The library · The other points and bodies

Vesta in Aquarius

the asteroid Vesta in the sign Aquarius, in modern Western asteroid astrology

What the tradition reads

Vesta in Aquarius is read by modern asteroid astrologers as devotion aimed past the household at everyone. Always Astrology reads the placement as devoted to the service of humanity, stimulated by its ideals and by the freedom to be an individual, friendly and open, working well in groups so long as the ideals are shared; it reads such a person as willing to contain their own natural freedom in order to carry out a duty and as often having to deny their own wishes to finish a responsibility, notes that emotional aloofness and intellect can both be used to keep intimacy at a distance, and calls the combination strongly transformational. Astrology Club reads the same placement as protecting and guarding the flame of the future, its focus on bringing equality to the many and its mission to help move the collective toward new goals, while holding to personal freedom and self expression and believing in the individual. By that page's pattern of renunciation, freedom of movement and the exploration of one's own progressive ideals are what get sacrificed, and it reads such a person as able to take the part of the underdog in order to know from inside the need they are trying to answer.

The story

Much of what the Vestals did was done for the whole city rather than for any household. Wikipedia's account of the priestesses records that on 15 May the Vestals and the pontiffs collected ritual straw figures called Argei from stations along Rome's city boundary and cast them into the Tiber to purify the city. At the Fordicidia, a rustic agricultural festival, a pregnant cow was sacrificed and its unborn calf reduced to ashes by the senior Vestal; the ashes were mixed with other substances into a preparation called suffimen, which at the Parilia on 21 April was sprinkled on bonfires to purify shepherds and their flocks. On 1 May the Vestals officiated at the women only rites of Bona Dea at her temple on the Aventine, and they attended her overnight December festival as well, hosted by the wife of Rome's senior magistrate, who was himself expected to spend the night elsewhere. Their work, the same page notes, provided a shared link between various public cults and possibly some private ones: a small college whose duties belonged to the community at large.

Written from

Corpus key point:Vesta:sign:Aquarius.