Focus On: (100) Hekate

Basics

Class: S-type asteroid
Location: Main belt
Orbit length (approx): 5.42 years
Discovered: Discovered on 11th July 1868 (time unknown) from Ann Arbor, Michigan, by James Craig Watson
Discovery degree: 15+ Aquarius
Discovery Sabian: A Big Businessman At His Desk
Name origin: Greek

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Name meaning & mythology

Named after Hekate, the goddess of magic, witchcraft, the night, moon, ghosts and necromancy in Greek mythology. One of few deities who could move in and out of the underworld; a denizen of both upper and lower realms, and therefore with experience and knowledge of both, she was valued in myth for her guidance. The asteroid's name also commemorates it as the hundredth to be discovered, as ἑκατόν (hekaton) is Greek for 'a hundred'.

Focus On: (9) Metis

Basics

Class: S-type asteroid
Location: Main belt
Orbit length (approx): 3.69 years
Discovered: 25th April 1848, time unknown, at Markree Castle, Ireland, by Andrew Graham
Discovery degree: 15+ Scorpio
Discovery Sabian: A Girl's Face Breaking Into a Smile
Name origin: Greek

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Name meaning & mythology

The name Metis means "counsel". Metis was an Oceanid, daughter of the Titans Oceanos and Tethys. She could change her shape at will. When Kronos had devoured all his children except Zeus, Metis produced the potion that forced him to regurgitate them.

Vernal Verification

We're about to encounter a busy week in sky lore. The equinox* (spring in the north, autumn in the south) arrives on Monday, with the Aries New Moon right on its heels. Then on 23rd March, Pluto ingresses Aquarius for its first visit since 1798. Meanwhile, as I'm writing this, Mars is a gnat's tarsus away from leaving shadow phase**, and will enter Cancer on 25th March.

All this may feel rather like a runaway chain reaction, psychologically speaking, involving an urge to brush off the dust and get right to action. New astrological year; new moon; new everything, it would seem; what is to hold one back? The equinox chart suggests, however, that it's probably worth taking a moment to size up the situation. Perhaps not everyone needs an especially long moment, but some form of analysis, pre-planning and/or discernment is apparently being called for here.

Divination: A Holistic Approach to the Truth

One of the qualities that make astrology endlessly fascinating to me is the way information can be assembled.

Astrology is a form of divination, of attempting to discern and translate the messages of the heavens, using the zodiac as a sort of dictionary (or map, or mandala). This places it in a particular category regarding how one arrives at the truth, in contrast to other disciplines such as mathematics, science and history; each of which treats data in different ways.