René Descartes

René Descartes is the father of modern philosophy, the French thinker whose Cogito, ergo sum, I think, therefore I am, became the bedrock of Western rationalism, and who fused algebra with geometry to give us the Cartesian coordinate system that still bears his name. His Sun in Aries tells the whole story of his method: the pioneer, the double leader, the one who refuses to worship the authorities who came before. Descartes swept the whole slate of received knowledge aside and wrote of the passions as if no one had ever written on them before, exactly the Aries move, the self-starter who charges ahead and leaves a lasting mark. He was even a soldier by ambition, serving in the Dutch States Army, and it was on a cold night in an army billet that three dreams handed him his new philosophy in a single fiery flash of certainty.

Yet his Moon sat exalted in Taurus, the luminary at its healthiest, and this earthy Venusian foundation grounded that pioneering fire in patient, methodical building. Taurus goes with the gut and takes its sweet time, and Descartes built his system stone by stone from one unshakeable truth. Aries lit the spark; Taurus laid the foundation that reason could stand upon.