The library · The other points and bodies

Vesta in Sagittarius

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

What the tradition reads

Where other signs give Vesta a person or a craft to be devoted to, the modern delineations give Sagittarius a conviction. Always Astrology reads Vesta in Sagittarius as devoted to a higher power or a universal truth, taking its greatest work as inspiration from that devotion, dedicated to its faith, determined to learn as much as it can, able to see the whole of a situation, fond of adventure and capable of teaching with real inspiration; it warns in the same breath that such a person can turn fanatical about a belief, and reads them as holding intellectual freedom as a principle. Astrology Club reads the same placement as protecting the flame of spirituality, knowledge and competition, committed to shared wisdom, advocating fairness and justice, and guarding the right to range freely through the world. By that page's pattern of renunciation, the right to move and to explore is what a person is likely to give up while looking for their own mission, together with the basis of faith and belief itself, and the right to hand on what they know; it also reads competition as uncomfortable for them until their own purpose is settled. Cafe Astrology's general keywords for Vesta, devotion to a higher purpose and hard work, sit beneath both.

The story

Vesta's cult outlasted almost every other in Rome and then ended in a decade. Wikipedia's account of the goddess records that her importance to Roman religion was such that after the rise of Christianity hers was one of the last non Christian cults still active, and that it was forcibly disbanded by the Christian emperor Theodosius I in AD 391. The end came in stages. Worship began to decline as Christianity rose; around 379 Gratian stepped down as pontifex maximus, and in 382 he confiscated the Atrium Vestae and at the same time withdrew its public funding. In 391, despite official and public protests, Theodosius closed the temple and the sacred flame was extinguished. Coelia Concordia stepped down as the last chief Vestal in 394. Wikipedia's account of the priestesses adds that dissolution of the college would have followed soon after the confiscation of 382, and that the last chief Vestal attested in an inscription is the same Coelia Concordia, who in 385 erected a statue to a dead pontiff. A fire kept alight for centuries on the claim that Rome depended on it was put out by an imperial order.

Written from

Corpus key point:Vesta:sign:Sagittarius.