Athena was a virgin goddess, dedicated to chastity and celibacy. She was the stately, beautiful warrior goddess, protector of her chosen heroes and of her namesake city, Athens . She was the only Olympian goddess portrayed wearing armour---the visor of her helmet pushed back to reveal her beauty, a shield over her arm…befitting her role as the goddess who presided over battle strategy in wartime and over domestic arts in peacetime, Athena was also shown with a spear in one hand and a bowl or spindle in the other. [18]

     You hold in yourself the intellectual Athena, the hard worker who did her duty and took her responsibility to teach others seriously. Far from displaying any vulnerability, your defences (force fields) could be habitually raised. Part of your solar quest is to experience the warming pleasure of life. Your lunar quest calls you to let your boundaries down.

Women with Venus in Aries frequently hold some of this archetype in their character. Your Venus is connected positively to Saturn and your Ascendant, and rules your Sun and MC. The no-nonsense, intimidating woman who devotes herself to her career is a Venus who has put aside romance for action, and pleasure for achievement. Even in childhood it was likely you preferred being sensible, to being…a child.

                 …the goddess Athena was a motherless daughter who took pride in having only one parent: her father Zeus…An Athena woman often has depreciated her own mother. She needs to discover her mother’s strengths, often before she can value any similarities to her mother in herself…It is helpful for an Athena woman to learn that matriarchal feminine values, which were held before Greek mythology took its present form, were swallowed up by the patriarchal culture that prevails today. [19]

Now you can experience the other side of Athena---superb craftswoman and content practitioner of the domestic arts. Many women at your stage in the journey find renewed pleasure in such activities as pottery and weaving. Many find, to their happy surprise, they have natural artistic skills in this area.

     As you have come to accept, your life has entered a phase refocused on lunar issues. Quieter, yet no less active. The progressed aspects suggest strength of purpose with the courage to speak out on difficult subjects. With your Sun about to enter Cancer, this is the time in your life to become an advocate for those who cannot use the system. Allowing for your natal Sun’s natural inclination toward preserving Nature’s gifts, ---all creatures, plant life, the bounty and beauty of the Earth---you could find immense satisfaction using your skills in this area. Helping to put together collectives of women artisans to market their goods is another kind of “work” at which you would excel. Or, considering Venus, ruler of the Sun in the confronting 8^th house, you could do hospice work, bringing your empathetic, effortlessly nurturing Moon to those who need its touch in their withdrawal from life. Fundraising for charitable causes, studying painting in Italy in exchange for English lessons, cooking in Paris , making pen pals over the internet, or writing are all ways of honouring Pallas Athene’s unique blend of creative intelligence and social conscience.

     During your life you proved your ability to give as good as you got, and make it in a man’s world. But now that need to prove your worthiness in such a way is done. Your health has been compromised, from lack of care. This is one of the side effects of an indentured life to the business ideal. But the point of your journey was awakening your ability to express the creative, caring person you are. That journey is complete. The seeds for the next cycle have been planted more consciously. Shortly you will enter the active phase of wondrous growth, where the miracle of life is enacted, once more.

         There seems to be a way for things to happen which is intrinsically right for them: they become what they were meant to be. Aristotle called the end of this process “entelechy”---the full and perfect realization of what was previously in a potential state…Do human beings also tend to unfold according to such inner designs, or is our life wholly random? It seems a reasonable and useful hypothesis to believe that we are like the rest of creation. According to the Eastern doctrine of “dharma,” we are each called upon to achieve a particular life-pattern. And while all patterns have equal dignity, each one of us should avail himself or herself of the possibility that is uniquely one’s own and not someone else’s. Each of us should try to discover the pattern and cooperate with its realization…Our entire life’s purpose is already present within us, and, furthermore, at each stage of our life there are subordinate purposes---steps along the way toward the fulfilment of our ideal pattern. [20]

      Whilst undergoing our public lives we are not necessarily denying the Call from the Sun of the Soul. Almost everyone can relate to the feeling that “there must be more to Life than this.” But as a person who has traversed many key phases of life, you understand how we might compromise an “impractical” urge to slow down and contemplate. As you might imagine, we often inappropriately re-channel our yearnings for love and for the mysterious, into activities that contain elements of that for which we are longing, but instead cause us illness and/or disillusion. On the surface we believe we don’t have enough time to achieve our goals. We work harder. We feel the pressure of expectation. That is, until we decide, or are forced by physical disability or circumstance, to enter the time scape of the God and Goddess. In this realm you can rest and re-focus. It is a place where you can tell yourself your own story---the ever-evolving narrative of your life. Here, you can expect to change your perspective on the past, the present, and the future. And lastly Anne, you will always know what Time it is.

Yours sincerely,

A Fellow Traveller.

Copyright: Margaret Penner Choinski

                   Earth Elephant Astrology

Bibliography

Arroyo, Stephen, Astrology, Psychology, and the Four Elements, CRCS Publications, 1975

Bolen, Jean Shinoda, M.D., Goddesses in Everywoman, Harper Perennial, 1984

Brady, Bernadette, The Eagle and the Lark, Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1992

Burt, Kathleen, Archetypes of the Zodiac, Llewellyn, 1988

Campbell, Joseph, Hero With A Thousand Faces, Pantheon Books, 1949

Clark, Brian, The Progressed Moon, http://www.astrosynthesis.com.au/articles/articles.html

Ferrucci, Piero, What We May Be, J.P. Tarcher, Inc., 1982

Forrest, Stephen, The Changing Sky, ACS Publications, 1998

Marks, Tracey, The Astrology of Self-Discovery, CRCS Publications, 1985

Murdock, Maureen, The Heroine’s Journey, Shambhala, 1990

Solar Fire v.5, Esoteric Technologies, Placidus Houses, True Node, supplied atlas

FOOTNOTES