New Moon in Aquarius ~
Tuesday, February 8, 2005
2:28 pm PST / 5:28 pm EST
Sun and Moon joined at 20.16 Aquarius
Sabian Symbol: A woman is disappointed, as a man leaves her boudoir.
Image symbol: "Potbelly" by artist Claudia Fernety
Aquarius New Moon 'Scope by Dana Gerhardt
Walk into a room after there’s been an argument or heavy sobbing; maybe a depressed person has spent time there. You’ll feel it. The energy will be thick, charged, and uncomfortable. To disperse it, you can clap your hands. You can ring bells. You can burn sage. Or you can spray a fine scented mist in the air. Such things work. I mention them now because that’s the best action for this New Moon. Aquarius is THE cycle to raise your energy. In fact that’s the mandate: This is the month to become unstuck. No sign has a greater connection to the future than Aquarius. It’s the sign of progress, innovation and breakthroughs. But first you’ve got to clear out all the musty, droopy, angry, wimpy, static energy of the recent past. Know that your inner genius is ready for a little revolution. Never mind what’s been holding you back. If you’re not living the life you want, Listen. What has your spirit been longing to do?
The Aquarius New Moon chart’s main aspect is auspicious: Jupiter in Libra trines Sun, Moon, Mercury and Neptune in Aquarius. Jupiter represents growth, good luck, expansion, and opportunity. The trine suggests an easy access to these happy potentials. But here’s the problem: Trines won’t make you do anything. Squares will slam doors in your face, oppositions will call you out. Difficult aspects force you to rise to the occasion. But with trines, nobody minds if you decide to stay at home, order a pepperoni pizza, watch Court TV, and paint your toenails. Great forward leaps are favored this month. But they aren’t guaranteed.
That’s where the clapping, bells, sage, and watery mist come in. Aquarius is The Water Bearer, which is a heavenly metaphor suggesting this is the cycle to come clean. In diverse cultures throughout the ages, this is the lunar month when rituals of purification are most frequently performed. The Romans did it. The Mesopotamians did it. At Candelmas and Imbolc, pagans do it today. Likewise in the East, temples are white-washed and given a thorough cleansing this month. Rituals are performed to drive away evil spirits. Offerings are made to please the local deities. In Tibet, the Aquarius New Moon is actually New Year’s Day (called "Losar"). It begins a special month dedicated to spiritual practice, when the power of one’s offerings and prayers are multiplied 100,000 times. If your own spiritual practice has lapsed, this is an especially auspicious time to take it up again. Spiritual practice is the most effective way to cleanse and purify your mind.
The inner and outer spaces mirror each other. If your work has been uninspired, rearrange your office and throw out old papers. If family relationships are not as harmonious as you like, give your home a top-to-bottom cleaning. A simple ritual for this New Moon is to become a your own Water-bearing Angel. Fill an atomizer or spray bottle with energetically charged water. Charge the water by placing a crystal in it for at least 24 hours (before that, clean the crystal by soaking it in a bowl of salt or under the sun’s rays). If you’re familiar with Dr. Masaru Emoto’s work, you know that writing positive intentions on the water bottle ("grace," "radiance," "fertility," "passion," or "peace") will further charge the water molecules. Dip a sprig of pine in the water to double its energetic potency. Pine is purifying--it smells clean too! On the day of the New Moon, visit all the rooms in your house and mist them with your ritual water. You should notice the difference instantly! Enjoy the newly charged air. Wait happily for your new inspirations to come pouring in.
What should you grow this cycle?
Look to the house of your birth chart where the New Moon falls: here’s your personal seed bed. This is the place you usually "do Aquarius." Every year at this time, you engage subtly or wholeheartedly in a purification ritual. A cleansing in this house can energize your whole year. This house is where you’re used to shaking up your status quo—and during this New Moon cycle, you have a unique opportunity here… but you must tune in. Listen for the stray thoughts that get you really excited. It may be your inner revolutionary handing you the manifesto you need.
© 2005 Dana Gerhardt,
All rights reserved
Aquarius New Moon Meditation for 2005:
Vessels for Living Water
by Jean Hinson Lall
Aquarius, the third and last of the Air signs in the Zodiac, is often thought of as representing the highest development of the intellect – dry, cool, remote, impersonal and objective. Its image, however, is not that of the tweedy scholar lugging a briefcase or a white-coated scientist loading data into a laptop, but that of a lightly-clad human figure carrying vessels of water from which the contents are being poured forth.
What is this water? According to ancient philosophy Water is one of the four Elements, or ‘roots,’ from which everything is compounded. In many creation narratives water is the primordial substance, the first matter from which all else proceeds. It is mother, nourishment, the process of growth, the joy and juice of life. It cleanses and purifies, mediates renewal and rebirth, confers blessing and sanctification. And at the end of life it receives us into itself again. Water is the principle of flow, the possibility for things to find their proper level, to adapt and to yield.
Astrologically, Water is often interpreted in personal terms as emotion, feeling, desire, attachment, compassion and sacrifice; and indeed the Water signs do describe and mediate emotional development. At another level, though, Water is connected with Wisdom and with the joy of being in the presence of God. This duality in the meaning of Water is reflected in the notion (found in several cultural traditions) that there are both Higher and Lower Waters.
Physical water, an essential part of our own bodily makeup, is found in rivers, streams, lakes, oceans, wells and springs, and descends as rain from above. Spiritual water, an equally vital part of our nature, is replenished through prayer and study, music and art, contemplation and pilgrimage, devotion and ritual, celebration and divination. Like rain, it comes to us as a gift from above, in the form of visions, teachings, inspiration, clarity of understanding, healing and renewal, mystical union with the divine and communion with our fellow creatures. The soul’s thirst for God can be quenched only by the "living waters" that flow from the divine source.
At this New Moon, the Sun and Moon are joined in Aquarius by Venus and Mercury and also by Neptune, the remote planet named for the god who ruled the seas in classical mythology. Neptune is associated in modern astrology with mysticism, imagination, and all forms of transcendence of ego. It is now situated right at the midpoint of Aquarius (15 degrees), a place of intense concentration of energy. With Sun, Mercury and Moon having just completed their conjunctions to Neptune and Venus moving towards it, Neptune is surrounded and contained in Aquarius, embodying the mysterious Water poured out by the Water-Bearer. Meanwhile Saturn and Uranus, co-rulers of Aquarius, are both placed in Water signs, and Jupiter, planet of higher study and the spiritual quest, trines Neptune, Mercury, Sun and Moon from Libra.
Whatever intellectual, political, artistic or community work we are engaged in, now is the time astrologically to realize more fully the spiritual purpose that lies at the heart of that endeavor and the source from which it springs. Rather than having to be laboriously extracted, calculated or figured out, this understanding should pour forth into the receptive mind and soul like a stream of living water.
Season Teachings for February 2005: Valentines
by April Elliott Kent
A few days after the Sun entered Aquarius, we organized a breakfast cookout in the park with our friends. Sound nuts? I thought so too, when my husband suggested it. "But it's January!" I complained. "It's been raining for, like, a month. It'll be freezing!" But Jonny, with Aquarius ruling his 9th house, had a stubbornly optimistic vision of midwinter: A barbecue in the park. Friends. Hibachis. Fun.
And you know what? It was fun. There were some harrowing moments leading up to the big event - the day before, when a light rain fell; at 6:30 am the morning of the party, when we woke to find the thermometer outside read 44 degrees. But the day was clear and the sun was warm, and by the time we got to the park the temperature was a balmy 58. About a dozen of our favorite friends trickled in, armed with hibachis, bacon and eggs, and terrific conversation. We fired up our grills, threw ourselves into a chaotic dance of cooking and eating and laughing, then collapsed on the grass and soaked up the sun. And damned if we didn't all have such a marvelous time that after we had packed everything up a few hours later, we stood around chatting in the parking lot for another half an hour.
When we had reluctantly parted ways with our friends, Jonny and I came home and spent the rest of the afternoon putting away camping equipment and congratulating ourselves on having the coolest friends in the world. I suppose everyone feels that way, since friends are, by definition, people you like, or at least have something in common with. And born with Jupiter in Aquarius, it is no surprise I feel exceptionally lucky in the friends department. Jupiter is a treasure map with the location of our greatest treasure clearly marked; Aquarius is astrological shorthand for friendships and group connections with like-minded folks. Is there anything in the world more delightful than rounding up a group of your friends, putting out a tray of food and a bottle of wine, and watching the conversational sparks fly?
Like the other air signs, Gemini and Libra, Aquarius is a communication expert, adept at making connections with others. But where Gemini is content to have fleeting and pleasant encounters with the grocery clerk, and Libra focuses on the magic of one-to-one relationships, Aquarius is a fixed sign that pulls all these connections into his field of gravity and hangs on until they coalesce into a distinctive group - "Friends of Jonny and April," say. And before you know it, a random collection of people who started out with only us in common find they share many of our interests in common, too - politics, coffee, music, astrology.
And yet, whenever I think of the astrological Aquarius, it is cold, off-putting images that come to mind, science fiction landscapes of metal and electrical wires, ice and electric shock. Certainly I don't picture warm times with friends, or the hearts and flowers of Valentine's Day, which never seems quite at home in the platonic Aquarian season. Remember how disappointing it was, as a kid, to get Valentine cards from friends? It's not that you weren't grateful for their affection, it's just that, as you impatiently rifled through your stack of Valentines, you were secretly searching for one from the cute boy who sat across the aisle and two seats back. That one would somehow "count," unlike a Valentine from a friend, or your from your sister or mother. It was an unattractive attitude that followed some of us into adolescence and even adulthood, this notion that friends were lesser attachments to be discarded at the merest whiff of romance.
Now that I'm older and happily married, and no longer looking over my friends' shoulders for my next romantic prospect, I appreciate my friends so much more than I did when I was young. Oh, I wish I'd kept those goofy, affectionate childhood Valentine cards from my friends! Well, at least I kept some of the friends; and along with the other connections I've formed throughout the decades, I'm grateful beyond measure for their companionship and wise words in troubled times. I admire, respect, and rely upon my friends- but mostly, I enjoy them. They make me laugh, they make me think, they inspire me. Friendships are completely optional relationships, an opportunity to examine an alien other up close without the expectations and codependency of marriage or the obligations and resentments of family. The love of friends is Aquarian love, a pair of arms wide open - the better to take you in, and to leave you free to go.
Jonny's quirky, midwinter picnic gave us a perfect opportunity to celebrate friendship, the web of connections that keeps us warm even in the coldest moments of our lives. You may be a social butterfly by nature, or you may (like me) be an introvert who finds social interactions a bit draining. But this Aquarian New Moon season, with the Sun and Moon in joyous aspect to Jupiter and touched by compassionate, fun-loving Neptune, is an ideal time to explore the comfort and power of groups. Whatever your disposition, celebrate some part of your Aquarian season with friends - unite your power with theirs in ritual and activism, playing team sports and games, or just throwing a party. There is powerful sweetness in finding your people - and, like Aquarius, holding on tight to them, with your arms wide open.
© 2005 April Elliott Kent
All rights reserved
For more of April's articles, visit her website.
2:28 pm PST / 5:28 pm EST
Sun and Moon joined at 20.16 Aquarius
Sabian Symbol: A woman is disappointed, as a man leaves her boudoir.
Image symbol: "Potbelly" by artist Claudia Fernety
Join our MoonCircle for February...
What does listening to the zodiac do for us at each moon cycle? It attunes us to the yet living quality of this ancient rhythm. It sharpens our senses to new ways to bring ourselves forth. It puts us on the alert -- as an animal living in the wild -- to something new in the air...
What does listening to the zodiac do for us at each moon cycle? It attunes us to the yet living quality of this ancient rhythm. It sharpens our senses to new ways to bring ourselves forth. It puts us on the alert -- as an animal living in the wild -- to something new in the air...
Aquarius New Moon 'Scope by Dana Gerhardt
Walk into a room after there’s been an argument or heavy sobbing; maybe a depressed person has spent time there. You’ll feel it. The energy will be thick, charged, and uncomfortable. To disperse it, you can clap your hands. You can ring bells. You can burn sage. Or you can spray a fine scented mist in the air. Such things work. I mention them now because that’s the best action for this New Moon. Aquarius is THE cycle to raise your energy. In fact that’s the mandate: This is the month to become unstuck. No sign has a greater connection to the future than Aquarius. It’s the sign of progress, innovation and breakthroughs. But first you’ve got to clear out all the musty, droopy, angry, wimpy, static energy of the recent past. Know that your inner genius is ready for a little revolution. Never mind what’s been holding you back. If you’re not living the life you want, Listen. What has your spirit been longing to do?
The Aquarius New Moon chart’s main aspect is auspicious: Jupiter in Libra trines Sun, Moon, Mercury and Neptune in Aquarius. Jupiter represents growth, good luck, expansion, and opportunity. The trine suggests an easy access to these happy potentials. But here’s the problem: Trines won’t make you do anything. Squares will slam doors in your face, oppositions will call you out. Difficult aspects force you to rise to the occasion. But with trines, nobody minds if you decide to stay at home, order a pepperoni pizza, watch Court TV, and paint your toenails. Great forward leaps are favored this month. But they aren’t guaranteed.
That’s where the clapping, bells, sage, and watery mist come in. Aquarius is The Water Bearer, which is a heavenly metaphor suggesting this is the cycle to come clean. In diverse cultures throughout the ages, this is the lunar month when rituals of purification are most frequently performed. The Romans did it. The Mesopotamians did it. At Candelmas and Imbolc, pagans do it today. Likewise in the East, temples are white-washed and given a thorough cleansing this month. Rituals are performed to drive away evil spirits. Offerings are made to please the local deities. In Tibet, the Aquarius New Moon is actually New Year’s Day (called "Losar"). It begins a special month dedicated to spiritual practice, when the power of one’s offerings and prayers are multiplied 100,000 times. If your own spiritual practice has lapsed, this is an especially auspicious time to take it up again. Spiritual practice is the most effective way to cleanse and purify your mind.
The inner and outer spaces mirror each other. If your work has been uninspired, rearrange your office and throw out old papers. If family relationships are not as harmonious as you like, give your home a top-to-bottom cleaning. A simple ritual for this New Moon is to become a your own Water-bearing Angel. Fill an atomizer or spray bottle with energetically charged water. Charge the water by placing a crystal in it for at least 24 hours (before that, clean the crystal by soaking it in a bowl of salt or under the sun’s rays). If you’re familiar with Dr. Masaru Emoto’s work, you know that writing positive intentions on the water bottle ("grace," "radiance," "fertility," "passion," or "peace") will further charge the water molecules. Dip a sprig of pine in the water to double its energetic potency. Pine is purifying--it smells clean too! On the day of the New Moon, visit all the rooms in your house and mist them with your ritual water. You should notice the difference instantly! Enjoy the newly charged air. Wait happily for your new inspirations to come pouring in.
What should you grow this cycle?
Look to the house of your birth chart where the New Moon falls: here’s your personal seed bed. This is the place you usually "do Aquarius." Every year at this time, you engage subtly or wholeheartedly in a purification ritual. A cleansing in this house can energize your whole year. This house is where you’re used to shaking up your status quo—and during this New Moon cycle, you have a unique opportunity here… but you must tune in. Listen for the stray thoughts that get you really excited. It may be your inner revolutionary handing you the manifesto you need.
© 2005 Dana Gerhardt,
All rights reserved
Aquarius New Moon Meditation for 2005:
Vessels for Living Water
by Jean Hinson Lall
Aquarius, the third and last of the Air signs in the Zodiac, is often thought of as representing the highest development of the intellect – dry, cool, remote, impersonal and objective. Its image, however, is not that of the tweedy scholar lugging a briefcase or a white-coated scientist loading data into a laptop, but that of a lightly-clad human figure carrying vessels of water from which the contents are being poured forth.
What is this water? According to ancient philosophy Water is one of the four Elements, or ‘roots,’ from which everything is compounded. In many creation narratives water is the primordial substance, the first matter from which all else proceeds. It is mother, nourishment, the process of growth, the joy and juice of life. It cleanses and purifies, mediates renewal and rebirth, confers blessing and sanctification. And at the end of life it receives us into itself again. Water is the principle of flow, the possibility for things to find their proper level, to adapt and to yield.
Astrologically, Water is often interpreted in personal terms as emotion, feeling, desire, attachment, compassion and sacrifice; and indeed the Water signs do describe and mediate emotional development. At another level, though, Water is connected with Wisdom and with the joy of being in the presence of God. This duality in the meaning of Water is reflected in the notion (found in several cultural traditions) that there are both Higher and Lower Waters.
Physical water, an essential part of our own bodily makeup, is found in rivers, streams, lakes, oceans, wells and springs, and descends as rain from above. Spiritual water, an equally vital part of our nature, is replenished through prayer and study, music and art, contemplation and pilgrimage, devotion and ritual, celebration and divination. Like rain, it comes to us as a gift from above, in the form of visions, teachings, inspiration, clarity of understanding, healing and renewal, mystical union with the divine and communion with our fellow creatures. The soul’s thirst for God can be quenched only by the "living waters" that flow from the divine source.
At this New Moon, the Sun and Moon are joined in Aquarius by Venus and Mercury and also by Neptune, the remote planet named for the god who ruled the seas in classical mythology. Neptune is associated in modern astrology with mysticism, imagination, and all forms of transcendence of ego. It is now situated right at the midpoint of Aquarius (15 degrees), a place of intense concentration of energy. With Sun, Mercury and Moon having just completed their conjunctions to Neptune and Venus moving towards it, Neptune is surrounded and contained in Aquarius, embodying the mysterious Water poured out by the Water-Bearer. Meanwhile Saturn and Uranus, co-rulers of Aquarius, are both placed in Water signs, and Jupiter, planet of higher study and the spiritual quest, trines Neptune, Mercury, Sun and Moon from Libra.
Whatever intellectual, political, artistic or community work we are engaged in, now is the time astrologically to realize more fully the spiritual purpose that lies at the heart of that endeavor and the source from which it springs. Rather than having to be laboriously extracted, calculated or figured out, this understanding should pour forth into the receptive mind and soul like a stream of living water.
* * *
In memory of Richard J. Barnet, and in appreciation of my colleagues and teachers at the University of Kent.
In memory of Richard J. Barnet, and in appreciation of my colleagues and teachers at the University of Kent.
2005 - Jean Hinson Lall
Season Teachings for February 2005: Valentines
by April Elliott Kent
A few days after the Sun entered Aquarius, we organized a breakfast cookout in the park with our friends. Sound nuts? I thought so too, when my husband suggested it. "But it's January!" I complained. "It's been raining for, like, a month. It'll be freezing!" But Jonny, with Aquarius ruling his 9th house, had a stubbornly optimistic vision of midwinter: A barbecue in the park. Friends. Hibachis. Fun.
And you know what? It was fun. There were some harrowing moments leading up to the big event - the day before, when a light rain fell; at 6:30 am the morning of the party, when we woke to find the thermometer outside read 44 degrees. But the day was clear and the sun was warm, and by the time we got to the park the temperature was a balmy 58. About a dozen of our favorite friends trickled in, armed with hibachis, bacon and eggs, and terrific conversation. We fired up our grills, threw ourselves into a chaotic dance of cooking and eating and laughing, then collapsed on the grass and soaked up the sun. And damned if we didn't all have such a marvelous time that after we had packed everything up a few hours later, we stood around chatting in the parking lot for another half an hour.
When we had reluctantly parted ways with our friends, Jonny and I came home and spent the rest of the afternoon putting away camping equipment and congratulating ourselves on having the coolest friends in the world. I suppose everyone feels that way, since friends are, by definition, people you like, or at least have something in common with. And born with Jupiter in Aquarius, it is no surprise I feel exceptionally lucky in the friends department. Jupiter is a treasure map with the location of our greatest treasure clearly marked; Aquarius is astrological shorthand for friendships and group connections with like-minded folks. Is there anything in the world more delightful than rounding up a group of your friends, putting out a tray of food and a bottle of wine, and watching the conversational sparks fly?
Like the other air signs, Gemini and Libra, Aquarius is a communication expert, adept at making connections with others. But where Gemini is content to have fleeting and pleasant encounters with the grocery clerk, and Libra focuses on the magic of one-to-one relationships, Aquarius is a fixed sign that pulls all these connections into his field of gravity and hangs on until they coalesce into a distinctive group - "Friends of Jonny and April," say. And before you know it, a random collection of people who started out with only us in common find they share many of our interests in common, too - politics, coffee, music, astrology.
And yet, whenever I think of the astrological Aquarius, it is cold, off-putting images that come to mind, science fiction landscapes of metal and electrical wires, ice and electric shock. Certainly I don't picture warm times with friends, or the hearts and flowers of Valentine's Day, which never seems quite at home in the platonic Aquarian season. Remember how disappointing it was, as a kid, to get Valentine cards from friends? It's not that you weren't grateful for their affection, it's just that, as you impatiently rifled through your stack of Valentines, you were secretly searching for one from the cute boy who sat across the aisle and two seats back. That one would somehow "count," unlike a Valentine from a friend, or your from your sister or mother. It was an unattractive attitude that followed some of us into adolescence and even adulthood, this notion that friends were lesser attachments to be discarded at the merest whiff of romance.
Now that I'm older and happily married, and no longer looking over my friends' shoulders for my next romantic prospect, I appreciate my friends so much more than I did when I was young. Oh, I wish I'd kept those goofy, affectionate childhood Valentine cards from my friends! Well, at least I kept some of the friends; and along with the other connections I've formed throughout the decades, I'm grateful beyond measure for their companionship and wise words in troubled times. I admire, respect, and rely upon my friends- but mostly, I enjoy them. They make me laugh, they make me think, they inspire me. Friendships are completely optional relationships, an opportunity to examine an alien other up close without the expectations and codependency of marriage or the obligations and resentments of family. The love of friends is Aquarian love, a pair of arms wide open - the better to take you in, and to leave you free to go.
Jonny's quirky, midwinter picnic gave us a perfect opportunity to celebrate friendship, the web of connections that keeps us warm even in the coldest moments of our lives. You may be a social butterfly by nature, or you may (like me) be an introvert who finds social interactions a bit draining. But this Aquarian New Moon season, with the Sun and Moon in joyous aspect to Jupiter and touched by compassionate, fun-loving Neptune, is an ideal time to explore the comfort and power of groups. Whatever your disposition, celebrate some part of your Aquarian season with friends - unite your power with theirs in ritual and activism, playing team sports and games, or just throwing a party. There is powerful sweetness in finding your people - and, like Aquarius, holding on tight to them, with your arms wide open.
© 2005 April Elliott Kent
All rights reserved
For more of April's articles, visit her website.
posted by gem.n.i at 2/11/2005 10:15:00 AM
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