Astraea is another ex-planet. I wrote already about three ex-planets (Pallas, Vesta, Pluto-Charon) here, but there are altogether six celestial objects in the solar system, that have lost the “status” of a planet. Some odd laws, like those of Illinois or New Mexico, show that people care indeed about the “status” of a planet. Although this is odd enough, it is also reason enough to request that the other ex-planets mustn’t be treated differently than Pluto-Charon. So I’m going to make articles for them too. Here is already the article for Astraea, the least thrilling of the ex-planets. Astraea is asteroid #5 and was discovered in 1845 and back then counted as the solar system’s twelfth planet.

This ex-planet is named after a character, that shall be a goddess from Greek mythology, but the Roman Ovid seems to be the first, who knew her name. Hence Ovid must be suspected to have invented Astraea. She’s the goddess of the Golden Age, also of justice or of the law of the Golden Age. Deities in charge of justice are usually quite grim because the people, who told the tales, wanted to spread the impression that nobody will escape divine justice. But Astraea is a beautiful version of a justice goddess. She represents the laws of a time, when all people kept the laws and they were really good laws and hence everything and everybody thrived and prospered. But humans became corrupt and didn’t keep Astraea’s laws anymore, so the humans consequently fell into the Silver Age. The corruption spread and the humans fell further and further down. When Astraea was still respected had the gods lived in the middle of the humans, but when Astraea was no longer respected had the gods no wish to share the miseries, which the humans would bring upon themselves. The gods were able to foresee the miseries. Nothing else than some common sense was necessary in order to foresee the miseries. So the gods left the humans. Only Astraea expected that the humans would understand their mistakes and correct them. So Astraea moved only from the city center to the rim. Other gods tried to persuade Astraea to follow them, but she stayed close to the humans because she did still believe in them. But the humans disappointed her and fell into the Bronze Age. Astraea had already to fear that she could get personally hurt. So she moved into a mountain range, far away from human settlements, but close enough to show to the humans that she would return as soon as the humans would again respect her. The other gods tried again to persuade her to live with them and give up on those humans. But Astraea had still some expectations in the humans. After a while the humans changed indeed, but only to become more corrupt and to disappoint Astraea more. They fell into the Iron Age, went at wars against everybody. The Iron Age humans even went out into the mountain range in order to kill Astraea. So Astraea could no longer live in denial and left in order to live with the other goddesses and gods.

Greek mythology inserts a Heroic Age between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. Sometimes the Bronze Age is hence called the First Bronze Age in order to make a better distinction from the historic bronze age. Greek mythology ends the Silver Age, the Bronze Age, and the Heroic Age by deluges, which are sent from Zeus. These are all differences from Ovid’s version. The Iron Age is in all cases included for connecting mythological times with documented history.

Astraea in the horoscope is said to represent clinging or a point, where you can’t let go. But I can’t confirm this! The Astraea in my own natal chart seems to indicate nothing like this. It would also be a quite small set of meanings for an ex-planet? Although Astraea is an ex-planet, she’s often not included in horoscopes, which want to show important asteroids or are pretending to show the main asteroids. She seems to have no big impact. Although Astraea is a main asteroid. Can Astraea nevertheless be excluded from the important asteroids? This would tell us that the “status” of a celestial object isn’t important at all. Astraea is such a boring Main Belt Asteroid that she’s almost featureless. She’s the stereotype of an asteroid. Perhaps this makes her important. Perhaps she’s important because she fell in “status” together with four other asteroids. That reduced the number of planets in the solar system by five, from thirteen (because Neptune was meanwhile discovered) to eight. It’s an interesting parallel that those astrologers, who include asteroids, ignore Astraea, while the humans in mythology also ignored Astraea. She did never seem to be worth some research? It’s also noteworthy that Astraea is the ex-planet, that had the “status” of a planet the shortest time! So it seems to me that Astraea is rather an indicating a point, that uses to be overlooked and ignored.