Asteroid Goddesses: Awakening & Empowerment of Feminine Consciousness
In greek and roman times, there were 12 primary deities, an evenly divided committee of gods and goddesses who represented different attributes of the human psyche. We know that our mythological models are really pictures of how we think of ourselves, and how we play our cultural games. So is it any surprise that in the prevailing Western model of astrology, we have the six Olympian gods, but only two of the goddesses? During the last few decades the inequities of patriarchy have been challenged in virtually every realm, from the legal to the linguistic. Celestial symbolism may be the last bastion of the old boyâs club that has defined civilization in the Western World, but there are stirrings of change even there. The sighting in the sky in the early 1800s of the first four asteroids corresponded historically with womenâs suffrage. Feminism got its second wind in the early 70s, just as Eleanor Bach published the first asteroid ephemeris.
The asteroids are small planet-like bodies that orbit the Sun in a belt that lies mostly between Mars and Jupiter. They first dawned on human consciousness in the early 1800s. The 24 Asteroid Goddesses are the main belt asteroids that measure at least 144 miles (in one of the 3 triaxial dimensions) or have a large satellite that extends effective size. Mass is also taken into account so Hebe is included. The first four asteroids to be sighted were given the names of four of the great goddesses of classical antiquity: Ceres (discovered in 1801), Pallas Athene (discovered in 1802), Juno (discovered in 1804) and Vesta (discovered in 1807). Ceres, Pallas, Juno and Vesta represent four very basic feminine archetypes which amplify and particularize the more general energies of the Luna and Venus.
Of all the traditional points in astrology, only the Luna and Venus are feminine. Including the minor planets helps to balance the Earth and the Heavens. Perhaps this is part of the emerging ânew heaven and new earthâ that has been prophesied. These 24 asteroids embody the most significant archetypes emerging in our time. While these may rightly be called âfeminine archetypes,â these bodies actually represent attributes and âpowersâ of our common Psychic Nature. Our psyche is feminine so the nature and mythologies of these astrological points apply to both sexes and can reveal important hidden talents.
This presents problems for astrology, but it also reflects a problem in the world. Imagine if our only two images of man were Daddy and Sexmonger (or Lawyer). What would a guy put on his rĂŠsumĂŠ for college professor? âHot in bed and likes kids?â This is the problem with our astrological picture of women, and our corresponding cultural one. We have Venus, the sex goddess, and âthe moon,â supposedly mommy. (The moon doesnât even get capitalized; thatâs why call her Luna, one of her proper names.)
Venus, who gets oversimplified like a lot of her sisters, is one of the most complex planets going: she works as an attractive force and as a creative one. She is about beauty and pleasure, two of the most idealized roles we attach to women. She ârulesâ two signs: Taurus, where we have a sense of our wealth, self-esteem and personal values; and Libra, a state of mind where we do most of our learning in the sphere of relationships. But Libra is also the sign representing the lower courts, where most issues of justice are litigated, so she has implications here as well.
Luna is not just mommy. She is the goddess of the hunt (Diana) and the guardian and patroness of unmarried women. We live by the hunt, or we did so in earlier (pre-agricultural) days. And we know that the world is not such a safe place for young women. She is an important goddess, but as âthe moonâ is reduced to a kind of housewife. Astrologically, her dominion is our habits, our body and our feelings and sense of security, intuition, childhood, and the realm of our unconscious thought patterns.
If you donât look further, this is where astrology runs out of female expressions of both Spirit and Humanity.
But there is more to women than this. Starting in 1801, and heralding the early feminist movements, thereâs been a series of discoveries of small planets, many of which were named after women. The first four of these are known as the major asteroids, and (with one exception) bear the Roman equivalent names of the Olympian goddesses. What we get in these four character types (or archetypes) is a view of the thoughts, roles and ideas that are missing from, or are poorly defined in, our culture and in our astrology.
Thereâs a common objection by most traditional astrologers that asteroids are âtoo littleâ to âhave an effect.â (I think what they really mean are there are âtoo many asteroidsâ and they âhave a confusing effect on my mind.â) However, letâs take a quick look at this because the argument falls on its butt. Many things in astrology have no mass whatsoever. Nobody has ever seen the Part of Fortune with a telescope (it is calculated mathematically). Similarly, the North Node, the ascendant, the midheaven and the house cusps, exist only as abstractions (though the lunar nodes really make you wonder whether thereâs something there that canât be seen with the eye). So just because a planet is only a couple of kilomoeters across doesnât make it less important. What makes it less important is that itâs diminished and not used, kind of like Pan in the Tom Robbins book who disappears because nobody believes in him.
What we could say about asteroids â even the Olympian goddesses â is that they are more specific in their themes and planets more general. Asteroids add amazing detail to a chart, for sure. But what we are seeing with the four Olympian goddesses is that their themes really are spreading out into all facets of life (take Ceres, for instance) and the fact that they might seem so limited at first has to do with the fact that they were limited and taken out of general consciousness for so long.
The maxim âas above, so belowâ underpins the philosophy of astrology. These bodies may have been orbiting between Jupiter and Mars since the birth of the solar system, but they are peculiarly new just now, as once again astronomical fact segues into astrological symbolism to offer a teaching about suddenly relevant concepts. Astrological tradition suggests that with the major discovery of a planet the collective is confronted with the conscious awakening of an archetypal force that may have previously lain dormant or been repressed.
Interestingly, the first 4 asteroids to be discovered were Ceres, Pallas Athena, Juno and Vesta in that order. These asteroids correspond to the elements earth, air, water and fire. This order of the elements is the same as a Native American creation chant:Â âThe earth, the wind, the water, the fire return return return.â
The asteroids are surrogates of the goddesses and invest life with mystery, imagination, and the sacred inner life. All women, were born into the world at a transitional time. All women, of this time have been chosen as a part of the âtransitional teamâ, a time where it is believed the feminine has provided them with more energy, and more resources to build a new world paradigm. These energies donât just redirect and define women; they redefine everyone, and such a transition is mystical, magical and enlightening.
Originally, each of these deities derived from the time of Mother Goddess worship, a period which began to crumble when the sky-god religions took over, starting somewhere in the Age of Taurus. Piecing together the clues as to how these goddesses were perceived by their worshippers way back in the primordial era, we see how the legends mutated over time as different political shifts in the cultures generated new religious images.
The premise here is that historical ages and cosmological imagery are inextricably intertwined. And to get the full picture of each of the four asteroids, one must take into account their goddessâ origins: each has an archaic inner face and a newer outer face. The outer face is the acculturated one: we all know this one (the extent to which classical mythology has a lock on our assumptions about sex roles in the Western world, and by extension dominant culture, could be the subject of another paper). The inner face, far less familiar, is the key to our liberation.
Ceres is the largest asteroid and the first to have been officially sighted. Demeter (Da-Mater, or Earth Mother) was the Greek name for this goddess, whose young daughter Persephone was abducted by Hades/Pluto and secreted away down in the Underworld. First in grief and then in anger, Mother Ceres withdrew her blessings from the world, causing the plants to die and people to go hungry. A compromise was eventually struck whereby the daughter is allowed to spend some of the year up above ground with her mother during which time crops would grow again, but she must spend several months every year below ground, during which time nothing would grow. Apparently mollified, Ceres is said to have given humanity the gift of a grain of corn, the central symbol of her initiation rites into the Mysteries of life and death. But who was the Ceres figure before the Greeks got hold of her? A look at the antecedents to the myth shows another layer of meaning.
There had been many fertility goddesses in this part of the world leading up to the classical period, each of whom had a myth like this, except for one salient feature: the rape of the daughter. That part seems to be a late addition: an allegory illustrating the power struggle that was taking place between the new masculine-dominant cultures and the indigenous cultures they were replacing. The endless-summer state the world was in before the abduction has been said to represent the Golden Age of pre-patriarchal times in the fertile crescent. The absence of a father for Persephone symbolized the fact that in the more ancient tribes, paternity was considered secondary, if at all, in lines of descent.
Some of the themes in the myth include incest, as indicated by the rape by Pluto, who was Persephoneâs uncle, and the interesting sub theme of its being permitted by the , Zeus, as well as custody sharing, as indicated by the compromise arrived at by the Olympian judge. Custody struggles seem to align with Ceres transits. She also governs food complexes, as indicated by Ceresâ refusal to eat; withdrawal of support; and work stoppages, as she halted food production as a means of control.Â
Ceresâ placement in the chart shows more specifically than the Luna does oneâs style of nurturing, both the creative giving of it, the style of receiving it, and its dark potential: withholding or over-controlling in the name of nurture. A twelfth- house Ceres might mean an elusive or abstracted maternal relationship or one where the native ingests spiritual values along with the motherâs milk. A Taurus Ceres would lend a hearty groundedness to the nurturing style, while increasing the potential to want to possess those being fed. Interpreting the asteroid in terms of its archaic inner face, we discover the wise funerary priestess, Ceres in her crone phase, as well as the innocent transformed in Hades. Like the prehistoric crones who cradled their dying tribesmen in their arms in last rites, She can inspire us as compassionate caretakers of the terminally ill to guide those in hospices, for example, to make their final descent. This asteroidâs placement also gives clues as to the types of situations where the native might âgo through hell and backâ as did Persephone. Ceres in aspect to Luna, for example, would make it very likely that transformative crises would happen on the home front, not just with family but with roommates or anyone else living under oneâs roof. In such a case even a domestic squabble with a house mate can put one into the state of a powerless child who must then resurface to adulthood through catharsis and understanding.
As parents, we can use both the transformative and valedictory facets of the Ceres archetype to help us through the loss and self-reinvention that characterize empty-nest syndrome. Ceres can guide us through any heartfeltâor womb feltâ loss that must necessarily be integrated, as the goddessâ had to be.
Like a feminine Pluto, Ceres represents a mother-love that embraces death and grieving. It also seems to govern the kind of rite-of-passage into adulthood that is taught through an encounter with the Dark, the extreme example of which is rape. Whether the violation is literal or psychic, its teaching is that even the most terrible traumas may be precursors to a state of sovereignty, as was the case with the young victim who ended up Queen of the Underworld.
Pallas Athene is the civilizing asteroid. She was for the Greeks the patroness of arts and healing, crafts and trades; a great warrior and strategist, who refused to be married. She was the one without a mother: Homer describes her as springing out of Zeusâs head full-blown, his favorite child. Astrologically she seems to be associated with politics and social causes.
It is a very particular type of intelligence that dwells Pallas Athene. Not logical in the usual sense of the word, it is holistic and inventive: it is associated with whole-pattern recognition. What is noteworthy here is that we have a mental planet that is not mental in the masculine sense. It is a feminine type of mentation. And it is designed to be used in the outer world. What a concept: a distinctly feminine energy that is most at home in the career.
There is an androgynous quality to this asteroid, with humanistic camaraderie emphasized over sexuality. And the Greek stories surrounding Athena portray her as playing a pivotal role in the issue of gender-bending.
In the myth of the trial of Orestes, Athena was the tie-breaker who came down on the side of the hero who had killed his mother. Under the older blood law, matricide was the ultimate taboo. But Athena says, in essence, âWhy not? The mother is not the true parent of the child. The father is.â This is an allegorical reference to the fact that around the time Aeschylus recorded the myth, the laws of mother-right were being foresworn in order to achieve some degree of leverage in the new patrilineal culture, from which we get one of the meanings of this asteroid: a womanâs ability to achieve success in a manâs world. At its most distorted, this figure represents selling out to the powers-that-be. Athena the goddess was impregnable behind the suit of armor she was born in, and Pallas Athena the asteroid can similarly denote the blocking of emotional vulnerabilities behind a psychological armor, in order to be free of the prejudice against them.
On the face of it, Pallas Athena can refer to the positive relationship a woman can have to an authority figure, as a professional woman might have with a mentor, or the daddyâs-little-girl type of bonding, with incestuous undertones, that is its shadow. She can be expressed positively as a pioneering career drive or, in her distorted guise, as the fear of success.
The other face of Pallas Athena can be uncovered by considering her origins before she became the protector of the State and apologist for the conquering order.
In the Perseus legend, Athena was pitted against Medusa, the hideous she-monster with snakes for hair. But the stories from further back feature Medusa as a beautiful queen of the Gorgon Amazons (such tribes actually existed before the Hellenic invaders). The slaying of Medusa is again a reference to the sociohistorical shift that saw the end of female political power in its earlier form, and its incorporation into another system. The emblem featuring Medusaâs face which Pallas Athena wears in the center of her breastplate is a reference to this incorporation. In fact, Medusa is the crone aspect of the Pallas Athena archetype. When we read the asteroid this way, her heroism and courage turns a very different light from the traditional interpretations of Athena. Her valor deriving not from an identification with maleness, but from her amazonian origins: a feminine form of warrior spirit.
The placement of Pallas Athena in the natal chart indicates the best ways to use oneâs holistic perception and intelligence. This asteroidâs placement also gives clues as to how the native might respond to contemporary sex-role issues such as preference for male children, educational streaming, and the glass ceiling in the work place. It may be that the newly politicized issue of sexual harassment falls under this asteroidâs rulership. A person with Pallas Athene in Sagittarius would be particularly sensitive to the moral dimension of these issues and would address them with passion; the Libra placement would be more likely to approach them through reason and negotiation.
The idea that world leadership should be in the hands of women gets heard more and more frequently these days. Whether the 21st century prime ministers and presidents will be biological women, or men who have repudiated destroy-and-conquer methods, Pallas Athene may be our model for the new face of governance.
Vesta is the asteroid whose archaic inner face is the least like her outer face. Sheâs the one who lost most in the translation. In pre-Hellenic Greece, the priestesses of the Luna Goddess practiced sexual rites. They initiated temple pilgrims into the Mysteries that way. Virgins not in the sense of being literally chaste, but in the sense that they belonged to no one partner, they would ritually bathe themselves after these unions, symbolically re-virginating themselves. The pagan festivals so reviled by later churchmen had their origins in sacred rites where groups of vestals and their consorts coupled in the darkness of a sacred cave, without knowing who was partnering whom. The children resulting from these unions were thought to be divinely chosen. This seems to be the origin of the legend, later adopted so enthusiastically by the Christians, that certain Latin kings were born of virgin mothers or were the sons of a god.
As soon as patrilineality came about, these practices became highly disadvantageous to the ruling castes, since knowledge of paternity was essential to the passing on of land and title. The Romans instituted a literal chastity into the vestal rites, which was enforced under penalty of death by live burial. The Christian mythos that followed literalized this virginity business still further, by coming up with an image of an idealized mother who even gives birth without sex.
The inner archaic face of Vesta is that of a spirituality that sees sex as a means to channel the power of the Divine Feminine: a sexuality that is not used to get a mate, nor to get children, nor to achieve personal pleasure⌠but to practice a religious devotion. From the standpoint of conventional morality, this has got to be the most explosive of all the ideas spiritual feminism has to offer.
The vestals of the ancient world were also charged with keeping the fires lit which established the spiritual and secular center of each community. The Greek goddess Hestia stood for the unity and cohesion of the family and state, and governed hospitality and the notion of sanctuary. Modern astrologers have thus associated the asteroid Vesta with security systems, insurance and notary publics.
Vesta functions as the ability to center the self, to focus (the Latin word for hearth is focus), and to pull in the consciousness away from outside distractions into a state of undivided attention; Vesta in Virgo, for example, has a tremendous capacity to lose oneself in work. Vesta by transit can indicate the times when one needs to retreat from intimacy in order to recharge oneâs batteries alone. Vesta in Aquarius would probably withdraw in front of the computer.
She stands for the memory each of us can access through the collective unconscious of sacred sexuality, a very private use of second chakra energy that is emphatically not other-oriented. Vestal sex is Doing it for the Goddess. Because of the extreme suspicion, not to mention legal prosecution, that such impulses would elicit in the contemporary world, it follows that Vestaâs expression is especially prone to distortions. Relationship separations were part of the healthy functioning of the sacred harlots. But we donât have a cultural framework to express this energy though, and if we donât find a personal framework either, the vestal urge to withdraw manifests pathologically.
Vestaâs shadow side is sexual repressiveness, fear, even frigidity and impotence. The more a given society debases sexuality, the more potential there is for individuals with strong Vestas to sufferâeither by suppressing their own sexual longings, or acting them out but thinking them shameful. Superficial promiscuity is another symptom of denied Vesta, however: the fully conscious Vesta may seek multiple partners but never in a superficial way. Â She is acutely discriminating. For her, sex that is merely ordinary is a blasphemy.
Juno is the asteroid of the C-word: committed partnership. Â Earlier than the classical period, Juno, or Hera in the Greek, was one of the tripartite Luna Goddesses who ruled quite alone. Her marriage to Jupiter, or the Greek Zeus, was the mythological record of her absorption into the victorsâ theology. Small wonder that husband and wife are always fighting.
Where Vesta uses sexuality in a way that allows her to stay complete unto herself, Juno is after heirogamos, or sacred marriage. Her placement shows more specifically than Venusâ does how one expresses the desire to be a significant other, no matter what the sexual orientation. A person with Juno in Capricorn would prefer a relatively conventional marriage; Juno in Scorpio would lead a person to place more importance on the sexual bond than on the legal aspect of union. Actual engagements and weddings and moving-in-togethers and divorces often correspond to Juno transits. Zip Dobyns finds that synastric connections of Juno make her clients think of marriage even when nothing else in the comparison would seem to indicate it.
Juno is the one among the four asteroid goddesses who represented steadfast loyalty to relationship-for-the-sake-of-relationship. It is she who offers the teaching for modern spouses trying to find ways to live as a unit without losing themselves in co-dependency. Like all the lunar deities, Juno had three facets: in this case, the maiden, the bride and the widow, which described the cyclical state of a committed union. In the myths, we see Juno and Jupiter separating for some reason, usually an infidelity of his; she goes into solitude or a wandering phase, then she bathes herself in the sacred spring, and goes right back into the relationship. This asteroid is about the natural rhythm there is in uniting with and separation from and reuniting with a mate.
It is possible to read Juno as being merely about bridal showers and couples counseling. But looking beneath this level, we find a more subtle perspective on committed partnership.
To understand the archaic inner face of Juno it may be necessary to dispense altogether with the modern term âwifeâ, and resurrect the ancient notion of a consort. Giving this asteroid both Scorpio and Libra rulership, Juno represents the concept of a union of intimate equals: the craving to fully merge with another human being in order to find the perfect balancing of masculine and feminine energies. On a secular level, this could be seen as the mutual respect and support a happily married couple would have for one anotherâs work, emotional well-being and creative projects, as well as their commitment to mutual pleasure in bed. On a spiritual level it could be seen as committed lovers in meditation, exploring the psychic sharing and the raising of the kundalini life-force that transpires in conscious sex, as practiced in Eastern tantric traditions. Ultimately, Junoâs goal is not the marriage itself but the ego transcendence the marriage can offer. Though pleasure may be part of it, this kind of coupling has more to do with religious ecstasy. The union becomes a means to get beyond the separateness of the self by joining forces with another at the deepest levels â the original meaning of the heirogamos â leading to healing and spiritual consummation.
The distorted expression of Juno stems from the skewed power relationships in the institution of marriage or its facsimile. Infidelity and the anger it inspires, jealousy and possessiveness and sexual rivalry all are potentials of dark Juno. Where there is the kind of dependency in a relationship such as the traditional wife has upon her husband, or where one partner keeps a vow of monogamy that the other does not keep, the pathology of Juno may rear its head. Greek legend is full of stories of Hera wreaking havoc on the lives of Zeusâ lovers and their children.
People in whose charts Juno is strong have a special sensitivity to the double standard, and by extension, to the underdog in relationships where there is a power imbalance, as is the case with abused children.
The distortions of the original goddess imagery are direct reflections of their cosmological disempowerment over the ages, now imprinted in the modern psyche. If the feminine power they embody is skewed, so has actual feminine power been skewed. The study of these asteroids, particularly their dark sides, resonates strongly with those searching for a way through confining cultural patterns. The primordial ideas they embody are alive within us, and it can feel like a soul-deep self-recognition to reconnect with them. Digging beneath the distorted images âseeing who Juno was before she became the jealous wife, for instance â we can find the archaic power buried there and let it out.
Ceres, Pallas, Juno and Vesta represent four very basic feminine archetypes which amplify and particularize the more general energies of the Luna and Venus. Their relation to the regular planets and to each other becomes clear in a mandala.
The large circle in the mandala represents Luna, the fundamental feminine principle that contains all the potential expressions of the feminine nature. Behind Luna resides Sun, the embodiment of the fundamental masculine principle. The union of the masculine and feminine, of the Sun God and Luna Goddess, give rise to what mystics have described as Oneness.
In the center of the mandala is Venus. As the essence of the feminine nature in her activated form, Venus embodies the feminine creative, magnetic, sexual, reproductive, vital life force. Venus is surrounded by Ceres, Pallas, Juno and Vesta. Each of the four in its unique way uses the creative sexual energy of Venus to express the various functions and activities of the feminine principle as it operates in both women and men.
Remember that both men and women have these archetypes in their charts, which represent both our inner personal qualities and the women in our lives. Men have many of the attributes of women and vice versa, particularly if you consider the qualities depicted by the asteroids. The best way to find out what they mean is to cast them into your charts for a while, and see what happens, to study their myths, or speak to an astrologer who is familiar with their energies. Â
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