finest material and to have as a finished product a designer-quality
coat or dress that would have cost more than ten times what she
paid for the material. She is infinitely patient when she sews and
half-seriously calls it “therapy” because it allows her to get away
from her work problems and into another state of mind.
Throwing pots on a wheel is yet another way of getting in touch
with this aspect of Athena. In fact, all the crafts offer Athena women
an inner balance to an outer-world focus.
RECOVERING THE CHILD
The goddess Athena was never a child; she was born as an adult.
This metaphor is not far removed from the Athena woman’s actual
experience. From the earliest time she can remember, she recalls
“figuring things out” or “being smart about everything.” But a verbal
little girl with a matter-of-fact mind often misses whole areas of
subjective experience that she may eventually want as an adult. She
may need to discover in herself the child she never was, a child who
can be confused or delighted by something new.
To recover her child self, an Athena woman must stop approaching
new experience as “a sensible adult” would (as she has done since
she was a child). Instead, she needs to approach life as if she were
a wide-eyed child and everything were new and to be discovered.
When a child is fascinated by something new, she takes it all in.
Unlike Athena, she doesn’t have a preconceived notion of what it
should be, isn’t skeptical, and doesn’t put well-worn, familiar labels
on the experience and file it away. When someone is speaking about
something she has not experienced, an Athena woman must learn
to listen and to imagine as best she can both the scene and the feel-
ings being described. When she is in the midst of an emotional mo-
ment, she has to try to stay in it and let others comfort her. To redis-
cover her lost child, she needs to play and laugh, cry and be hugged.
DISCOVERING HER MOTHER
In mythology, the goddess Athena was a motherless daughter
who took pride in having only one parent: her fa-
Athena: Goddess of Wisdom Growing beyond the confining