Neptune into Aries — Wrestling with an Angry God

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

Today we are going to take another deep dive into the sign of Aries. Saturn is entering Aries. At the end of May, Neptune has just entered we had a solar eclipse in Aries, Venus and Mercury just went retrograde in Aries. I think that when you have this many planets doing as much as they are in one sign, it becomes important to meditate as deeply as we can on that sign and from different angles and perspectives. So I hope that you'll find this one beneficial for you, and I have a few more that I've got planned as well. So this will not be at all the final word, just another hopefully useful perspective.

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All right, on that note, let us turn our attention to the real time clock, and I'm going to show you here. We have Saturn and Neptune entering the sign of Aries. They'll be together finally in late May, when Saturn enters Aries. But Saturn a couple of years it's going to spend in Aries, Neptune 14 years almost in Aries, when you have planets that are slow moving and several of them entering a sign at the same time, it becomes important to spend more time meditating on that sign. It's as though we're opening ourselves to a new season of life that will we will become immersed in the sign of Aries.

And so it's really helpful to learn about the sign in new ways, think about it in from different perspectives, so that we are ready to receive, you know, the blessings and benefits that that really come with these transits. So on that note, I want to talk about a theme today that I've called wrestling with an angry God. This comes from a Liz green passage in the book the astrology of fate, where she talks about Aries in terms of the tendency that the sign has toward power struggles or conflicts, and on a cosmic level, that could even mean a sort of power struggle with God.

I'm going to talk about those that theme today, among others that have to do with meaningful power struggles that happen in this sign. This will be, again, one of a number of ways that we have of looking at it. So, you know, this angle will not be the only angle that we share in the weeks to come, but let's, let's talk about this today. So she, she talks about this sign as like I was talking about it recently, in terms of the process of individuation, of the development of individuality, of a sense of personal pride, confidence, creative power and agency.

I am a potent human that has creative capacity. I am a creator as a part of the Divine and its creative capacity is I'm part of it so recognizing that and developing a healthy sense of our importance, a healthy location of pride, a healthy ego, a healthy sense of what makes us unique and set apart from everyone else as a like little unique snowflake in creation. This process I've talked about in terms of Jung's individuation in some recent videos, but it's been talked about in so many different ways by so many different religious and spiritual groups philosophers for 1000s of years.

I think that when we are developing that sense of I matter, I am relevant, my I am significant, that the natural opposites are part of the process of what we're developing, which would mean we have to face things like the fear that I'm insignificant, the fear that I am not powerful, or a feeling of being disempowered rather than feeling empowered. I'm oppressed rather than feeling dignified. I am disrespected. So a natural part of the process of developing a healthy strong sense of who we are, I am leading my own.

Life. You know, think about that phrase we tossed around like I lead my own life. But when you when you kind of slow down and you go like you think about Aries Mars and the Sun is this place of leadership, a sign that invokes a lot of themes around leadership. I lead my own life. I I create choices. I live and learn from the consequences I take creative risks. I develop creative purpose, and I live with the consequences. I learn from the consequences I take accountability and responsibility for my own power and agency.

And like these are deeply Mars, like themes and solar themes, and these are the two major rulers of Aries, of course. But isn't it? Doesn't it make total sense that some part of that process will therefore involve power struggle. So I want to talk about the three ways that these power struggles show up, and at the end, I'll circle back around to this theme of a power struggle with God. But for one, there are external power struggles.

So when you're when you are learning an Aries lesson, let's say that lesson is a strong sense of individuality. It is not uncommon. You know what I see more than like anything else, like I had to like nail. One theme that I've seen that is super Aries or Mars like, is someone saying I got into a relationship with someone who doesn't respect me, or they walk on me, or they don't listen to me, or I they're domineering, or whatever. And then what happens during an Aries or Mars transit? They they have to get engaged in a power struggle, which is usually a lot of it's within getting up the courage, getting up the strength, getting up the motivation to break up with the person and take back something that you maybe unconsciously gave away, you know, so, like a super basic theme, is getting into a relationship with someone.

Maybe they're not a bad person, maybe they're just a little too much, and you either have to talk to them about it and change the relationship, or you have to get out of the relationship. That's a kind of power struggle. You're wrestling the light out from the darkness. Remember, this is a sign in which light takes over from darkness. In the solar year, there's a core theme with Aries that has to do with saying, in order to be an individual empowered, strong in myself, I have to take it back from someone that I projected it onto or given it away to.

So external power struggles can be a very real part of how that process of individuality, individuation, motivation, courage, strength, you know, external power struggles can also come in terms of, you know, like, like exploring and examining. What is it in me that chose to put myself in a certain circumstance that was disempowering, or it can be not necessarily that you did anything, at least not consciously, but it's, it's very clear that a situation, a work environment, a person you're dating is you're you're not able to Grow and step more deeply into your own creative capacity in this situation, and so you have to kind of pull yourself out of it.

But one way that the process of personal strength, personal growth, I am leading my own life, and I feel that, and I know that the way that it will develop will be through a power struggle. It's a power struggle for personal freedom and dignity and creative agency. If it can happen within a relationship, if a relationship in our lives has room to accommodate a person stepping forth, that's a pretty evolved, special relationship. If you think about it, it's like, you know, how often are relationships able to hold space for something like that? That's pretty impressive.

If they can, they're probably worth keeping if they can, you know, because in a relationship that you can grow into that allows you to come forth more, and then they a person that you're with a workspace environment, says yes, yes to more of you. Then they're affirming your dignity. And sometimes it's surprising. At first we'll think I got to get away from this person, this place that dana da, and then we step up, and all of a sudden the person says, Oh, well, I don't want to be a I don't want to be a part of what oppresses you.

I'd be glad to make space for you. And then we're surprised. We're like, oh, I guess this was more about me than them. I mean, that's a wonderful surprise, isn't it? But on the other hand, sometimes it's not like that. Sometimes other people are not willing to share or create make space. I think one of the most positive mantras for the sign of Aries, anyone working through anything Aries, is, there is room enough for me, there's room enough for you, there is room enough for all of us, and that the universe is teeming with life.

There's no shortage here. So the myth that I have to compete for my space or right to exist, I'm not going to live by that myth. I am going to feel strong and empowered, and that does not have to come through a paradigm of domination, right? And that, that's kind of the I mean, that's. Sort of Bodhisattva version of it, I guess, so wrestling with an angry sky god spiritually happens on the earth plane in these kinds of power dynamics, and struggles to just bring ourselves back to a healthy, clear sense of our divinity and our beauty as individual people different from others, creatively relevant in the universe.

Sometimes it has to happen by some kind of wrestling match. Number two are internal power struggles. I think all external power struggles usually simultaneously involve an internal level of struggle. But there are also many cases in which, and I've seen this in my client practice over the years as well, the real struggle is within. It's with a voice inside of yourself that is oppressive. It's with a person on your itty bitty, shitty committee. Steal a phrase my wife likes to use. It's a member of your itty bitty, shitty committee who's like, you suck.

You're not worthy, you're not creative, you're irrelevant, you're insignificant, you're disempowered, you're you don't belong. You know, sometimes it's about having to look deeply within ourselves and develop a new Nexus of authority or power. And we might have to repurpose some of those voices that are domineering, critical, harsh bull. You know, the bullies inside of us have to be dealt with. And again, I think it's pretty frequent that the external power struggles with a boss or a lover or whatever the case might be, are usually mapping with an inner power struggle at the same time.

There are usually interior reasons that the external circumstances are are there there's like a parallel so exploring those at the same time is important. Sometimes there's not like sometimes you're not. It's not like you you're I don't like thinking that you have a shitty boss only because you're lacking self esteem or something like that. It's not always that simple, you know? So I don't, I don't like going down that path. But some, sometimes the mapping of the external struggle with the internal struggle is there, and it's important to look at anyway, internal power struggles with this individuating sign of Aries are critical.

That's the point. It's very rare that we only do external or internal power struggles as a part of the process of individuation. Usually it's both. The internal power struggle is also about facing fears. So one of the main reasons that we sit we weren't, I'm not leading my own life is one of the reasons we're not is because we're afraid. You know, it's like I I'm afraid of the consequences of my actions, because I don't know what I'm doing, or I don't really know what I should do or what will work.

So we're we get afraid to take a risk. We are afraid to lead our own lives, because then we have to live with the consequences, and what if I'm wrong, I better just not act at all. Or who am I to do something? You know, so a lot, I think a lot of you may have bullies or domineering, mean voices you have to confront within yourself. But you may also have, you know, you may have, there may be, what is it called, timidity. Like you may be timid, you may be afraid.

You may be shy of stepping into yourself somehow. And so facing fears can become like a ritual and a rite of passage that happens in Aries. I'm stronger than I thought I was because I faced the fear, because I took a creative risk, I started something new, I believed in myself enough to give it a try and live with the results. And even if they didn't work out, I live with the results. I did something I didn't think I could do. It wasn't the end of the world.

And now, paradoxically, I'm empowered. Maybe it's not the first thing I try, but three things later, because I built the confidence failing in the first one that I find something that works. I don't know anyone who doesn't develop that confidence to creatively try things and make things that are successful without a lot of failure and without the willingness to fail, but that's a facing of fear that is a core part of the sign of Aries. Number three are cosmic power struggles.

This gets back to the idea of wrestling with an angry God. Okay, so how many times have I had a client walk into my practice and tell me what? How did you get into astrology? Well, I got into astrology. Well, I got into astrology because I started, I took an interest in things that were more like universal spiritually, I grew up, you know, with someone will tell me like I grew up with a God that felt oppressive, you know, a God that felt angry, a God that was judgmental, it was too strict.

You know, well, quite frequently, people individuate spiritually by wrestling some healthy sense of what divinity is, or how it is located within ourselves from some kind of tyrannical image of God. God, you know. And Liz green talks about this at length, it's like, in the sign of Aries, you will often find people, you know, resisting any kind of authority that feels oppressive, like pathologically just freedom seeking individualist. You're not going to own me. You're not going to control me.

You're not going to command me, you know, it's a strong part of Aries. But imagine that the the oppressive figure that wants to control you, that wants to run your life, take away your freedom, judge you harshly, tell you you're not worth anything, tell you're insignificant. Is God. And a lot of people actually, unfortunately, grow up with the idea that divinity is like an oppressive CEO in the sky or, you know, like an oppressive father figure. These are, remember, the sun is exalted in Aries.

So the sun Mars can pair as this kind of angry, domineering sky god, which the, in some ways, the heroic spiritual quest of Aries is to overcome that version of God. No, that's not. That's a false god, right? That's that's not the God of my heart, that's not the God of my soul. When we locate our sacredness as a being within the body of a God that is loving, compassionate, supportive, encouraging, of our own choices, of our own, the creative risks that we take as a being endowed with creative agency that shift into that version of God is a shift into a different version of ourselves, right?

And that is so much a part of the sign of Aries. So many people that I've met over the years, with a strong Mars transit, strong Aries transit, will have to get out of a religion with authority figures in the religion and a projection onto God itself as an authority figure that is just dark. So sometimes Aries, you know, one of the classic things that happens in the sign of Aries too. Is like someone walks into the counseling practice and says, I feel like the universe is against me.

I feel like the universe is again. That's a strong, difficult feeling to deal with. If you've ever had that feeling, it's not That's not fun. But this is a sign that will dare us to engage with a struggle to be happy, free, whole. And that says, you know, as long as I abide in the goodness of my own heart and soul, I am always free, and nothing that's happening externally can take away that sense of agency and beauty and truth and holiness that is my very being.

And so a lot of the times it's these major feelings of cosmic, epic proportions, everything is against me, or everything is against us, or everything it can, you can feel like reality itself isn't fair. You know that it's that there is some cosmic imbalance or injustice taking place. And I think you know there's some times where that happens, you know, socially or, you know, in human history, and there's, there's wars that are fought over, over such things, you know, but existentially, I think we have to fight at times.

I use that word in a spiritual sense. It's like a spiritual battle to maintain a sense of hope, joy, light, beauty, power inside of ourselves when it feels like it's raining shit burgers, you know what I mean, but it just feels like things are set against us. Somehow, the sign of Aries says, As long as I am with me, I'm good, right? And there's something about that that is also it's about placing some kind of full faith in the creative direction that everything is going in, that everything is together, unified, meaningful, true, beautiful, despite what feels like oppression or chaos that I stand in these eternal truths, and I take refuge in them, and I'm strong in them, right?

I am a being of light, and in dark times, I don't despair and I don't say everything's against me. The universe is unfair. God sucks, you know, like all of that, and it's I can't blame anyone for doing it, for feeling that way, but there is a way in which Aries will the sign of Aries, especially Saturn and Neptune, which I'll talk more about in another episode. But this sign will test us and challenge us, no even in the present.

Of oppressive forces, historically, personally in relationships at work, your happiness, your freedom, is found in the very nature of your being and nothing else. And to wrestle that free from the grips of projection is a powerful lesson. It's sort of like saying I am not going to allow myself to become a victim of forces outside of myself, or things that I project or give away my power to other things. That doesn't mean that the experience of being victimized isn't real, that there isn't a level or like a reality to the experience of being made a victim by an oppressor.

But if you look and study the lives of people who have been some of the great saints and teachers who have been oppressed. Martin Luther King Jr, comes to my mind. Nelson Mandela, so like so many others, that when people have faced persecution, that they remain I am strong, I am good, I am healthy, I am free. Inside, you can't take away my spirit like that's Aries. Try as you may. I'm not going to fling my arms up in despair.

Try as you may to crush my spirit. You will not crush it, right? And that's an inner spiritual struggle that we all face at different times, in different ways. I mean, it is easy to feel like your spirit is getting crushed by circumstances. Easy because there is a level at which we have to process pain and loss and impermanence and suffering, and you can't not process that. You can't not experience it. But Aries will teach us you are stronger than you think you are.

You can suffer and struggle and feel the oppressive nature of things and people and forces while retaining the light, the power, the strength, the pride, the clarity, the dignity within yourself stay the stronger that, the more you refuse to give that ground away and just stand in it, the stronger you get in Aries. Paradoxically, there's this very interesting thing that comes along with this. I'm just going to give you a kind of a silly example for a summer.

A couple summers ago, I did jujitsu for a whole summer. And I don't know if you guys have ever done Jiu Jitsu, but it's a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it. It is also pretty crazy, because you're just like, you're going into a class, you're doing all these exercises, basically wrestling with people you've just met, you don't even know them, you know, men, women, children. In the class, I was mixed. So it was like, there were little kids kicking my ass, you know, there were women kicking my ass, or men kicking my ass, people older than me, younger than me, kicking my ass.

But what I really liked about it. In addition to just, you know, I was exploring martial arts. It was something I'd always wanted to explore. I broke a rib, and then I was like, Okay, I'm done. But while I was going through that experience, the weirdest thing happened the first couple of days, I don't, I think I got choked out or submitted like, 50 times, you know, and it was just relentless, and I did not submit anyone with any of the moves or exercises we were learning as just completely tapping out every single time, like, okay, you've got me in a choke hold, tap, tap, I'm done.

The first couple of days, I felt awful about myself. I really did. I was at a low with my self esteem. And I talked to a friend of mine who also did jujitsu, and he was saying, just keep going. Just keep going things. It's a it's a journey. Keep going. And I was like, Okay, I'm gonna keep going. So anyway, so I kept going. And then what happened was not that I started getting submitted any less. I kept getting submitted, but my experience of submission changed all of a sudden.

It became no big deal, like it was a game. And, like, yeah, of course, I'm a beginner at the game. Of course, I'm gonna lose all the time. Like, but you know, there I'm working on not getting submitted maybe as quickly, you know. So anyway, as I was going along, though, you know, it was like someone's got me in a choke hold, tap, tap, I'm done. You know, you'd like high five with each other, and then it would just be on to the next person.

To the next person kicking my ass. But I would leave, and I started developing this very bizarre feeling. You know what? I feel better about myself than I've ever felt. Why? Why do I feel this like inexhaustible, very basic level of confidence, just a self assuredness. It's very simple feeling that I had, but it was profound because it was so simple. And I realized, as I was reflecting on this, that it had to do with the fact, the fact that I had been walking around the world with a certain level of false confidence, especially around like my math.

Masculinity, and it just been, it just had been inauthentic, not like deliberately, just like unconsciously. And I was like, Well, I'm getting my butt kicked so regularly that I'm walking around the world with just a much clearer sense of my limits, of my fragility, that I'm not that big of a deal because, like all of these amazing amount of people just kick my ass, you know? And it just started giving me a sense of confidence, because I was willing to submit and recognize a limitation.

Oh, I can't do this. I'm limited. I'm not all powerful. Tap, tap, tap, I'm out. And progressively, I just was living with less illusion, and paradoxically, started feeling more confident in myself. And then as I went along in the summer, actually, you know, I ended up learning how to submit a few people. But what I took away when I did submit them was like, Yeah, but don't get a big ego about it, because you're going to get submitted in the next 10 minutes for a couple times at least, you know?

You know. So it's like it was this powerful thing, where any power I was developing within the jiu jitsu exercises we were learning was checked by the willingness I had developed to be submitted. That submit. Submission and dominance. Submission dominance, these are two sides of the same coin. The black belts will tell you. You know, huge part of the development of being able to submit, most people that they roll with on a jujitsu mat comes from the amount of times they failed and were willing to fail and didn't have an ego around failing.

Now, as much as we're talking about standing in this power and being strong and wrestling power from external figures, or wrestling it free from bullies in your own itty bitty, shitty committee, or we're wrestling it from God or whatever, there's this weird way in which we also during during transit, through the sign of Aries. We will, we will develop power in some ways only as much as we are willing to cosmically tap out. It. It's amazing.

There's like times where you just have to be like, I'm not going to become a victim. I'm going to stand strong in my light, and I'm going to be that is my refuge, right? Like that. Sometimes you can't do that. You don't have the strength. How do we get that spiritual strength? Because it doesn't feel shitty when someone just tells you that you ought to have it. You ought to be this impenetrable bastion of spiritual confidence. You know, it's like, Fuck you, man, I'm just playing.

So, yeah, it's, it's, you can't just have it. You have to develop it. And how do we develop spiritual strength? Spirit strength can't take it from me. You know, it's I think we develop it only as much as we are able to submit and admit defeat, admit failure, admit weakness, allow for overwhelm and tap out and say, I'm not strong, I'm weak. I know that the Christian saying will probably drive some people nuts, but you know that you're when you ever grow up going to church, they'll say, in my weakness, he is strong.

You know, I know it's so annoying. It's like bible camp all over again, but there is something to that take away the he and just think about it as when I am weak, and I admit it, it allows for channels of Spirit to come and heal me, to lift me up and to empower me, because I realize that I'm just a channel for this power, and it's my capacity to hold it and be strong in It is only as good as my ability to recognize that I am not the owner, the possessor, the controller.

And if we recognize that, then we can't become what we opposed. We can't turn into the Dark Lord that we wrestled ourselves from, which is a big temptation in Aries. I'm powerful. Now watch out, I beat my oppressor now I'm a badass, you know. So all of these things are great teachings in the sign of Aries, and it's just a real privilege to even talk about these things, because I think we're blessed to be even in the ballpark of talking about this kind of stuff, you know, to have these struggles, to struggle to surrender, to struggle to stand strong in our own light, to have to deal with oppressive things in ourselves and others in the world, and to persist and to learn and to be willing to learn, we're in good company for having any of this kind.

In a conversation. I think so. Anyway, I'll leave you that for today. I hope that this was a unique and interesting way of looking at the sign of Aries. I have some more thoughts that I'd like to share around the Christ mythology and Jesus, who many astrologers believe, was an Aries. I'm going to talk a little bit more about that. There's also a very interesting correlation with the topic of martyrdom and assassinations, with the sign of Aries that I want to unpack, that will not be a political talk.

I want to give that heads up. It will be an archetypal exploration of why those themes of martyrdom and assassination are also associated with Aries, which I think you'll find really useful on a psychological and spiritual level. So as always, I hope you're doing well, and we will see you again tomorrow. Bye.