The library · The other points and bodies

Pallas in Capricorn

the asteroid 2 Pallas in Capricorn, in modern Western asteroid practice

What the tradition reads

Pallas in Capricorn is read as strategy in the service of what already stands. Astrology Club's delineation names this the warrior who defends and upholds traditions and the status quo, and calls the creative intelligence structured, classical and refined. On that reading the assets a community has accumulated and built are what gets protected, and conservation and thrift are what gets taught; the page places the likely talents in the fields of art that need structure joined to strength and beauty, naming architecture, landscaping and the classical arts as places where such a person could excel. Astrology King's collection of the modern reading supports the same emphasis from another side, since it attributes to Demetra George the link between Pallas and the Midheaven, the angle of ambition and of visible, socially useful accomplishment, and quotes Michael O'Reilly that a prominently placed Pallas can make one exceptionally skilled as a political strategist. Wikipedia's page on asteroids in astrology, keeping to the plainest form, offers Pallas as an indicator of effort, and dates the astrological use of asteroids to the 1970s. Capricorn is the sign the Western scheme gives to Saturn.

The story

Athena held office. Wikipedia calls her the goddess of war, good counsel, prudent restraint and practical insight, and says that in this role she became the guardian of the welfare of kings. She was known as Polias and Poliouchos, both from polis, meaning city-state, and her temples were usually located atop the fortified acropolis in the central part of a city; the Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis is dedicated to her. Her competence was technical as well as civic: she was called Mechanitis, skilled in inventing, and as Hippia she was credited with inventing the bit, bridle, chariot and wagon, while Pausanias records a temple of Athena Chalinitis, the bridler, at Corinth. A bridle is an instrument for governing force without destroying it. The asteroid is old in the same literal way. It is described as likely a remnant protoplanet, and Pallas, Vesta and Ceres appear to be the only intact bodies from the earliest stage of planetary formation to survive inside the orbit of Neptune.

Written from

Corpus key point:Pallas:sign:Capricorn.