Listen for Aquarius and Aquarius Rising

2013 Annual Horoscope by Eric Francis

Aquarius Part One
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Aquarius Part Two
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Music for Aquarius – Invocation of the Mystery Guest by Blue O’Connell
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Listen for Aquarius and Aquarius Rising | 2013 Annual Reading by Eric Francis
Full minor planet list for the day that the Sun arrives in your sign.

This is a time in life when you’re learning to assert your will and your authority. This is a new chapter in a lifelong story; it is made new, in part, by the prominence of Saturn in your chart. The planet that rules your sign (contrary to what many modern astrologers think; if we use Uranus for this purpose, we don’t really understand Aquarius) has begun its journey across your 10th house, Scorpio.

That’s the house of all matters of authority, reputation and executive-style power all the way to the top. With the authoritative Saturn now transiting this house in your chart, you’re on notice that it’s time to take charge of your life. Contrary to the usual conditions of Scorpio, Saturn is demanding that this happen in an overt rather than covert way. Taking over your own affairs can no longer be a fly-by-night operation but rather one conducted by the light of day.

The question is, what happens when you make moves to take over? What is likely to happen, initially, is that you will get a psychology lesson. It’s good that you take an interest in the dynamics of human interrelation and the workings of your own mind. In many ways that’s your key to healing what I will call the ‘authority issues’ that have followed you through most of your life.

Now, to some extent we all have authority issues. Does anyone want to be bossed around, or compelled to do anything? We might live with it, but relatively few people actually like it. It’s not so simple. If we plastered the slogan “Lead, follow or get out of the way” on every street corner, it would not deliver that message vehemently enough. Most people don’t think they want to be told what to do, or told what is good for them, though few are willing to assert their authority over their own existence and the world around them — at least not in an honest way.

To combine Scorpio with the house of authority is a recipe for subversive activity. The 10th house (10th solar house for Aquarius Sun, 10th by whole-sign houses for Aquarius rising — synonymous with ‘Scorpio’ in your life) is easily corrupted when it’s combined with secrecy, particularly in the life of an individual. Yet in your life, it speaks of a family dynamic that wasn’t, well, it wasn’t exactly familial. The 10th usually represents the dominant parent, and with Scorpio there you can be sure that dominant really meant bossy.

Most of our authority issues can be traced back to the “authoritarian mini-state” known as the family, as it was so aptly described by Wilhelm Reich. There are reasons humans have a tendency to come under the thumb of influences that would suppress them — just about every one of us is taught to do so. We are then told we have to be assertive, self-actualized individuals, participating in the larger society where the same influences do their part to make sure that we have limited participation.

Children are powerful yet powerless. They rarely have even the least influence over the course of their own lives, much less over events unfolding around them, and this lack of self-authority (or usurped self-authority) tends to do two things. One, the whole process is internalized. Two, resentment builds up.

Then, this extends into our adult relationships with people and institutions, such as the companies we work for. Most people find it easier to go along with the suppression, despite how frustrating it is, though usually they know no other way.

The part that seems to be appealing is that when we do, we also have limited responsibility. If you want to know why people are so often sheeple, that’s the first place to look for clues; the prospect of taking responsibility for one’s existence is a burden and to many, it’s simply not appealing. Now, however, you are being summoned to take charge. Saturn is your personal delegate within your chart. Where Saturn is describes the area of life that you’re focusing on. It’s now at the very top of your chart, which happens for just two-and-a-half years out of every 29 years.

There are a number of ways to think of this; one of them is as a coming-of-age process. From time to time it’s necessary to define a tangible step in maturity, something we humans need desperately (though it’s rarely done in our society, and this in part accounts for our obsession with marriage — the only socially sanctioned rite of passage after high school or college graduation).

Another way to look at this transit is to think of it as overthrowing your dominant parent, or both of your parents for that matter, taking over the job and doing it right. This is not a quick process, though you’re not entirely new at it. You have had a diversity of practice runs over the past couple of years, and in some respects a lifetime of experience trying to get this right.

Yet another way is to look at it as a sign that you’re being called to achieve bigger and better things. You know that it’s time and that it’s time to do so in a direct, rather than skewed, underhanded or manipulative way. I understand these may be harsh words, but we are talking about a mix of two of the most potent seats of power, in combination: Scorpio and the 10th house. And we are talking about a society where these are the ways that things ‘get done’ by most people, most of the time. People spend endless time and energy rationalizing the ‘power at all costs’ school of conduct in business and in their personal lives.

All of these topics are related, energetically and by psychology, through one common aspect of life, aspect of the psyche or if you prefer, energy field. They are one common aspect of life which is now coming up for review, along with a few other related matters. But if you were to take away nothing else from your astrology of 2013-2015, this one aspect of focus on your personal development would be more than enough. It’s not possible for me to provide actual counseling for you on this transit, though you can go a long way by researching the relationships and the placements, and if you have the resources, studying past transits to your 10th house.

These include Pluto in Scorpio, from November 1983 through November 1995. The people, times and places associated with this transit may seem long ago and far away. I assure you: they are not. Many events from that era, including unresolved ones, are likely to be on your immediate radar, though even if it doesn’t seem that way, they are merely one shade back from the foreground.

Pluto in Capricorn; the Mutual Reception

Part of what’s making this such a deep time in your life is that Pluto is transiting Capricorn. Capricorn is the sign before yours, making it your 12th house by whole-sign houses if you’re Aquarius rising, and your 12th solar house if you have the Sun in Aquarius.

The combination of the 12th and Capricorn is perhaps trickier than the mix of Scorpio and the 10th, though the two are closely related. The difference is that the 12th house acts like a vast, concealed universe, whereas the 10th tends to be more forthright and exposed. Capricorn for its part is like an intricate maze of history, structure, psychology and to some extent, knowledge — though most of the knowledge was valid in the past.

Capricorn, like the 10th, has a propensity to power. But where it’s placed in your chart conceals the whole matter of power, as well as various kinds of attachment to the past, including to various family structures and patterns.

Pluto moving through this house has the approximate feeling of what astrologers politely call transforming — or what we could also call demolishing — past karma. The Brits call the 12th house “the dustbin of the zodiac,” dustbin meaning garbage pail; it’s the place where nearly everything that is unresolved gets swept into.

Generally we access this house through things we associate with the ‘unconscious’ or ‘subconscious’ — through dreams, visions, meditation, ‘shamanic’ experiences, psychedelic trips and certain forms of art and cinema. This is why the 12th is considered the house of dreams. Yet those are merely the access points, not the content. The content is what we actually contact or go through in these experiences.

From another perspective, the 12th is the house of the waking dream — that is, the trance state that many psychologists say is at the root of ‘normal waking consciousness’. This is an interesting inversion of the ‘house of dreams’ approach, saying that normal consciousness is a kind of a dream. And if it is a trance-like dream, you can be sure that there is a corresponding awake state on the other side.

Therefore, no matter how you look at the 12th house (there are more descriptions than the ones I’ve offered — houses are the most complex thing in all of astrology), Pluto moving through your 12th house is about waking up to the present moment. This will happen in many ways, one of which will include a change in your relationship to the past.

This includes how the past influences you in a covert way as well as how it influences your moment-to-moment awareness. You might describe this (borrowing from modern astrology) as an evolutionary process, that being associated with Pluto. There is a kind of deep reaching to the roots of both your history and your awareness.

Said in clear psychological terms, Pluto in Capricorn is challenging all of your prejudices. It’s a transit calling you to take nothing for granted: nothing that you believe, in particular about the past; nothing that you perceive, particularly if you’ve made your mind up in advance, rather than having gone through a deliberative process to arrive at a particular point of view.

Pluto in your 12th house may also have several other effects. One is a sense of isolation. Any 12th house transit can do this — though Pluto is particularly infamous for this effect, and for this and other reasons Pluto in the 12th house is considered one of the most difficult transits in all of astrology.

Another sensation of Pluto in the 12th can be a profound erotic awakening. The 12th in Vedic astrology is the house of the pleasures of the bed. Pluto is like Scorpio personified; it’s stirring up eroticism on the deepest levels — including the ones trapped in all of that Capricorn structure. There is a release of much pent-up energy of the past, potentially going back many generations.

Now, here is where this transit gets more interesting: Pluto and Saturn are in what is called mutual reception. Pluto is the modern ruler of Scorpio; Saturn is the traditional ruler of Capricorn. When the two planets occupy one another’s signs, they are in mutual reception — a potent, multi-faceted condition that allows for many different possibilities.

[If you are reading carefully, you will note that I tend to discount Uranus as the modern ruler of Aquarius, but I do allow for Pluto being the modern ruler of Scorpio. This could be the topic of a whole article, but let’s say I am bending the rule of mutual reception in using it with a modern planet such as Pluto. I will sum up the issue this way: in my research, I have seen that Uranus doesn’t really contribute much to our understanding of Aquarius (though I’m open to suggestions for how it does). But Pluto contributes significantly to our understanding of Scorpio.]

The effect of the mutual reception is that for the time being, you can count yourself as having both Saturn 10th and Pluto 12th as well as Pluto 10th and Saturn 12th. This bonds the energies and processes intimately. Think of everything I’ve said about Saturn through the 10th house as being fully related to Pluto through the 12th house — especially one thing: your use of sex as power, and sex as power that is used over you.

The conflation of sex and power is one of the most common things in a world where nearly all people feel powerless, and where nearly everything that exists is turned into a commodity. It is also one of the greatest sources of misery, what lawyers call alienation of affection — and speaking of lawyers, it’s a source for wealth flowing in their direction (i.e., legal fees for divorces).

I will give you a clue as to when you’re using sex as a means of concentrating power: when you tend toward secrecy in any form. This includes secrecy with others, an over-emphasis on privacy, or keeping secrets from yourself, commonly known as denial. When you feel yourself going in any of those directions, I suggest you notice how you feel and try a new direction. Secrecy and power are the directions of the past.

I also suggest you consider the ways in which you control time in your relationships. The conscious use of time is one of the key things that constitutes maturity, in all the many ways that time manifests — including the long arc of time, your perception of what a ‘lifetime’ is, your perception of past lifetimes, your perception of a year, and other measures of time and growth. What is an adult? What is maturity? And what happens ‘after the end’?

Mortality and Saturn, Pluto, Scorpio, Capricorn

One thing that Saturn, Pluto, Scorpio and Capricorn have in common is that they all relate to death. Prior to Pluto, Saturn was the planet that represented the ‘end of time’ or time limits — often depicted as the grim reaper. By association, Capricorn was included in this — the sign of old things, old people, old bones and related matters.

In modern astrology, Scorpio and Pluto are associated with ‘death and transformation’. Pluto was the Roman god of the underworld, the place where souls were supposed to have gone after they left; Pluto himself was depicted as a kind of kidnapper who took people there.

So, with these four symbols activated in your chart, and inter-related, the theme of mortality is something that may be real and present for you in some way. I believe that as a psychological force, it’s an essential element to recognize and relate to within the psyche.

This is a natural part of maturity; it’s part of the aging process. But it’s also a key element in one’s relationship to being alive. A relationship to death is a way of keeping things realistic — and at the same time, it’s a way to prevent your life from being run by the subconscious fear of death.

In other words, I think we have two choices — to have our lives be run by the subconscious fear of death, or to engage in a conscious relationship. This translates to a conscious relationship to the process of change, which can include growth and other forms of changes. In practical terms, this would mean reconsidering concepts like ‘permanent’, ‘forever’, ‘lifelong’ and others, and trying on more realistic concepts like ‘dependable’, ‘adaptable’ and ‘realistic’.

There is, however, the factor of actually coming into some tangible relationship with physical death. Have you addressed the practical matters associated with this? Lest you think I’m making a prediction here, I am not; nobody needs to predict death. What I am suggesting is that this theme may arise in various forms, and the thing to do is dance with it consciously.

Much has been written about the way that American culture in particular denies this whole topic, much to its detriment. We live in what may be the most transient culture in history, where monuments such as stadiums are torn down and rebuilt like tents at the Boy Scout Jamboree. And at the same time we deny change and cling to the notion of the unchanging.

This is one of the deepest spiritual issues we face as humans, since it involves the concept of nonexistence, and existence is all we know. Yet your charts speak to nothing less than the profound. Though this may be a challenging region of territory, my sense is that your mind is already going there.

Money as a Function of Self-Esteem

Two of the most significant transits of our era — Chiron and Neptune in Pisces — relate to self-esteem and the concept of abundance in your life. They are in your 2nd house, which represents your available resources: money, emotional resources and how you feel about yourself.

You need some grounding in this aspect of your life, and that may come in the form of a holistic view of your finances as an existential matter. This is not easy to describe, though I can draw you a sketch. It’s really an approach to living rather than an approach to ‘making money’. It involves spending money as much as earning it; it involves what you do with your money while you are in possession of it. Mainly it involves seeing the relationship between how you feel about yourself and how you feel about your flow of money.

I am not suggesting taking a New Age manifestation approach, though such would be similar. This is actually not such a complicated thing to understand, though we make it complicated.

It would be easier to trace the ways in which damaged self-esteem led to the sense of not deserving to live according to your own values. This is subtle work. To do it you will need to investigate the influences of your past and draw the connections. However, this is a central element in the process of taking charge of your life as described by Saturn going through your 10th house.

Remember: in this world, money is power. Not having money is a form of being powerless. Coming into a relationship with your power will include developing a conscious relationship to money and its relationship to who you are in the world. The best suggestion I can make for how to work with this astrology is to factor this theme into every decision you make.

Communication in an Introspective Time

All in all, this is an introspective time for you. To an extent, all the transits I’ve described illustrate that, as do others. Yet you may also crave social contact and involvement in relationships. If that is true, I suggest that you increase your standard of communication.

The chances are, you let on far less about yourself than you think you do. Even if you see yourself as outgoing, I would propose that others don’t necessarily have a sense of what is going on with you. You need to say what you want people to know, and I suggest you say a little more than you think is necessary. Communication is a skill. It’s not just about talking. It’s about listening, and it’s about knowing whether you’re understanding what someone is saying and whether they understand you. To facilitate contact with others, you need to watch all of this, and take care that it’s actually happening.

There is a subtle level that can get lost, not just in the world of Aquarian idea-based thinking but in a world where what we call communication is more like being pelted by free-floating packets of information. You need to bring the receptivity element in, as well as the clarity element. It’s the essence of personal communication; and it is the essence of professional communication (which includes asserting your ideas, and standing up for yourself).

Listen, speak clearly, and then listen. Repeat as necessary.

 

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