Catasterism

Definition

Catasterism (Greek katasterismos) is the placing of a figure among the stars — the mechanism by which a deified figure becomes a constellation. It is bound up with the idea that the soul rises to dwell among the stars once life ends. Barton documents it within the esoteric milieu surrounding Publius Nigidius Figulus, the first-century-BCE Roman senator and Pythagorean-revival figure. He wrote on catasterism alongside works distinguishing rival sets of constellation-names.

In Tradition

Barton sets catasterism within the syncretic, esoteric astrology taking hold among the Roman elite. Nigidius Figulus, Cicero's ally, treated the subject in his writing, glossing it as the soul's rising starward at death. Separate works of his, the Sphaera Graeca and the Sphaera Barbarica, laid out two rival traditions for naming the constellations. The concept also carried political weight: Octavian read the comet at Caesar's funeral Games as a sign of his soul's ascent, a public, mythological use of the same idea. Barton presents it as one strand in how myth, sky, and the fate of the soul were woven together at the threshold of Roman astrology's rise.

In Practice

Take catasterism as a piece of the cultural and cosmological backdrop to ancient astrology rather than a charting technique. It answers a particular question — how the figures of myth came to live among the constellations, and how the dead were imagined taking their place in the sky. Hold it next to the solstitial-gates picture of the soul's descent and ascent, since both belong to the same vision of the heavens as the soul's origin and destination. Knowing it lets you read the mythic and political uses of the stars — the comet at Caesar's Games, the naming of constellations — as part of the world the astrologers worked within.

Historical Origin

Catasterism is documented by Tamsyn Barton in Ancient Astrology (Routledge, 1994, Chapter 2, pp. 63-64 and 66). She records Nigidius Figulus writing on the subject — the rising of the soul starward at death. Separate works of his treat the two rival constellation-naming traditions of the Sphaera Graeca and the Sphaera Barbarica. Barton places all of it within the esoteric milieu surrounding the rise of elite-Roman astrology.

Etymology

Origin: Greek. Meaning: a placing among the stars.

Further Reading

• Tamsyn Barton, Ancient Astrology
• Dorian Gieseler Greenbaum, The Daimon in Hellenistic Astrology