Natal Wheel › Guides › Aspects › Mercury and Pallas
Mercury and Pallas · the mind at full stretch
Mercury in aspect to Pallas
Mercury processes and Pallas patterns; the contact is one of the sharpest a chart can carry for anything requiring structured thought. Argument, design, code, law, mathematics and games all suit it. The two are similar enough that the pairing intensifies rather than negotiates, so the strength and the blind spot arrive together: everything looks solvable. Situations that are not problems at all get treated as problems, and people who wanted company get given a method. Learning which situations are not problems is the work of about two decades. It is generally learned by getting it wrong in a relationship rather than at work.
What each body brings
| Mercury | thinking, speech, learning |
|---|---|
| Pallas | pattern recognition and strategy |
The soft aspects (trine or sextile)
Trine or sextile, thinking is quick and well organised. The person holds a complicated structure in their head and explains it to others without condescension, which is rarer than the thinking itself and is usually what determines whether the ability turns into a career. Without it the ability stays private and impressive and does very little for anybody.
The hard aspects (square or opposition)
Square or opposition, detail and pattern fall out of step. Either the argument is elegant and the facts are wrong, or the facts are gathered endlessly and no shape is ever proposed. Working from the other end deliberately is what unsticks it, and the person generally knows which end they default to. Doing so feels clumsy and produces better results than the natural approach.
The conjunction
Conjunct, the intellect is the whole instrument. It is formidable, and it will happily analyse a situation that required a decision, at length, until the moment has passed. Setting a deadline for the thinking, in advance, is the only reliable correction. The deadline has to be external, since an internal one will be renegotiated.
Reading it in a chart
The orb settles how strongly this shows: a contact within a degree is a defining feature of a chart, one at the edge of the orb is a colouring. The signs the two planets occupy change the manner, the houses change the arena, and a third planet touching either of them can change the reading entirely.