Aries. Saturday, May 25th, 2025, Saturn will enter Aries, joining Neptune, and simultaneously giving us a first preview of this transit’s lessons.
Saturn, known as the prosecutor of the zodiac but also a symbol of karma, is one of the most feared planets because it verifies whether the attributes of the zodiac sign it currently occupies are learned, assumed, mature, and used responsibly and in a balanced way. On September 1st, Saturn will retrograde back into Pisces, where it has spent the last two years testing spirituality, artistic creativity, the degree of faith, the power of surrender, compassion, the capacity to manifest dreams, and clairvoyance skills. Besides these, due to its clearheaded nature, if these attributes were not properly integrated, Saturn likely brought lessons about illusions and disillusions, loneliness and isolation, addictions, or even mental illnesses.
The initial ingress of Saturn in Aries, a sign where it is in its fall, represents a sneak peek of the tests and lessons about self, identity, willpower, independence, autonomy, assertiveness, action, courage, pioneering spirit, honesty, masculinity—and the list can go on. Regarding the shadow side of this position, themes may arise related to impulsiveness, anger, aggression, or somatic illness or issues in the head area (cranial bones, face, or hair), brain (including the pineal gland), or upper jaw (including teeth). The Saturn-Neptune conjunction in Aries reminds me of a scene from The Matrix where the little boy tells Neo not to try to bend the spoon because it’s impossible. Instead, he suggests trying to see the truth: that the spoon is not real. Then he will understand that it’s not the spoon that bends, but himself. And in at that particular moment, the spoon actually bends. (“Do not try and bend the spoon. That’s impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth. There is no spoon. Then you’ll see that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.”) Years ago, I read something similar in Ramtha’s the White Book: “The truth is often crucified between two thieves of apparent contradiction.”
How could I best honor this transit other than throught a personal and sincere confession?
My entry gate into this world was an Aries. My birth would cut short my mother’s childhood. We shared many things (from her I inherited the gift of joy), but even more separated us, including a reversal of lunar nodes from which I received the karmic child’s seal. Curious how I came into the world from an Aries and a Cancer, as I am also a cardinal sign! And how even my maternal grandparents were cardinal signs. My best friend from childhood, my friend from high school, my later-life friend—all cardinal signs. And years later, I would marry also a… you got the idea! It seemed like the cardinal signs were following me. However, no other sign would leave a stronger imprint on me than Aries. For a Libra, the lessons Aries taught seemed abstract, hard to accept, and often, at the end, I would declare defeat: “Everything is an illusion.”
The bad. Since my father’s illness, I have worked a lot on myself. Caught in the material plane, I often forgot that the most important keys to healing (or spoons) were the people around us. It was during the period when we had received the diagnosis, and my manager at the time looked me in the eye and said without empathy, “You’re so lucky to have this job because in this way you don’t have to think about your dad anymore.” I projected all my aggression, shame, duality, and narcissism onto that woman. But she was showing me exactly the empathy and aggression I was offering myself. And until I accepted those parts of myself, I didn’t learn what self-love is.
Last year, near the Pisces Moon eclipse, I had a module dedicated to “Shadow, Archetypes, and Ritual in Integrative Psychotherapy.” For several weeks, I was projecting some pride onto my therapist, and in the therapy before the module, I was trying to summon the courage to confess this. I knew that what I was projecting onto her was actually inside me. Yes, pride was not an unfamiliar theme; it was one of the personas discovered earlier in therapy. I had chosen as a representation of pride one of the shiniest masks that had white and gold on it and called it “Hyperion” (n.r. Luceafărul). Among others, I discovered Sadness (suggestively nicknamed “Paparuda” (traditional Romanian dance used to invoke rain) — remember who dances her sadness?) and Creativity (“Rainbow” — the rainbow at the end of my sadness).
At the first session of the module, I fixed my gaze on Narcisa: “Today we have to work together.” I didn’t know why or where the impulse came from; I only knew it had to be done. Self-disclosures flowed easily between me and Narcisa: we confessed how tired we were. Neither of us remembered what it was like to be rested; we were constantly caught in life’s rollercoaster, always supporting others. Forever aiming for the next goal, slaloming between our own needs and those of others. We rarely paused, and that was only when others’ needs were met. I told her I was about to take a sabbatical year, convinced I had been running from myself by working myself to exhaustion. I realized that the biochemical exchange from the intrauterine period still sabotaged my existence. I worked hard and had turned into a savior to validate my existence. Although she never verbalized it, she told me she had always wanted to take some time off but that other situation always came up preventing it from happening. Honestly, I always saw Narcisa overflowing with femininity; it seemed things just flowed for her, came and settled. It seemed she knew how to receive and just be. Her fairy-like gestures were in contrast with my way of being (or how I saw myself)—a little boy disguised as a girl. Although she saw my feminine side, she admitted she also felt me as a playful, lively little elf. She saw a free child in me and had forgotten the last moment she allowed her own inner boy to play.
The good. In our honest exchange, I received the most precious gift. For years I longed to reach Narcisa’s level of femininity until the question that hit me in the solar plexus: “In your attempt to activate your feminine side, don’t you feel your little boy has died out?” I almost shouted, “No! I never want my inner little boy to die! And if that’s the price I have to pay for femininity, I choose to remain a little boy. Happy, full of life, free!” I smiled foolishly thinking about what a mirror Narcisa was for me, when suddenly the thought struck me: we weren’t mirroring each other; we were complementing each other. We were Anima and Animus. We were yin and yang, masculinity in femininity and femininity in masculinity. And what poetry our names made: I was self-love (Narcisa) and love of people (Alina)! Neither of us knew where self-love begins and love of others ends, or vice versa, and the collective unconscious demanded us to be catalysts for each other.
I told my therapist about the session with Narcisa and how I realized that to be humble, you need a bit of pride. You can’t understand humility without first being proud. Pride is the starting point. But her healing words rang like a bell: “That’s right, you need pride to be humble. But not a bit! You need A LOT of pride to be humble. You must fall from the high sky to shatter into nothing.” Ha, just like Hyperion!
The ugly (truth). Well, the opposite of pride is not humility. The opposite of pride and humility is shame. If pride is living in the ego through too much self-love, and humility is self-renunciation through love of others, shame is an illusion that annihilates both. God (and implicitly, Saturn) does not want you proud or humble. And definitely does not want you tormented by the contempt of shame. God wants you on the middle path. And do you know what the middle path looks like? It’s like Saint George, but instead of the Danube and the Black Sea, the love of others fuses with self-love. It’s a field from Letea where wild horses run free. It’s a confession of one’s own shadow in front of strangers. It’s healing the inner child through the wisdom of the old hermit. It’s a penumbra in a vortex of light, a truth that liberates. And today, freed by the truth that you need a lot of pride to be humble, I allow myself to be proud with all my heart, knowing that tomorrow life will humble me anyway!
What is your ugly truth?