Now, I have a thought for you to ponder about this whole question of dignity and traditionalism in the astrology. Saturn is, and always should be an important and powerful principle in human life, I would never question the import and advantage of a favourably placed Saturn, however, what I would question is if it is contemporaneously advantageous in the same way that it has been historically.
Think of those qualities of the Pilgrim Fathers, who constituted the spiritual DNA – if you like – of the United States. They were Saturn personified, strict, serious, fundamentalist; indeed the very reason they left the shores of Europe at all was because their demand for law was too Saturnine for the dissolute ruling classes, who despite their accordance with the strictures of God had no real desire to give up their Jovian enjoyments; the Mayflower was essentially an exile-ship. The picture I paint then is very much one that demonstrates the power of Saturn in a world dominated by the rules of proper conduct, of adherence to the Laws of King and Country and most importantly of God and the Church. An ability to resonate with the power of Saturn would have lent a man of that bygone age dignity, seriousness, grave power, indeed gravitas, and the esteem of a society that valued innately the qualities of Saturn far above and beyond those of Jupiter, who seemed to dominate an earlier and near-mythical Dionysian age.
My point then is that traditionalists seem unwilling to place the raison d’etre of dignity in the context of its time, to everyone’s detriment; attempting to discard the rulership of Pluto is nothing more than anachronism in action; by that selfsame logic we should consider Hiroshima and Nagasaki mere myths, because Plutonic power has no resonance in this world.
This leads on to the a posteriori conclusion that astrology evolves, the good qualities of Saturn do not have the power they claimed of old; indeed, many of society’s greatest successes have almost no affinity with Saturn’s qualities at all; this does not mean that Saturn is not a useful planet to have in dignity, but it is nowhere near as crucial to worldly success as once it was. New planetary powers come into human understanding because they are required to reflect the increasingly diverse and unconstrained qualities of human expression, and I mean that in both positive and negative modes.
Ultimately the key of astrology is that we learn to grasp what we are made from, and by understanding how others are so complexly configured we cease to judge and gradually we come free in ourselves. As the oscillation of the human soul vibrates at an increasingly higher pitch, new archetypes are required; not to replace or cast down the old Gods, but to increase the pantheon of potential for our species. As we as individuals specialise, our requirement for cosmic symmetry expands across the whole sweep of mankind, and some of us are beginning to see that in these last days of old empire, that is our best hope to step up and find the compassionate consciousness that does not choose our wealth at the cost of any child’s life in some far-off African dustbowl, but instead recognises that our true destiny lies in needing absolutely nothing in this life except the respect, love and simple warmth of human contact. Time then, to transcend and find “our own people”, so that we might go together, into the light.