Pallas Athena & Her Connection to Patriarchy

Art Tsuyoshi Nagano

This month in Skydancer we are moving through the Solar Plexus Chakra, which is ruled by Mars. Venus just so happens to be in Aries, which is also ruled by Mars.

Our Guardian Goddesses for this month are Athena and Medusa.

Both of these Goddesses are powerful in their own right, and both have strong ties to Patriarchy and it's underbelly.

This month we have an opportunity to rewrite how we hold Feminism/the Feminine in our lives.

Feminism as it stands is actually highly patriarchal, and stands to uphold the patriarchy.

I know that feels like a radical statement.

Let’s look at Athena’s connection to the Patriarchy.

In Greek Religion, Athena as the city protectress, helped to cultivate modern day Greek Civilization, and later becomes a goddess of war, strategy, handicraft, and practical reason.

Born fully formed from the head of her father Zeus, Athena is quite literally, "The Daughter of Patriarchy". She was famously known as his favorite child, and as such, much responsibility was given to her, as she helped him to advance is dominion, and agenda.

She is represented as a majestic woman, clothed in a long flowing sheath, covered by her aegis, an armored breastplate, with snakes embroidered around the edges, and the head of Medusa in the center. Her totems or items of power were her spear, owl, and her helmet.

Athena is credited with advancing civilization, and became a patron of the Arts and Medicine.

She instructed humanity in the trades of smithing, metal founding, and weaving.

In a sense her resume reads like one of today’s famous philanthropist's might read. Inserting themselves in furthering culture, potentially to their aims. You know, those people that put their names on hospital wings, or set up grants to advance scientific or medical discovery? Upholders, and enforcers of our current paradigm.

Athena is involved In one of history’s worst betrayals. Medusa is raped by Poseidon in Athena’s temple. Instead of Poseidon facing consequences for desecrating the temple, it is Medusa who is punished, turned into a hideous monster, and exiled from civilization. Despite the fact that as a Priestess in Athena’s temple, Medusa would have been in her care. Athena did not defend or protect Medusa. She betrayed and further traumatized her. Siding with the Patriarch.

To make matters worse, after cursing her, and forcing her to live live in isolation on the edge of the wilderness, Athena then mounts the hunted and murdered Medusa’s head on her Aegis. Almost in a boast to killing the feminine.

At some point along the way, the energy of feminism changed from just being about equality for men and women under the law, to an energy that denigrated “the old customs of woman craft, and men” in equal measure. Similar to Athena’s breastplate, the energy of the new feminism set out to proudly kill some dimension of what it meant to be a woman.

As I watch today’s feminists, I can’t help but see a parallel to Athena, daughter of Zeus, the Patriarch.

We didn’t use feminism to create a new playing field, we just joined the men on theirs.

So where does this leave the feminine?

In a chart, I always look at Pallas Athena and ask, could this be a place where you left your wild, intuitive, feminine, nature behind, to follow the path the Patriarchy had set out for you?

What expectations did your parents have for you? What language did you hear growing up?

I know I was told that I needed to become so smart, and so strong, that I was never caught out needing a man.

This narrative did untold damage to my relationships as a young woman.

I went head to head with my partners. Always challenging them.

This isn’t to say we should allow ourselves to be dominated. But I did bring a decidedly masculine energy into the home. When it clearly wasn’t necessary.

Another question I ask is: Is this a place, where you are holding yourself to patriarchal standards of success, that are now just as severe for women as the standards of perfection we hold for motherhood?

What would happen if you stopped comparing yourself to the standards the matrix sets for us, and instead cultivated your own set of standards?

A lot of times we are negating our deepest needs and desires, to answer the patriarchy’s call. To live up to its standards.

We see ourselves as "loosers', or feel quiet shame, for not hitting certain patriarchal milestones.

For us women, it’s as though we traded one for the other. The prison of our kitchen, for the prison of our father’s boardroom. The expectations that used to be placed on women, for the expectations that are placed on men, without creating any archetypal fluidity between the two.

But there is a more radical revolution that could happen. One that is more supportive to women as whole people.

In our quest to have what men have, we lost sight, that we might not become like men “are”.

Because many women I know have a strong internal, true, drive, to be successful, and they also have a similar impulse to be fully expressed as women and mothers. There are few archetypes for this. Without the archetype, society doesn't have the template it requires to meet the needs of the humans underneath.

This is why I am so passionate about Emergent Archetypes.

I am interested in cultivating an archetype that merges our Athenian impulse towards success and leadership, with one that supports the feminine body and needs around motherhood.

A cross between Demeter and Athena. Mother, and Leader. Softness and Strength.

*Archetypes are always multivalent. Athena has numerous wonderful qualities as well. She is a weaver, a strategist, someone highly intelligent, wise, and sovereign. So this isn’t to say she only represents the patriarchy. It’s one emanation she can take on.

I also see her place in the chart as an Area of Strategic Mastery for the Native. A place where they are adept at the practice of metaphorical, or literal weaving. Weaving disparate strands of life, joys and pains, into an exquisite tapestry.