The library · The other points and bodies

Pallas in Sagittarius

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

What the tradition reads

Pallas in Sagittarius is read as strategy aimed a long way out. Astrology Club's delineation calls this placement a defender of the future, and describes the creative intelligence as spiritual, philosophical and far reaching, balancing dreams against the wish to go and see what the world offers. It reads such a person as intelligent, worldly and astute, says the words are both the weapons and the healing tools, notes an easy agility with laughter and humour, and locates the likely talents in literature, writing and communications. Read next to what Astrology King collects as the modern sense of the asteroid, which includes just warfare, strategy, creative intelligence and pattern recognition, the Sagittarius placement is the version that argues rather than strikes, and that prefers the long view to the near one. The practice is recent and the claim modest: Wikipedia's page on asteroids in astrology dates the astrological use of these bodies to Eleanor Bach's 1973 ephemeris and the 1970s, and offers Pallas as an indicator of effort, or of wisdom, intelligence and healing perhaps through effort. Sagittarius is the sign the Western scheme gives to Jupiter, the planetary name Astrology King sets in parentheses beside Athena's father Zeus.

The story

Athena was the goddess of long journeys made with help. She was the patron goddess of heroic endeavour and is said to have aided Perseus, Heracles, Bellerophon and Jason; according to the Bibliotheca of Pseudo-Apollodorus she advised Argos, the builder of the Argo, and assisted in the ship's construction. In the Iliad she assists the Achaeans, and in the Odyssey she is the tutelary deity of Odysseus, the one hero whose whole story is a return journey. Under the epithet Aethyia, a word meaning a diving bird and figuratively a ship, her name is taken to reference the teaching of shipbuilding or navigation. The asteroid travels far by any reckoning: an orbit of about 4.6 years, unusually highly inclined to the plane of the asteroid belt at roughly 34.8 degrees, with an eccentricity nearly as large as that of Pluto. That inclination lets it reach places the planets never do. On 9 October 2022 Pallas passed Sirius only 8.5 arcminutes to the south, while no planet can come within 30 degrees of that star.

Written from

Corpus key point:Pallas:sign:Sagittarius.