Athena’s Challenge to Modern Mantras

Truth and wisdom bring terror to those adhering to popular narratives

Perhaps one of the most important Olympian gods was Pallas Athena, the goddess of wisdom, war, and craft; also, she was the daughter of Zeus. (Demitrios P/Shutterstock)

Today, it seems that we are in a world where facts and truth are no longer important; how we feel seems to be the key criterion for establishing whether something is true or not. So we hear the expression “my truth” everywhere, meaning that it is irrefutable because it is “my truth,” no matter what the facts are.

The ancients had a different understanding of what really counted. The Greeks, in particular, understood the psychology of the human mind: how it works, what it seeks, and, most importantly, what the consequences are for the hubris of ignoring the gods’ advice or commands—the gods’ advice, of course, according to reality and the facts.

Hubris for the Greeks was the ultimate sin, for it meant that one had either ignored or defied the express wishes of the gods. Although the gods, the Olympian gods, fought and bickered among themselves and had rivals and jealousies just like us, nevertheless, they had supplanted the chaos, primitivism, and savagery of their fathers and mothers: the Titans. They had replaced all that with order and justice.

The world of Cronos (Zeus’s father), for example, seems bestial compared with the ordering of the cosmos that his children created. Indeed, when we think of Cronos as a word for “time,” we remember that time eats all its children, just as Cronos attempted to devour all his male offspring.

Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom, instructs a young student to find his inspiration in Italy and Greece, circa 1778. (Archive Photos/Getty Images)

The Goddess of Wisdom

Aside from Zeus himself, perhaps one of the most important Olympian gods was Pallas Athena, the goddess of wisdom, war, and craft. Also, she was the daughter of Zeus, and some say his favorite.

Usually, when we think of the Greek god of war, we think of Ares (in Latin, Mars), but both Ares and Athena were gods of war. The difference is significant. Ares was the god of war that is understood as blood-thirsty, brutal, and ferocious, whereas Athena as the goddess of war could be understood as strategic, intelligent, and sometimes deceptive.

Athena loved wily Odysseus for this very reason. He was not the greatest Greek warrior—that was the blood-thirsty Achilles. But it was not Achilles who won the war for the Greeks. It was Odysseus’s cunning stratagem of the horse. Of course, through his strategies (and Athena’s support), it is Odysseus who also survives the war.

Athena is also the “perpetual virgin,” which I think points to the fact that (her) wisdom and truth cannot be corrupted. She sprang fully grown and armed from the head—the forehead, in fact—of Zeus, suggesting not only foresight but also the power of wisdom. Indeed, in one myth, all the other gods were awestruck by her appearance, and Helios, god of the sun, stopped in his tracks to behold her!

"The Birth of Athena" by Antoine Houasse. Palace of Versailles. (Public Domain)

As the patron goddess of heroes and heroic values, Athena favored many other great Greek heroes, including Perseus, Herakles (the greatest of all), Bellerophon, and Jason, as well as Odysseus. Invariably, it was her advice that was crucial to their success. A great example of this, and relevant to our discussion, was her critical support of Perseus.

Athena instructed Perseus not to look directly at Medusa so that he would not be turned to stone and, literally, petrified. Instead, he looked at his shield of bronze, polished like a mirror, which enabled him to decapitate her.

Medusa Today

Athena today is relevant because we see a common pattern of behavior whenever wisdom presents itself in our modern life: when, for example, someone challenges nonbinary ideology, or when a qualified person challenges the presumptions and orthodoxy of COVID-19 vaccinations and mask-wearing, or when critical race theory is challenged on the grounds that it might itself be racist, or when … the list goes on. When these challenges occur, when some evidence is presented counter to the popular narrative—that is, when Athena, goddess of wisdom and truth, manifests—we always see the same behavior.

If we return to the Perseus myth, the head of Medusa, after it appeared in several other adventures with Perseus, finally finds its resting place in the center of Athena’s shield, the aegis. This means that, in facing Athena in battle, one had to face Medusa’s head. In other words, one had to face the sheer terror that is petrifying! Only another god or spirit could withstand it. And as for her attacks, even among the gods, probably only Zeus and one or two others could adequately do even that.

"Frederick the Great as Perseus," 1756, by Bernhard Rode depicts Athena showing Perseus how to avoid the gaze of Medusa. (Public Domain)

Thus, when shibboleths of today are attacked by wisdom, the result is terror and petrification. These ideas manifest in a number of ways. First, the people who spread these ideas exhibit the inability to rely on rational dialogue. There is no rational argument to pitch against the truth. Instead, those who call themselves “woke” enter into profound denial. (To be clear, the term “woke” is used by both liberals and conservatives to describe a number of more radical progressive ideologies, including critical race theory, social justice, and gender theory.)

This petrification hardens their attitudes and their hearts. The heart becomes a stone. Fear (more accurately, terror) produces a lashing out, a vicious response, an inability to consider alternatives, and even the possibility of considering that they might be mistaken or, in fact, be wrong.

A third manifestation is that eventually, as the hardening (the petrification) deepens, they display a merciless, pitiless quality: Offenders must be punished. (At the same time, of course, the meme “be kind” is chanted like a mantra.)

Freedom’s Defenders

We know, then, that wisdom and truth—Athena—is on our side when we witness these behaviors and manifestations of those determined, through their hubris, to deny reality, to deny the facts, and to deny truth. As the English writer and philosopher G.K. Chesterton said of the unforgiveable sin, it is “to call a green leaf gray.”

Composer and writer Kenneth LaFave, in his wonderfully instructive book “War of the Words,” justly observed that “the single best and most accurate word to identify freedom’s defenders, it seems, is ‘Westerners.’”

Historically, this does seem to be true. From the Magna Carta to the Bill of Rights, the West has continually pushed to establish the freedoms that we now take for granted. The danger we are in now is that these freedoms are being eroded internally, and we have been extremely lax in confronting this decline: lax as in taking our attention away from wisdom and truth, which petrify the enemy, and by allowing green leaves to be called gray.

The antidote is to return to the goddess of wisdom. This, of course, is a metaphor, for we might also wish to remind ourselves that wisdom was in the Judeo-Christian tradition with the Lord God in the beginning: “The Lord possessed me [Wisdom] at the beginning of His way, before his works of old. From everlasting I was established …” (Proverbs 8.22–23).

Let’s step up our efforts to stay with the truth and instill wisdom whenever we can, for more than anything else, this is what the woke fear.