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a semester of equations, calculations, and structural studies, she announced that she was going to leave university” p. 27. When Lukas asked Athena what she was going
to do after leaving university, Athena answered: “I’m going to get married and have a baby” p. 28. Therefore, her struggle to get an engineering degree from university
was failed.
4.2.1.2. Athena’s Struggle in Her Marriage
Athena got married to Lukas Jessen-Petersen in a young age. “I was twenty, she was nineteen, and I thought it was still too early to take on such a commitment” p.
28. At first, the idea of marriage was rejected by her family. “I asked if she’d told her own family, and she said that she had, and that their reaction had been one of
horror, accompanied by tears from her mother and threats from her mother” p. 32. Approximately two years after their marriage, their baby named Viorel was
born. “When Viorel was born, I had just turned twenty-two” p. 34. Unfortunately, they did not have any financial security.
But all this romanticism didn’t bring in money. Since I played no instrument and couldn’t even offer my services providing background music in a bar, I finally
got a job as a trainee with a firm of architects, doing structural calculations. They paid me a very low hourly rate, and so I would leave the house very early each
morning and come home late. p. 35
Athena and Lukas started to had problems. I began to slide into depression, feeling that I’d been used and manipulated by the
woman I loved. Athena noticed my increasingly strange state of mind, but instead of helping me, she focused her energies on Viorel and on music. p. 36
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Lukas believed that divorce could solve their problems. “The next day, I told Athena that I wanted a divorce” p. 38. They eventually divorced. “A few months later, we
signed the final divorce papers” p. 40. Athena was failed in having a family through marriage.
4.2.1.3. Athena’s Struggle in Teaching People
First time Athena knew about what a teacher is when she learned calligraphy in the desert. “What is a teacher? I’ll tell you: it isn’t someone who teaches something,
but someone who inspires the student to give of her best in order to discover what she already knows” p. 78. Edda was the one who asked Athena to be a teacher. “Those
are things you know already. You need to teach what you don’t know, what the Mother wants to reveal through you” p. 134. Back to London, she started becoming
a teacher. “Now was the time to make the most of the present, to live what remained of her youth, and to teach others everything she had learned” p. 141. “You’re lucky.
A group has just asked you to teach them something, and that will make you a teacher” p. 153. Even she taught how to love. “And yet”, she went on, “you’re as
capable of love as any other human being. How did you learn? You didn’t, you simply believe. You believe, therefore you love” p. 157. Edda only persuaded her to
teach, but later Athena became more than a teacher—she could transform into her divine side. She called her divine side as Hagia Sofia.
