the-astrology-book

Lucina
Lehman, J. Lee. The Ultimate Asteroid Book. West
Chester, PA: Whitford Press, 1988.
Schwartz, Jacob. Asteroid Name Encyclopedia. St.
Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 1995.
LUCINA
Lucina, asteroid 146 (the 146th asteroid to be
discovered, on June 8, 1875), is approximately
140 kilometers in diameter and has an orbital
period of 4.4 years. It was named after the
Roman goddess of childbirth and the travails of
women, who was the daughter of Jupiter and
Juno. In addition to indicating something about
one’s children, Lucina’s position by sign and
house shows where one “gives birth” to various
activities or ideas.
An image of the planetary goddess Luna, the moon, from
a fifteenth-century German calendar. Reproduced by
permission of Fortean Picture Library.
Sources:
Kowal, Charles T. Asteroids: Their Nature and Utilization.
Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Ellis Horwood
Limited, 1988.
Room, Adrian. Dictionary of Astronomical Names.
London: Routledge, 1988.
Schwartz, Jacob. Asteroid Name Encyclopedia. St.
Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 1995.
LUMINARIES
Traditionally, the Sun and the Moon were referred to as the luminaries because, in
contrast to the planets, they “lit up” the Earth. The majority of contemporary
astrologers have ceased to use the term, in spite of its pleasant connotations.
LUNA
Luna is the Roman name for the Moon, and the root of the adjective lunar. Due to the
increasingly eccentric behavior that insane people exhibit during the full moon, the
Moon became linked with insanity—hence the terms lunatic and lunacy.
LUNAR MANSIONS
The lunar mansions are a kind of lunar zodiac, constituted by dividing the Moon’s orbital
path into 27 or 28 segments. Twenty-seven or twenty-eight roughly corresponds to the
number of days the Moon takes to complete its orbit (28 is a day short of a synodic period
and a day longer than a sidereal month). The Arabs, the Hindus, and the Chinese all
devised systems of lunar mansions, termed, respectively, the manzils (from lunar mansion is
probably derived), nakshatras, and sieu. Traditionally, these included interpretations of the
[418] THE ASTROLOGY BOOK