Travel

Pallas Athene went where she pleased, when she pleased. If she traveled with a group, she did so as its leader. Amelia Earhart invoked Pallas Athene's independence and courage when she set out on her solo flight around the world.

Long-distance travel is actually ruled by Sagittarius and the Ninth House, not by this somewhat small asteroid. But the qualities required to enjoy traveling these long distances fall squarely under Pallas Athene's influence.

Women who travel alone, whether on vacation or on business, do so under Pallas Athene's guidance. Dealing with local customs, learning your way around a new city -- even navigating a strange airport -- require the resourcefulness and self-sufficiency that this goddess possessed. When you represent your company on a business trip, your ability to strategize and your sense of empowerment hark back to the Peaceful General.

Whether you stay at Club Med, where you pay once and everything else -- transportation, food, lodging, activities -- is taken care of, or you decide to backpack across Europe never knowing from day to day where you will rest that night, you travel in the spirit of Pallas Athene.

Throughout history, women's travel has often been confined to the family -- when the tribe or clan moved, so did the women. And where the women were, that's where the camp or settlement was, even when the men roamed out to search for food or battle.

In some cultures, a woman left her family to live with her new husband's family; this journey from one household to another marked her transition to a new stage of life. In societies where the new husband came to live within his wife's family group, women changed status without changing locales. Either way, the journey -- made or not made -- represented a major life event, a Special Occasion, not something a woman was free to do whenever the whim struck her. Such constraint goes against what Pallas Athene stands for.

Today, going away to college is a rite of passage for many young women, our first step toward living on our own. Where Pallas Athene appears in your birth chart influences (and other factors) how far you will stray from your known environment.

For celebrities like Jodie Foster and Jamie Lee Curtis, traveling is simply part of the job. It's becoming less and less surprising to find women globetrotting, paying our own way and making our own decisions about where to go and what to do.

Relocating, which falls mostly under the moon's jurisdiction, belongs in part to Pallas Athene when a woman moves to a new place by herself. It takes confidence and determination to set up house in unfamiliar territory, especially when you carry the entire burden yourself.

Pallas Athene is the force that draws you out into the world to learn and then brings you back to your home to share your knowledge with others.

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