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Vindemiatrix
Vindemiatrix is a modest yellow star of third magnitude in the northern wing of the constellation Virgo. Its Latin name means "the grape-gatherer": in antiquity its first appearance before dawn marked the start of the grape harvest. It is the faintest of the stars Viastaro looks at, and among the most sober in meaning. In astrology it is read as a star of separation and loss, and of the depth and wisdom that can come through them.
In the zodiac
Vindemiatrix now stands at about 10° Libra. Through precession it moves forward about one degree every 72 years, so in a chart from 1950 it sits about a degree earlier, near 9° Libra.
Its nature
Ptolemy gave the bright star in Virgo's northern wing, which he called Vindemiator, the nature of Saturn and Mercury: a serious, thoughtful, cool-headed star. Older writers attached harsh words to it — falsity, disgrace, the loss of a partner — and later authors nicknamed it the "widow-maker". Modern astrologers usually read it far more gently: as a star of endings, partings and sobering experience, where careful thought and maturity grow out of what is hard, and where the harvest it is named for is the one gathered late.
In a chart
Only a close conjunction is usually counted, within about a degree or a degree and a half. With Mercury, Vindemiatrix is often read as a deep, careful, sometimes melancholy mind; with the Sun or the Midheaven, as seriousness and a sense of responsibility in one's work. With Venus or the Moon it tends to describe feelings that run deep and are slow to trust. It colours the point it touches rather than deciding anything: it describes a temperament, not a loss waiting to happen.