SATURN-URANUS (PART 2)

I’m not of the opinion that there is some sort of mystical necessity whereby scientists always get it right, from an astrological point of view, when they name a planet. Why should they? For many of them, astrology is laughable. It’s remarkable that the modern planets work as well, astrologically, as they do. Furthermore, as human beings we make plenty of mistakes on an ordinary level, so why not on a metaphysical level also?

The planet Uranus is a case in point. In his book ‘Prometheus the Awakener’, Richard Tarnas argues that Prometheus better embodies the astrological qualities of the planet we have come to call Uranus. And in ‘The Astrology of Fate’, Liz Greene argues for the mythological Prometheus as a more adequate ruler of Aquarius than Uranus.

And you can see why. Very little is known about the mythological Uranus apart from the fact that he had his children imprisoned in the bowels of the earth because, being earthly, they repelled him; and that one of them, Kronos or Saturn, managed to overthrow him and thrown his severed genitals into the sea, out of which grew the goddess Aphrodite. So this tells us a certain amount about Aquarius, particularly its difficult relationship with the instinctual, bodily realm that it often has to come to terms with. But Prometheus, whose mission was to help mankind, and who brought us all sorts of skills and useful arts such as architecture, mathematics, navigation etc, gives a much fuller picture of Aquarius. There is a lot more mythological material around him. And like Uranus, he also came unstuck through not paying his dues to nature: in Prometheus’ case, he brought fire to mankind against Zeus’ wishes, and he deliberately taunted Zeus, and as punishment for this hubris he found himself strung up in the Caucasus Mountains having his liver pecked out.

So we need to look to Prometheus as ruler of Aquarius to find, amongst other things, that quality of goodwill to humanity, the active desire to help it progress and awaken, that we so regularly find in Aquarius.

Mythologically, both Uranus and Prometheus ended up at war with Saturn, and this perhaps gives us 2 viewpoints on the Saturn-Uranus opposition, which begins in a low-key way this autumn, and then in earnest a year later. Saturn was no better than his father Uranus, for he ate his children, and his son Zeus, aided by Prometheus, in his turn overthrew Saturn.

So Uranus in its archaic form is weaker than Saturn, who overthrows him; but Uranus as Prometheus the Awakener is stronger than Saturn for, along with Zeus, he overthrew Saturn.

So in considering the Uranus-Saturn opposition, in any instance it is maybe interesting to look at whether Saturn is facing up to the archaic Uranus or Uranus the Awakener, because there are likely to be different outcomes. In the first case, as in yesterday’s blog, there is the example of possible US popular protest against the Iraq War this autumn: and here what seems to fit best is Saturn as ordered, civilised society taking steps against the archaic bloodletting that Iraq now is, and Saturn eventually prevailing, in the sense of the US withdrawing from it.

An example of Uranus the Awakener vs Saturn would be scientific progress, where we have form (Saturn) being given to new scientific ideas (Uranus). But it is also the process of new ideas (Uranus) coming into conflict (opposition) with established ways of thinking (Saturn), and in the case of science, Uranus the Awakener eventually tends to prevail over Saturn – or rather, he re-shapes Saturn, so that what was Uranus eventually becomes part of the canon.