Saturn in Aquarius – The Freedom for Rebellion

image: „Icarus“ © David Bovey
Displayed here by kind permission of the artist / Slika je objavljena uz pisanu dozvolu umetnika

translation: Maja Miskovic
„Far from demanding general independence, the rebel
wants it to be recognized that freedom has its limits everywhere that a
human being is to be found – the limit being precisely that human
being’s power to rebel.“

Albert Camus, The Rebel [L’ Homme Revolte]

Yesterday’s news caught my attention: two teenage girls from Serbia committed a collective suicide. Two young woman decided to end their lives by throwing themselves off a building. We don’t know whether this was their only escape, a way to kill the emptiness within, or the final cry for help as they felt they didn’t really exist anymore. But we do know that they existed and lived their lives in a small Serbian town, that they had their youthful desires, loves, yearnings, fears, and sufferings. Lena and Milica used to be. Last year, two young women jumped into their death from the bridge over the Danube river. I am not sure if I would write about this at all save the fact that among these four young women, three had Saturn in Aquarius in their natal chart. This is a story of that Saturn…

Let’s dive into the past. Saturn wants us to reach the truth conscious of time and its effect on life. Once upon a time, teenagers’ boundaries were prescribed by parents who imposed limitations, by schools with their stern demands, or by popularity whimsically delineated by the times people lived by. One needed to blend in order to become and remain popular, and it was just fine. It’s worth mentioning that this Saturn represents uniformed ideologies and a rigid communist system. Even if you are young, it’s not difficult to imagine how easy it was for Saturn to live in Aquarius, how possible it was to be your own revolutionary, whether  talking back to your parents or running away from school in times when the parents were summoned for such a transgression, whether dogging the punishment or stoically enduring it. The more we experienced the punishment the less confined and stronger the spirit was, as Saturn in Aquarius mocked those who wanted to mould it, discipline it; it firmly believed in its path, feeling that its destiny and life are its own business! Hatred toward other groups, toward those who always think the same, and an insatiable need to oppose and find out those in opposition, had meaning only until the person with such Saturn had his or her faith and ideology based on life experiences full of taking justice into one’s own hands. If such a person found him or herself in a collective, he or she was there only to provoke the group think crowd to become rebellious and brave, and challenge even when it seems impossible. This is a person who will always find a way –sometimes on purpose, sometimes haphazardly – to deride the routine ways of being that promise some spurious progress. It’s irrelevant whether such a person would doze off at some “famous” teacher’s lecture, or burp at the table full of dry elites and stiff quasi intellectuals, whose spirit – and by extension – whose thoughts are empty, or speak truth to power when nobody else dares to. But this is certain: such person is fearless. And also, despite the appearance of the leader, this person neither follows nor wants to be followed! This is an eternal unruliness and disruption of order, which he or she knows since birth, since the family, the state, or what have you, is just an artificial herd of little sheep. And that’s why I’ve been always fond of the “black sheep” metaphor. And that very black sheep could be our Saturn…

But the times have changed and we live, or so we are told, in a New Age. In this new age, parents have become liberal. If not liberal, then depressed and disinterested in the well being of their children. Here is your play station, here is your Internet and Facebook, and there you go! Here is the freedom in which checkups and limits don’t exist. I am, my child, down and out and have neither time nor energy to be in your life. And don’t let me start on schools. Teachers have lost their authority, because somebody wanted it that way. Here is your “A”, just leave me alone! But this youngster, this Saturn in Aquarius looks at the face of its tired teacher and hates him for the lack of punishment. And as the ideology gets duller and duller, and lethargy, chronic depression and lack of life motivation are becoming a pattern, a young person is left to him or herself, asking – where are the boundaries?

Boundaries are necessary because they are directly linked to identity awareness. When Saturn is in Aquarius, we are aware of ourselves to the fullest when we cross the boundary. The most banal case would be a geographic boundary, crossing from one state to another (although, it’s so much sweeter if such going over is forbidden, just like in the past when people found the riskiest way to run away, here in Eastern Europe or in Afghanistan) or boundaries that always boil down to “can’t do this, can’t do that.”  When I impose my will supported by the most magnificent freedom, my life has meaning, says Saturn in Aquarius, and that is when I fully exist, when I am the most important. Meaning. A drive for meaning in humans is the same as a drive for self-preservation in animals. Meaning is always where Saturn is. And meaning is also in our subconsciousness streaming towards the absolute, as Viktor Frankl so aptly said. Everything else that sweeps us for a moment only to be discarded later is an illusion of meaning. Regrettably, this is what dominates our life today. Many will even die with this illusion of meaning, never living it, never finding it. However, having Saturn in Aquarius means trying freedom, being where we haven’t been before. Saturn in Aquarius represents people who never watch the same movie twice, who, to the words, This is new, retort, It’s old, because it is, as they had been on that path, as they had inhabited that knowledge. The new is always old, the new is already in the old, the oldest, the ancient, and that’s why Saturn in Aquarius loves to dig, literally and figuratively; from a true archaeologist to someone who “digs” into old languages and old manuscripts. Saturn in Aquarius thinks, Oh, how my life would be even more meaningful if I can only sneak into Vatican’s archive library! All that which is in the bookstores is not true! I want to read forbidden books, I want to know forbidden knowledge and hidden secrets; I want into Vatican’s archive, into Pentagon to find NASA’s data. Saturn in Aquarius thus becomes a hacker, one who doesn’t fear anybody, but who’s feared from all.

And that’s why we need to know this – these young women didn’t end their lives because of love problems, but because the view from the heights of a building or a bridge awakened in them freedom and a call to cross the boundary. Railroads, bridges … it’s all the symbolic of Saturn in Aquarius; all such constructions are risky and dangerous when a person can’t find the meaning of life. Life, unfortunately, can be lost to such constructions, but sometimes, whether in Brooklyn or Belgrade, under some bridge a new meaning is found. It could be a risk though as a person chooses to live his or her life with beggars and prostitutes. But he or she lives and won’t change such life for anything! Only such life, the life of a rebel, a wanderer, the life of the marginal and the rejected has meaning! There will be more like those who wander and search for the meaning in homelessness, who leave the comfort of their place and go into to world to find their way on the streets. These are the boundaries that freedom dictates in order for the identity to be formed, larger than the identities of the masses which the wanderers left behind.

Bust does it really have to be this way? For many, it has to as they are not going to read this text, nor they have the internet, nor there is a spirit in the parochial corner of their world. But, there is a large number of people who have Saturn in Aquarius who grin at New Age, who are revolutionaries, anti-globalists,  and who fight for justice outside of social conventions and institutions – they are an institution in itself and they want to teach this to others. Saturn in Aquarius shouts at us until we are annoyed. But that’s the goal, because “We are all institutions. A human being is the biggest institution! A human being– Aquarius is an institution  – Saturn! This is where my right for freedom begins and ends! I am Camus’ rebel, I am a condor and an eagle that flies when and where he wants, I am a life on my own, I am the one who, if I want to, will determine my own death, that last drop of human dignity! These are the ancestors of the rebels and those who did all kinds of jobs: forever climbing the heights fixing roof tops and changing wires, walking on the edges, crossing over the narrow, ruined bridges; these are the revolutionary minds that always take our breath away when we read about them in the paper or see their images that mock us and say, “You see what a man can do!”  We see Saturn in Aquarius, who, like a child in a circus finds his free identity of a Man-God. And while we all cover our eyes, afraid of the fall before us, that child, Saturn in Aquarius, walks away from the audience and towards the podium, because it is the only one that believes in a man who washes the windows 20 meters above the ground, or performs acrobatics, or walks on the wire, or conquers the cosmos. That is the man who is the first one to enter the Fukushima nuclear plant, the one who saves us from fear.

And since Saturn will be in Aquarius again in 2020, we have enough time to rebel and find the meaning, to make our own revolution, to break the grouping and group think and only in peace respect the need for them. Yes, in 2020 and the following two and a half years that Saturn will stay in Aquarius, many world groups will disappear, and we will see a wave of suicides. Remember 1991-1994 in Serbia, the pyramid schemes, and the series of suicides, when people had lost their invested money and found an escape in death? Suicides are always prevalent when Saturn is in Aquarius, so pay attention to were you invest your money in the years prior to and especially in 2010. What is even more important is to show your awareness by being rebellious.  Consciousness is not being in a herd, it is being human. Consciousness is the freedom to be. The more of us understand this, the less there is fear. There is actually no fear at all, as life gets the wings of an eagle and everything is possible the more it is impossible.

Saturn in Aquarius will tell you an old truth, Don’t believe anybody. Don’t even believe yourself. Instead, be brave, and when everybody falls on their knees praying, you remain standing! Be brave to bring the man to his heights even if it means self-sacrifice. And that is my message to you, my dearest, tireless, and intractable Icarus…