Saturn, Fate and the Aquarian Age

Gail's AstroWorks

Saturn, Fate and the Aquarian Age...................................by Gail Sandra Klein

The revival of astrology in the 20th Century coincided with the birth and development of psychoanalytic theory, and its eventual outgrowth into the various theories of modern psychology. There has been a striving to be more inclusive of different sorts of human qualities, and a reluctance to view personal qualities as specifically bad. Rather, unconventional manifestations of character, or qualities which don't necessarily fit preconceptions of morality or traditional social norms -- as long as they are basically harmless or not illegal -- have become redefined as alternative. This has been an enormous forward stride in many ways. Let's not forget the wonderful things we've achieved, and begun to achieve in the 20th Century -- Women's Suffrage, Civil Rights for minority groups, Gay Rights, greater freedom of religious practice, the anti-vivisection and Animal Rights movements, etc.

The astrology of the 20th Century reflected this trend with a fervor. Bad aspects from malefics became merely challenging. The word 'affliction' became a curiosity, rusty from disuse and disdain.

In this interface between Ages, and paradoxically within the first breaths of the Aquarian Age, Saturn -- at least in so far as his governance over fate -- has been ejected, as we clamor in preference for Uranus, the planet of breakthrough. In the
West, self-determinism is a sacred ideal. I find this a mostly hopeful perspective, but I remember the ancient sin of hubris, and I wonder whether we've taken it all a bit too far. Seeing what we of the West have done to our environment and ecosystem, the wholesale lack of reverence for life and nature, Saturn as limiter, Saturn as the sayer of "no", and "stop, you've gone too far", must be allowed to co-rule in the coming Aquarian Age.

We have already seen other experiments of Uranus: communism, and its inverse -- the too-free free market, industrial development, Mad Scientist stuff like cloning, a rate of change and uncertainty in life which has plagued many of us with anxiety disorders and depression.

The stability and limits of Saturn are essential for integration into this modern scenario. When we ignore the ancient fateful quality of Saturn, we eventually meet the more severe fatefulness of Pluto.

In the 20th Century, as humankind finally achieved God-like powers of destruction with nuclear technology, and of creation with cloning and fertility technology, we left Saturn way in the dust and graduated to Plutonian levels of fate and consequence. Pluto, unlike Saturn, doesn't give many second chances.

Astrology, in its older forms, had no problem recognizing the limitations of a life or character. Respect was paid to Saturn and limitation was not a dirty word. Character was judged, 'good' or 'bad', by means of analysis of essential dignities, and planetary strengths and conditions. If that approach leaned too far away from the precept of self-determinism to suit our modern sensibilities, because after all we do have more access to education here in the West than at any other time in Western history, and we do have more choice of experience from which to learn and possibly change ourselves to an extent, we have now leaned too far in the opposite direction, or so it seems to me. We have lost respect for fate and for the natural limitations of being human, and the humility that goes with it. Unless we regain it, we will face fateful consequences.

Date: 04/05/2000