Now It Can Be Told: The Secret Origin of Minerva
Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2018 6:02 pm
Long ago ... and yet, from a cosmic perspective, fairly recently ... there was a goddess known as Athena, and a god known as Zeus. They were cousins, and they were married. And theirs was a fairly happy marriage, despite the wandering eye of Zeus, except for one problem. Sometime before this, when Zeus had thrown down his father, who had been known as Zeus before he became Cronus, that latter had prophesied that, just as he had thrown down his own father, so too would the current Zeus be thrown down by his own son, mightier than he. And this word was confirmed by the great mother of all the gods, who was no better pleased with the current Zeus than she had been with his father or grandfather. So that prophecy warned them that they could never have children ... and yet they very much wanted children.
And this is the point in the story where a modern reader might ask 'why'? That question is the invisible gulf that separates the modern mind from the minds of those who first told these stories. Just as a skeptical reader looking at the first few chapters of the book of Genesis wonders where the wives of the children of Adam came from, so too do even older stories hang on even older assumptions that we no longer share. We wonder, why would an immortal want children, if they have no need for heirs -- and in this case, a decided fear of the possibility of heirs!
Another part of the problem is that we have the idea of gods as eternal beings, eternal presences -- even though the very story above indicates that they can rise and fall. The truth of the Olympian gods is that while they are immortal and undying, they are also driven by the same biological urges that most animals are. And one of those urges is the urge to have offspring, even if the mind might know that it is a bad idea.
The goddess, known for her wise counsel, determined that there was a way to ensure that the prophecy could be defied. But it would require a great sacrifice from her. Her husband balked at it when she told him what was necessary, and yet in the end, moved by her counsel, he did what she told him to do -- and consumed her mind and energy into himself. (Hesiod, told this story by the muses, couldn't quite understand what he was being told, and so made up the tale of the shapeshifting contest where the goddess of wise counsel, Metis, is swallowed in But tfly form by Zeus.)
Within him, not digested or incorporated as one might expect, the goddess was able to guide Zeus more directly. If it is true that he became a better ruler as time passed, where his forefathers had grown more tyrannical, then it is likely because he had wise counsel within him as well as without. But that had not been the point of the exercise, from the goddess' perspective. Within him, she was able to study his essence more directly, and change it in subtle ways, so that his male children would not, in fact, become mightier than he. And she was also able to combine her essence with his in intriguing ways.
The result of that was the birth of a daughter, born from Zeus' mind (imagined as emerging from his head) and given her mother's name, Athena. She did many great things, and inspired many other great things, and yet she was never to have children of her own. Thus, the Greeks envisioned her as a perpetual virgin. She found that funny, but that is not part of the story we are telling, for her mother was not yet done with her plan to undo prophecy.
Her mother could be said to be a goddess of wise counsel. The younger Athena was a goddess of battle wisdom and keen judgement. These were the whole of wisdom in the times they existed, and yet they were both dimly aware that there was another kind of wisdom, though they didn't truly understand what it could be. It would not be until after the gods had begun to simply watch the world, rather than interfere with it, that the goddess within Zeus began to hear the first arguments of the philosophers, trying to decide how best to live one's life, that she understood what that other wisdom might be.
She began to combine her essence with Zeus' again, even more slowly and deliberately, taking nearly a millenium, recording in the child-goddess' mind all the discussions and theorizing of the philosophers, and giving her the tools to go beyond them. She took almost too long, for Gotterdammerung was upon the bods by the time she was ready, and Zeus was fighting the final battle of his life, aided by Hermes and Athena. Athena fell in that battle, and with no time to mourn, the elder goddess copied all her first daughter's memories into the mind of her second daughter. Then, at the last possible moment, as Zeus and the monster god of the Xothics destroyed each other, the goddess released her daughter into the world, making her materialize at the edge of the explosion.
Her daughter believed that she was Athena, and why not, for she had all of Athena's memories, didn't she? Yet something felt just a bit off about all of it, and so she took the name Minerva, one of Athena's aliases. Among the other Olympians, this secret is known only to Aphrodite, who learned by reading a stolen page of the Source Book she found in the halls of a demon king, and to Hestia, who learned it from the Sacred Fire ... and who was also told by Hermes, who survived this final battle but abandoned his name to go wandering through the cosmos.
And not even they know if Minerva's recent mortality is another part of her mother's plan, or if she has succeeded in making the gods free of prophecy, even her own.
And this is the point in the story where a modern reader might ask 'why'? That question is the invisible gulf that separates the modern mind from the minds of those who first told these stories. Just as a skeptical reader looking at the first few chapters of the book of Genesis wonders where the wives of the children of Adam came from, so too do even older stories hang on even older assumptions that we no longer share. We wonder, why would an immortal want children, if they have no need for heirs -- and in this case, a decided fear of the possibility of heirs!
Another part of the problem is that we have the idea of gods as eternal beings, eternal presences -- even though the very story above indicates that they can rise and fall. The truth of the Olympian gods is that while they are immortal and undying, they are also driven by the same biological urges that most animals are. And one of those urges is the urge to have offspring, even if the mind might know that it is a bad idea.
The goddess, known for her wise counsel, determined that there was a way to ensure that the prophecy could be defied. But it would require a great sacrifice from her. Her husband balked at it when she told him what was necessary, and yet in the end, moved by her counsel, he did what she told him to do -- and consumed her mind and energy into himself. (Hesiod, told this story by the muses, couldn't quite understand what he was being told, and so made up the tale of the shapeshifting contest where the goddess of wise counsel, Metis, is swallowed in But tfly form by Zeus.)
Within him, not digested or incorporated as one might expect, the goddess was able to guide Zeus more directly. If it is true that he became a better ruler as time passed, where his forefathers had grown more tyrannical, then it is likely because he had wise counsel within him as well as without. But that had not been the point of the exercise, from the goddess' perspective. Within him, she was able to study his essence more directly, and change it in subtle ways, so that his male children would not, in fact, become mightier than he. And she was also able to combine her essence with his in intriguing ways.
The result of that was the birth of a daughter, born from Zeus' mind (imagined as emerging from his head) and given her mother's name, Athena. She did many great things, and inspired many other great things, and yet she was never to have children of her own. Thus, the Greeks envisioned her as a perpetual virgin. She found that funny, but that is not part of the story we are telling, for her mother was not yet done with her plan to undo prophecy.
Her mother could be said to be a goddess of wise counsel. The younger Athena was a goddess of battle wisdom and keen judgement. These were the whole of wisdom in the times they existed, and yet they were both dimly aware that there was another kind of wisdom, though they didn't truly understand what it could be. It would not be until after the gods had begun to simply watch the world, rather than interfere with it, that the goddess within Zeus began to hear the first arguments of the philosophers, trying to decide how best to live one's life, that she understood what that other wisdom might be.
She began to combine her essence with Zeus' again, even more slowly and deliberately, taking nearly a millenium, recording in the child-goddess' mind all the discussions and theorizing of the philosophers, and giving her the tools to go beyond them. She took almost too long, for Gotterdammerung was upon the bods by the time she was ready, and Zeus was fighting the final battle of his life, aided by Hermes and Athena. Athena fell in that battle, and with no time to mourn, the elder goddess copied all her first daughter's memories into the mind of her second daughter. Then, at the last possible moment, as Zeus and the monster god of the Xothics destroyed each other, the goddess released her daughter into the world, making her materialize at the edge of the explosion.
Her daughter believed that she was Athena, and why not, for she had all of Athena's memories, didn't she? Yet something felt just a bit off about all of it, and so she took the name Minerva, one of Athena's aliases. Among the other Olympians, this secret is known only to Aphrodite, who learned by reading a stolen page of the Source Book she found in the halls of a demon king, and to Hestia, who learned it from the Sacred Fire ... and who was also told by Hermes, who survived this final battle but abandoned his name to go wandering through the cosmos.
And not even they know if Minerva's recent mortality is another part of her mother's plan, or if she has succeeded in making the gods free of prophecy, even her own.