Astraea

The Seba library treats Astraea in 5 passages, across 4 authors (including Liz Greene, Place, Robert M., Kerényi, Karl).

In the library 5 passages

The constellation of the maiden was identified by the Greeks with the goddess Astraea (or Dike), who represents the principle of justice. According to Hesiod, she was the daughter of Zeus. Once she lived on earth, during the Golden Age when there was no strife or bloodshed among men.

Greene establishes Astraea as the mythological identity of the Virgo constellation, grounding the sign’s archetypal character in the principle of justice and the loss of the Golden Age.

Liz Greene, The Astrology of Fate, 1984thesis

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It would seem to be Dike or her Roman counterpart, Astraea, who is depicted as Justice in the Tarot. Although Medieval Christians did not officially worship ancient goddesses, because of the influence of allegorical stories like the fifth-cen

Place identifies Astraea as the probable prototype for the Justice card in the Tarot, tracing her iconographic lineage through Dike to the Platonic virtue tradition and into medieval allegorical imagery.

Place, Robert M., The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, 2005thesis

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The goddess Astraea also possesses something of this quality of discriminating judgement, although as we have seen it lies in a different sphere; but it is my experience that both Virgo and Libra share a similar sense of outrage at the breaking of the rules.

Greene distinguishes Astraea’s discriminating judgement from Libra’s projected idealism, positioning the goddess as the archetypal root of Virgo’s interior moral sensibility.

Liz Greene, The Astrology of Fate, 1984supporting

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This was Astraios, “the Starry One”, whose name I mentioned as that of a son of the strong goddess Eurybia and of the Titan Krios. It is expressly said of him that he was “the ancient father of the stars”.

Kerenyi contextualizes the stellar lineage from which Astraea derives, identifying Astraios as the primordial father of the stars and locating the justice-goddess within a broader cosmic genealogy.

Kerényi, Karl, The Gods of the Greeks, 1951supporting

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