An Aquarius Beat

Now that I’m officially a licensed therapist and in my first week of private practice, I have SPACE to make more fully-formed the astrological musings I’ve been rolling around in my mind for so long . . so let’s try it out in this form and see how it goes? These posts will be sent out as a newsletter so if you want more, sign up here.

I recognize we’ve newly entered Aries season and are creeping up on a Jupiter-Neptune conjunction in Pisces - of which I plan to write about next month - but it feels fitting to start with Aquarius, the sign of liberation and experimentation, for this particular personal milestone. Just a reminder: we all have Aquarius somewhere in our charts, so even if you don’t have your Sun there - or any planet- it doesn’t mean it’s not relevant to you.

These next couple weeks we have Mars joining up with Venus and Saturn in Aquarius while squaring Uranus, adding yet another dimension to the Saturn-in-Aquarius-squaring-Uranus-in-Taurus saga that has been keeping us in a tense start-stop bind for the past year+. There are plenty of people out there decoding all of this for current global events, but that’s not necessarily my vibe here. At least not the doom. That’s not a pile I feel like adding to. Instead, I’d like to juice the astrology for all that is creatively interesting and archetypal. Pick apart each component to know what it’s really capable of.

Aquarius is a fixed sign, meaning it’s part of the group of signs (including Taurus, Leo, and Scorpio) not transitioning into or out of a season, but falls right smack in the middle. It’s the times of year we sink into the rhythm of the moment. Aquarius, though, surprise surprise has a very unconventional, totally individual beat. This is the sign coming off the tail end of Capricorn. Capricorn has endured the climb to the top, survived the test of time, but is probably up there alone in a stillness of self-mastery. Aquarius is taking in a macro (some might even say alien) perspective to challenge the myopic hierarchy. A gust of progress, a lightning bolt ideal, zeitgeist, rebellion, the future of everyone. A rhythm-keeper that both creates and organizes its own chaos. It can, at times, be completely baffling. It can throw so much newness at you at an overwhelmingly incomprehensible rate, but when it works, it’s exhilarating and even brilliant. It finds its strut and maintains its cool. The only thing I’ll note about the current state of the world is that Zelensky has his Sun and Venus in Aquarius so make of that what you will. . .

My Aquarius dad, a musician, always talks about the concept of “the needlepoint of nowness” - something a childhood music teacher taught him, and something that honestly used to stress me out to no end. Because it’s about getting on the beat now! And now! And then the next now! I also once heard the trick to tap dancing is to “stay on the balls of your feet and keep your heels up but available.” Which is so funny to me. Keep your heels in the wings. Warm it up with a shuffle so they can come in hot. But hey, Gregory Hines has his Sun, Mercury and Venus in Aquarius; Sammy Davis, Jr has his Venus in Aquarius; and they made the 1989 movie, Tap - of which the trailer has some choice Aquarian lines like “They’re talkin’ about the future!” And “I don’t do it like everyone else, remember?

As you might expect, there are quite a few literal drummers in the Aquarian mix, too. Sheila E is an Aquarius rising with an Aquarius Venus.

Max Roach had his Venus in Aquarius.

Phil Collins has both his Sun and Venus in Aquarius. Actually, Genesis might be the most Aquarius band ever to be: Peter Gabriel - Sun. Venus, Jupiter in Aquarius; Tony Banks - Venus and Jupiter in Aquarius; Steve Hackett - Sun, Venus, and Jupiter in Aquarius; Mike Rutherford - Jupiter in Aquarius. Even another Genesis, Genesis P-Orridge, had Venus and Mercury in Aquarius. And Brian Jones! - whom Genesis P-O obsessed over, and wrote “Godstar about - ALSO had Venus and Mercury in Aquarius.

Are you whipped into a neural frenzy yet??

I’ll leave you here with an excerpt of the poem “Fresh Air” by Kenneth Koch (Venus in Aquarius). Read the poem in its entirety here. I really recommend it.

At the Poem Society a black-haired man stands up to say
You make me sick with all your talk about restraint and mature talent!
Haven’t you ever looked out the window at a painting by Matisse,
Or did you always stay in hotels where there were too many spiders crawling on your visages?
Did you ever glance inside a bottle of sparkling pop,
Or see a citizen split in two by the lightning?
I am afraid you have never smiled at the hibernation
Of bear cubs except that you saw in it some deep relation
To human suffering and wishes, oh what a bunch of crackpots!”
The black-haired man sits down, and the others shoot arrows at him.
A blond man stands up and says,
“He is right! Why should we be organized to defend the kingdom
Of dullness? There are so many slimy people connected with poetry,
Too, and people who know nothing about it!
I am not recommending that poets like each other and organize to fight them,
But simply that lightning should strike them.”
Then the assembled mediocrities shot arrows at the blond-haired man.
The chairman stood up on the platform, oh he was physically ugly!
He was small-limbed and –boned and thought he was quite seductive,
But he was bald with certain hideous black hairs,
And his voice had the sound of water leaving a vaseline bathtub,
And he said, “The subject for this evening’s discussion is poetry
On the subject of love between swans.” And everyone threw candy hearts
At the disgusting man, and they stuck to his bib and tucker,
And he danced up and down on the platform in terrific glee
And recited the poetry of his little friends—but the blond man stuck his head
Out of a cloud and recited poems about the east and thunder,
And the black-haired man moved through the stratosphere chanting
Poems of the relationships between terrific prehistoric charcoal whales,
And the slimy man with candy hearts sticking all over him
Wilted away like a cigarette paper on which the bumblebees have urinated,
And all the professors left the room to go back to their duty,
And all that were left in the room were five or six poets
And together they sang the new poem of the twentieth century
Which, though influenced by Mallarmé, Shelley, Byron, and Whitman,
Plus a million other poets, is still entirely original
And is so exciting that it cannot be here repeated.
You must go to the Poem Society and wait for it to happen.
Once you have heard this poem you will not love any other,
Once you have dreamed this dream you will be inconsolable,
Once you have loved this dream you will be as one dead,
Once you have visited the passages of this time’s great art!