The library · The other points and bodies

Pallas in Virgo

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

What the tradition reads

Pallas in Virgo is read as the strategist working at the level of parts. Astrology Club's delineation has this placement defending the health and strength of life, a phrase about what is championed rather than a claim about any body, and describes a mind that understands the nuances of the supportive structures inside a problem. The creative wisdom is called refined, detail oriented and intellectual; the page reads an intricate way of knowing how things fit together, and the ability to assemble scattered pieces into a coherent whole. It also reads a readiness to defend those under one's care at real cost, and names the risk in the same breath: taking on the problems of others at one's own expense. Wikipedia's page on asteroids in astrology notes that Pallas, like Vesta, is sometimes called an influencer of Virgo, and gives the plainest version of the reading, Pallas as an indicator of effort, or of wisdom, intelligence and healing perhaps through effort. Astrology King gathers the wider modern list of strategy, skill and pattern recognition. Virgo is the sign the Western scheme gives to Mercury.

The story

The craft titles are the ones to keep here. Athena was known as Ergane as the patron of craft and weaving, and as Mechanitis, meaning skilled in inventing. As Hippia she was credited with inventing the bit, bridle, chariot and wagon, and under the epithet Aethyia, a word for a diving bird and figuratively for a ship, the name is taken to reference her teaching the art of shipbuilding or navigation. The equipment of her own trade was made rather than given: in Hesiod's account Metis, hidden inside Zeus, forged robes, armour, a shield and a spear for her daughter once the daughter had grown. She was also Athena Parthenos, Athena the Virgin, believed like Artemis and Hestia to remain perpetually a virgin, and her most famous temple, the Parthenon, takes its name from that title. The asteroid is a plain enough object to fit a sign of measurement: about 513 kilometres across, 79 percent of the mass of Vesta and 22 percent of the mass of Ceres, and an estimated 7 percent of the whole mass of the asteroid belt.

Written from

Corpus key point:Pallas:sign:Virgo.