Girl, Uranus does not rule Aquarius
He doesn't even go here?!?!?!
Happy birthday to all my Aquarius friends and readers. My gift to you is this ranting blog post about Saturn, traditional ruler of Aquarius. I think a lot about Saturn, for one thing because I get a lot of clients who need support during Saturn Return or other transits of constraint and limitation. What I bring to you today might slip into inside baseball territory, but I hope for some it will really support their understanding of how astrology can bring us deeper than ever into relationship with God, nature, and ourselves.
So to start, Saturn, not Uranus, is the ruler of the peak winter months. I don’t hold to modern rulerships like Pluto ruling Scorpio or Neptune ruling Pisces. I think it’s asinine, and it actually breaks the pattern recognition of astrology, which is the point of all this study, and not, as some would have you believe, a giant and solipsistic personality test.
We have to consider that astrology and its archetypes are reflections of the wheel of the year (as experienced in the Northern Hemisphere, where this system originates). As life bursts forth from the frozen soil, it’s easy to recognize the element of fire. In the naive courage of baby birds fall-flying out of their nests for the first time, we easily recognize the brave heart of Mars.
The elements fire and air are said to be masculine — not because they grow mustaches, but because they are electric, extroverted, energetic and diurnal. Earth and water are feminine because they are magnetic, introverted, receptive and nocturnal. Passe gendered language aside, all people carry both electric and magnetic, extroverted and introverted traits. So, too, do the planets. We know Mars’ masculine side in Aries, but do we afford him his equally important expression of the feminine warrior in Scorpio? No longer naive, in Scorpio Mars is calculating, resource conscious, strategic (fitting and appropriate for the harvest time of year, no?). Like all esoteric systems, astrology is based on a binary code where polarized opposites find harmony, giving rise to a new, third entity (let’s table the third energy, Creation, for now).
So Mars is seen to have his masculine side in Aries and his feminine side in Scorpio, but what of his polarity partner? Traditional astrologers made sense of complementariness by assigning to each zodiac sign its polarity. And so we see across the wheel from Aries Venus ruling Libra. Venus the goddess of love and beauty is Mars’ perfect match — not his exact opposite, but his exact complement. Where Mars in Aries is sovereign, Venus in Libra is the diplomat, the arbiter of justice. Venus here is upright, extroverted, energetic, because she’s expressing her masculine side in air sign Libra. How differently we see her in Taurus, where she is magnetic, indulgent, introverted, the perfect polarized complement to Mars in Scorpio.
For whatever reason, the dark months are when modern astrologers have chosen to really abandon the geometry of the cosmos mirrored in our Earth matrix. In winter in the Northern Hemisphere, the absence of light is the predominant feature of every person, animal and plant's experience of earth. In winter, our experience is dryness, melancholy, isolation, hibernation. What better planet to rule the peak of this desolation than Saturn, the Time Lord, the faintest, furthest and most remote planet we see. The perfect polarity partner to the luminaries moon and sun, which rule Cancer and Leo.
We understand Saturn best as the ruler of Capricorn, the ambitious, self-serving, hard-working sea-goat. But then, how do we explain Saturnalia (Christmas to the moderns), where Capricorn reveals that Saturn, by virtue of his ambition, hard work and self-centeredness, is afforded the luxury of extreme generosity, of recognizing that the greatest resources are friends and family? This is because Capricorn is the polarity partner of Cancer. Where Cancer is the nurturance of the mother, Capricorn is the nurturance of the crone. Not opposites like repellant sides of a magnet, but dance partners who spin and dip one another, taking turns expressing essentially the same tune.
Aquarius is the masculine side of Capricorn. The Time Lord looks to the collective and asks: does everyone have a role that suits their strengths? How can we bring along even the smallest among us? Uranus could never! We see affinity in Uranus for Aqua. Uranus is the rebel, and Aquarius is a sign very concerned with conformity. Those with sun (identity) in Aquarius, will often come with serious codes for uniqueness, for rebellion and nonconformity. That isn’t because they’re Uranian, it’s because they’re embodying ego (sun) received by Saturn (authority) and that naturally goes against the grain of collectivity or conformity.
Reception, as mentioned above, is a complex enough concept that it really deserves its own blog post. But suffice it to say, reception makes no sense with modern rulerships, and we really need reception to understand the conversations happening between the planets in your birth chart and in transit charts.
Using modern rulership takes away the specificity that makes astrology such a powerful tool for understanding our unconscious mind, our will and motivation, our loves and opps, and the cycles that we are going through in life.
None of this matters if we want to use astrology as a personality test, as so many people today do. This, to me, is spiritual bypassing. The real story of astrology is that it seeks to recognize patterns in the sky and patterns here on Earth. Not just for individuals and their personal evolution, but for the collective. We humans are animals, and we are being called to return to living in harmony with nature. We see the evidence for this call to return everywhere — from how physically and spiritually sick we all are of living through digital avatars, to how quickly and completely we heal through connection to Earth, family, clean water and food, sunlight, and our real life communities. The plants cry out for our attention, the land begs for our good stewardship, and our neighbors cooperation and generosity is, as it was in ancient times, a matter of life and death (this is the case for us in Western North Carolina and LA. If it hasn’t yet been the case for you, simply give it time).
Astrology invites you to take the mundane, material world (seasons of planting, growth harvest, dormancy) and use them as a clear path to the spiritual realm. Astrology is not for atheists. It is for believers in a higher purpose, a soul-ar evolution, a collective ascension. Every constellation in the wheel of the year reaches out its hand for its polarity partner seeking balance.
While this earth matrix is composed of dualistic forces, binary energies naturally seek balance through the creation of a third, stabilizing element. Thus the polarity partner of regal, self- authoritative, lovergirl Leo, which, when out of balance goes so far as to be selfish and deeply alone, reaches for its opposite: community minded, collective-oriented Aquarius, which, when out of balance gets lost in the pressure to conform and intellectualize and is (you guessed it) deeply alone. These forces reach for middle ground and find evolution and the opportunity for transformation. A third way. A child born of complementary opposites, healing the shortcomings and karmic poverties of its parents. This is the evolution of the soul across a lifetime and across thousands of lifetimes.
And this is exactly why I offer astrological analysis grounded in ancient tradition and focused on the work your soul came here to do.