In Homer’s world, the gods are constantly present. Not necessarily through thunderbolts, miracles, or spectacular apparitions: much more often, they intervene through a suggestion, an intuition, an encounter, a change in perspective.

In the Odyssey, Athena sets Telemachus in motion when the young man seems unable to react to the situation created by the suitors: she appears to him in human form, speaks to him, suggests that he search for news of his father, and finally pushes him to act. Shortly afterwards, she also appears in Nausicaa’s dream, prompting her to go down to the river—precisely where she will meet Odysseus. When Odysseus returns to Ithaca, Athena disguises him as an old beggar, advises him, helps him prepare his revenge, and above all repeatedly urges him to be cautious: returning home is not enough; he must observe, understand whom he can trust, and wait for the right moment. During the confrontation with the suitors, she is there again; and in the end it is Athena who stops the final spiral of revenge between Odysseus and the families of the men he has killed.

It is a world in which human and divine intelligence seem to be constantly working together.

Apparently, this no longer happens to us. Or perhaps it still does, but we have changed the vocabulary we use to describe it: when we suddenly understand how to solve a problem, we say that “an idea came to us.” We talk about intuition, unconscious processing, selective attention, the reticular activating system, serendipity. A few centuries ago, we might have spoken of a guardian angel or a tempting devil. Odysseus would probably have said: Athena.

We can argue endlessly about which description is the correct one. For the moment, however, we can simply observe the phenomenon: many of the most important things we do depend on thoughts that, at some point, simply appear.

And very often, what we need is not a miracle: it is an idea.

The gods help those who help themselves

There is one characteristic of divine assistance in the Odyssey that is worth emphasizing: Athena does not do Odysseus’s work for him.

She does not kill the suitors for him. She does not steer his ship in his place. She does not spare him twenty years of struggle. She does not deliver Penelope to him with a certificate of guarantee. She offers guidance, opportunities, protection, clarity. Then Odysseus has to understand, decide, and act.

It is the old principle that God helps those who help themselves. This does not simply mean “you’re on your own.” It means something much more interesting: some forms of help become available only after we have done the part that belongs to us.

An idea is useless if we are unable to recognize it. An opportunity is worthless if we are not prepared to seize it. An encounter may change our life—but only if we have something to say to the person we have met.

From this point of view, we can imagine the universe as an impersonal system. Gravity does not love us and does not hate us: it simply works. Ignore its rules and you may break a leg; learn how to use them and you can build an airplane.

Perhaps something similar is true of other forces that we understand far less well.

The gods may be helping you all the time

We can therefore turn the whole question around.

What if the gods helped us far more often than we imagine, but we simply failed to notice?

The idea that appears in the shower. A sentence overheard by chance that suddenly allows us to see a problem from another angle. The person we meet just when we need a particular piece of information. The uneasy feeling that makes us decide not to sign a contract immediately. A solution that emerges after days in which nothing seemed to be happening.

Where do these things come from? We can say they come from within. We can say they come from outside. We can invoke the unconscious, statistics, Athena, or the Tooth Fairy. From a practical point of view, it makes surprisingly little difference.

Something has given us information we did not have before.

The real question, then, becomes: can we increase the chances of this happening?

How to ask the gods for help

The ancients had at least one advantage over us: they knew whom to ask.

There was no generic “Universe.” If you needed strategy, there was Athena. For trade, communication, and negotiation, there was Hermes—Mercury to the Romans. Apollo brought clarity, order, and inspiration. Ares was useful when it was time to stop talking and face the conflict.

That alone has a practical value. Before a negotiation, asking yourself, “Mercury, what am I not seeing?” directs your attention very differently from simply thinking, “I hope this goes well.”

In modern terms, it is a prompt.

So perhaps we can recover five simple steps.

Ask. Formulate a precise question. Not “I want to be successful,” but “What am I missing?”, “What move have I failed to consider?”, “How can I deal with this person?”

Be open. Do not decide in advance what answer you are supposed to receive. Otherwise, you are not asking Athena—you are asking Athena to agree with you.

Offer. Put something of your own on the table: study, attention, work, discipline, time. Not to buy the gods’ favor, but because help is useful only to someone who is capable of making use of it.

Act. Do your part. Action generates information. Many solutions cannot appear until you actually engage with the problem.

Give thanks. When something useful arrives, acknowledge it. There is no need to decide whether you should thank Athena, your unconscious mind, a lucky coincidence, or the friend who happened to call at exactly the right moment. It is enough to remember that we do not control everything that contributes to our results.

Perhaps the ancients were right, and the gods are still walking beside us. Perhaps they simply found an extraordinarily effective language for describing forces of the mind and of the world that we still understand only in part.

We do not have to choose in order to make use of their lesson.

The next time we have a problem, we can do what Odysseus did: think, prepare, act—and meanwhile ask Athena whether she happens to see something we have missed.

by Brunus