Astrology is often a helpful tool when I'm thinking through complex issues. This week has been complicated. This video specifically focuses on Mars, generally, and in the Sibly chart. At the end of the video, I weave the Sibly chart into some of Ma'Shar's mundane techniques. If you are fatigued by Mars, ignore this post or come back to it another day. As always, this post is full of my own bias.
with love,
larry
Hello all,
I hope you’re taking good care of yourselves and your folks as we sit in the strange churn of eclipse season. Eclipses are fascinating centers of Astrology’s history. There are so many ways they’ve been discussed throughout the tradition. I’ve created a short video to illustrate some mundane eclipse timing techniques. We will use last year’s total solar eclipse in Aries as an example. This is a public post. Feel free to share it with folks you think might be interested. I hope you enjoy!
(PS- I am writing this PS on the afternoon of 09/10. I recorded and wrote all of this before the events of today & had this posting scheduled to send. I'm going to post it as scheduled, but recognize that it's an intense day. This material contains references to violence, death, war, etc. If you're feeling disregulated, skip this post or save reading it for another time.)
We so often get stuck in the immediacy of the present. Astrology as it currently circulates can sometimes exacerbate this. We think everything happens in the right, now, now, now! Today’s lunation, today’s transit, the exact moment of today’s eclipse—as if each celestial event fully reveals itself on the day it occurs.
But astrology’s timing works differently. It unfolds across longer arcs, through stages of emergence, ripening, and intensification. Very few things in the heavens arrive whole and complete at once.
Even a transit, which we tend to mark by a single date on the calendar, is always a process. We know it simply by being alive. You don’t just wake up one morning and suddenly get married, or begin a new career, or hold a newborn in your arms. These moments are preceded by long periods of preparation, contemplation, and becoming. They are lived into.
This is especially true for many timing protocols used on eclipses. Their impacts last well beyond the moment of occurrence. They linger. They echo. They spiral and unfold long after the exact moment the shadow was cast, revealing their meanings in ways we only begin to grasp as the years pass.
In the video linked HERE I share a method for working with last year’s total solar eclipse in Aries. The Aries eclipse was visible across the United States and was a total eclipse. That emphasizes a visible and potent impact on the US. We are in a moment that a 2nd-century Hellenistic astrologer, Ptolemy, would call the “intensification period.”
I want to make a small but crucial disclaimer. My own interest in astrology is as much historical as predictive. I do not claim to know which techniques “work” in any final sense. I have only worked with these techniques for a few years. I share them in the spirit of curiosity.
I also share them with an agenda! My constant aim with astrology is to reframe my thinking about time. There is something profoundly enlivening about returning to the methods of our astrological ancestors. They give us fresh ways to think about time as complex overlapping processes, not discrete events. These techniques broaden our understanding of how experience, meaning, and impact evolve. Even if none of these techniques “work” I treasure the way they change my thinking about time.
Most of this work is based on Dr. Benjamin Dykes series, Astrology of the World. The eclipse material can be found in Astrology of the World Vol 1: The Ptolemaic Inheritance.
The total solar eclipse of April 2024, visible across the United States, is of particular significance. Its visibility and totality suggest an impact that touches the nation directly. In Washington, D.C., the eclipse occured with Leo on the ascendant, emphasizing the Sun as central in the configuration.
The Sun at 19° Aries had just moved beyond its maximum degree of exaltation. Its had just passed the height of dignity when it was eclipsed. This image of light obscured at the very point of power suggests challenges to the solar principle: authority, leadership, and visibility. With the eclipse also near the Midheaven, the themes of rulers and figureheads are underscored.
Falling in the ninth place, the eclipse extends its relevance to law, courts, religion, higher education, and foreign affairs. Its ruler, Mars, was joined closely with Saturn in the eighth, a place associated with death, taxation, and shared resources. In mundane terms, this may speak to debt, supply chains, or systems of finance. Mars, as a morning star, carries additional force in Ptolemy’s doctrine.
We can add in some general potential topics connected to an Aries eclipse. Aries connects to four-footed animals. Aries is one of the northern terrestrial signs. Ptolemy connects those signs to earthquakes. Aries is an equinoctial sign. Ptolemy connects that to sacred rites and worship, weather, and crops.
Taken together, the picture is not reducible to a single prediction. Instead, we see a cluster of recurring motifs: the eclipse of power at its height, the vulnerability of leaders, institutions of law and religion, and the disruptive role of martial forces, issues of financial and collective burdens, and death. It is in these overlapping themes that the character of the Aries eclipse begins to emerge.
Ptolemy’s protocols in Book II of the Tetrabiblos teach us that the “life” of an eclipse stretches over years, with periods of duration that have a beginning and intensifications. Using these techniques, the beginning period was Aug 8th, 2024 - Dec 8th, 2024. We are only now entering the heart of the intensifying effects.
Let's look at an excerpt from the Tetrabiblos to work through the April eclipse.
How many equinoctial hours the obscuration of the eclipse lasts in each.
For when these data are examined, if it is a solar eclipse, we shall understand that the predicted event lasts as many years as the equinoctial hours which we discover, and if a lunar eclipse, as many months.
The nature of the beginnings and of the more important intensifications of the events, however, are deduced from the position of the place of the eclipse relative to the centres.
For if the place of the eclipse falls on the eastern horizon, this signifies that the beginning of the predicted event is in the first period of four months from the time of the eclipse and that its important intensifications lies in the first third of the entire period of its duration;
if on the mid‑heaven, in the second four months and the middle third;
if upon the western horizon, in the third four months and the final third.
The beginnings of the particular abatements and intensifications of the event we deduced from the conjunctions which take place in the meantime, if they occur in the significant regions or the regions in some aspect to them, and also from the other movements of the planets, if those that effect the predicted event are either rising or setting or stationary or at evening rising, and are at the same time in some aspect to the zodiacal signs that hold the cause; for planets when they are rising or stationary produce intensifications in the events, but when setting, and under the rays of the sun, or advancing at evening, they bring about an abatement.
Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos 2.10, trans Robbins
The Aries Solar Eclipse of 2024
We will focus on Washington DC today. I have, in previous posts, used the time for the total eclipse which is a bit longer. HERE'S A LINK TO SEE THAT Scroll to the section on the Aries Eclipse to see that timimg worked out.
Washington DC - 2.5 hours
Washington DC= 2 years 6 months
Total relevant timing window: August 2024 - Feb 2027
BEGINNING / second 4 months of year / August 8th, 2024–December 8th, 2024
Beginning: August 8th, 2024–December 8th, 2024
INTENSIFICATION/ 2nd 3rd of timing / June 8th/ Oct 8th through April / Aug 2026
Intensification DC: 2nd ⅓ of 2.5 years = 10 months
10 months from Aug 8th 2024 -Dec 8th 2024 =June 8th, 2025 - Oct 8th, 2025
Intensification lasts: June 8th/ Oct 8th through April / Aug 2026
Friends of Dorotheus: Friends of Dorotheus is a group I offer through Patreon. I began it back in 2023, and it quickly became a treasured part of my work.
This fall, we will start with a fresh look at the fundamentals of advanced traditional timing techniques. We’ll spend the year learning about circumambulations/distributions, zodiacal releasing, primary directions, profections, and so much more. If you’d like to study with me, if you want to do a deep dive into traditional techniques, or if you simply want an opportunity to read key astrology source texts with a like-minded community, this is a special group. You can dive in now or join the community in the fall.
You’ll get the most out of FOD if you already have a solid foundation in traditional astrology and you’re ready to refine your skills, enhance your interpretive power, and build lasting connections with fellow practitioners.
We will restart the timing material on October 19th at 10:30 am PT. Class meetings happen once a week through Zoom. They alternate between Mondays at 9am PT and Fridays at 12pm PT. We have a once-a-month casual meetup on Sundays. If you can’t attend the live sessions, everything is recorded.
$20/month low-income/wealth (with access to all other Patreon content)
$50/month regular price (with access to all other Patreon content)
$90/month community sustainment price (with access to all other Patreon content)
If you’d like to give the gift of astrological learning, you can now also gift memberships through Patreon.
This will be my last year offering this level of teaching at this accessible price.
Quotes from Members
Larry is hands down one of the most knowledgeable astrologers I know, and one of the very few who cares about teaching. She has a talent for making complex concepts and techniques approachable and digestible.
Joining Friends of Dorotheus is an absolute must for any astrologer looking to explore the minds of the ancients and be in community with an eclectic group of passionate students. Larry has an incredible ability to make these ancient astrological texts accessible and makes them applicable to our lives in the 21st century. The wide variety of techniques we have explored in this group has improved my usage of astrology as a tool ten-fold, and the individuals in this group have enriched my life beyond the astrology. No traditional astrological study is complete without Friends of Dorotheus!
Hellenistic Considerations of the Moon: I’m thrilled to be co-teaching a virtual course this fall with a wonderful friend and fellow astrologer, Chris Burick. Sign up early if you know you want to attend. Kepler offers an advanced pricing discount too. Class begins October 26, 2025 and lasts for five weeks. We meet on Sundays from 9am-11am.
A fundamental, yet often neglected, question in astrology is how do we keep time? In the roots of the tradition, astrology was inseparable from that pursuit. The art arose not as a system of symbolic abstractions floating free of the real world, but as a way of reading time from the movements of the heavens. The Sun’s yearly path along the ecliptic, the Moon’s phases, the rising and setting of fixed stars, the conjunctions of superior planets – these were clocks. To know the time was to watch the sky’s aliveness.
Our timekeeping is only a loose descendant of this older framework. We still honor the solar year and lunar month in name, but most of our civil timekeeping is divorced from observable phenomena. Current clocks tick with a bureaucratic rigidity. Time is now more abstract, imagined as a single line of uniform motion. Traditional astrology, by contrast, placed its measures within the visible cycles of the sky. It treated time not as discrete and linear, but as cyclical, a complex weave of overlapping patterns, each cycle resonating with others.
MEANING / ROOTED IN TIME
My engagement with this material is at once technical and ideological. Within the zeitgeist of contemporary secular materialism, astrology has been divested of one of its most essential truths: its medium is time itself. Mundane charts, properly understood, remind us that we are not isolated individuals but participants in overlapping temporal rhythms that extend beyond our lives and frame our living in webs of relationship. They foreground the recursive nature of historical process: what has been conditions what will be, and the present moment serves as both consequence and cause, the inscription of the future within the present.
Astrology reminds us of the importance of the root chart. All moments are connected to roots that precede them. In astrology, there is no way to understand “now” without first understanding “then.” There is no way to know what will be without knowing what is and what was.
Similarly, astrology teaches us to think of time differently. It encourages us to reflect on time’s unfolding in multiple cycles of irregular and overlapping rhythms all expressed in an alive present. It asks us to consider time’s expression through multiple tempos and textures.( brontez) In this framework, the “present” cannot be imagined as neutral or self-contained; (nothing is neutral or self contained) rather, it is continuously refracted through cycles that extend beyond individual lifespans. Time cannot be conceived as a unique line of novel unravelling. Each moment spirals within a complex web of root charts, themselves unraveling at different cadences simultaneously over time. This situates every moment in vast cycles of recurrence and transformation. Every chart is both a seed and a root.
This raises a series of critical questions. What if individual charts (even our own nativities) were approached not as isolated texts but as embedded within these broader temporal frameworks? What if world horoscopes were understood as “root charts,” requiring us to situate our own nativities (and by extension our lives) within their unfolding patterns? And further, what might it mean to cultivate responsibility toward these mundane roots and the world they represent? What would it mean to dramatically reframe our awareness of time and think of our present as part of long lineages of history? To see ourselves as seeds inside larger cycles, responsible to the living future and the present past?
Abu Maʿshar’s Book of Religions and Dynasties, also known as On the Great Conjunctions lays out an elegant system of temporal architecture. Abu Maʿshar’s analysis of the Jupiter–Saturn cycle provides a particularly robust framework. Ma ‘Shar’s schema organizes history through the conjunctional periods of Jupiter and Saturn in idealized 20, 60, 240, and 960-year cycles.
Three of Abu Ma'Shar's Six Elements
For today’s post, we’ll keep things simple. I’ve been experimenting with drawing diagrams that help students visualize these cycles, especially those eager to deepen their understanding of astrological time. We will examine how the cycles of Jupiter and Saturn are combined as time-keepers.
The Islamicate astrologers achieved a remarkable sophistication in temporal design. By observing the motions of the superior planets, they constructed vast, overlapping cycles that organized history into meaningful periods. Their work built intricate scaffolding for time itself, mapping centuries with elegance and precision.
In the image below, I lay out the basic architecture of Jupiter and Saturn. Many of you will be familiar with this cycle (The great conjunction) & the corresponding triplicity eras. For our guide, we’ll turn to excerpts from the ninth-century astrologer, Abu Ma’shar’s Book of Religions and Dynasties. Ma’shar outlines six different configurations. We'll look at three here.
To begin, Ma'Shar introduces temporal framing for prognostication. He names that there are six.
Since the things from which to deduce advanced knowledge of the occurences of general <types of event> and thier particular instances in future times are gained from six elements, <here they are:>
Abu Ma'Shar, Book of Religions and Dynasties, trans. Yamamoto& Burnett. page 11
THE OUTER CIRCLE
Ma'Shar instructs us to observe the cycles of Jupiter and Saturn, to note when they begin in Aries (the spring tropical sign). This cycle covers 960 solar years. (The large outer circle represents these 960 years)
The first is from the celestial bodies positions in the horoscopes of the revolutions of the years in which the conjunction of the two superior planets occurs in the spring tropical sign, happening every 960 solar years.
Abu Ma'Shar, Book of Religions and Dynasties, trans. Yamamoto & Burnett. page 11
THE FOUR INNER CIRCLES
Ma'Shar instructs us to observe the cycles of Jupiter and Saturn within specific triplicities. We know that the cycles of Jupiter and Saturn emphasize the triplicities. They join every 20 years in signs of the same element. That idealized version of that cycle covers 240 years of repeating conjunctions in the same triplicity. (The four circles inside the larger circle represent these 240 year periods)
The second is from the celestial bodies positions in the horoscope of the revolutions of the years in which their conjunction occurs when they shift from one triplicity to another, occurring every 240 solar years
Abu Ma'Shar, Book of Religions and Dynasties, trans. Yamamoto & Burnett. page 11
THE TWELVE SMALL CIRCLES
Ma'Shar instructs us to observe the cycles of Jupiter and Saturn in a single conjunction. These two superior planets meet every twenty years. (The twelve small circles inside the four inner circles represent these 20 year periods)
The fourth is from the celestial bodies' positions in the horoscopes of the revolutions of the years in which their conjunction occurs in each sign, happening every 20 years.
Abu Ma'Shar, Book of Religions and Dynasties, trans. Yamamoto & Burnett. page 11
For those of you who are a bit more advanced, the below image maps the current cycle. The dates listed are for the mean conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn. You can see the transition from the earthy triplicity to the air triplicity in 2000. The mean conjunction in Gemini/2000 then spirals into the 2020 conjunction in Aquarius. You can follow the arrows as Jupiter and Saturn circle the triplicity.
With Uranus’s entrance into Gemini, this week begins our window where all of the superior and outer planets are in their new signs.
From July 7th until August 31st
Jupiter is in Cancer
Saturn in Aries,
Neptune is in Aries
Uranus is in Gemini
Pluto is in Aquarius
Examine the chart above. Saturn and Neptune’s conjunction forms a sextile to both Uranus and Pluto. Uranus now holds a trine with Pluto, reinforcing a dynamic architecture of transformation in the age of air. This pattern is a shape of change, a map of upheaval. It’s the shift many contemporary astrologers have been talking about.
Saturn and Neptune operate as a dissolving force, eroding structures that once seemed immovable. Saturn’s fall amplifies the break. Uranus accelerates this process with abrupt shifts and systemic jolts. Together, these three planets form a coalition of disruption, united in dismantling the old toward something not yet fully imagined. Uranus maintains a sign-based sextile with Saturn through 2028, and with Neptune through 2033.
Meanwhile, Uranus and Pluto amplify a deeper revolution in the realms of AIR (technology, artificial intelligence, social frameworks, and ideological paradigms.) Reflect back on the ways we’ve connected Pluto’s transit of Aquarius to the triplicity shift into air. Uranus is a new actor in that story. It escalates, innovates, and disrupts.
Let’s begin with a familiar refrain: the air era is not coming, it is here. If Pluto in Aquarius is the ideological architect of the air age, Uranus is the innovating force that brings it, at a breakneck pace, into being.
Uranus cycle: 84 years (approx 7 years/sign)
Transit Dates: July 7, 2025–Nov 7, 2025 / April 25 2025–May 22, 2033
Previous Uranus in Gemini periods: 1941–1949, 1858–1866, 1774–1782
Technology
Education
Communication, translation, language
Personhood/identity
Friendship and social dynamics
Transit and movement
Magic and energetic work
Using traditional mundane astrology, the air era has been unfolding since 2000. The Saturn–Jupiter conjunction in 2020 signaled a turning point. Then, Pluto’s entrance into Aquarius added serious gravity in the form of technocratic authority and mundane adoption of AI technologies.
Uranus in Gemini is a new actor in this story. It is one that will pollinate and proliferate these changes. To my eye, it appears as a hurricane within the triplicity shift. It whips the air into a frenzy—toppling, rearranging, scattering. Uranus is like an atmospheric destabilizer and accelerator in the burgeoning era of air. I imagine that by the end of this transit, the shape of our quotidian lives will be shockingly different.
Uranus and Gemini both exemplify a kind of moral ambivalence that resists binary interpretation of good or bad. They are not forces of virtue or vice, but catalysts of change, movement, and multiplicity. Uranus, as the planet of disruption and radical innovation, destabilizes the status quo—not out of malice or benevolence, but as an inherent expression of upheaval. Is innovation a good or bad thing? That’s an impossible question to answer without much more context.
Similarly, Gemini, governed by Mercury, embodies intellectual multiplicity and mutable logic. It thrives on contradiction, fluidity, and perspective-shifting rather than moral consistency or dogma. Both archetypes challenge static frameworks, offering instead a dynamic mode of being that prioritizes transformation and change.
Connecting this to our conversation of the air era, we can identify that air as an element is also inherently unstable. Taken together, many factors point to rapidly shifting landscapes. The winds are picking up, and the weather is changing. When stability is unavailable, it is helpful to stay nimble and flexible. When change introduces itself, it is best to acknowledge it.
As the shape of our quotidian lives recalibrates, we must temper the pace of change to an anchor of ethics. Each of us will need to devote time to thoughtful consideration of these changes. Innovation always comes at a cost. Be willing to examine the price being paid.
This is a transit that modern mundane astrologers have discussed for years, especially in relation to the United States. If you’ve been interested in astrology for the last several years, you’ve heard about it. The Sibly chart (a chart used for the US) has Uranus in Gemini.
Before moving on, I should say that if astrology is giving you anxiety, I highly recommend putting it down. It will be there when you want to return to it.
Similarly, no single piece of data ever tells the whole story. It is tempting to use single-pointed anecdotal information to over-emphasize correlation. Astrology is and should be complex.
If you are tuned into astrology on the internet, you’ve likely heard this transit discussed in relation to war. While the US has been involved in foreign wars for almost every single year of its existence, Uranus in Gemini specifically overlaps with the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War II. I never rely on a single transit or a single piece of data to suggest such severe outcomes. Still, it’s worth noting that periods of Uranus in Gemini coincide with historic upheaval in the US.
A necessary anchor in this discussion is the Sibly chart. The Sibly chart has Uranus in Gemini, but it also features Mars in Gemini. Mars amplifies the explosive qualities of Uranus.
In that chart, Mars (the traditional malefic associated with war and violence) is the out-of-sect malefic. This means Mars will present problems. Mars is dynamically angular in the prominent seventh house. This means Mars has an opportune position from which to enact those problems.
We’ve discussed Mars (and its square to Neptune) in many previous Patreon posts. It’s a tricky placement. Think back to discussions on the USA’s relationship to guns, mass shootings/violence, toxic masculinity, foreign wars, police violence, etc. Mars speaks to the inflammation of these issues.
As we might in a natal chart, We could use this transit of Uranus in Gemini to think through the Siby’s complex Gemini house. The following years will test this house and this Mars. Uranus, for all of its destabilizing force, also offers real substantive change. As this transit begins, many Americans are waking up to the reality of Mars.
The drawing below illustrates the major transits Uranus will make while in Gemini. You can zoom in to see the various aspects and dates. During it's time in Gemini, Uranus will sextile and conjoin Saturn. It will trine Pluto in Aquarius. It will sextile Neptune in Aries. It will make a host of aspects with Jupiter. There is a Mar's retrograde that will square it. There will be a Venus retrograde copresent in Gemini.
These aspects are varied. Some are more complex/intense than others. For example, at the end of its transit through Gemini, Uranus will be met by Saturn in Gemini. In modern mundane conjunctional theory, that is a major aspect. It will be exact in the summer of 2032.
There's a very tricky Mars retrograde in early 2027. That retrograde makes it into the 2027 Aries ingress. That lets us know that the heat of Mars will impact the whole year. Additionally, 2027 coincides with a Mars-ruled profection for the United States.
With Uranus in Gemini, the internet gets stranger and more alive. Generally, Gemini is deeply curious. As a Mercury-ruled sign, it traffics in language and learning. Uranus in Gemini will bring major upheavals to knowledge, language, media, and AI. It will transform the information and education sectors as we know them. Many of us who work as consultants and educators already know that the space we work in will be unrecognizable by the time Uranus leaves Gemini.
Similarly, the digital twin is a perfect image for this transit. Gemini, the sign of the Twins, is “double-bodied.” Most of us have digital doppelgangers, speaking and acting for us, in the curated social media museums of ourselves; Uranus in Gemini will likely enliven them.
Similarly, Gemini traffics in double-speak. Expect deep shifts in how we understand plagiarism, consciousness, personhood, and authenticity.
Gemini is also a place of movement. Expect major changes in transit.
On Sunday, Saturn makes its initial entry into Aries, marking an important preliminary shift into this sign. Consider this period a prologue to Saturn’s upcoming transit through Aries. On September 1st, Saturn will retrograde back into Pisces, where it will remain until completing its journey through Pisces on February 13th. At that point, Saturn will reenter Aries for an extended stay that will last until April 12th, 2028. We will explore this transit in much greater detail in the coming months.
As we begin, I’d like to cover some foundational material, discussing Saturn and Aries generally. This background aims to deepen your understanding of the zodiac and planets beyond simple descriptions of qualities. It’s a lot of information, but for those of you learning, it will be helpful. I hope you enjoy!
The cardinal axis is an essential framework in the tropical zodiac. It defines the rhythm of the seasons, illustrating the Sun’s journey and shaping the architecture of the year. This axis moves through beautiful swings of light and dark as expressed in the changing seasons. Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn correspond to spring, summer, fall, and winter respectively.
This collection of dignities reveals a great deal about Saturn’s inherent qualities. Understanding Saturn’s role across the cardinal axis offers insight into its diverse expressions of responsibility and restriction. Each of the four cardinal signs casts Saturn in varying lights, showcasing its diverse expressions. Saturn is exalted in Libra, fallen in Aries, in domicile in Capricorn, and in detriment in Cancer.
Saturn’s two signs of strength, Capricorn and Libra, put us face-to-face with darkness and the seasons of waning light. In Capricorn, Saturn nestles us deep into the belly of winter, when the light has diminished and darkness prevails. Saturn exalts in Libra, which marks the autumnal equinox when the scales measuring the Sun’s light tip toward increasing darkness. We cascade into fall. There’s a seriousness to these seasons that illustrates the best of Saturn. These seasons reflect Saturn’s qualities: They ask us to confront darkness and endure the natural cycle of endings, mortality, responsibility, severity, discipline, sacrifice, maturity, time, aging, and the influence of elders.
Conversely, Saturn’s signs of detriment and fall are those of excess light. Saturn’s detriment in Cancer comes as we reach peak saturation of the Sun. Summer begins, and the light of day lingers. Aries begins the spring. The verdant force of life breaks through the earth. Winter melts, and the youthful push of spring conquers the cold. It's a strange place for Saturn the Senex. Picture Saturn, the elder, sitting in the bright wildness of spring.
When thinking about Saturn in Aries, I picture the beautiful death scene from The Godfather. Surrounded by the buzzing vibrancy of spring, the Godfather playfully engages his grandchild. Then, suddenly, the moment shifts. He dies, enfolding the scene in a sense of inevitable transition.
Francis Ford Coppola is a Capricorn rising, ruled by Saturn in Aries. I’m not surprised that he has given us an enduring image of Saturn in Aries in The Godfather. Vito Corleone is one of cinema’s most beloved anti-heroes (a great Saturn in Aries phrase). Corleone is an imposing figure, a patriarch who must wield Saturn’s responsibility, but he does so in a fallen way. Fall often speaks to being held in low esteem. The Godfather exists as an outsider:—a boss of organized crime (another great Saturn in Aries phrase) who must operate within the limits of that low esteem, outside the law, and wield Mar’s tools of violence and cunning to accomplish his goals.
Fall can express being out of place. Sixth-century astrologer Rhetorius gives us a beautifully clear description of this:
On exaltations and humiliations… On what account is Kronos humiliated where the Sun is exalted, and is the Sun humiliated where Kronos is exalted? We answer that the Sun is the treasury of fire and light and the master of daytime, while Kronos, who signifies darkness, is cold. Consequently, where the light of daytime is exalted, darkness and night are humiliated, and coldness is warmed up; but where darkness is exalted, light is humiliated, and daytime becomes shorter.
—Rhetorius, trans. Lazlo, Compendium
You’ll notice the translation uses the word “humiliation” in place of fall; that’s a helpful clue. Exaltation and fall are dignities that reflect context. Fall speaks to a planet being disrespected, out of place, laid low. In her excellent tome on ancient astrology, Demetra George writes of fall:
The Greek term, tapeinoma, means a low-lying place, like a depression in the ground. The word carries both the meanings of lower status—humbled, base, low-born—and the corresponding state of melancholy; downcast spirits. A person who has a planet in the sign of its fall may find themselves in situations, in regard to the planet’s own nature and house location, where they feel weakened or marginalized due to a lack of authority and respect. Planets in fall can indicate worry and hardship concerning the matter the planet represents. Despite one’s best efforts, a person may encounter situations that lead to sorrows and distress and can provoke a sense of being powerless or unfortunate in one’s circumstances.
—Demetra George, Ancient Astrology Volume I, 191
We gain valuable insight into Saturn’s dignity through the Thema Mundi, the symbolic chart of the universe. It’s an important chart that demonstrates many structural teachings of traditional astrology. The Thema Mundi has a cardinal angular axis. It is a Cancer rising, Aries is on the MC, Capricorn is at the descendant, and Libra is at the IC.
All four of Saturn’s primary dignities are represented here—its domicile, exaltation, detriment, and fall—which makes this a crucial point of reference. No other planet is so closely linked to this axis. Saturn's strengths align with the angles of waning light and darkness. Saturn's points of struggle correspond to the angles of increasing or peak light.
CAPRICORN / THE SETTING POINT / SATURN’S HOME SWALLOWS THE SUN
Saturn’s domain of Capricorn holds the seventh house, where the Sun plummets into the earth each day at sunset. The Hellenistic name for that place, Dusis, translates to “Setting.” While this part of the chart is associated with partners of contractual binding, a Saturnian signature, it is also connected to death and darkness. We can see this amplified in first-century astrologer Manilius’s writing in the Astronomica:
There remains one region, that in the setting heaven. It speeds the falling sky beneath the earth and buries the stars.Now it looks forth on the back of the departing Sun, yet it once beheld his face; so wonder not if it is called the portal of somber Pluto and keeps control over the end of life and death’s firm bolted door. Here dies even the very light of day, which the ground beneath steals away from the world and locks up captive in the dungeon of night.
—Manilius, Astronomica, 2,939 - 48
LIBRA / SATURN’S EXALTATION IN THE SUBTERRANEAN REALM
Saturn’s exaltation Libra holds the fourth house and IC. The Hellenistic name for this place was Hupogeion (“the subterranean place”). When the Sun is here, we are in the depths of night. Manilius connects Saturn to this place:
Where at the opposite pole, the universe subsides, occupying the foundations, and from the depth of midnight gloom gazes up at the back of the Earth, in that region Saturn exercises the powers that are his own: cast down himself in ages past from empire in the skies and the throne of heaven, he wields as a father power over the fortunes of the fathers and the plight of the old.
—Manilius, Astronomica, 2929 - 937, 2798 - 800
ARIES & CANCER / SATURN’S STRUGGLES
When we look at the cardinal signs where Saturn struggles in the Thema Mundi, we see a very different orientation. These are the places of amplification of light and vitality. They are the first and tenth houses. These parts of the chart are associated with life, light, and vigor. The Cancer ascendant marks where the Sun rises, defeating night. It marks the hour when the life force triumphs over death and the child takes its first breath—the miraculous birth. The first house is where life and light enters the chart. Of course, Saturn is not a welcome visitor here.
ARIES IN THE THEMA MUNDI
Aries holds the tenth house of the Thema Mundi. The tenth place is one connected to the brightest part of day, and the peak visibility in career and renown. But Saturn’s heavy weight is too much for the top of the chart. This is where Saturn falls. Its gloomy gravity sits precariously in the place of peak light. Of the bright tenth place, Manilius wrote:
Enthroned on high this post is occupied by Glory (truly a fit warden for heaven’s supreme station), so that she may claim all that is preeminent, arrogate all distinction, and reign by awarding honors of every kind. Hence comes applause, splendor.
—Manilius, Astronomica, 2810 - 820
We can see how the archetypes of Saturn might sit awkwardly here. I picture an aging king, his faculties failing him.
Know that the convertible signs indicate the quick transformation of matters, and nothing is made fixed by them, nor does its period of time last long…. And the quickest of the convertible ones are Aries and Cancer, and they are the most intense in crookedness and the greatest of them in changeability; and Libra and Capricorn are the most powerful and balanced of them.
—Sahl B Bishr, trans. Dykes, The Book of Choices, page 197
You’re going to hear a lot about mismatched time signatures with Saturn in Aries. Saturn is known for its dragging slowness; Aries is known for its breakneck pace. Aries’s pace can be attributed to its modality. There’s an initiatory force in all of the cardinal signs, but especially in Mars-ruled Aries.
Saturn is connected with slowness because of how long it takes to move through the zodiac. Its lengthy synodic recurrence cycle takes thirty years, more than double that of any other planet. When it comes to ascensional times, Aries is eager to rise—it races across the horizon. Aries and Pisces have the shortest ascensional time (in the northern hemisphere).
Aries, a fire sign, is hot and dry, eager to act quickly and assertively. Saturn is associated with coldness and dryness but moves at a far more deliberate, measured rhythm. This combination results in a significant friction: Saturn’s cautious, limiting influence resists Aries’s impulsiveness. The clash manifests as frustration and difficulty in harmonizing these contrasting tempos. Saturn’s need for structure and long-term planning feels at odds with Aries’s desire for immediate action.
This tension may produce a sense of being off-tempo, with Saturn attempting to slow down the rapid bursts of Aries energy. Instead of flowing naturally, the interaction can lead to grinding irritation, where Saturn’s constraints stifle Aries’s capacity for spontaneity and daring. Conversely, Aries’s exuberance may challenge Saturn’s emphasis on commitment and discipline.
Your Saturn might not represent you. Does it rule your seventh house? Maybe it’s about partners. Is it in your fourth house, or ruling your fourth? Maybe it speaks to your early life or parents. Is Saturn in your sixth house? Perhaps you deal with a chronic genetic health condition that has nothing to do with you or the choices you’ve made. It can be very helpful to disentangle dignity from the modern idea that the chart is a picture of your psychological profile. That’s a relatively new adaptation in astrology. You cannot judge a person’s character, goodness, or worth by the essential dignity of the planets in their natal chart.
Similarly, imagine that a fallen planet rules the ascendant. In this case, it will have a more inherent connection to that person. Rather than expressing goodness, worth, or value, it may express more about the circumstances surrounding the person. For example, there may be cultural conditions or contexts that speak to the planet’s struggles. There are so many people who are devalued by dominant powers. The immigrant, the academic, the trans person, and so many more are being knocked low by law and letter.
Much is made of Saturn’s challenges, but the bones of Saturn are crucially important for holding society together in the architecture of government. Saturn offers a kind of cold bureaucratic solidity. We need Saturn to be able to create impersonal systems that can support large and complicated communities.
We can look back to the recent period of Saturn in domicile to see this point made starkly evident. Saturn was in domicile during Covid. While those years were marked by Saturn’s characteristic experiences of fear, isolation, and restriction, we can also see how Saturn’s connections to government and management were functioning in ways that illustrate the best of Saturn.
Due to responsive Covid-era relief packages, tax credits, and unemployment benefits, poverty rates fell. At the beginning of Saturn’s ingress into Pisces (and very near the heliacal rise of Saturn), Matthew Desmond published an excellent book, Poverty by America, in which he details these shifts. The statistics are staggering—for example, child poverty fell by 57 percent during 2020. These are the statistics we should be concerned with replicating.
MOMENTS FOR INFRASTRUCTURE IN RECENT PAST:
Affordable Care Act: Signed into Law by President Obama: March 23, 2010
Saturn in Libra, the sign of its exaltation
The First New Deal (1933–1934): Saturn in Aquarius (The Depression begins in 1929 when Saturn is in Capricorn / FDR is elected in 1932 in the early days of Saturn in Aquarius, the sign of its domicile
Aries is the sign of the hero- the individual. We can learn about Saturn in Aries through its opposite. Saturn’s exaltation is in the sign of Libra, the scales of justice. Libra concerns itself with fairness. Fairness feels like losing to Aries; Aries wants to win. Winners require losers. Under this placement, we can expect the scales of justice to go unbalanced, at least as they relate to Saturn’s work in architecting infrastructure and government. I imagine merit-based rhetoric will continue to run rampant under this transit. The dismantling of DEI initiatives and federal funding that benefits the general public is likely to continue.
This transit is also colored by Neptune’s presence in Aries. Modern mundane astrology focuses on cycles of the outer planets. The conjunction of these two planets is quite significant. We’ll discuss it in greater detail as we move closer. The Aries ingress' of 2026 and 2027 features Saturn and Neptune’s conjunction in prominent positions.
Saturn in Aries is a complicated place. I think of Dylan Thomas’ iconic poem Do not go gentle into that good night. While not a Saturn in Aries, Thomas’ Saturn is in Cancer, the sign of surplus light. The sign of Saturn’s detriment. The poem contains all the complexity of Saturn in Aries. Its first lines harken back to the Thema Mundi, “Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” In the poem, Thomas pumps his fist in the face of the inevitability of death, of defeat. It demands a passionate resistance against endings. Yet speaks to Saturnian wisdom in the line, “Though wise men at their end know dark is right.”
How might Aries provoke courage to champion our commitments? How might Saturn’s wisdom show Aries which fights are worth fighting in the long term? How can we stay committed even when it feels like we are losing? How might we keep our hearts ignited even in the face of temporary loss. Saturn is a planet that concerns itself with the long game. How might we accept what is, and is not, available right now, with our compass pointed to the long term? This may require effort, Saturn in Aries is not naturally prone to patience.
We can temper this transit by connecting to other opportunities. Jupiter in Cancer offers an important counterpoint. Where do we have capacity in our local communities, close-knit circles, affinity groups, and personal commitments? How might we widen our circles of care? These will be important spaces to nourish in the coming year.
We will discuss Saturn in Aries a LOT more. For now, I hope this has connected you to some of the foundations of the sign and planet. Wishing you courage!
