By Dorian Grimault, astrologer · Published · updated
Deianira is an asteroid that modern astrology reads as a mirror to Nessus: where Nessus describes the dynamic of control, Deianira describes the position of the person who undergoes it without seeing it, and the path back to their own discernment. In your AstralPro reports, her name is written Dejanira, with a j: it is the form used in the astronomical catalogue, which the reports keep in every language except Italian, which writes Deianira. Like Nessus, she is read with care, in Shadow side.
Deianira is the daughter of Oeneus, king of Calydon. The river god Achelous asks for her hand; Heracles fights him and wins. On the road to their new life, the centaur Nessus attacks her while crossing a river, and Heracles kills him. As he dies, Nessus entrusts her with his blood as a philtre that will guarantee her husband's love.
Deianira keeps it for years. The day she believes she is losing Heracles to a captive, Iole, she smears a tunic with this blood and sends it to him. The poison consumes him. Realizing what she has done, Deianira takes her own life. Sophocles drew a tragedy from it, The Women of Trachis.
The heart of the myth is not guilt, it is confusion: Deianira acts to protect the bond, with a means handed to her by the one who had attacked her. She believed an outside word rather than her own judgement.
Dejanira was discovered on December 1, 1875 by Alphonse Borrelly, at the Marseille observatory. It is a small asteroid of the main belt, between Mars and Jupiter, with no physical kinship with Nessus: one is a centaur discovered in 1993 at the outer edge of the giant planets, the other a 19th-century asteroid. It is the myth, and the myth alone, that associates them in astrology.
Why Dejanira? Asteroids carry an official name, often Latinized, and AstralPro keeps the names of the celestial points unchanged, with three exceptions in Italian: Éros, Hygiea and the other points are written the same way in every language, but the Italian reports write Psiche for Psyché, Nesso for Nessus and Deianira for Dejanira. The positions table and the text thus carry exactly the same name, which spares you from thinking there is an inconsistency between the two.
AstralPro keeps one formula: dynamic of control undergone within the bond; vigilance and reclaiming personal power. Astrologers who use her read in her misplaced trust, the fear of loss that pushes you to act in a hurry, the difficulty of recognizing what was passed on to you by someone who did not wish you well.
Read this way, Deianira is not a fate: she points to the place where your discernment gains by taking back control over other people's words. The report never makes you a victim and points to no one around you. It describes a possible mechanism and the way to free yourself from it: take your time, check, rely on what you know rather than on what you have been promised.
In Shadow side, Deianira is in dialogue with Lilith, which the rubric also reads. Lilith says what does not bend, what you refuse to give up; Deianira, on the contrary, says what risks bending too quickly before a promise or a fear. Together, the two sketch one and the same question: to whom, and to what, do you entrust your power to decide?
Dejanira shares with Nessus its anchor, the Shadow side rubric of chapter IV, and its instruction of care. With a contact (a major aspect within 2° at most of the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, the Ascendant or the Midheaven), its orb is copied into the “Aspects of the celestial points” sub-grid and the rubric develops it in two or three sentences. Without a contact, it comes out as a position only, with this mention in the table and a single sentence in the text.
When Nessus and Dejanira are present together, each keeps its own sentence: the report does not reconstruct the couple of the myth and does not link the two positions, since no aspect is calculated between two celestial points. And for a person under 18, Dejanira is removed from the report, from the text as well as the table, whatever its contact.
For Camille Morel, AstralPro's sample chart (fictional data), Dejanira sits at 13°39′ Sagittarius, in house 1, without any tight contact: it appears as a position only. Her Nessus is at 11°27′ Scorpio in house 12. Camille's Shadow side therefore mentions both bodies, each in one sentence, one in the hidden sector of the chart, the other in that of the visible personality.
In classical symbolism, Sagittarius in house 1 suggests spontaneous trust, faith in promises and in great impulses: this is precisely where a reading of Deianira invites you to keep your own judgement. Psyché is a neighbour, at 12°30′ Sagittarius in the same house, but the report does not bring the two together: closeness in degrees is not an aspect.
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