Deception: A Needed Tool

My Mortal Blog Readers,


As I sit on Mount Olympus I constantly think to myself. As my brothers fight and cause trouble to you humans, I take advantage of the quiet to ponder ideas. One that continues to come back to me is that of deception. The ability to disguise yourself from others, and perform tasks without relieving your identity. How vital a tool, my mortals. To be able to perform actions without ever have to give away your identity. The amount of help someone can receive because of this, it can be nothing but a good thing.

Some criticize me for my use of deception. However, how else I am supposed to help the heroes who truly deserve it? They expect me to be able to do everything, to perform miracles while simply being me in front of mere mortals. How dare they hold me up to this pinnacle, as if I was a goddess myself... Oh wait, I am. Well, regardless the problem is still all the same. If I want to help people I must disguise myself.

I mean, what am I supposed to do. The rules are simple: I can help whatever mortals I want but I most not do so while in my godly form. I care for people, you all know that. And the only way I can express my care is if I do it while disguised. I have done this countless times for Odysseus. I helped convince the Princess Narcica to go and find Odysseus so that he could be brought into town. I helped convince his own son Telemachus to go after him. I instilled confidence and ability in these people to insure that Odysseus gets home in one piece, and does so quickly. Do you honestly think I could have done this in my true form? Of course not!

If I even dared to show my true form to these two mortals, there would not even be the question of relieving my identity. They would simply disintegrate in front of my true form, the light radiating around my body scorching their poor souls. I am the goddess of heroic endeavor, yet people expect me to help heroes while staying true to my godly form. It is impossible. Even us God’s have limits, and this is one of them.

However, deception can be a bad thing. When the Titans ruled this universe, they constantly used deception to cause destruction and enslave you mortals. They even tried to convince my father, the Lord Zeus, that it was impossible to stop them. They attempted to deceive him by showing him untrue visions of a war he would lose, and Kronos even attempted to disguise himself as Mother Earth, Gaea, to convince Zeus from persisting in his efforts. Luckily for you, humanity, this did not work. However this does teach us an important lesson. Deception is a double edged sword, and in the hands of an inherently evil person, can be used as a deadly weapon.

So, maybe deception does have a bad side, but this will not deter me in my efforts of using it. It may be fighting fire with fire, but the fire of good is strong enough to engulf the fire of evil. Us Gods will use this power for good, and I can say confidently that I will never stray from that promise. My life is not dedicating to myself, or to my fellow gods. My life is dedicated to the service of Zeus through the service of you, the people. If that means I need to deceive others by disguising myself, then so be it. I shall not be deterred. For some, deception may be a weapon used to promote evil. However for me, it is a tool that is vital in the countering of such evils.



- Pallas Athena