Ceres

By Barbara Fahringer

Finally! The asteroid that should seriously be considered for planetary ranking has received an upgrade. Why should it be considered? Ceres is:

1.located where Bode's law says a planet should be located

2.was the first asteroid discovered

3.is the largest asteroid

Also, I have done many calculated experiments using Ceres as a final aspect for the Moon when traditionally the Moon would have been considered void of course, and the results have continued to be favorable. These sorts of experiments with Chiron have not worked out as well.

Some background: Ceres, located with the other asteroids between Jupiter and Mars, completes her orbit of the Sun in about 4 and a half years and is about 480 miles in diameter. Ceres is about 1/3rd the size of Pluto.

Ceres was discovered in 1801 by Italian astronomer Giuseppi Piazzi. He named her Ceres for the primary goddess of his native Sicily. Ceres is goddess of the grain, of the harvest. Ceres is the root of our word cereal. Ceres is the Latin name for the much older Greek Goddess Demeter, meaning mother of the grain, or mother of the seed.

Ceres is also known primarily as the mother of Persephone, who dies and is reborn. Persephone was carried off to the underworld by Pluto, and is also known as Kore, the Kernal which is the seed goes into the earth. Ceres is therefore the archetypal mother-as-nurturer (the mother earth providing for her children). Ceres also has to do with separation, loss and grief.

The myths of Ceres and Demeter echo the older stories of Isis, and the ancient myth of Inanna who visits the underworld herself and brings back the water of life. Isis is also referred to in Egyptian records as the inventor of agriculture.

When Ceres grieved for the loss of her daughter, she went off alone and cursed the earth so no crops could grow. It was after Persephone returned that Ceres allowed the earth to be fertile again and gave the gift of grain and agriculture to the world.

She also then taught secret rites to some of the people of Eleusis. The original temple at Eleusis, where the Eleusinian mysteries of Demeter and Persephone were celebrated, dates from around 1500BCE.

Really, when we look at the myths of Ceres and Persephone we are looking at interactions between Virgo and Scorpio, for Persephone is taken from her mother and goes to the underworld with Pluto. It seems rather clear to me that Ceres is associated most closely with the sign of Virgo, almost certainly as a co-ruler.

Among other things, Virgo has to do with nutrition and assimilation of nutrients, and this is also the domain of Ceres. Virgo is the time of the harvest, which is also related to the Ceres myth, and Ceres is concerned with labor, at one time most of our labors related to producing food. Now we work to put food on the table in other ways. Ceres is also where our work can be most productive and part of a higher calling.

Likewise, the connection of Virgo with ritual and service is clearer through the added rulership of Ceres.

The main areas of concern for Ceres are the Mother-Child relationship, Mother Earth, Food, Separation and Grief, and, as part of Grief, the power of words in incantations, poetry, hymns, and lyrics. Ceres reflects the rhythms of life and rhythms in poetry. I have found Ceres prominent in the charts of poets and lyricists.

Ceres is Nature and the cycles of nature, gardening, agriculture, productivity. Ceres says that the earth is part of heaven. Our bodies come from the earth and are vehicles which lead us to spirit. When we take care of the earth we are caring for our mother and for ourselves.

To eat, there must be planting and harvesting, and, if eating animals, birth and death. To eat, with few exceptions, something must die. Death supports life. Ceres is often prominent in the charts of chefs. Badly aspected, Ceres can indicate eating disorders, or people who felt uncared for or who have difficulty caring for themselves or others.

Ceres is about Motherhood and can usually give additional information in the chart about the mother-child relationship.

George W. Bush has Ceres in Aquarius in 7th house in very close opposition to Pluto. We have heard about his difficulties with his mother. He is surrounded by many women who seem to mother and shield him. Then there are many grieving parents caused by the war he started in Iraq that are also in relationship with him whether he acknowledges it or not. When the Ceres principle gets caught up in war, caught between Jupiter and Mars, then fields aren't plowed, they are battlefields, then children are killed and injured and mothers grieve.

A more pleasant Ceres aspect happened to George McGovern, who had Ceres-Venus progressed to exact conjunction in Scorpio in 1998 when he was appointed as Ambassador to the UN food distribution post, which also required him to live in Rome. McGovern has his natal Ceres in Scorpio in the 5th house. His daughter Teresa died of alcohol poisoning in the Spring of 1994. Transiting Ceres in late 1993 and early 1994 was retrograde from 6 Taurus back to 22 Aries and forward again, opposing his natal Ceres and squaring his Sun at 25 Cancer.

In transits, especially with stations, and progressions of Ceres to personal points in the chart there is often separation from or death of a close personal relation.

It could be that Ceres shows a place in the chart where there is a propensity toward grieving a loss. There may be a sense that we have to let go of something related to that house and sign and grieve, trusting that later in this life or the next we will be reunited with what we have lost, in a transformed state.

It may also be the house that shows how our work can be fashioned into service and devotion.

Al Gore has North Node, Ceres and Venus conjunct in Taurus in his 10th house and his career has taken off as he has pursued the global warming issue. Also, however briefly, when he won the popular vote, he was thought to be president and then he let go of that position, no doubt with some grief. Wasn't that like an abduction of his place in the world?

Ceres is also about being initiated into mysteries that confer the certainty of life after death. Eating disorders, anorexia, obsessive compulsive cleaning, all in a different context could be a way to the mysteries, mysteries that require purification of body through ritual bathing and through fasting. Are people with eating disorders people who need and crave initiation into a greater mystery?

When done with awareness and devotion, purification creates a receptacle for the experience of the divine. Athletes who have obsessive rituals before games, or people with obsessive-compulsive behaviors may know something on a very deep level about connecting to the universe. Because of the lack of adequate rituals in our society they have to resort to creating their own, not even realizing the real and deep reasons. Rituals can help maintain our right relationship with the universe, with the unseen world, or with the underworld, the realm of Pluto.

Ceres teaches us, or perhaps, forces upon us, the rituals with which to face death. Pluto may precipitate death. How we deal with that experience is often filtered through Ceres. Ceres is the grieving, the fasting or overeating, the religious rituals. Have you ever noticed how often a sheaf of wheat is pictured on coffins or bereavement literature?

Ceres bears the child who is taken to the underworld and returns. Mary as Handmaiden-of-the-Lord, bears the child, Jesus, who dies and is resurrected. Like Ceres' grief, Mary's grief is not written about. As God's servant she gives her son (who also characterized himself as the servant of others).

Everyone gets a Ceres return every 4 to 5 years. What sometimes happens is that an old wound around loss or death is reopened or processed in some way.

In parts of Greece it has long been the custom for women to publicly mourn with self-composed dirges at any funeral that happens in the community. Mourning rituals are then conducted for a period of 5 years, about the length of time of a Ceres cycle. "Skilled lamenters were highly respected by their peers for their creative skills. Their composition of lament poetry was so powerful that it could 'crack the hardest rock', as the women said, and raised them to a high, near-magical status." (Women's Music and the Life Cycle by Jane Bowers)

Ceres is about giving voice to divine inspiration, literally putting into words, poems, songs and the power of nature's rhythms. Words become part of magical ritual, incantations, the divine Liturgy, the mass as mystery initiation and the funeral dirges whose magic can "crack a rock".

These following quotations sound to me like Ceres speaking:

Isabelle Allende was born on August 2, 1942, and Ceres had just had a retrograde station on July 30th at 4 degrees Aries. Her Ceres at 4 degrees Aries in the ninth house, also trines her Pluto, Mercury, Sun in Leo and sextiles Uranus in Gemini. She was speaking about a new book she had just started:

"This book is like a pregnancy in my womb, not in my mind. It's quite different from all the other books I have written before. It's a book my publisher will hate, but it's a book that I really need to write now because it comes out of so much pain that if I don't write it, I will die. It's about separation and death and loss. It's always a very heavy emotion, very deep and very painful; however the process of writing is wonderful."

Alice Walker was born on February 9, 1944, Ceres made a direct station that same day. Her Ceres is at 24 Gemini in the second house and conjuct Saturn and sextile her Moon and Jupiter in Leo, and trines her Sun in Aquarius. When she was questioned about her book Possessing the Secret of Joy she said:

"I learned about genital mutilation 20 years ago in Kenya and it was completely beyond my experience. Over the years I started to understand what it meant to women and children to whom this had been done. By the time I actually started, I was in such a state of grief that the only thing that sustained me was that I could go outside and just lie face down on the earth. And somehow I got the energy that I always get from the earth directly, and I really understood in a deep way that the body of woman is the body of earth. When they cut up a woman and say 'When you have children, they're going to be mine,' they are inflicting the same kind of scarring, mutilation, and control on a woman that they inflict on the land. I have found in my work that I cannot live without the earth; it gives me everything, including peace of mind."

Both of the above quotations are from interviews in Magical Blend Issue 30, July 1993 which was printed with permission from Sounds True Catalog 800-333-9185. Discussion was at a Conference in San Francisco "Where our books come from".

Fritjof Capra born February 1, 1929, has Ceres rising just above his ascendant in Taurus.

"The new vision of reality is an ecological vision in a sense which goes far beyond the immediate concerns with environmental protection. To emphasize this deeper meaning of ecology, philosophers and scientists have begun to make a distinction between 'deep ecology' and 'shallow environmentalism'. Whereas shallow environmentalism is concerned with more efficient control and management of the natural environment for the benefit of man, the deep ecology movement recognizes that ecological balance will require profound changes in our perception of the role of human beings in the planetary ecosystem. In short, it will require a new philosophical and religious basis." (The Turning Point by Ftrijof Capra)

Walt Whitman, who wrote Leaves of Grass, also nursed the wounded during the Civil War. He was born with an almost exact conjuction of Sun and Ceres in Gemini in the second house. In "Song of Myself" he wrote:

A child said "What is the Grass?"

"I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord.

Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of vegetation

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves...

What do you think has become of the young and old men?

And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere

The smallest sprout shows there is really no death...

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,

And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

Dylan Thomas, with a Jupiter-Ceres-Moon conjunction in Aquarius on his Midheaven ended his poem about an idyllic childhood on a Welsh Farm with:

"Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means

Time held me green and dying

though I sang in my chains like the sea."

Will the real meaning of the Pluto-in-Virgo generation be that they will be the ones to face tough questions about a degraded environment, an earth that cannot produce enough food for the population? Perhaps some great poets will come out of the Pluto-in-Virgo generation. Perhaps we will have an ecological balance which "will require a new philosophical and religious basis."

Barbara Fahringer, M.A., LMT, RPP, has studied astrology and has been active in the fields of dance, theater and holistic health for over 25 years. She has lectured on astrological topics since 1998. Barbara welcomes comments and questions at www.astrodance.com.

March 29, 2007