By Len Wallick
Retrograde Ceres returns to Pisces on Wednesday after having spent a month on the Aries Point. That’s the first degree of Aries. It’s the place where the Sun is on the Vernal Equinox. That is when the cycle of the tropical zodiac starts over. It’s almost as if Ceres was trying to get our attention by slowing down and turning around in that particular spot. Of course, that’s a silly notion. How could an inert chunk of rock and ice out in space possibly do that? After all, everybody knows attention can only be given, or else it must be paid. The importance is in knowing the difference, and that may be just what Ceres means in your life right now.
In astrology, planets are archetypes expressed in our lives. The nature of the expression combines the mythology (if any) behind the object’s name, its history, motion, and our correlated observations. On the whole, dwarf planet Ceres appears to have a yin character that, in western culture at least, corresponds with the feminine.
In ancient western mythology, Ceres was indeed a goddess, and not a minor one. She had power. She also had a daughter. Her daughter was kidnapped by Pluto, with the tacit approval of the patriarchal authority structure. Ceres needed to use all her power in a quest for simple redress, but things were never truly set right. Rather, things were reset. It was a compromise. Ceres would enjoy the company of her daughter half of the year and mourn her absence for the other half.
Thus the archetype of Ceres is expressed in our lives through the seasons. Production of food is not constant as we would please, but subject to cycles that reset and return in portion. That requires the inhabitants of Earth to adjust as Ceres did. Perhaps the most prominent reset is when the Sun returns to the Aries Point. On that day, Sol is directly over the equator and all of us together are equally sharing its light all at the same time. That appropriates a very broad meaning to the word “equinox.”