a duel of inner goddesses
hestia vs. athena
It’s 6:30am. I’ve been up for over an hour. The sun is nearing the end of its slumber. I have a mound of dough rising behind me that I’ve folded over itself dozens of times. It strikes me how the early morning hours feel so much like the late night hours—a block of time I am much more familiar with. I used to (still do) wonder whether I am a morning person or a night owl by nature. I could make a pretty compelling case for both, which is why I have found myself pondering a question even more fundamental lately: is there really such a thing as having one true nature?
I’ve been reading a book called Goddesses in Everywoman. I am running a book club with my friends on it, which has kept me unusually focused on the reading at hand. The book explores seven feminine archetypes through the lens of the Greek goddesses Hestia, Artemis, Athena, Hera, Demeter, Persephone and Aphrodite.
The author claims that every woman contains the essence of all seven goddesses, but certain goddess archetypes’ patterns and characteristics play out most prominently in her life. She breaks down the goddesses into two key categories: the ‘virgin goddesses’—Athena, Hestia, and Artemis—known for their independence, focus, self-derived aims, willingness to be in solitude, and lack of dependency on relationship for fulfillment. There are also the ‘vulnerable goddesses’—Demeter, Persephone, and Hera—who are most complete when they are in relationship, representing their archetypes as mother, daughter, and wife, respectively. She categorizes Aphrodite into a third category all on her own: the alchemical goddess—as she contains a fusion of virgin and vulnerable goddess traits.
This idea that we contain all seven goddesses but are most connected to one or two deeply resonated with me. As I read about certain goddesses, it felt like I was behind their eyes, the protagonist in their myths, in sync with how they felt and acted. Whereas with other goddesses, I had to dig deep to connect to them—the resonance faint, but present if I looked for it. In those goddesses where I felt less resonance, I noticed a lot of congruence between them and qualities or patterns I would have judged, found confusing, or felt disconnected from in my female friends when I was younger and still maturing—experiences and patterns that have become more legible to me as I have gotten older. Because age calls in new phases of life that activate new aspects of ourselves that we never knew we contained.
The self is a spiral: we are always winding past parts of ourselves we thought were gone and watching them come alive again, only to soon shed them and re-awaken aspects of ourselves we didn’t know existed. As we come out of those phases, we then wonder: was that really us back there? Was I able to work that hard so effortlessly? Was I able to relax that much and genuinely enjoy it? Did I really enjoy being so independent and self-sufficient? Did I like being so deeply entangled with someone else? Am I really as nurturing as I was then? As strategic, emotional, logical, playful, sensual, spiritual? Or whatever feels far from us now. We forget that we are cyclical creatures, that there are seasons to our lives. That we do have an inner nature, but that its elements vary from season to season, phase to phase, moment to moment.
Hestia vs. Athena
Right now I can tell that I am in a heavy Hestia phase — Hestia is a deeply spiritual goddess — goddess of hearth and home. She spends time inwards, is happy in her own company, doesn’t look outside of herself for fulfillment, validation, or meaning. She is able to enjoy where she is and be at ease. I am enjoying my Hestia phase. And since I have been deepening into it for some time, it now feels so fundamental to me that I question whether I really could have been ‘in my nature’ when I was operating with the tenacity, focus and discipline I embodied in a more strategic, somewhat masculine phase of my life. I wonder if I was really being ‘me’ when I was embodying my inner-Athena: goddess of craft, strategy, wisdom and protector of fathers.
my inner Athena
My childhood friends and I recently went around and shared one word that we thought best describes each other. The word I was assigned was ‘relentless.’ The word hit me somewhat surprisingly now, in a phase that feels much gentler than the one I was in growing up (the phase of my life they had the largest window into), but as soon as they shared it, it also made complete sense to me. It hit me somewhere deep, tickling a vestige of myself I had almost forgotten about. I felt the drive and focus rise up within me that I would channel back when I did not have time to sit still, to ponder life’s big questions. I had goals, aims, work to do! I was good at fitting into environments that valued intensity, resilience and ambition because those were the qualities most emphasized in myself then. These tended to be more male-dominated, masculine environments—ones I felt very at home in until my Hestia phase began to emerge. I didn’t feel particularly pulled to relationships, romantic love or spiritual pursuits. I didn’t particularly resonate with the idea of trading in my promising career for motherhood, though I assumed I would want to one day. The truth is that I was simply preoccupied with my current focus: what I wanted, what I was working towards, what I was aiming at… quite relentlessly, I suppose! I was able to operate with such focus that I would get lost in my pursuits, forgetting that there were roses to smell or relationships to nurture. I was just in it. I would take on more than I could handle and still somehow pull it off (at a physical and metaphysical cost I would only fully confront much later). My backpack was always too heavy for my frame, filled with agendas, books, notebooks. My workouts were regimented. Sleep, rest, ease and comfort were not a priority. The goals were all that mattered then.
This rigidness served me well at the time. In the games I was participating in, structure and rigidity were foundational to my success. I always knew where I needed to be, what I needed to do, when I was going to do it, what I did or did not understand. Nothing was left up to chance. I was in control. And that felt really, really nice. It wasn’t unpleasant at the time (though it probably would be to my current self).
When I tell the story of younger me, I find myself tainting it with some hindsight bias, saying that I was oppressed by my own discipline, that the rigidness of my structure kept me away from my true desires. But if I am being really honest with myself, I think I just really liked being on top of things back then. I don’t know if I was suppressing my true nature, or if my nature then was to know where I was headed and do everything I could to ensure my success. It didn’t matter to me if I was aiming at precisely the right place, if I was perfectly “in alignment”. I was just concerned about getting there. And that worked for me! You move pretty fast and far when you’re not paying much attention to how you feel, to what direction you’re headed in, to whether your goals are the right ones. And while living a life of alignment is a core value of mine now, I also see that my past self who wasn’t as focused on this aim has a lot to teach me, too: about the value of having clear, defined goals, about the power of bending the world to your will, about the fruits of hard labour, and about the freedom that accompanies discipline.
In that time, I was certainly embodying the archetype of Athena: I was deeply strategic, focused, and well-positioned to fit into highly masculine environments (congruent with Athena’s core trait of being a loyal daughter/protector of patriarchal figures). I still had the emotional, empathetic aspect of myself developed back then, I just felt very comfortable dialling it down when the situation didn’t call for feelings (which was often). Being in touch with my emotions did not feel fundamental to me. The focus was on performance: what would help me do best, not feel best. And that didn’t feel like self-betrayal. It just felt like the way it was then.
I look back on that period and wonder where (or rather who) my goals came from. Because I wasn’t in touch with my intuition, I derived my aims by looking around at others and following their desires. It was classic status game-driven mimetic behaviour. I figured out what I wanted by paying attention to what others wanted. And hey, that’s probably what I should have been doing back then. I mean: what did I know? I just wanted optionality, money, and a secure future. I was young and smart and people told me: this is a great direction for you! So I trusted them and walked (ran) in that direction. I didn’t pay much attention to what I wanted deep in my soooooul. I was just doing the work, and doing quite well at it.
Eventually something shifted, though. You could call it an awakening of sorts. I realized that I didn’t know why I was headed where I was headed and that I didn’t really enjoy what I was spending my time, energy and attention on—resources I came to view as incredibly precious and valuable. I felt this deep pull to get in touch with my true interests, to follow the vector of my own curiosity, even if it meant shattering this life, career, and future that I had spent so long building up. It felt like I was flushing all of inner-Athena’s work down the drain at the time. That is why it took me a while to shift towards a more heart-led, Hestia-oriented path. I needed to get my rational mind on board by convincing it that this was the only way I would feel truly accomplished. I had to appeal to my inner-Athena to convince her to relinquish control. I told myself: it is not that I want to dispose of my focused, strategic nature, but that if I have this capacity to work hard, I should probably point that effort at my own goals, visions, dreams, and creations. The problem was that I did not know what those were yet because all I had done for the first two odd decades of my life was put my head down and grind my way to becoming the most dynamic, high-operating creature I could. And that was a lot of work! I didn’t have time for stories and myths and fairytales (which is ironically what I now spend a significant amount of time reading about). I had to get things done! Eventually though, Athena agreed and handed the reins of my consciousness over to Hestia.
my inner Hestia
My inner-Hestia has lead me to beautiful places. She has helped me write these essays. She has helped me go inwards and see things I never imagined could exist within me. She has helped me connect more deeply with my inner nature, with the earth, with all of the humans and living things around me. She has helped me take a meaningful pause in the fast-paced and steep trajectory I had kept myself on for as long as I was conscious. She took my limp, under-nourished soul and nursed it back to life. She has helped me strengthen my connection to my inner wisdom. She has given me a deep sense of meaning and purpose that feels more rewarding than any achievement my inner-Athena was striving for. She has shown me the way home—the way back to myself. She has shown me what I want to pour energy and life force into. She has shown me what it feels like to be in resonance with your environment, to find people who activate your soulful, raw, egoless self. She has taught me how to surrender. She has taught me how to allow. She has taught me to simply be.
These two inner goddesses have made me who I am. The high-achieving, execution-oriented, ambitious, hyper-rational, structured and clear Athena helped me climb the mountains I thought were meant for me quickly enough to realize that they weren’t filled with the sunshines and rainbows I had hoped for. And the inwardly-focused, spiritually-centered, intuitively guided Hestia has brought me clarity, self-trust and alignment. She has guided me to a place where I am doing what feels meaningful and personally true for me, and attracting people, opportunities, and resonance into my life that align deeply with my inner world.
I am grateful to both of these goddesses, and by allowing each one of them to have the reins when they needed them, I have landed exactly where I am meant to be.
the limitations of identification
But I have also recognized a limitation within myself: I noticed that I naturally gravitate to one goddess at a time and begin to believe that I am limited to only her qualities, traits, patterns, and predispositions. Because our mind likes to jump from “I feel like this now” to “I will feel like this forever” rather than to accept that life is full of change that requires us to adapt, evolve and let go.
I noticed recently that my inner-Hestia was getting greedy with my time, unwilling to make space for my inner-Athena to rise up once more and focus on the strategic, structured, disciplined tasks that it was time to prioritize. My inner-Hestia thought she had won the game of thrones of my inner psyche, and that there would be no more threats from other goddesses wanting to take my time, attention and energy way from her. She wanted to dominate my being entirely.
sisters, not foes
But I am my best when my inner goddesses view each other as sisters not foes—when I can invite my inner-Hestia to collaborate with my inner-Athena. Athena sees the opportunity Hestia has created and wants to help. Just as Hestia helped redirect me when Athena had taken me far enough towards status and achievement, Athena now knows her powers are lying dormant within me and wants to serve the mission Hestia has selected. She wants to incorporate more structure, discipline and plans. She wants to take my ideas further and produce more of them! But Hestia feels threatened by strategy and ambition creeping back into my psyche, fighting against it, convinced that if I let go, I will surrender my loyalty to her completely, forever. Because that is how identity works! When we identify with one thing by saying “I am Hestia” or “I am Athena”—or, extending this past the goddesses, when you identify with any characteristic or behaviour—you disown the other parts of you and make it impossible for the other polarities to consciously be a part of you. You are implicitly telling yourself (and the world) that you are X and therefore not Y. That because you do A, you struggle with B. Because how could you be both? How could you contain both sides of a duality simultaneously?
But this is our nature! We are non-dual. We contain it all, and we only forget this when we are stuck in dualistic thinking that has us believing we are one thing and not the other. Identity keeps us from actualizing our whole self, embodying our full potential, and allowing all the gods and goddesses within ourselves to wake up.
admiration as an invitation
If you feel disconnected from a part of yourself trying to rise up, notice who you admire and begin to channel the qualities in them that you feel far from in yourself. Do they have the strategic, single-minded focus of Athena, or the nurturing, soft, maternal qualities of Demeter? Is it the wifely, loyal qualities of Hera that you look up to, or the wild, competitive qualities of an Artemis? Do you admire the beautiful, sensual goddesses around you that contain the eroticism of Aphrodite? Or is it the spiritual insight and stillness of the Hestias in your midst that you crave, or the innocent, submissive, endearing nature of the Persephones that you find charming?
You might see a piece of yourself in all of the goddesses. And you might feel most resonant with one, or two, or three. You might also notice that while one was alive in your past, you feel distant from her now. Maybe you want to give her some sunlight and water by doing what she loves, giving her space to express her strengths and desires. Or maybe you are at peace with the phase you are in, and know that when the time comes, it will pass and a new goddess within you will awaken. Maybe you know that there is no rush, that you are not behind, that you are not too much of one thing and not enough of the other. That you are all of it, and with time, each expression of you will find its way to the surface.
Perhaps you are tempted to identify with the current version of yourself that is activated, believing that this is Who You Are now. But remember: we can surrender to the archetype presently at the helm of our consciousness, without thinking it is Right and its polarity is Wrong. Our inner nature is constantly changing, spiralling upwards, jumping around to different archetypes within us, moving from one goddess to another. Allow these shifts to happen without gripping onto them too tightly. It should be more of a concern to you if you stay the same than if you change.
Because, like nature, you are impermanent. Who you are today can be different than who you are tomorrow. The self unfolds as it pleases, not as you please. There is inner wisdom at play in the parts of yourself that get activated in each phase. Trust what is rising up naturally and encourage your inner gods and goddesses to make space for each other. Remind them that welcoming one does not displace another and that they are all serving the same aim: full expression of your multi-faceted, ever-evolving true nature.
Do you desire deeper mental clarity and self-awareness? I offer 1-1 coaching to help individuals define and pursue what they truly want. If you resonate with my writing and want to cultivate alignment between your inner and outer world through introspection and action, you can apply for my coaching program by filling out this form. You are also welcome to email me at isabel@mindmine.school or DM me on Twitter for more details.
Related essays you might enjoy: embodying over appearing, comfort, growing pains, getting out of a funk, you might disappoint people (and that’s okay) and humility vs. hubris. If you enjoyed this essay, please let me know on Twitter where I share my daily thoughts. I am also on TikTok now, talking about ideas that inspire these essays.
Oh this is wonderful! And something that I deeply resonate with. I've been in a similar headspace and it was cool to see you articulate that through the goddesses.
This was so beautiful to read, I feel like I’m mostly a Persephone