Alex's Asteroid Astrology

Ixion was a king of ancient Greece, a son of the god Ares, and the first murderer in Greek myth. His story is a complicated one, involving many crimes and infractions of rules, especially of the social contract between hosts and guests. When Ixion married, he refused to pay his father-in-law the agreed-upon bride price, so the latter took matters into his own hands and stole some of Ixion’s horses in compensation.

Outraged, Ixion pretended to accept this, and invited his father-in-law to a sumptuous banquet, but once arrived, Ixion threw him into a bed of burning coals and wood, killing him. The other local kings in Thessaly were appalled by Ixion’s act against his own kin, and drove him from his kingdom to wander in the wilderness, where he went mad.

Zeus took pity on him and invited him to Olympus for rehabilitation, but once there, Ixion conceived an overriding passion for Zeus’ wife, Hera. Zeus, suspecting this, fashioned a cloud in the likeness of Hera, which Ixion raped and impregnated, fathering the deformed monster Centauros, ancestor of the race of centaurs. Furious at this act of disrespect, Zeus expelled Ixion from Olympus, ordering him bound to a fiery, rotating wheel in the heavens, where he was forced to eternally utter the phrase, “you should be grateful to your benefactor.” The name Ixion was given to a TNO (Trans-Neptunian Object) from the Kuiper Belt region of the solar system, near Pluto.

Astrologically, Ixion represents ingratitude; the violation of social norms of conduct; being offered a second chance, only to waste it; betrayal; and murder, often prominent in the charts of murderers or homicides.