Numerous small wars (can any war ever be small ?) are already raging around the world, yet not one has hit home and threatened mainland America. The tragic terrorist bombing in Oklahoma came close, yet America seems to have recovered and begun moving right along, business as usual. Bosnia may strike closer still.
As Saturn transits into Aries (April 8th, 1996 through June 9th, 1998) America enters the Saturn Return of the Viet Nam War (Saturn last entered Aries Mar. 4, 1967 through April 29, 1969). Coincidentally enough, the Viet Nam War commemorated the Saturn Return of World War II, when Saturn previously entered Aries between April 26, 1937 and March 20, 1940. It is also important to note that a war does not automatically erupt every time Saturn enters Aries yet, it seems the Aries archetype must find some consensual collective expression every twenty-nine years or so if only to fulfill its purpose.
What is the purpose and intention behind the Aries archetype ? If consensus consciousness -- and this is part of what Saturn symbolizes, collectively -- is in need of a war at this time, then precisely what kind of war is worth fighting for ? Do we have a choice in the matter ? I think so.
I wish to confront a difficult fact and my troubled reactions around this fact. I do not want literal war; this is not a pro-war essay. Who can deny that war has consistently ravaged human history with racial genocide, cultural destruction and pointless suffering ? Some hope exists in the well-known futility of nuclear warfare, coupled with enough advanced information technologies to jump-start collective intelligence, communications and social conscience. In this essay, I wish to demystify the Aries archetype by confessing the human necessity for conflict, aggression and dominion. I also think it's time people explored more imaginative ways of doing this than the boring old literalist patterns of dominating, controlling and killing each other.
Controlling Turf is an Aries Thing
Historically, war has been fought over territory and lest we forget, there are many, many types of turf people have been fighting and dying for. War has been waged over land, money, oil, ideologies, love, technology, slavery, power, and just about anything we believe is ours to own and control. Whether you are a third-world nation or a member of a street gang or a jetsetting CEO, you are fighting for some kind of turf to assure your survival in a certain way. I think this dynamic process of turf-control is self-defining and can be effectively symbolized by the archetype of Aries.
Look at any astrology chart to that house cusp ruled by Aries and you can ascertain where that individual (or whatever that chart is drawn up for) must fight for and control a specific territory (the house Aries rules) as a process of self-definition. Aries Rising must fight for the self-control to actualize themselves. Second house Aries must take charge of their resources to secure their lives. Third house Aries must learn to control their communication processes to articulate their ideas. Aries at the nadir must command the space where they dwell to nurture their souls. Fifth house Aries must single-handedly steer their passions to live creatively; and so on. Aries in the houses represents where the impulse to assert ourselves seeks its most direct expression and where, ultimately, we can find an outlet for that singular human need to control space, or territory.
My theory continues by suggesting that if we are not busy exercising turf-control where Aries rules, we may flail about trying to control areas of our lives and the lives of others we have no business controlling whatsoever. Like any theory, this must be tested throughout numerous charts to ascertain its value as an actual technique. (I've been using it as a technique for years but don't believe me just because I say so; run your own experiments and find out). In the Sagittarius Rising chart of the United States of America, for example, Aries rules the Fifth House. Perhaps the USA might minimize its own pointless control tactics by taking more charge over its in-house creative projects, for example flexing its considerable economic and legislative muscles towards funding indigenous cultural foundations and arts groups. What if the American identity was defined by the force of its cultural and artistic strengths instead of big business interests ?
Info-Warriors and Information Warfare
In any astrological chart, transiting Saturn passes through an area on the verge of a serious integrity test. Imagine a construction crew setting up a work station to check for fractures, leaks and other potential damage on a street corner. In my book, Astrologick, and in my essay The United States of Aquarius (The Mountain Astrologer, January 1994), I've postulated a chart that symbolizes to me the Zeitgeist of this era. It places Uranus conjuncting a 00 degree Aquarius ascendant, that also conjuncts Mars and Mercury in the first house. For this theory, I also suggest an equal house system. Starting April 8th, 1996, transiting Saturn enters this chart's third house instigating a serious reality check to its communication systems. The Aries archetype redefines its fighting turf as the interpretive conceptual mind and the modern battlefield, outright information warfare!
Imagine a global village on the verge of rewiring its central nervous system and you're warming up to the news at hand. Picture people participating more actively in communication technologies and you're watching future history unfold. Visualize, now a post-information age investing more value (higher wages/debit credit) to specialized translations of data and, you're accessing future economic strategies. As information superhighways hyper-saturate with heavy traffic congestion, structural integrity collapses under its own cumbersome mass. Information loses value. "Interpretive vocations" soon emerge distilling the essences of these greater bodies of interpreted data, forming competing meta-structures of commercial wisdom. These "meta-wisdoms" compete for the majority of minds now bereft of any capacity for original and creative thought, real-time actual experience and, its first-hand imaginative interpretation. Free-thinking persons must continue to fight for their consciousness amidst the worldwide information wars of rival ideologies.
Fighting For Your Consciousness
Whether the previous scenario is just another deluded, paranoid conspiracy theory or whether it's paranoid enough to be true right now probably depends more on your available information and how it's interpreted than upon the actual theory itself. In my own thoughts, the concept of "fighting for your individual consciousness" is a damn good metaphor for Saturn's transition from Pisces into Aries where the Piscean undifferentiated unity with all things gives birth to the Arien emergence of a singular direction from that nameless void. The ancient alchemical symbol of the worm Ourboros relates to this Pisces/Aries transition -- the snake eating its own tail -- as the end turning into the beginning and the beginning biting, or holding, its own end. (Read Carl Jung's studies of 16th Century northern European alchemical texts in books such as The Psychology Of The Transference, Princeton press.)
The Aries archetype demands action. Through the structural pressures of the Saturn force, it invariably demands action within a form. From my experience, saturnine "forms" seem almost always connected to responsibilities, obligations, duties, contracts and other formalized processes. Saturn in Aries would seem to say "it's time for more responsible action." Yet, the key here is self-definition. Just how are you redefining "responsibility" ? Look to where the Aries Saturn transits through your natal chart and where, with the position of your Aries house cusp rulership, you are learning to take more conscious control over your life. As Saturn moves through Aries, social responsibility is redefined by how each individual controls the turf of their own processes, that is, which houses and aspects ?
After Saturn in Pisces, we exit a time of Piscean passivity which saw a certain commitment to immaterial, spiritual values of compassion and boundary loss. With Saturn in Aries, the collective enters a two and a half year "selfish" period where responsible action from the individual level can more effectively shape consensus reality at large. It is now imperative that we, as individuals, reassert our place in the collective scheme of things. Saturn Returns often reflect past errors in judgment, or "mistakes" that can be corrected given our integrity for confessing those errors and reapproaching the problem more competently. How ready are we to learn from what happened thirty years ago and, thirty years before that ? Time will tell...
Define Yourself or be Defined
The taboos of one archetype can fuel the actions of another. Generally speaking, the Piscean tendencies to avoid conflict by retreating from aggression, or to display dominating behavior are natural to Pisces' innate movement towards greater openness and unification. The Pisces Rising person, for example, who has become overly persona-identified (the Rising sign symbolizes persona) may feel more psychological discomfort around conflict and aggression than, let's say, an Aries Rising person who might revel in its self-defining action. One person's heaven is another person's hell.
Yet, the Aries archetype exists within everyone as much as the deeper instincts for aggression, territoriality and confrontation exist as legitimate behavior for any animal fighting for its survival. Although these more forceful "martial" reactions may fail to maintain the "politically and spiritually correct" tone set by the collective sensitization established by Saturn's passage through Pisces, they posit an honest phase of a larger, ongoing evolution. The key, once again, is self-definition. In precisely which areas does a given individual find justifiable expression for conflict, aggression and dominion ? Once more, look to natal Aries. To fully realize this process of self-definition, the individual must make his or her choices in this area and follow through on them; that alone conveys the message of Saturn in Aries.
If you are not addressing a true source of conflict within you, it invariably projects itself onto relationships or the work you do or in more family or money problems. Where Aries rules is where you may actually need conflict, aggression and dominion to define yourself. What I mean by "dominion" is any process of single-handedly commanding a given territory by determining its direction in the choices you make and by the integrity of your follow-through there. In other words, dominion is where and how you are in complete control. Since nobody (not even God) can be in complete control of everything all the time, we might learn some proportion by discovering one area in our lives over which we not only can exercise complete dominion but which demands it. Without this kind of self-knowledge, our territorial instincts run amok and become misguided attempts at controlling the uncontrollable.
Antero Alli is a practicing astrologer, author (Astrologick, Angel Tech, All Rites Reversed, Letters/Essays/Premonitions) and independent filmmaker who used to live in Seattle before moving to San Francisco. You can send him E-Mail at anteros@speakeasy.org or visit his website at: http://www.paratheatrical com/
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