Rites of Wisdom and Strength - Honoring Pallas Athena at Bryn Mawr College

One sometimes stumbles across the most extraordinary things in the pursuit of knowledge; things that make one pause to reflect, speechless and moved. I knew when I visited the campus of Bryn Mawr College in November of 2004 that something special lingered upon the air just outside of my ken, like the intangible flutterings of magick long since wrought and forgot. I was there to conduct research for a biography about the founder of the first modern Pagan tradition to specifically serve the queer community, a tradition that I had been a student and initiate of for a number of years. There must have been something truly magickal about that campus to have motivated Eddie Buczynski, the founder of The Minoan Tradition, to pull up stakes and move from New York City to Bryn Mawr, PA to study archaeology in the mid-1980s.

Bryn Mawr College was founded in 1885 at the bequest of Joseph W. Taylor, a Quaker physician, who saw a pressing need to facilitate “the advanced education of females.” The 135 acres of Bryn Mawr College clearly comprise one of the most beautiful college campuses in the United States. Crossing its boundary is like stepping through the looking glass into a world of Welsh castles, soaring oaks, rustling ancient pines, and green, green hills. The rolling hills of the campus function as academic pasture, where young minds are plumped on the rich forage of Yeats and Plutarch, enzyme chemistry and Anatolian archaeology, child psychology and classical Greek sculpture. It was one of the first colleges in the United States to offer graduate education of women through the Ph.D. level. The school has a long history of social activism, and continues to honor key Quaker principles such as freedom of conscience and freedom of inquiry, and provides a strong emphasis on consensus-building, peace studies, and conflict resolution.

Although Bryn Mawr’s graduate school of Arts and Sciences has been co-educational since 1931, the undergraduate college remains primarily the domain of women to this day. As ground-breaking as Bryn Mawr has been over the years, it is a campus steeped in traditions designed to strengthen the female body, cultivate the female mind and empower the female spirit. Thus, for example, we see the excitement and affection with which the students, faculty and surrounding community generally greet the annual May Day celebrations, a tradition dating back to 1904 which features hundreds of women dancing ribbons around the maypoles. In another Tradition, at Lantern Night in mid-November, the sophomores present each freshwoman with a lantern in a complex and beautiful night ritual of colored lights and song. Each lantern has glass panes tinted in one color signifying the owner’s school class. The colors - light blue, red, dark blue, and green - together with the purple that all McBride school attendees receive, are designed to represent the elements of Greek hermetic magick - air, fire, water, earth, and spirit, respectively.

That Pagan symbolism abounds at Bryn Mawr is not surprising given a school which has continued to foster the concept of a classical education long after it has gone out of vogue with the increasingly compartmentalized and industrial mindset of American higher learning. Such “casual Paganism,” begun with Renaissance Europe’s rediscovery of its Pagan past, and influenced by the splintering (some would say degeneration) of the enlightenment into the romantic, aesthetic, and decadent movements, was a mark of a late Victorian university education that was steeped in the arts and of the classics read in their native tongues. In remembrance of this, Bryn Mawr continues to sing its traditional songs in ancient Greek and is (Alas!) one of the last U.S. schools to do so. Two of these songs honor and call upon the Goddesses of Victory and of Wisdom. Of Victory, they sing:

Anassa Kata, kalo kale,
Ia ia ia Nike,
Bryn Mawr, Bryn Mawr, Bryn Mawr!1

Queen, descend, I invoke You, Fair One,
Hail, hail, hail, Victory,
Bryn Mawr, Bryn Mawr, Bryn Mawr!

The Anassa Kata is used by the students to invoke the Greek Goddess Nike to see them to victory, and is traditionally started by the seniors and taken up by the other students at sporting events and at other times throughout the year in a rousing call. But the most beloved school song is arguably the hymn to Pallas Athena,2 the Goddess of wisdom and Matron of the college.

Pallas Athenathea,
Mathe mastos kai stenous,
Se par he me is i man
Hie rus sou sai soi deine.

Pallas Athena, Goddess of learning and strength
We come to You to worship You, dread Goddess.

Makar i ze ai toumen
He min sophi an didou
He min syngignou a ei
Makarthe a akoue.

Bless us we pray; give us wisdom.
Be with us always, Blessed Goddess, hear!

Hie rize nyntous lydnous
A ei phanos phanoien
Lampry nontes ten hodan
Melan phanon poiountes.

Sanctify our lanterns now, to shine forever clearly,
Lighting the way, making bright the dark.

The hymn to Athena is sung at all formal school occasions, including the Step-sings that are held during the major traditions such as Parade Night and Lantern Night, alumnae reunions, and graduation ceremonies. It dates to the turn of the Twentieth Century, and was a source of controversy when it was sung at a Chapel lecture in 1904. A Trustee of the school and his daughter made an enraged complaint to President Thomas at that time, saying that “it was irreverent and pagan and a hymn to a heathen goddess, sung like a benediction standing.”3 President M. Cary Thomas shrugged off the complaint. President Thomas was heavily influenced by the writings of authors such Algernon Charles Swinburne.4 Swinburne, a Victorian poet of the aesthetic movement, celebrated and explored the concepts of Paganism and unconventional eroticism. It is not difficult, therefore, to understand the tolerance with which a college administration headed by Thomas greeted the birth of such “irreverent” traditions, and may even have had an unconscious hand in encouraging them.5

While I was interviewing Dr. James Wright, the Chairman of the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology, I gingerly inquired about a custom I had heard about from other sources, namely, that students made offerings to a large Goddess statue located somewhere on campus. Jim laughed and said it was true. Would I like to see? Indeed, yes. He led me out into a cavernous neo-Medieval temple of dark wainscoting, rich carpets, bright flags and diamond-paned windows. There, nestled in a sunlit corner of Thomas Great Hall stood a ten-foot-tall statue of Pallas Athena, its base absolutely covered in offerings - candles, coins, flowers, origami, stuffed animals, and scrolls. Her arm clutched a beribboned oar, the “spear” of the crewing team. There were representatives of several sources of caffeine, presumably offerings to request help in keeping the penitents awake to study or to finish a paper that was down to the wire. There were prayers for help on tests, prayers for victory in sports, prayers for love, and prayers to intercede in the Presidential election (then just days away). I was stunned. Jim explained that students make votive offerings to Her throughout the year for guidance, wisdom, sporting triumphs, and the inevitable help on tests and term papers. This practice had been going on for decades. And that wasn’t all. On the night before the May Day festivities, the Traditions Mistresses are said to conduct rituals designed to propitiate Athena in the hopes for a dry May Day. And then there’s the owl.

Athena’s familiar owl is carved into the keystone of the arch of Rockefeller Hall, roosting much as its living model continues to make its home in the nooks and crannies of the Acropolis. She is found in carvings here and there throughout the campus, and is present in triplicate upon the school crest. The owl, said by some to be a primeval form of the Goddess Athena,6 is the designated protector of the school. In the past, one of the duties of the undergraduate Traditions Mistresses was to provide for the “care and feeding” of the owl. At the beginning of the school year, the Mistresses would process with their lanterns clockwise around the campus to “wake” the owl, and at the end of the year they would process counterclockwise to put the owl back to sleep. Magickal practitioners will, of course, recognize in these rituals a reflection of their own practices - the clockwise or “sunwise” (i.e., deosil, in Wiccan parlance) invocation of a Power and the counterclockwise (i.e., widdershins) dismissal of the invoked Power when it is no longer needed. In truth, by “waking” the owl one is really invoking the spirit of wisdom - the sophia - that lies at the heart of Bryn Mawr’s traditions in order to guide the faculty and students on their path to knowledge in the service of humankind.

Sophias philai paromen.
Philokaloumen met eute laiar Philosophoumen.
Aneu malakias, plouto ergou
Kairo crometha Athlon ariston,
Kai kindunon tonde.
Kallist on nomizomen.
Enthoumometha orthos hosa praxomen orthos.
Kalon to athlon kai elpis megale,
Elpis megale Kalon to athlon kai
Elpis megale, elpis megale,
Nai megale.7

Friends of wisdom, let us gather.
We love beauty with simplicity.
We love wisdom without softness.
We use our talent to accomplish deeds.
This is the finest achievement,
And this is the venture we consider noble.
We have proper pride
In what we have achieved.
The achievement is worthy,
And our hope is great, hope is great.
Hope is great, yea, great.

Beauty and hope, wisdom and strength. What wonders lay at the end of any path fortified with such traits? Long may Pallas Athena continue to be “sung like a benediction standing” at Bryn Mawr by strong women in honor of a strong role model. So mote it be.

Statue of Pallas Athena in Thomas Great Hall at Bryn Mawr College.
Photo copyright Garan du.

Copyright (c) 2005 by Garan du. All rights reserved.
Originally published in the Fall/Winter 2005 issue of Circle Magazine.

1 The Anassa Kata, also known as the Bryn Mawr College Cheer, from the Bryn Mawr College website.
2 Pallas Athena, from the Bryn Mawr College website. To hear it performed by the Bryn Mawr College Night Owls, please visit http://www.brynmawr.edu/alumnae/reunion/songs.shtm
3 Bessette, Alicia. “Come and See: Religious diversity invites new ways of knowing to Bryn Mawr,” Bryn Mawr Alumnae Bulletin (Winter 2000). Bryn Mawr College. Bryn Mawr, PA.
4 Horowitz, pp. 84-85.
5 President M. Cary Thomas made a point of emphasizing the Pagan origins of the May Day tradition in her 1915 May Day chapel address. From “Come and See: Religious diversity invites new ways of knowing to Bryn Mawr,” Bryn Mawr Alumnae Bulletin (Winter 2000).
6 One of Athena’s epithets is “Glaukôpis” meaning with eyes like a glaux or owl. It is usually taken to mean owl-eyed, gray-eyed or blue-eyed.
7 The Bryn Mawr College song Sophias. From the Bryn Mawr College website.