aries: a coming of rage

Moon Gang-tae belongs to Moon Gang-tae.

O Goddess sing what woe the discontent
    Of Thetis' son brought to the Greeks; what Souls
Of Heroes down to Erebus it sent,
    Leaving their Bodies unto Dogs and Fowls,
Whilst the two Princes of the Army strove,
    King Agamemnon and Achilles stout.
That so it should be was the will of Jove,
    But who was he that made them first fall out?
Apollo, who incensed by the wrong
    To his Priest Chryses by Atrides done.
Sent a great Pestilence the Greeks among;
    Apace they di'd, and remedy was none.¹

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Declare, O Muse! in what ill-fated hour
Sprung the fierce strife, from what offended power
Latona's son a dire contagion spread,
And heap'd the camp with mountains of the dead;
The king of men his reverent priest defied,
And for the king's offence the people died.²

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Sing, goddess. Sing, muse. Sing of wrath, of resistance, of the rise of a child with a fox sealed in his belly, of a prince with a scar. Sing of a Mars-marked child forged in his fire, cut with his blade, raised to remake the world that banished him.

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So here I stand, singing of the once and the world where there lived an outcast prince. I sing of the prince who has wandered through my many stories with many different faces, driven by his hunger, walked through my dreams. Like fire, he shifts endlessly so in fire, we write the story to begin all stories: the father (Leo), the son (Aries), the holy ghost (Sagittarius). He shows in many of my tales: always wounded, always pushed to the margins, always explosive enough to be visible a chapter away.

Here: once there paced a lion cub, driven out of his forest after the fall of the king. Trembling with fear, he fled his kingdom. Here: once there paced a furious fire-bending prince, storming into a room to bark commands because the Avatar had gotten away again. Trembling with rage, he vowed to return to reclaim his throne. Here: once there was a child with an angry nine-tailed spirit of death and destruction bound inside him. Trembling with grief, he vowed to prove himself and rule them all.

I sing of the children of Mars — myth-makers born under the planet of strife and discord. A good story starts in humiliation and defeat that teaches the prince how much his ambition must mean to him so he won’t cower, even as he loses all he has ever known. The season of Aries, the time of cardinal fire blooming out of the dragon’s mouth like a carnation, is the prince’s story, beginning in his disgrace, his fall. The systems that he's waiting to be initiated into all seek his humiliation to teach him to delight in humiliating others, to convince him that worth must be proven through suffering to climb the hierarchy.

In Aries, Mars is too malefic for the mortals. They prefer him in Scorpio. I sing here for Naruto whose harm wasn’t as useful as Sasuke’s, Naruto who never wanted to win if it meant humiliating someone else. I sing here of the child who didn’t become disciplined enough to be a useful weapon because he cared more about being himself, who was too loud and too visibly himself for comfort of others who have been Shinobi first and self second.

Mars is the planet that divides, that cuts away. I start the story in an understanding of normalcy, in the Before so when the conflict descends, we know what we have lost, what more we’re willing to part with to see things through to the bloody end. Can you think of the story ending any other way?

The season of Aries maps the Separation in the myth, where the prince is uprooted and loses everything. The jewel at the center of the crown is pulled loose and thrown away. Simba flees the pride lands to an oasis, hiding. Zuko is exiled, adrift on a sea. Naruto lives in a village that won’t claim him, lives without his clan, lives in both the hyper-visibility of surveillance and the invisibility of no care.

All three live unaware of their true origins. In Aries season, the past collapses into ashes so the prince may transform, freed of duty and stability. He is stripped of the protection of community, finally exposed enough for the fire to burn the old away. Discredited for his aggression, called reckless and impulsive for wanting to reinvent the wheel, the prince answers the call for rebellion. Forced by his life to choose himself, he answers Mars and finally ventures into the wilderness at the borders.

Hear your muse and heed her advice, my prince. Be grateful for your rage. It is only a tool as good as your use of it. Anger is the knowledge of injustice. Anger is the awareness of harm, the grief of violation. Anger on behalf of the vulnerable is a gift from Mars.³

Anger is the reminder that you want your due, even as it is terrifies you.

The fire trine tells the prince’s story. The sun exalts in Aries; every king starts as a child with something to prove, eager enough for glory to fight for it, to disrupt order for it, to burn himself up to excel. From Aries as the exaltation to Leo as the domicile to Sagittarius as the triplicity, the excitable prince grows into a wise king by overcoming his challenges and then wizens into a wise elder. But what does the golden child know of love and power when they’ve always had it? What do you know of favor before you’ve lost it?

This is a story of the malefic-starred princes, who must realize every myth starts with leaving the center and venturing to the outside, from power to powerlessness back to power. The kekkei genkai children are feared for their unnatural powers, even as they are coveted and collected like trophies. Zuko paces and yells at the guard, trembling with both anger and terror.

Dear reader, track this chain of command. It’s a chain of fear — fear of the insecurity of power, fear that the Other may be stronger than we imagined. Beyond the mountain ranges and the rivers, behold Arian fire casting shadows on each face huddled around it: the Martian fire to burn the Piscean mist away, the fire devouring the field, the fire struck hastily at night as the blaze born out of fear, held out to help you keep the encircling wolves at bay. Here is anger, shrinking the world to a pinpoint, bringing clarity and focus. Here is the anger, the roar to silence everything else.

Aries is the bravery born out of terror that helps you push through it, your shaking hands as you fight back-to-back, as you do what everyone else is too afraid to.

Saturn falls in Aries. The rebel arrives to tear down the structures where he was imprisoned long enough to know exactly where to deal the blow. Behold: the birth of a prince who will threaten his tyrant father, the prince who could never hide from harm because he was branded with everyone’s fear and dread. Behold: the prince born into hatred so he may demolish it. Behold: the birth of Gaara as his father’s consequence.

Venus is in detriment in Aries. Mars is in detriment in Libra and Taurus. The maker of social norms doesn’t know how to live in this place of discomfort, where she isn’t desired but reviled, where she seeks conflict instead of union. The maker of conflict doesn’t know how to live in a place of comfort, steadiness and security. In a myth, the hero must be pushed into the margins because that’s the only place where the shifting can occur. The center is too rigid to allow the change the prince must undergo to become a king and remake the old order. Venus is the center, governor of the law-abiding world, bound in its rules and civilization. Mars rules the warring edges where the prince wanders. The prince comes to undo all the social relations that demand he stays in his place, to ascend. He loses his son-hood to gain his king-hood.

Reject peace. Be the problem we need to catapult things into chaos because change requires chaos. Become as dangerous as we accuse you of being.

So the young prince is less person, more act and for that, he is difficult to contain and subordinate. Administration requires categorization but you can't be categorized if you don’t get caught. Saturn falls in Aries because the rioter frustrates the tyrant. Too much fire, too much spirit for a body to hold. You can keep trying to get back to the center you were thrown out of. Or you can expand your imagination out here. You can be unafraid enough of the emptiness to finally remove the rot. Are you beginning to see how we must write the story to end all stories? The same fire that started this tale must finish this.

The prince is always angled towards movement. Look up and he’s always tilted forward like he’s waiting to jump, to run, to leap into the water twisting like a ribbon. He’s Flynn slicing Rapunzel's hair off, Snow White's prince knocking her apple loose. He comes to sever the decay, comes to uproot it the way it cast him out. He comes to incinerate the curse, blazing better than the sun.

In Aries: who is given the right to rage? If Mars is revenge, he is demanded by those who are failed by Venusian justice. Who is given the right to destroy what tried to destroy them? Who is given the right to protest their harm?

In Pisces, you learned the joy of communion. Learn now to belong to yourself. Learn the dangers of universalism. Let the children of Mars teach all of you that they belong to themselves. Reciprocity to the community must be chosen, not enforced. Be worth the loyalty and protection you demand. Be worth the sacrifice.

Communities must remain unafraid of dissent from the new children bringing rebirth. If they terrify you because you know they are born in the wake of your destruction, they are your consequences. If you are afraid of change, be content to die.

Look at what you forced these children to learn and tell me if your community is worth the sacrifice of their dreams, the violence you have wreaked. Look at the dangers of belonging when what you belong to is the thing that hurts you the most. What of the children you have deemed monsters and pushed out of the holy kingdom? What of those you think defile your sacred land and must be cast out? What of the land you stole and the people you stole from? Do these children want to belong or do they simply have nowhere else to go?

Before you demand allegiance, have you built a world worth belonging to? Look at your own child, in whose name you committed this theft. Are you a good enough king for your son to follow? Do you think he will inherit your shame with pride? You’ve brought him only the anguish of knowing the harm was in his name. You have robbed him of his humanity by gifting him this war. The child born to a legacy of cruelty has been cut down before he could stand.

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Hear your muse, my warrior. Raise your lowered head. Every push forward is met with conflict. The bud must break through the soil. The bird must smash through the egg. The phoenix must burn so it has ashes to rise from. The son must challenge his father to raze the system that rejected him, so no one may be humiliated like him again.⁴ We must all move away from what once sustained us and now contains us, or we will be held hostage.

If harm is inevitable, exercise wisdom. If conflict is inevitable, choose to stand up to those who push you down, those who will discard you the day you’re more trouble than you’re worth, the day you’re useless to the empire. The best agitator is the class traitor. Disavow the system that promises you power in exchange for harm to others.

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Once, there was a Zuko who befriended Aang because he could look past his pride long enough to realize that what he wanted to prove wasn’t worth proving. Once, there was a Naruto who loved Kurama and learned his name because he understood the rage that grips you when you’ve been used and abandoned by those who were supposed to protect you. Once, there was a Thyme who loved Gorya because she showed him the world could be kinder, that he could be kinder, by defying him.

Love has no spine without defiance. Love must be big enough to hold anger — anger because you loved your community enough to expect something better. Love for the Other means challenging your own to do better than to pass on harm. You may be able to prove your worth. Will you think of those who can’t?

Violence as spectacle. Violence as relation. Violence as catharsis.

We frame peace and conflict as antithetical to each other. I know you can see a new way forward, a way that does not require banishing the inevitable and necessary to create an artificial quietude. I know you see how that concord will shatter at the first sign of dissent, stretched taut to hide what we truly feel.

Mars falls in Cancer. My love, begin something separate from what you’ve known your entire life, even as it feels impossible. Strain against what you’ve been born into. When the prince enters Mars’ terrain and meets the Other forgotten children, he learns of the world that’s been trampled underfoot to build the kingdom he’s meant to inherit. He learns that self-reliance is a myth, that suffering only begets suffering instead of protecting him from harm. He learns of the violence it takes to maintain this noble victory and so, he chooses to lose instead.

My love, rewrite my stories and make them your own. Choose ugliness. Choose fear. Choose to walk through the fire and see how it refuses to burn you because you trusted it. There are things beyond glory. You will find them when you grow brave enough to release this.

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Hear your muse. Fight with those who could see past the cruelty you've been taught. Be brave enough to defend those who defend you. Be brave enough to choose kindness.

Choose to love and want a new world enough to defy your own. Choose the last thing you’ve been told to consider: yourself. Choose those who remind you to think about the risks of defeat, instead of only the greed for glory.

Once there was a prince who had been burned and scarred, attacked by his father. For many years, he had denied the grief this loss and humiliation had caused him, bent only on revenge against the Avatar. Now he redirects the lightning against his father to defend the air-bender, armed with the righteousness of his anger, armed with the knowledge that he is challenging injustice. For the love of his mother and uncle and friends, for the love of the people he does not know and the love his father said made him weak, he gives up his throne and chooses bravery.

Once there was a child who had been ostracized by his village, deemed violent and unpredictable for the nine-tailed fox sealed inside him. For many years, he had pushed through the shame and whispers. Sometimes, his fury would overtake him and the spirit would explode from him, causing harm to others but mainly to himself. Now he refuses to fight the Other because he understands the force of their grief and rage. There are those who urge violence and ridicule him for seeing humanity in the Other but he understands that their community abandoned them. There can be no expectations for kindness from the Other if kindness has not been shown first.

The malefic-starred princes choose to be weak because it means being good, because strength is built on subordination.

They choose to remake the world, even if it means losing their kingdoms.

They choose to look at their own wound without flinching so they may learn how to hold another’s wound.

Fire to purify. Fire to resurrect. Fire to cauterize.

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Out of the night that covers me,   
  Black as the Pit from pole to pole,   
I thank whatever gods may be   
  For my unconquerable soul.   

In the fell clutch of circumstance 
  I have not winced nor cried aloud.   
Under the bludgeonings of chance   
  My head is bloody, but unbowed.   

Beyond this place of wrath and tears   
  Looms but the Horror of the shade, 
And yet the menace of the years   
  Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.   

It matters not how strait the gate,   
  How charged with punishments the scroll,   
I am the master of my fate:
  I am the captain of my soul. - Invictus, William Ernest Henley.

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book with me at twitter.com/ranniazorya or by emailing me at ranniazorya@gmail.com. I offer basic birth chart overviews, profection year consultations, 3-month transit breakdowns (based on your chart) and tarot readings.

1. Thomas Hobbes’ translation of Homer’s Iliad, 1677.

2. Alexander Pope’s translation of Homer’s Iliad, 1715.

3. “Anger is one of the most powerful emotions we have. It probably evolved as a useful response when we felt someone was trying to cheat us or take what was rightfully ours, or when we were threatened or demeaned. But the crucial component—what generates anger—is the perception that another person is deliberately trying to cause us harm. When we get angry, we tell ourselves who, or what, we think is responsible for the threat. Along with the feeling of anger, our body initiates a chain of physiological responses that prepares us to defend ourselves. As a result, we focus our thoughts and consolidate our resources. Our heart beats faster. We tense our muscles and flare our nostrils. We breathe deeply. We take in more oxygen. In short, we ready ourselves to take action.” The Other Side of Sadness, George A. Bonnano (pg. 23).

4. “The hypermasculinity of Mars, which is not patriarchal like Saturn but youthful and in protest against authoritarian structures, often isn’t the masculinity of men who are already accepted as men but instead the masculinity of people who must prove themselves to be men.” - Postcolonial Astrology, Alice Sparkly Kat.

5 - ‘we frame peace and conflict as antithetical to each other’: learned from Zenana, Everyday Peace in a Karachi Building, Laura Ring. whenever the men would fight and stop speaking to each other, the women would use this vacuum to strengthen their bonds, knocking on each other kitchen’s doors to borrow ingredients or send food. conflict is not the death of peace. it is the mother. peace forged in conflict is stronger because it is aware of this reality. it does not hide or shy away from it.

that naruto helps people change by telling them their anger is righteous is proof of it. I ‘m thinking of how many war-dances are performed in solidarity, like the Maori Haka to help others process grief or death, to induce catharsis. it represents unity and pride. it can be an embodiment of strength. the sword you swing in battle is moved by the same arm that spins a partner around the fire in a dance. this is how Venus and Mars are bound together. art and war are both sources of beauty, power and pleasure. they are both integral to the process of civilization and unity. we cannot deny these truths like our colonizers love to do, claiming themselves too enlightened to cause harm.

we all cause harm. the point is accountability and recovery.

our ideas of violence are dangerously narrow for those on the receiving end of them. fearing harm solves nothing. demanding discipline only creates a new face for it to hide behind, only makes your own body the new site. the new world we build must have room for hurt by knowing how to hold it, instead of banishing it to the margins and making it someone else’s problem.

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To understand how Mars falls in Cancer and that it’s a thing of beauty — Cancer as the place where both malefics struggle because they don’t know how to sit in her garden and relax — please refer to F4 Thailand, ep. 15. Cutthroat self-independence has a price. Insisting on suffering now because you think you can evade future harm by sacrificing your joy today doesn’t work. When you rely on people, your bonds strengthen. Mars must learn to create a community that will accept him instead of trying to survive in one with no room for him.

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the subject - Moon Gang-tae belongs to Moon Gang-tae - is a line from the Korean drama It’s Okay to Not be Okay (2020), where both brothers learn to belong to themselves while still relying on each other.

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"I never asked Tolstoy to write for me, a little colored girl in Lorain, Ohio. I never asked [James] Joyce not to mention Catholicism or the world of Dublin. Never. And I don't know why I should be asked to explain your life to you. We have splendid writers to do that, but I am not one of them. It is that business of being universal, a word hopelessly stripped of meaning for me. Faulkner wrote what I suppose could be called regional literature and had it published all over the world. That's what I wish to do. If I tried to write a universal novel, it would be water. Behind this question is the suggestion that to write for black people is somehow to diminish the writing. From my perspective there are only black people. When I say 'people,' that's what I mean." - Toni Morrison.

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From Naruto Shippuden, episode 492 (I recommend watching the arc from 490-493):

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The images in order:

• Zuko confronting Ozai in in Ep. The Day of the Black Sun (Avatar: The Last Airbender). The scene is attached in a YouTube clip towards the end.

• Young Zuko burned by Ozai in an Agni Kai where his father says, “You will learn respect and suffering will be your teacher.” I was in 6th grade when I first heard it and I wrote it everywhere.

• Jung Ji-woon threatening to kill himself in front of his father, Inspector Jung, who has slain many in his name and is now about to execute Ji-woon’s two friends and workers just to keep his son safe.

• Joseph Campbell’s monomyth structure that details the hero’s journey as found in many stories. Aries season is the first quadrant of Separation.

• Gaara, the Fifth Kazekage. From Naruto.

• Jet from ATLA

• Stitch on the beach trying to get along with his new family as he realizes his loneliness and desire to belong — Lilo & Stitch (2002)

• Our first introduction to Thyme (Akira Paramaanantra) from F4 Thailand (2021).

• Below, Kurama: the nine-tailed fox spirit sealed inside Naruto when he was an infant.

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more aries heroes: