A tale of mothering & nutrition in the eyes of astrology and Brit Mikagami.
hunger
A few weeks ago, I was doing my morning rounds of cat and bird feeding when I complained of an intense hunger that needed immediate attention. Although I am generally careful of what I put in my stomach, at that particular moment I was craving for “food” (air quotes necessary) that would greatly upset my caveman ancestors: McDonalds.
Without getting into the details, I obliterated my breakfast meal with an iced coffee like a madwoman on the hallway floor of an apartment building that wasn’t even mine – and that left me absolutely flabbergasted. What the hell was that? Why was I so hungry? I had eaten breakfast before my morning walk as I normally did – and as far as I was concerned, everything was just as it always had been.
An hour after my McDonalds craze, my stomach had gotten upset at my Decision Making Skills and I was in utter agony. I went home, canceled work and moaned in bed like a dying rabid animal. Later, I dragged myself to the kitchen and devoured another meal (this time healthy) while crying at the same time. After which, I went back under the sheets and moaned some more.
It was a bizarre sight I am glad no one witnessed. It was catastrophic and it was lovely.
ceres
Which leads me to mother daughter duo Ceres & Proserpina. You know. Demeter and Persephone. Yeah. We all know that Pluto (Hades) abducts Persephone, right? Did we also know that Hades is Ceres’ brother? So he basically kidnaps his own niece and forces her to be his bride. Myths are fucked man but I guess so is real life. Anyway.
The story goes like this: Hades sees Persephone tralala-ing about in the fields or something when he’s like “yeah, gotta have her for my wife” then ABDUCTS her ‘cuz that’s how Gods do things. For a while, Ceres has no bloody clue where her daughter disappeared to, and in her devastation, famine was invented. Ceres rules crops and harvest (among other things) and with her precious daughter gone, she had no desire to feed Earth.
To cut the long story short, while Persephone is Pluto’s forced prisoner wife queen, humanity is dying cuz famine. Zeus (Jupiter) panics (cuz if humans die, who the fuck will revere him?) and sends Hermes (Mercury) down to demand Persephone back from Hades. Blah blah blah, Hades tricks Persephone into staying, but a peace treaty is made and she can stay with her mother on Earth 6 months of a year (spring & summer) then goes back to Hades to resume her duties as Queen of the Underworld (fall & winter).
Wow. That was an ultra fast gist. But it makes sense, right? When Ceres is happy with her daughter on Earth, there is food and crops, and when she is without, the rest of the world needs to suffer with her.
So. Back to the “normal world”. Ceres is an asteroid and one of the 4 Asteroid Goddesses that Demetra George talks about in her book “The Asteroid Goddesses” – available in fine bookstores everywhere.
Ceres in a birth chart can reveal a myriad of things, and although many astrologers don’t really use the asteroids in their readings, I find them — especially Ceres — to be invaluable. My Ceres placement shows not only what the majority of my personality is like, but the fact I am severely malnourished – physically and emotionally.
beginnings
When I was a little girl, I looked like a porcelain doll. My mother was proud of me and I was the trophy daughter to say the least. Truly, I was perfect: fair with big fat rosy cheeks and I was quiet. Too shy to befriend anyone. Too scared to impose.
Then in 1987 at 4 or 5 years old, I got measles. I had no idea back then, but this would change EVERYTHING. My sickness led me to lose all my baby fat (except for those in my cheeks which remain to this day) and the weight loss revealed a tiny frame that I never recovered from. All throughout my life I could never gain any significant weight, and at 42 years old, I am 82 pounds.
In fact, every time I see a doctor they ask me the same questions: am I on some extreme diet? Am I anorexic? Am I this way by choice?
As a child my favorite things in the world were my mother, my security pillow, and the milk bottle that was prepared for me every morning — even if I should have outgrown it by that age. Everyday I would lie in bed suckling on that precious bottle, happy as a cow. In my mind milk was the most delicious thing in the world.
Until it wasn’t. I woke up one day no longer liking the taste of milk. My frantic parents changed brands, but it didn’t work. It devastated me so much to no longer enjoy the one thing in the world that gave me so much pleasure that I cried for weeks. I was beyond distraught.
That was the time I lost nutrition.
ceres in the chart
As I mentioned, I find Ceres’ role in a natal chart extremely useful and one that is cemented in my must haves at all readings, especially with clients. Her position tells me a lot about the native’s childhood, values, partnership styles and relationship with mother and food.
In traditional astrology, all these were carried by the Moon, but with the recent discoveries of asteroids, Ceres has taken a lot of weight off the Moon’s shoulders and created a dynamic that is soley hers.
Where she is, especially the house and sign and what she aspects are important. As always, I use the Wholesign House system. Astro.com is a free tool you can use to check your Ceres placement under the additional objects tab:
We good? Ok, let’s go.
THE PARENT-CHILD PARADOX
- Desire to be a parent: to nurture, to feed
- Themes of mothering or single parenthood
- Parental structures and the development of a child.
In detriment:
– child will go “why bother” in trying to achieve things
– child will have no self esteem and worth - Unconditional love
- Loss or separation from a loved one: parent, child, relative, lover, friend, situation, job, opportunity
- Fertility issues
- Ceres-Pluto:
– Learning to let go or share ones’ children/pets etc.
– CUSTODY BATTLE over children/pets
– power dynamics - Fears of unrealized hopes and dreams transferred from mother to child
- Rejection, abandonment, GRIEF, suffering, loss, ANGER
- FOOD:
– nourishment
ex. food, money, nurture, love, growth and resources
– lack of nourishment = response to (possible) early sexual violation
ex. eating disorders which include anorexia, bulimia, overeating, comfort eating, body dysmorphia
– food allergies
ex. dairy, gluten, lactose intolerance etc.
– punishment
ex. withholding food as punishment to a child - In relationships:
– passive-aggressive behavior
– difficulty holding a relationship
– attracting toxic partnerships
– separation; long-distance; abandonment
MEDICAL CERES:
- Digestive imbalances
- Gastrointestinal disorders
- Assimilation difficulties
- Eating disorders
All this is a lot, but let me illustrate it better by using myself as an example:
Ok. So. I’ll make this as simple as possible. My Ceres is at 16 degrees in my 12th house. The 12th house is associated to loss, mental health, isolation, hospitals, asylums, retreats, closed enemies, secrets, the place of self-undoing, imprisonments…you get the point.
Ceres is joined by Jupiter, which rules my chart. That alone tells you that my personality is at peace in isolation, but thru particular transits, can go through periods of loss and grief. The zodiac of Scorpio is dark, deep and emotional, also associated to the genitals in medical astrology.
All this suggests that I relate with loss and this is what makes me an effective healer (with Jupiter and Sappho uplifting what is normally a dark place).
If you look at my entire chart further, you will be able to delineate that I lost my family/childhood. I lost my mother. I lost nutrition. I lost food. I lost myself. I lost my mental health. I lost my physical body. And very possibly, I lost my sexual innocence.
And because I lost so much, I am full of yearning. It’s the one thing that keeps me alive.
our daily bread
Speaking of what keeps me alive, my relationship with food has been strange to say the least. As a kid, I was forbidden from leaving the table until I was done with my meal – which proved to be a challenge. Growing up, I felt shame for my poor appetite, guilt tripped about the starving children of Africa and being sermoned that for every grain of rice that I wasted, I was going to spend 1 day in purgatory.
However, things changed when I turned 11 (for hellenistic astrologers, this was my 12th house profection year, activating Ceres in the house of loss).
I went from being bullied at school for weighing half of what everybody else did to without warning, wanting to bulk up because I had a sudden interest in basketball and getting stronger. Good right? Life is funny because, no. At 11, my family went into crisis mode and we didn’t have food, electricity, or money to pay the bills. I’m going to save you all from the boo-hoo narrative that accompanies this part of my life, but going back to food, it was scarce. It was limited.
Ceres had taken the crops back.
a desire for control
By 18 I developed anorexia nervosa. Thanks to my brilliant reasoning of eating liquids (aka melted ice cream) instead of solids, I somehow didn’t die. I was a freshman at college and I had lost any purpose to life by that point. My dream of studying film in New York wasn’t realized and I coped by focusing on the one thing I could control: what I put in my body.
On the week I decided to take anorexia on, Ceres was transiting my Natal Moon in the 2nd house, which also represents my body and what I take in. Interestingly, Pluto is in Retrograde in my first house…which lo and behold, also represents my physical body.
In the process, the list of things I lost included: nutrition, my glorious commercial worthy hair, friendships, the will to go to school and my relationship with family – especially my mother.
I’ve seen Ceres in my clients’ charts come up as using food for comfort to hide. By over consuming food, they get to protect themselves from being seen as sexually desirable – a response to possible sexual violence at an early age.
The same can be said when I see Ceres come up as a vaginal infection (usually with relations to Mars, Pluto, certain houses and Scorpio), or abandonment by the mother (a career driven mother, perhaps with Ceres in Capricorn).
And although I fought the battle with the Pluto that lives within my soul and won, a part of me never fully recovered. Depriving myself and my body of what it needed seemed to be in my blueprint and it has taken decades to decipher what to do with myself and my physical health. It has taken decades to even begin reclaiming myself and what I have lost, and to really start reparenting my inner child.
All this because I have come to the point of being sick and tired of my own trauma. I am sick and tired of retelling the story over and over.
I want to get better. I am investing in getting Ceres back. In getting nutrition and sustenance back. Thank fuck I’m a healer.
take away
Ok, so. What I love about using chart readings during sessions with clients is the straight away access I have to the tales their mouths won’t tell. Using my intuition, I am able to fixate on what part of the chart is screaming for my attention. Many times, my clients don’t even recall certain incidents. Many times, my clients try to hide certain incidents. Many times, my clients just need a little bit of a nudge to start talking. And many times, Ceres gives me a clue on what questions to ask. Many of these questions are uncomfortable. They prod on the psyche, the mother, the body, and many times, the abuse. But many times, my clients feel a sense of relief just discussing something they never thought was important.
But it is important. Ceres tells me it’s important.
So, what are you hungry for? And what feeds your hunger?
off to freak out other random folk,
brit-brit
Leave a Reply