The library · The other points and bodies

Ceres in Aquarius

the dwarf planet Ceres in tropical Aquarius, in modern Western asteroid astrology

What the tradition reads

Ceres is read in modern Western practice as the manner in which nurture is offered and taken, and in Aquarius the delineations consulted read it as friendship and as distance held on purpose. Bob Marks reads Ceres in Aquarius as finding the odd and the unconventional nurturing, and the company of friends nurturing in both directions, the friends being tended in turn; he reads the early nurture as likely to have been erratic, and names difficulty with closeness in intimate relationships as the placement's harder side. Astrology Club calls this the figure of the future among the twelve, tending personal freedom, independence of thought and the liberal hopes of those it cares for, with an affection it describes as altruistic and concerned more with the whole than with the individual pieces; the same page has it comforting through friendship, nourished by those who leave it free while remaining allies, and fed by intellectual company and shared ideals. Cafe Astrology, which groups Ceres by element instead of giving twelve sign readings, has the air signs reaching first for mental and communication support, which sits close to both.

The story

The arrival of Ceres in astrology is itself a modern and collective story, which fits this sign. Wikipedia records that the asteroids are relatively new to astrology, having only been discovered in the nineteenth century, that their use has become significant to a few Western astrologers while still only a minority use them in chart interpretation, and that their use in astrology began with Eleanor Bach's publication of the first asteroid ephemeris in 1973. The same page records that Ceres, Pallas, Juno and Vesta started being recognised by astrologers in the 1970s, and that their use was popularised after Asteroid Goddesses appeared in 1986. It also notes that Ceres, although reclassified by the International Astronomical Union in 2006 as a dwarf planet, is still discussed among the asteroids, where it is sometimes informally called the queen of the asteroids for its size and symbolic prominence. A reading assembled inside living memory, by a minority, and argued about in the open, is an Aquarian provenance if the twelve signs have any.

Written from

• Bob Marks, Ceres, Astrology Lesson 21.1, archived copy
• Astrology Club, Ceres in the Signs
• Cafe Astrology, Ceres
• Wikipedia, Asteroids in astrology

Corpus key point:Ceres:sign:Aquarius.