Mullo is asteroid #5164 and also known as 1984 WE1. Mullo was discovered by the French astronomer Christian Pollas at the Observatoire du Calern. Mullo’s orbit is characterized by a semi-major axis of 3.69 Astronomical Units, an eccentricity of 0.50, a period of revolution of 2 594 days, and an inclination of 19.3 degrees. So Mullo needs more than seven years to orbit once around the Sun and hence belongs to a very distal section of the Asteroid Main Belt! There it belongs to the group Cybele, that consists of asteroids in a 7:4 orbital resonance with Jupiter.

Mullo is named after a Celtic god. Mullo is known from inscriptions only, eleven of them altogether. They were all found in what is nowadays France, mainly in Brittany and Normandy. Everything else on this Celtic god is speculation! He is believed to be a god of healing, especially in cases of eye disease, but also to be a variant of the Roman Mars because the word Mullo is used as an attribute of Mars in an inscription. Mullo could be an adopted Mars and only be pronounced differently, but there is no hint that Mullo would have had presided over any of the subjects, over which Mars presides.

Different etymologies were proposed for the name Mullo. The Latin word mulus means mule, so Mullo got associated with horses and mules. The Irish word mul as well as the Latin word cumulus both mean hill. So Mullo got associated with hills too. The Romany (language of the gypsies) word mullo means an undead person or vampire. There are no hints, which could back up any of such associations.

The only real hint is an inscription referring to a cult and a shrine, which existed for Mullo. People with afflictions visited the shrine. Especially people with eye afflictions prayed there for healing. So Mullo must be the Celtic god of healing. A connection with Mars is strange because Mars isn’t known as a god of healing, but as the Roman god of war. Mars on the other hand presides over sports and physical training too. So maybe there is a connection regarding the prevention of afflictions. Hence prevention of afflictions is what I propose as a working hypothesis for the astrological interpretation of Mullo.