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

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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.

Copyright 2016 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Aries 4°

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

 As I mentioned, Spring Equinox is like New Year’s Day and Easter rolled into one for us. All Christian holidays have been pinned to already existing pagan ones. Thus the tradition meal of lamb, a baby sheep or ram, on Easter, a word that derives from the festival of the goddess Ishtar, a fertility deity, whose fecund symbols included bunnies and eggs. She is the cognate of the Sumerian goddess as Innana, later Astarte, who is somewhat synonymous with Aphrodite or Venus—Ishtar is the personification of that lovely planet. In our vernacular, Venus/Aphrodite/Mari (synonymous with Mary in biblical mythology) is the archetype of Pisces, associated with the sea, a goddess of love, while the sign of Aries, ruled by planet Mars, named for the war god (Greek: Ares) boasts the war goddess, Athena, as its female archetype. Ishtar/Innana, though, was goddess of both love and war which were perhaps more delineated into the characters of Aphrodite and Athena in the Greek pantheon. I always wondered why it is Athena, Aphrodite, along with Hera (Juno), form this triple threat to Paris, prince of Troy, who must choose the most beautiful among them. We are used to viewing goddesses in triplicate nature, all emanations of the One goddess. So perhaps the Judgement of Paris was really about what was most valued in human experience: Wisdom (Athena), Power (Hera), or Love (Aphrodite)—he picked love which led to the most famous war of all time.

Love and war are inextricably linked. The War god Mars is lovers with Aphrodite, giving birth to Eros/Cupid who embodied the combination of both elements. Eros is forever a babe, and yet he is also the oldest god. Love is War and they combine to the most essential and evernew. Eros is love. Jesus is love. Aphrodite/Mari/Mary being their eternal mother. Jesus is the babe and the everlasting god—part of the triplicate of father, son and holy what?: originally that trinity included mother. But we fear the feminine, the vagina dentata that threatens to castrate the patriarchy. It was from Uranus’ castrated (by his son Cronos) penis that Aphrodite sprang, the foam, of the sea. In French the word écume means both foam and scum, the perfect Pisces paradox once more expressed. But yes I realize we are in the sign of Aries. And thus I turn my attention to the goddess Athena, the aspect of female-hood as seen through the ultra masculine lens of the Zodiac’s first sign, ruled by Mars, the god of war. And so she too wears armor. And we have no evidence of her ever having a lover. Her war-like brother-archetype Mars is the lover of Aphrodite who is married to the lame Hephaestus who does attempt to rape Athena, but his seed spills on the ground impregnating the Earth goddess (and his great grandmother) Gaia. A son is born of this union which Athena raises as her own.

I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. Except to hit home the self sufficiency of the Athenian archetype. And to perhaps illustrate the fact that she couldn’t have it both ways. She couldn’t be some god’s wife—she did take a passing fancy for a mortal friend of her demigod brother Heracles/Hercules. But, unlike her warlike sibling Mars who rushes into battle and ere long rushes out again, bawling if he sustains the slightest scratch: Athena has never lost a battle. She is strategic, defensive and she uses her godhead of wisdom and wit to, well, outwit all other opponents. One might assume that her surpassing success, not just in war, but in art—she is goddess of craftsman and, by extension, civilization—is a direct result of never being anybody’s wifey or main squeeze. She is the premier goddess archetype in the Zodiac, and a feminist; which means that feminism is encoded right up top into the Zodiac. The dual archetype of Aries is expressed, un-ironically, in the uber male and macho and rather bullying and cowardly figure of the main man Mars/Ares; and to counterbalance this energy, we don’t do so with an uber-feminine figure—the sign of Aries, under Mars rule, expresses the energetically “male principle”—but we do counter balance with an ultra feminist figure. It begs the question: what is the true opposite of this uber male energy embodied by Mars? Well, there are two opposites at least: there is the ultra feminine Aphrodite, Venus, her namesake planet representing the feminine principle, expressed, in various forms, in the signs of Taurus and Libra, while the archetype of the goddess herself rules over the uber feminine sign of Pisces. That would be one archetypal opposite to the god Mars; but so to is Athena, despite the fact that she is similarly clad in wargarb and helmet likewise brandishing a spear because she takes the pure aggression of the male principle and harnasses it into a strong defense and energy of protection and patronage. Athens is named for her because she took the most care for its civilization. Athena is arguably the most eternally modernist deity in the pantheon, male or female; although Apollo might give her a run for her money. Apollo is an archetype of Aries opposite sign of Libra, a male figure, in a masculine sign, ruled by feminine Venus. Whereas she takes on the estate of war and traditionally male domains, Apollo is god of art and music and prophesy and all things that had, in pre-Hellenic civilizations, been the estate of female goddesses and muses.

Copyright 2016 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

3° Aries
(For last year’s meditation on the Sabian Symbol for this degree:  click here)

Our work with clients basically falls under the heading of humanistic astrology, the astrology of the individual in this lifetime. There is also esoteric astrology which uses the zodiac as a lens to view the soul journey of a person over many lifetimes.. There’s horary astrology and mundane astrology and, I think at last count, 80 different brands of astrology; yes, because the Zodiac is like the Golden mean—it expresses everything and everything can be expressed by it. The individual life, the soul journey, the course of a year, or a day or the breadth of all existence, from creation to destruction of the entire universe. Everything we can know or need to know or will know about everything is encoded in the Zodiacal system, truths that are just now being discovered by science. Though the Zodiac was “divined” at least 3000 years ago by the Sumerians, Babylonians, during the Chaldean period, it has held the encoded knowledge, big things like matter is an illusion, that it is just dense energy, truths that impact magic as much as science. Which brings me/us to our next point:

Underscoring general sun-sign astrology speicific work with individuals, and all schools 80 schools of astrology is our most essential belief about the Zodiac. That beyond being a symbolically rich and ever unfolding mandala for all existence, it is actually a practicable system, like an ancient self-help manual to living a functional life of richest fulfillment. Something we like to call Natural Astrology or Cosmic Astrology or Natural Cosmic Astrology whereby we view each of the twelve signs and houses of the zodiac is a building block, one upon the other, an infinite upward spiral, guiding us to self actualization. Stella likes to say it’s “the original twelve-step program” ™. Which is no joke really because if you look at what the twelve steps are in an AA or Al-anon or any program they correspond almost exactly to the themes of the astrological houses, in turn. The main thrust of this Natural Cosmic Astrology is to attune ourselves to the cycle of nature and the cosmos meaningfully, metaphysically, indeed alchemically. No better way to do it then with the the Start of the new Year at Aries 0°, which we did with the performance of our monthly show, The Zodiac Club, in New York (which we will do monthly) and the exploration of the first sign and first astrological house, all month long here in the sign of Aries. (At the time of writing I’m about two weeks behind in this but I will be playing catch up over the next couple of days.

I will explore this aspect of astrology, daily, all year long, while weaving in personal story where applicable. But the point this year is to unlock the Cosmic Energy and wisdom of each sign , starting with the Spring Equinox, which provides something of a clean slate. We exited the womb-tomb of Pisces with its opposite facing fish, the twelfth and final sign and house of the Zodiac, that of non-material existence, mutable-water, vapor and mists and and foam and primordial soup, primeval slime, gestation, incubation and purest imagination, to be born, once again, into the bloody real, bleating and brutally honest first sign of Aries, the Ram to begin a new journey around the Sun. We are this month celebrating the energy and indeed the people of the sign, as we will for each, turning on the power, flipping the switch of each of the twelve cosmic energies, that resides within each of you.

Copyright 2016 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.