Again Athena is always the goddess called upon to fight unsavory female characters in greek myth, the Furies, Medusa. Characters that Mr. Ward makes an excellent case represent the demonic feminine, everything a patriarchial social system is afraid of in women. Wildness, oldness, rage, blood, mysterious sexual & reproductive processes.

Athena is also the only goddes Zeus will allow to wield his thunderbolt, why? Because she can be trusted to obey her father, to absolutely uphold the status quo unquestioningly. In “Oedipus” Athena even says, ” There is no mother anywhere who gave me birth, and but for marriage I am always for the male with all my heart, and strongly on my father’s side.” Mr. Ward describes a personality type in women that makes them act exactly like this, wishing for the debasement of their own sex to unfairly favor men. He says, we’ve all heard of an Uncle Tom, but maybe now women can claim an Aunt Athena.

Only with women seizing the traditional attributes of Athena, wisdom, the power to vote, has Athena been remade to support women once again as she most likely had done in prehistoric days. Apparently mortal women alone are not the only ones who have to deal with a shadow king.

Thanks for the guidance, and the bibliography. It’s important to get beyond the “good girl/bad girl” dichotomy and really integrate that stuff. Some of it comes a bit more naturally as you get a little too old to be called “girl,” but only if you’re open to it.

he also had some positive stuff to say.

Thanks for doing what you do.

“Or my personal…don’t know what you’d call him. Guardian angel? Benign friendly male energy that’s been with me for some time now? Has been held helpful in getting rid of the grumpy old twat also.”

“Daimon” I think might be the word you want. Check out Caitlin Matthews’ In Search of Women’s Passionate Soul: Revealing the Daimon Lover Within. Oh my God what a helpful book that was for me.

I don’t know about this Shadow King stuff. Not that I’m opposed to shadow work, and I have done plenty of it (I think); but my instincts are telling me that when this guy comes up, this patriarch, this internalized voice of the patriarchy, that my best bet is to kick the fucker to the curb. I get enough of that crap out in the world, thanks. I’m thinking of what Clarissa Pinkola Estes calls “the predator”, which sounds a lot like the same figure. Him, she says, it is both safe and wise to ignore. So I don’t know.

That could, of course, simply be resistance or denial. Who knows.

My Shadow King and I have some talking to do.

But this morning, when he was bitching about my dire fate for exploring something other than mainstream Christianity, I remembered what you said about him wanting to protect me, no matter how annoying he was being about it. I explained to him how I arrived at my decision to try it and why I could trust the people with whom I will be exploring this, and he kinda muttered to himself and shuffled away. Thank you for the advice, Sera–a few minutes of peace and certainty were worth it!