A Stellium in Aquarius

November 5, 2004 (with chart and picture)

 

http://cainer.com/ericfrancis/nov5.html

 

Hi Eric:

Fascinating to connect with you via the net via Jonathan Cainer's site. My question for you is: I have five planets in the 5th house... in Aquarius. A stellium in Aquarius...what do you make of it? Am I a future leader in the Aquarian age? Am I here to do incredible work in the area of love and communication? I've been told the 5th house represents kids and creativity. So far I don't have any kids, and I've been around the sun 42 times and my creativity isn't at all what I would like it to be. What do you see that might help me be more connected to my soul? Most of my work this last 15 years has been spiritual and inner focused. Do you see me coming out and shining my light? I'd love to hear from you. Your responses are profound and joyful. Thank you.

 

All the best,

 

LeeAnn

1/28/1962 8:56 PM Rockville Centre, NY

 

Dear LeeAnn,

Rummaging around the back room of astrology a few years ago, I found the prototypes for your chart. That is, searching through the years around your birth, I noticed the most stunning Aquarius alignment in recent history, and you were born during that moment. I happened to be in that neighborhood because I have a fetish for 1960s astrology, and this seemed to be one of the obvious root charts of that era, a chart that contained the keys or secret codes for what was to come. We could probably still use it with excellent effectiveness as an historical bellwether. That's an interesting metaphor because the bellwether is the sheep who wears a bell and leads the whole flock, and you're asking if this (loosely speaking) is your role.

 

Before we go into what your natal chart signifies -- which should be fairly obvious from the course of your life, except for one factor that might obscure things a bit -- let's go over the basic features. At the time of your birth, six of the seven of the seven traditional planets of antiquity are located in one sign, Aquarius; all that's missing is the Moon, and when it arrived one week after your birth, each of the other six will still be in Aquarius. Hence we had a truly rare condition of all seven planets of antiquity being in one sign. That, however, is the missing factor, and with the Moon conjunct Neptune I would like to have a good one-page biography of your mother available before reading your chart.

 

The Aquarius alignment tells me that you were born into a rare, exemplary and outstanding moment of history: in the middle of the brief presidency of John F. Kennedy, when an exactly divided nation (election of 1960 was nearly tied between Nixon and Kennedy) gathered with all its heart behind one leader during truly momentous times. Martin Luther King was very much alive; the Civil Rights movement was happening; but this was the Sixties Part One -- before the Beatles came to the United States -- in an era known as Camelot. I suggest you study this era, if you want to know something about yourself and your mission. The New York Times microfiche (for the week of your birth, an exercise I highly recommend to anyone curious about their natal astrology) is a good place to start, as are innumerable books written about this era.

 

When the Moon showed up in Aquarius seven days after your birth, there was be a total solar eclipse. It was an extremely rare eclipse -- one of the great eclipses of the 20th century.

 

Let me explain to everyone how I can see this -- it's extremely obvious if you know what to look for. Notice that the Sun (orange circle with dot, with the number 8 next to it) is near the South Node of the Moon (dark upside-down horse shoe with the number 18 next to it). When the Sun and either of the Moon's nodes are together, there is an eclipse in the neighborhood. Either it just happened or it's about to happen. You can make a good guess by the position of the Moon relative to the Sun; in this case, a New Moon is approaching and the Sun will still be very close to the node at the lunation. That is an eclipse. To be sure, check an ephemeris, or use the eclipse finder feature in an astrology program.

 

That eclipse was the first major checkpoint of your life. We are not conversing now (astrology is best done as a conversation), but if we were, I would have begun this whole discussion with an inquiry about the condition of your family at the time of your birth. There was, I imagine, something highly unusual. Nobody is born into average-normal situation with all that Aquarius gathering like a bolt of Thor's home-made lightening.

 

I would make a second inquiry about the condition of your life and family at the age of seven: all factors, including siblings, parents, health, pets, location, school, everything. Why seven years? You are born with the Moon square the Sun. It took the Moon seven days to get from Scorpio (your natal placement) to Aquarius, where that eclipse happened. This is a clear case for checking your progressions. Progressions go on a day-per-year formula; seven days translates to that eclipse having its real manifestation in your life seven years later, i.e., at the age of seven.

 

That was around 1969. Everything was different. Kennedy was dead. So was his brother, Robert. So was Dr. King. In fact, 1968, as your progressed solar eclipse was approaching, society was in complete turmoil. By 1968, Richard Nixon was president. The Vietnam War, barely spoken of at the time of your birth, was the biggest issue on the national radar, it was going horribly, and the protests were raging. The idealism of the early 1960s was basically shattered, but something else had emerged: social movements where young people began to have faith in their own ability to hold an agenda and shape society. Now, you may ask what this had to do with you; you were seven, after all. I assure you, because you are who you are, it had everything to do with you.

 

I would say this were there far fewer indicators of a link between you and the collective in your chart; but because of your birth in the days before this eclipse, and the powerful emphasis on Aquarius in your chart, you are drawn in to the consciousness and the experience of society -- which was truly unparalleled in the first seven years of your life. The world had seen nothing like it and would never see it again. There was so much change people could not keep track of it. And as an impressionable young child, you lived through this. And the events of the "larger world" influenced your family. Your parents were somehow deeply touched by what occurred (Sun conjunct Moon).

 

Whatever the specifics, the age of seven was a profoundly important and formative time. And if you ware asking if you're supposed to be a leader of the Aquarian movement, that suggests on its face that you have a connection to society. Instead of looking for ways to hook into that mission, I am with this discussion taking you through a process where might see, in a clear way, what that mission is at its most organic and functional.

 

Do you experience yourself as part of the world, in tangible fact? Aquarius is a pretty no-bullshit sign. Its first ruling planet is Saturn, as tangible as astrology gets.

 

There were several other crucial checkpoints, which I would like to go through before we attempt to make any judgments of what this chart says your purpose is. Besides having a good understanding of your Saturn return at 29 (very important because Saturn came back to Aquarius and transited each of your planets there), your Uranian opposition at 40 (also vital because Uranus is associated with Aquarius), and your major Chiron transits, I would want to have a good sense of the early part of 1997, when, once again, there was a great alignment in Aquarius -- at the time of Comet Hale Bopp. That was the enormous, double-tailed comet that appeared around your birthday that year -- here is a visual cue:

 

Next turning point, or point of unfoldment, was May of 2000. This was the time of a grouping in Taurus very similar to what occurred in your sign at the time of your birth, and it squared all of your natal Aquarius planets. This was the first collection of all seven planets of antiquity in Taurus (that is, the traditional, visible planets, before the discovery of new planets began in 1781 with Uranus).

 

Searching back some 7,000 years, no such alignments were found in Taurus.

 

Natal charts are not static. Planets are particles, but they are also wave patterns. So charts unfold. They unfold at important points where progressions and transits aspect the chart. Age seven (progressed solar eclipse in Aqurius), Saturn return in 1992, plus the events of 1997, plus the events of 2000, plus the Uranian opposition in 2002: what are they about individually, and what is the story they tell? What is the direction this whole plot known as your life is moving?

 

Please go over these dates thoughtfully. Take a few weeks. See if you can summarize them in a form I can publish here easily, linking back to your question and this introductory essay. Write the long version, then get it down to 100 words per event, so our readers can get snapshots of your life at these important times and see how the process of a chart unfolding works.