Chiron at Aries 3

26/3/2019

The Sabian Journey of Magical Chiron – Aries 3

As Chiron transits its complete zodiac cycle we can look for the various steps of its journey through the lens of Sabian Symbols. Chiron will passage Aries 3 between 25 March and 11 April 2019.

Desire and Action

The first 5 degrees of Aries is about taking action to express desire and, according to Rudhyar, every batch of 5 degrees follows the formula:

Affirmation of an idea
Countering and contrasting that idea
Reconciliation and the combined result
Change mechanism
Synthesis and progression

Personal Journey

If we are able to make this work on a personal level we have to identify a seed, something totally new, that occurred between these dates: 18 February 2019 to 8 March 2019, or if not then 17 April 2018 to 7 May 2018, or 3 September 2018 to 26 September 2018. This could be a new idea, a new project, a new person, a new way of being – the seeding of a very significant new chapter of life.

The Seed of Possibility

Although we are looking at Aries 3, let’s consider the preceding steps.

Aries 1; we see that the woman who has arisen from the sea represents the receptive principle coming out of the undifferentiated sea of humanity’s collective unconsciousness. The seal, which rises up to embrace her, shows a rather similar image of something rising out of the unconscious, yet with a more masculine, rather phallic sense. At this first point in the story, both aspects could very easily simply sink back into the sea and return into unconsciousness. Indeed most of our ideas and possibilities lead nowhere; they pop into our awareness for a moment, we have our little fantasy about what could happen, and then we forget all about it.

Comedian

Aries 2, (the comedian entertaining a group), the second within the batch of 5 degrees, is the polarising principle to the first idea. In society it is the comedian’s function to make it clear that our own exalted self-perception is not shared by society.

Reflexive Self Awareness

This symbol shows us that an idea we may have of who we are, or what we are doing, cannot be properly understood until we have also taken into account the way our community views us. We will only ever be effective within a background context, and that context is the social group within which we circle. An important aspect of who we are is the community’s take on who we are.

Making Adjustments

So whatever was seeded in Aries 1 will come up against something that gives pause during Aries 2 since we have to come to terms with outside factors. We have to make adjustments to our awareness and intentions so that we may progress.

Social Context of What We Do

In Aries 3 (A profile of a man outlined by his country), we have to marry what we want for ourselves with what we want for the community with neither side taking advantage, and both gaining benefit. The power needed to realise any idea comes from those who support it and do work to bring it into form. To some extent this idea, and any other project, must become a communal project because in fact we can do nothing alone. This fact requires us to win support, to persuade, to communicate and negotiate, and eventually to find an overlap between our personal vision and the collective need.

Power of Participation

Participation is powerful, alienation is ultimately disempowering.

Those of us who feel we can complete a project alone may need to think again. We love the idea of independence, the freedom from the need to compromise and being forced to interact with potentially tiresome people – but here the wisdom is very clear, unless we align with the community to some extent we will not succeed to realise anything much, and our ideas will come to nothing.

Further understandings of the mystery of polarity can develop and deepen during Aries 4, and then the gate to progression is opened in Aries 5.

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Out of Bounds Planets

14/3/2019

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Out of Bounds Planets

Introduction

One less-well-known fact in astrology is that sometimes planets go beyond their normal limits. People with these in their charts can behave in an exceptional manner, occasionally showing surprising and even extreme qualities and behaviour; later we will look at what to expect if you have such a planet. In the general sense, when a planet is Out of Bounds you may look for feelings, thoughts, events and situations in your life to become noticeably out of the ordinary according to society’s ideas of normality.

OOB Planets Qualities

Conversation by Telepathy

Mars goes out of bounds on 20 April 2019, at Gemini 14, whose Sabian Symbol is ‘A Conversation by Telepathy’. It stays out until 11 June 2019, with its most extreme reach around 19th May when it has just entered Cancer. The first degree of Cancer has as its Sabian Symbol, ‘Furled and unfurled flag’, which has a lot to say about allegiances and loyalties.

Commitment

So in mid-May we can look out for feelings of doubt about where we belong, highlighting whether or not we can make a commitment – and with Mars OOB we may expect a rather passionate, even aggressive resolution to the question!

Technicalities

In your horoscope, technically speaking, a planet’s position is given in the form of degrees and minutes of a zodiac signs. My Sun for example is at Taurus 15:38. These numbers, which can be between 0 and 30, are measuring the degrees of longitude. Another dimension of the planet’s position (up or down rather than side to side) is its declination, which is the measure of its angular distance above or below, (North or South), of the ‘Celestial Equator’. More technical explanations are on this site.

Definition: Out of Bounds

Planets are almost always found within the range between 23:27 North and 23:27 South because they circle the Earth in a band around the equator rather than being dotted about randomly. However sometime they exceed this angular distance (which is the same as the Earth’s tilt on its axis) and when they do they are said to be ‘Out Of Bounds’. For example if your Moon’s declination is ‘24:00 North’ then it is OOB.

Which Planets Go Out?

Mars and the Moon are often OOB, and Jupiter is seldom out. The Nodes and four planets never go out – Sun, Saturn, Neptune and recently discovered Chiron, which is already very ‘out there’ in its meaning and behaviour! As an example of a person with OOB Moon we can see how the celebrated Japanese artist Ruby Fumizki’s paintings are very subtle and hint at, rather than fully express, their intended meaning.

People are divided roughly equally between those with none and those with one or more. Of 100 people you would expect only 1 to have 4 planets, 3 people would have 3 planets and 20 people would have 2.

Multiple Planets

A person with three planets will very likely be seen as a real odd ball and could be innovative and creative – or rebellious and unsettling. A person with four is so rare that analysis is impracticable, but we can be sure that such a person would be seen as very weird and probably would live on the margins of society doing very unusual and creative things for which they go unrecognised.

Off Limits

The phrase itself is very descriptive. As children we would be told where we were allowed to go and which areas were off limits, and sometimes we would even see a sign saying ‘out of bounds’. A child who wandered out was a naughty child and risked penalty, especially if they did it repeatedly.

Not Good Nor Bad

Similarly with the behaviour of a person with any OOB planets – they behave to some extent in a way that society considers antisocial, disruptive or eccentric, and this can be just mildly so or extremely so, even to the level of criminality, depending on distortions of basic personality. However there is no evidence that OOB planets are essentially bad; good guys and bad guys have the same percentages, as do famous people and the rest of us. Yet whether helpful or harmful they tend to be radically different in some way, depending upon the qualities of the planet itself and also the extent of its OOB-ness.

Finding Your Planets

You can find out about some of your planets, Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter by visiting Café Astrology, otherwise you would need some skill at reading an astrology table (it requires an ephemeris for declinations).

Qualities and Celebrities

I am including here are a few of the descriptive qualities of OOB planets, and if you want to read more about them you can check out a fuller list of characteristics on my website Sabian Mysteries.
Some celebrities with OOB planets clearly display certain of these qualities and I have recorded an example of that after the description:

Moon, Mercury, Venus and Mars

Moon: great need for freedom, good emotional intelligence, strong intuition, sensitivity and understanding, having different moral values to established society. (Oprah Winfrey)
Mercury: innovative thinking, very commercially minded, ability at writing, eloquence, charismatic style of speech, can reach the audience. (Donald Trump)
Venus: grace, special charm, extraordinary appreciation of beauty, artistic talent, unusually romantic nature, ability to entertain. (Frank Sinatra)
Mars: masculine energy, leadership qualities, brimming with self-confidence and vitality, drive, courage, will to succeed. (Rupert Murdoch)

Pluto and Uranus

When Pluto and Uranus go out they are effective in shaping history because they influence a whole generation. We cannot really say what Pluto means on a personal level because it is poorly researched and anyway already well beyond our day-to-day understanding; however it will have something to do with an extreme, and possibly dangerous, inclination to push boundaries around questions of taboo like sex, death and personal transformation.

Uranus OOB Generation

To some extent this is also true for Uranus but an interesting quirk is easily identified in history. The ‘Uranus Out of Bounds’ generation, which was born within a few years around 1948, had a very powerful impact upon society when, in the late 1980s, their Uranus oppositions were also OOB. OOB Uranus is extremely eccentric, obsessed with the spirit of discovery, revolution, experimentation, and with unrestrained imagination and creativity, demanding freedom of thought and action, and displaying very rebellious behaviour.

This period was typified by social discontent and refusal to accept unreasonable constraints; it gave huge emphasis to the Alternative Culture that has had a major impact on current thinking about gender issues, climate change, racial acceptance and holistic healing methods for example. Richard Branson (Uranus), and Leonardo da Vinci (Pluto) show how they may act on the individual level.

Qualities of Out of Bounds Planets

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Chiron at Aries 2

6/3/2019

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The Sabian Journey of Magical Chiron – Aries 2

It would be false if we thought that a particular planetary placement has a definitive meaning that is always the same for everyone. People, and life, are much more complex than that. As astrologers we are observers and we study human behaviour to check out whether our ideas prove workable.

The closer, visible, planets have been studied for thousands of years so we have had more time to observe and understand their impact. But that said, a lot of commentary had been strongly influenced by morality, philosophy and conditioned expectations – for example Saturn and Mars were not always at all well thought of.

Pluto and Chiron are Newly Discovered

Recent discoveries like Pluto and Chiron have not even completed the whole Zodiac cycle since they were first seen, so really we are still learning about them, and our interpretations are rather more speculative and philosophical than we might want to admit.

We Participate in Discovery

Our special study of Chiron as it passages through each Sabian degree is actually an aspect of its discovery. We are not yet so much learning and confirming what it means as we are finding out and co-creating its meaning, which is inevitably a function of humanity’s current and limited state of awareness.

This is no less true for Sabian Symbols, whose influence within astrology is only now starting to be felt widely. As we try to grasp their meanings we stand at the leading edge of esoteric knowledge.

Evolution of Knowledge

This position, the horizon of consciousness, is the territory of Chiron. In mythology Chiron was the first astrologer, first teacher of the mysteries. Even more than for the other planets, Chiron’s meaning can never be complete because it is always evolving, that is its very purpose - to evolve our knowledge, to bring us to new understandings. The wisdom of Chiron can be captured in the phrase ‘the meaning of life is to discover the meaning of life’.

After 18 days in Aries 1, on March 6th it moves into Aries 2 where it stays until March 25th.

Aries 2, the Comedian

The Sabian Symbol for Aries 2 is “A comedian entertaining a group”, which Marc Edmund Jones explains with the keyword ‘Release’. Rudhyar offers his version, “A comedian reveals human nature” with keywords ‘Objectification of Consciousness’.

If the first degree represents the un-met seed, vulnerable and by no means certain of survival, then the second degree is its accommodation, the womb or matrix that responds and holds it, and offers the possibility of potential furtherment.

The secret of Aries 2 is that ‘whatever is an aspect of human nature must be revealed’. There is also the strong hint that this revelation is not likely to be reverent and sacred but the opposite: we will experience aspects of our personality being ridiculed for their silliness and lack of grace.

Who we really are will certainly be revealed at some point in our personal evolution, and we will be shown – and shown up! Generally comedians tackle us for our ego-pride, and by doing so they reveal shadowy facets of personality that actually need to be looked at, accepted and released.

Sometimes we take ourselves much too seriously – we are attached both to self-congratulation and self-blame – yet to be free is to be free of such attachments. The comedian helps with this, as does the light-hearted psychotherapist.

My Sufi teacher taught: ‘If you take a person’s problems seriously you are not taking the person seriously enough’. In other words a little bit of humour is worth a lot of sympathy. (However we must remember that the chuckle works better than the aggressive, blaming ridicule!)

Release of Pain and Distortion

In order for us to break new ground, to step forward rather than repeat old patterns, we must release some of our distortions and pain. There is no choice about this, no negotiation. No new initiative will find an accommodation within us unless and until we make space for it by releasing what must now move out of our field of self-image.

Examination

Whatever has presented itself to us as opportunity during Aries 1 will stimulate in Aries 2 the process of emotional clearing needed to allow a new perspective to take root within us. This is a type of examination wherein we are asked the question: “Is our commitment to find our spiritual path backed up by our willingness to face up to our imperfections of personality, and release some of the more negative qualities we have been holding?”

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Chiron at Aries 3

The Sabian Journey of Magical Chiron – Aries 3

Desire and Action

Personal Journey

The Seed of Possibility

Comedian

Reflexive Self Awareness

Making Adjustments

Social Context of What We Do

Power of Participation

Out of Bounds Planets

Out of Bounds Planets

Introduction

Conversation by Telepathy

Commitment

Technicalities

Definition: Out of Bounds

Which Planets Go Out?

Multiple Planets

Off Limits

Not Good Nor Bad

Finding Your Planets

Qualities and Celebrities

Moon, Mercury, Venus and Mars

Pluto and Uranus

Uranus OOB Generation

Chiron at Aries 2

The Sabian Journey of Magical Chiron – Aries 2

Pluto and Chiron are Newly Discovered

We Participate in Discovery

Evolution of Knowledge

Aries 2, the Comedian

Release of Pain and Distortion

Examination

Articles

Categories

Archives

Official

Sabian Mysteries

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