Aquarius, Saturn, and the Slowest Revolution
I’ve resisted my Aquarius Rising Sign for a long time. I don’t ‘feel’ Aquarian. I don’t ‘look’ how I thought someone with Aquarius Rising should look – slim, tall, authoritarian, somewhat ‘anemic,’ like a properly Saturn-ruled human being. I couldn’t see similarities between myself and other people I know with prominent Aquarius placements. I was born in a developing country, when clocks sometimes went wrong, and accurate birth times were not likely to be hospital workers’ priorities. I was told I was a difficult birth.
Patrick Watson is one of my favourite astrologers right now. He works within the Hellenistic tradition and does an excellent job of making the ancient feel even more contemporary than much ‘modern’ astrology. His video 10 Types of Aquarius, while focusing on solar Aquarians, helped me accept my Aquarian nature. Like Sam Reynolds in another video, this episode made me realise that an intelligent way to understand Aquarius is through treating it as the anti-Leo, its opposite sign. Aquarius refutes the dominance of the solar principle, and being ruled by Saturn, leans its asymmetric crop-clad shoulder against the walls of the known universe. The sun despairs here for Aquarius won’t salute you just because you wear a crown, say the right words, and get people applauding.
Aloofness is a trait attributed to Aquarians. Walter Benjamin, whose Aries Ascendant was ruled by a natal Mars in Aquarius, wrote, “I came into the world under the sign of Saturn, the star of the slowest revolution.” Dry and icy Saturn dwells most distant from the life-affirming heat of the sun. I’ve been told I’m impossible to read, I’ve been called ‘opaque’ and even though I come across like a highly visible oversharer on the Internet (inner planets in Leo), a rare human who listens more than he talks once asked me: “Have you made yourself so impenetrable that you are unknown even to yourself?”
If Leo demands confidence, Aquarius demands authenticity. Confidence without authenticity wins an applause that is half-hearted, predictable. Authenticity without self-confidence cannot be witnessed and acted upon, and sits isolated from, and untouched by, a universe it seeks yet fails to transform. The heart of the solar system and its shadowy edges are bound in never-ending conversation, caught up in sometimes love, sometimes hate, and – somehow, despite the distance – never indifference.
I’ve spent my whole life feeling ashamed of everything I was, from the circumstances of my birth, to things about relationships I’ve had, to reasons I’ve had for leaving places and people I’ve left, to jobs I’ve had to do whether I liked them or not, to my messy encounters with educational institutions in multiple countries. Looking different no matter where I went. Thinking differently even when I was reading the same things as everyone else around me. Reading different things, wishing different things, in pained and secret silence. Embodying Aquarian loneliness even without knowing it. I’m nothing like Walter Benjamin but I too was born under this slow, naysaying star. I don’t know what this reluctant acceptance brings. I hope it’s visibility to people, places and stars that would accept and travel the universe with my impenetrable and messy authenticity.
