cover image Athene: Image and Energy

Athene: Image and Energy

Ann Shearer. Viking Books, $32.95 (320pp) ISBN 978-0-670-85797-5

The scope of this well-written, thought-provoking book extends well beyond the Greek goddess of wisdom. Shearer (Woman: Her Changing Image) discusses with keen insight Athene in her various manifestations: as a classical figure, an archetype and an emblem of state. But Shearer goes beyond the best-known roles to examine the earlier divine prototypes which molded Athene's identity, and also how her traits have influenced subsequent mythic figures. Her analyses of the Black Virgin and the Hagia Sophia in Christian thought and of Florence Nightingale in nationalistic secular society are all particularly astute. At times it's not entirely clear what constitutes the ""Athene-ness"" of some figures, but in the vast majority of her discussions the vital energies of that paradoxical goddess are offered with real clarity. Athene is an extremely complex and contradictory figure, and Shearer doesn't always resolve every complexity she forwards. Perhaps, as is befitting her training and private practice as a Jungian analyst, she believes it is better for patient or reader to work things out for themselves. More far reaching and less shrill than Lee Hall's recent Athena: A Biography (Forecasts, March 24) Athene offers the modern reader new interpretations of a very old and powerful female figure. Photographs. (July)