The Archaic Feminine

By Andrea Michelle Kennedy

This article is a primer for how the three main feminine asteroids Juno, Vesta and Pallas Athena plus dwarf planets Ceres and Eris contribute to a vital and holistic reclamation of feminine wisdom~gnosis through the 19month Venus Cycle.

The Archaic Feminine
 Source: Julija Simas

Introduction

This article is a primer for how the three main feminine asteroids Juno, Vesta and Pallas Athena plus dwarf planets Ceres and Eris contribute to a vital and holistic reclamation of feminine wisdom~gnosis. The 19 month Venus cycle is the backdrop and the “field” or intelligent matrix for this synergy between Venus and these goddesses.

All of the feminine dwarf planets and asteroids can be viewed as facets or fractals through which aspects of our feminine (#1) nature manifests, and I focus on the main four, plus Eris, as their combined characteristics cover a wide swath of the feminine psyche (when I speak of the Feminine I am referring to a primal force in all genders, like the Masculine). If we entertain the planet Venus as our general feminine wiring (for each of us by Her sign, house and aspects in our chart), then the unique Venus phase in which we were born within Her 19 month heliacal (Sun) cycle is the enlivened holographic field of creative intelligence and potential our feminine is wired to flourish and be nurtured within to discover and live Her-our fullest embodied feminine.

The following will go into more details around the benefits of a heliacal orientation in the chart as well as the main qualities of the aforementioned feminine asteroids and dwarves and how they accentuate the themes of the 13 phases of the Venus cycle in support of our feminine evolution.

How It All Began

The Venus Cycle

I met Adam Gainsburg in the Fall of 2012 at the Washington State Astrological Association where he was offering a workshop on the insights regarding the Venus-Sun cycle based on his just-released book (#2). My encounter with Adam’s work was deeply synchronistic, laying the groundwork for personal transformation and my professional work as an astrologer. Only a few months earlier, a powerful experience while in retreat when Venus crossed the face of the Sun simultaneously awakened a reckoning and broke open a seed of remembering my Soul’s Desire that continues to unfold.

I always consider heliacal cycles in my professional astrology work (for individuals or small groups), and have found clients extremely receptive to the holistic portrait they evoke and often confirm in themselves.

The Feminine Asteroids

Although there are numerous bodies in the asteroid belt, my primary focus has been on Ceres, Juno, Vesta and Pallas Athena, plus Eris. The main four are the first discovered by astronomers in the early 1800’s, with Eris’ discovery in 2005.

From a geocentric viewpoint, Venus can only get as far as 48 degrees elongation from the Sun (a semisquare aspect), whereas the asteroids can form the same aspects with the Sun as Mars and the outers by virtue of their position within the solar system between the personal planets (Mercury-Venus-Mars) and the social planets (Jupiter-Saturn). (#3) I term these inter-psychic midwives the Archaic Feminine (#4) because this greater reach emphasizes the all-encompassing nature of the feminine principle and Her/Our desire for connection and inherent interdependence.

They are here to disrupt business-as-usual and erupt the deeper current of feminine wisdom and gnosis that our modern culture overlooks at best and has morphed into the toxic feminine, at worst. We’ve metaphorically placed an iron maiden on the feminine by confining Her import to our values, our relationship style, what we attract, our aesthetic and our resources. All this is certainly true, AND– the essence of Sophia or wisdom has been drained from the feminine (as represented by Venus astrologically) over the eons by all but a very few who have kept feminine wisdom sacred and alive. In this light, the Archaic Feminine redefines our interpsychic borders, inviting conversation and connection between formerly compartmentalized dimensions of our Being. As we welcome their support within our psychic terrain, they stretch our personal desires and wants beyond a narrower framework of self-improvement and social relevance back into our primal instinct to live in joyful attunement and reciprocity with all sentient life: human and more-than-human alike. The resulting increase in psychic biodiversity enhances our Safety and experience of true Belonging.

Re-Vitalizing Our Astrology

Before we continue, let’s step back and consider why we might work with helical cycles (any planet’s dance from conjunction to conjunction with the Sun). The Sun is the central cohering force of our solar system - our very own local star that imbues us with the necessary light and lifeforce to grow and thrive and flourish along with all sentient life on our abundant planet Earth.

In the natal chart, the Sun is the cohering factor of the psyche; it represents our already-always enlightened, awakened, vital, powerful, whole and loving true nature in potential. Everything in our solar system is a holon of the psyche designed to uniquely receive, amplify and embody specific qualities held by our Solar nature. As the organizing principal, the Sun provides a unifying influence and clarity of purpose for the individual, perennially inviting each facet of the psyche to be in service to interpsychic cohesion through development of diversity and interdependence. The Sun needs the inhabitants of its system to manifest and embody its fullest potential of Love~Wisdom~Purpose. Each of us is invited - in our unique timing and way - to integrate the multivalent aspects of our psyche as differentiated manifestations of our unique solar Love~Wisdom~Purpose.

For this reason, working with a planet’s relationship with the Sun by elongation, declination, latitude and through mapping the planet’s mutable relationship with the Sun through its heliacal cycle seems fundamental to embodying that planet’s fullest potential. Centering on the Sun as our primary reference or refuge empowers healthy inter- and intrapsychic relationships, relieving deep patterns of isolation and strengthening the bonds of interconnection, safety and belonging as well as purpose, within and without.

The Venus-Sun Cycle + The Archaic Feminine

The Archaic Feminine
 Source: Image used with permission from Adam Gainsburg

Above is Adam’s map of the 13 Phases along with the goddesses' placements commensurate with their amplification and support of the wisdom potential of each phase.

Before we delve into the attributes of the goddesses, below is a brief overview of what Adam Gainsburg calls Sky Factors: observable sky phenomena whose organically shifting relational dynamics create distinct fields of experience (the phases), with one Sky Factor as the marker for the shift from one phase to another (#5). The Phases are sub-themes that individually and collectively support the cycle’s main objective. In the case of Venus, it’s evolving our Collective Feminine through a multivalent experience of the sign consciousness sustaining and motivating the entire cycle (marked by the sign in which Venus’ interior conjunction with the Sun takes place).

Some Sky Factors are:

1. APPEARANCE: Venus before sunrise or in the west after sunset;
2. SPEED: Venus slow and increasing in speed; slow and decreasing; fast and speeding up; fast and slowing down
3. VISIBILITY: Venus dim and dimming; dim and brightening; bright and brightening; bright and dimming; not visible at all (invisible)
4. EARTH PROXIMITY/FIELD EFFECT: Venus far from Earth and retreating farther; far and moving closer; farthest (superior conjunction); closest (interior conjunction); close and coming closer; close and moving farther
5. ELONGATION: the distance between Venus and the Sun measured by zodiacal longitude
6. ORIENTATION: Venus moving in direct or backward motion (retrograde)

This shifting interplay stirs our aliveness as we allow the alchemy of Venus + Sun to work its magic; it’s where we’re invited into a greater dance of Being-Becoming, opening to increased wonder, receptivity, creativity, fullness and joy.

The Archaic Feminine

Unlike Venus, with the exception of Vesta under the right conditions, none of the goddesses are visible to the naked eye. This is one hallmark of their shared Love~Wisdom~Purpose: to strengthen a palpable connection with the mystery/Source from which we come - that we need not “see it to believe it.” An overreliance on our masculine faculties of intellect and rationality and an obsession with certainty has made our masculine threadbare and brittle, diminishing our capacity for humility, nuance, awe, and access to our bodies’ subtler somatic language underneath our reactive nervous system. This imbalance isolates us from our primal rootedness and belonging, manifesting outwardly in our estrangement with the Earth and each other. Opening the channels of communication with our Archaic Feminine avails us to the source of healing and wholing, restoring the balance between our masculine and feminine in the process.

Below is what’s on offer from the Archaic Feminine when we choose to consciously invite Her into relationship:

Vesta is devoted to purifying the accumulated thoughtforms that dilute and dampen connection with the timeless, vital and integrative lifeforce of the Sun;

Pallas Athena channels the alchemical nature of the Sun to reunite mind-heart-gut intelligences - this ‘alliance’ is the basis of authentic feminine power;

Juno is the wisdom of interdependence and feminine sovereignty arising from deep intimacy/union with the Solar force, resulting in balanced, respectful relationships with other humans, with our multidimensionality, and the other beings with whom we share space on this planet;

Ceres (#6) is a force of natural cycles, timing, and the human initiatory mysteries of death-rebirth which, when undertaken, root the Sun’s generative power more deeply within our human form. Ceres cultivates the humility to remember humanity’s place within the greater web of life among the elements and our more-than-human kin, where we naturally feel most deeply resourced and where human culture has/can find inspiration and sustenance;

Eris is the primal drive to live unobstructed by conditioning and manmade laws to embody and act from the powerful self-initiating, self-substantiated, creatively unfettered, and playfully free impulse of the Solar Logos.

Conclusion

Where and how each of these goddesses shows up in our natal chart, along with the attributes of our Venus and Sun sign, will illustrate how the gifts of the Archaic Feminine can be accessed through and as us individually. May this introduction to their synchretic relationship with Venus as our evolving Feminine either spark a curiosity or add fuel to an existing desire in the reader for deeper intimacy with these facets and their workings in our psyche.

Notes:

• 1) Attributes of our feminine nature in women and men include but are not limited to: tending of all kinds of relationships, receptivity, wisdom, nurturance, inner stability, values, aesthetics, diplomacy, harmony, balance, safety, comfort, attraction, magnetism.
• 2) The Light of Venus: Embracing Your Deeper Feminine, Empowering Our Shared Future
• 3) Eris is beyond Pluto in the Kuiper belt and is the exception astronomically, though no less influential psychically
• 4) Etymology of “archaic”: archaic (adj.) 1810, from or by influence of French archaique (1776), ultimately from Greek arkhaikos "old-fashioned," from arkhaios "ancient, old-fashioned, antiquated, primitive," from arkhē "beginning, origin," verbal noun of arkhein "to be the first," hence "to begin" and "to rule"
• 5) For example, the Birth Phase is distinguished by Venus’ first visibility on the eastern horizon before sunrise (known as Heliacal Rise); the Fullness Phase begins when Venus stations direct as a MorningStar; the Wholeness Phase begins at Venus’ maximum elongation from the Sun as an Evening Star; the Transition Phase begins when Venus disappears from visibility as EveningStar over the western horizon. All the phases and more are elaborated upon in The Light of Venus.
• 6) Astrologer Faye Blake-Cossar also ascribes Ceres to epigenetics (epi means ‘beyond’, so epigenetics is a term for environmental factors that can affect gene expression beyond the DNA we inherited from our human ancestors). The human microbiome is designed to mimic and be in conversation with the biome of the Earth (the soil); it’s no wonder, with glyphosate and other environmental pollutants deteriorating gut health, that our intrinsic ability to be in reciprocal ‘conversation’ with our Mother Earth has been compromised. As a modern ruler of Virgo, one of Ceres’ primal functions is maintaining open channels of communication with all life, to ensure coherent co-evolution between humans and Earth.
• Note: Integrating the feminine asteroids with Adam Gainsburg’s Venus Phases in this way is solely my inspiration, and may or may not reflect his views.

Published in: Timelords Magazine, December 2024.

Author: Andrea Michelle Kennedy

In 2012, Venus’ visible passing between Earth and the Sun ignited Andrea Michelle’s “Soul Circuitry” by awakening her devotion to remembering ourselves through marrying sky and earth in our bodies. She made her astrology teaching debut at the second Sky Astrology Conference in 2018 and was most recently a Lunar Guide for Astrology Hub’s Inner Circle in 2022. She offers astrology workshops, courses and classes in service to revitalizing the Sacred in the ordinary, and supports her clients to courageously surrender into living more from their empowered, Soul-steeped Self. Andrea Michelle is passionate about returning to the root of our unique Desire (de sidere, “from the stars”) to open us into the inherent freedom and boundless creativity of the Love We Are.

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