Almagest

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Vesta in the tenth house

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

What the tradition reads

Vesta's astrological reading dates from the 1970s revival of the first four asteroids, and the pages that give it agree on its substance. 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, tradition and righteousness; Always Astrology calls Vesta the keeper of the hearth, focus and dedication, mental clarity and self respect. The tenth house, in Alan Leo's account, is profession, business ability, fame, honour and material reputation, and he says that all worldly activities and moral responsibilities are shown by it. He calls it the Mid-Heaven or Upper Meridian and the apex of the horoscope, the portion thrust out most prominently into the busy life of the world, reads it as the public standing or worldly position, and in his summary of the twelve attaches parentage and hereditary tendencies to it as well. He counts it angular and assigns to it the knees. Of the sources consulted, none gives a reading for Vesta in the tenth 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 held rank as well as a fire. Wikipedia's account of the goddess places her among the Dii Consentes, twelve of the most honoured gods of the Roman pantheon, and reports that mythographers name her one of the oldest of the gods, entitled to preference in veneration and offerings over all the others. Her standing was public and official: the state's leading priest, the pontifex maximus, was required to live in a publicly owned house, and after taking that office in 12 BC Augustus gave part of his own house to the Vestals as public property and built a new shrine of Vesta inside it, tying the public hearth of the state to the emperor's residence on the Palatine, so that emperors were thereafter automatically priests of Vesta and the pontiffs were sometimes called priests of Vesta themselves. Coins carried her: a denarius of 60 BC shows her veiled with a lamp, and a coin under Nero shows her cult statue holding a patera and a sceptre inside her hexastyle temple.

Written from

Corpus key point:Vesta:house:10.