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Question: What are Athena's dreams and desires? What are Athena's fears? What are Athena's inner emotions? What magical objects does Athena have? What does Athena look like?
Answer: Athena's dreams and desires relate to the way that men and women can use wisdom, skills and warfare. She is sweet and considerate to people who were sincerely seeking wisdom, but fierce and destructive to the ignorant.
A goddess knows no fear. But she is confined to her own realm. This is her limitation. Sometimes she must negotiate with other gods and goddesses to accomplish her ends.
A Greek goddess appears to have emotions. As when Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena quarreled as to which one was the most beautiful. But this is only so she can communicate better with human beings. Zeus prevents humans from being too god-like by requiring that they communicate in some coded or hidden form that does not reveal the true nature of divinity. But if they talk as though they are humans this is not a problem.
When a divinity uses a power that is an exception to the rules of their realm then this appears as magic. All they are doing is utilizing options that they have forbidden to humans. But they are within the realm of divine law. And because they are acting beyond human understanding they appear to be using magic. Since they are outside of time and space they can appear to move through time and space. To us this appears to be magic. When the fates weave the thread of life for each person it seems that they weave a number of strands for each person. A person follows only one strand while the others remain as potential. What the deities do is change a person from one strand to another if the situation warrants. This also appears to be magic because the direction of life changes with the thread. There are symbols that work with these concepts. Wings symbolize Athena's ability to move through space. A wand symbolizes her ability to change the direction of a life.
Athena always takes on a look that meets the expectation of the viewer. She is a shape changer. She can look like a wize friend, and owl, or almost anything else. The statues of her that we have represent the vision of the artist.
Question: Athena and Python- symbol of Celts?
Apollo killed Python and Echidna snakes at Delphi before the Dorians arrived to continue the prophetic tradition. Athena's aegis (aigios goat?) was made of goatskin of Python-snake, and Medusa Gorgon had goathorns. This suggests a goat-horned snake, which is the form of the Celtic snake on Gundestrup Cauldron, and the French guivre/wyvern dragon - a snake with horns. The Druid "Ovates" prophets derive from the IE word "wat", vates, vatieke, which became Vatican as place of prophecy. Thus, Delphi was possibly a Celtic (or similar) site of prophecy by the Ovates, sons of the Echidna dragon, who was daughter of Brettanos of Gaul._
Diodorus 2.43 5.24. Etymol. Magnum 502. Parth.Alcman 30.
"Vatika" is a place in Laconia, possibly the Sanskrit form from Syria, meaning "botanic garden", hermitage of sages and prophets. It became Angkor "WAT" in Cambodia of Sanskrit priests. Could it be that Delphi was a "vatika" shrine of Celts?
Answer: Not likely, but possibly. More likely is that they had a common ancestor. Current paleontology suggests that all humans have a common ancestor located in the rift area of Africa some 250 thousand years ago. These ancestors left evidence of religious experience about 35,000 years ago. As the people spread out different branches of people differentiated. The result of this is that if you trace any religion back far enough it seems similar to all the other religions at that time. The people who lived in Greece before the Indo-Europeans moved in definitely had European roots. They were blond and blue-eyed in some cases. But to say that they were Celts is stretching things. The fact that Wicca has roots in both Celtic and Greek does argue for the similarity of these two but the parts would not be identifiable unless the religions were different. To prove your case you would have to be very dilligent in terms of tracing ancient movements of the peoples involved and determine when and where they were one people. One problem that interferes with this process is that the Minoan language is still untranslated. The source of this language is open to speculation. One author suggests similarities to the rift area of Africa. This would not support your theory.
Question:Athena Echidna and Celts?
"To prove your case you would have to be very dilligent in terms of tracing ancient movements of the peoples involved and determine when and where they were one people. " Thanks for replying. It is accepted without explanation that Apollo was borrowed by Etruscans as Aplu, and that Romans borrowed Athena as Minerva, and Zeus as Jupiter. The 3 peoples were separate, as Celts and Greeks also were separate, and borrowing a god did not require wider borrowing of ritual. In fact, Greeks evidently "killed" the original Delphic ritual of a tribal snake-prophet. As Delphi is in the north, the early Delphic population did not need to have been in Greece to the south, and Celts flowed across the Balkans from Austria from the time of Dorian entry. The spread of IE dialects carried in-built word-roots connected to religious concepts such as snake/river goddesses. The Dorians from the north would logically be aware at least that Celts existed. The Austria-Delphi distance is comparable with Athens-Tuscany. Would this add meaning to Athena's snakes?
Answer: Probably not. You are right that ideas moved without people but as you go back in time this is less likely. Traders and explorers also moved ideas. Even merchandise has been known to move ideas great distances without the traders moving that far. So it is important to identify these type of links. What artifacts have been found at Delphi to document the early worship of snakes and what culture do they support? Likewise do we find ancient Greek pottery in contemporary Celtic lands? Myths are suggestive but the ideas that they suggest should be backed up with hard facts.
Snakes are an almost universal symbol of a spiritual nature. In Minoan Culture there is a goddess reffered to as the Snake Goddess. Perhaps she is Athena. But she might be Medusa. Many of the dragons of ancient Greek myth are more easily interpreted as snakes. Then Medea becomes a snake Goddess. Andromeda was probably being sacrificed to a Snake. etc.
I think the Dorians might be too late for your idea. Apollo kills the snake. Apollo seems to symbolize the overthow of the old religion by the religion of the Dorians. So the Celts would have to be related to the Mycenaeans or even their predecessors. But though the Dorians officially overthrew the old religion they adopted the language, deity names, and deity characteristics of the Mycenaeans. So the question is "Where did the Mycenaeans come from?"
Question: What role does Athena play in the odyssey? Why is she often considered its main female character?
Answer: The Odyssey is not a work of fiction and styling it as a story with a plot and main characters somewhat simplifies and trivializes it. But that you can treat it that way is a tribute to its power. Lately I have read that what the Odyssey was really about was the voyages of discovery that took place in the 9th and 8th centuries BCE. This makes a great deal of sense and relates well to other themes that have been assigned to it. We know that during the Minoan and Mycenean periods ships sailed from the Aegean far and wide, to the Black Sea, to Egypt, to Lybia, to France and Spain, and maybe even to the British Isles. Then there was a period of a few centuries when few if any trips took place. Then just before Homer they started again. During that period many colonies were set up. The result is that by Homer's time there was a lot of experience with stories to tell, just like Homer relates.
So how do you deal with a voyage of discovery? You prepare yourself as best you can but you know that new things may be discovered and dealt with. So do you think it will work to take a cookbook along so you match new things to recipes already known? Not likely. You will have to use your wit and intelligence to meet the new demands. You need supplies and equipment that is adaptable as the situation demands and you need to be willing to make that change. That is why Athena is important. She is the goddess of knowledge that allows you to face these new situations. It is not that she is a character in a story with Odysseus. It is that Odysseus needs the knowledge that she symbolizes to survive his ordeal. And it is plain that Athena is fond of Odysseus not because he is strong, handsome or high-born, but because he uses his head and figures things out.
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