The library · The other points and bodies

Vesta

the asteroid Vesta as a point in a natal chart, in modern Western asteroid astrology

What the tradition reads

Vesta's astrological reading is modern, and the sources that give it say so. Wikipedia's account of asteroids in astrology dates the practice to Eleanor Bach's publication of the first asteroid ephemeris in 1973, and records that the first four asteroids began to be recognised by astrologers only in the 1970s, that Demetra George's Asteroid Goddesses of 1986 popularised them, and that even now only a minority of astrologers use asteroids at all. No older doctrine stands behind any of it. That page states the reading plainly: astrologers use Vesta to determine what a person is devoted to, and, in its own words, how sexuality will develop. Cafe Astrology's asteroid pages list Vesta's themes as dedication, focus, sexual healing, health, warmth, devotion and a sense of purpose, adding devotion to a higher purpose, hard work, structure, tradition, obsession and righteousness. Always Astrology calls Vesta the keeper of the hearth, focus and dedication, mental clarity and self respect, and puts insecurity, lack of focus and a fear of intimacy on the difficult side. Rulership is contested. Astrology Club records that Bach assigned Vesta the rulership of Virgo, which non-asteroid astrologers did not favour; Wikipedia notes that many prefer to call the Virgo link an affinity, and that Vesta also seems to bear some influence over Scorpio.

The story

Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers had discovered Pallas in 1802 and proposed that it and Ceres were the remnants of a destroyed planet, writing to William Herschel that a search where their orbits crossed might turn up more fragments. He searched from 1802, and on 29 March 1807 found Vesta in the constellation Virgo, which Wikipedia notes was a coincidence, since the three bodies are not fragments of one larger world. The discovery was announced in a letter to Johann Schröter dated 31 March. Already credited with a planet of his own, Olbers gave the naming to Carl Friedrich Gauss, who had computed the new body's orbit in ten hours, and Gauss chose the Roman virgin goddess of home and hearth, whose temple fire in the Forum stood in for her because she was rarely shown in human form. Gauss also designed its symbol, the altar of Vesta with its sacred fire. The body itself is one of the largest in the asteroid belt, about 525 kilometres in mean diameter, second among asteroids in mass and volume after Ceres, and the brightest asteroid seen from Earth. Asteroid symbols left astronomical use after 1852; those of the first four were resurrected for astrology in the 1970s.

Written from

Corpus key point:Vesta.