Everything you need to know about the cosmic strategist
What: The goddess of war and wisdom helps you unlock your winning strategies.
Takeaway: By understanding your Pallas Athena placement, you can connect with the part of you that’s a clever, creative powerhouse.
Content warning: One of Pallas Athena’s myths includes a mention of sexual violence. We’ve flagged this section so you can take care of yourself as needed.
Who is Pallas Athena?
Pallas Athena is the warrior queen of the cosmos. She’s the activist, the artist, and the goddess that every hero/ine in ancient Greece wanted in their corner. Now she’s in yours.
Mars (aka Ares) is the other war god you’ve probably heard about. But Mars and Athena do battle differently. While Mars relies on brute force, Athena uses her mind. The two of them have a few showdowns in classical myth, and Athena usually wins.
A fearsome fighter who could go toe-to-toe with any challenger, Athena was also a champion of artisans, weavers, and sculptors. The ancients credited her with inventing the flute, the trumpet, the potter’s wheel, the first earthenware vases, the plough, the rake, and the ox yoke.
For this reason, astrologer Demetra George says Pallas Athena represents “the principle of creative intelligence.” This goddess embodies the brilliant streak that flows through writers, makers, musicians, engineers, entrepreneurs, lawyers, organizers, politicians, and anyone who needs to problem-solve.
Pallas Athena’s mythology
Born of two minds: Athena’s origin story
In Athena’s best-known origin story, she emerges fully formed from the head of her father, Zeus (aka Jupiter). In some versions of this myth, Zeus swallowed his pregnant wife, Metis, to counter a prophecy that their future son would overthrow him. Metis was the goddess of wisdom and deep thought, but she tends to be erased from the story at this point. When it’s time for the child to be born, Zeus gets Hephaistos (the blacksmith god) to split his head open, and Athena springs forth, armored and battle-ready.
Because of this, it’s said that someone with strong Pallas Athena placements in their birth chart (conjunct the Sun, Moon, or ascendant) may feel closer to the masculine figures in their life than to femme folks. But Athena is also famous for her mother’s most notable trait: intelligence. So the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, even if the ancients pretended this tree never existed.
Spear-bearer: how she got the name “Pallas”
Athena’s history dates back 6,000 years to the matriarchal goddess cults and femme warrior tribes of ancient Libya. According to Demetra George, the goddesses Metis, Medusa, and Pallas and/or Athena were the faces of the three-headed snake Goddess, Neith.
Libyan refugees brought the stories of this triple goddess to Crete around 4000 BCE. As the Greeks absorbed this lore into their own mythology, they told a tale of two companions, Pallas and Athena, who were raised by a trio of nymphs at Lake Tritonis. During one of their war games, Athena accidentally killed Pallas. To express her grief, she crafted a statue of her friend from olive wood. She also took her friend’s name, which came from the Greek word pallô, meaning “spear-brandishing.”
Internalized misogyny: Pallas Athena’s dark side
Content warning: sexual violence
Homer, Hesiod, and later poets of ancient Greece and Rome composed stories that cemented Pallas Athena as a goddess associated with the patriarchal order. In a play by Aeschylus, Athena casts the deciding vote in the trial of Orestes, who murdered his mother. Athena says, more or less: “I’m a child of Zeus, and no mother gave birth to me, so I support men in all situations (though I’d never marry one).”
In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Athena curses a young priestess, Medusa, after she is raped in Athena’s temple. Instead of going after the attacker, Poseidon, Athena transforms Medusa’s hair into snakes and causes her gaze to turn people into stone. She then helps Perseus defeat Medusa by lending him her shield, which he uses as a mirror to freeze the gorgon with the reflection of her own stare.
Reclaiming Athena’s matriarchal lineage
At its worst, the asteroid Pallas Athena can indicate a willingness to take women down or side with the patriarchy. But if we look beneath the surface of these stories, we find a goddess who still bears traces of her origins. After Perseus slays Medusa, Athena wears a breastplate depicting the serpent-haired head, a visual reminder that she and Medusa were once one deity. And when we call her by the name Pallas Athena, we remember that she, Medusa, and Metis once belonged to a goddess that predated the patriarchal society of ancient Greece and Rome, a goddess honored by warrior-priestesses across North Africa.
The astrology of Pallas Athena
Pallas Athena is one of the four “goddess asteroids” orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. The other asteroids in this quartet include Ceres (the great mother and the goddess of grain), Vesta (the keeper of the sacred hearth), and Juno (the divine consort, or partner, to Jupiter).
Pallas Athena was known as a virgin goddess, meaning she was complete in herself, and she directed her life force inward. She often represents people who focus on producing creative or intellectual projects rather than child-rearing, or those who feel a tension between their home life and their career. This asteroid tends to be prominent in the charts of writers, lawyers, entrepreneurs, politicians, activists, and anyone in the business of thinking tactically to achieve their goals. Pallas Athena is also the ultimate “tomboy,” and she is a protector of gender-nonconforming and nonbinary folks who resist traditionally masculine or feminine roles.
Ultimately, Pallas Athena is the divine artist and wise tactician who can outwit her opponents without coming to blows. At times, Pallas Athena can reveal the ways we deny our softer, gentler, more vulnerable sides. But at other times, Pallas Athena shows us how to reclaim the parts of ourselves that have been rejected. This asteroid’s placement in your birth chart is a site of creativity, wisdom, and strategic thinking. Get to know your natal Pallas Athena with the help of these tips:
7 ways to work with Pallas Athena
- Learn about your natal Pallas placement in the Me tab of the CHANI app. This is also where you can find out if you have any conjunctions between Pallas Athena and other planets or points in your birth chart.
- Reflect on your Pallas placement by journaling, trading notes with friends, or researching famous figures with notable Pallas placements. By doing so, you’ll better understand how to sharpen your own strategies.
- Awaken your inner strategist with the Pallas Athena guided meditation from Chani Nicholas. Because Pallas Athena represents the key to our creative intelligence, there’s so much she can teach us about outsmarting our opposition. To get started, visit the Listen tab in the CHANI app.
- Get crafty. Practice playing the guitar, paint your kitchen, or concoct a DIY volcano as a science experiment. If nothing like that calls to you, bring some creativity to your everyday problem-solving. Identify where “the box” is and think outside it. Pallas Athena reminds us that our wisest tactics involve a little imagination.
- Honor Pallas by letting your inner warrior take the wheel from time to time. Do you think the goddess of war and wisdom people-pleases or yields to others? Nope. She’s the boss witch in charge, and she doesn’t care if HR gets annoyed when she refuses to work overtime. The boundary is often mightier than the sword.
- Find someone or something to fight for — or fight against. Pallas Athena is an expert litigator and negotiator, and with this ally in your corner, you can outwit just about any opponent. Just make sure you’re channeling Pallas Athena’s fierceness toward a worthwhile goal.
- Wind down with our Pallas Athena Sleep Story, which will help you focus your mind and get your best rest, so you can wake up refreshed and ready to seize the day. Set yourself up for success by heading to the Listen tab in the CHANI app. Remember: A good night’s sleep is essential for achieving your dreams.
