Aries 14°

(For last year’s meditation on the Sabian Symbol for this degree: click here)

Another excerpt from something of ours…

The goal is to get those cardinal-fire sparks flying. The 1^st Cosmic Energy is outward and directive. And as we’ll see in the third section of this chapter, it is possible to consciously focus this energy and move it around. Indeed, 1^st energy is one which you can see manifest in a real way. Chi masters have long been able to direct (this) their energy, even igniting fires through shooting this force from their fingertips. Now, we are certainly not expecting our readers to put the Bic lighter company out of business—although one should never say never—but in the practice of consciously moving this 1^st, very physical, energy around one is actually also developing the mental muscle it takes not only to connect with a deeper sense of purpose but to feel fearless in the face of the challenges necessary to bring desired circumstance about. Taken together the first house, Aries and Mars rule the head, the blood, the muscles and the adrenals that control fight or flight. The Ram obviously fights with his head. We are born headfirst. Metaphorically speaking, the 1^st energy is about diving headlong into experience without second-guessing. Of course we can be too headstrong and brash and rash and not look before we leap. But the 1^st energy cannot, by nature, be concerned with such cautions—other energies work with the 1^st energy to keep it in check. For now we are only concerned with getting you to plunge into life, head first, as if there is nothing to stop you. Psst, hey, psst: There isn’t!

Mars also rules the active libido and the 1^st Cosmic Energy fuels our lust of all kinds. An expression of the masculine principle, it powers our sex drive in contrast to our ability to attract, which is controlled by the 2^nd Cosmic Energy, one of allure. When we are properly suffused with 1^st energy, we come to pursue love and sexual bonds, or defend ourselves against them, from a primal place. We embody our most basic animal urges and our noblest romantic intentions. That means we don’t put our loves on untouchable pedestals, satisfying our so-called needs with those whom we don’t offer respect. A more prevalent problem that many might think. But the 1^st Cosmic Energy cuts to the quick of divisive personal issues such as this. Just as it re-pairs all such dichotomies between what you truly want and what you have been led to believe you deserve. It also solves the morality problems associated with these dualities. That is to say many of us think that certain natural urges within us are disgusting, the proverbial devil’s work. And certainly not something to be expressed with, say, this perfect pristine mate that you have managed to land despite these natural proclivities. Well, there’s nothing like repression to make prurient mountains out of molehills. Meanwhile that perfect being sharing your life might like a little of that action you’re keeping under wraps. And so the story goes…

Copyright 2016 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Aries 13°

(For last year’s meditation on the Sabian Symbol for this degree: click here)

Another excerpt which name-checks William’s Wordsworth, who couldn’t have been more aptly named, and whose birthday it is today by synchronicity.

 In closer consideration of the cardinal-fire nature of the 1^st Cosmic Energy: The element of fire is symbolic of spirit or life force while the cardinal quality is primary, essential, initiatory—the spark of our spirit. Yet the 1^st energy is based firmly in the physical experience. (The first three signs/houses comprise the zodiac’s first Quadrant, that of the physical level of human experience—the ensuing three relating to the emotional, mental and so-called spiritual planes. Aries and the first house point to the blood, guts, muscle and sinew of the body and objective, aggressive, action. Taurus and the second house are associated with the senses and subjective responses. Dual Gemini and the third house relate to the nervous system, output and input, a combination of those two forces which precede it on the cosmic wheel.) Anyway, if you’ve been reading our meaning, thus far, you’ve already gleaned that, vis a vis Arien 1^st energy, that emphasis on the body and the spirit isn’t a contradiction, but rather points to a singular truth about life: that the physical, tangible level of existence is inherently transcendent, spiritual and indeed miraculous, as we’ll see. It is from the 12^th Cosmic Energy associated with the sign of Pisces, that of mutable-water, expressing the most misty mystic nature of existence, that this 1^st Cosmic Energy is born. The zodiac is, despite our traditional two-dimensional way of viewing it, an infinitely dynamic spiral, not a flat and static circle. The twelfth house of the zodiac is that of non-material existence. Mutable water points to the literally dissolute state outside of time and space. The opposite-facing fish of Pisces portray yin and yang, the alpha and the omega, the womb-tomb from whence we come and to which we must return. Fishy, tadpole-y Pisces represents the real and metaphorical primordial soup or embryonic environment from which physical human life miraculously bursts forth in all its bloody, violent Arien splendor. But let us for a moment consider that there is but One essential Cosmic Energy, not many, which morphs into various manifestations that we can best discern as having twelve distinct forms. Out of the most immaterial, “spiritual” form evolves the most material, blood-and-guts one, such seemingly opposite energies being so organically able to emerge, one from another. So from the vaguest primeval bog of the 12^th comes the 1^st Cosmic Energy, one of sharpest individual self-distinction, “But trailing clouds of glory do we come.”[1]

What we are urged to do and to be should be characterized as an expression of that glory. Let’s revisit our mythical common ancestor for whom navel-gazing was an impossibility. What Adam wants is the same as what creation wants. And we, as creatures, all possess the potential to be that simply aligned. We just need to mete out which urges are actually those of all existence working through us. Certainly, if you have the impulse to drown kittens that’s not one we would consider your birthright to act upon. Most of us do find, if not bemoan the fact, however, that our first instincts are typically our best. The enormity of that truth cannot be overstated. For many people it is a use-it-or-lose-it situation. What strong instincts we have must be acted upon lest we squander our talents or resources. The good news is that, as George Eliot put it, “it is indeed never too late to become the you you might’ve been,” despite anxiety-producing cautions not to, say, Blink, (by Malcolm Gladwell, whose own first instinct, apparently, was to parrot Emerson’s Self Reliance.) In truth, after a lifetime of compromise, it can be a challenge to trigger in our minds exactly what that original yen was that once served as the seed of what was to become the overall theme of our life purpose. And this is what 1^st Energy work is determined to do. In our private practice guiding individuals to reclaim their birthright(s) we have found that this is actually best achieved by re-activating a person’s physical life. Which, we find, nine times out of ten, is also in some state of atrophy. Either that that or the role that physical exercise plays in ones life isn’t all that healthful on closer examination.

Copyright 2016 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

[1] From William Wordworth’s poem Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, the title of which perfectly encapsulates the particular thrust of 1^st Cosmic Energy.

Aries 12°

(For last year’s meditation on the Sabian Symbol for this degree: click here)

Another excerpt:

This chief Aries cardinal-fire power is our primal impetus to life, our purpose. Here we reclaim our freedom from outside influences, distractions or detractors. This energy of singularity urges us to approach life as if we were, each of us, the only person on the planet, thus entitled to take from existence what we want, on our own terms, without apology or second guessing. This premier cosmic energy is focused on our basic raison d’être, our initial aim, design and inalienable determination, with which we often lose touch on our path through life. So many of us ask ourselves, what is the point?, what the ef am I doing here? Well, accessing the 1^st Cosmic Energy allows you to discover, indeed reclaim, those answers for yourself. Cardinal-fire denotes the flame of our own individuality, our unquenchable fire that nobody can snuff. Easy for Adam and Lilith, as sole terrestrial inhabitants, who refused to even live with one another—sexually, and otherwise, they each demanded the top position. But the rest of us live in a world of innumerable relationships, where we constantly come up against others’ opinions and agendas. Which explains why Adam and Lilith’s counterparts in classical mythological are the war gods, Mars and Athena. These armed deities are even more vivid personifications of the 1^st energy. They embody the individual offensive (fight) and defensive (flight) manifestation of this energy in human form. Adam and Lilith, too, may well have evolved into war gods if they were likewise thrust into a pantheon of such divine egoists as the Greek and Roman gods. (These gods were originally worshipped locally, monotheistically, by clannish cults before being slammed all together.) So why are we delving into all this myth stuff anyway? Because: These figures embody archetypes that live within us all. They are the humanized forms of cosmic energy to which we can relate more personally, making our connection to this energy less abstract.

Our potent yet under-appreciated mandala, the Zodiac, symbolically rich and steeped in archetype, provides us easy, organic access to these prototypical personas upon which we may imprint in our efforts to channel each of the twelve cosmic energies. The primo sign of Aries, associated with the 1^st Cosmic Energy, is indeed ruled by Mars, named for the aggressive and often bratty god of war whom the Greeks, no big surprise, called Ares. He was, also fittingly, the first-born male offspring of the Olympian gods just as his slightly older sister the war goddess, wise Athena, was the first female progeny, emerging from her father’s head, the body part governed by the sign of Aries. We all must suit up in their armor and grab hold of their spears to fearlessly stake out our individual fulfillment. Mars and Athena were likely hunter gods to begin with, taking on warrior status once their individual cults locked horns with neighboring clans. Hunting is an act of survival and of competition, both elements applying to the war field as well. The gender difference in these gods points to pure “masculine” aggression and prudent “feminine” defense and diplomacy. Both these aspects must in fact be channeled by all of us, despite our sex, although Athena’s archetypal nature is more valuable to females in general, just as Mars’ is more applicable to males. We see the Mars archetype echoing in popular culture from GI Joe to Gladiator, Superman to Ironman, just as Athena’s incarnations include Xena the Warrior Princess and even Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Copyright 2016 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Aries 11°

(For last year’s meditation on the Sabian Symbol for this degree: click here)

Some more excerpting:

The first astrological house, as an umbrella covering a number of related attributes, is still most often distinguished as the house of Self. This speaks volumes. So many enclaves of society, not to mention those organized religions, though they entertain the notion of selfhood, regard it as something that must obey and conform to the collective in its myriad manifestations. The pitfalls of selfishness are forever being pointed out, while missing the point entirely: That true selfishness is actually the most selfless of acts. The more independent we are the less we need rely on others, self-concern, even a surplus of it, staving off pesky imposition on our fellow earthlings. This is a good example, incidentally, of the brand of singularity-thinking that we all must get our brains around in courting the 1st Cosmic Energy—that is, that some thing or notion and its opposite are essentially the same, more than paradoxically, one. Let’s take this astrological first-house concept of selfhood a wee bit further.

Think of Adam and—we won’t say Eve, but rather Adam’s first wife—Lilith. (Yes, Eve was wifey mach two, as shall be revealed in her archetypal influence over the 2^nd Cosmic Energy, detailed in the next chapter). Adam, as we know, had total carte blanche. White (blanche) symbolizes both a clean slate and essential goodness. Along with red, for blood, it is the color associated with the 1^st energy and Aries. Its planet, Mars, rules the blood, which, of course, is made up of white and red cells. The name Adam (Adamah) actually means bloody clay. The stuff of which we creatures are made. The 1^st Cosmic Energy is focused on what is, both literally and figuratively, in our blood. It is concerned with our essential, primal selves. It seeks to fully form and fortify us in the face of the infinite influences. Those that can cause us to forget who we are, unadulterated and unabridged, and what we truly want, without extraneous voices in our heads. And as we grow in life, this energy powers our ability to continually wipe the slate clean of all such externals, so that we can always know our own mind. The 1^st Cosmic Energy sees who we are and what we want as one and the same.

Adam, our model-A man, imposed his will freely. He was empowered to name all he surveyed. Doing so is an act of creation, logos (not Grease) being “the word.” Life was what he made it, or, more accurately, how he called it, without any concern for conflicting ideas or derision. Adam, alone, comes up against no obstacles. Likewise Lilith. They cannot stay together because they each need that carte blanche. Essentially, so do we all. Genesis, the opening chapter of the proverbial good book in which Adam appears, is, like the first house of the zodiac, a mirroring of the first chapter of every individual’s life. And whether you are a closed book or an open one, this must remain the beginning of your story—intact, to revisit again and again. Or else, as many of us can sadly attest to doing, we all too easily lose the rest of the plot. The Arien first house is associated with the age-span of human life from birth to age seven. This a time when we are the subject of every sentence as yet unstrung together in our own minds. Everything else, including other people, are objects for our own use, pleasure, comfort and other innumerable purposes that fall under the heading of our own survival. Thriving is our singular aim. What we often fail to realize as we “grow” is that this should remain the case. It seems that, while we do need to negotiate other aspects of life, neatly catalogued by the ensuing eleven energies, we tend to lose our grasp on this premier one. Cosmically, you might say, so many of us all too easily throw our selves under the bus as a result of others’, and life’s, demands of us. The upshot being that none of the subsequent eleven cosmic energies can properly take hold in our life unless we maintain our connection with this primary force. Think of the 1^st Cosmic Energy as the hard drive of our being upon which all the other energies, like so many software programs, run.

Copyright 2016 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

(For last year’s meditation on the Sabian Symbol for this degree:  click here)

An excerpt from something I wrote sort of recently

The 1^st Cosmic Energy is that of our basic being. Here we focus on our originality, in every sense of the word. This energy is funneled through the first astrological house, and is associated with the sign of Aries and it’s ruling planet Mars. It is the Arien energy of cardinal-fire. Cardinal is initiating and fire represents spirit. So the 1^st Cosmic Energy is our initial individual spark of life, just as it points to the universal notion of Genesis or the Big Bang, these levels of interpretation being non-mutually exclusive. We’ll get deeper into this later but: just as the 1^st Cosmic Energy is that of individuality in human terms, so too is it one of singularity, in the abstract. Meaning that the notion of multiplicity or metaphysical “levels” is anathema to its particular power. For example, it doesn’t distinguish between physical and spiritual existence. Stick a pin in that. For now, suffice to say that cardinal-fire points to both our biological animation and to the ember of divinity within us, at the same time.

Indeed, Cosmic intelligence discerns no real difference between the two, despite what most western religions would have you believe. The idea that, from the moment we’re born, we are somehow separate from the divine experience, now just mere mortals, who will someday (at our death, no less—right, cheers, thanks a lot) reunite with our divine creator runs counter to what the zodiac tells us. This notion is particularly at odds with the 1^st Cosmic Energy, which animates each of us as divine creatures who take the form we do. And bids us to continue to be thus animated, forever becoming our own best creation. Such that, to ye olde biblical line, “we are all made in god’s image”, we would hasten to add, “that we see for ourselves.” For, from where we sit, who we are, and what we want, is one and the same with the proverbial Divine Plan. Our particular spark, our basic purpose(s) must simply be remembered, a word that etymologically implies a need to reconnect something that’s been severed or, shall we say, absentmindedly left untied until it can become—anagrams!—united.

Copyright 2016 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Aries 9°
(For last year’s meditation on the Sabian Symbol for this degree: click here

)

Aries is the sign of new beginnings. And it’s always helpful to think in those terms when we enter that sign each year. Questing is an energy that befits the warrior spirit of the sign. The brutal energy of the war god Mars, namesake of the sign’s planet, is refined through the feminine aspect of Athena, into vigilant figures like the knights of medieval legend. Whereas Arthur is a (Leo) King, Lancelot du Lac is an Aries figure, emerging from the Lady of the Lake, as the sign of Aries emerges from the watery sign of Pisces, of which that lady is an archetype. The pure aggression of the war god is channeled through vigilance in to a purifying factory, the fire of being. Lancelot is single-minded, as we all might be in the roles we feel we are born to—Aries rules birth and, by extension, that which is our birth right. What, however, is Lancelot’s one fatal flaw? Libido. Lust. Love.

Mars rules the male libido and the animus—the so-called masculine—sex drive in women. The warring spirit and the sexual urge in men come from the same testicular source. Aggression is aggression and the analogous connection between love and war is age old. The “spear” of Aries is both the literal instrument of war and the little soldier standing at attention below the belt, something that can unfortunately be used as a weapon in war wherein soldiers would kill the the men with spears and rape the women. Seriously analogous. But this pure aggression and beastly nature can be channeled into something noble as we see in the abstemious character of Lancelot who forgoes all pleasure, remaining, holding vigil. He puts his entire self in service to the large good. Like Superman. In fact Lancelot du Lac exhibits superpowers in a medieval context—he is a godlike figure so long as he keeps channeling that Mars ruled energy and libido into noble pursuits of serving land and liege. The moment he falls for Guiniviere all is lost. The lust is not only his personal undoing but that of the entire civilization of Camelot. You might say you lose Camelot if you came alot. Ba-dum-bum. Sorry.

Copyright 2016 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Aries 8°

(For last year’s meditation on the Sabian Symbol for this degree: click here)

As mentioned, the Aries governing planet Mars rules the blood which is the most essential part of ourselves. This befits the sign’s native association with the first astrological house of Self. I think of Aries first house as our nature, before any nurture; what it is in our blood to be and do. In our work with clients this is an essential element of the process: to help people connect to that which they pinpoint as their original purpose, before life’s influences and influencers creeped in. “Starsky and Cox, changing the world, one creep at a time.” The first house rules our first impressions, a notion that has many intricate meanings. Primarily I like to interpret this as what impression we feel we are foremost meant to make on the world. We come into the world head first—or we should do—and Aries rules the head, hit home by the headlong Ram, with its might antlers, as the sign’s symbol. The antlers are both for offense as well as defense, but let’s look at the former: What are we impelled to do in this life if we had to say? If we could do but one thing, without anyone preventing us, what would it be? And how much determination do we need to accomplish that or break through the years of barriers opposed on us. For, trust me, embodying purpose is what Aries and the first house is all about. It is our initiation that is most important in so far as it regards our initiative.

We tell clients that it is never to late to be what you are. The motto of this sig is I am, after all. You are what? If you had to say. Before we start rattling off a list of things. I will use myself as an example. I am an actor. That’s the essential part of myself. I work as an astrologer, a counselor, a writer, a producer—I’ve been a journalist, a pr, a sales person, a waiter, an editor, a tv personality, on and on. But I really am an actor and a very good one although I don’t work at it. And I should. So, in that spirit I make a pledge to myself, proof in the putting, practicing what I preach, to pursue that study and career moving forward. One what cannot do is think about results when it comes to the first cosmic energy—cardinal-fire—associated with Aries and the first house. The being is all that matters. The putting of first things first. Expressing one’s truest nature. As a Libra (the opposite sign of Aries), the sign’s motto(s) being a counterpoint to the I am—We are or I balance, both of which point to the being or doing of a number of things, if we read the “We” as a royal one. Meaning Librans, the men especially, tend to be of the Renaissance variety, doing a number of things over the course of their lives, often simultaneously, risking being a jack of all trade and a master of none, a dilletante; while over time (father Time, Saturn is exalted in Libra) they might meet with myriad mastery like the archetype of the sign, Apollo, who is the god of a variety of arts and abstract doings. I say all this to illustrate that, more than any other sign, perhaps, we Librans are challenged when it comes to first-house energies, so unlike Aries people, who are simply the best representations—living illustrations—of that sign’s energy, incarnate. Look to your Aries friends: they are pretty well focused on being one thing, regardless of so-called success or trappings. They tend to develop mastery in one area, seemingly and seamlessly obsessed and driven in a specific direction. And unapologetically so. They are not waiting around for anyone’s approval. And when it comes to the I am, for all of us, we must all take a page from their book.

So what’s in your blood?

Copyright 2016 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Angela Lansbury as Madame Arcati in Noël Coward’s comic play “Blithe Spirit”

Aries 7°

(For last year’s meditation on the Sabian Symbol for this degree: click here)

We were recently interviewed by British Vogue for a forthcoming article. I received a follow-up question today by email— It is my sense that astrology itself goes in cycles of fashion. I think we could identify a high interest point in the 1920s, perhaps? (I think of Madame Arcati and Carl Jung and the dissemination of newspaper horoscopes). And perhaps also in the ‘New Age’ late-1960s. And maybe also – now?

 It inspired more than a sentence worth of response:

Madame Arcati is a character in Blithe Spirit not a real person. And that play debuted in 1941. I think you mean Madame Blavatsky the Theosophist? And that is the spiritualist movement.

Popular astrology (in the form of newspaper horoscopes) began with the birth of Princess Margaret in 1930. And astrology may have become more a thing in the late 1960s but it was during the me-generational 1970s that it really had mainstream popularity in the form of Linda Goodman’s Love Signs, the biggest selling astrology book author until we came along. In the 1970s casting individual birthcharts was as artisinal as it was since the middle ages, where charts were done by hand.

Look, you’re talking different forms of astrology. Real and faddish. The point is that it might have been faddish at various times in the 20th century where astrology enjoyed popularity. But if you’re making a case for it being more popular in those terms now then you have to justify the fact that Vogue and Vanity Fair and other popular magazines, with a certain sophistication, got rid of their astrology columns thinking they were no longer relevant. That would disprove your point.

What the point is is: Astrology is no longer a faddish thing. You have to remember the Quadrivium, curriculum of medieval university systems in which astronomy was one and the same as astrology. All major cathedrals have some Zodiac pattern or reference BECAUSE astrology was seen as evidence of God’s plan and Divine Order.

Back to the future: As Eastern philosophies and religions infiltrate Western thought, they bring their astrologies with them. Yogananda (Autobiography of a Yogi) and the Indian culture he grew out of all espouse astrological systems. What this did was inspire Westerners to look to their own existing astrology and Zodiac (which differs very little from any other Zodiac on the planet). The so-called New Age grew out of a combination of Eastern influences and New Thought philosophies and teachings here in the West, taking hold in the 1980s when Nancy Reagan had an astrologer in the White House. All major leaders through the centuries consulted astrologers, most notably Elizabeth I consulting John Dee; or the Romanovs with their Rasputin.

Carl Jung’s work with archetype is key. Joseph Campbell died with plans to write an astrology book next. People have come to realize that these high minded archetypes that come to us from the world of comparative religion and modern psychology are one and the same with the archetypal principles encoded into the Zodiac. We (and people) are coming to realize, wait a minute: This circular pictograph I’ve been staring at all my life was not just fodder for Peter Maxx drawings and songs in the musical Hair—the Zodiac as we know it dates back to the ancient Chaldeans who might have known a thing or two about a thing or two. So why have we been underestimating this thing and making it a parlor game for the past couple of centuries (which is a short amount of time for it to have been underestimated) in the scheme of its nearly 4000 year-old existence.

So the upshot? We don’t think astrology is experiencing another fad-period of popularity. We think that it is being permanently cemented into modern thought, philosophy, spirituality and culture. We see it as playing an increasingly larger role. We see more psychologists using it working with their patients just as we combine both previously separate schools of practice. People worship god ubiquitously without any proof of the existence of a divine being or beings. While, even from a (pseudo-) scientific perspective, the predictability of the movement of the stars, a documentable cosmic order is not only reassuring to people but it provides a logical basis for trusting the effects of the movements of the celestial bodies. From a scientific standpoint: People understand that the Moon effects not only the tides and women’s menstrual (moon-stral) cycles and that surgeons avoid cutting on full moons because bleeding is increased; so if that tiny orb has an effect on us why wouldn’t giant Jupiter or Venus or Saturn since we are in a SYSTEM with them.

Again science: we know (something the Zodiac seems to have known all along) that physical matter is something of an illusion, that all is energy in various forms of density. As we delve microcosmically we understand that all existence is actually non-material (the message of the all inclusive 12th house of the Zodiac); and so what does that say? It says that we are energy, not to mention that every atom of our being originated in stars. We are stardust IN FACT. We are made up of the same material/energy. And just like I can’t tell you if there is a heaven or a devil or angels or gods or any of that. I can tell you that we have assigned archetypes and personages to express and describe cosmic energies. This is why each of the symbols of the zodiac are packed with myriad myth which are no less allegorical for spiritual and human principles than those spouted by Jesus or other prophets. The entire Jesus myth, which millions of people buy into, all started with three savvy astrologists following the movement of a single star.

I think the trend in culture which is more permanent than a passing fad or fancy is that people, the younger millennials especially, have a more wholistic view of the world in general. They grew up into a world of quantum physics and the internet and fictitious wizarding worlds that intrinsically ring true. They live in a world of unseen forces (which most/all are). And the work of New Thought leaders and Eastern philosophers and gurus and psychologists and spiritualists and yes, astrologers  like us, specifically us, (we have hundreds of thousands of readers with our books in 16 translations worldwide) makes more sense to them than a single religious story and black and white rules of right and wrong. So we make the prediction that astrology is here to stay and will only increase in popularity and meet with unquestionable acceptance because (as you know from reading even our books on general sun-sign astrology) it rings TRUE!

Copyright 2016 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Aries 6°

(For last year’s meditation on the Sabian Symbol for this degree: click here)

As I walked around this frigid Spring day, after so mild a winter and the early appearance of pretty pink and white tree blossoms, now dead with frost, it reminded me of my aborted start to this year’s daily Blague in which I am behind by about ten days. And I thought perhaps it wasn’t just a modern human failing to start something and then immediately exhibit no follow through—or perhaps to start something prematurely, not determined to finish or not gauging the “climate” of one’s own life correctly. In other words, those dead blossoms on frozen tree limbs reminded me of my own failed attempt at a new Spring ritual, similar to, but not the same as, last year’s.

Ironic (said word’s coincidental kinship to the element or iron, ruled by Aries planet Mars, not withstanding) that Aries is the sign of ignition, impetus, impulse, new beginnings, befitting the sign’s own start with the first moment of Spring, each year, on the equinox; because, the fact is, it doesn’t always have stamina to follow through; or it might be so rash that it leaps before it looks and then must take two steps back for its one. This is what is read by the cosmic energy, personified in the war god Mars, brashly running onto battlefields wherein he gets wounded and sent off howling. And yet we need his sense of iniative and his hussle; we just need to harness it, as does his war-goddess, sister, Athena, who is always playing the end game, and to win. She invented the harnass and the bridle both, symbolic of an ability to sustain and steer and strategize, as she does, with here steely eyes and demeanor. She is also the goddess of crafts and all things artisinal—things that require a design and determination—to be steely is to be undistracted, eye on the prize or finished product. But again, there are extenuating circumstances, if not for Athena, then for the rest of us and those poor frozen blossoms.

The image of an early blossom, warmed by promise, burned by the cold, dead on the vine, to me, is like the opposite of withering on one. When we say one is whithering on the vine that is a metaphor for the fact that they mightn’t have made a love match and are now past the usual age, their bloom of youth has gone, they have failed to bear fruit, etc. This being the opposite, an early bloom, blasted by a freeze, rashly venturing forward to be burned by frost would thus carry the opposite metaphoric meaning: One who might have entered into love or lust too early and have paid the price of some form of damage for doing so. As someone who has never withered anywhere, the latter metaphor is more up my alley, so to speak. Rash moves in life are more the more ruinous when we not only haven’t thought them through but we don’t have the wherewithall to do so. If the god Mars/Aries is the spark interpretation of cardinal-fire, then he isn’t much concerned with the follow through—though Aries men might be sexually specific I don’t think they have the staying power of some other signs, although their refractory periods can be almost instantaneous. Lest we forget that Warren Beatty scheduled multiple lovers in one night, this surely wasn’t a recipe for any one of them, perhaps, experiencing multiple orgasms. Unlike sparky Mars, his sister Athena more embodies the metaphoric personification of a polite light, another interpretation of cardinal-fire. It’s there, but you might not see it behind the steely exterior of the stove or one’s eyes. But it’s all the while burning and ready to fuel this or that.

Copyright 2016 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Horned One: Matthew Barney, an Aries, obsessed with his male-distinguishing parts

Aries 5°

(For last year’s meditation on the Sabian Symbol for this degree:  click here)

Aries rules of the ages of birth 0-7 years, literal birth being foremost a bloody fight for life and survival, and, both actually and metaphorically, a quest for meaning and purpose. When we are amusing and suffusing ourselves with Aries energy we are endowing ourselves with the energy of new beginnings, a clean slate. Aries is the cardinal-fire sign, which is characterized as a spark, our ignition. That god Mars (Greek: Ares) namesake of the sign’s ruling planet, most embodies that sparky, initiating spirit of the sign—he is the war god, armed for the bloody fight of life, adrenaline fueled and headstrong like the sign’s emblem, the ram. He is that fight instinct in all of us, pure energy, or rather, energy incarnate—these are what the muscles are. They are the part of us that provide evidence of our being wo/men of action, in whom fight (and indeed flight) are possible—we lose muscle mass when we are inactive. We don’t cease to exist, we just get fat and flabby. But life is evidenced in the bloody lean meat of our very being. Mars, the red planet, rules the blood and also the element of iron which is what makes our blood red. We might imagine that the ancient Sumerians assigned Mars the rulership of iron because it created weaponry that befitted an archetypal landscape of war; but it is a mystery how they might have linked this to the red in our blood. And it is certainly a mystery, it can’t just be a 3500 year-old lucky guess, that we discovered the red planet of Mars not to be “fiery” but frozen and only red-colored due to it being rusted with iron. Such mysteries don’t weird me out. They are just part of a larger cosmic joke on us: That the Zodiac and astrology aren’t just some pretty pictures made for our amusement, they contain secrets encoded from the origins of existence, at least the (super-)human kind.

Speaking of superhumans, Superman is one of the modern archetypes of Aries. (We will talk about Ironman another time.) In a recent post celebrating the birthday of Aries Warren Beatty, someone quoted Carly Simon’s recounting her love affair with that womanizing Hollywood god. She termed him a Superman in the sack, which I don’t doubt. He is known to have had a habitually hard-on, bedding a number of women in any given night, and known to have thousands of female conquests, many of them the most famous leading ladies in Tinseltown. This could only describe an Aries man. He is indefatigable in this regard. The same was said of (and by) Aries Marlon Brando—that he couldn’t help spreading his seed everywhere, all the time. That he was eternally unfaithful—while Shirley Maclaine said of her brother: “he couldn’t commit to dinner.” Cardinal-fire, that spark of life, right? Well what sparks life but the male-principled sperm. Before he was a wargod in the Hellenic pantheon, Ares was a male fertility god, the proverbial horned one—the Ram’s antlers are not just his warring weapon, they will determine dominance which translates as the right to reproduce with the female population. Aries men, like their archetypal godhead, wear the mantle of assumption that they are the alpha, and comport themselves as such. But remember people of a certain sign are simply the best representation, example, personification we have of that sign’s archetypal energy, which lives in all of us.

Aries is the natural ruler of the first astrological house, whose motto is I am. The first house not only rules the physical body but embodiment (of the cardinal-fire that burns within all of us). What I’m trying to say is that: When it comes to who you are, akin to what you want(ed) to be (when you grew up), this is where we need that self-evident, alpha energy. Mars and Athena’s station as war gods isn’t just about competition, it’s about winning hands down, stopping at nothing to achieve the campaign of being yourself. The second we second-guess or make apologies or compromises or but (our own inner) baby in a box, we are already setting ourselves up to lose. We don’t have to warriors in all aspects of life, but we mustn’t be anything but when it comes to the battle for selfhood.

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