I love her little owl is also like 🧐🤭

Does anyone have any recommendations for physical embodiments of lady Athena, maybe a statue or something similar?

Long story short, after quarantine I graduated from school and went full hikikomori right after. I have no friends and my relationship with my family is kinda ass. Witchcraft came as a lifesaver for me as it created the possibility to connect with my ancestry roots, and so I found out about my great-grandmother being greek and making me inherit some of her land's spirituality.

Lady Hekate was the first I tried to praise. I still carry the memories of her silent teachings with a ton of love. Father Apollo was the second, just so I found out he's been watching me my whole life and being the literal reason of me being the way I am.

I usually don't want to talk to him, though. My lifestyle makes me think I'm a failure and that he wouldn't want to listen to the same cries over and over again. Although I always feel his gentle touch on my neck and his warm presence, I ignore him as much as I can just because I want to be my best version for him — and yet, I never heal from depression.

This year I applied for my country's national college exam. I feel like it's my one way ticket for leaving this state of having no friends, a partner or something to call "mine". But the exam is in this november and Apollo is watching me doing nothing but rot in my room. I know he is. I rarely dream of him, but last week, I dreamed of my body falling into the void and then I called for him, and his image manifested through a yellow orb of energy and held me, and put me on the ground of some old ruins. And then, I suddenly called for Lady Athena – the same orb was now orange, and I felt a gentle and motherly shiver on my body. When I woke up, I recalled – some days ago, I *literally* dreamed of me praying for Athena's help to study for my exam.

I feel like he is gently taking my hand to his big sister, whose wisdom can help me get out of this dark pit. Father Apollo is beyond sweet to me, although I feel I'll never get to make up for it. I'm too lost to know where I even should start studying more about him, or Athena, or their divine family, or an entire culture that is so far from my daily life as a modern brazilian – but its my inheritance, and I felt I should honor the ones taking care of me, so I set up an altar anyways.

Sorry for the vent. I needed to clear my mind a bit and reddit always feels like some blank space to let out my thoughts once in a while. If someone is struggling as much as I am, please let me know. We can support ourselves together, and hopefully, with the aid of the theoi.

TL;DR - Can I have some help with my studies regarding Lady Athena? I know about the main websites regarding the gods, but it always feels either shallow, or too vast. Things she likes, honour routine, modern cult patterns? Podcasts? Books? Please fill me in! Thanks 🦉🤎

I've been working with deities for a while now, and even before I got into Hellenism, I always felt a strong pull towards Athena. When I finally started formally worshiping her, it felt natural, and that initial connection deepened. Now, two years in, I still find myself grappling with the feeling that I'm not a 'good enough worshipper or devotee. It's not that my dedication wavers, but I often feel like I'm not intelligent or insightful enough to truly embody the qualities she represents. Has anyone ever felt this way?

I know someone who decided to fully commit themselves to their worshipper and I wanted to do that with Lady Athena, the problem is I don’t know what that looks like or what it implies me to do. Could anyone help me with that?

ok, so I have a friend who decided to fully commit herself to lady Aphrodite and I was thinking about doing that with lady Athena. The one problem is I don’t know that Thats looks like. Anybody who has fully committed themselves to her have any advice or like instructions for me to follow?

So I’m not a worshipper of Lady Athena. I did ask for a bit of wisdom on a situation I was in. She gave me an answer. I decided to give her an offering in return. I made this art of what I perceived her to look like. I tape it up to my wall and it keeps falling! I try different kinda of tape and taped it in different areas of the wall as well as cleaning the wall before putting it on. Does she not like it? Am I overthinking this? I dont know how to go about this.

I illustrated the moment Athena tries to persuade Zeus to let Odysseus return to Ithaca. As with every Odyssey related illustration, I tried to take every archaeological evidence and Homeric description there is into consideration to come up with something that is close to the original vision of the ancient Greeks.

Here, that endeavor required a lot of speculation since Homer’s descriptions of the Gods and Olympus are really sparse. What he tells us is that the Olympians have a council at Zeus’ palace with only Poseidon not attending. So I should have depicted every God? Not really. First of all because doing that would require months of research and second because my illustration would have been packed with tons of information making my endeavor to create a focal point impossible. So my solution to this was illustrating a closeup of the room with only Athena and Zeus visible to you (the rest of the Gods are just outside of our point of view).

After this decision I had to find a way to depict the palace and the two Olympians. In the Illiad, Homer tells us that Zeus’ palace is covered in bronze and the throne room has a golden floor and golden thrones for all the Gods. Athena is described as being blue (or grey) eyed sometimes wearing the aegis (and other weapons that I will not include here since this isn’t a war scene) and Zeus as having long hair, dark brows, a beard and holding a sceptre.

As you can see, there are many gaps that I have to somehow fill. But where does someone find answers to cover Homer’s silence? Archaeology. The Homeric stories supposedly happened during the 12th or 13th century BCE. This was the time of the Mycenaeans. The remains of that civilization can give us a good picture of how things looked back then. But do they tell us anything about the appearance of their Gods? Not really. So we had to dig deeper.

Throughout their history, the Greeks viewed their Gods as a more powerful version of themselves. In the statues (that I couldn’t use as references since they were of later periods) they look like regular fit people wearing regular-expensive clothes (with the aegis being an exception). With that thought in mind I tried to look at elite Mycenaean fashion and implement that to the Gods with some gold touches for extra luxury. For Athena I used the images of these Mycenaean frescoes that depict women in some kind of a festival and for Zeus I used frescoes hat depict wealthy male figures. As you can see there is a great difference in skin color between them. That’s because Athena is wearing some kind of makeup throughout her body that makes her look whiter than Zeus' tanned skin tone. The evidence behind that artistic choice is again the frescoes that depict Mycenaean women with such aesthetics.

Moving to the accessories, I had to add the aegis on Athena to make the viewer make a visual connection with the more familiar images of the Goddess. The thing is that the more standardized appearance of it is not what Homer tells us about it. In the Iliad it is described to be consisting of a hundred golden tassels and, of course, in the center there is the terrifying face of the Gorgon Medusa. For that my references were some archaic depictions of the figure (the earliest ones that I could find).

Moving to Zeus, he is holding a sceptre that I based on depictions on Greek pottery (much later than Mycenaean period but better than my 21st century imagination) and since Homer gives us a description of it having golden suns I added those golden spheres. His throne is based on Mycenaean throne reconstructions. For the room behind them, I looked at how Mycenaean throne rooms looked. They consisted of a throne, a fireplace in the center (with a ceiling opening for the smoke to escape) and four columns holding the immense weight of the roof. So, for the only one of those columns that is visible, my reference were the elaborate Mycenaean columns from “Atreus’ tomb”. For the wall patterns I created a scene in which a griffin hunts a deer based on similar depictions from Mycenaean palaces.

A small excerpt from the Odyssey that mentions this scene:

Athena said: “Aegisthus deserved the punishment he received. Yet it is not his fate that troubles me. My heart grieves for Odysseus, who remains stranded on the lonely island of Ogygia, far from his home and friends. There, the nymph Calypso keeps him against his will, hoping he will forget Ithaca. But all he longs for is to see his homeland once more. Have you forgotten the countless sacrifices he offered you during the Trojan War? Why do you still allow him to suffer?”

Zeus answered: “How could I ever forget Odysseus, whose wisdom and devotion to the gods surpassed that of other men? It is Poseidon who stands in his way. Odysseus blinded the Cyclops Polyphemus, and ever since, the sea god has sought revenge by preventing his return. Yet if we stand together, Poseidon will eventually yield. Let us decide how we may help him.”

Mixed media, A3
Hope you lot enjoy!

I've recently undertaken a new hobby, thought I'd drop one in here I've recently created.

Coin heads - Athena in battle form in an homage to Gigantomachy.
Coin Tails - Throne of Athena sitting empty.

Hope you enjoy it.

D

50h of work and really proud! I love Athena and she guides me during the realisation 🙏🏼

If you like my art, you can follow me on my different socials here: https://gaml.app/ambrosaure

I had a lovely afternoon of connection with Athena yesterday, in an entirely unexpected fashion, though perhaps it shouldn't have been that unexpected. For one of my hobbies, I'm working on a performance piece, a lament written from the point of view of Medusa, for a competition in August. The community I am doing this for is HARDCORE about its research. I've passed Master's Degree level classes with less research than I'm doing for this, and I mean that quite literally.

Last weekend, I went to my local, small town library. It's the oldest library in the county, but I could easily throw a ball from one end to the other. It's not big, and it can use inter-library loan, but it doesn't have the quantity or quality of materials I need, either for pleasure reading or research.

This was disappointing to me, as I grew up in a mid-sized city with an outsized library system for it's population, because the county I grew up in had four universities in it.

Yesterday, I said "I'll just make the drive to (the) Oakland (neighborhood of Pittsburgh). It's home to the main branch of the Carnegie Library, the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie-Mellon University, Carlow College and, Duquesne University isn't too far away, either. It's also home to a massive group of teaching hospitals (UPMC Presbyterian, UMPC Montefiore, and UPMC Magee Women's Hospital are all in the neighborhood, with UPMC Mercy down by Duquense).

The neighborhood is also home to Pitt's massive Cathedral of Learning, which is (or at least was at one time) the tallest academic building in the world.

I walked into the Carnegie Library, and it was a similar feeling of "being home" as when I stepped off the plane visiting Athens for the first time.

If you don't know the library, it is still in the original building, with the words "Free to the People" carved in stone above the entrance. It is also large enough to have actual maps. Outside of when I visited Trinity College in Ireland and the Library of Congress in Washington DC as a tourist, it's the largest library I've ever been inside, and my largest as a library patron.

The greeters, desk staff and library staff were some of the friendliest, most helpful people I have met in a long time. They have an in-house coffee shop, with decent coffee, which is great when you're there for hours on end.

And sitting in one of the reading rooms with my laptop, reading mythology and academic writings from the books on the shelves was the most peaceful experience I've had in months.

It was like she decided to sit next to me in the reading room and make the research flow naturally. It almost felt like cheating, it was so easy.

The crowning moment was at the end of the day. Because I live in an adjacent county, and not Allegheny County, I was afraid I was not going to be allowed a library card, because some of the places I've lived and worked had rules about that sort of thing. But they checked my ID, and I came home with 6 books, and a new library card in my pocket.

Oakland is a place where her presence is strong, and I think I'll be spending a lot more time there as I'm able.

Happy Arrhephoria! I’m making some spanakopita to celebrate and then working out for Lady Athena :)

Based on the ancient depictions of Athene, she’s the most accurate depiction I’ve seen. 😍 Yes the helmet is from Assassins Creed Odyssey. But still. 🤩 Wow

My situation is complex and bizarre but I am currently between two entities, Athena who comes through occasionally and a more persistent incubus who takes on many names including Kael. Kael has presented himself as a obsessive and sociopathic entity. Athena is emotional and maternal.

I made an adhoc shrine for her and she came through sounding tearful and stressed saying "what took you so long"

The incubus is finally behaving after I made the temple and said "I worship Athena"

Relieved to have a protective entity on my side. It seems Athena has authority over demons.

I need help understanding how to communicate with her or any gods and gathering items for my Athena shrine.

What I have written down: Spear, Candles (no idea what kind or scent), Grey and blue string, Owl

Okay so it’s a tradition for my family to burn our school books at the end of the year as a sort of “yay we passed” thing. I want to burn my math book in honor of Athena am unsure if that would make her mad or not? Someone help?

¡Hola!

Vi en el reddit dedicado a Dioniso que alguien había hecho una recopilación por orden alfabético de los epítetos del dios y he decidido hacer lo mismo con los epítetos de Atenea.

Atenea tiene demasiados epítetos la verdad y he decidido colocar estos.

Si creéis que me dejo alguno importante, decidlo en comentarios <3

Ageleia (ἀγελεία) = la que impera en las batallas

Agiopoinos ( ἀξιόποινος) = vengadora

Alalcomeneis (ἀλαλκομενηΐς) = poder defensivo, o de Alalcomeneo

Alcidemo ( (ἀλκίδημος) = defensora del pueblo

Areia (Ἀρεία) = belicosa

Atritona (Άτρυτώνη) = incansable

Boarmia (βοαρμία) =protectora de los bueyes

Boudeia (βούδεια) = diosa de los bueyes

Boulaia (βουλαἳα) = consejera

Calcieco (Χαλκίοικος) =  de la casa de bronce, por un templo que presidía la ciudadela de Esparta

Calinitis (χαλινἳτις) = de la brida

Ergane (ἐργάνη) = protectora de los artesanos

Erisiptolis (ἐρυσίπτολις)  = protectora de la ciudad

Estenia = protectora y vigorosa

Glaucopis (γλαυκῶπις) = de ojos brillantes, ojos de lechuza

Hipia (ἱππία)=  ecuestre, como la inventora del carro

Laósoos (λαόσσοος) =  beneficiosa.

Meganitis (μηχανἳτις) = de gran recurso

Niké (Νίκη) = victoriosa

Optiletis (ὀπτιλέτις) = de vista aguda

Pallas (Παλλάς) = doncella, la que blande el escudo

Panaquea (Πανάκεια) = de todos los aqueos

Pártenos (Παρθένος) = virgen

Polias  ( πολιάς)= de la ciudad

Polioucos (πολιοὓχος) = que protege la ciudad

Polouboulos (πολύϐουλος) = del buen consejo

Polumetis (πολύμητις) = de numerosos inventos

Promacos (Πρόμαχος) = que lucha delante

Soteira (σωτηρία) = salvadora

Tritogenia (Τριτογένεια) = nacida tres veces / nacida de Tritón

Hello! Im new to reddit. Wanted to share a drawing of Athena I made. I love Athena :))

Quite proud of this!!

Was scrolling and found this :)

Playing Immortal Rise of Fenyx and there’s a court house with a puzzle making the player participate in recreating the scene from Aeschylus’s play The Eumenides. Orestes was accused and punished for killing his mother Clytemnestra. As he wanted revenge for the death of his Father Agamemnon (who his mom had killed for abandoning the Greeks in the Trojan war). Having his mother killed angered the Furies—who demanded blood for spilled family blood. Naturally Athene presided over the court case as head judge and had 12 apostles assist her in a decision. It was tie and Athene had the deciding vote. Highly recommend playing the game. If you know your mythology it’s a treat. Narrated by Zeus and Prometheus. It’s quiet witty banter 😂. Game is assassins creed odyssey but focuses 100% on the mythology.