The library · The other points and bodies

Juno in Aquarius

the asteroid Juno in tropical Aquarius

What the tradition reads

Juno is a modern reading rather than an inherited one, taken up by astrologers in the 1970s after the first asteroid ephemeris appeared, and the corpus keeps that distinction visible. Cafe Astrology reads the sign Juno occupies as where a person wants to do well and wants the scales level, and where unfair treatment is felt disproportionately. In Aquarius, the site's delineation reads natives described as very fair and rational, and wholly bothered when they are not treated as a peer and as an individual, or when they are treated as a possession, or as anything less than fair and honest. What is required of a partner or a friend, on the same account, is respect for their individuality as they respect the other's, together with an acknowledgement of their wish to keep drama and egoism to a minimum. Set against Juno's general associations of commitment, fairness and the balancing of power between two people, this is given as the placement that reads a bond as an agreement between equals who remain distinct, a claim about a pattern and not a rule for how any two people should arrange themselves.

The story

Juno was not only a household goddess; she belonged to a public. Wikipedia describes the Roman Juno as the protector and special counsellor of the state, and adds that she was said to watch over the women of Rome, a body of people rather than any one family. Her Etruscan counterpart is Uni, and her worship was attested across Etruria and in many towns of ancient Italy under differing titles. On the Greek side the same collective quality appears in the siting of her cult: Hera was worshipped as Argive Hera at a sanctuary that stood between the former Mycenaean city states of Argos and Mycenae, belonging to neither of them alone, while at Stymphalos in Arcadia a tradition held there had been a triple shrine, to Hera the Girl, the Adult Woman and the Separated, each state of a woman's life given a standing of its own. A goddess whose marriage was the concern of a whole community, and whose shrines counted the unmarried alongside the married, sits close to a sign the tradition reads through peers, groups and the individual within them.

Written from

Corpus key point:Juno:sign:Aquarius.