The library · The other points and bodies

Ceres in Sagittarius

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

What the tradition reads

Ceres is read in modern Western practice as the manner in which nurture is given and received, and in Sagittarius the delineations consulted make knowledge the food. Bob Marks reads Ceres in Sagittarius as nurtured by knowledge, wisdom and adventure, and by long journeys; where the turn of mind is intellectual, he reads the same nurtured feeling arriving through giving advice, through teaching or instructing, and through reading on abstract philosophical subjects, with the person able to leave others feeling tended or inspired by the advice and instruction given in return. Astrology Club calls this the philosophical and joyful figure among the twelve, tending the dreams, horizons and beliefs of those it loves, taking in what the world offers and exploring it on their behalf, and finding its own nourishment in journeys of the mind; the same page has it protecting and feeding the future, spiritual life and joy. Cafe Astrology, which groups Ceres by element rather than giving twelve sign readings, has the fire signs reaching first for moral support and encouragement. The reading is a modern one, and Cafe Astrology treats Ceres as an optional point rather than a standard body.

The story

The Roman cult of Ceres was itself an import, which suits this sign. Wikipedia's article on Proserpina records that she was brought from southern Italy as part of an official religious strategy toward the end of the Second Punic War, when class antagonism, crop failures and intermittent famine were read as signs of divine anger at Roman impiety, and that the new cult was installed at Ceres's Aventine temple around 205 BC, with ethnically Greek priestesses recruited to serve the two goddesses as Mother and Maiden. Wikipedia's article on the goddess records that Romans described the paired rites of Ceres and Proserpina as the Greek rites of Ceres, and that the Romans saw Ceres as the counterpart of the Greek Demeter. A body of doctrine carried in from abroad, given to foreign priestesses, and explained as a remedy for a failed harvest, is the sort of history a sign read through travel, foreign learning and belief tends to attract, and it stands behind a reading in which nurture arrives as teaching.

Written from

Corpus key point:Ceres:sign:Sagittarius.