well Kent, and Christy Carol). Some of the smaller and more recently located aster-
oids have been given entertaining-sounding names, such as Bilkis (the Koranic name
for the Queen of Sheba), Dudu (the dancing girl in Nietzsche’s Thus Spake
Zarathustra), and Mr. Spock (named after the discoverer’s cat).While most asteroids are no more than a few miles across, many are much larg-
er. Ceres, the largest asteroid, is 620 miles in diameter. The main group of asteroids is
located where Bode’s law would lead one to anticipate a planet, and one theory specu-
lates that the asteroid belt is the debris of a former planet that has disintegrated into
many pieces. Another theory speculates that at some distant time in the past when
the solar system was being formed, the material circulating between Mars and Jupiter
failed to coalesce into a cohesive planet, perhaps because of the disruptive influence
of Jupiter’s tremendous gravity.
Except for a very few whose orbital paths carry them near Earth, asteroids are
invisible to the naked eye. The asteroid belt was not discovered until the nineteenth
century, so asteroids were not taken into account in traditional astrology. Even after
sufficient information was available to construct ephemerides (tables of positions) of
the major asteroids, astrologers chose to ignore them. Alan Leo tried to interest his fel-
low astrologers in asteroids but was unsuccessful. Perhaps the ongoing disputes over the
astrological influences of the newly discovered planets discouraged astrologers from
studying the significance of these relatively tiny bodies. The sheer number of asteroids
would also discourage such exploration. Whatever the explanation, the astrological
study of asteroids did not begin until the last quarter of the twentieth century.
The real founder of asteroid studies was Eleanor Bach, who in the early 1970s
published an ephemeris and a set of interpretations for the first four asteroids (some-
times called the Big Four) to be discovered—Ceres, Pallas, Juno, and Vesta. Zipporah
Dobyns followed in 1977 with a similar work on the Big Four. Emma Belle Donath
also published a set of books dealing with the four major asteroids. In 1986, Demetra
George and Douglas Bloch’s Asteroid Goddesseswas published. Building on the work of
its predecessors, this book quickly became the definitive study of Ceres, Pallas, Juno,
and Vesta. It contained everything needed to locate and interpret the four major
asteroids in a natal chart. George, the primary author, also integrated the feminist the-
ory of the primordial goddess religion (the notion that all of our more distant ances-
tors were goddess worshipers) into her discussion, giving Asteroid Goddessestremen-
dous appeal in a subculture where the idea of a primordial goddess religion was widely
accepted. The book enjoyed such success that a new, expanded edition was published
four years later. The general availability of Asteroid Goddesses,the basic appeal of the
goddess notion, and the integration of asteroid positions into most computer chart-
casting software programs all combined to make Ceres, Pallas, Juno, and Vesta easy to
use. Thus, the general acceptance and continually expanding use of the four major
asteroids by the larger astrological community was ensured.
The focus on Ceres, Pallas, Juno, and Vesta by asteroid advocates has generally
eased the anxiety of astrologers who resisted the introduction of hundreds of new
points demanding interpretation in a horoscope. Yet, the widespread acceptance of
the Big Four only made the question of the significance of the other asteroids moreAsteroids
[62] THEASTROLOGYBOOK