The Un-Trad Wife
Reflections on identity and the 1st House for Aries season and the new astrological year
You might be surprised to see that I chose to change the date of publication for the new astrological year after all. It’s because the New Moon in Aries on Tuesday will be at zero degrees and that felt somewhat significant. I’m also going to phase in some format changes, starting with New and Full Moon chat threads to check in with each other. I can promise it’ll still be the same vulnerable and thoughtful musings you’ve come to expect from me.
It’s a Saturday morning, I’m expecting my landlord within the hour and I’ve just chucked a bunch of leftover Order of Service booklets from my wedding in the bin. They were in a box with the congratulatory cards and some gifts I’ve always hated. It was all the kind of girly stuff like you see in shops with the Live Laugh Love and It’s Prosecco Time shabby chic signs. It makes me want to cry, if I’m honest, and not just because it was gifts to celebrate what I knew already back then was a lie. It’s just how much the people around me, even people who have known me since I was a child, have absolutely no idea who I am, and it feels insanely lonely.
This is the Aries newsletter, and I’m going to talk about the 1st House it rules. I like my takes hot, clearly, but if I wanted to talk about the archetype of the tsundere redhead (think Café Enchanté if you get my otome references) I’d probably not send it because boring much? That’s the obvious basic Aries that everyone knows about.
What I find fascinating is that such an archetype is what rules the house of identity. It’s Cardinal Fire, and Cardinal signs are all about the qualities of the beginning of the season. The sign that occupies our 1st house is the sign of our Ascendant, which technically sits in between the 12th and the 1st, at the interception between what’s unconscious and inside of us, and what we project to the outside.
Things like how we present ourselves (from our clothing style to our social masks), our personality, our outlook on life (shoutout to Barney + Flo(w) for that insight), and what people perceive about us all fall under this House, and it’s ruled by Aries, which is ruled by Mars.
I have found my diary from when I was first engaged in 2018. At a glance, “identity” may be the word that appears the most in it. It’s clearly a question I have wrestled with what feels like my whole life (and I found out yesterday that I’ve been in a first house zodiacal release since 2016…)
My word for 2020 was Connected. I had plans for dates with my new husband, and prayer and worship and Bible studies. I got therapy, the beginning of what led to a divorce, otome games, and eventually becoming a witch. In a way, connected did I get, I just didn’t anticipate to what. Half-way through the notebook there’s an empty page, following my saint for 2021 and notes about (you guessed) identity. Ironically, the saint was St Martha, the very picture of the identity I was so struggling to embrace.
If you’re unfamiliar with her story, she lived with her sister and brother in the town of Bethany and when Jesus showed up on a visit with his disciples, she jumped to cooking and serving food and resented her sister for sitting at Jesus’ feet listening to his teaching. She is…my mother, basically. The one thing I have spent 30-odd years striving not to be, and I’m still working through the consequences of the enmeshment growing up. St Martha is a good example of the pressure of doing that can come with Aries energy.
I believe that’s why it’s not a coincidence that Aries rules the first house. There is a tension between our being and our doing. If you ever tried to change a habit, or do anything significant in your life, you know how much of the success of the endeavour rests on the shift in your identity.
Manifestation, too, is a lot more about your identity than it is about positive thinking (although the annoying new iteration as Lucky Girl Syndrome at least gets that right, you have to embody that identity as a lucky girl). How we move through the world comes from it, so it makes sense it’d be the first house, and it being Aries is what truly interests me.
The most common explanation you’ll find if you ask Google-sensei is that we start the year in Aries because that’s when the spring equinox is. Spring has obvious symbolism about new beginnings, although this witch would argue that spring only comes because seeds were planted in the winter so really, that’s why Samhain is the new year for me and a lot of witches. But, still, I can see the argument of winter as a time of preparation for the new working both ways. I just like the idea of starting the year at Samhain because it severs the link between rest and productivity. To rest at the end feels like there’s a need to earn it, but for me rest is the World and the Fool in the Tarot. I’ll share my musings on that in due course.
Going back to our Ram, there is a deeper link between it and identity that would be missed if we dismissed it as first sign therefore first house. There is a myth in Greek mythology if you want to look into that, but the one I’m most fascinated by is the link to the Egyptian god Amon-Ra, which according to William Olcott in Star Lore: Myths, Legends, and Facts was "Lord of the Head”. During the New Kingdom period (16th to 11th centuries BC) he held “the position of transcendental, self-created creator deity ‘par excellence’ ”, according to Sjur Papazian on the Cradle of Civilization blog. And, like Amon-Ra, we too get to be self-created creator deities of our identity in our First House.
My first encounter with my Scorpio Rising was strange. I still had to deconstruct a lot of my identity around what was conditioning and what shadows I had created in rejecting things that were true about me in order to fit in with a label and be accepted in a certain inner circle when I could have…just gone elsewhere. But that’s a story for another time. Right now, I still don’t always know what it truly means to me to embody that energy beyond my penchant for LBDs with deep v-necks and short skirts whatever my family think that you can only be elegant if you show one or the other, red lipsticks in fairly dark shades, deep dark colours and biker’s jackets. Oh, and as much eye make up you’d think I’m Avril Lavigne in 2003.
It’s less of a problem for me that it may sound: astrology taught me that things are layered. We move through a cycle of 12 signs. Each season we move in will come back next year. It’s not a linear progression either: we shift from Fire to Earth to Air to Water, and again Cardinal, Fixed, Mutable energy. Even before the planets come to play, things are already not black and white. And when you add the houses to the rotation, it adds yet another layer of meaning.
It can be easy to look at archetypes as a fixed thing, but they’re more like a label. Not everyone who calls themselves Catholic ends up in therapy for religious OCD, terrified of their own thoughts to a degree that from the outside can never be imagined. But that was my experience of the things that label meant. It’s the same with the signs. It’s easy to read a magazine horoscope, not resonate, and conclude the problem is Astrology instead of your inability to speak the language.
When someone understands how personalised Astrology is, it may still be unhelpful to them. I’m studying Japanese because I consume a lot of Japanese media, I can see the value in knowing Mandarin or Arabic as a general thing but it’s of no use to me. I don’t feel the need to proselytise my way of life now I’m not making decisions from a place of avoiding eternal damnation. I don’t even have an in-group to prove anything to.
I have picked up many battles that weren’t mine because I amplify people’s opinions, feeling what I can now recognise as discomfort and low key stress and anxiety at having to be forceful in my convictions when I’m more open-minded and prefer to understand where others are coming from to trying to sway their thinking about a topic (and it was no surprise to learn I have one lone hanging gate in my undefined Ajna in Human Design).
This is to say that it’s all part of self-exploration. No matter how deep you go into something, that choice alone tells you something about yourself. We make choices all the time, most unintentional and habitual, and they build up who we are as much as they come from the self we have constructed (and the soul underneath if it’s really there, who knows). If you’re reading this when I sent it, it’s the dark moon, so it seems extra fitting to spend some time thinking about how you can be more intentional with who you are in the coming year, safe in the knowledge that you don’t have to be the same in a year’s time (telling it to myself first and foremost, I struggle with people’s expectations).
Our birth chart are layered because they represent the human experience. As above, so below. Transits are the day to day circumstances of our lives on a cosmic level. The argument with a rude person rushing past at the train station (Mercury square Mars), that coffee date with your best friend that makes you feel seen and loved and healed of all the friendship wounds you had before (Jupiter conjunct Chiron), etcetera.
Energetics is the language of the soul. We have the energy of the cosmos within us, whether you take it literally or metaphorically. If you’re still reading this (and if you’re reading every month, thank you so much, I really appreciate you), chances are you value being intentional about using it. Now’s a great time to commit to yourself for the upcoming year, and find a small way to deepen your knowledge of who you are and act from this place of awareness instead of just reacting to life from the subconscious. And if you’re out of ideas for how that can look like, I’ll talk more about it with the New Moon thread on Tuesday.
Here’s to an empowered new year. Happy Equinox and blessed be if you celebrate it. And until next time, keep living in wonder!
What’s happening in my world
I’m going to cut it short so I can go play Hakuoki with my friend, but I’ve been having some amazing conversations I can’t wait to share with you when Starry Sky and Witchy Things S2 comes out this Thursday!