TNO Watch- Sappho

Photo by Arianna

Artemis writes:

Yeah yeah yeah, Helios, make the lesbian write the TNO on the asteroid Sappho!  Like that’s not cliche or anything?  Eh whatever.  It’s best to write from a place of experience, no?  Well, Sappho is actually a really friggin cool asteroid that talks just as much about a person’s poetic and romantic expression as their sexual expression.

Here is why you should get to know her (and don’t lie, dudes, we all know you’re interested in this one):

THE ASTRONOMY- Dancing around the sun midway between Mars and Jupiter in our solar system’s lovely Asteroid Belt, Sappho takes 1,271.350 days to complete her orbit.  This means she muses around each Zodiac sign for about 3 months.   She is 83 Km (52 miles) in diameter and was discovered by Norman Robert Pogson on March 2, 1864, rapturously floating through Taurus (of course).  She was obviously taking in various Venusean delights, singing her poetry, playing her lyre, flipping through tumblr images and probably indulging in some vegan chocolates.

THE MYTH- So, anyway,  Sappho was known as one of the greatest poets of ancient Greece.   Dionysius of Halicarnassus called her poetry enchanting in its musical quality.  It was so melodic that even when spoken it sounded as if sung.

So, what did she write about?

Primarily angsty poetry about love, of course (must be a thing in lesbian genetics, I swear).  She especially enjoyed to sing about unrequited love and hot women (*le sigh*, who can blame her?!).  Alexandrian’s placed her on the list of 9 great lyric poets, and she was quite the celebrity during her time.  A few historians have attempted to hetero her up with male sea captain companions, but these assertions have been found to be historically incorrect.  No one can just let a hot lesbian be a hot lesbian, can they?  Her contemporary Alcaeus describes her as, "Violet-haired, pure, honey-smiling Sappho.”  In other words, she was probably pretty sexy.   She was exiled from her Lesbian shores for a while for unknown reasons, and was believed to have come back in her old age and live out the remainder of her life there.  Very few fragments of her writing remain for us today, but her notoriety in antiquity has been noted by many historians.

Sappho was dubbed a "school mistress" by the Victorians.  This claim is also inaccurate.  Instead of being a teacher, Sappho had something far better going on; a sacred following of women.  These artistic, spiritual, free loving women formed a group where "membership in the circle seems to have been voluntary, irregular and to some degree international." (Anne Pippen Burnett)  Following lesbian conventions, they were probably all banging each other's exes, but I guess let's not get stereotypical here!

Maximus of Tyre wrote, comparing Sappho to Socrates: “What else could one call the love of the Lesbian woman than the Socratic art of love? For they seem to me to have practiced love after their own fashion, she the love of women, he of boys. For they said they loved many, and were captivated by all things beautiful. What Alcibiades and Charmides and Phaedrus were to him, Gyrinna and Atthis and Anactoria were to her ...”

THE ASTROLOGY- Sappho in your chart indicates whether you have an abundance of that sultry poetic romanticism in your life (no matter the sex of the person's chart).  Do you see the world through a poet's eyes?  Do you find yourself attracted to the beauty of romance?   Do you fall hard when you fall in love?  People with strong aspects regarding Sappho are also very ardent women's rights activists; they crave the sexual freedom that all women should possess and will refuse to take a back seat in relationships.  Sappho is also an indicator of  an individual who has a way with words, and (if aspected correctly) can indicate a talent for singing and dance.

Strong aspects with Mars, Venus, Psyche, Uranus or Eros in one's chart may indicate homosexuality in an individual.  If she is strongly placed in Libra or Aquarius (or the 5th and 7th houses), one can also expect Sapphic tendencies.

In short, she is indicative of a poetic soul, how that poetic soul is expressed, and can be a strong indicator of female homosexuality if placed prevalently or aspected heavily in a woman's chart.

To find out where she shows up in your chart, go to astro.com, put in your birth details and in the extended options, all the way at the bottom, there will be a menu of additional objects.  Under that is a blank space where you can enter the number 80, for Sappho.  Once you have it entered, generate the chart!  Where does Sappho affect your life?