The Asteroid Goddesses: Pallas Athene

Origins of Pallas Athene

Once upon a time, the Titan Sea Goddess Metis helped Zeus (or Jupiter, if we go with the Roman version), achieve victory over his father Cronus (or Saturn for the Romans). You see Cronus/Saturn had swallowed his children in fear of a prophecy that foretold one of his children would usurp him one day, just like he had usurped his own father Uranus by castrating him and tossing his testicles into the sea. Silver lining with the Uranus story was Venus emerging from the white foam that appeared from the severed bits! These stories are crazy!!

Athena in Oracle of the Goddess by Anna Franklin & Paul Mason Greek

Titan Sea Goddess Metis helped Zeus/Jupiter to free his swallowed siblings by serving Cronus/Saturn an enigmatic and upsy-daisy! out came Demeter/Ceres Hestia/Vesta, Hera/Juno, Hades/Pluto and Poseidon/Neptune (Greek/Roman names)! Brothers and sisters united to take down their castrating, hungry father and Zeus/Jupiter became King of the Gods.

How did (let’s just stick to) Jupiter repay Metis? Libidinal one-note Jupiter did what he always does to women: he raped her and she got pregnant. History began repeating itself because now Jupiter learned that he would be defeated by his grandson, the child of his unborn daughter with Metis. Sticking to a method that worked for his father, he swallowed Metis! The story goes that she continued to give him counsel from within… talk about a gut feeling!  Metis means “wise counsel”—we see where Athena got her wisdom from.

One day after swallowing Metis, Jupiter took a stroll along the shores of Lake Triton when he was accosted by a blistering headache.  To alleviate his agony, Hephaestus—Hera/Juno’s  parthenogenetic son she literally had all on her own—split the head of Zeus. Out came Athena, fully grown and warrior ready. She never went through the terrible twos!

Later, Athena added Pallas to her name in tribute to the dear childhood friend she accidentally impaled during a play fight at an athletics festival. She is known as Pallas Athene or Pallas Athena.

Even further back

If we go back even further into Pallas Athene’s history, we find her origins in the African Amazons as the Libyan Triple Goddess Neith.  Later she made her way to Greece where she was folded into the story of Metis and Zeus. In Asteroid Goddesses, Demetra George points out the “from a sociological perspective, the myth of Pallas Athene’s birth from Jupiter’s head marks the ingestion and adaptation of the feminine wisdom principle to the needs of the new patriarchal order.”

Pallas Athene in the natal chart

In our charts, Pallas Athene describes our capacity for creative synthesis, curiosity, strategy and remarkable perception. Think of the gifted weaver’s ability to see patterns and capture the whole picture, pulling together insight from a web of associations.

Demetra George has written masterfully on Pallas Athene. These bulleted descriptions for Pallas Athene through the signs are taken from her book Asteroid Goddesses: The Mythology, Psychology, and Astrology of the Re-emerging Feminine.

  • PA in Aries initiates and activates and sees how to get things going. Wisdom is that of sudden inspiration like a brainstorm or sudden pioneering urge. 
  • PA in Taurus sees the beauty of the world through visual, auditory and tactile senses. Wisdom is common sense, practical understanding and street smarts. 
  • PA in Gemini sees the world through words. Wisdom is knowledge that comes from one’s own mind.
  • PA in Cancer perceives through emotions. Wisdom is empathy, a knowledge gained through one’s hypersensitive emotional antennae.
  • PA in Leo sees in terms of how one can impress their unique vision upon the world. The wisdom of the creative impulse that gives birth to new forms. 
  • PA in Virgo sees the essence of things in their simplest forms. Her wisdom is discrimination, separating the wheat from the chaff. 
  • PA in Libra sees in terms of spatial relations, bringing balance, composition and cohesion. Her wisdom is the ability to integrate polarities. 
  • PA in Scorpio sees through, under and beneath with their x-ray vision. This wisdom is one of insight: penetrating to the core and grasping the essence. 
  • PA in Sagittarius sees the big picture and has broad-scale vision. Her wisdom unifies by forging links of the parts to form a cohesive whole.
  • PA in Capricorn sees the structure that supports form as in architecture or sculpting. Her wisdom is order: putting things in proper sequence.   
  • PA in Aquarius sees futuristic possibilities such as vibration healing and radical art. Her wisdom creates forms that future generations will understand. 
  • PA in Pisces is a diffuse and merging perception. Her wisdom is compassion, recognizing universal suffering and desire for happiness is a human condition. 

Finding Pallas Athene in your chart

If you don’t know where Pallas Athene is located in your chart, you can find it by following these instructions:

    1. Go to astro.com
    2. Click on Horoscopes, located to the left of the top banner
    3. Click on Extended Chart Selection
    4. Enter your birth data
    5. Next, find the section “Additional Objects” (bottomish/left)
    6. Select Pallas

When you update your chart, you’ll now see the glyph for Pallas Athene.