Lumen is asteroid #141, a big asteroid with a rather eccentric orbit (eccentricity 0.214; inclination 11.877°) within the Asteroid Main Belt. Lumen is named after a book from Nicolas Camille Flammarion, who was a French astronomer, spiritist, and author and lived from 1842 until 1925. He and his work are honored by the names of several other asteroids too.

Lumen means light. Although already the Greek mythology knows many deities of light and together with other mythologies could the different facets of light certainly be treated several times each, the name of this asteroid isn’t from mythology. From the word lumen are several other words derived, which have to do with light too. Such as illuminate or luminescence. Chemical and biological types of luminescence are known at least. The term lumen exists in biology also for describing the side of a hollow organ, which isn’t the side of the tissue. This means a lumen is hidden within a body, hence by most people believed to be internal because it is in the interior and hence can’t be seen, but for the biologist a lumen belongs to the outside because there aren’t the body cells and instead there are often many symbionts. Lumen is also a unit in physics for describing the color temperature of a light. You have to pay attention to the lumen of a led if you are searching for a warm white light and want to avoid a cold white light. All the many possible meanings of lumen hint to the light, which is described by this word for light, coming from a different source than the Sun. Thus this asteroid points out that facets of light are different from facets of the Sun. Lumen represents the light of artificial sources, which make light available also in the deep sea and in dark caverns.

Lumen is another of those asteroids, that caught my attention because of a conjunction with the midheaven in my own natal chart. All the asteroids, that represent facets of light, should support the Sun, that is the source of all light within the Solar System, in revealing what is hidden. This process increases knowledge and as a result reduces fear. Lumen brings light to those dark places, which are protected against direct sunlight. Lumen represents hence a weak light, nevertheless a very useful light. It doesn’t come along with the hazardous effects of the overwhelmingly powerful direct sunlight. But it can reduce fear everywhere and replace it with knowledge. Fear is always due to a lack of knowledge.