Almagest

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Vesta in the eleventh house

the asteroid Vesta in the eleventh house, in modern Western asteroid astrology

What the tradition reads

What the tradition reads of Vesta is modern, dating from Eleanor Bach's asteroid ephemeris of 1973 and the work that followed it. Wikipedia's account of asteroids in astrology says astrologers use Vesta to determine what a person is devoted to; Cafe Astrology's asteroid pages list dedication, focus, warmth, devotion, a sense of purpose, hard work, structure and tradition; Always Astrology calls Vesta the keeper of the hearth, focus and dedication, mental clarity and self respect. The eleventh house, in Alan Leo's account, is the house of friends, acquaintances, hopes, wishes and aspirations. In the chapter he gives it he sets the house in a triangle with the seventh and the third, where its relation to the seventh shows the open friends and its relation to the third the private ones, calls it, taken alone and free from affliction, a benefic house inclined toward good fortune and happiness, and notes its sympathy with the tenth in the charts of those concerned with the many rather than the few, through companies, associations and societies. He assigns to it the legs and ankles. Of the sources consulted, none gives a reading for Vesta in the eleventh house: the two delineations that treat Vesta placement by placement, Always Astrology and Astrology Club, work by sign only, and Cafe Astrology's asteroid pages give Vesta's keywords without any delineation by house, so no reading is offered here.

The story

Vesta's fire was kept by a body, not by an individual. Wikipedia's account of the sacred fire records that it was tended by the Vestal Virgins, a priesthood that began with two members, was later increased to four, and eventually to six, chosen by lot from patrician families and serving thirty years. Its account of the priestesses adds that they were supervised by a senior Vestal but chosen and governed by Rome's leading male priest, the pontifex maximus, who in the imperial era was the emperor, and that the most widely accepted tradition has Numa Pompilius appoint the first pair and then add a second, with Rome's sixth king, Servius Tullius, raising the number to six. Plutarch attests six in the imperial era, and the same page notes that claims by Ambrose and others of a college of seven in the late fourth century rest on what it calls very unsatisfactory evidence. Six women, answerable to one priest, kept between them a fire the whole city claimed to depend on.

Written from

Corpus key point:Vesta:house:11.