The Wilderness in the Horoscope — Part 2

Kathy — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:05:58 +0000

In a recent post I asserted that there is no clear archetype of nature in the horoscope. I want to take that back, kind of. There are actually several symbols that could be different faces of the nature archetype — for example Mars’s wild instinct and Venus’s sensuousness and the abundance of Jupiter — but I’m going to go out on a limb (ha!) and call out the least “wild” of all archetypes as the horoscope’s fullest embodiment of nature.

Saturn.

In western astrology, Saturn is so often associated with doubt, fear and loathing, but every archetype has its light and shadow, and those associations are really, in my view, just potent bastardizations of Saturn’s good side. For, from the Huber perspective, Saturn is the matrix, the ground, the wellspring of security beneath our feet — the mother, even. (Before you take up arms against the idea of Saturn being the mother, let me assure you I’ll post about that soon enough.)

While Saturn may not imply abundance the way Jupiter does, it is the embodiment of the physical world — the roots, the trunk, the spreading-out of leaves, the slow and steady growth, a sort of integrative ability: the drive to take things into oneself — sun, rain, soil — and to distribute them according to need, in order create a productive system that is greater than the sum of its parts: a tree, a frog, an internally balanced ecosystem, a cohesive and secure family.

Saturn also embodies the arduous, enduring path toward that creation, and the patience of time spooling through the cycles of life, the inevitability of what follows: spring, summer, autumn, winter; pregnancy, birth, growth, death; inspiration, thought, action, results. It is not impetuous or unpredictable, except on the longest of timelines — who but the Divine could have foreseen that butterflies, for instance, would emerge from the Big Bang? — rather, like nature, Saturn is evolutionary, making incremental changes that are rooted in the seeds that have already been sown.

Saturn is, then, the keeper of the gate, the guardian of the rules of how a process must unfold. And though we tend — in our planned and organized society — to associate wilderness with chaos, the reality is that the wilderness depends on rules, on systems, on order for its very survival. If summer did not follow spring, if flowers did not condense into berries, if forest fires did not provide the raw material for regrowth, the wilderness would truly be chaos, and desolate. But humans’ first problem with Saturn is that, in our hands, within the confines of our small egos, Saturn wants to control the rules, the unfolding, of what Clarissa Pinkola Estes calls the Life/Death/Life Nature. We want to decide when it’s time for something to end: a relationship, a project, a life.

If we are conscious and humble and sincere in our motives, we might get that chance. If we are not, Saturn will render our endings for us, through crisis, ugliness and fear. And so Saturn is also the reaper, the symbol of the eventual unfolding, in due time, of what is sown. And here, again, we resist because the rest of the Saturn cycle has been reassuring, safety-making, connective and secure. We get used to the activity of sowing and tending whatever it is we are sowing and tending — a seed, a project, a relationship — forgetting that the seeds we are planting will eventually blossom and fruit with whatever pulse of energy we have poured into them. And when the fruit is ready to be transformed, we buck back. We want to hold the ripe, juicy fruit in our hands forever. But we can’t. It must become food, or it must shrivel and die.

This happens in nature all the time — both the nature without and the nature within. Internally, the transformation process is the ultimate test of authenticity and survival. Saturn seems to trouble us because we don’t want change and in its matrix we believe we will find the safety of changelessness. But we won’t. Because for as much as we astrologers associate Saturn with retrenchment and contraction, it is more about the inevitability of evolution. And if we retrench in the face of inevitability — if we embrace fear instead of the slow tectonic shifts of life’s seasons — then nature, Saturn, will find a way to crowbar us out of the ground beneath our feet. She will throw us into the wilds to find our own deep path toward survival.

Photo credit: Micky

The Wilderness in the Horoscope — Part 1

Kathy — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 23:37:39 +0000

This question has come up, in various forms, during several horoscope readings lately: What is my relationship to the environment? – meaning the natural environment, nature, wildness, wilderness.

I suppose the question is becoming more and more urgent as environmental degradation seeps more deeply and more intractably into our lives — and as people of certain stripes reach ever more desperately for connection to the earth, or to our inner wilds. But it’s a difficult question, not only because there’s no clear archetype of nature herself in the horoscope but because what the horoscope does tell us about nature seems, in my view, to jive with a more imperialist view of humanity’s relationship with the trees and the mountains and the rivers.

What I mean is that my instinctive response to the question is to look at astrological implications of what the chart native can “get” from the natural world. For example, the other day, an avid dog lover with Jupiter in Taurus in the 5th house put the question to me in her own way, and my gut reaction was, “You could probably make a good amount of money breeding dogs.” Besides being a wholly inadequate response, the specific example implies a view that nature is there for our benefit — and that is not my client’s perspective (or mine) at all.

So the question becomes not only how to let go of my own unexpected imperialist view but also, then, to answer a question with a question: What is your intention, or desire, or need with nature? What are you thinking, feeling, or longing for, that seems as yet out of reach? The UK’s Atmosphere, Climate & Environment Information Programme has a wonderful summary of differing perspectives on nature here, describing four basic human attitudes toward the wild:

Stewardship, which holds that humans are part of and must care for the environment.
Imperialism, which holds that humans and nature are separate, and that humans have an inherent right to control nature.
Romanticism, which holds that nature is sacred, akin to God, and must be left alone to its wildness.
Utilitarianism or hedonism, which holds that the purpose of nature is to provide pleasure, comfort and usefulness to humans.

Each of these perspectives will have astrological corollaries through which we can understand more deeply the client’s impulse around nature. However, like any relationship, we cannot look to just one element of the chart to say, “Oh! You’re a hedonist! You want food from that river.” For example, a steward will be resource-conscious while also valuing mutuality. Perhaps she has a strong Venus, a horizontal aspect structure and several planets along the 2/8 axis. An imperialist may have more dominant-submissive features, such as a strong vertical orientation, an intense Pluto and several oppositions. A romantic might be watery and 12th house-oriented, whereas a hedonist may be earthier with a dominant Jupiter.

Then again, maybe not. Because again, like any relationship, the answer will never be as straightforward as a single archetype or element (which, after all, is not a simple thing in and of itself anyway). While we might have overriding tendencies in any relationship — to seek attention, to create stability, to exchange ideas, to control — none of us is exclusively a monolithic impulse. We want all of these things, from each other and from nature, in differing proportions in different relationships at different times in our lives.

And so asking an astrologer, “What is my relationship to the environment?” is a bit like asking her, “What is my relationship with people?” or “with money?” or “with work?” Relationships comprise the whole of the chart; they are a primary expression of Psyche; they engage every intricacy of our brains, our bodies, our souls, so that it is a question worthy of a whole session, or more, to inquire about the wilderness.

And that’s not even considering the wilderness within.

Picture of the Week: Scott Thiessen

Depth Astrology » nature

The Wilderness in the Horoscope — Part 2

The Wilderness in the Horoscope — Part 1