The New Moon in Aquarius comes with a splash of fresh air, and a breath of liquid fire to inspire new ways of being. She’s hot for life, and cool as hell. They are visionary, seeing wide, opening eyes, breathing with the sense of interconnection. 

Aquarius, the water bearer, used to be a she, and is now a he. On the one hand, this is an expression of the patriarchy, turning the important, powerful being who holds the waters of life and pours it on the earth to fertilize it, into a male figure. This can easily be seen as the disregarding of the feminine in yet another way, kicking her out of the picture, leaving her on the wayside, thirsty, without her water jug. On the other hand, we can flip this transition on its head and see it as the fluidity of gender, as the ability to transmigrate, and to translate an archetype, a character, an aspect of self, and sexual identity into different languages spoken through and expressed as different bodies. 

There’s a Greek myth about a beautiful young man, Ganymede, who caught the eye of Zeus one day while tending his father’s herd in the pastures. Zeus found him super sexy, and in a typical Zeus manner, he transmuted into an eagle and snatched Ganymede with his great talons and carried him to Mt. Olympus. There, he not only took the young man as a lover, but also replaced Hebe – the cup-bearer who poured the elixir of the gods – with him. 

In one version of the story, Hera, mother of the gods, was infuriated, and turned Ganymede into a constellation. In another version, Ganymede got very bored of pouring elixir all day, and having sex with Zeus all night, and he poured all the wine, ambrosia, elixir, and waters of the gods on the earth, which caused a great flood. A flood of wisdom, of inspiration, of knowledge, of understanding. A flood of insight, of imagination, of vision, of perspective. A flood of intoxication, aliveness, a cocktail of mortality and immortality paradox. In this version it is Zeus who transforms Ganymede into a constellation. 

The water container of Aquarius holds in it a capacity, a power, a skill, a potency greater than the ones we realize we carry. 

Astrologer Divine Harmony equates the ancient feminine form of Aquarius with the maiden of the Holy Grail. She’s the inner treasure, the precious jewel of life itself. The grail is, of course, the womb of the Great Mother. The waters she pours onto us can be cleansing, clearing, purifying. 

But I’m thinking of how messy life is, how messy amniotic fluid is. We come into the world covered in gunk. It’s beautiful. We come into the world and the first thing we do is cry. We carry the liquidity of tears. Because the world is painful and beautiful and it makes us feel things. We come from sexual fluids. From heat, from desire, from pleasure. We come from beautiful mess. And we mess things up as we go. This existence is not pure, not perfect, and not part of some divine order many religions and spiritual traditions want us to believe in. And that is exactly where the gifts are, where the flavor is, where the wildness of creativity comes from. From marvelous mess and sensual soil and dirty dancing. 

Aquarius is an air sign, not a water sign, but it snuggles in the space between the elements, where the boundaries of identity are not as clear as the air side of this archetype wants them to be. Aquarius wants us to do better. It cares deeply about the well being of everyone, and can’t stand injustices, which inevitably leads to more injustices, because it takes us through a journey of idealism, which has a gigantic shadow. Hopefully, as we learn to see that we can’t see everything, this voyage through perfectionism lands us in the receptivity of the womb, where we are able to cradle into the embrace of our complexity

When you hear or say or read the word Aquarius, do you immediately hear “This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius?” in your head, or is it just me?

There’s an ability to reach into an expansive vision of life that’s associated with this archetype. They look at what’s possible and get frustrated with where we are. She’s got no patience for war, for big corporations, for the lies of governments. He recognizes where we could be as where we should be and doesn’t get why anyone would hesitate. 

We need this part of us to lead us in connecting to our humanism. We need to carry the water of life and pour it into the cups of those deprived. We need to reach into our capacity to develop care for the collective. The forward thinking energy of Aquarius can guide us into progress. But we want to be careful that our progressive agenda doesn’t become dogmatic. With Aquarius, the expansive vision can very easily become a myopic view, so we just want to take that into consideration. We want to make sure that clarity of vision doesn’t lead to close mindedness. 

This lunar cycle begins with the forward thinking water bearer, and continues with Pisces’ immersion in the ocean of spirit, as the sun enters the sign of infinite consciousness mode. We start the cycle with forward thinking, inclusive ideology, and collective vision, and continue it as we dissolve in the vastness of a directionless cosmos. 

This is also Lunar New Year’s, and we begin the Chinese year of the Dragon. Dragons hold the mythic wonder of both shadow and light. They often play the villain (in European folklore). And they represent the shadow that the wild feminine is demonized for. I love dragons so much! They live in caves, in dungeons, in the deep, dark wombs of our psyche. They guard the holy grail, the sacred vessel of the goddess. And they fly high, able to see things from a broad perspective, gathering wisdom and developing character. They are fiery and untamed, dangerous and majestic. 

The Chinese dragon represents strength, power, and wisdom. We begin the year of the Wood Dragon in Chinese astrology, and those creatures represent abundance, success, improvement, and evolution. 

And to top it off, it is also Lunar Imbolc, the Celtic festival that marks the midpoint between Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox, and celebrates the sprouting of seeds, the stirring of life beneath the surface, the budding of flowers, the emergence of hope, and the rise of awareness. 

As we weave together the archetypes of this moment, we make a soup that nourishes the power of the collective, feeds our communal vision with strength and vigor, flows in abundance and reminds us that there’s enough for everyone, and is cooked within the flames of wisdom, bringing different kinds of definitions to the ideas and ideals of success. 

The visionary, evolutionary, creative, imaginative fire and liquidity of this archetypal soup can be tapped into in many ways. If you want a ritual, which is more of a series of rituals, check out the Imbolc Somatic Ceremony. It’s gonna be available for a few more days. You’ll get a rich immersion in mythology, symbolism, meditation, pranayama, asana, mudra, mantra, contemplation, and embodied magic. This ceremony is an expansive, wide, and deep dive into this phase in the season. Check out the details here. 

And if you want to watch or listen to a mythopoetic exploration of this new moon, head over here for a FREE talk. 

Are you into this? Is this speaking to you? Share it with your peeps, will ya?!

With much love,

Hagar