Vindemiatrix in the birth chart: the grape-gatherer star

Star data

sefstars catalogue, Swiss Ephemeris 2.10.03.

Vindemiatrix is a star in the wing of Virgo, and its Latin name means "the grape-gatherer". In the tropical zodiac it stands early in Libra, just past the first third of the sign. Its main astrological point is the nature Ptolemy gave it, Saturn and Mercury, one of the most sober formulas among the bright stars.

In the sky

Vindemiatrix is a yellow giant of spectral class G8: a star that has left the main sequence, swollen to a large size and has a cooler surface than the Sun. It lies about 108 light-years away, the distance given by the parallax measured by the Gaia space telescope.

The star lies about 16° north of the ecliptic. The Moon never strays more than a little over five degrees from the ecliptic, so it can never pass in front of Vindemiatrix. For chart work this means that a conjunction with it by longitude is a projection: planet and star share a zodiac degree, but in the sky there is a clear gap between them. For stars like this some astrologers also look at parans.

Finding it from Ukraine

Vindemiatrix is a star of spring evenings. It stands highest at midnight in early April, and in May it is high in the south once the sky gets dark. The easiest guides are three bright stars of the spring sky: orange Arcturus, Spica, and Denebola, the tail of Leo. Vindemiatrix lies roughly in the middle of the three, about 20° from each, and almost due north of Spica.

From the latitude of Kyiv it climbs to about 50° above the southern horizon at its highest. It is only of the third magnitude, so it is easy to lose in city light, but from the countryside it is plain to see.

The name

Vindemiatrix is Latin for "she who gathers the grapes". The name took this form in the Alfonsine Tables, and from there, according to the star-name historian Richard Hinckley Allen, it passed into modern lists. Earlier Latin writers used Vindemitor or Vindemiator: Columella, Ovid and Pliny all call the star so, and Vitruvius has Provindemiator. The Greek name Protrygeter, used by Ptolemy and Plutarch, carries the same idea; in a line of Aratus's Phainomena that Allen reports as considered doubtful, it is rendered as the "Fruit-plucking Herald".

The calendar explains the name. Allen writes that the star was called the grape-gatherer because it rose in the morning, just before the Sun, shortly before the vintage. He also cites an objection from the Century Cyclopedia: around 2100 BC, when the zodiac seems to have been formed, that rising came too late for the vintage, so the tradition may be older than the zodiac itself. The International Astronomical Union approved Vindemiatrix as the star's official name in 2016.

Other peoples gave it quite different names. Allen records a Mesopotamian title that may have belonged to it, which he translates as "the Star Man of Fire", and a Chinese one meaning "the Second General". Arab astronomers simply translated the classical name, calling the star Muqdim al-Qitaf.

Nature according to Ptolemy

In the first book of the Tetrabiblos Ptolemy describes the stars of Virgo part by part, and he names this one separately: "the bright star in the northern wing, called Vindemiator", has an effect like that of Saturn and Mercury. Its neighbour Spica, in the same list, has the nature of Venus with some Mars, a striking contrast between two stars of one constellation.

Saturn stands for limits, caution, long effort and a sense of weight. Mercury stands for calculation, speech, craft, accounts and trade. Together they describe a sober, critical mind, inclined to notice errors and losses before gains. Read through this pair, the star suggests thoroughness and the patience to see a task through, and on its harder side a habit of dwelling on what went wrong.

After Ptolemy

Vindemiatrix is not one of Agrippa's fifteen Behenian stars. The clearest later witness to its reputation is again Allen, who notes briefly that in astrology it was a mischief-making star.

In Ptolemy's time the star still stood in Virgo, around the middle of the sign. It crossed into Libra towards the end of the thirteenth century, so medieval tables still place it in Virgo, while every newer reference puts it in Libra. The change of sign does not alter its nature: the sign only shows where the star now sits on the zodiac circle.

Conjunctions with planets and angles

Vindemiatrix is used by conjunction, with an orb of about 1°. It is fainter than the first-magnitude stars, so it carries less weight in a chart. Two typical cases:

• Vindemiatrix with Mercury. A star that is itself half Mercury strengthens the planet's themes, and Saturn makes them more restrained: attention to detail, critical reading, writing that is checked and checked again. The Saturn side of the pair also points to the other face of the same trait, a habit of judging oneself and others too harshly.
• Vindemiatrix on the Ascendant. On the angle that describes manner and first impressions, astrologers read the star's tone as seriousness and reserve that show at once. How far this goes depends on the condition of the Ascendant's ruler and on the rest of the chart.

In celebrity charts

Conjunctions within 1° to the planets from the Sun to Saturn and to the chart angles.

• Jin: Jupiter, orb 0°20′
• Jerry Heil: Mercury, orb 0°27′
• Benjamin Netanyahu: Mercury, orb 0°29′

Find fixed stars in your chart