Pallas

Definition

Pallas is asteroid (2) — the second asteroid discovered (Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers, 1802) — the third-largest body in the main belt, about 512 km across, with an orbital period of 4.62 years. It takes its name from Pallas Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom, strategic warfare, and the crafts. Pallas is one of the four asteroids (with Ceres, Juno, and Vesta) brought into modern Western practice from the 1970s on, through Eleanor Bach's ephemeris work.

In Tradition

In modern Western asteroid astrology, Pallas is read through her Greco-Roman myth: creative intelligence, an eye for pattern, strategic vision, and the just-warrior side of wisdom. Demetra George's asteroid-goddess school treats Pallas as the main asteroid marker for seeing structural patterns, for design and craft, and for the strategic-political mind — a more particular thread than Mercury, who stands for the mind in general.

In Practice

Astrologers find Pallas from a dedicated asteroid ephemeris, now built into most software, and read its sign, house, and aspects for the area of life where you most readily catch a complex pattern, exercise strategic vision, or bring craft and design intelligence to bear. When weighing your intellectual style, astrologers look at Pallas alongside Mercury and the third-house/ninth-house axis; when weighing strategic or political faculties, they look at it alongside Mars. Transits and progressions to natal Pallas are read for cycles of creative insight and the pulling-together of pattern.

Historical Origin

Pallas was the second asteroid discovered — Olbers, 28 March 1802 — but its use in interpretation is a late-twentieth-century development. Eleanor Bach and George Climlas published the first dedicated *Ephemerides of the Asteroids Ceres, Pallas, Juno, Vesta 1900–2000* (Brooklyn: Celestial Communications, 1973), which made the positions easy to compute. Demetra George's *Asteroid Goddesses* (with Douglas Bloch, 1986) set out the standard modern asteroid-mythology framework. James Holden views the wider asteroid movement skeptically — a byproduct of abundant ephemerides.

Etymology

Origin: Greek. Meaning: From Pallas Athena, epithet of the Greek goddess of wisdom and strategic warfare.

Further Reading

• Demetra George, Asteroid Goddesses