The library · The other points and bodies

Vesta in Libra

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

What the tradition reads

Modern asteroid astrologers read Vesta in Libra as devotion that needs a second person in the room. Always Astrology reads the placement as needing to work with others, finding that interaction and balance draw out its willingness and ability to serve, talented in the arts and in social settings, and good at compromise and diplomacy; it warns that the need for equality can cost such a person too much of their own control in the effort to be accepted, that they may end up competing with someone rather than working alongside them, and that they may be willing to suffer anything that brings advantage to a partner. Astrology Club reads the same placement as guarding the flame of harmony, grace and beauty, committed to equality and to shared values, with a mission to build bonds of mutual appreciation and often with strong artistic ability at the centre of that mission. By its consistent pattern of renunciation, harmonious interaction itself is what gets sacrificed in the search for spiritual truth, along with the talents a person looks past in the hope of finding something beneath them; the same page reads this position's sexuality as expressive, refined and romantic, and as likely to be held back during that search.

The story

The priestesses of Vesta held a legal standing no other Roman women had. Wikipedia's account of the Vestal Virgins records that they were lawfully persons in their own right, sovereign over themselves, answerable only to the pontifex maximus, and that unlike any other Roman women they could make a will of their own volition and dispose of property without the sanction of a male guardian, including leaving property to women, which even men were forbidden to do. Because they were held to embody the Roman state, they could give evidence in trials without first taking the customary oath, and they had custody of important wills and state documents. Their persons were sacrosanct: anyone who assaulted a Vestal was treated as having assaulted an embodiment of Rome and its gods, and could be killed with impunity. No magistrate held power over them, so the lictors of any magistrate who met a Vestal had to lower their fasces in deference. They alone had the right to travel in an enclosed two wheeled carriage, which some Roman writers remarked resembled the chariots of generals in a triumph.

Written from

Corpus key point:Vesta:sign:Libra.