In 1973, an astrologer by the name of Eleanor Bach published a book titled Ephemerides of the Asteroids: Ceres, Pallas, Juno, Vesta, 1900-2000, motivating astrologers to begin adding these four bodies to their charts along with the Sun, Moon, and planets. Four years later, an astronomer named Charles Kowal discovered an object orbiting between Saturn and Uranus. Named Chiron by its discoverer, it was neither an asteroid nor a planet, and is now known to belong to a group of similar objects, known as Centaurs, that orbit the Sun between Jupiter and Neptune. Finally, Demetra George’s book Asteroid Goddesses, inspired by Bach’s work, was published in 1986 and is still in print.
Over the years that followed, as more and more objects were discovered by astronomers, they were duly named…