The Moon will catch up with the Sun and begin a new cycle at 10 Aquarius on Wednesday, January 29 at 4:36 a.m. Pacific time. It’s also the beginning of the Chinese New Year, the second New Moon after the December Solstice. This will be the Year of the Snake, fitting for the times we are living in now. A snake has many archetypal qualities, including wisdom, stealth, and the ability and necessity to shed its skin and become something new.
Aquarius, our western astrological sign, is an odd one. Its glyph looks like ocean waves. The root of its name, aqua, means water. But Aquarius is no water sign. Its element is air. Its mode is fixed, like something hanging still in the atmosphere before a welcome breeze blows through.
Aquarius’ totem, derived from the constellation coming between Capricorn and Pisces, is the Water Bearer, a mythological being who pours clean water from an urn. The Greek gods didn’t have plumbing! They relied on professionals to fill their cups.
For millennia, astrologers knew Aquarius’ ruling planet to be Saturn, known as Chronos by the Greeks, Chronos meaning Time. Saturn is the force of time, of aging and death—which no one can escape—of things that are old, traditional, limited, entrenched. These are qualities of a fixed sign.
Relatively recently in the history of astrology, after Uranus was discovered in 1781 near the time of the U.S. and French revolutions, modern astrologers assigned Uranus as Aquarius’ ruler. They began to define Aquarius as a sign of iconoclastic personalities, of lovers of liberation and democracy, of innovation, technology, of something new and fresh like the water the Cup Bearer brings.
Old? New? Stodgy or liberating? What is Aquarius, with its two planetary rulers?
Aquarius’ style is contradictory, curmudgeonly even. Contrariness is one of its features, not a bug. Aquarius is an air sign, hard to grasp, which is fine as long as its inclination for entrenchment is not forgotten in favor of its potential for breakthroughs. (Ronald Reagan and Bob Marley were both born on February 6.)
The January 29 New Moon is an ultra-Aquarian event, coming just days after the inauguration of a new—or is it old?—regime in the U.S. Capitol. (The chart for Inauguration Day is fraught with danger signs, but that’s another story.) At this New Aquarian Moon, Mercury and Pluto are conjunct in Aquarius as well. On the high road, a conjunction of Mercury (communication and thinking) and Pluto (power) might spell radical new ideas, bringing something fresh to humanity from the Water Bearer’s cup.
But not now. Aquarius, in its more Uranian mode, is associated with communication technology. The January 29 New Moon makes an enabling trine aspect with Jupiter, now in Gemini, the mutable air sign. Jupiter is like a magnifying glass or a gigantic hot air balloon. Gemini is the stories we tell, true or not. This is a time of too much information, much of it propaganda, launched into the collective air for purposes of expanding the wealth and reach of Aquarian tech gurus and oligarchs. Airwaves, theoretically, could be made free and for the good of all. That’s not happening, now.
In the chart for the January 29 New Moon, there are hints, though, of more liberatory possibilities. The transiting nodes of the Moon shifted on January 11, to Virgo (south node) and Pisces (north node), for the next one and a half years. The nodes of the Moon are symbols of collective and individual destinies, their particular manifestations not pre-ordained but a matter of free will. Virgo, where the south lunar node is now, is about attention to detail and discriminating wisdom, the kind that separates what’s good from what’s trash. Pisces, where the transiting north node now lies, is like a wish to color outside of the lines, to dissolve unhelpful barriers out of altruism and love for all. One might take heart, amidst these disastrous times, in a Piscean dream of a future where everyone is treated equally, starting by treating everyone equally in one’s own small sphere.
At this New Moon, Venus and Neptune both conjoin the lunar north node, symbol of the future one is drawn to—once the clouds clear. Venus, the planet of love, harmony, and beauty, is traveling now with Neptune, one’s highest aspiration for union with the Divine. These are symbols available for anyone to contemplate.
While thinking about the future, the transits of Mercury are always something to watch. Mercury is the planet of thinking, writing, and speaking. Mercury is also about commerce, trading, making a living in wily ways. At the New Moon, Mercury’s conjoined with Pluto in Aquarius, suggesting now’s a good time to network, to congregate, to think of new ways to survive.
The element of air is social. Air is breath. To breathe together is to conspire.
The Buddha’s instructions, in sets of lessons that were passed on orally until monks eventually wrote them down, include many teachings that are vital for hard times. In the Majjima Nikaya, the Buddha is said to have taught: “Develop a mind that is vast like space, where experiences both pleasant and unpleasant can appear and disappear without conflict, struggle, or harm. Rest in a mind like vast sky.”
Blessings for the Aquarius New Moon!
~ Sara
Sara R. Diamond, an astrologer based in the San Francisco Bay Area, is a life-long student and practitioner in several esoteric paths. Her style of astrology combines modern-psychological astrology with insights from traditional astrology. Sara is also an estate planning attorney. In addition, she has published four books on right-wing movements in the United States and earned her Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. You are invited to contact Sara via her website at www.SaraDiamondAstrology.com.
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