Ceres enters Virgo
The asteroid Ceres is currently retrograde, and it leaves Libra on March 22, 2023 to enter Virgo. It will travel backwards to 23* Virgo before stationing direct on May 6 2023, and then re-entering Libra on June 21 to continue her voyage around the zodiac. When retrograde, Ceres brings up issues related to physical health, nutrition, financial abundance, and material assets. We are forced to confront where we are lacking in these areas and how we can overcome these challenges to achieve greater health and wealth. These issues will not fully resolve until she enters 6* of Libra once more on July 15, 2023.
Ceres was the Roman goddess of agriculture and motherhood. She is also sometimes called Demeter, and she is well known for having been the mother of Persephone. The asteroid Ceres represents how we meet our needs to give and receive nurturance and what we need from ourselves and others to feel unconditionally loved. She shows us how we can foster feelings of self-love and self-acceptance, and how we can avoid feelings of self-rejection and criticism. Being the asteroid of agriculture, she describes how we nourish ourselves with food grown in the ground. Her placement shows us how we source, cook, and digest food. She also represents all phases of female sexuality and governs menstruation, pregnancy, and childbirth. She also describes our relationships with our mothers and grandmothers as well as our children - how we are cared for and how we care for others. Childcare is another theme of Ceres.
In Libra, Ceres showed us how we identify nurturing with cooperation and how we nurture others by teaching them how to interact and cooperate as equal partners. Self-acceptance becomes based on how we create harmony and beauty in our environments. Going retrograde in Libra, Ceres shed light on where there are imbalances in your life relating to either a lack of care for others or an unhealthily large preoccupation with the care of others to the detriment of oneself. Balance is the core theme of Libra, and Ceres in Libra asks us to create balance in our relationships as it relates to nurturing.
Retrograding into Virgo, this care for others and oneself expands in scope to also include how we use our skills and talents to take care of ourselves and others and how we can be of service to others by teaching them skills and talents that they can then implement to take care of themselves and others. It also highlights how we sometimes use perfectionism in our diets and professions to make up for a lack of self-love and self-acceptance.
Imbalances in these Libran and Virgoan themes will be emphasized as Ceres retrogrades and then goes direct, and they will resolve themselves on July 15, 2023 when she moves forward into new degrees of Libra. At this point, we can expect ourselves to more easily find balance in our relationships with our mothers, grandmothers, and children, as we will be able to implement the lessons we’ve learned during her time retrograding through Libra and Virgo.
