New Moon in Aquarius: Revolution From Within
There is an astrological technique from Hellenistic astrology called annual profections. A form of predictive astrology, profections use whole sign house systems to determine what single year after birth defines your year's theme. Basically, similar to a solar return chart it will display the themes underlying the year ahead. Last month I celebrated my 63rd birthday, which means I am in a 4th house profection year.
Houses within the chart illustrate where things are happening, and where your attention will need to be focused. They hold multiple layers of meaning, both literal and psychological/spiritual.
The 4th house rules the home, the family, your origins, your sense of belonging, your sense of having a firm foundation, and your mother and or father depending upon your chart. On a developmental level, It is the seat of consciousness, our most personal and private self. You could also refer to it as the place we dwell, both literally (our home) and psychologically. It is the root of the chart.
Astrology is magical, inevitably your chart mirrors where your attention is being drawn at a given time in your life.
Thus I admit even before my birthday I had been contemplating, well really inexorably finding my attention drawn to this area of my life.
The 4th house is also connected with the moon within the astrological alphabet. And Thursday’s New Moon in Aquarius seems the perfect time to invite you to partake in the core question I have been asking myself: Where do you wish to dwell?
The luminaries, the Sun and the Moon shine a light on things. As they traverse the chart they illuminate different areas of our life. Have you ever noticed that different parts of your life seem to come alive during different seasons? Currently, we are nearing the end of “Aquarius Season.” During this point in the year, the Sun lights up a particular area of your life. Each year the Sun symbolically passes over each area of your chart, and as it moves through it casts its light bringing an area of your chart to life. The Moon moves even faster, it traverses the entire chart over the course of a month, yet its two most pronounced points within any period are the New and Full Moons which we also experience in an area of our chart annually. But the Moon’s light is more reflective than the Sun’s. It is more connected with our inner world.
The Moon symbolizes our home, our sense of belonging. We dwell in so many places within our lives. Many of them without any conscious awareness of how or why we are spending so much time there. Or often even that we are spending so much time there. Ultimately where we are dwelling we are yearning, consciously or unconsciously, for connection, for belonging.
Friday’s New Moon, at 20° Aquarius, takes amidst a two-week period that echoes the Great Mutation that occurred at the solstice of December 2021. Astrologers saw this conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn at 0° of Aquarius as the harbinger of a new era and to be sure with Pluto in Aquarius this shift is upon us. What we make of it, over the next twenty years, is up to us, both individually and as a collective.
Aquarius, on the one hand, is the sign of the rebel, the place in our charts where we instinctively dance to our own drumbeat. However, it can also represent where we feel orphaned. It can be a place where we have lost our sense of home and belonging, particularly where the Moon is concerned.
Aquarius is an air sign. Air signs are about ideas and connection. The Internet, originally known as the World Wide Web, exemplifies this quality. Think about the technology shifts we have seen over the past 30 years, let alone 50, or 100. When I was a child my grandmother had a party line, a local loop telephone line she shared with multiple subscribers. There were no answering machines. When I was in high school things were mimeographed rather than copied on a copy machine. When I moved to Sedona in 1993, calling long-distance was expensive. I remember being excited about a number you could dial first that would send your call through another exchange and reduce the fee to 10 cents a minute. That was for calling within the continental United States. Now I can Skype, FaceTime, or Zoom with close friends across the globe for basically nothing.
We are indeed more connected. Wondrously, the exchange of information and ideas is easily accessible to us in a manner that has never been available throughout human history.
This past Monday, February 5th, Mercury ingressed into Aquarius aligning with Pluto at this 0° point. Next Tuesday, February 13, Mars moves into Aquarius and aligns the following day (Yes, that is Valentine’s Day, more about that next week) with Pluto, and then on Friday, February 16, Venus also moves into Aquarius aligning with Pluto on Saturday, February, 17.
Part of the significance of this is that the Moon, Mercury, Venus, and Mars are the planets we feel and experience most personally. It’s why they are called the personal planets, though technically the Moon is a luminary. As I noted earlier, Aquarius is a sign that is concerned with our ideas. Thus in many ways these two weeks we are being asked to personally consider our ideas about ourselves and our world. Particularly during this New Moon.
Our ideas, and our beliefs, about ourselves and the world around us shape our world. They are the lens through which we view everything. Even when we don’t realize it. Changing our minds, the filter through which we gaze upon everything will indeed change our lives. But all too often we unconsciously defend the status quo no matter how prettily we argue otherwise. Wherever in your life you are sure that something is impossible, or you have to operate in a particular way (“this is just the way I work,” or “I know myself”) we are defending the status quo. As Richard Bach said in Illusions, The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, “Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they’re yours.”
Two planetary archetypes vie for rulership on Aquarius. Saturn, its traditional ruler, and its modern ruler Uranus. Ironically their two myths are inextricably intertwined. Uranus was the consort of Gaia and they had a very fruitful union with many, many children. However, Uranus was appalled by some of his children that he didn’t view as perfect. He saw them as monsters and metaphorically shoved them back into Gaia’s womb by essentially imprisoning them in caves.
Saturn, who is Uranus's son, literally dismembered him at Gaia’s urging (what mother likes to see her children hidden away?) and then went on to swallow his children because he was afraid of being overthrown by them. Symbolically, one of the dark sides of Aquarius can be where we cut off or swallow our creative children. Essentially we unconsciously divorce ourselves from our life force abandoning our creative nature because it doesn’t live up to our ideas of what it should be.
And to be clear, I am speaking both literally and metaphorically. I think of the periods I‘ve spent castigating myself for not living up to my ideals of who I should be. Aquarius can be more perfectionistic than any Virgo.
This New Moon, which echoes the Great Mutation, presents an opportunity to shine a light on our inner world at the dark of the New Moon. Use its reflection to harness the gifts of Aquarius: creative insight, connecting to the big picture and truly attempting to view compassionately what is good for all (including all parts of yourself, including both your heart and your head). Use your insight to think outside of the box you have placed yourself within. Aquarius craves freedom. The freedom to be itself, room to roam, and the possibility of viewing new horizons not yet imagined. The New Moon’s energy can be used to seed the inner genius that is ready for a revolution that will sprout over the longer process of the next 20 years.
Reflect upon anywhere you’ve been feeling stuck. If you’re not living the life you want, I invite you to sit in contemplation during this New Moon. Question everything. Are the ideas you hold about yourself serving you or sabotaging you? Byron Katie’s four liberating questions are a beautiful tool for this practice:
1. Is it true?
2. Can you absolutely know that it’s true
3. How do you react when you believe that thought?
4. Who would you be without the thought?
Go within and listen to the song of your heart. Journal your dreams, especially the ones you have discarded or deemed impossible. Essentially witness your bodacious self, Explore your inner world, and drink of the nectar of the Gods - the true essence within the Water Bearer’s containers. Allow yourself some space to breathe. Use your restlessness, your divine discontent, and witness your soul at its core calling you forward towards a new vista. What do you yearn for?
What evolutionary things would you like to give birth to in 2024? Where do you wish to dwell?
