Kassandra, Uranus, Hidalgo, Niobe: Believing in Potentials

Uranus enters Aries March 12, 2011 at  00:53am UT/+0

With Bali now in retrograde, we know we need to rely on ourselves as our premier generator of all which produces achievement and satisfaction.

With Nemesis now having retrograded back into Virgo, we see what needs doing. Or what has gone wrong.

And now...? Well yes, Uranus is just about to enter Aries. The ticking of the clock seems louder than usual.

But before that happens, Kassandra moves into Aquarius. This asks us whether we really believe in this world. In our life. In our values. In others and ourselves.

Do we trust anyone? Do we think people will do the right thing given the chance? Is this altruism - or chance? Do promises matter? What is integrity - really?

Named for Cassandra, Apollo’s ill-fated priestess of Delphi, asteroid Kassandra is a main-belt asteroid. And because Kassandra is one of the thousands of main-belt asteroids, we know Kassandra represents one of the thousands of things we meet up with in life.

And how when we meet up with such things, we have to deal with them.

In the case of Kassandra, the question is belief. What, who and why do or don't we believe? This may be a question of 'faith' but then again, it may be about trust. About being trustworthy - are you to be believed? Is something 'too good to be true?' Has someone been duplicitous?

Do we believe in ourselves and what we're doing in and with our own life? Do we believe in this world? Our potential? Do we believe that the lives and values of others matter as much as our life and our values mean to us?

Bali having gone retrograde most likely will manifest for most people as a realization that life doesn't get handed to us. That fantasies aren't real and that reality is sometimes disappointing not because it's bad, but simply because it's not a living fantasy.

Since ‘paradise’ (Bali) isn't going to be provided to us by others, do we believe we are capable of creating a happy life for ourselves?

Kassandra enters Aquarius on March 12 at 36 minutes after midnight, +0/UT. Aquarius is a sign of society, freedom, anarchy, systemic functionality, energy, the marketplace, individuality, human collectives and income (among other things). Aquarius is also an air sign – it deals with the idea of the thing, not the reality.

This air sign quality is sometimes a blessing – it allows us to theorize. Then again, sometimes it undermines us by discouraging us with the ‘idea of what it will take’ to do something when the reality is not all that complicated.

Aquarius has two rulers. The basis of Aquarian accomplishment is rooted in Saturn: the effort, the thought, the dedication we are willing to apply to a project. Saturn asks that we take the required time and do each thing correctly. Saturn says make it work well. When we do, the we get the Uranian benefits, the results, the profits, the freedom of something which makes our life easier.

Fortunately or unfortunately, Saturn is retrograde at the moment. On one hand, that says we can take matters into hand…as a matter of fact, our job IS to take things into our own hands!

At the same time, this is also a celestial way of saying any free rides are absolutely over. Saturn in retrograde is always about the need to work on ourselves or to re-examine our priorities, our attention to and attitudes towards responsibilities.

 Saturn's rings - photo credit: NASA/JPL

Most of all, Saturn is about whether we’re being realistic. This doesn’t mean we have to like our reality…or the facts currently on our plate(s). No, we don’t like it – but we do have to deal with it, and the more realistic we are with ourselves about what life is and requires of us, the better off we’ll be…in the Aquarian individual or collective sense!

Of course this is just the appetizer. The real entrée being served up today is Uranus entering Aries, an event which happens not twenty minutes after Kassandra enters Aquarius – at 00:53am (UT/+0), to be exact.

Uranus being the kind of energy which pushes us towards the ‘new,’ this can either become a motivation or explosion. It can represent our suddenly taking hold and making more out of what is and what can be, or our rebelling against everything around us.

We look around us and we see old structures crumbling. Old ways of being being taken apart. Old ways of thinking no longer being upheld, honored or even acknowledged. For some, this means all the rules get thrown out the window. Given that Aries is the sign of “I Am” some will say they are the rule – that what they say goes. Some will go the nihilistic route and claim nothing means anything and whatever you want you’re entitled to take because in the end nothing means anything.

Frankly, that nihilistic concept seems rather easy to defeat. I've had it proposed, but the 'life is meaningless' idea seems the easiest of all to take apart! After all, if you believe nothing matters, aren't you investing belief and meaning in that very idea?

Acceptance of differences I can rent, lease or buy. The 'life is meaningless' Nietzsche sort of thought? That strikes me as an excuse to not try or getting involved.

But maybe that's just me. (sigh....)

Getting back to the subject however, let’s be real here – there are those who with or without having brought along their own soap boxes will claim they get to make their own rules here in this moment and over the next eight years or so while Uranus jolly-trots through Aries. That idea is in itself the Aquarius idea of freedom without any of the Saturn foundation-laying and taking on of responsibility. That’s freedom from responsibility and the honoring only of the individual in a world where we don’t live alone.

Such people will happen as we move forward – count on it. Some will be startlingly outrageous. We will be hearing now from people who seem to be out of touch with the mainstream and sometimes that will pique our interest and drive innovation in society, methodologies and human existence. This is the ‘thinking outside the box’ we all so admire.

Yet with those who color usefully outside the lines will sure-as-shooting be those who are just plainly off base. The nature of this time is to reveal those who are off base, and as difficult as this may seem, the lessons which go with realizing strangers hide in plain sight is really about learning more about what humanity is and what we’re capable of being, tolerating and creating.

Some of these ideas are very long term; Uranus will be in Aries for years now. But with Neptune at 29 Aquarius for the next few weeks (not to mention a few other astrological events which will be happening between now and then) we can expect to be surprised and daunted and enlightened as much as dismayed.

For the past eight years while Uranus has been in Pisces, we were being asked to become more adept with dealing with our emotions. Now we find out why.

Hours pass…tick, tock, tick, tock. Then at 10:18am (UT/+0) we enter Niobe’s station zone, an indication that the pride which goeth before the fall here begins to take its toll. With Niobe going retrograde in Scorpio, the platform upon which some will now meet up with their self-destruction will be defined by choice. Have we invested ourselves in others, in situations, in joint ventures wisely? Have we acted with intelligence and integrity, knowing our limits and what’s ‘too good to be true’? Have we overstepped our bounds? Have we been too greedy, too proud and too selfish?

Some will take a fall now. Others will see how people go wrong and learn plenty from that.

It’s a time for learning…and for learning better. And considering that this is Niobe entering it’s two-day pre-station allowance, what we are likely to hear first are the realizations. The recognitions. And more than a few defiant announcements which claim the higher ground, which in essence say I know better. I don’t have to listen to you! I don’t have to listen to anyone! I know!

Niobe et Enfants (Niobe and her Children)

Charles Gabriel Lemonnier (1770)

And those people will be wrong. Some will attempt to prove how right they are now and be taught lessons in short order. Others will take a stand and have their pillars knocked out from under them.

And yet...and yet...and yet...

At its best, this combination of Niobe’s station and Uranus’ Aries ingress would be a realization – a recognition that we have been in a dark of our own making, that there are changes which need to be made in our lives (or in the whole of life or our world) which we need to stop hiding from, or denying. In saying that, it pays to recognize that there are all sorts of ways we can hide from ourselves.

Or more to the point perhaps, all sorts of ways that we can hide…or may have been hiding from our own feelings. From our mistakes. From our vulnerabilities. From the reality that some dream we really, really, really wanted to be true is…in the end, just a dream.

Niobe going into retrograde in some lives will represent a moment when they drop the mask or the act or the pretense. For them, Uranus’ entrance into the innocent potency of Aries – the new life – will be reinvention of self.

And so long as they are able to own up to who they are, what they’ve done, what they haven’t done, with this day being when Hidalgo actually goes retrograde in Sagittarius…others will be more inclined to forgive them their humanity. That doesn’t mean they won’t have to make up for whatever they’ve done, but there is a special sort of quality which goes with this mélange, this collective confluence which suggests that honesty will beget begrudged agreement to at least talk about it.

In other words, it’s as good moment to lower intemperate temperatures of debates as it is to turn up the wattage when it comes to illumination in and about your own life.

And that’s just the point. We not only all make mistakes, but we need to make mistakes. That’s how we learn what works and what doesn’t work – and that’s part of the Sagittarian process. Sagittarius isn’t just about proclaiming ‘the truth’ but in finding it.

Uranus as discovery, Aries as new life plus Hidalgo as nobility of being with the reflective questioning of Kassandra.

Maybe Niobe’s approaching station/retrograde is all about accepting with a certain grace (Hidalgo) that sometimes we need to question (Kassandra) what we are or have thought and through that, become a new person. It doesn’t mean we won’t stub our toe, and it doesn’t mean we won’t cry or feel helpless or feel wonderment at how anyone lives through this life.

Or all that life can perhaps be…and become. That’s a really Uranus/Aries ingress sort of idea.

Pass it on!