Saturn in Aries from the Psychological Perspective

Hey everyone. This is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology [https://nightlightastrology.com/].

Today we are going to take yet another look at Saturn's upcoming entrance into the sign of Aries. This time, we are going to look at it from a psychological perspective. I'm going to be sharing a few of the really poignant thoughts from Liz Green's book called *Saturn, a New Look at an Old Devil*.

There are just a few little pieces of a section of the book dedicated to Saturn in Aries that I'm going to pull from today. And then I have a list of things to watch for in terms of the kinds of experiences we are likely to have, emotionally, psychologically, mentally while Saturn is in Aries over the next couple of years.

I think that this is important to do, to look at a planet from several different paradigms within astrology, the evolutionary paradigm—not that I perfectly represented it in our video yesterday—but looking at it from that standpoint of what is the soul here to learn and how is it going to grow along the timeline of Saturn and Aries.

Today, let's look at the most likely themes that are going to come up, emotionally, psychologically, internally, in terms of this upcoming transit. We did some horoscopes already. So today we'll be looking at Saturn from a psychological perspective.

We'll just be giving you some themes to watch for, and then tomorrow I'm going to be looking at the major transits coming in over the weekend. We've got a Sun trine to Pluto while Mercury and Uranus are conjoining. So we'll round off the week tomorrow by looking at that. Today, a little bit more on Saturn's entrance into Aries.

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So okay, I apologize. My voice is a little hoarse as I'm recording this. I am just back from seeing the Timberwolves clinch the series against the Golden State Warriors here in Minneapolis last night.

So my voice a little hoarse, but that was super fun. That was a—that was super fun. I'd been previously—I've been to what, seven or—no, nine Minnesota sports teams' playoff games, and never seen a win.

So Minnesota will take what we can get. Anyway, so today, let's refresh on the transit. We have been looking at this pretty much all week, of course, because it is a huge thing when any slow-moving outer planet changes signs.

We're looking at Saturn moving into the sign of Aries coming up here on Sunday—day, Saturday into Sunday. So let's put it up on the screen. Here you can see Sunday, May 25, by early morning, Saturn has entered Aries.

It's technically late Saturday night, the 24th into the 25th, depending on your time zone. But we've been looking at this all week from a variety of perspectives, so I hope that you have found the content thus far rewarding and enriching.

I am today going to share just a few little thoughts from Liz Green, who is really the great—I would say, the great master of modern psychological astrology. Without her, so much of modern astrology wouldn't be what it is.

She is a hero to me on an intellectual level, and just someone that I've modeled a lot of my work and practice after. Never met her, never studied under her personally, but I've read her entire library of works.

Have them all in my closet, and I think if you haven't read her, that you ought to, right? So you'll see that occasionally I draw from her texts for inspiration, James Hillman being my other main homie that I often draw on in these presentations.

So anyway, the book today is *Saturn, a New Look at an Old Devil* by Liz Green. Go pick up a copy. You can get it on Amazon. I know for sure it's on Amazon. Maybe there's another place you can pick it up too. But that's the one that comes to my mind right away.

Now, the portion of the book where she takes Saturn through the signs is really interesting. She conflates signs with houses in the way that is typical of modern astrology. Hellenistic astrologers don't do that.

We've discovered, really, since the publication of many of the ancient texts in English language—which happens kind of like the '80s, '90s, progressively—that there was likely a very, very different rationale behind the meaning of the houses than the idea that they take their meaning from the signs.

So all of that is just to say that if you read this text and you're a Hellenistic student, you may notice that the way that houses and signs are talked about, they're conflated. We don't do that in Hellenistic astrology so much.

But there's still so much to learn from this section and from all of her texts that I don't really think it's a big deal anyway. In this section, she says a few things, and I want to do two things today, based on this section and some of the things that she says.

I want to give you three things to watch for, given the psychological nature of Saturn in Aries. Now, often you'll see me go for five. When I was writing up my notes this morning for this presentation, I really felt like these three were the ones I wanted to go with, so three rather than five—just live with it.

Anyway. And then I want—as I go, I want to remind you of the last time that Saturn was in Aries and give you some prompts, or some ideas of how you could look at these themes relative to the last time Saturn was in Aries, if you were around back then.

Some of you who are coming up on your first Saturn Return, or just had one, may not even remember this period of time. It was very vivid for me, because I'm, you know, turning 44 this summer, so I was old enough to have a very rich Saturn in Aries experience the last time around.

So as I go through these themes and through this little—a few little excerpts from Liz Green's book, I'm going to reflect on that period of time in my life and how these themes that she mentioned, mentioned psychologically, were active.

And I'll tell you kind of the prompts that I gave myself as I was writing the talk today that you could use as a way of reflecting upon the last time Saturn was in Aries, if you choose to do so.

So I hope you'll find this meaningful and, you know, useful as always. So actually, before I read the section, I guess it would make sense. Sorry, I was kind of going backward here.

Let's look at the last time Saturn was in Aries. Just, you know, for refresher, I'm going to take everything out of the chart right now, except for Saturn, so that the view is sort of simpler. And let's do that now.

Let's go back to the last time that Saturn was in Aries. Okay, so Saturn was in Aries in 1995—oh, no, no, sorry, we're in Pisces. So what I find so interesting is Saturn moves into Aries in about April of 1996.

As soon as Saturn moves into Aries in 1996, we are in Saturn in Aries territory. Now Saturn goes into Aries and retrogrades, but does not go back into Pisces, as it will this time.

So April of '96 is really the start of the Saturn in Aries journey. And then Saturn stays in the sign of Aries and doesn't enter Taurus until—here we go, back this up just a touch—about June of 1998.

So April '96 to June '98—that's about two years. Now, Saturn's going to enter Taurus, and then Saturn is going to retrograde and dip back into Aries in October of 1998 and does not turn direct again and finally leave until March of 1999.

So you can see how it's about two and a half years if you add it all up. That's typical for Saturn per sign. So that period of time, spring of '96 through maybe spring of '99—looks like it's three years.

Not all of that is Saturn in Aries, but it's a good enough timeline to work with, considering that you're in a process during that whole period that is reflective of the themes we're going to look at today.

So that's the timeline that I looked at to reflect upon these themes in my own life, and I'll tell you kind of what I saw and just the brief arc of my own journey during that time.

And then I would really love to hear from all of you in the comment section today, if you've got a good story to share. This is a great one for a "grab" episode. Tell us about what your Saturn in Aries experience was like last time around in the late '90s there.

Use the hashtag #grab. Say, "Saturn in Aries, '96-'97," whatever it was, and then tell us what you experienced. We'll grab some of those stories and we'll include them in a future storytelling episode.

So all right, let's talk about the psychological Saturn in Aries. These are some few brief ideas from Liz Green to get us started. So Saturn, she says, is considered to be in his fall in Aries.

And from this, one might deduce that this is a difficult position for him, and one which is not easily carried. Possibly the most difficult side of it is the tendency to be cut off from both the flow of outer life and the flow of inner life, so that the individual is stranded in a very small and very arid area of his psyche, difficult to reach and unable to touch the mainspring of purpose and meaning, which would enable him to face the outer world with courage.

But I am inclined to believe that planets in their fall, and Saturn in particular, can offer to the persistent and perceptive person a much greater key to the meaning of the planet, and therefore to the development of in life, of the function which it symbolizes.

I really love that take on planets in their fall. There's a whole rationale from the Hellenistic perspective about planets and their fall and exaltation, the opposites that I won't get into today, but to suffice it to say, you're not just doomed if you have a difficult placement.

Those difficult placements have a kind of archetypal and philosophical rationale behind them, which has to do with the tension between planets. So why is Saturn in its fall in Aries? It really has to do with the placement of Saturn in the sign of the Sun, and the fact that the Sun and Saturn are natural opposites.

So we're placing Saturn, the Lord of Darkness and winter, in the sign of spring and life. And I went through earlier this week the example of what Saturn might order if it were a guest at the B&B of Mars and the Sun.

And then what kind of things do the Sun and Mars provide? And that dynamic shows you exactly why it can be a difficult placement. It's the tension between who Saturn is and what the Sun and Mars as co-hosts of Aries have to provide for Saturn's own nature, the combination of which, as you can see from the exercise we went through earlier this week, can be very difficult.

But that difficulty has value psychologically. It has value on an evolutionary level, which is why we're looking at it from these perspectives as well.

So I like that she says that. Then she says, a planet in its fall must generally struggle in—if the struggle which is careful, if carefully tended, yields insights and eventual expansion of the field of consciousness—that I could not agree with more.

But what are those struggles psychologically that lead to that evolutionary potential? This is particularly true of Saturn, who, when placed in the sign of his fall, is often stripped of the courage and confidence, the natural gifts of the Aryan, which is required to tackle the problems of living head-on.

Yet the thing he wants the most is the joy of being free, of being first, of exploring unknown regions and meeting unknown challenges, and reveling in the innate realization that his existence is guarantee enough of his purpose.

That's—that's a lot. That is a really beautiful passage. In fact, it's the person with Saturn in Aries who, with effort, has the greatest possibility of achieving this kind of freedom.

Saturn may overcompensate with this placement as much as with any other. Consequently, there are usually two distinct kinds of reactions to the struggle between the desire to challenge and experience life to the fullest and the fear of being hurt, dominated, and crushed by the forces of a hostile environment.

The person who eventually perpetually effaces themselves to avoid a struggle and who backs away from those situations which might call for strength, aggressiveness, or direct confrontation, expresses one kind of unconscious Saturnian reaction.

He often has no temper and rarely displays anger. But this can be very hard on the physical body, because the natural tendency toward irritability is turned inward against oneself.

This position is often connected with symptoms of a psychosomatic kind, such as migraine headaches, which are often linked with unexpressed anger and frustration.

The self-effacement of this expression of Saturn is not truly humility, but is rather a fear of entering the fight because of the inner certainty of losing it.

There's often great emphasis on being unselfish, a favorite keynote of Saturn in Aries or in the first house. But to be unselfish, one must first have a self to give away.

And the difficulty with this placement is that in the beginning, until the individual comes to terms with this fear, there is no real acceptance or expression of the self in the first place.

Saturn in the first—or in this case, Aries—often feels that he is never able to have what he wants, that life is forever thwarting his desires. This is largely because he doesn't ask for what he wants, or if they do ask, then it is with the concurrent feeling that they do not actually deserve a reply.

So you can see how much of this has to do with self-worth, confidence, the fear that we're not worthy or capable, or that there's conflicts in front of us that we will lose, and so we may choose self-effacement or diplomacy, or what we think of as peace or humility, when actually they're just ways of avoiding things, confrontations, tests of our mettle somehow that we're afraid to face.

I love that she's mentioning this because this was very true of my experiences in the late '90s, as I reflected upon it. I'll say more about that in a second.

The will and use of the will are often frightening to the individual, because they're afraid of their own will, and consequently projects what they term willfulness or selfishness onto others.

That's fascinating, isn't it? As they come to terms with the shadowy and powerful aspect of their own personality—I guess, of our own, as we're all listening to this.

For the person with Saturn placed here has a powerful and controlled will if they choose to recognize and utilize it. They generally find that along with their frustration, they have also learned control over desire nature has shaped their personality into a disciplined tool.

Although Saturn is in his fall in Aries, Mars is exalted in Capricorn, and the energy is similar with both these positions. The controlled and directed will, coupled with a sense of purpose, is one of the more positive qualities offered by Saturn in Aries.

But we have to cultivate it. We have to build it. That's the point she's making, and that will often involve confronting things that we're afraid of within ourself or with the general direction or use of will or aggression or assertiveness or confidence or competition.

Sometimes those qualities are necessary. Sometimes we have to lean into them, even if we would like to write them off with some kind of moral position, like, well, to be assertive is immoral or something like that.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, the more aggressive manifestation of Saturn in Aries often appears, and this individual may be, at first glance, rarely distinguishable from the truly fiery type of temperament.

No one is more outgoing than they. No one more prepared to take charge or seize control of a situation, either through sheer force or more subtle calculation.

Their philosophy is the best defense is offense. It has not yet occurred to them that it is possible to control oneself without the necessity of controlling everybody else.

So it's interesting to think about the opposite end of the spectrum where Saturn in Aries can bring forth the problems that we have with self-control and a tendency to be domineering or bullying or just too aggressive.

She closes with this: The use of will is something available to every human being, but it grows in proportion to one's self-knowledge and self-mastery.

That might as well be the mantra for this transit. The use of the will is something available to every human being, but it grows in proportion to one's self-knowledge and self-mastery.

I feel, as someone who almost daily studies the *I Ching* and the *Tao Te Ching* and the Taoist philosophical tradition—has been a very meaningful part of my own, you know, kind of private, personal development—that is a teaching that is repeated over and over and over and over again.

Real power, real effectiveness in the world comes through the ability to understand, acknowledge, work with, live with our feelings, our impulses, our will, but to be able to let them be a channel for them, and with some ability to direct them, rather than being governed by them, rather than being completely taken over by these energies and forces that flow through us.

Very like Jedi training, you know. So the person who has achieved a degree of psychic integration is far better equipped to cope with life, because they are generally aware of the purpose of life in a broad sense, and also more aware of the energies which they can utilize from within to carve out a little piece of life for themselves.

Saturn in Aries tends to emphasize the fear of powerlessness because it suggests a clinging to the more superficial features of the personality and a consequent loss of contact with the rich inner person.

Eventually, this fear can prod the individual into a deeper exploration of what they consider to be identity.

So I'll close there—some really cool thoughts from Liz Green. And just to—anytime I read something from another author, it is always with the intention to also promote their work.

So go pick up this book. It's fantastic. I couldn't recommend it more highly. And sometimes I feel like the best content is to point toward the masters.

You know, where have I gotten a lot of my ideas, my learning, my education from? Liz Green, you know, Richard Tarnas, a lot of others, a lot of others too.

But—and you'll be enriched as well if you take some time with Liz Green's work, all of her work, and her webinars and everything else she does.

So now, in terms of the three takeaways that I took from this:

**Number one**, the tendency for Saturn in Aries to present us internally with the feeling that we are cut off from the flow of life, or the energy of life that is creative, potent, powerful, empowering.

That enthusiasm—the word etymologically comes—you break it apart, *en-theos*—the God within. There's a powerful level of freedom and passion and enthusiasm and charisma and spirit when we are in touch with that flow of life, when we feel as though we're an instrument for the expression of life in the cosmos itself.

And to fear being cut off from that, or to feel like someone or something is telling us you're not worthy of being in touch with that force—that's a really difficult theme that comes up with Saturn in Aries.

But it is a theme that is meant to be confronted. It's a theme that's meant to be heroically faced, overcome.

So I was looking back at the late '90s. The month that Saturn entered Aries, my dad gave us the news that we were moving from my beloved small hometown, where I was an integrated member of the social community, from the church that I attended as a preacher's kid, to my school, my grade, my sports teams, my—I was in theater, like, you know, music—like I had a—I had a sense of who I was, and I felt very connected to the flow of life.

I'm a part of the flow of life in this little ecosystem. Now we're moving. Now, of course, Saturn's in my 12th house as a Taurus rising during this time, but it was an immediate sense of being cut away from the flow of life, and being cut away from a sense of—there's this powerful thing called life that's happening, and it has this broad sense of being purposeful.

I wasn't the most popular kid in the world, but I kind of knew who I was and where I was. During the next couple of years, while Saturn was in Aries, I went into an experience of being a loner, of being sort of becoming sort of anti-social, of going through some pretty serious bullying events, and then ultimately—I'll tell you more about the arc of that story.

But if I had to describe how I felt in that first year, especially the first few months, it was—I'm being cut off from everything that makes me feel most free and alive.

I'm suddenly being like a caged animal that can't be free, and there's nothing—you know, if you've—like, we have a puppy right now. Man, does a little puppy coming right into the world not understand crate training right away.

You got to make that crate feel very safe, very comfortable, you know, have them eat their food in the crate, and then they get used to it, and then it's like, okay, this is my little den.

But initially, when you put an animal in a cage, you know, and it's used to freedom, boy, it will completely flip out. So that's why there's a lot of sensitivity around crate training, right?

You ever gone to a rescue shelter, and you see—we've had a number of rescues throughout our life, Ashley and I—throughout our marriage, I should say. When you go see the rescues and you see them and how sad and depressed they are, how their spirit looks like it's been killed.

Animals will chew off their own paws if they're caught in a trap out in the wild. So being cut off from what makes us feel alive, circumstances changing so that suddenly we have to find that connection in what feels like a space of isolation or oppression—that's a hard task.

That's why Saturn is in its fall in Aries. However, could you think of a more heroic setup for a story of transformation?

And I will tell you—these years, although they were easily the hardest in my adolescence—also because of a lot of other things that were happening in my family. There was infidelity, and, you know, it's like my dad was sort of starting down a path of, sort of evolving in his spirituality, but leaving the church, all of which was very confusing for me.

I've written about that very publicly, spoken about publicly before, but there was a feeling that life as I knew it, and what connected me to a feeling of power and purpose—not power as in, I'm powerful, but power as in, there's something enlivening about life.

It's an exciting place to live and be—that that was taken away. And again, the image of a cage kind of comes up, and then the question becomes, how do you find that within this space of oppression or confinement?

And there's lots of ways to do that, but that becomes a really important dynamic. Now, I experienced this mostly psychologically. My basic needs were cared for. I wasn't in any great danger.

The bullying was extreme in some moments, but, you know, I survived, you know. But the underlying current was like, man, I felt like I was in a strong, good flow, and then something comes in and just feels like it's knocking you, trying to knock you off your horse, you know?

So that becomes a really important theme.

**All right, let's move on to number two.** Another thing that will happen with Saturn in Aries is that we feel within us a sense of being disempowered or trapped or stuck, or we feel cut off from that life force energy.

It's as though Saturn sets up this barrier, and on one side is a feeling of flow, freedom, life, power—like spring energy, right? That's Aries and Mars and the Sun.

And on the other side of the wall is a feeling of being trapped, limited, disempowered. And there's this—it feels like a really strong dichotomy.

So what we typically do with that, as Liz Green was outlining, is go to one of two extremes in order to cope with the feeling of not being powerful, creative, free, open, flowing.

We will say to ourselves, well, that's selfish anyway, you know, to be strong or powerful—those are egotistical motivations, not for me. Or the kind of confrontation with our own fears or our own sense of inadequacy, the courage required, the assertiveness required—will say, well, those are pushy, domineering, aggressive qualities, and I think of them as immoral or lacking in virtue, or there's something wrong with those things.

So we can moralize to keep ourselves from the kind of conflict or the kind of confrontation or the kind of what the moment requires, so that we can, in a sense, return to a feeling of life and flow.

So on the other hand, some of us may be learning through Saturn in Aries the lesson of being too aggressive, too assertive, too domineering.

It's as though, for some people—and I'm sure a lot of people listening to this, this won't be you. You know, you're probably all very like gentle, thoughtful people who are not domineering or bullying—but for those who are, the lessons can be pretty harsh.

And by that, I mean, there can be a way that the ego gets checked, and you get this very clear feedback that you're not going to succeed through will and force and power and bullying and domineering and pushing.

You're going to be met with a kind of karmic consequence for that kind of behavior. And that's why you'll often see the rise of sort of like tyrannical figures, as well as the checking of those figures by the force of fate.

You know, not that it's guaranteed that it always works with them, but you will see things like that happening while Saturn is in Aries.

So on the one hand, we don't want to avoid struggle. On the other hand, we don't want to be too aggressive. There's a middle path where we learn to be strong but disciplined.

We learn to be confident and assertive but not egotistical and domineering. And finding that middle line where the flow of life is located—not easy. It requires real work.

And even if most of us are good at that day to day, when Saturn enters Aries, it's time to level up with that.

You know, I think of it sometimes like this. When I was working with Ayahuasca over the years, there would be spaces that would be really, really turbulent.

And in the beginning, it's kind of like, you know, when you're learning to ride a bicycle and you're like, over-correcting, and so you're just swerving back and forth, and then gradually your sensitivity to correcting kind of comes into the center.

And so you're not going so crazy to the left and right, sort of, because you're learning you have to just correct more subtly.

That process was one that really took place for me over, you know, 100-plus ceremonies with Ayahuasca where it was like, how do I handle the turbulence, mentally, emotionally, even physically, in my body, in the way I'm carrying the medicine during a ceremony.

You'd be like, okay, first I'm wildly correcting, and then, of course, that was like, coupled with like, barfing all over, screaming, or like, all the purging, right? Good. It's—it's good.

Those spaces, whether you're doing it meditation or psychedelic or whatever, it doesn't matter. But the point is just that meditation is the same thing, right? You're learning not to correct so wildly.

And then you come into the middle, and then what becomes really cool is, as you get more into the middle, the same kind of wildness exists within a much subtler space, and so it keeps getting refined.

And that, to me, is why it's important to always have a practice of meditation or quiet time in your life, because we're really learning how to be channels.

And part of the way we learn how to be channels is how to let it flow through us. We're sort of guiding it and directing it through us, but we're also just sort of getting out of the way.

And to get out of the way is also a process of learning how to let something not be too afraid or too aggressive, too timid or too assertive.

It's like you're just finding that sweet spot. Saturn in Aries will refine that for all of us, regardless of how much work we've already done on it already.

So anyway, think about that. Now, when I was mapping this out in terms of the late '90s, the thing that I thought was really interesting was that for me, this was a huge part of the process.

When I was a new kid in a new place, at first, I really was avoiding struggle and just hiding myself. And then the bullying came when I tried to assert myself, but a little too aggressively.

I wasn't being a bully, but I was just trying to, kind of like, show myself, or try to make myself be more seen or more a part of the social fabric of this new environment, and I was doing so in a way that was just a little over-aggressive.

Did that mean that I deserve being bullied? I don't think so. Of course not. That was really shitty of them, you know. But nonetheless, the process was really instructive, because I could see how, you know, it's like—I gotta find somewhere in the middle here in terms of how to just assert myself into a new social situation.

And I remember very clearly that, you know, initially being bullied, it was like, okay, let's just go back to hiding. Let me just go back to like being invisible, that's way easier.

And then in that invisible space, I wrote a lot of poetry, and a lot—just being totally honest—I'd write a lot of poetry that's very angsty. I'd play my guitar.

Everything was about writing off the people that I felt oppressed by, especially some of the ones that were being bullying, by moralizing or, like, putting them into categories, you know, like, oh well, they're jocks, or oh well, they're this, or oh well, they're that.

And this allowed me to feel more comfortable in what was really hiding in fear. That's just me. I'm not saying everyone is like this—this is just my process and how I've reflected on it.

But, you know, I—I'm pretty honest with myself internally—maybe it's my Capricorn Moon. I have a hard time hiding from myself anyway.

Most of the time I said, no, like, this is BS. You're putting them into a bin that's really reflective of your fear.

And so there were some instances—I've written about some of these in my recent book, *The Oracle Speaks*. You can check that out on my website. It's under the Shop page.

So I'm releasing that book chapter by chapter. One of the chapters I was really more recently writing and reflecting on the bullying thing and how I chose to find some way of responding that was more meaningful.

So it's a simple story from high school for me, but maybe you can relate in terms of what you find when you think back about the late '90s, if you—you know, if there was—you know, like some of you may be too young, but you know, it's a good time to look back at how were you working with those tensions between, you know, hiding in fear, or, you know, kind of being too much.

So anyways, very educational time for me in, you know, in my life.

**Number three**, power, will, strength flowing through us. And I've kind of already said this, but let's say it again.

You know, there's—I think the—like, as the Taoist philosophy teaches us, and really, like, watch *Star Wars*, it's the—really that simple, you know. If you—if you want to crash course on Taoist philosophy—

When we recognize that strength, power, force, confidence, joy—just that carefree, easy feeling of vibrancy that Aries is so reflective of—the Sun and Mars being its rulers, fire being its element, spring light taking over in the year—that is just life force energy.

And that's why we sometimes think of the sign of Aries in terms of that phrase, *I am*. Liz Green said it perfectly. She said that the best Aries is like—you have purpose simply because you exist, because you are alive.

And that's such a simple, embodied sense of purpose that's less intellectual and ideological, and we have to go prove yourself to, you know, guarantee that this purpose is real.

You have to make a certain amount of money or accomplish certain things or have certain skills. That's all bullshit to Aries. They're just being frank.

This is what I love the most about all the Aries people in my life that I've ever known. If you really get to know people who have the strong Aries confidence that's not domineering, it's just simple.

It's like, you exist. Brah, sorry, you exist. Like, that's—you don't need anything else. You're good. Ride it, you know what I mean? Like, yeah.

So can we find that flowing through us when circumstances try to make us feel like, well, you can't have it because this happened. No, you can have it because you exist, right?

That's the test that we get. What a beautiful test, right? But not necessarily fun in all moments.

Also, when we can identify this force as something flowing through us, can we become caretakers of it? Where does the Aries tendency toward activism, advocacy, guardianship, protecting things and people come from?

It comes from the very basic sense that this vibrancy, this strength, this life, this force, isn't mine—it flows through me. So I'm a steward of it. I am a guardian of it. I am a protector of it.

*I am, I am, I am.* You can feel that—it's like the pulse behind Aries. So let it flow through, protect it, guard it, cherish it, but it's not yours.

And what makes you powerful is the extent to which you're humble enough to realize it's not yours, because then you become a really effective instrument for its flow, right?

So can we do that work? Can we find that little sermon from the stars today, right, guys?

So one of the things that happened for me—I'll close off my high school story with this—I recognized that at a certain point, my struggle to assert myself into this space socially—and even though I did find kind of a happy medium where, okay, I passed through the tests of the bullies.

I asserted myself too strong. Got this feedback of like bullying energy and—but I—so I went back to fear. And then I kind of figured out a happy medium.

And then I'm not kidding when I say it clicked all of a sudden. I said, but what about, regardless of what these people think about me, or how well-adjusted or how much I fit in, what's the path of life that I want to take beyond high school, right?

Because this was 10th, 11th, 12th grade for me. Around that time, it's like, where am I going with my life? What path do I want to blaze? What trail do I want to take?

And having the courage to say, screw all of this. Not that I'm—again, I kind of graduated past like condemning or putting people into bins that maybe I was really just afraid of, or, you know, didn't like the tension of them being there, but just being like, what do I want, you know?

And I realized, oh, I want to study philosophy, because I was really super hungry for big questions, you know.

So I left high school and I went to community college. In Minnesota, there's a program where you can leave high school your 10th, 11th, 12th grade years.

I ended up leaving my 11th grade and 12th grade years, going to community college and getting double credits for high school and those that would count toward a bachelor's degree, and the state pays for it here. It's incredible.

So I—I said, this is where I find life. This is the direction I'm going in. This is where my spirit is happy, and I have to sort of let go of trying to prove myself or find that happiness in an arena that is more about what other people think than what is in me, what is my own dharma.

That's also Saturn in Aries, right? Power, will, strength flowing through us also means that sometimes we have to learn to redirect in a way that is more conducive to our authentic selfhood.

And Saturn in Aries will say, are you struggling to find that life, that freedom, that happiness, that power of life in just the wrong space with the wrong people?

And no matter how good you get at being confident or not shying away, or, you know, that all of those tensions you play with, how meaningful are they if it's not even the right arena to begin with?

You know, so some of my reflections—I would love to hear yours. You know, what was happening between those years of spring of '96 to like, spring of '99?

What kinds of challenges were you facing? Add something to the list if there's something I missed. You know, we'd love to hear from you guys.

I hope you're having a good one. Tomorrow we will visit the Sun trining Pluto while Mercury conjoins Uranus—a big transit over the weekend that we'll take a look at before we finish for the week.

All right, after I sign off right now, there's an informational video about Year One. Come study with us. Diving deeply into astrology is so transformative personally, and then for many people, you'll find that you actually may have the talent and skill to help other people with this beautiful language.

So consider studying with us, and hope to see some of you there soon. Okay, bye.