New Moon in Aquarius: There Is a Light That Never Goes Out
I explore the New Moon's Polyphonic Aquarian Spree, the meet-cute of the benefics, and consider the Plutonic dregs of our last lunation through the prism of The Weeknd's cyberpunk Super Bowl ritual.
“When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don't seem to matter very much, do they?”
― Virginia Woolf (Sun, Midheaven and Mercury in Aquarius)
“In the universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between, there are doors.”
― William Blake (Saturn in Aquarius)
On rare occasion I will see a painting that pierces my soul, and so it was with this breathtakingly intimate scene by Otto Hesselbom of Sweden (discovered on @amber.of.the.sea’s instagram). The symbol of the candle is one I have long associated with Aquarius: the Saturnian sign of darkness, decay and winter, poised in opposition to the luminaries, can only bring intimations and traces of light. The solar radiance is abstracted, and compressed into lapidary facets.
This is the light of revelation, and the small flame that focuses our hope. In the absence of sol’s warmth in the dead of winter, we are all Prometheus, thieving drops of sun, with the knowledge that summer will gild these wastes again. On this New Moon, I imagine our wanderers gathered in candlelight, in a state of solemn counsel, as their long shadows taper to pillars in the snow.
There have been moments in the past few weeks when I’ve wept like this man, brokenly, in front of my altar—supplicating myself to seemingly indifferent forces. The vaccine rollout in Canada has all but slowed to a halt (gracias a Mercury rx), and it wasn’t surprising under our last Plutonic lunation to see the vaccine contracts themselves cloaked in secrecy. We were told to wait. We were told to trust. The contractual obligations would be met. Except all I could feel was an even sharper exile lodged in my heart.
The Plutonic flavor of the last few weeks has probably seen many of us spinning out and feeding pet obsessions. I’ve perused comment sections, and sub-reddit discussions on the botched vaccine delivery with a focus bordering on fanaticism. Pluto is transiting my 8th house—the idle place—where resistance to karmic loss, and holy debts, can lead to toxic patterns of escapism, and even illness.
The building Saturn-Uranus square has also brought rebelliousness in the face of seemingly unremitting restriction, and for me this manifested as wild schemes to get vaccinated in Cuba, under a recent tourism initiative. I’ve even been close to booking a one-way flight to Barcelona.
Except I know, in my heart, that such rashness would lead to self-undoing. Uranus-Mars in my 12th wants to jailbreak the exile that this place can bring, as one can only be sustained by so much by roving of the astral plane. The Aquarian assembly has the upper hand for now, however, with Saturn in the overcoming square with Uranus. We also have Uranus-Mars’ ruler, Venus, shadowing Saturn as diplomat, and spin-doctor. All roads lead to the God who demands that we wait and suck it up.
All of this is to say, I’m being urged to continue down this path of the lonely and contemplative hermit, tumbling the slurry of my thesis into the cool symmetry of gemstone facets. Like the candle, The Hermit’s lantern is another light that never goes out.
Over this New Moon it can be helpful to identify the two houses hosting the Uranus-Mars ‘great escape!’, and Aquarius’ super serious ‘Council of Elrond’. As the Lord of Winter edges closer to a square with Uranus’ electric emancipation, we can experience a tremendous tension, and even cognitive dissonance, as the matters of the two houses feel impossible to reconcile: an Escher loop of stairs that only swallow each other.
Especially as our last Pluto-tinged lunation closed, we may have felt the accumulated weight of our Covidian Times peak over the dark of the moon, as we were edging an emotional catharsis that never really came.
The Super Bowl’s Plutonic Ritual
More on the New Moon soon, but first a fascinating reverberation of cosmos in the desiccated wastes of pop culture. I was struck by the Super Bowl half-time show, where Aquarius native The Weeknd, (whose alter-ego is appropriately ‘the Star Boy’), performed a medley of his glitzy, synth-driven hits against a tessellated cityscape of his dopplegangers (the grid is very Aquarius). In a blood-red sequined jacket, he seemed to ham it up as a Las Vegas lounge lizard, though the Aquarian glamour was seen through a glass, darkly. An enormous screen blinked the word Alone, over and over, and a demonic priest opened proceedings, hovering down from the void.
When our Star Boy swaggered into the field—his masked ciphers spaced in a chessboard to covid protocol—what should have been the cathartic release of his hit “Blinding Lights” (bathed, as it were, in the collective residue of TikTok dances), came off as more unsettling than jubilant. The dancing automatons flailed as if possessed by currents of voltage, and the human emptiness of the depopulated stadium pressed invisibly.
It was as if The Weeknd’s Aquarian self had refracted into the spangled, but abstract, field of an increasingly remote pandemic collective. When his alien falsetto sang the line, “No one’s around to judge me,” and the disembodied consciousness of the drone swooped over the stadium, I realized that most of the fans were cardboard cut-out replicas. (Shudder).
Apparently actual humans paid 100 dollars each for their 2D avatars to populate the stands (an echelon of late-Capitalism nobody could’ve predicted). If Uranus wants to Make it New, Aquarius ensures that what is new will also be weird as fuck. In any case, as the dancers finally dropped to the ground, I couldn’t help but think of the swathes of unknown humanity lost to covid.
Abel Tesfaye, in addition to being the loneliest Aquarian pop star in the world (to echo The Washington Post)—courting the brilliantine projections of fame with ambivalence—also has a Moon-Pluto conjunction in Scorpio! Now I understand the red and black uniform, and his visual album’s Orphic descent. In this way, he was the ideal mirror of a particularly murky dark of the moon. The flashing red eyes of his gospel singers, and a sequence through an underworld labyrinth lit with dazzling lights, was a brilliant yoking of Pluto to the rising of the Aquarius stellium.
I’m sure you’ve all seen the halftime performance, but here it is again (I also have an Aquarian friend here who has been spending lockdown rating halftime shows against an increasingly complex criteria):
Godspeed through the Event Horizon
Friends, I’m really glad to see that Plutonic lunation behind us, which was frankly extremely triggering (how was it for you?). Somehow, impossibly, there is a way out of the intractable binds that January presented, and it’s under this auspicious New Moon that we will see a way forward.
Yes, we have the combative square between Saturn’s zombie status quo, and Uranus’ battle cry of “stonks to the Moon!” This will have to be unraveled in the month to come, but with Mercury rising now as morning star, and effervescent herald, the eureka moments will be forthcoming. Plans will be announced. Soul-aligned declamations will light the way forward.
We also have a meet-cute of the benefics that coincides with Luna swooning into Sol’s embrace. The conjunction of Venus and Jupiter will perfect just a couple hours after the New Moon, and this is, to me, the stand out aspect.
Venus is indeed busy this month, having exchanged a longing glance with Saturn last week (either a moment of binding commitment, or a bittersweet letting go). She now finds herself in cahoots with our Sky Zaddy to hatch audacious hopes for the post-plague world. There’s something of this union that brings to mind the image of glaciers calving: a sudden rapturous release into the bracing cosmic soup. What a heart-opening sound!
Just as Mercury’s revising and stitch-picking is helping us through the Byzantine negotiations of a global vaccine roll-out, Venus will help to ground the more abstract clash of titans into our relationships, our resources, and even our budgets. This lunation could see a productive restructuring of our alliances, and even a severing of toxic ties with Martian steel in the mix (trust that our last lunation saw the vampires slinking out of the shadows).
This restructuring will follow the clarion call to freedom and individuation that this stellium demands. Anyone, or anything, determined to keep us small will be left to rot in Hades’ catacombs. We see the candle flame of a distant opening, and we’re not risking any backwards Orphic glances this New Moon.
That the New Moon aligns with Sadalsuud, a fortunate and benefic star, is further confirmation that Jupiter and Venus have blessings to heap upon us. This star translates as ‘luckiest of lucky,’ and its rising with the sun was said to herald the end of the winter and the beginning of the season of gentle rains.[1] In the Northern Hemisphere, we’re still deep in winter of course, (and a rather bitter cold snap), but the light is slowly gathering. When the Moon transits here, Vivienne Robson suggests building, traveling, and getting by with the help of our friends [2] (perhaps the travel is of the mind though!).
This third decan of Aquarius, however, can see our social networks tightening into fraught cat’s cradles. Despite the high-mindedness of this lunar cycle, we may be even more sensitive to the shadow-side of social media (especially with the benefic’s confirmation that we can have nice things). Saturnian boundaries may be necessary in terms of tech, lest we become as robotic and automated as the algorithms that scaffold cyberspace.
Remember that Aquarius can kidnap us, like Zeus plucking Ganymede, stripping us of our humanity in the thrall of a zealous Utopianism. Troubling machinations around freedom of speech will also continue to reverberate, and we may find ourselves severing our Venusian creations from platforms that peddle in fear, outrage, and the ecstasy of mobbing. The internet’s Saturn return is chugging hard.
Austin Coppock draws our attention to the social tethers that can become straight-jackets in this place: “The final decan of Aquarius is a complicated place, for here we struggle with the knots that bind us, both collectively and individually. But what is a knot? It is a pattern, a circuit, a shape. Superstrings and sub-atomic serpents tie themselves into knots to bring forth the world itself. Some of those tangles tie us into existence, yet others bind us to cruel patterns. They are trauma and drama circuits, feedback loops which repeat fruitlessly.”[3]
How appropriate, then, that this decan is ruled by the Seven of Swords. Here we have a helpful ally in the Martian severing from Coppock’s ‘drama circuits’. The solider of this card is seen absconding from a military encampment, making off with five swords and a shit-eating grin. Certainly, this card can bring betrayal, theft and shadiness, but sometimes there are moments that call for a tactical retreat, or even a lone wolf charting of the unknown.
The Freedom of Edges
Once again, looking to the houses that host Aquarius and Taurus may help to unlock the areas in life where we may need to stick to our guns, and go it alone for the time being. Or perhaps we’ve left this military camp in search of a tribe that is more aligned with the clarion call to individuation, abundance, good faith and largess that the benefics are seeding. Anyone who makes us their emotional hostage has no place under this resplendent lunation.
It may be helpful to remember that although Saturn is making the executive orders in this assembly—behooving us to be tactical and cautious even as we dream wild dreams—he is also a God of liminality. The boundaries of Saturn always secret an opening if we are determined to find it. Even within these constricted times there are unknown niches, halls, and secret gardens of the soul to uncover. (Saying this, I realize that I speak from my more reflective 9th and 12th houses, recognizing that many essential workers do not have the luxury—or curse—of endless time and empty space).
Under two months of sobriety, I have been delighted to uncover a capacity for wry detachment, and curiosity, even in the throes of deepest suffering. I have realized that emotional stability does not extinguish the duende of life: in fact, it gives these fire spirits even more space to roam and cavort.
For now, we venture forward in the obscure reaches of the psyche, as far the candle throws its light. We find paradoxical freedom in ravishing attention on that which is close at hand. We realize that humility in the face of formal edges is a revolutionary act, in the way that the poem’s jagged margin creates a dialectic with empty space. We winter, and we wait—
Or, in the words of Gerard Bachelard:
“A creature that hides and “withdraws into its shell,” is preparing a “way out.” This is true of the entire scale of metaphors, from the resurrection of a man in his grave, to the sudden outburst of one who has long been silent. If we remain at the heart of the image under consideration, we have the impression that, by staying in the motionlessness of its shell, the creature is preparing temporal explosions, not to say whirlwinds, of being.”
Works cited:
[1] https://www.constellationsofwords.com/stars/Sadalsuud.html
[2] Ibid
[3] https://austincoppock.com/astrology-feb-9-18-aquarius-iii-solar-eclipse/