This is part 1 of a series called The Art of Mentoring. Think of this as a way to analyze and interact with all of the tools provided by VirtualMentor including MentorSphere. This also serves as an indicator of the UIF's approach to Mentoring and what distinguishes it from other mentoring tools and approaches. You can navigate to other posts in the series from the list called The Art of Mentoring.
Historical Reference: Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad
The concepts of Mentoring and Mentor are first introduced in the second Homeric epic, the Odyssey (circa 700 BCE), one of the first Greek sagas and one that has influenced Western culture for more than 2,700 years. The first Homeric work, Iliad, recounts as a mythical tale the facts surrounding the Trojan War, and when Odysseus departs for the ten-year Trojan War and leaves his infant son Telemachus in the care of a family friend with the name of Mentor, it sets the stage for the Odyssey. Four hundred years after the debut of the Odyssey, a short version of how Aristotle summarized Odysseus’ twenty-year departure is as follows:
A certain man [Odysseus] has been abroad many years; he is alone, and the god Poseidon keeps a hostile eye on him. At home the situation is that suitors for his wife's [Penelope] hand are draining his resources and plotting to kill his son [Telemachus]. Then, after suffering storm and shipwreck, Odysseus comes home, makes himself known, attacks the suitors: he [Odysseus] survives and they [the Suitors] are destroyed.
The Odyssey: A Context for Understanding Mentoring and Mentor
The Odyssey from beginning to end contains the context and an understanding of the complexity and disclosure of different types of Mentoring and identities of Mentor. It is this context that has enabled UIF to appropriately define these terms and design applications for mentoring relationships consistent with the Mentoring Systems, Models and Types articulated in the Odyssey.
The Odyssey begins twenty years after the beginning and ten years after the end of the ten-year Trojan War. Two decades earlier, when Odysseus had set sail for Troy, his son Telemachus was an infant. At the opening of the Odyssey, Telemachus is now twenty and is sharing his missing father’s house on the island of Ithaca with his mother (Penelope) and with a crowd of 108 boisterous young men (the Suitors) whose aim is to persuade Penelope to accept the finality of her husband’s disappearance and hence marry one of them.
Prior to his departure to fight in the Trojan War, Odysseus places the well-being of his palace, his wife and his infant son under the aegis of a long-time loyal friend named Mentor. In this role Mentor is entrusted with the care and education of Telemachus, thus becoming the protective guardian and wise teacher of Telemachus during his formative years.
While growing up in the environment of the palace, his mother and the Suitors, Telemachus develops his Dream to resolve his father Odysseus’ whereabouts. When Athena, the Greek Goddess of Wisdom & Protection, first visits Telemachus, she conveniently assumes the human guise of the character Mentor to hide herself from a house full of Penelope’s Suitors. Disguised first as Mentor, Athena encourages the twenty-year-old Telemachus to stand up against the uninvited suitors, raise sail and go abroad in order to pursue his Dream to resolve the whereabouts of his long absent father, Odysseus. With the help of Athena, his father returns to Ithaca. Once together, he and Telemachus team up and kill the Suitors. Odysseus then attempts to re-engage his relationship with his wife Penelope.