“Greeks were deeply aware of the ways in which our successes and our failures—indeed, our very actions themselves—are never completely under our control. They were constantly sensitive to, amazed by, and grateful for those actions that he cannot perform on one’s own simply by trying harder.” There are certain acts of man that seem providential. Their origins are mysterious and not a function of processes that can be documented and repeated.
We refer to these human elements as gifts and assign their ownership to God or gods. How can they be described in a secular manner? This is the trick of narrative that the Greeks, personified as someone named Homer, brought to humanity.
The trick of creating or elevating this Homer to the status of author is part of the magic trick. We accept the divination because we’ve elevated a human to deity status, someone who likely did not and could not have achieved what was claimed. So to answer how could these superhuman actions be possible, the logical answer is that they cannot, not regularly. They are most likely, and most often, the result of a process that involved many and evolved over time. We believe in genius and other gifts because we need the central character to make the drama fit the format.