Aquarius is Rising
Opening up my first chart of the day sent a little shock through my system. I had awakened from a dream that came with the message: you have to be who you are. Then typing ‘any key’ and waiting a moment for my friend Planet iMac to wake up, I had a look at the astrology. Aquarius rising, followed by a stream of planets in Aquarius and Pisces stuffed into the 1st house. Part of Fortune conjunct Uranus. North Node in the 2nd house.
Be myself, indeed.
Put on your sunglasses and take a look at the chart. You don’t need to be an astrologer to get it. The rising bit is all the stuff on the left, just below the horizon or horizontal line.
http://planetwaves.net/astrology/aquariusrising.html
This is Aquarius turned up to the level of the Jet Stream. The exact degree of the forthcoming Chiron-Nessus conjunction (in effect from Feb. 21 or so clear through the next couple of seasons) is in the ascendant, three and a half Aquarius (Sabian Symbol: A Hindu yogi demonstrates his healing powers). This is a conjunction, long in the development as Chiron approached Nessus in Capricorn, that looks to me like it’s going to shake a little reality loose from the cosmic tree, and fortunately up in the north, it happens when the weather is getting warm and people are getting restless and curious.
In the current chart, Chiron (little green key) is floating above the horizon, currently in the last arc minutes of Capricorn, about to burst into the next dimension. The Moon in the late degrees of Pisces is making a sextile to Chiron — balancing the emotions with the transforming force of awareness, but balancing on the very edge — a position that will be in effect part of the day. Then in a little while, the Moon blazes into Aries for much of Friday and the weekend, running all that emotional energy through FIRE instead of water. Now that should be interesting.
Aquarius involves a great many commitments and social patterns, but ultimately the message of this sign is distinguish yourself from the great mass of humanity as the individual you were born to be. Distinguish yourself from your peers. This is not hippy talk. This is not groovy therapy talk. This is what I understand as the evolutionary imperative of Aquarius, as ordained by the cosmic architects. Right now, every single natal horoscope on the planet, no matter when or where you were born, is getting its Aquarius angle pushed past the speed of sound.
How are you feeling? In what particular way are you feeling restless? In what particular way are you seeking contact with a group that allows you to be your actual real self? This is the message of the Aquarius Jet Stream.
There what seems to be a necessary process with Aquarius: some kind of pattern or system must break before the new one can take over. Imagine this happening most distinctly on the level of personality.
Individuation: if Aquarius on the most spiritual or esoteric level has a tradition that must be honored, this is it. Yet this tradition requires us to take a series of deeply personal steps and leave behind who and what we were before. Growing this way can be challenging, especially if you see your only choices as being McDonald’s and Burger King. If there is a trick, it’s usually some form of giving yourself additional options. This is easily done, if you want. Usually the choices are right there, you just have to see them. If they’re not there, you need to get creative; remember, you are creative.
I’ve noticed from long observation that the group in which it’s often most difficult to be an individual is the group of two. In these groups of two, we can live with all kinds of spoken and unspoken expectations and arrangements that seem to trap us into being someone other than who we are now. Often the deals we live with were made back when we were different people, in truth bearing little resemblance to who we are now. I see this every day, I feel it every day, and I feel the strength that it takes to assert myself as the person I am that particular hour of my life. It takes strength just to remember! And to remember that the biggest barrier is my own fear.
Slowly I’m learning not to feel bad for pushing everyone around me so diligently to accept me for who I am today. Gradually, I’m even learning to feel good about it. The more of us who do that, the more the world will start to make sense. If the past is what we must let go of, can you think of a more efficient way? If you can, I would love to hear about it. I have noticed that when I make authentic decisions that reflect who I am now, the cosmos responds. I have learned to trust my motives. I’ve learned that I love people without trying.
Then there’s the office. What would it feel like to stop making compromises there? Who, me? I would probably write a lot more science fiction stories in this space, or somewhere nearby. Essays would be a heck of a lot sexier, and more veils would fall away. I would stop worrying about what you think, with perfect faith; please, fill up my reader comment folder. I would take a chance and explore some wild possibilities we’ve both never heard of, and some extremely sensible ones. I don’t know about you, but I need some of that in my life.
And, truth be told, I would stop giving a rats ass about the latest bunch of morons who think they’re going to take over the planet, and find a lot more fun things to write about.
Some of my readers [rereading this, I saw the word ‘teachers’!] have been extraordinarily articulate in explaining to me that if I’m going to cover the news, I must focus on what’s going right in the world. It’s true — the problems are finally getting a lot of attention now. When I’ve paused to look back, I’ve always considered myself a fairly bold writer. But I think the calling today is to be bold in an entirely different way: with what is possible. The world needs new possibilities, I need new possibilities, and I feel them inside me, and I feel them inside everyone I know. That sounds like a hot story.
So, brothers, sisters, cousins, colleagues, lovers, friends and Papa, Aquarius is rising. Let’s get ourselves someplace new, and let’s take ourselves along.
Happy Birthday, Aquarius!
In this life we often must exceed what we think of as our potential. Yet few people even get to the point where they allow themselves to sense their most basic potential, let alone exceed it. The time has come for both.
First a bit of history. In the 1970s there was a (seemingly) minor psychological and social revolution called the Human Potential Movement. The main idea of that cultural wave is that people can reach into themselves and, with a little help, heal their doubts and fears, and bring into the world more of who they truly are — often much more, and often coming with a sweeping transformation of their worldview, their role and their state of being.
This, and more, is available to you.
It’s just that you might not feel it at this particular moment as any more than a possibility, no matter how excited you are about your life. Because Chiron is still in Capricorn at the time of your solar return, it may seem like a perpetual dream that is out of reach. Yet this need not be the case. One of the most typical ways Chiron works is by prompting us to work a little harder at what we want. Yet that sense of ‘out of reach’ is a chirotic effect. It appears to be a debility; in fact it is motivation to keep reaching, to aspire, to have faith.
Let’s focus a bit on the symbolism of Chiron in this state in your solar return chart, dangling in one of the last degrees of Capricorn, a sign it’s occupied since late 2001 (remember back then? Remember everything that’s happened?). This is symbolic of the healing force residing deep in your unconscious. Or rather, guarding the gate to the unconscious. If you reach in just a little, through any particular portal available — meditation, dreams, tarot, astrology, or however else you may bend or stretch your consciousness — you will very likely find this quality, this energy, this aspect of your psyche, being the first thing that you reach.
Beware: many experience Chiron as the ‘sense of being injured’ or the ‘sense of what is missing’. Stay with this feeling long enough to see through it. Stay long enough to notice just what your journey, struggle or adventure has given to you. Plan for what your life would be like if you were free from the things that have held you down in the past. Reach in its direction. Soon enough, the force for healing and transformation through awareness will be reaching back in yours.
Aries (March 20-April 19)
We are, in fact, all in this together, and you know that now. However, there are those in this life who are destined to be leaders, and for those people, life can have its lonely moments, no matter how many others surround us. If you are in such a position, you must as a matter of necessity reach out to others on your level, or find others and bring them to your level, or go to where they are. It’s rarely easy balancing a sense of egalitarian thinking against the necessity for leadership and at times maintaining authority, but these days and weeks, that’s your mission if you choose to accept it.
Taurus (April 19-May 20)
Okay, so you want it all. You want to do it all. And you believe that you can do it all. You have certainly been hung up for enough months, perhaps even years, waiting for a moment when you have enough confidence in yourself to make changes purely based on your own desire, ambition, or creative potential, not merely because you have to. Yet the change implied is much greater than we realize; no longer forced to adjust, we need to motivate ourselves, prioritize, and make one decision at a time. I suggest you start with what is personally the most important to you. You, as in you.
Gemini (May 20-June 21)
Let’s talk about…paranoia. One definition describes this as, “A belief that the actions of others are demeaning or threatening; feelings of being exploited or harmed by others; questioning loyalty or trustworthiness of friends or associates.” The issue is: what is real and what is not? Why is it okay to envision a better world, a more idealistic world, and hold that as real, and yet when we come to fear or mistrust, to somehow eliminate that from the world of potentials? The answer is free will. You stand in an extraordinarily creative moment, where mind, imagination and manifestation are aligned precisely. Think carefully, and think well.
Cancer (June 21-July 22)
The issue is whether you stand to give up or gain a great deal. Regardless, the key theme is exchange. The outcome depends on how you look at what is going on in your world, and whether you feel you’re in a position to act on what comes most naturally to you. This is affecting your life principally where you share commitments with people, or what you perceive as commitments. Do they leave you enough space to be free? Or are they compromises you feel you’ve made and cannot get out of? Let me make it brutally plain. What is the cost of freedom?
Leo (July 22-Aug. 23)
This is the year to take the entire world as your valentine. If anybody can do this with impunity, indeed, with radiant idealism in their heart, it’s you. I suggest you write a letter to the cosmos, including friends and family, and email it to your entire address book and a few lists and newsgroups, reminding people to get with it and love. While some would regard this as anarchy, what principle would they prefer we use to organize our minds and guide us through our lives? Ah well, we had better not answer that one. In any event, I truly suggest you speak up. You have the microphone, and people are listening.
Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22)
Please don’t squander all your precious energy on work. There is so much more calling you, and if you haven’t noticed, you’re having an early case of spring fever. This is, or is soon to be, one of your “the rules were made to be broken” phases of life. In the end, your tendency to be an iconoclast and resist authority is going to help your work, which would benefit greatly from the breath of fire, a long stretch and an all-night brainstorming session. Keep it loose, keep it light; creativity gets more done than labor — a lot more.
Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23)
Liberte, egalite, fraternitie — the motto of France. Is this too much to aspire to? Not this week. One issue with high ideals is that so few people have any experience seeing them turn up in reality that few believe anything idealistic is possible. Plus, our parents often programmed us to be blatant pessimists, thinking they were doing us a huge favor by not giving us any expectations that would someday be dashed. These patterns are changing in your life. The creative force is alive and glowing in your life. Creation implies the making or birth of something that was not there before. As a noted Libra once said, there’s nothing you can do that can’t be done.
Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22)
The ongoing clash between logic and emotions consumes half your body’s energy some days, but I suggest you just give up the struggle. If ever the two seemingly different spheres of reality were aligning and converging, it is now. Logic is subject to rules, and when you change the rules, different outcomes are possible. Certain potentials are expanding rapidly and in fact exceed the known guidelines that were designed based on prior experiences. So hang loose. Let your expectations change along with your confirmation of what is possible, in reality. You do need theories to keep your emotional life in order, but you don’t need them at the moment.
Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22)
As I have been saying, it all comes down to your friends. Cast any trace of negativity from your mind and instead focus on how, in so many ways, your situation is genuinely ideal. You would do better not considering this your personal good fortune and instead thinking of the potential you feel as a community enterprise of some kind; in truth it is, and you’re its motivating influence. This is particularly true where financial matters are concerned, but does not end there. Still, for now, I suggest you maintain an emphasis on engineering the details of financial wellbeing like a grand conspiracy to run the world. Your perfectly outrageous ideals will not suffer one bit for it.
Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20)
The whole basis of love is this thing we often write off casually as self-esteem. I’ve said before we need to drop this term in favor of something clearer: self-respect. You may be going through a crisis around this aspect of life, or you may be entering a peak moment where you inherit a powerful sense of necessity. The only risk you run these days is thinking that your ego is overstating the case of what a great person you are. Such is possible, but I think you need to get it into your blood, bones and brains that you are a great person, and stand in that sunlight till you get a nice tan.
Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19)
It’s often a pleasant experience when we recognize that something we thought was impossible suddenly becomes obviously possible — or even inevitable. For you, the key is keeping the word ‘impossible’ out of your vocabulary. Forget I even reminded you that the word exists. There is an element of mental exercise here, and the objective is to help you keep your mind open. For now, focus on what you envision as good or necessary. The logistics, to the extent that they are even necessary, will take care of themselves
Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20)
Okay: what next? Several planets have gathered in the supercharged Aquarius zone, your 12th house. The theme is ‘considering your highest ideals’. You may be experiencing a mix of nervousness, anticipation, or a sense that something is building up, about to be born. Actually, many things are due to emerge in the coming days and weeks, and for now you need to carry on with your current projects and process, while being open to some rather sudden developments that present much in the way of opportunity. In hindsight, you will see that patience was a virtue.