Ceres

Definition

Ceres is the largest body in the main asteroid belt and — since the IAU's 2006 reclassification — a dwarf planet, catalogued as 1 Ceres. Giuseppe Piazzi discovered it at Palermo on 1 January 1801, the first asteroid ever found. It takes about 4.6 Earth-years to circle the Sun, so it spends roughly five months in each zodiac sign on average. Its name comes from the Roman grain goddess Ceres, the Greek Demeter.

In Tradition

In modern Western astrology — especially the asteroid-goddess approach developed by Demetra George (with Douglas Bloch) and those who followed — Ceres is read through the Demeter-Persephone myth and stands for nurturing, the mother-daughter bond, food and the body, agriculture, and cycles of loss and return. This reading is widely held within the modern asteroid school, but Ceres is not part of the classical seven-planet rulership scheme and stays optional in traditional practice.

In Practice

Astrologers who include Ceres read its sign and house and its close contacts with the lights (the Sun and Moon), the personal planets, and the chart angles. The themes usually given to Ceres are nurturing and being nurtured, mother-daughter dynamics, your relationship to food and body, cycles of grief and reunion, and care for the natural world. Computer-generated horoscopes have included Ceres as a matter of course since dedicated asteroid ephemerides — tables of asteroid positions — were published in the 1970s and 1980s.

Historical Origin

Ceres has no astrological record before 1801. Its modern adoption follows the publication of asteroid ephemerides: Eleanor Bach with George Climlas, Ephemerides of the Asteroids Ceres, Pallas, Juno, Vesta 1900-2000 (1973); Rique Pottenger, The Asteroid Ephemeris 1883-1999 (1977, with a preface by Bach and an introduction by Z. P. Dobyns); and Emma Belle Donath, Approximate Positions of Asteroids 1851-2050 (1981). Demetra George and Douglas Bloch's Asteroid Goddesses (1986) is the consolidating modern interpretive text.

Further Reading

• Demetra George, Asteroid Goddesses
• James H. Holden, A History of Horoscopic Astrology