AWAKENING TO PALLAS ATHENE
Pallas Athene in the horoscope has a seemingly infinite number of threads. But a strong fiber within the mythology of Athena is pattern creation, cognition, cutting and reconstructing. Pallas Athene is a weaver of paradigms. Wherever she figures in macro events, shifts in collective consciousness occur. Whenever she figures strongly in a person’s natal chart, they will undoubtedly wield a keen skill for paradigmatic technology.
The thing about Athena is she’s been stripped of her womanhood.
Over the course of hundreds of years, the evolution into patriarchal supremacy culture has made her about justice and law within the confines and limits of a system that centers doctrine and dominance rather than people. But Athena is first and foremost a protectress. The kind of protection with which she is imbued is knowledge that stems from a deep well of intuition. We see this in the metaphor of her springing from the crown of Zeus’s head (knowledge). Previous to this birth, she had to emerge from the womb of her mother(intuition), swallowed by the records of the patriarchal order, cast away and hidden in Zeus’s belly.
This kind of intuition buried in untold depths, guarded by blinding armor, is pure and potent life force.
It is wolf and serpent and owl energy combined. Primal, aware, yet deadly, old and wise.
For thousands of years we have understood that a woman’s intuition is unparalleled knowledge. It’s been so feared that we’ve done everything we can to control it.
Athena at her core represents the defiance of that control. Athena says no. Athena has the wit and education and pattern recognition skillset to play with the men AND the lifeblood of womxn’s innate knowing - and she uses both to give to and protect her people.
I see Athena in Amazonian women. In Durga Ma and Kali Ma. In Baba Yaga and many of the stories told in Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ Women Who Run With the Wolves. Athena’s beauty is rooted in the careful, laser-sharp, wielding of her wild take-no-shit nature. I see her in Black Trans women like dear mother Blanca Evangelista on the TV show POSE. I see her in womxn I know.
I see her in myself, in the way she presented herself to me through my own actions. It was like a spiritual awakening and so much more. A coming home. A sensation of belonging that could only arise from being so rooted in one’s core that you couldn’t possibly do anything out of alignment. A few days into 2020 I was arrested for a direct action of sorts. That night, I felt a presence, a throng of womxn I must have known for thousands of years around me, a pattern woven and held and secured by a pack, invisible to all but me.
Athena carries, or perhaps IS the lightning of Zeus, while holding one foot in the fertile soil of Demeter and another in Persephone’s ocean underworld. She understands that right and wrong is not written, not defined by the hunger for certainty but felt and known beyond the bounds of what is comfortable for any of us. Athena is powerful magic. If she has marked you, you can’t get away with anything. And you don’t want to. Athena reminds me of Resmaa Menakem’s definition of ‘clean pain’ versus ‘dirty pain’, the latter being the pain of avoidance. Athena leads you into clean pain. She helps you make things right. She wants a pure and nourishing well, not just a pretty surface.
A couple of weeks ago I had the honor of being invited to speak on The Basement Astrologers podcast. In this episode, Kipp and I discuss some of the mythology of Pallas Athene and how she shows up in the charts of famous activists and movement-related events. Most interestingly perhaps, we apply Athena-like critique in process as we interrogate the evolution of her story and I contextualize her narrative within supremacy culture in an attempt to extract and reclaim the innate wisdom she embodies.
Spoiler alert! Kipp asks me some personal questions about my relationship to and evolution with astrology. Happy listening :)
If this resonated with you and you want to talk about the asteroid Pallas Athene and where it is featured in your personal horoscope, you can book a natal chart session with me.