ASTROLOGY “Ceres was the first to turn the earth with the hooked plowshare; she first gave laws. All things are the gift of Ceres; she must be the subject of my song.” Ovid, Metamorphoses
• BY JULIE LOAR n January 1, 1801, Giuseppe Piazzi pointed his telescope in the direction of the rocky objects that orbit the Sun between Mars and Jupiter and discovered what he thought was a new comet. Piazzi named the object Ceres, after the Sicilian goddess of grain, and Ceres became a planet for 50 years. Three other objects were discovered in the next few years: Pallas, Vesta, and Juno, which were also considered to be planets. Later, William Herschel, discoverer of Uranus, argued that they were too small to be planets; and when the fifth, Astraea, was identified, they were all re-classified as asteroids, which means “star like.” By the end of the nineteenth century, several hundred had been spotted, and at present, several hundred thousand asteroids have been given provisional designations. Thousands more are discovered every year. Most planetary astronomers believe that the planets of our Solar System formed from a nebula of gas, dust and ices that coalesced around the developing Sun. Although some have suggested that the asteroids are remains of a proto-planet that was destroyed in a massive collision long ago, and there is considerable mythic evidence to support this view, the prevailing scientific opinion is that asteroids are leftover rocky matter that didn’t become a planet. It’s believed that insufficient mass, and Jupiter’s strong gravitational influence, caused collisions and captured many small bodies, perhaps placing the Trojan asteroids that precede and follow Jupiter. Instead of sticking together, the planetesimals shattered, preventing them from becoming a larger planet. Astronomers believe that most of the main belt’s mass has been lost since the formation of the Solar System. In 1930, 129 years after Ceres’ appearance, Pluto was discovered, and he was a planet for seven decades. But in 2006, after the discovery of Eris, who was the tenth
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planet for a brief time, Pluto was demoted, becoming the first in a new class of objects called plutoids—objects in a 2:1 orbital resonance with Neptune. These events also caused a planet to be defined for the first
dences. They were both the first objects to be discovered in their respective belts, and both have the distinction of being the first of their kind in recent nomenclature. Both were considered planets for decades, and both occupy highly populated belts of objects orbiting the Sun. Relative Size of the There’s a symmetry largest Asteroids (NASA) between the Main Asteroid Belt and the Kuiper Belt, Pluto’s home, where four planets precede each belt; Ceres follows the terrestrial planets, and Pluto comes after the gas giants. Ceres and Pluto are also profoundly linked in myth. In the earlier Greek stories their names were Demeter and Hades. Demeter was the ancient Greek mother goddess of the greening of the Earth. She oversaw cycles of life and death as well as preserving sacred law. Demeter taught humanity the arts of agriculture: sowing seeds, plowing, and harvesting. In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, dated to about the seventh century time. Ironically, it was Pluto’s change in BCE, she is invoked as the “bringer of seastatus, and the creation of new categories of sons.” According to Isocrates, an Athenian objects in our Solar System, that resulted in rhetorician, the greatest gift that Demeter a promotion for Ceres. She was reclassified bestowed was grain, the cultivation of which as a dwarf planet in September 2006, placing elevated humans above the animal kingdom her on a level playing field with Pluto, and and freed people from the seasonal migramaking her unique (so far), in the Solar tions of the hunter-gatherer. System since she is the only dwarf planet in In myth, Demeter’s daughter Persephone the Main Asteroid Belt. Asteroid Vesta may (Prosperpina in Latin), was picking flowers in also be a candidate once the Dawn spacecraft a field when she was abducted and raped by gets a closer look at her in 2011. Dawn will her uncle Hades/Pluto, god of the underthen visit Ceres in 2015. world. This violent act occurred with the The combined mass of all the asteroids in complicity of her father, Zeus/Jupiter, which the Main Asteroid Belt is less than that of the also mythically describes the abduction of the Moon, and Ceres contains approximately feminine principle that occurred as the patrione-third of the total. Unlike the lumpy, poarchy rose to power. tato-like objects with lower gravity we norDemeter grieved for her daughter, or her mally expect to see, Ceres is spherical, and own lost innocence, and withdrew to search with a diameter of about 950 km, she is by for her. Without her the Earth became far the largest and most massive object in barren, and people risked starvation. Zeus the asteroid belt. Ceres appears to be differsent gods with gifts to influence her, but it entiated into a rocky core and ice mantle was not in his power to command her to with a surface that is probably a mixture of make the Earth green. Nor could the king of water, ice, and various hydrated minerals heaven order the crops to grow on his own, like carbonates and clays. Ceres may contain as the nature of her feminine fertility was not a tenuous atmosphere with water vapor and within his domain. This strongly suggests also harbor an ocean of liquid water that that Demeter was an earlier and more powmakes her a target in the search for extratererful goddess. In fact, when Demeter was restrial life. given a genealogy, she was the daughter of Ceres and Pluto share several correspon-
Ceres
Goddess of the Asteroid Belt
What can this unique dwarf planet reveal about astrology and immortality?
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the Titans Cronos and Rhea, and therefore Zeus’s elder sister, even though Persephone was said to be his daughter. Their mother, Rhea, finally intervened, and Zeus agreed to bring Persephone back. Meanwhile, Hades/ Pluto had tricked Persephone into eating pomegranate seeds, which meant she had to remain part of the year with him. At the end of the tale, Demeter taught humanity the secrets of wheat and cultivating grain, pointing toward the deeper meaning of the story. Demeter and Persephone were the central figures of the Eleusinian Mysteries that predated the Olympian pantheon. These were the most important rites of initiation in ancient Greece and are believed to have originated in Minoan goddess worship in Crete nearly 4,000 years ago. The road between Athens and Eleusis was called the Sacred Way as thousands of pilgrims from all levels of society, from Greece and beyond, made their way to celebrate the mysteries. The only requirements were never having committed murder and not being a ”barbarian,” that is, unable to speak Greek. A binding vow of secrecy was
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required, and the penalty for breaking this oath was death, so we can only speculate from clues and indirect evidence what actually occurred. But tradition says that the high point of the ritual was a eucharist where a “sheaf of grain was reaped in silence.” What little is known about the exact
nature of the rites bears similarity to the Egyptian mysteries of Isis and Osiris, and Syrian and Persian mystery cults, which have similar themes. It’s said that the secret mystery ritual of Eleusis held the symbolic key to immortality and the principle of resurrection. Ancient writers asserted that the rites of Demeter promised the initiate a better life on Earth and Ceres puts the happiness in the afterlife. The things of war beneath her feet. Eleusinian Mysteries were seen as (Simon Vouet, deeply spiritual and inspiring—a 1835) far older and more elevated approach than the intrigues of the battling and scheming Olympians—and offered an alternative religion well into the Christian era, as did the worship of Isis in Egypt. Demeter’s emblem was the poppy, a bright red flower that grows among barley, or grain, which links her to altered states of consciousness as well as themes of death and resurrection. Scholars say that the great Mother Goddess, who bore the names Rhea and Demeter, brought the poppy from Crete to Eleusis, which means “arrival,” or “advent,” and assert that in the
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Among other objects from the horde are a copper shield, two gold goblets, three silver vases with fused copper parts, a copper cauldron with handles, and seven copper daggers. Most of these items appear to pre-date the Trojan War, when the Bronze Age had eclipsed the manufacture of copper goods. From the museum at Canakkale, I hiked a few miles to the archaeological park, where a large, modern but crudely-made recreation of the infamous wooden horse stood behind the entrance. Beyond it, visitors passed directly among the broken stones of Ilion poking through the top of the high hill that still covered most of the fabled city. From its high walls, one could look below to farmers’ fields spreading in green, geometric carpets to the Aegean Sea, now about two miles further away than it was 3000 years ago. There was less to see than to imagine, but I lingered among the ruins all afternoon, until closing time. I returned the next morning, once more to spend an entire spring day just hanging out at the site. Due doubtless to the more chilly, uncertain weather, I was the only visitor this time. Even the lone curator seemed to have disappeared. Vistas stretched far, in many directions, from atop the inclined ramparts. The worked fields below were totally deserted, and the entire Troad—yet another name for vicinity—was strangely silent, save for the constant breeze. Homer wrote in the Iliad of “windy Troy.” By afternoon, the bright sunshine yielded to an overcast that threatened rain. It was then that I distinctly heard—at first very faintly, but with growing clarity—the sound of someone playing a flute. I stood up on the ancient wall and looked around but saw no other visitors. The fields below were unoccupied, as far as I could see, which was some distance. For perhaps five minutes, the wispy music whistled through the ruins, then gradually faded away on the breeze. As I left the archaeological park, I asked the man behind the desk, “Who was playing that flute at the site?” “No one,” he answered in fluent, disinterested English. “You the only visitor today,” and he eyed me suspiciously. “What about a farmer down there in those fields?” I persisted. “It kind of sounded like a shepherd’s tune.” “Shepherds’?!” he bristled defensively. “Turkey’s a modern nation. We don’t have shepherds anymore. Nobody works the fields now. Is religious holiday. Farmers never play music in the fields! We’re closed now.” And he pointedly ignored me, while noisily chaining up the gate. At the time, I speculated that the echo of that ghostly music might have been an incident of clairaudience, or something of the kind, but could never come to any firm conclusions. Only many years later, after stumbling on Aristotle’s Poetics, written in 335 BC, did I read some lines that made me wonder about my solitary experience on the walls of Ilion, “Often, indeed, as he turned his gaze to the Trojan plain, he marveled at the sound of flutes and pipes.” See Our Great 8-page Catalog Beginning on Page 74
archetype of the harvest-bringing goddess, pure and good, independent of the masculine. She gives the four seasons and is the source of the fertile Earth.” Earth is the womb of the Goddess, and Continued from Page 49 her mysteries of generation and regeneration Cretan cult, opium was prepared from pop- include the seeds that are planted, germipies. In a clay statue, which resides at the nated and the subsequent harvest that reHeraklion Museum on Crete, the Minoan sults. We reap the harvests of our lives acpoppy goddess wears the seed capsules in her cording to the seeds that we have sown, and diadem, source of both nourishment and the manner in which the garden has been tended, carefully winnowing the wheat from narcosis. the chaff as we learn our The pomegranate lessons. played a key role in PerWhen the sickle is sephone’s journey. Hades wielded, the crop is setricked Persephone into vered from the stalk and eating the red seeds, its connection to the which tied her to the unEarth is terminated. As derworld. The number of the fruits of the Earth seeds varies from four to are gathered and consix, but determined the sumed, the promise of number of months she another harvest is imhad to spend as queen of plicit. the underworld. The The symbolic themes pomegranate has been a of Ceres and Virgo are symbol of life and death, roots, fertility, plenty, rebirth, resurrection and crops, renewal, cultivaeternal life, fertility and tion, nourishment, submarriage, abundance and stance, eucharist and prosperity throughout communion. Astrologihistory and in almost cally, I believe Ceres/ every religion. The abunDemeter represents recdant seeds held the lamation and renewal promise of cyclical resurand can reveal what Demeter and Persephone celebrating rection. Almost every asthe Eleusinian Mysteries needs to be uncovered pect of the pomegranate, deep in the underworld its shape, color, seeds, juice, has come to of our consciousness. Examining Ceres’ place symbolize something. Ceres rotates on her axis in nine hours, in a natal chart we can ask, what is hidden, orbits the Sun in 4.6 years, and stays in an lies fallow, or is imprisoned in the underastrological sign about 4.6 months, creating world of our psyches that needs to come to an intriguing harmonic resonance with the the surface so our fertility returns and our number of months Persephone spent in personal gardens flourish? Ceres’ reemergence as a planet, albeit a Hades. Ceres’ astronomical symbol is the sickle, or barley hook, an ancient harvest im- dwarf, is similar to her myth. Her energy is plement and instrument of reaping. It seems reappearing from the underworld of our natural that Ceres should be astrologically awareness and coming into her own. I bealigned with Virgo. Virgo is the only female lieve this also represents the resurgence of among the zodiacal constellations, and other the feminine principle, which must be reintethan the Gemini twins, Castor and Pollux, grated into humanity’s psyche. The resolushe is the only human figure. Virgo is de- tion involves a restitution and restoration of picted as a maiden, holding a palm branch in balance. Pluto is seen as the astrological agent of her right and a single ear of wheat in her left. Her brightest star is named Spica, “ear transformation, but he must remain in the of wheat.” The symbolic eucharist of Eleusis underworld. Persephone/Proserpina, daughis the perfect symbol of Virgo, and of the ter of Ceres/Demeter, was his wife and queen, mysteries of alchemical transmutation, that and each year she journeyed from above to occur in the intestines, the area of the body below and back, reuniting with her mother to make the world green again. What might ruled by that sign. Virgo is one of the oldest constellations the Persephone in each of us bring back from and over time has been equated with every her annual journey to the underworld? Her important feminine deity, including Ishtar, mother as “bringer of the seasons” teaches us Isis, Demeter, Persephone, Medusa, Artemis, that nothing really dies, but a cyclical deand Urania. Richard Hinkley-Allen says, scent to the underworld of our own psyche “Those who claim very high antiquity for the may be required for real growth to occur. zodiacal signs (15,000 years ago), assert that Bravely undertaken, this passage leads us tothe idea of these titles originated when the ward a Sacred Union with the Goddess, reSun was in Virgo at the spring equinox, the vealing the “knowledge of the gods,” the sutime of the Egyptian harvest.” Astrologer perhuman qualities that reveal the true Bernadette Brady has remarked that, “What- nature of immortality. ever image is chosen across time and culwww.JulieLoar.com tures, what is contained in Virgo is the
ASTROLOGY
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