning intelligence,” or “wisdom.” They love each other, but are wary too. Zeus knows the prophecy that Metis’s child of will be greater than its father. In short, Zeus tricks Metis into metamorphosing into a fly as he transforms into lizard and immediately eats her! Job done: no more Metis and no possibility of an even greater offspring than himself. But as things turn out, the guile of Metis proves stronger than Zeus’s trick.
In fact, Metis set up the situation she wanted: not a sexual liaison with Zeus but an incorporation into his whole being via ingestion. Zeus returns to his wedding feast happy and confident that Metis is no longer a threat. Some time later, he develops a headache that literally begins to tear him apart: The king of gods screams in agony, and no one seems able to relieve his pain—until Prometheus advises Hephaestus what to do.
Note that every player in this story has symbolic significance. First, Prometheus, a Titan, sided with Zeus against the Titans. Why? Well, his name provides a clue: It means “forethought.” Prometheus foresaw that Kronos would lose in his battle against his son and so sided with the winners. Forethought is, of course, a form of wisdom.
Second, Hephaestus (the Roman god Vulcan) is the lame god and son of Zeus and Hera. Critically, though, he is the armorer of the gods. He forges metal and is a master of metal work. In other words, he’s the gods’ defender.
A Virgin Birth
There are several parallels between this Greek myth of wisdom and wisdom in the Bible. Wisdom is not born through the flesh, through sex and biology, it is born parthenogenetically, or in common discourse, through a virgin birth.
Extraordinarily, wisdom is “sui generis” or one of a kind. One of its attributes is that it comes fully armed. It needs neither to arm itself nor prepare itself, for in its essential nature it is armed. Athena comes fully-bodied in herself: fully sufficient, fully able, fully powerful.
To refer back to the Bible, one rarely noted aspect of Jesus’s life is that he was constantly under verbal attack and challenge. Yet there is not one recorded instance where he was at a loss for an effective and decisive response. Where did this man get his education, the Pharisees and teachers bewail? Who taught him? He is not educated, so how could he answer in those ways?
What Athena’s myth says is that education is not the same as wisdom, and may well be at variance with it. Wisdom has an axiomatic power; it is foundational. It precedes what we might term “thinking about things.” In other words, wisdom is intuitive; it rises from the depths of our psyches. We all know this is true when we see ordinary people exhibiting more wisdom, or sometimes we might call it common sense, than the educated ones of our time.
One striking example illustrates this point—the recent university testimonies before Congress. Here, the intellectual elite—the wise of the world—came up short in the context of real wisdom, which is to distinguish between the good and the bad. Especially egregious was the testimony of Professor Claudine Gay, who subsequently had to resign as president of Harvard. Of her, Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik said: “Her answers were absolutely pathetic and devoid of the moral leadership and academic integrity required of the president of Harvard.”
How can someone so well educated be so lacking in wisdom? Sadly, today education has been divorced from wisdom.
There is one, final point about the Athena’ virgin birth. One of the first things the goddess does after her birth is request from Zeus that she ever remain a virgin. This request, he grants. What this means, of course, is that wisdom is pure, unsullied, uncorrupted by carnality; further, that it maintains an independent, objective point of view, because it’s not contaminated by relationships or even one special relationship that might elicit partiality. She is the Eternal Virgin who cannot be defiled.
Clearly, the idea is that knowledge is objective, and that subjectivity itself is under the sway of reality. This offers an antidote to much of contemporary thinking.
In the third article in this series, we will move on from Athena’s birth to consider some of her outstanding actions, and how, through understanding Athena, she can help us get back “home.”
