The following excerpt is from a work-in-progress and MAY NOT be copied, reproduced and used in any way without EXPRESS consent from the author, Mary Katherine Spain.
PILLAR #7: Knowledge. “Teach the children, even the adult children. Lean in, listen, process. Be patient with what you can’t quite figure out. Don’t get your news from only one or two sources. READ! Seek counsel from your elders, your mentors. Appreciate the wisdom of experience, yours and others’–everyone has something to teach you. Light the way for others by representing the wisdom of the Feminine. Technology is winning out over other forms of intelligence, over ways of noticing but it is only a vehicle for information. Information is not wisdom. Wisdom should be a verb. Women inherently know how to make it a verb.”
Wisdom is crucial in our age of information as we navigate through the maelstrom of data points, stats and percentages and of course, artificial information, which is said to herald the end of original thought, critical thinking and problem solving. Collectively, we have trained our ears to perk up upon hearing or reading the words, ‘studies show.’ We have been taught to trust science (to the exclusion of other kinds of noticing) and yet it’s a universal joke to say ‘it must be true, I read it on the internet.’ Which is to say that none of us, really, know how to gather truth, or true things. We clutch on to what ‘resonates’ with us, talk to those who are going to generally agree with us in the first place, and visit websites (and social media feeds) that not only DO NOT challenge our ways of thinking but reinforce the thoughts we think over and over again, throughout our days. As someone who has spent some time teaching college freshmen, I could write a 20-page essay on the disintegration of the Learner (which has been replaced by the Producer or, even more accurately, the Performer). What I feel Athena may be alluding to without saying it is: What is the cost of replacing wisdom with information? ‘Information is not wisdom.’ Like many things Athena purports in these pillars, we must ask ourselves: Is it a warning or an invitation?
And where do we find wisdom? How does one cultivate wisdom?
In March of 2021, I offered an online class entitled, ‘Telling a New Story.’ It was essentially about how words and inner narratives create our reality. Therefore, change your story, change your reality. We met for six weeks and in the last week, I challenged the participants (all women) to define wisdom. We came up with many tasty morsels but settled on the following: Wisdom can be defined as a steeped kind of intuition that is only available when you heed, fully process and honor the experiences you’ve had.
The mental stability that comes from honoring the experiences you’ve had coupled with trusting and fine-tuning your intuitive “hits” and insights feels like a pretty good working definition of wisdom and how to hone it. I also recognize that wisdom might be very subjective. In other words, how we all exhibit wisdom (and even look for it) will be determined by a plethora of factors.
But let’s look at the foundation of the Pillar: ‘Knowledge.’ One idea that comes to mind is that ‘knowledge’ feels like a thing that can be proven where wisdom cannot be proven, disproven or measured in any quantifiable way. Additionally, Athena implies that there is an imbalance between knowledge and wisdom, and that the age of technology and information is “winning out,” which leaves little room for wisdom and its verb-like promise to flourish and thrive. Why is that? For one, wisdom feels very feminine (and therefore, a runner up to the dominant male-centered approach). If you asked ten people to paint a picture of wisdom, I’ll bet some owls and women in long flowy salmon-colored robes might make it into at least half of the portraits (and possibly iterations of Athena herself!). Also, knowledge (being “provable”) feels more masculine. What might this portrait look like? A pile of books? Ivy league campus with white columns, a verdant green quad where stodgy professors are hurriedly getting to class? For certain generations, one might draw a computer when asked to create an emblem of knowledge.
Unfortunately, a popular place to find what I’ll call ‘wisdom-lite’ is the internet, where memes offering a dizzying array of platitudes, spiritual gurus selling empowerment courses and “Feminine Rising” retreats in far-flung places are ubiquitous. If one was to code these signposts of ‘wisdom’ either masculine or feminine, I’d guess the majority would code feminine. What does masculine wisdom look like on the internet, or even in our day-to-day world? When I googled “Is there such a thing as masculine wisdom?” on 01/7/2025, there were many blog sites that came up delivering a study of the masculine divine: strong but vulnerable, decisive, structured-oriented, heroic for the common good.
But where are your memes? Your retreats? What are you selling me, world, that embodies what it means to be a wise male person? The fact that our culture doesn’t package male wisdom should be a red flag (but that’s another book!).
This complex pillar is suggesting an engagement with the world around us that both men and women are called to do differently. Simply ‘getting your news from more than one source’ is an empowering act but how many of us are willing to do that? Modern life has gotten too easy for our brains! In the space of the internet, knowledge and wisdom have been sacrificed due to an overindulgence and an over-reliance on ad-copy that teases our dopamine centers. This, in turn, produces an over-identification with selfhood, planting the whisper deep in our brains and body chemistry: when are we going to feel good next?
Embodying the Divine Feminine 