epic poetry), and Laetitia (Latin for “gladness”) are all larger than Juno (150 miles in
diameter), but almost no information is available on any of these bodies except Psy-
che. (Short summary meanings of these asteroids are given in Martha Lang-Wescott’s
Mechanics of the Future: Asteroids.)By sequence of discovery, the next four asteroids after the Big Four are Astraea,
goddess of justice; Hebe, goddess of youth who took ambrosia to the gods; Iris, goddess of
the rainbow who was a messenger between the gods and humanity; and Flora, goddess of
flowering plants. Again, little information on any of these four asteroids is available
except for short summaries in Lang-Wescott’s survey. The clues that one would use to
research any one of these “concept” or “goddess” asteroids—health, justice, poetry, glad-
ness, and so forth—are all appealing, so the lack of attention they have attracted is sur-
prising. Clearly, the next step in establishing the study of asteroids as a widely accepted
branch of astrology will be the systematic exploration of the larger or the earlier aster-
oids, rather than the current piecemeal study of asteroids with idiosyncratic appeal.
One issue that emerged when astrological asteroid studies was beginning to
attract serious interest was the question of sign rulership. It was traditionally held that
the Sun and the Moon (the two luminaries) ruled one sign apiece, Leo and Cancer,
respectively. The known planets each ruled two signs: Mercury ruled Virgo and Gemi-
ni; Venus ruled Taurus and Libra; Mars ruled Aries and Scorpio; Jupiter ruled Sagittar-
ius and Pisces; and Saturn ruled Capricorn and Aquarius. When the “new” planets
were discovered, astrologers determined that Uranus ruled Aquarius, Neptune ruled
Pisces, and Pluto ruled Scorpio, leaving Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars as the rulers, respec-
tively, of Capricorn, Sagittarius, and Aries. In this modified system, only Mercury and
Venus still rule two signs each. The attractiveness of a balanced system in which 12
heavenly bodies rule 12 signs has often led twentieth-century astrologers to speculate
that two new planets would eventually be discovered and come to be accepted as the
rulers of Virgo and Libra.
Some asteroid-oriented astrologers speculated that the larger asteroids ruled these
signs. Bach, the founder of astrological asteroid studies, assigned Ceres and Vesta the
rulership of Virgo, and Juno and Pallas the rulership of Libra. Zipporah Dobyns, another
pioneer in the field of asteroid research, accepted the Big Four as corulers (with Mercury
and Venus) of these two signs. However, spreading out sign rulerships to more than one
planet did not strike a favorable chord among nonasteroid astrologers. Not only did mul-
tiple rulership lack elegance, but it also made certain astrological procedures, such as
identifying the significator in horary astrology, somewhat schizophrenic. Beyond the
question of elegance, some of the sign associations were strained. Ceres, which embodies
the quality of nurture, for example, is clearly more related to Cancer than to Virgo.
Another question one might ask with respect to asteroid rulerships is: Why stop with the
Big Four? The asteroid Hygiea, the personification of health and hygiene, is clearly relat-
ed to Virgo; the asteroid Astraea, the goddess of justice, has definite affinities to Libra;
and so forth. The point is, while various asteroids may be associated with the 12 signs of
the zodiac, assigning rulerships to asteroids raised more problems than it resolved.
In more recent years, the exploration of the astrological significance of asteroids
has been overshadowed, if not derailed, by two developments: the emergence of JyotishAsteroids
[64] THEASTROLOGYBOOK