For Athene

Athene of the summit, blazing with intellectual fire,
Goddess who burns the perimeter around material desires,
quenching them to embers, awakening the soul’s seed
to grasp for the highest summit, may you hear this prayer,
O daughter of Zeus and Metis, virginal and chaste,
adorned with the aegis, shaking your shield,
your spear reaching down into matter’s deep recesses,
a sign and a beacon for all scattered here below
while preserving you immaculate, O holy Goddess.
Warlike and proud, cause of intellectual strength,
may the roots of my soul be nourished by wisdom,
awakened to truth, beauty, and love through sages’ holy words.
May I bloom with fragrant flowers, crafting what is best
in my actions, speech, and writing, alone and in society.
May I open the true inner sanctum within myself,
discerning true insights and visions from false delusion.
May I be wise without arrogance or boastfulness,
contributing to what is necessary and what is best.
May I be just in friendship, family life, and civic duties,
cultivating a space for virtue, thriving, and ascent.

I wanted to post this separately from my February update for indexing purposes. This is the prayer I am now using on a daily basis for Athene. You will probably catch extremely strong echoes of Proclus in it if you’ve read him in any capacity, as it’s influenced by his exegesis on Athene (and by several of his hymns to various Gods). The requests at the end move more towards the model that Plato’s Socrates sets in the dialogues for how to formulate a prayer — wishing for what is good, praying for virtue, and leaving the details to the God.