The library · The other points and bodies

Pallas in Scorpio

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

What the tradition reads

Pallas in Scorpio is read as strategy that goes all the way down. Astrology Club's delineation names this the warrior of life, beauty, truth and death, and calls the wisdom penetrating, occult, mysterious and profound. Problems are met by investigation and penetration; the page says such a person fights for their rights and needs with whatever tactic is required, is a nearly unbeatable adversary when defending a justice or a right, and leaves no shadow unexplored and no stone unturned in a search. Nothing in that reading is a prediction about conduct: it is a description of where the sign's version of the asteroid puts its attention. The wider modern reading Astrology King gathers is consistent with it, since the asteroid is credited there with just warfare, strategy and a defensive nature that takes action only when other routes close. Wikipedia's page on asteroids in astrology gives the sparest version, Pallas as an indicator of effort, of wisdom or of intelligence, and dates the astrological use of asteroids to the 1970s. Scorpio is ruled classically by Mars, and by Pluto in the scheme that spread in the twentieth century.

The story

The darker Athena material gathers around a skin and a severed head. Wikipedia records a version of the epithet's origin in which Pallas was a Giant, slain by Athena during the Gigantomachy and flayed so that his skin became her cloak, worn as a victory trophy, and an alternative variation in which Pallas was instead her father, who attempted to assault his own daughter and was killed and skinned for it. Her symbols include the gorgoneion, the head of Medusa, whom Ovid says Athena transformed into the Gorgon after witnessing the young woman being raped by Poseidon in the goddess's own temple. The aegis she wore to war carried fear, strife, defence and assault. The asteroid has a battered surface to match. It appears saturated with craters, has more large craters than either Vesta or Ceres because its high inclination and eccentricity make average impacts far more energetic, and its craters are named after ancient weapons. A suspected impact basin at the south pole ejected about 6 percent of the body's volume.

Written from

Corpus key point:Pallas:sign:Scorpio.