Baby's First Planetary Returns Via Art Class

Rita Young is an Art Teacher who has written a fascinating book called Teaching Art to Children the Marvegos Way. The book is fascinating not only because Young appears to be a very effective mentor for her little students but also because the way she explains the different stages of a child's creative development. And these stages correspond really well with the planetary cycles that children go through at the same ages. There's an especially an interesting sort of back and forth movement between Jupiter and Saturn Cycles.

In the book, explanations are given on how to teach kids at different ages. Young groups the kids by Age and encourages different approaches accordingly.

The first Age Group that Young teaches as a unit are Ages 4-1/2 to 7. She calls this the "Art Exploration" stage. Age 4 1/2 is an interesting age astrologically for a child as there is a whole slough of 1st time aspects. What Young says is what one would expect to hear about Moon, Ceres and Jupiter, especially. "Facilitating the art-making for this group involves encouragement, praise, and an "all's well" attitude." Interesting that around 4.5 years a child goes through the 1st Progressed Moon sextile, 1st Ceres Return (4.6 years), 1st Pallas Athene Return (4.61 years) and then 1st Nodal Square (4.8 years), and then 1st Saturn Sextile (4.8 years).

She says that art making at this age is about telling stories. Rather than illustrating the story, the child literally will create it while drawing or painting the picture. She says that kids at this age really don't have a sense of form, something which she says starts to show up around the time that amazingly corresponds with the first Saturn square, around Age 7 or 8. Young says that kids can show directions, a person facing you or to the side, and will enjoy counting things like legs and arms. She says that kids at this age are happiest when encouraged to play and take risks. Sounds like a lot of Mars influence as well. The Mars and Jupiter cycles sort of work together. By Age 4 a child has had 2 Mars Returns. The first Jupiter square occurs around Age 3 and the first Jupiter Return occurs around Age 4.Around this time all the asteroids in the Belt between them have their returns.

The Next Age Group described in the book is Age 7 to 11. This grouping starts around the time of the first big Saturn Aspect, the square and ends around the time of the first Jupiter Return. Young says that this age a child's art becomes more socialized and shows awareness of the outside world. It's just really interesting that when working together Jupiter and Saturn rule this process. Rita Young literally says that kids are "connecting who they are to their world." Their pictures develop realism as their observations become more accurate. They develop a sensitivity to shape and form and light and shadow. As they observe the outside world they can start to see how they are the same and or different. They develop their own style of mark making. At this age she stresses teaching a study of form and composition and also knowledge of media.

Saturn's influence is very strong here. Young says that it is most important to use Time to let kids at this age develop. The student needs encouragement to solve problems on his own time.

The last age group is Age 11 and Up. This is the Age of the 1st Jupiter Return. Young says that during this phase the best things to guide the kids with are learning to make decisions, i.e. developing own opinions about things. They must be helped to "define goals broadly." And they need to understand how to handle and make positive use of Accidents (accidents in art are often considered gateways to creativity, unlike most other academic studies). These are all Jupiter concepts! Jupiter equals Exploration! Young also says that through this age kids can create more happily when guided to understand Struggles and Plateaus in the creative process. This is sort of an understanding of using Saturn vibes with Jupiter vibes where "backsliding precedes leaps in growth." "All part of the process of making art and living life."

Excellent!!! This is probably not news to anyone who has kids but I don't so I'm totally blown away by this.