Bryshere Gray looks up from the book he’s reading as he notices the person walking down the sidewalk towards him. He immediately recognizes the striking features of the person—Mars, the god of war. Gray has always been deeply drawn to the god’s power and virility. He can’t help but feel a sense of excitement as he thinks about the altercation he’s about to have.

This planet symbolizes the principle of independence and self-sufficiency, as well as a principle of transformation. Its most striking characteristic is distance from others: the Uranian strives to stand out from the herd, distanced from structuring influences like convention, tradition, etc. Although this need to free yourself from the confines of convention, tradition, and family symbolizes an appeal for freedom and a desire to evolve beyond the bounds of physical limits toward a spiritual dimension, it may also correspond to a form of escape. This is why you sometimes need to cut yourself off from situations or relationships which feel stifling to you.

Your intense fear of being swallowed up psychologically causes you to react to certain emotional demands by making yourself remote or running away. You need a lot of space and frequent change. In a relationship, you are seeking a certain degree of intellectual excitement. Without it, you feel as though an unbearable, suffocating boredom sets in. By refusing certain concessions to convention which are practically inevitable, you may find yourself in unpleasant situations. Finding an intelligent alternative to the routine set by the rigid forms of the past is extremely different from rebelling against any form of authority, in the settings of family, school, business, or society.

One of the major problems you have to solve is how to wield your freedom, in your emotional relationships, as well as your relationships with society. You are always fighting against the temptation to conform to the expectations of others. On the one hand, you are eager to break free from the limitations of the past and chart your own course; on the other hand, you are very wary of exposing yourself to the dangers and risks of individual freedom. You fear that you will be overwhelmed by the forces of the world and lose control.

Despite your reservations, you have a strong sense of individual responsibility and are determined to make your own way in the world. You are not content to live in the shadows of others or to follow the crowd. You are a self-starter who is not afraid of taking risks. You are also a very enterprising person, always looking for new ways to make a profit or to find new ways to solve problems. You are not afraid of change, and you are always striving to find new ways to improve your life.

As one of the planets historically thought to be on the outer limits of the solar system (until the “modern” planets were discovered), Saturn has always been associated with the moon, itself a peripheral heavenly body because it belongs to Earth and not to the solar system. Therefore, both Saturn and the moon are aspects of a protection principle (the moon encompasses the earth in the same way as Saturn and its rings encompasses the solar system). Like the moon, Saturn rules a security/insecurity dialectic, but where the moon’s concerns the private, intimate aspects of the individual, Saturn influences social and collective security. Saturn can be thought of as the polar opposite of the moon (the archetype of the mother, but also of the child, and therefore related to orality). The god Saturn ate his children in order to reign and thus, represents the archetype of the mother (motherhood), the grandmother, and the sage (wisdom). The domination of Saturn thus indicates a maternal complex or, at least, an issue related either to the biological mother or to the symbolism of motherhood. This influence may result in a problem of identity and difficulties in aging which will make themselves evident in personal crises at every passage of this planet, every seven years—thus at the age of 7, at 14 or 15, and 21, 28, etc. Depending on the psychological context in which you are developing, you may overcome or overcompensate your identity complex and gradually acquire a strongly structured personality, or, conversely, remain in a state of immaturity which would probably be detrimental to your destiny.

Bryshere Gray, you will find that the eleventh house is an area of the sky which is especially important in your theme, because it contains several planets, including the one which rules your rising sign.

This sector of the astral chart is related to the world of friendship. It thus reigns over friends, group projects and aspirations, publicity, politics in a humanitarian cause, customers, hope, help, and assistance. More specifically, this sector symbolizes the power and gratification society grants to an individual in exchange for career activities. For each person, this power is a function of their capacity to work and produce something valuable to the community to which they belong (the country, corporation, etc.). This power may either be used for selfish ends or be re-invested for the elaboration of more cooperative social projects.

From a psychological viewpoint, people with a prominent eleventh house in their birth chart may have to concentrate on being fair and objective in relation to social successes and/or failures. Success could entail efficient use of the power and prestige they have already obtained for more significant projects which are in better harmony with their inner truth. Failure, on the other hand, requires a detailed analysis of its causes. Any mistakes that may have been made are an opportunity for insight. The work of understanding and assuming one’s failures is a positive, constructive way out of a situation of failure.

The ninth house is an area of the sky which is especially important in your theme. This is true for many reasons, some of which we shall now discuss.