The Asteroid Field

What 26,454 names mean

The asteroid list is a map of human naming laid over the solar system: every one of those 26,454 names was chosen by a person, and astrology reads each as a word the sky can speak.

The discovery of the asteroids

• January 1, 1801: Giuseppe Piazzi in Palermo found Ceres in the gap between Mars and Jupiter, where a planet had been predicted.
• 1802 to 1807: Pallas, Juno and Vesta followed. For about half a century, all four were counted as planets.
• The flood: by the 1850s dozens more had been found, and they were reclassified as asteroids ("star-like") or minor planets.
• Today: well over a million minor planets are known; hundreds of thousands have permanent numbers, and only a small fraction of those have names.

How asteroids are numbered and named

• Number: assigned by the Minor Planet Center once an orbit is secure, in order: 1 Ceres, 2 Pallas, and so on.
• Name: the discoverer proposes it, and a working group of the International Astronomical Union approves it.
• Naming traditions: the first asteroids took names of goddesses and mythological women. Later names include gods and heroes, scientists, artists, writers, musicians, cities, rivers, discoverers' family members and friends, fictional characters, and ordinary first names.
• Rules: names of political or military figures are held back until long after their deaths; pet names are discouraged; commercial names are not allowed.

The kinds of minor bodies

How astrology came to them

• Eleanor Bach published the first astrological ephemeris of Ceres, Pallas, Juno and Vesta in 1973.
• Zane Stein and others developed the astrology of Chiron after its discovery in 1977.
• Demetra George, with Asteroid Goddesses (1986), gave the four main asteroids a full mythological and psychological framework rooted in the feminine.
• Researchers of named asteroids, including Jacob Schwartz, Martha Lang-Wescott and others, catalogued and tested meanings across thousands of minor bodies.

The principle of the name

• The idea: the name given to a body, even by an astronomer with no interest in astrology, carries its meaning. Many astrologers see this as synchronicity, the meaningful coincidence Carl Jung described: the act of naming follows the same pattern as the sky.
• Three layers of meaning:
  
• Myth: a body named for a god carries that god's story.
• Literal name: a body named for a person, place or word speaks for that person, place or word.
• Sound and resonance: some astrologers read names that sound like meaningful words, or that match names in the person's life.
• Personal-name asteroids: an asteroid bearing the name of a person in someone's life, placed near a personal point in the chart, is read as a signature of that person's significance.
• Caution: with so many names, coincidences are guaranteed. Serious practitioners weight only tight contacts, within about 1°, to the most personal points.

The four goddesses: Ceres, Pallas, Juno, Vesta

The first four asteroids discovered carry the names of four great goddesses, and together they describe four ways of being: the mother, the strategist, the partner, and the keeper of the flame. Demetra George read them as the parts of the feminine that the traditional planets left unspoken.

Ceres (1)

• Astronomy: about 940 km across, the largest body in the asteroid belt, reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006. NASA's Dawn orbited it from 2015 to 2018 and found bright salt deposits in Occator crater, likely from a briny reservoir below. It circles the Sun every 4.6 years.
• Myth: Ceres (Demeter), goddess of grain and harvest. When Hades took her daughter Persephone, Ceres searched the earth, and in her grief nothing grew. The seasons were born from the bargain that returned her daughter for part of each year.
• Core themes: nurturing and being nurtured; food, eating and the body; the parent and child bond; loss, grief and return; attachment and letting go; agriculture and the cycles of growth; self-care and self-worth.
• Rulership proposals: Virgo (the grain) or Taurus (the fertile earth); some add Cancer.

Pallas (2)

• Astronomy: about 510 km across, with an orbit tilted nearly 35° from the plane of the planets, which is why it is so hard for spacecraft to reach.
• Myth: Pallas Athena, goddess of wisdom and war strategy, born fully armored from the head of Zeus. She took the name Pallas from a childhood companion she accidentally killed. She championed heroes, crafts, justice and the city.
• Core themes: wisdom and strategy; pattern recognition; creative intelligence and the arts of design; justice and politics; the father and daughter bond; the tension between feminine identity and a world of fathers; the warrior mind; healing through seeing the whole.
• Rulership proposals: Libra (justice) or Aquarius (the mind), sometimes Virgo.

Juno (3)

• Astronomy: about 250 km across, one of the more reflective main-belt asteroids, orbiting every 4.4 years.
• Myth: Juno (Hera), queen of the gods and goddess of marriage. Wife of Zeus, she endured his endless affairs, and her rage and jealousy turned on his lovers and their children. She embodies both the sanctity of commitment and the pain of betrayal within it.
• Core themes: committed partnership and marriage; what one needs in a partner; equality and fairness in relationship; loyalty, jealousy and betrayal; power dynamics between partners; the rights of the partner; contracts and vows.
• Rulership proposals: Libra, sometimes Scorpio.

Vesta (4)

• Astronomy: about 525 km across, the brightest asteroid, occasionally visible to the naked eye. Dawn orbited it in 2011 and 2012, revealing a giant impact basin at its south pole. Many meteorites on Earth come from Vesta.
• Myth: Vesta (Hestia), goddess of the hearth and the sacred flame. She refused marriage to remain whole unto herself. In Rome the Vestal Virgins tended her eternal flame; its fire was the life of the city.
• Core themes: devotion and focus; sacred service; what you keep burning; dedication to a path or cause; sexuality as sacred, or sublimated into work; purity and integrity; the risk of burnout; wholeness in oneself.
• Rulership proposals: Virgo or Scorpio.

The four through the houses

The wider pantheon

Beyond the four goddesses, the early asteroids filled with the rest of the classical world: the Fates, the healers, the messengers, the queens of the underworld and the heroes. Grouped by theme, they read as a second, finer vocabulary layered over the planets.

Justice, fate and consequence

Health, fortune and blessing

Light, sky and messengers

Magic, the underworld and transformation

Heroes, tricksters and fallen heights

Love and desire: Eros, Psyche, Amor, Sappho, and asteroid Lilith

Venus describes what we love and value; these asteroids split love into its separate currents: desire, the soul in love, love without condition, the love that writes itself, and the love that refuses to submit.

Eros (433)

• Astronomy: found in 1898, the first known near-Earth asteroid. A peanut-shaped body about 34 km long. NASA's NEAR Shoemaker orbited it for a year and, in February 2001, became the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid.
• Myth: in early Greek cosmology, Eros was a primordial force born from Chaos, the drive that makes all things come together. Later he became the winged son of Aphrodite, whose arrows ignite passion.
• Core themes: erotic desire; passion and what arouses it; the life force as attraction; creative passion; obsession; what you would cross any line for.

Psyche (16)

• Astronomy: a large main-belt asteroid, about 220 km across, thought to be rich in metal, possibly an exposed core of a shattered early planet. NASA's Psyche spacecraft launched in 2023 and is due to arrive in 2029.
• Myth: told by Apuleius in The Golden Ass. Psyche, a mortal whose beauty rivaled Venus's, was secretly married to Eros, who visited only in darkness. When she lit a lamp to see him, he fled. To win him back she performed impossible tasks set by Venus, including a descent to the underworld. She was made immortal and reunited with him; their child was Pleasure.
• Core themes: the soul; sensitivity and vulnerability; love tested by trials; the need to see the beloved truly; transformation through love; psychic sensitivity.
• Eros and Psyche together: desire and soul. Contacts between the two in a chart, or between two people's charts, are read as love that transforms.

Amor (1221)

• Astronomy: found in 1932, it gave its name to the Amor asteroids, a class that approaches Earth's orbit from outside without crossing it.
• Myth: Amor is the Latin name for Cupid, Eros's Roman form.
• Core themes: unconditional love; platonic and spiritual love; compassion; love that gives without needing return. Where Eros wants, Amor offers.

Sappho (80)

• Astronomy: a main-belt asteroid found in 1864.
• Namesake: the poet of Lesbos (about 630 to 570 BCE), whom Plato called the tenth Muse. Most of her poetry survives only in fragments. Her love poems addressed to women gave the English language the words lesbian and sapphic.
• Core themes: romantic and creative expression; love poetry and art; love between women; the voice of desire in words; friendships of intensity; beauty.

Lilith (1181)

• Astronomy: found in 1927. Named not for the myth directly but in honor of the French composer Lili Boulanger, the first woman to win the Prix de Rome for composition, who died at 24.
• Relationship to Black Moon Lilith: entirely different; one is a physical asteroid, the other an orbital point of the Moon. Their positions rarely coincide.
• Core themes as used by astrologers: the defiant feminine in relationship; conflict over power, equality and sexuality between partners; refusal to be dominated; anger that surfaces in intimacy; the woman who will not stay where she is placed.

Others in the circle of love

The Centaurs: Chiron, Pholus, Nessus, Chariklo, and Hidalgo

Centaurs are icy bodies caught on unstable paths between Jupiter and Neptune, part asteroid and part comet, just as the mythic centaurs were part human and part horse. Astrologically they are the bridges: between the personal planets and the outer ones, between the wound and the cure.

Chiron (2060)

Astronomy

• Found by Charles Kowal on November 1, 1977, the first centaur discovered. About 200 km across.
• Its orbit crosses Saturn's and reaches almost to Uranus's, taking about 50 years.
• It later developed a faint coma, so it also carries a comet designation, 95P/Chiron.
• The orbit is so elongated that Chiron spends about 7 to 8 years in Aries and Pisces but under 2 years in Libra.

Myth

• Unlike the wild centaurs, Chiron was wise, gentle and immortal, the son of the Titan Kronos and the nymph Philyra, who was horrified by his form and abandoned him.
• Raised by Apollo and Artemis, he became the great teacher of heroes: Achilles, Jason, Heracles, and Asclepius, the founder of medicine.
• Heracles accidentally wounded him with an arrow poisoned by the Hydra's blood. Immortal, he could not die, and could not heal.
• He gave up his immortality in exchange for the freedom of Prometheus, and Zeus placed him among the stars.

Core themes: the wound that does not fully heal; healing others through what hurts in oneself; the teacher and mentor; the outsider who belongs to two worlds; rejection and early abandonment; holistic healing; the bridge between the material and the spiritual; turning pain into wisdom.

Rulership proposals: Virgo (healing), Sagittarius (the centaur, the teacher), or co-rulership with both.

The Chiron return: around age 49 to 51, Chiron returns to its natal place, often a turning point where the old wound resurfaces and becomes the source of one's elder wisdom.

Pholus (5145)

• Astronomy: found in 1992, one of the reddest objects in the solar system, on a 92-year orbit reaching from Saturn to beyond Neptune.
• Myth: the centaur who hosted Heracles and opened a sacred jar of wine meant to be shared by all centaurs. The scent drove the others wild and violence erupted. Examining one of Heracles's poisoned arrows afterward, Pholus dropped it on his foot and died.
• Core themes: a small action with enormous consequences; lifting the lid; releasing what was bottled up across generations; family patterns of addiction or excess; the catalyst; sudden awakening.

Nessus (7066)

• Astronomy: found in 1993, on an orbit of about 122 years.
• Myth: the centaur who offered to carry Heracles's wife Deianira across a river and tried to abduct her. Heracles shot him. Dying, Nessus gave Deianira his poisoned blood as a love charm. Years later she soaked Heracles's shirt in it, and the poison killed him.
• Core themes: abuse of power and its aftermath; cycles of harm passed down; revenge and its delayed return; accountability, the point where "it stops here" sexual and power dynamics; releasing what was taken.

Chariklo (10199)

• Astronomy: the largest known centaur, about 250 km across. In 2013 astronomers found that it has two narrow rings, the first small body known to have rings.
• Myth: a nymph, the wife of Chiron.
• Core themes: grace and dignity; boundaries and sacred space (read through its rings); holding space for another's healing; quiet, supporting presence; honoring the feminine that stands beside the healer.

Hidalgo (944)

• Astronomy: found by Walter Baade in 1920. Not a true centaur, but its steeply tilted, elongated orbit (about 14 years) carries it from inside Mars's orbit to near Saturn's, so it is often grouped with them.
• Namesake: Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, the Mexican priest whose 1810 call to revolt began Mexico's war of independence.
• Core themes: standing up for one's beliefs; defending the oppressed; confronting authority; advocacy and activism; the voice of conscience in public life.

The far frontier: the dwarf worlds beyond Neptune

Beyond Neptune lies a second belt of frozen worlds, some nearly as large as Pluto, discovered mostly since 2000. Their names come from the creation stories and underworlds of cultures around the globe, and astrologers read them as the newest, deepest layer of the collective psyche.

The discoveries that reshaped the solar system

• 1992: the first Kuiper Belt object beyond Pluto was found, proving Pluto was not alone.
• 2003 to 2005: Mike Brown, Chad Trujillo and David Rabinowitz found Sedna, Eris and Makemake in quick succession. Haumea's discovery was claimed by both Brown's team and a Spanish team led by José Luis Ortiz.
• 2006: because Eris proved as large as Pluto and more massive, the International Astronomical Union defined the word planet for the first time. Pluto, Eris and Ceres became dwarf planets.

Eris (136199)

• Astronomy: about 2,330 km across, nearly Pluto's size and about 27% more massive. Orbit of about 560 years, steeply tilted. It has one moon, Dysnomia.
• Myth: the Greek goddess of strife. Excluded from the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, she threw in a golden apple inscribed "to the fairest." Hera, Athena and Aphrodite fought over it, Paris chose Aphrodite, and the Trojan War followed. Her moon Dysnomia is her daughter, the spirit of lawlessness.
• Core themes: discord that exposes hypocrisy; the excluded one who disrupts; fierce feminine truth; rivalry and competition; standing up for what is right when shut out; the uncomfortable catalyst.
• Its effect on the world: its discovery literally caused discord, demoting Pluto and dividing astronomers and the public. Astrologers took this as a fitting introduction.

Sedna (90377)

• Astronomy: about 1,000 km across, deep red, on one of the longest orbits known: about 11,400 years. It never comes closer than about 76 times Earth's distance from the Sun, and reaches its closest point around 2075 to 2076.
• Myth: the Inuit goddess of the sea. In the best-known version, she was thrown from a kayak by her father during a storm. When she clung to the side, he cut off her fingers, which became the seals, whales and sea creatures. She sank to the ocean floor and became its ruler, and hunters depend on her mercy.
• Core themes: deep betrayal, especially by family; trauma and abandonment; sacrifice; descent into the depths and sovereignty there; the ocean and ecology; the long view of time; transformation through total loss.

Haumea (136108)

• Astronomy: a stretched, egg-shaped world, spinning end over end every 3.9 hours, among the fastest rotations of any large body. It has a ring and two moons, Hiʻiaka and Namaka.
• Myth: the Hawaiian goddess of fertility and childbirth, mother of many deities, who could renew her youth and be reborn. Her moons are named for two of her daughters.
• Core themes: birth and fertility; creativity and renewal; rapid regeneration; the mother of many; connection to the land; rebirth after endings.

Makemake (136472)

• Astronomy: about 1,430 km across, bright and reddish, on a roughly 305-year orbit. Found around Easter 2005; it has one small moon.
• Myth: the creator god of Rapa Nui (Easter Island), the chief god of the bird-man cult, whose competitions decided leadership.
• Core themes: creation and fertility; resourcefulness in isolation; ecology and the fragile balance of an island world; competition for leadership; manifestation.

Quaoar (50000)

• Astronomy: about 1,100 km across, on a roughly 285-year orbit. It has a moon, Weywot, and in 2023 astronomers found that it has a ring far outside where theory said rings could survive.
• Myth: the creation force of the Tongva people of the Los Angeles basin, who sang and danced the world into being, calling each new being into existence.
• Core themes: creation through song, dance and rhythm; bringing order out of chaos; harmony; creative flow; indigenous and ancestral wisdom.

Orcus (90482)

• Astronomy: about 900 km across, on a 247-year orbit in the same resonance with Neptune as Pluto. Its orbit mirrors Pluto's, on the opposite side of the Sun, which is why it is called the anti-Pluto. Its moon is Vanth.
• Myth: the Etruscan and Roman god of the underworld who punished broken oaths.
• Core themes: oaths, promises and their consequences; integrity; the underworld judge; speaking truth; the inner law that cannot be escaped.

Varuna (20000)

• Astronomy: about 700 km across, found in 2000, on a roughly 280-year orbit.
• Myth: the Vedic god of the cosmic waters, the sky and rta, the moral and cosmic order, who sees all and binds wrongdoers.
• Core themes: cosmic order and law; vastness; reputation and fame; the all-seeing; moral accountability.

Ixion (28978)

• Astronomy: a plutino, about 700 km across, found in 2001, on a 250-year orbit.
• Myth: the first man to murder a relative in Greek myth. Pardoned and invited to Olympus by Zeus, he tried to seduce Hera. Zeus bound him forever to a burning, spinning wheel.
• Core themes: second chances, and wasting them; lawlessness; ingratitude; pushing boundaries; the cost of betraying trust; also, freedom from inherited rules.

Gonggong (225088)

• Astronomy: about 1,230 km across, found in 2007 and named in 2020 after a public vote. Orbit of about 550 years. It has a moon, Xiangliu.
• Myth: the Chinese water god with a serpent's tail, who in rage smashed Mount Buzhou, one of the pillars holding up the sky. Heaven tilted toward the northwest and the Earth toward the southeast, which is why the stars move west and the rivers flow east. Xiangliu was his nine-headed serpent minister.
• Core themes: chaos and floods; rebellion that reshapes the world order; rage with vast consequences; the collapse of old structures; the origin of how things now are.

The frontier as a whole