Saturn in Aries and the PolyVagal Ladder
What astrology has to say about the state of our nervous systems right now
On May 24th, Saturn makes its first foray into Aries, initiating a new three-ish year astrological season. Wherever it transits, Saturn has important (if often uncomfortable) lessons for us about boundaries, structure, discipline, diligence, mastery, mortality, endings and other fun stuff. It usually asks us to mature somehow, to cut bad habits, toxic relationships, unhealthy power dynamics, etc, and to create new structures that support the life we really want. We come out more evolved as humans, but while the transformation is happening, it usually kinda sucks.
Adding to the challenges of this transit, Saturn is technically debilitated in Aries. That means the two archetypes bring out the worst in each other. Saturn feels like a heavy weight around the ankles of the warrior spirit that inhabits Aries. Aries’ impulsivity and impatience is a constant irritant to Saturn (aka Chronos, aka Father Time). Together they are a grind, and as I’ll get into, we’d be smart to anticipate the downsides in advance.
But if we show up to the lessons of this transit, Saturn in Aries will also be a forging. Saturn will shape and sharpen the core sense of identity that lives in Aries, like molten iron becoming steel. We’ll come out with a more authentic, intentionally-formed self-knowing.
In these times of rising fascism and climate collapse, maybe this is exactly what we need. It’s an emergency. It’s okay to act like it. It’s okay for our nervous systems to behave like it. It’s okay to claim or re-claim an identity that is not dissociated from the true urgency of our historical moment. That’s what I hope we can get out of this transit. I hope the exploration here helps you give yourself permission to be present with these energies, and what they’re ultimately asking of you.
THE PISCES/ARIES THRESHOLD
I’ve been in a contemplation of the Pisces/Aries threshold since late March, when Neptune, Mercury and Venus were gathered there. It’s the end and beginning of the cycle, so a particular type of transformative alchemy happens at that threshold, and especially when major planets like Saturn and Neptune cross, we get access to it. It’s the separation of the individual spark from the primordial muck, a great cosmic wake-up call, a coming alive.
Aries is a disruption — and there’s nothing we need more right now, at least speaking for America and the west. Before entering Aries on March 30th, Neptune had been in late Pisces for several years, a transit that relates to the distracted, escapist culture almost all of us have been somewhat lost in. Opportunities abound to numb out or chase dopamine down a rabbit hole. Streaming platforms, social media, video games, the scammer-filled gambling parlor of the crypto scene, ubiquitous porn, celebrity culture and more are all part of the mass delusion. We’ve got our faces buried in our screens, literally, while the oceans are rising, literally.
These days, you may feel a survival instinct is starting to awaken. It’s time to snap out of the stupor and do **something** to ensure your own survival and that of your loved ones. What that might be is a whole different story, which Saturn will likely bring to light. But so far this might be showing up as more of a feeling, and maybe not a great one. It might feel like a background buzz of anxiety, easy over-stimulation, a shorter temper than would be ideal, a tight jaw or chest.
That’s your body’s sympathetic nervous system response, often called “fight or flight”. It’s one type of threat response, an ancient programming that primes the body to give every ounce of its energy toward immediate physical survival. Blood moves out of the brain and digestive organs to the muscles and limbs. Heart rate accelerates, breath quickens, in rare cases physical superpowers are unlocked. After escaping a predator, animals in the wild are known to shake or tremble to discharge the sympathetic activation. Trauma-informed somatic practices also now use shaking and trembling to help resolve old, unreleased fight/flight responses within the nervous system.
As is pretty common knowledge these days, the levels of stress placed on us by late-stage white supremacist capitalism keep us in a constant baseline threat response. Instead of ever deeply relaxing, most people numb the discomfort or temporarily “down-regulate” their systems with alcohol, tobacco, weed, prescription meds, and/or any of the screen-related modalities I listed above. Then in order to get through the workday, they “up-regulate” with caffeine or other stimulants.
There’s another type of threat response, broadly called “freeze”. In this state, a different set of nerves activates, and instead of preparing to fight or flee, the body plays dead. It’s not just about lying still: a freeze response slows circulation and digestion and keeps breath shallow.
Freeze corresponds to depression the way fight/flight corresponds to anxiety. Freeze is when late-stage white supremacist capitalism — and/or some other event or piece of information — has knocked us over into despair. Something pre-conscious in us gives up, decides it’s not worth the fight, decides it would be better to lay low. And so we find ourselves exhausted, brain foggy, stiff, cold, constipated, joyless. Even if the rational mind wants to keep fighting, the body has made a different choice.
The current activation of the Pisces/Aries threshold brings both types of threat responses into focus. With so much late Pisces in the ether this spring, we were in a collective freeze response. With Neptune and Saturn crossing into Aries, there’s a gear shift happening, a collective movement from freeze to fight/flight — from emulating death (late Pisces) to urgently and actively moving in the direction of survival (the singular focus of early Aries).
THE POLY-VAGAL LADDER
Of course, we’d like to get beyond threat response completely, and into what is considered a “regulated” nervous system, the coveted ventral-vagal state. Ventral-vagal is sometimes called “rest and digest”, but it doesn’t always look like rest. It means openness, compassion and curiosity, a feeling of safety and resource in the body. In ventral-vagal, heartbeat is regular, salivation and digestion increase, muscles relax, and the brain’s social engagement centers come online.
In other words, in ventral-vagal, we feel good. We can appreciate the depth and vibrancy of life, we can tune in to the emotional states of others, we can laugh and cry and experience deep release. This place is our birthright, and it’s normal that we’d rather be there than in a state of threat.
At the same time, as therapists and other poly-vagal speakers might know, it doesn’t always serve us to pathologize “disregulation”. There are interesting nuances here, in the depths of Stephen Porges’ polyvagal theory, that I think can help us grapple with the transition we’re going through now.
The Polyvagal Ladder is a concept developed by Deb Dana, a colleague of Porges’ who helped to build out his theories. It describes an experience common in the long-term process of trauma healing, basically that one’s nervous system “climbs the ladder” on its way to recovery. It’s normal for a person coming out of a deep depression to feel anxiety as part of the emergence. Like shifting gears in a car, you can’t just jump from first to third.
But the ladder also over-simplifies things. Movement between these states isn’t linear, and some folks experience anxiety and depression simultaneously, like hitting the gas and the brake at the same time.
Moreover, I don’t know if we serve ourselves by considering ventral-vagal the ideal we should always strive for. It is a product of privilege to even have your basic needs met — at this survival-oriented turning point in humanity’s history, it might not be realistic to expect our nervous systems to always be “regulated”.
When we overlay the Pisces/Aries threshold with the nervous system’s shift from “freeze” to “fight/flight”, it helps us have a less linear, more cyclical perspective. What is born at the beginning of the cycle — when some other pre-conscious decision is made in the system to come back to life — is a disruption we need to embrace. It may be rough around the edges, feral, wild, not mature yet, but it’s alive. And it’s an essential part of the whole process, in fact the initiator of everything else. (In a very unscientific way, you might even trace the nervous system states forward: Taurus as a bodily safety, needs for food and shelter met; Gemini for the curiosity and openness that are traits of ventral-vagal activation, and Cancer for enough resource to love and nourish other beings.)
Saturn is a planet known for making shit real, for giving form to what has been lurking in the ether. Its crossing of the threshold gives us a chance at a big rebirth, but whatever vision is emerging in the flames will take effort to be attained. With Aries there can be a lot of trial and error, a lot of impulsivity guided by intuition. To move our own lives forward, we might need to embrace a certain amount of disregulation and maybe even be grateful for it. We need to listen to it, ask it what it wants from us.
In my opinion, the best way to channel this energy is to find the place in your life that connects with the transit, and give it your all. Treat it as a survival situation. Saturn’s themes are boundaries, discipline, structure, sticking to it, heavy lifts, putting in effort day by day towards mastery, not cutting corners. Lock in to your deepest core values, call them into your cells, and let them guide your actions.
No matter how uncomfortable, edgy and legit scary it is (we are living in fascism after all), let’s remember that Aries is inherently disruptive, and we — Americans, western culture, the imperial core — NEED a disruption. A disruption is the only possible effective transition out of the stupor induced by the capitalist death grind. So my prayer is that we can all ride this energy, say yes to it even when it challenges us, even when it disregulates us.
For more support, check out my rising sign horoscopes for Saturn in Aries! You can find the written version here (along with more of an exploration of the transit itself), or the video versions on the Collapse Astrology YouTube channel, which include oracle cards for each sign.
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