Aster Tattoo Meaning

The star, love, patience, and rays of light from a single point.

The aster is the star-flower — its very name the Greek word for 'star,' its radiating petals like rays of light spreading from a single point, the earthly echo of the stars, blooming at summer's end with meanings of love, patience, and the late beauty that closes the season. To carry the aster is to carry the star, love, and patience — the flower whose rays spread like starlight from a single center, the earthbound star of love and patience, the late bloom that arrives at summer's end and finds it beautiful.

In Greek myth the aster was born of the tears of the star-goddess Astraea — and its very existence is bound to a longing for the stars. According to the legend, Astraea (associated with the stars and the constellation Virgo, the last of the immortals to leave the earth) looked down from the heavens upon the dark earth and wept to see that, while the night sky above was filled with stars, the earth below had none — no stars graced the ground beneath her. Where her tears fell upon the earth, the asters sprang up: star-shaped flowers blooming across the ground, the earthly answer to the heavenly stars.

The aster is thus the earthly form of the star — the flower grown from a goddess's grief at the starless earth, the consolation for a world that longed for stars of its own. The asters scattered across fields and meadows became the stars of the earth, blooming where the goddess wept, giving the ground its own constellations. The aster carries this beautiful origin: the star-flower born of longing, the bit of the heavens brought down to bloom upon the earth. The Greek aster is the star-flower born of Astraea's tears for the starless earth. The Greek aster is the tears of Astraea — born where the star-goddess, weeping from the heavens to see the night sky full of stars but the earth below with none, let her tears fall upon the ground, springing up as star-shaped flowers, the earthly form of the star and the consolation for a starless world, the bit of heaven brought down to bloom upon the earth.

Aster (from Greek aster, star) is named for the daisy-like flower's radiating ray petals, which create a star-pattern around a central disc. In Greek myth, asters grew from the tears of the star-goddess Astraea who, after Zeus had placed her in the heavens as the constellation Virgo, wept for the earth below and her tears became star-flowers wherever they fell. Asters bloom in late summer through autumn — September and October — making them one of the last wildflowers of the season in temperate climates, and associates them symbolically with the qualities of autumn: depth, reflection, the beauty of things approaching their end. The aster is the September birth flower and in Victorian flower language carried meanings of patience, elegance, and the kind of love that deepens rather than burns.

Aster across cultures

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