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Aquarius: In the On Position

EL SOUL ingressed Aquarius earlier today, the third of three Saturn-ruled signs of the zodiac: the first being Libra, where Saturn is exalted; second being Capricorn, Saturn's night house; and Aquarius, Saturn's traditional day house, now said to be ruled by Uranus. This gesture touches a cosmic acupuncture point: the Chiron-Nessus conjunction is right there, waiting for something precisely like this to happen.

The next four weeks and, indeed, continuously through the end of March, we will be in one long escalation of energy and acceleration of history, culminating with a total solar eclipse on the Aries Point, the arrival of Pluto on the Galactic Core for the first time in United States history, and the presidential inauguration chart reaching what we can politely summarize as Quite A Moment.

But before that happens, during the next 30 days the Earth turns into an Aquarius rotisserie to rival a Texas longhorn barbecue.

In some ways this will be a lot of fun, and in some ways it will [continue to] be shocking. There are two sides to Aquarius, and now's the time to choose which side of the tsunami you want to be on.

Dark Aquarius, it turns out after all, is one of the zeitgeists of our moment in history. As much as the 11th sign is about brotherly love, idealism and community spirit, it's also about the control games that people play when they harbor the specific agenda of others not being free. Many of these involve technology, often, as in this case, an Aquarian type entity.

Just a moment ago, I clicked on my Gmail and found an article sent by a friend about an alumni group offering students $100 to spy on UCLA professors they think are too liberal. You get a free tape recorder for your reconnaissance mission; and according to the article, "Lecture notes without a tape recording net $50, and even non-attendance at the class while providing copies of the teaching materials is worth $10."

Stories like this, seemingly morphing four-dimensionally off the pages of 1984, are coming along so fast it's hard to keep track. What is next? "The Official Spy On Your Parents Kit for Kidz"?

My favorite real story from that genre so far is computer and camera systems being installed throughout England which will enable the government to record every single motor vehicle trip taken on a public highway. It will scan your license plate, and feed the data into a rather massive computer at Police Headquarters down in South London. Then they can use a little internal search utility and find out where you've been and presumably what you've been doing at any hour of the day or night, such as buying milk or visiting your mistress or going to your Thursday night bowling game with your terrorist cell.

"They?" Yes, "they." Whoever is putting in this system. They. Them people. The ones spying on us. If you sat down in a psychiatrist's office 20 years ago and described this scenario, you would have been diagnosed as paranoid. Today, ignore it and everything will be fine; because if you don't ignore it and you do mention it to your shrink, you're paranoid. The problem is, you read too much news.

But one cannot be too freaked out these days -- or too innovative. I think this system should be linked to a GPS device in your car. Case in point: you're having an affair, you get in your car at 8 o'clock at night, where he's staying late at the office; and you begin to drive there. The government tracks you, and then the computer in your car comes to life: "You appear to be visiting Bill. There's a shorter way to get there."

We're all aware that in recent months it's come out that the National Security Agency (NSA), the biggest spy shop in the world, has been running a domestic spying program on the American people for the past five years. The debate has been over whether this is legal or moral; I think the issue is profitability. I hate seeing my tax dollars wasted on such a dead-end project. To give the project some business sense, all they need to do is make the data available to the public, for a fee. They should create NSAnet, a subscriber-only facility you can use to search the billions of emails and phone calls (your boss, your kids, your spouse, your neighbors, your political enemies) that are available with no other purpose. This will help the government recover their considerable costs, and also put the data to good use. Also, once it's making money, people will stop complaining and the newspapers will praise it.

On a similar note, please don't be alarmed, but I am quite certain that The Boys are collecting all the nude pictures people privately send one another night and day, and creating internal porno sites to raise federal employee morale. But why keep all this fabulous amateur art behind the curtain? PornInTheUSA.gov could be a premier government-sponsored erotica portal, complete with millions of photos organized by state, actual kinky citizen emails searchable with a Google utility, MP3s of saucy phone recordings, and the world's largest database of naughty SMS text messages ever gathered -- all yours for just $29.95 per month recurring billing, the proceeds from which can be donated to fund the war in Iraq.

But I digress.

Thinking of the Sun in early Aquarius feels like powering up a string of Christmas tree lights made entirely of Centaur planets. Foremost among them is the Chiron-Nessus conjunction that has now taken up long-term residence in early Aquarius, as well as a sextile (60 degree angle) to Pholus in Sagittarius, and the same angle to Asbolus in Aries. Together these represent the founding members of the Centaur class of planets, the basis of the astrological philosophy of healing and soul-recovery.

Slow-moving planets such as Centaurs often work on the level of potential, forming aspects, and then awaiting faster moving points or bodies (such as the Sun, Mercury or an eclipse) to set off the configuration and allow it to manifest in some way. Speaking of Mercury -- he's close behind the Sun, basically redoubling and prolonging the whole effect. And speaking of eclipses, the late March total solar is rather close to Asbolus, which is itself hovering around the Moon's North Node.

The presence of the first three Centaurs -- Chiron, Nessus and Pholus -- in signs that address collective reality -- Sagittarius and Aquarius -- represents an acceleration of the historical process, and a magnetic pull for our awareness to pay attention to what's happening around us in the mental environment in all its forms. Sagittarius represents the power of belief, and the experience of going beyond what we believe. This is the sign of "greater horizons," which Pholus (small cause, big effect) is doing its part to stir up. Sagittarius is also about religion and all forms of religiosity, such as terrorism or the belief in fighting it -- and, as the ancient rules of astrology would have it, the Supreme Court. Barring a miracle, the court is about to become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Heritage Foundation.

Aquarius -- at its best -- is an energy that addresses community, rising above mass consciousness, and the process of becoming an individual. Aquarius is also one of the signs that covers the media. Neptune's journey in this sign, going back to the Clinton impeachment, has represented a long communal drug trip via satellite that makes LSD look like sober, comprehensible reality. A small mob of people snorting the pure fumes of fundamentalist Christianity have got themselves into power, or perhaps just taking a power trip that we're all falling for. At least with drugs, you tended to remember that everyone's trip is their own.

Now Chiron-Nessus, fired up by the Sun, arrives to give us a two-edged dose of reality: edge one, how badly our system of moving information is broken, and edge two, somehow conveying what is actually happening around us coupled with the miracle of someone actually noticing. Think of Sid and Nancy watching so blissfully as the curtains in their room caught fire. This is what the United States feels like. Chiron-Nessus is the smoke alarm that someone else hears.

Asbolus is associated with waking through danger and the elemental quality of all living things known as survival. The Aries Point, where Asbolus is now positioned, is a spot in the chart where the individual person or life path meets or encounters the collective experience [much is written about the Aries Point in Astrology Secrets Revealed on cainer.com]. Asbolus, working this point, adds a second smoke alarm to the chorus, hopefully setting off the individual survival instincts of enough people that we can actually get together and do something.

Imagine that with the Centaurs there, all these processes are picking up speed and intensity -- as is always the case with the Centaurs. Then, imagine the Sun coming in and making so many things obvious, lighting things up, and bringing individual awareness even to people who might not normally notice. Mercury is close behind the Sun, aspecting Nessus the following day. Mercury helps us be mindful and give a voice to anything, in the case first of Chiron, the crux of the issue, and then of Nessus, the unspeakable bottom line.

Capricorn Inside Out

Aquarius is like Capricorn inside out. The energy contained and organized in the earthy form of Capricorn is released in the airy form of Aquarius. It does not lack structure; to the contrary, Aquarian energy is very structured, like many forms of energy; but it's made portable and in a way accessible.

"Aquarius is pre-eminently a sign of constant movement, of changing activity and recurrent mutations, and the symbol for this sign is expressive of this state of activity," writes Alice A. Bailey in Esoteric Astrology. "It is therefore a sign in which the significance of cycles is mastered and understood by the initiate."

Constant movement is an understatement. The Sun-Mercury exterior conjunction occurs the 26th (marking the midpoint in time between Mercury retrogrades), followed by an Aquarius New Moon conjunct Mercury, Chiron and Neptune three days later. At this point we have a full-on locomotive going through Aquarius -- that is, a concentration of planets in one sign -- which is a configuration that will repeat often through much of 2006 and 2007. The keyword is intensity: a lot of gravity, energy and emphasis in one direction.

But that one direction is opposed, balanced and focused by Saturn, the first ruler of Aquarius, in "when the levee breaks" Leo.

"As the interplay goes on between Leo and Aquarius (for they are polar opposites), there comes a deepening of all qualities, and the superficialities disappear until -- upon the reversed wheel -- the intensive self-consciousness of Leo expands into the group awareness of Aquarius. "The individual becomes universal," writes Bailey, in Esoteric Astrology.

"Man, alone and separative, becomes mankind in his awareness and yet, at the same time, preserves his individuality. He is no longer just a human being, individually self-centered and separative, but becomes humanity itself, losing his personal identity in the good of the whole yet retaining his spiritual identity. From self-service he proceeds to world service and yet is always the individualized Child of God until after the third initiation."

By late January, we're in Parallel Worlds territory -- an aspect I've been writing about every day this week on the Planet Waves cover blog. This involves an alignment of many planets at about 15 to 16 degrees south declination, at the same time as there are many normal aspects by longitude (Sun conjunct Neptune, both of which are square Jupiter; Mercury square Mars, and so on).

For now, I'll refer you to the blog on our main page, where the charts are available, along with comments by me and for the past two days, many readers -- worth a look.

The gist of it all is that the pace of events, of time itself, and of change, will all seem to gather even greater momentum. Can we go any faster? Well, for our society, the whole river of time is picking up pace, which would include our little boats floating on that stream.
 
Parts of this article were adapted from "Ephemeris News," researched by Tracy Delaney and available at http://artofwebdesign.net/
 
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Planet Waves by Eric Francis
Weekly Horoscope 594 - Jan. 20, 2006

Note: I am aware that I still owe late birthday Cappies an extended birthday report. I truly apologize: I just reached my limit for the moment, and I'll make it up to you soon. Extended Aquarius reports begin early next week. e

Happy Birthday Aquarius!
It would be difficult to overstate the potential that's being made available to you now. You merely need to extend sincere effort, a desire to learn and grow and a modicum of humility about your shortcomings and that potential is yours to make real. The thing is, I would not doubt if you're feeling insecure somehow. But you can just as easily convert fear to true confidence as you can to inaction; the choice really is yours, and you have a lot more going for you than you could possibly imagine right now.
 
Aries (March 20-April 19)
Aspects this week will shed a light on the subject of a community situation that's been taking shape in your life. We could ask, who among your circle of friends is genuinely supportive of your goals and objectives, and for whom can you be supportive? You need to find these points of contact or non-contact and respond to them consciously. Dreams are powerful but a bit fragile. You need the support of those who are offering it to you and you need to steer clear of everyone else. You don't owe them anything, and obviously they don't owe you anything. Just remember, you're on a mission and it's up to you to take it seriously.
 
Taurus (April 19-May 20)
The Sun crossing the currently spectacularly aspected career and professional angle of your chart suggests something big is up, and soon. The thing is, you may not see it that way. If you're focusing more of your energy on your shortcomings than your talents, you are basically wasting your time. All you need to change is your perspective, and just a little. I recognize that you may be having moments of feeling like you'll never get where you want or need to be, but you also need to look at the distances you're crossing and account for the fact that you're actually attempting something new. Give yourself credit for that and you'll get it back from the world.
 
Gemini (May 20-June 21)
A certain ethical matter may be getting more attention than it deserves. Right and wrong come down to two things, really: the intentions involved in the situation, and the actual damage done. Neither seems to be particularly revealing of anything untoward, and if you notice the matter is academic or theoretical, I suggest you drop it and move on to exploring the rather wide horizons that are calling you at the moment. Just get your plans and aspirations out of your head and onto the ground. This is reality calling, not just an idea.
 
Cancer (June 21-July 22)
No matter what you do, your focus is being kept riveted on a particular line of activity. This is the best thing you could want at the moment, because it's actually leading somewhere quite productive, even if you cannot see or imagine the outcome. Events this week, however, will go a long way toward showing you what is possible, particularly revealing what happens when you get the cooperation you need and work so hard to provide for others. On one level it's unfortunate that many people take so long to wake up. On the other hand, you'll have to admit the timing was pretty good.
 
Leo (July 22-Aug. 23)
The Sun enters your opposite sign, Aquarius, this week, which is always an interesting time. But gradually your home planet (not coincidentally, the fireball at the middle of the solar system) is making a major alignment that will show you just how much you've accomplished in your life, and on how many levels you've managed to do it. The new factor in the equation is the ability to integrate all these different gains and learning processes, and convey them into a long-awaited development or project that takes advantage of them all at once. Keep your questions or doubts at bay, and carry onward.
 
Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22)
You still have plenty of support despite the sense that a key figure in your life seems to have shifted allegiances. They have not actually done so; it's just that there is business to attend to, and the same is true for you. If you find yourself putting substantial effort into an organizational, community or charitable concern of some kind over the next few weeks, proceed at full energy -- it will be worth the effort. Even if you find yourself solving problems at work that you neither created, nor are your responsibility, the results make your life easier and the process will lead to some interesting discoveries.
 
Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23)
Developments this week are the first step in bringing you back to the present and moving in the direction of the future. You still may be preoccupied with a past situation but it's slowly losing both its influence and attractiveness, particularly if you've devoted yourself to working it out. Still, there is no rush and the future really is taking care of itself. All you need to do to get there is follow the gentle lure of your curiosity and that not-so-subtle yearning for new experience that should be making itself known right around now.
 
Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22)
Fortunately, there is no crisis; no emotional storm; no actual reason to doubt yourself. Of course, there was a time not so long ago when the circumstances you now face could have easily led to one. But you are growing and you are also receiving the benefits of considerable experience that is offering you both foresight and the ability to not only stay stable, but also notice and exercise your choices when you need them. Meanwhile, keep paying attention to where you are, and asking yourself every now and then whether you belong there. If you discover you don't, then remember you have feet.
 
Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22)
You are now in idea overdrive. But I suggest you keep doing for the sake of learning, and out of your own innate interest rather than for the good of society or whoever. It's true that your thought process right now has the power to impact those beyond your immediate reach, but heroic notions will only get in the way of your concentration. The work is what counts now; your notebook is your sanctuary, and what goes there need not be anyone's business but your own. There will soon enough come a moment of contact between a larger need and what you have to offer, and you'll know it when you get there.
 
Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20)
In order to be successful financially, it's necessary to think beyond the bounds of survival. This, in turn, provokes the issue of whether you deserve to do more than get by, which crisis we could politely say is a gift that has been delivered to you from the distant past. The beauty of any economy, be it personal or national, is that it supports everyone around you, which is what your chart tells me is at the heart of your monetary philosophy. So remember, you need to have no special loyalty to your grandparents in this matter, and no matter what they went through, trust that they want the best for you.
 
Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19)
The Sun is making a rather spectacular entry into your sign at the moment, and it's a real see-what-you've-been-missing moment. For an interesting exercise, I suggest you play the "what a difference one year makes" game. Before we set our astrological sights on the future, I suggest a review phase. A lot has changed, it's made a very significant difference in your life, and in some of the most vital respects you are not the person you were at this time last year. But this is merely the beginning of a process that will be much more fruitful if you're aware that it's happening.
 
Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20)
You are entering the time of the solar year when you get to see what's going on behind the scenes of your own life. Speaking in fish tank terms, it's time to change the water and clean the filters of your psychic aquarium. Drinking lots of water would help, as would breaking a sweat now and then; keeping all; your drains clear would help even more, and listening to the messages of your unconscious will provide you with a few important keys to healing that you've been seeking for a while. Truth is stranger than fiction, and what you discover these weeks promises to be more interesting than the stories you've made up -- and far more useful.

 
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