February 11, 2021
by DK Brainard
This moon feels remarkably positive, but the chart and the degree symbols for the New Moon indicate a need for clarity on our part if we are to realize that positive outcome.
You can just eyeball this chart and see the shift from the heavy Capricorn energy of the last few years into airy Aquarius. Jupiter and Venus made exact conjunction in Aquarius four hours prior to the new moon and retrograde Mercury conjoins first Venus and then Jupiter over the weekend.
So, maybe we have some nice, expansive good luck energy for Chinese New Year!
The Sabian symbol for the degree of the new moon is: "A man, having overcome his passions, teaches deep wisdom in terms of his experience."
Dane Rudhyar says this degree symbolizes the ability to use the difficult experiences we've lived through and learned from "as examples for those who are still striving to overcome their passions."
This theme of learning from the past so we don't repeat the mistakes of the past as we build a better future also shows up in the degree symbols for Aquarius' two ruling planets.
Saturn is at 6 Aquarius 32': "A child is seen being born out of an egg."
Rudhyar sees this degree as heralding "a new type of human who is not born from 'Ancestors' and who therefore is free from the inertia of mankind's past." One the one hand, I take this quintessentially Aquarian statement of idealism as expressing the transformative potential of the deep soul work our community is engaged in:
By going within and healing the trauma and core shame we inherited from our ancestors, we are making it possible for souls to enter the world who will not have to spend the first 40 or more years of life fighting within themselves for the freedom to be who they are.
We could also see in this degree, however, the reflection of the agenda being pushed on us by the lords of technology and finance - an agenda that proposes to cure the world's ills by culling the human population to 1/6 of its current state and rapidly moving the remaining population towards a transhuman future where we live primarily "inside the machine."
Uranus, Aquarius' modern ruler, is at 8 Taurus: "A sleigh on land uncovered by snow." Rudhyar interprets this degree as symbolizing the need to "use past knowledge and skill to meet the demands of a stage yet to come."
Remember that Aquarius is the sign of society, specifically symbolizing the individual within (or versus) the group. A key distinguishing factor between the individuals in a group and the people in a mob is the ability to think clearly rather than acting unconsciously from strong emotion.
If we are to have any hope of claiming the Aquarian promise of a world that is free, fair, and just for all, we as individuals need to reclaim our sovereignty (Leo as Aquarius' polarity sign) and develop our inner authority (Saturn as Aquarius' sign ruler).
Idealism vs. Ideology
As the universal Air sign, Aquarius tends toward an inherently idealistic mental frame. Able to imagine the whole from any of the parts, Aquarius believes we can restructure old systems (or innovate new ones) in a way that gives everyone who wants it access to opportunity. Aquarius is blockchain rather than central banks, distributed networks in place of giant server farms, print-on-demand instead of corporate sweatshops.
But Aquarius is also a fixed sign. The fixed mind, enraptured with an idea, can have a hard time shifting perspective. At its best Aquarius creates networks designed to encourage individuals to innovate and prosper in ways that support their own unique expression in the world. On the shadow side of Aquarius, we see ideas of fairness and equality propagated as rigid systems. These ideologies, when wielded by charismatic leaders who are adept at stirring the passions of their followers, often seem very appealing at first. It is only when adherence to the ideologues' principles of fairness or justice have become mandatory - and enough non-conformists have been exiled or imprisoned - that the implications of having given over our sovereignty to the idea of progress become evident.
This pattern is writ large in the history of the last century. Soviet Communism, German Nazism, Italian Fascism, U.S. military-industrial capitalism, Mao's Cultural Revolution and modern-day Chinese communism have in common? They all started with ideas espousing fairness, justice, prosperity and other worthwhile societal goals. Together these ideologies resulted in hundreds of millions of people murdered, tortured, imprisoned, impoverished and enslaved while the oligarchs at the top of society grew rich and powerful on the people's misery.
Dane Rudhyar published An Astrological Mandala, his commentary on the Sabian symbols, in 1973. Reading through some of the passages of the book today, I was struck by the thought that Rudhyar was writing for people who could actually read.
As someone who naturally wants to see the best in other people, it was easy for me - at least until the scam-demic kicked in last year - to overlook just how woefully ignorant many of our fellow citizens are. The combination of an ever-increasing immersion in mass media with an educational system that has focused more and more on teaching young people that everything is relative and words can mean anything you feel they mean has molded tens of millions of our fellow citizens into order-followers who lack the ability to understand the messages they take in, let alone judge the moral value of the orders they are being given.
I'm grateful to have had the privilege of growing up in a family that encouraged me to love learning and to pursue knowledge throughout my life. And, owning your own mind is not about whether you went to a prestigious university - or any university. Most useful education takes place outside the classrooms and people who have acquired wisdom have always acquired it through their own experience, as well as by listening and considering the words and ways of those who are already wise.
Question Authority!
Aquarius is a fascinating sign. It's ruled by two (almost) completely contrary archetypes: Saturn (rules, hierarchy, structure, doing things by the book) and Uranus (sudden, shocking change, visionary, new paradigm). Aquarians absolutely need the freedom to express themselves in their own unique ways and yet they are also the ultimate team players, the ones who work ceaselessly and selflessly for their communities.
One thing Aquarius possesses, when it hasn't fallen into that fixed mental energy construct, is a good bullshit detector. Aquarius hates being told "because I said so" or "that's the way we've always done it." At the beginning of the Aquarius New Moon cycle and the first Great Conjunction cycle in Aquarius in several centuries, we really need to tap into Aquarius' iconoclastic side and question authority. Not just the obvious authorities, either, like the government or the church or the community leader.
It's frighteningly easy nowadays to deal with the complexity of life by allowing others to do our thinking for us. Swimming in an unprecedented flood of information, it can be tempting to simplify our lives by turning toward the familiar voices from the past (family, friends, legacy media, social media influencers) and tuning out the (often) strident voices of non-conformity. The physicians who risk their entire careers in challenging the status quo; the former mainstream media reporter who keeps calling attention to the holes in the story; the tens of thousands of moms who are laughed at and called conspiracy theorists for insisting their child was healthy until they got vaccinated.
I've been a "conspiracy theorist" since I was a teen, I guess. You don't go from growing up fundamentalist Christian to becoming an astrologer without asking a lot of hard questions. But Covid-19 shocked me out of a state of mental complacency that I had inhabited for a number of years. It still stings a little to admit how many unpopular societal truths I rejected because I wanted to believe they weren't true or soft-pedaled because all the cool, artsy people around me scoffed at them.
Then again, when you start to realize how how many decades we the people have subjected to mass media mind-control programming, as well as systematic physical poisoning by Big Pharma, deep state intelligence agencies, and other deep-pocketed psychopaths, you can cut yourself some slack.
If you're just starting to wake up again, please keep asking the hard questions. Recognize propaganda - with all of its baseless conspiracy theories, false claims and dangerous white supremacist labels - when you see it. Stop reading and listening to legacy "news" organizations that once may have reported some truth and now traffic mainly in lies. Vote against censorship by taking back your data from the social media tycoons who pretend to care about equality so much they made billions of extra dollars last year while half of black-owned businesses in American were going bust.
The world does need to change and it is going to change quickly. But those of us who actually live with open hearts and who actually care about helping other people and who have done the hard work required to become individuals are the ones who should be setting the agenda and driving this transformation.
We can't erase 60 years of "progressive" education and deep state/media mind control overnight. But we can share our hard-won wisdom and encourage those who are waking up to the challenge and opportunity of this unique moment in time.
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