The Sign of the Centaur Archer
The Sagittarius constellation represents the expensive wisdom of fire, always to rise and spread. Sagittarius are friendly, energetic, and adventurous, but their spontaneity can make them flaky.
Over the years, the Sagittarius constellation has been conflated with the Centaurus constellation, leading Sagittarius to represent a Centaur archer, rather than just an archer. The conflation is appropriate, however, since Centaurs like Chiron, who trained Hercules, excelled at athletic pursuits, valued their freedom, and had a noble character, much like Sagittarians do.
The 19 Days of Sagittarius range through most of December.
Fire Sign
Sagittarius, the 3rd and final Fire sign in the Zodiac, surges with the electric energy of lightning. Like a bolt from the heavens, they embody the spirit of adventure, freedom, and expansion. Sagittarians are the eternal seekers, always yearning to explore new horizons and expand their knowledge and experiences.
Just as lightning illuminates the sky, Sagittarians brings illumination to the world through their boundless optimism. They have a thirst for novelty that knows no bounds, searching for more in every corner of existence. With their sharp wit and insatiable drive, they become beacons of inspiration, encouraging others to expand themselves.
Their restless spirit leads to spontaneity and unpredictability. Always on the move, they’re driven by a desire for freedom and independence. Like lightning, they can strike with sudden bursts of enthusiasm and passion, igniting those around them with their infectious zeal for life.
Wisdom Sign
As with the other Wisdom signs, Sagittarius thrives on the abstract, so it isn’t surprising that the Force law of electromagnetism is quite similar to that of motion in the way it works, just way more conceptual and difficult to illustrate! It has to do with the force exerted by electrons flowing through a magnetic field, and for our purposes we will call it the law of Potential. It’s the myriad of possibilities that open up when the vicinity is energized, and it is the drive that calls us to explore the unknown. This is a very active form of curiosity, which must see in order to believe and thus be an eye-witness. Not content to sit back or theorize, this sign blazes the trail in order to get a first-hand account of something previously thought to be impossible. While pushing the envelope might not seem to be the most survival-focused adaptation, in fact it is imperative to seek new horizons if we are to adapt to changing conditions in our world.
Being able not only to muster the courage to do this, but actually enjoy it is a beneficial quality of wanderers. They go where others will not, just to see what is out there, and bonus points if they are skilled at bringing the information back to tell the rest of the tribe! This exchange makes them excellent bridges between cultures, ways of life, and styles of learning, but it doesn’t make for a very secure base or long-term connectivity. Jetting off can be seen as flakiness, and their resistance to committing or settling down may put them at odds with long-term goals. It isn’t always necessary to be the guinea pig for your own desire to know what is possible, and a lot of time and aggravation can be saved by learning from the examples of others if we slow down and make sure what we are after hasn’t been done before.
Sagittarius is often portrayed as a philosopher or sage, but there can be a disconnect between the ever-seeking heart of the young blood and the learned advice of the elder. That this sign so readily embodies both is no coincidence, it is a paradox that must be reconciled if there is any hope of gleaning value from the excursions. This is why the heroes in myths such as Don Quixote, there must be an accompanying bard to note down all the events of the quest and make sure the story goes on to be told if the champion should be laid low. An integrated Sagittarius is one who can both adventure, and scribe.
Personality
Personal Life / Personality
Those born under the Sagittarius constellation or with a Sagittarius influence in their Star Chart tend to have an aura of electrical energy about them. Their personal lives are marked by this energetic nature, as they radiate a vibrant and lively spirit that is contagious to those around them. Sagittarians are notoriously spontaneous, always ready to embark on new adventures and explore uncharted territories. They thrive in environments that offer them freedom and versatility, allowing them to express themselves to the fullest.
Confidence is a key attribute of Sagittarians as well, since they trust in their abilities and have faith in their instincts. This self-assuredness fuels their adventurous spirit and pushes them to seek out thrilling experiences and expand their horizons. However, this hyperactive nature and tendency to get easily distracted can sometimes lead them on tangents or scatter their focus.
They desire the accumulation of experiences, which can sometimes manifest as an avaricious pursuit of novelty and thrill for their own sake. Needless to say, they can develop some of the most addictive personalities in the Zodiac. They thrive when they can engage in pursuits that stimulate their minds more holistically and gradually satiate their thirst for discovery, without causing sensory overload.
Interpersonal Life / Relationships
Sagittarians have a magnetic nature that draws others towards them. Their charming and charismatic personalities make them incredibly likeable, and they effortlessly navigate social situations with grace and ease. Sagittarians are naturally sociable beings, thriving in the company of others and engaging with lively interactions. Their positive outlook on life and infectious enthusiasm make them wonderful companions, always ready to entertain and bring a sense of fun to any gathering.
Friendships come naturally to them, as they have a genuine interest in connecting with people from all walks of life, being so accepting and non-judgmental of others. Their adaptive nature allows them to easily blend into different social circles and forge meaningful connections. They do, however, have to guard against becoming too performative for the sake of bad influences which tempt them with mania and enable their volatility to get out of hand.
As passionate individuals, their romantic nature often adds a touch of dashing allure to all of their interactions. They effortlessly captivate others with their charm and free-spirited nature. But this same free-spirited and free-loving nature makes it difficult for them to commit to any one person or place, at least in theory. In practice, they commit deeply to anyone who also values honesty, freedom, and variety as much as they do. Sagittarians are perhaps the most liberated of all Zodiac signs in love, and they can usually afford to be because of how liberating it is to be with them.
Nonetheless, they are capable of directing excessive outrage toward those who they perceive to be limiting them or dampening their free spirits. Their proactive and at times chaotic lifestyles may also produce undue stress at times for their loved ones, and for themselves, even if they aren’t always aware. Their first response may be to cut ties and detach, but deep down they often know when they’ve gone too far. At their best, they are highly capable of directing their near-infinite energies toward growth, progress, and unconditional love in relationships of all kinds.
Social Life / Society
Sagittarians lead socially dynamic lives, and they’re possibly the best social networkers in the entire Zodiac. Their engaging personalities and natural charisma make them popular among peers. And their ability to gregariously and successfully upkeep a myriad of acquaintances, business partners, and friendships at any given time is an impressive feat. But it often comes at the expense of their more intimate and depthful relationships. They must learn to differentiate between relationships and prioritize those which give them the deepest and most wholesome value.
Their expressive and stylish personalities make them stand out in a crowd, as they are not afraid to embrace their image and either go against the grain or jump on the bandwagon and inspire trends in their own direction. Their rebellious or revolutionary streak can sometimes make them appear volatile or manic, as they navigate life on their own terms. And their performative streak, on the other hand, can make them appear superficial or conniving. Whether contradicting or proselytizing norms, they tend to be motivated by their public image, and so either way is ultimately harmful.
Sagittarians dare to take risks and push the boundaries in pursuit of their goals. They have a realistic and pragmatic approach to life, always considering the practicality of their endeavors. With their original and progressive thinking, they are often seen as trendsetters, both in fashion and breakthrough ideas.
Their heroic nature propels them to seek out new experiences and adventures, drawing others into their exciting enterprises. However, their opportunistic nature can sometimes lead others to see them as unreliable, inconsistent, or reckless, as they chase after new opportunities without considering the consequences. This may also lead to scattered behavior, occasionally displaying a tendency to procrastinate at some times and take foolish risks at others.
Ultimately, Sagittarians aren’t afraid of being seen differently, and embrace their own eccentricities, adding an exciting element of predictable unpredictability to their social lives and contributions to society as a whole.
Archetypal Story of Sagittarius
Maximus is a Disciplined soldier. He has served his emperor with honor, and led his men to many victories, protecting them to the best of his abilities so that they may return home to their families. When the time comes for him to be released from his station so that he may do the same, the jealousy of a deranged wannabe emperor plunges his whole world into darkness.
His family is murdered, he is hunted down and forced into slavery. Instead of laboring in the fields, however, he is sent into gladiatorial combat and must fight for mere survival. As his martial prowess becomes known, he is offered an opportunity not only to live as a celebrity, but to take vengeance upon the traitor who wronged him and fulfill the dream of his late mentor. Yet revenge is always far from his mind as he takes on each fight with presence and a clear set of priorities. Whenever the match involves fellow fighters, though the intent of the game host may treat them as expendable, Maximus is every bit a general making strategic decisions and giving orders which safeguard their lives. He imparts Discipline to everyone he works with, and easily slips on the mantle of leadership through their loyalty and respect. As entertainment hinges upon the subversion of expectations, the crowd goes wild every time he flips the script back on his captors and rewrites the stories they try to force him to reenact. This is clearly his goal, and he asks them, “Are you not entertained? Isn’t that why you’re here?” expressing his growing contempt for the gladiatorial practice and brainwashing it attempts.
With every victory in the arena, his fame grows, and his status as a national hero brings him back into the crosshairs of the patricidal Commodus. He comes to represent not only heroism in the classic Roman sense, but through his virtue and resolve against the tyrannical regime. The jealousy which was first kindled over the emperor’s fatherly treatment of Maximus grows into a raging fire as now he is beloved by the crowd as well. Commodus is desperate for popularity and validation, and feels entitled to it through his inheritance of the throne, but even that is not enough to win the genuine admiration of others, as he spends all of his time plotting instead of cultivating virtue. Through manipulation and guile, he leverages his position to degrade the authority of the Roman Senate and convert Rome into a dictatorship rather than a democracy.
In their final stand-off, Commodus knows he cannot best the general in fair combat, so he stabs him backstage and covers the wound with armor to deceive the crowd. Ever eager for their approval, he brought the coliseum back to life and staged this whole series of wasteful spectacles in the hopes that they would accept his regime. Ironically, it is a stage he sets for his own downfall, as even mortally wounded Maximus manages to slay the delusional tyrant.
There once was a dream that was Rome, and though he had dedicated his life to fighting for it, now, in death, the Commitment to it instilled in him by emperor Marcus Aurelius came full-circle; for her enemies did not lie in the forests of Germania but in the halls of the imperial palace. He slew the greatest threat to the republic and set Rome on a path to be retaken by the will of the people.
In life, Maximus gifted Aurelius with the greatest adventure, accompanying his campaigns and helping him expand the empire as far as he dared. Despite all of their success, Aurelius the Taurus, who is often regarded as one of the wisest stoic thinkers of all time, came to the conclusion that the glory of Rome didn’t lie in her military prowess, but in the hearts of her people. So, in this historical fiction, Aurelius implores Maximus to Commit to Rome as a protection against the evil that he knew lay in the heart of his own son, who craved only power.
♐︎ Sagittarius
Promote Recreation, Rehabilitation,
Mental Health Cultivation
A magical inversion can sometimes occur during imprisonment. When you are truly removed from the bustle of your regular life and forced to spend time alone with nothing else to do, sometimes profound discoveries are made. That is not the condition being created by our present industrial prison system, so that is the primary directive of Sagittarius to address, but under dignified conditions there is something therapeutic about the process of sitting to reflect on the value of your own life and freedom. Neuroticism cannot take hold where gratitude is present, and certain types of deprivation can force you to never take things for granted again. It is possible instead of turning resentment upon the captor, to utilize the time to look inward and find the freedom which was there all along, and that is exactly what Solzhenitsyn did when writing the Gulag Archipelago. His courage and ability to speak that truth into being through his book, freed not only himself, but a nation from its knees under the yoke of communism. Don’t ever think that what you are doing doesn’t matter, even if it doesn’t seem worthwhile to journal about your personal experience, that’s simply not true because journals have changed the entire course of history.
While Aries manages the front end, Sagittarius must then handle the ethical containment and rehabilitation of people who commit crimes and the direct correlation that has with mental health. We are experiencing a complete and utter breakdown of the boundaries between those two issues. Instead of providing support for mental health, people who are actually suffering are thrown in with all the others, and the crafty are able to appropriate that in defense of their willful wrongdoings with no distinction being made on their treatment. Depending on the color of their skin anyway. Prison is a catch all for the unwanted, and our system is broken. It really would take so little for even a marginal improvement, but in speculating about a truly optimal one I think it would be something where the sentence left the person in better shape than they started with. Authentic growth must come from within, it can’t be enforced with sanctions from outside. But if people are confronted with the consequences of their actions, damage they have done, or harm they have caused to others, and given the opportunity to step up, make it right, and prevent it from happening again, it can be a galvanizing force for taking charge of their life and reforging who they aspire to be.
We are severely lacking in the ‘opportunity to make it right’ area, with community service being a strangely disconnected slap on the wrist instead of a direct connection to the negatively impacted party. How is anyone supposed to form real compassion and empathy if they are kept completely separate from the impact of their deeds? Which begs the question, if we are able to shame and exile people over charges which cannot be related back to their source, are such charges valid? We have two main mechanisms of behavioral control in society, which we enforce by coalitions. There is a physical punishment route which includes imprisonment, corporal damage, and the death penalty; and a more psychological one made up of ostracism, shame, and exile. Don’t be fooled, they are actually equal in severity, as in the past exile was basically a death sentence and our psyche is deeply burdened by this fear to this day. Our current system is a tag team of both, leaving little room for a third way to explore the redemptive quality of making mistakes and learning from them. If we are not allowed to mess up, and find a way to fix it, we are doomed as a species unable to learn and progress.
There is nothing more socially impactful than a sincere apology, rooted in empathetic consideration, and followed by a modeled change in behavior. We yearn for this in our heroic stories, wanting so much for our champions to rise up out of the disgrace of a foolhardy initial attempt into a wizened strategy to carry the day, and be crowned victorious at last. No one of us is perfect, and we must have the freedom in life to explore the limits of our flaws if we hope to reach for what might lie beyond them. Therefore, the mission of Sagittarius encompasses guidance and forms of mentorship, from therapists to parole officers, spiritual teachers to bards. Where mistakes have been made, and advice may be given, there are opportunities for rehabilitation and many ways that path may be explored. Art and music have incredible therapeutic properties, for some that may be their main motivation for involvement with them. When they are able to fulfill that purpose, rather than merely be vehicles for commercial gain, they can transcend the suffering of the human condition and grant us some insight into how we can transcend it and grow beyond our own limitations.