This is just a random musing but here is my (traditional) rationale for why Aquarius is associated with the internet. I doubt I'm the first one to think of this, but I wanted to share it anyways.

The sign Aquarius is opposite the sign Leo; Leo is ruled by the Sun and Aquarius is ruled by Saturn. If the Sun symbolizes oneness then its opposite Saturn would suggest multiplicity, or at least "not-oneness". This theme of singularity vs multiplicity is also apparent in the exaltation signs of these planets where Aries is the more "selfish", independent sign while Libra is oriented around partnerships. Therefore the sign Aquarius derives its connection with networks (of all kinds) from the implicit multiplicity of Saturn.

One interesting thing that occurred to me was how the internet and the modern age is basically reliant on electricity. In a very real sense electricity is like a false (decentralized) Sun, which fits in with the symbolism of Saturn ruling mimicry. Being a night owl and operating a 24/7 civilization has never been easier; even candles couldn't bring about this degree of circadian inversion. You can go pretty far with this metaphor of a false Sun and I think it explains a lot about the various idiosyncrasies of the age of Aquarius.

I've always thought it odd that Saturn represents ignorance/stupidity but also mastery and deep knowledge. After reflecting for awhile it occurred to me that it's probably connected to the Chaldean order of planets. Since Saturn is the slowest planet and casts no forward rays (but only receives those of the faster planets) this suggests that Saturn is indeed blind. However by virtue of receiving the rays of the other planets and collecting their light Saturn is able to construct a memory and turn its blindness into indirect vision (wisdom?). I think this explains the apparent contradiction in intellect that Saturn represents.

I think this also relates to Saturn's association with history. The past cannot directly interact with us, so it's blind in that regards, however the collected knowledge and experience from the past can give us this same sort of indirect vision. Maybe this is why there's an apparent revival of antiquity in the present age (Project Hindsight etc) that's happening in concert with an intensifying flood of information which otherwise threatens to dull awareness and create ignorance instead.

One underlying theme here seems to be that Saturn operates in a biphasic manner with the 1st stage being ignorance/blindness and the 2nd stage being wisdom/vision. I thought of a very interesting application of this principle. When we think of time we divide it into three parts: the past, the present and the future. I conceive the present as being connected with the Sun due to its immediacy and eternalness (the eternal present), meanwhile I think we could assign the future AND the past to Saturn.

I see the future as being something that's intrinsically connected to ignorance because it's impossible to "see" the future; therefore when dealing with the future you're always operating in blindness. This is why I associate the future with the 1st stage of Saturn, which is ignorance (This might explain why the age of Aquarius is always associated with futuristic themes...). Likewise I attribute the past with the 2nd stage of Saturn which is wisdom and for obvious reasons outlined above. A final observation to round off this theory is that Saturn also rules over illusion. Isn't time the ultimate illusion? Neither the past nor the future really exist, only the present moment does.

This brings me to my last point. The age of Aquarius brings to mind the myth of Icarus. The dynamic of the Leo/Aquarius axis seems to play out very strongly in this myth where the foolhardy Icarus flies too close to the Sun which melts his wings* and causes him to crash into the ocean. Interestingly enough, Icarus' father Daedalus who made the wings was a master craftsman which brings to mind the platonic demiurge and its informal connection to Saturn. So in the myth of Icarus I see this interplay between hubris, agnoia and limitations and understand it as a cautionary tale about technology.

*As the great mimic I think Saturn has a lot to do with technology, even more so than Mercury. Technology usually seems to be an enhanced/modified reiteration of a natural process. Case in point, the synthetic wings of Icarus made of wax and feathers.

This is a very interesting post. Not sure it belongs in the Traditional and Ancient astrology section but thanks for posting.

Deb wrote:This is a very interesting post. Not sure it belongs in the Traditional and Ancient astrology section but thanks for posting.

My apologies. My angle was that I wanted to talk about Aquarius and how it relates to Saturn without bringing Uranus into it. I felt like it would be too much effort if I posted this in another section of the forum and had to police people on keeping the discussion centered on Saturn and an ancient astrological perspective instead of a modern astrological perspective. I will edit the title to make this more clear.

EDIT: I just noticed that the title of the sub-forum was "Traditional (& Ancient) Techniques"; I wasn't paying attention and assumed it was just an area for generic discussion of ancient astrology. Sorry!

kuberntetes

an interesting post... thanks!

saturn and the sun form a type of opposite - saturn - darkness and sun - light.. i think the alchemists were thinking of saturn as the lead that can be turned into gold ( sun ) if one knows the way to do it.. also saturn seems to be connected to the myth of janus the 2 headed god that looks back into the past, but also into the future.. this might explain the pagan festival of saturnalia that would happen near at the end of the year, or the beginning of the new one... and of course january is connected to the god janus too as i understand it.. these are just more thoughts to add to all you have stated... i suppose it is all philosophical in nature, but an interesting thought process non the less!

No need to apologise Kuberntetes, I was only thinking that it might have gained a broader audience in the general astrology forum - but now it's here, let's keep it here.

james_m wrote:kuberntetes

an interesting post... thanks!

saturn and the sun form a type of opposite - saturn - darkness and sun - light.. i think the alchemists were thinking of saturn as the lead that can be turned into gold ( sun ) if one knows the way to do it.. also saturn seems to be connected to the myth of janus the 2 headed god that looks back into the past, but also into the future.. this might explain the pagan festival of saturnalia that would happen near at the end of the year, or the beginning of the new one... and of course january is connected to the god janus too as i understand it.. these are just more thoughts to add to all you have stated... i suppose it is all philosophical in nature, but an interesting thought process non the less!

That's a great point about Janus and Saturnalia. I skimmed through the article on Wikipedia about Janus and I saw Saturn referenced to a few times, so it's definitely related to the Janus myth in some way. I found the observation about Janus looking into the past and the future very interesting. I'm spitballing here but I suspect that when we think of time we usually only think about it in terms of the past or the future. It's much less common to think about time in the context of the present. I was just thinking about this as a counterpoint to the commonly held assumption that Saturn only rules over the past or "old age" when really it seems to rules over time in general.

Something else interesting about Saturnalia is how it centered around inversion, which is exactly what we're seeing during the age of Aquarius. For better or for worse all of our normative values are being challenged or turned upside down. I won't go into details because it's a can of worms but as a non-political astrological person I do find it interesting watching this play out from the sidelines.

Monotheism began to take off during the age of Aries, which is logical since the Sun ("oneness") is exalted in Aries. The common understanding of monotheism is that there's only one god instead of many, however a more esoteric interpretation might be that god is everything (instead of existing separately somewhere). My reasoning for this is because the Sun in Aries opposes Saturn in Libra. Saturn rules over matter which is intrinsically "separate" as well as ruling over illusion; therefore you could say that the other/matter is actually an illusion. I see it as the contrast between the "true" solarian world of forms vs the "false" saturnine world of matter.

I bring up this point because the same reasoning can be exported to the age of Aquarius since we're also dealing with a Sun/Saturn ruled axis. I think this plays out in the age of Aquarius with a constant struggle between truth (Leo/Sun) and falsity (Aquarius/Saturn). We're dealing with a more mundane expression of the loftier archetypes represented by the Aries/Libra axis. I think there are numerous ways that this dynamic seems to be manifesting:

1.In the age of the internet, everyone has multiple identities. We have separate profiles for Facebook, Skyscript, Amazon etc etc. Each of these profiles is not the real us, rather it's an imperfect representation of our true selves. As such, we can see the classic connection between Saturn and feigned appearances at work. I find it funny how this is a deceptive practice, but not in an intentional way. I think this is something important to keep in mind during the age of Aquarius; "deception" is not always done with evil intent and it's not always a bad thing.

2.This idea of multiple false identities but one true self reflects the concept of reincarnation as well; in the sense that there's a journey of the soul through multiple lives until remembering who one is and rejoining the source. This concept of awakening and finding the true reality again seems to be a potent theme during the age of Aquarius. It's always reflected in movies like: "The Matrix", "Inception", "Total Recall" etc etc.

On a broader scale I think mass media (I mean entertainment in general) fits with this idea of false realities because it's usually fictional or at least a distortion of reality. Likewise technological mediums like photography/video recording are saturnine in the sense that a video or photo of something is not the real version, its just a representation of it ("Ceci n'est pas une pipe").

Also interesting is the explosion in popularity of video games over the past few decades which echoes this theme of assuming an identity which isn't your true self. However, in true saturnine form, these alternate realities are manifested by material/technological means as opposed to spiritual/organic ones.

3.Something that really tickles me is how intellectuals are flocking around "Simulation Theory" these days. These are the same people who scoff at astrology but always do so without realizing the deeper philosophical implications of it; which is that any simulation needs a program to function in the first place, so what would be the hypothetical programming for this simulation? A logical suggestion would be something like the zodiac, however I don't think this connection is ever made.

Anyways, I don't fault these science types for not realizing this because in the cosmic scheme of things ignorance is a feature not a bug. As Plato once said: "All Learning is Remembering"; this act of continual forgetting and remembering has always been the entire story arc of existence in the theater of the divine.

kubernetes, you've provided many more fascinating ruminations on the nature of saturn, astrology and much more! good stuff! thank you..

i am not sure where to begin in responding, but i want to mention a few ideas that continue with some of your thrust here... the symbolic connection of saturn to time is a good one... it is a time of structure that many intentionally impose on themselves and society does this as well as a way to gauge 'progress' and etc. etc. there are infinite 'uses' for time, lol including to get us to feel like slaves to it! but really - what is time? our lives are lived in the moment - one endless moment that seems to capture both the past and the future.. it is all captured in this moment.. when i think of the sign aquarius, i think it is more future oriented which makes sense from the dead of winter and moving out of the dead of winter.. things are dead in winter in the northern hemisphere.. how very saturnine! but one is also looking forward to the future and i think this is connected with our experience of time and the symbolism for saturn applies... letting go of the past... adopting accountability for the past with a renewed vision for the future all seems relevant to what i think of about saturn and the signs it rules over...

now the other idea i wanted to share is the idea of masks.. i think saturn is very good at putting on masks, whether it is hiding behind social conventions or going along with the status quo and etc. etc... but they are masks that don't really reveal what is going on behind the mask.. i think they provide protection, but they also are good are hiding a potentially very different reality... i don't generally think of conscious manipulation here, but i suppose this is very possible too.. people do a lot of ''acting'' from a position of fear... i see this as rooted in some sort of saturnian influence and i think fear is a very saturn type energy.. sun- fearless and saturn - fear.... but learning to overcome our fears is also very saturnine.. again - it is the alchemical transformation of lead to gold going on in all of this - all as i see it... i have quickly framed it in a way that i relate, but i think it is relevant to all you are saying... cheers james

james_m wrote:kubernetes, you've provided many more fascinating ruminations on the nature of saturn, astrology and much more! good stuff! thank you...

Excellent points about Saturn and social conventions/status quo, it makes perfect sense. Tangentially related to your point about metaphorical masks, I think it's interesting to point out that theater is ruled by Saturn, which makes sense since it's an exercise in benign deception. An interesting extra layer of meaning to this is the fact that Saturn is exalted in a Venus ruled sign. To me this is saying that art is often a Saturnine affair because it's usually about simulacrum (i.e. a painting) or deception (acting).

Also that was a good point about fear. When I think about fear, I feel like its often related to the unknown, or in Saturn terms "ignorance" . I'm glad you brought that up, I hadn't previously connected Saturn with fear but it seems like a logical connection.

I was thinking about Saturn and the concept of multiplicity mentioned in the OP and it occurred to me that this seems contradictory since Saturn is about lack and multiplicity implies abundance. After thinking about it some more I realized that there is probably different kinds of multiplicity. I like to think of it as saturnine multiplicity and jupiterian multiplicity:

Saturnine multiplicity: Split an apple in half, voila! you now have two parts.

Jupiterian multiplicity: Magically duplicate an apple so you now have two apples.

I'm positing that saturnine multiplicity is more about division/separation while jupiterian multiplicity is multiplicative in the truest sense of the word. This is just a random fast and loose heuristic I thought up, but I feel like it mostly works.

Here are a few more contemporary trends related to Saturn:

1.Transhumanism

2.Artificial intelligence

3.Transgenderism

4.Meat analogues

5.Green activism

For points #1-4 the Saturn connection is obvious since the underlying theme is about replication/syntheticness/artificiality.

Point #5 isn't as obvious but when you think about it it makes sense. Green activism is about "saving the Earth", which in a more abstract sense is ultimately a hyper-focus on the realm of matter as opposed to the intangible realm of forms. I think it's not a coincidence that green activism has become such a major ideology during an age of rational materialist thinking.

I think I've mostly covered all the bases about Saturn. The main reason for making this post was to demonstrate that the myriad things associated with age of Aquarius* can all be traced back to Saturn without having to resort to using Uranus.

*I'm probably going to make a separate post about this in the mundane astrology forum but I wanted to point out that technically we're in both the age of Pisces and the age of Aquarius. What I use for determining the great ages is how close the heliacal rising of the Sun (not the Sun itself) is on the vernal equinox to a given constellation. I use the same orb that I use in natal charts for phasis, which is about 15 degrees.

Hi kubernetes,

Regarding this:

kubernetes wrote:3.Something that really tickles me is how intellectuals are flocking around "Simulation Theory" these days. These are the same people who scoff at astrology but always do so without realizing the deeper philosophical implications of it; which is that any simulation needs a program to function in the first place, so what would be the hypothetical programming for this simulation? A logical suggestion would be something like the zodiac, however I don't think this connection is ever made.

Anyways, I don't fault these science types for not realizing this because in the cosmic scheme of things ignorance is a feature not a bug. As Plato once said: "All Learning is Remembering"; this act of continual forgetting and remembering has always been the entire story arc of existence in the theater of the divine.

This makes sense.

In Plato's view, the world of our experience is indeed some kind of simulation, whereas the so called intellectual world is the actual reality (think Plato's cave analogy!).

Since the zodiac pertains to the world of ideas in the Platonic sense (as, by extension, the whole framework of astrology does), it can indeed be said that the zodiac, together with its associated astrological elements, are running the show that is going down here on our level of reality.