aquarian atmospheres
full moon Aquarius August 11, 2022 9:35 pm est.
☁︎
full moon Aquarius August 11, 2022 9:35 pm est. ☁︎
The flower essence for this full moon is Mullein. Standing tall amongst wild flowers, mullein lights the path of ones unique vision… it “connects us with our inner voice, with the light of conscience, to help overcome falsity to self and others…Mullein is the archetypal wildflower of inner light. It is no coincidence that its dried stems were used as candles by the Romans, who called it candelaria.” read more about this flower essence here.
Unicorn is the Uniform: starlit clouds, wild winds, riding waves
“You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.”
Angela Davis (Sun, Moon & South Node in Aquarius)
On the tail of the Leo new moon arrives the full moon in Aquarius. Have these two weeks felt like years? This full moon arrives at the bending of the nodes… distorting perception, time slows in the thick of summer. Momentum suspends under the squared sky. What do squares do best? Frame? Hold? Build? Structure? Orient? Direct? Squares move energy because the tension they produce requires attention. The friction between these aspects builds the kind of focused energy needed to take the action necessary. But until the wave breaks, were in the build up and it is hot and heavy. Linked up with a retrograde Saturn, tending the archive of what Aquarius holds.
Look to the houses that the signs Leo, Scorpio, Aquarius and Taurus rule in your chart. This tension arrises from the houses in the four corners of your natal chart which these signs color. Our web of reality is more of a fiction than most would like to believe.
“Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.”
Virginia Woolf (Sun, Venus, Mercury in Aquarius) referred to as ‘v.w.’ here onwards…
What character are you becoming in your own story. Does the full moon in Aquarius hold a message for you? In order to hear it, to catch the bolt of light, we look to the area in our chart that is held under the sign of Aquarius, and we begin to notice the state of this space in our life. Does the story line up? Sit still, close your eyes, imagine you are as expansive as the sky that surrounds you… what exists here?
“I am in the mood to dissolve in the sky.” v.w.
Aquarius is a paradoxical sign. It is fixed air, meaning under its influence the very quality of its own element is challenged. Air moves, disperses, exchanges, circulates. And yet… the fixed nature of this sign reveals something about the nature of humanity. Each cycle of the season begins with cardinal signs, moves to fixed, and the transitions through mutable. As we shift from summertime cardinal cancer through fixed Leo, we gather under two Saturn ruled full moons in a row. With the cardinal full moon in Capricorn last month, the world we are building was highlighted. But now, how do we stay alive within those structures? Are the structures serving the highest evolution of humanity? We must maintain what it means to actually be alive: that to be human is to evolve, and to evolve is to maintain the movement of growth in a forward progression. Aquarius takes the edge of human potential and leans into it, appearing to stand on the outside of things... but the truth of the matter is… outlaws aren’t outliers. They’re at the heart of everything.
The genius of Aquarius is that for it to stand apart as unique, eccentric, brilliant, innovative, and intellectually ahead of its times… “You can’t have a rebel without something to rebel against… you can’t have a genius without some preexisting ground to break,” writes Steven Forrest. The way of this sign is to emerge from within the systems that exist, identify what life should/could be like according to this unique vantage point, and move forward unyielding in the vision for this updated reality.
Well said by Matthew McConaughey (Midheaven and Mars in Aquarius), “The outlaw don’t live on the edges, he lives in the center… cruising on the slip stream.” As the Sun beams from Leo, across the axis to the moon in Aquarius, the truth becomes advantageous. ‘Rebels’ aren’t always fighting against something… they are likely fighting for the thing that matters most to them.
“There is more than one kind of freedom… freedom to and freedom from.” (Margaret Atwood, The Handmaids Tale, Moon, Mars, and Midheaven in Aquarius)
When our intention is aligned, heart-centered (read the Leo new moon post if you missed it), it reorients the very fabric of existence. Reality changes because it is becoming through each defining choice and some of those choices won’t look like other peoples idea of what is supposed to be. Unless of course, that is what you want… but does that make you come alive? The devotion to staying in the flow requires living authentically, allowing new shapes take form as time carries us along the slipstream…
"We begin with habitation, a neighborhood, perhaps a place with which we connect (the Kitchen). And from this might emerge a habitus, unique sensibilities, attitudes, ways of moving through some-thing we might call technique or simply the daily work, which might live for a little while in something brief called dance. It comes out of and becomes a way of life, reinscribing a social world, or a psychic community of historical addressees. Habitare, "to live." Not just anywhere, not just for anyone. But for you and me, the devoted." DAVID VELASCO on SARAH MICHELSON (artforum jan. 2014 vol. 52, n. 5) who’s art has been described as exploration of the pleasures, sacrifices, and viability of a life dedicated to dance recipient of the “genius” Mccarthur Award.
Are you dancing? Are you letting your body take new shapes? Are you opening your heart through the devotion of each choice becoming an important act- to live.
Think back over the past 6 months, to the new moon in Aquarius February 1, 2022. Over this time period, what has arrived for you to frame, what progress has been made? Did you pivot from what you were expected to do, love, say, think, be? Have you been mapping something- a constellation of how you move through the motions, noticing how it feels when you shift attention, when you restructure a moment around how you’d like to feel. Is there a framework for your life to flow more freely through? Or… are you in a collision with the choices that led you here… meeting resistance that you didn’t expect?
It could be as subtle as a sensation, an idea that hovers through each moment of your day. A shift of energy moving in a new direction, one that is only perceptible from you unique perspective. Have you adjusted your plans, have you made room for the possibility that to grow into the world you dream of, you must release parts of the world you came from? What is comfortable and familiar vs. what is challenging, risky, bold… even terrifying (because you just don’t know what it will look like yet)?
“Challenges are gifts that force us to search for a new center of gravity. Don’t fight them. Just find a new way to stand.”
Oprah Winfrey (Sun, Mercury & Venus in Aquarius)
This leads to the “free-spirit”, the freak/genius, the one that daringly stands apart from the flock. Ruled by Saturn, the influence of Aquarius requires one to be part of the fabric of our collective experience and equally stand apart from it. Aquarians know what they are not, and they build their worlds around it. They can be celebrated, eventually, and certainly admired… from afar. Aquarians can appear glamourous. As if they shimmer, a haze of energy rising around them. It is in their unique expression they step into the power that the outsider holds, a glaring freedom. A perceptual power. It is in this same position they get judged and criticized by those whom fear uncertainty… labeled the outcasts, the odd ones, even condemned or isolated for the very thing that makes them so necessary for human evolution… being ‘different’ … becomes a threat to those who cling to sameness.
"Of course it is beautiful but first, all beauty in it is denied and then all the beauty of it is accepted. If every one were not so indolent they would realise that beauty is beauty even when it is irritating and stimulating, not only when it is accepted and classic. Of course it is extremely difficult, nothing more so, than to remember back to its not being beautiful once it has become beautiful. This makes it so much more difficult to realise its beauty when the work is being refused and prevents every one from realising that they were convinced that beauty was denied, once the work is accepted. Automatically with the acceptance of the time-sense comes the recognition of the beauty and once the beauty is accepted the beauty never fails any one.”
Gertrude Stein (Sun, Mercury, Venus, Saturn, and Ascendant in Aquarius)
“The energy at the outer edge of the subtle anatomy is rarefied, not unlike the highest strata of the Earth’s atmosphere. Reluctance to receive new impulses causes the aura to “crust over”, an energetic shell is formed. The tall spiked flowering stalks of mullein point to the vibrational impulse of this plant influencing the higher levels of the aura. Mullein creates the right conditions for the initial absorption of fresh impulses which filter down to the mental levels where discernment occurs and the impulses are further absorbed or rejected.” Aquarius Flower Remedies
Over the past 6 months…
have you figured out what you definitely are not aligned with? Becoming aware of what doesn’t feel right is the first step…
What is your heart, your awareness, leaning towards? Are you creating, weaving, spiraling, mapping, morphing, summoning, shifting, organizing your world with the awareness that the space is percolating… accumulating… alive? Building anything, especially realities, perceptual pivots, requires time/resources/recalibration/boundaries/persistence and a flash of insight every now and then to remind you that you don’t have to know where you will end up… you simply have to attune to the information available.
This moment is here to sharpen the vision, to reinstate the gravity needed to center new ideas, visions, & progressive dreams. when things get rocky, and tension arrises as the plan unfolds, does the vessel hold? are the juices flowing? Do you know where your limitations are… and where you are simply holding yourself back? is your energy clear? Have you gotten tired… falling back into the crowd a bit?
Along the fixed square in the sky, one might contemplate that no matter how sound, all strategies need updating at times. This moment holds a clue to how you might release some old way of dealing with change, and step into a more practical approach. Something that possibly feels good. Even if what feels good surprises you… the answers are always in the last place you look.
a little bit about Aquarius
“Did you ever see the way the clouds love a mountain? They circle all around it; sometimes you can’t even see the mountain for the clouds. But you know what? You go up top and what do you see? His head. The clouds never cover the head. His head pokes through, because the clouds let him; they don’t wrap him up. They let him keep his head up high, free, with nothing to hide him or bind him.”
Toni Morrison “Song of Solomon” (Moon, Mercury, Midheaven in Aquarius)
The archetypal image of the sign is the Water Bearer. A human holds a vessel which through the waters & intelligent life force flow. Aquarius is the bridge between humanity, connecting humanity to the source of inspiration. In some instances, we understand that the energy of Aquarius is similar to the vapor air that rises along the mountain, carrying water towards the skies. It is the formation of potential, the cloud suspended, at times passing in front of the light of the Sun, only to be warmed by it and eventually spill the rains back to the soil. Austin Coppock provides an interesting perspective of the tarot card associated with Aquarius- The Star, and other ancient images related back to this sign.
“As in the Star, a woman, a goddess whose name has been forgotten or confused, holds two cups. She appears to be naked, though no detail of her can be seen, for she is veiled by a black, shifting mist which wreathes her. When her skin is exposed it appears to flow and change between black, white, and red, a sort of abbreviated rainbow. These are the colors of the primal alchemy. Like in the Star card, there is a pool at her left side, but it is crimson — a pool of blood. Looking deeper into the night-scene, it becomes clear that the pool leaks from a wounded lion. Although at first glance the woman appears to be pouring blood from her cup into the pool, on closer inspection, it is clear that the blood is actually defying gravity to flowing upwards into the cup. She is extracting it from the pool, her cup a sort of magical syringe. Her other cup is raised to the heavens, as if a torch, and from it the blood flows further upward, spiraling toward the Moon and stars. As the spilt blood floats skyward, it separates into small streams which take on the appearance of serpents, or dragons. These coil around the Moon and stars, staining a portion of Luna pink. You see now that she is offering this blood to the celestial lights, and although at first this strikes you as some sort of monstrous, vampiric sacrifice, you understand now that through this process she is somehow healing the beast at her feet. The blood has become tainted or diseased, and she is sending it to the Moon and stars for cleansing. After whatever mysterious alchemy is complete, you know it will be returned to the wounded lion below, fresh and full of primordial star-fire.”
Austin Coppock (Moon in Aquarius)
Looking back to the new moon two weeks ago,
the new moon moment was shaped by a question poised in the sky… what gift flows generously through all aspects of your life? Now, as the full moon arrives, the skies seem to mirror back… and are you willing to emancipate from where you are now in order to evolve? Where are the wounds, where are we unable to contain our energy? Noticing the patterns around what seems to drain you can lead to startlingly honest truths. are you sure that you aren’t in denial of your own needs? are you sure that you’re aware of the things that pull at your energy each day?
As the central organizing force of the solar system, the Sun & Leo hold the glowing attention of all. But what happens when the Lion shines it’s light to the possibility of a very different future, gearing itself against the very mechanisms that generate the life it comes from? What happens when things stop feeling comfortable, or we get hurt… emotionally, a blow to the ego, coming up against what we need and the obstacles that stand in the way?
The strange scene painted by Coppock shows the lion wounded, and the mysterious woman offering the blood of the lion to the stars, and in doing so… what exactly can we imagine a lion fresh and full of primordial star-fire becomes? Will the Lion be the same at all? Or will the change simply change everything.
“I am made and remade continually. Different people draw different words from me” (Virginia Woolf, again).
Sometimes, especially when tracking the moon, we experience these shifts as a collective. Are there many people, perhaps unaware or just beginning to sense how connected we all truly are, wondering if we’re sensing the same thing but just don’t know how to be the one to say it?
nervous system networks
The central nervous system is wild.
“for my love is like the wind, and wild is the wind…” (Nina Simone, Ascendant Saturn and Venus in Aquarius)
All these loose ends return the focus back to this human thing we all inhabit… a body. All the loose nerve endings are the pathway for information to travel through us, to feel and experience the subtle shifts of our environments within our own bodies. The nervous system acts as the aquarian circuit board, receiving information through the senses, and channeling it through our bodies so that we may respond accordingly. It also emits energy, extending information out into our spaces, our connection with others, our community. Perceptual shifts in awareness give insight on how we fit into the structures of our life. It is in this way that we orient ourselves to the world, the communities, the groups, the human collective. We learn where and how we are a little bit different. When we are younger, this can establish patterns in our neural pathways that put us in certain energetic loops based off of not having the awareness to understand that being different is not “bad”. Depending on how we grew up, a part of the Aquarian energy in everyone’s chart speaks to how we must individuate ourselves from those influences to become our fullest expression of self. We don’t get to decide the experiences that form our core patterns. We do get to respond to them, as adults.
These days, tools exist (Tobemagnetic - founded by Lacy Philips (Sun in Aquarius, Leo Rising), Joe Dipsenza (Jupiter, Saturn, South Node in Aquarius) systems created by Aquarians, to evoke meditative states which allow you to reprogram your neural pathways. When we begin to work from the outside-in, allowing cerebral meditative states to shift the patterns that bind us to outdated limiting beliefs, we begin to change our reality.
“I am rooted, but I flow.” (v.w.)
Here is the beauty of this connection between the nervous system, Aquarius, the heart, and Leo. That to be ‘heart centered’, we must first learn to calm the heart. How? Air. Breathing. fixed air. Remember that thing about Saturn ruling Aquarius? Saturn controls, restricts, limits, refines, and masters… with these Saturnian principles we can then begin to control our breathing. Which in turn gives us the ability to shift the way we experience each moment.
Through new patterns of breath, restricting the inhale and exhale through breath work, we can begin to change our energy. When we disengage from negative patterns we perceive through the world around us, whether it is a trauma response or stress or an actual danger that shakes us up… we must always come back to calming the heart in order to realign our intelligence.
When tested, triggered, challenged, and denied… frayed nerves fall back into familiar habits that seems ‘safe’. Through shifting awareness to breath, regulating control of our own body.. access opens to the awareness of the information available around us that is important.. organizing our lives through a process of knowing what resources are useful and which ones aren’t, we stay in the slip stream. In the flow. Sacrificing the outdated beliefs… and in doing so, the heart, the generosity of life giving energy, the organizing force of our known universe, gets charged up, full of prana, full of primordial star-fire. We let go of the “poison”, the overload of input. We become both the Lion, and the Goddess, we become human and animal. In flow, we remain alive, connected to the necessary movement of energy from one expression to another. the alchemical force alive through this choice to choose who we are, and enact change.
“The function of freedom is to free someone else.” Toni Morrison
The sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system provide us with pathways of energetic expression that directly work through our bodies. We can remain unconscious, and through the sympathetic nervous system, allow our bodies to be regulated by our environments, what is outside of our control. Through the parasympathetic nervous system, we consciously shift our bodily intelligence into coherence, which facilitates brain function. The interpretation of the moon in Aquarius gains dimension here. Is it possible that the Moon in Aquarius is not simply ‘aloof’ or ‘detached’… but more accurately requires a kind of accute awareness through control over the bodily response to the information that moves through us?
When doing the Aquarian thing of advancing the potential of human awareness, creativity, innovation and genius… might one need this tool to stay rooted as perspective shifts according to what must change in order to continue to evolve?
“To the yogi, it is not the heart, the physical heart, that sustains us. It’s prana, life force, and wherever or however energy is shaped within us, shapes our thoughts. Shapes our experience of life. Shapes our perceptions of self. Influences our level of creativity, kindness, love & inspiration. So as we begin to gain control and contact with energy, we change everything.”
Rod Stryker (Chiron in Aquarius)
Coming back to the Aquarian Archetype of the Waterbearer, and the image of The Star, one might begin to see new possibilities. Is the sacrifice, the blood spilled, required in order to reestablish power to its rightful place, realigned and reinvigorated? More specifically, what wounded the lion in the first place, what poisoned its blood? As the mysterious goddess, name lost or forgotten, fills the cup as an offering, allowing a connection to form between the wounded, (heart/leo) raising the second cup to the heavens (to inversely release the flow of life force to a higher power), the goddess is animated by an alchemical force. It is this moment, in-between humanity and the heavens, that the Aquarian perspective is placed. Still tethered to the difficult task of releasing what has become stagnant in the collective heart, and allowing it move through them as an offering of flow. The Aquarian assumes the role of the alchemist, the ‘mad scientist’, the one willing to take to the fringe… it is here that they see what has become lifeless, and in only the way an Aquarian could, they defy the laws, they break the ‘rules’, they search for a new center of gravity, releasing the dragons and serpents that seem to coil within the pool, with the intention of bringing the spark of life back to it’s source, clear & sparkling from the cosmic refresh.
This Full Moon in Aquarius… what will you release?
What has pressurized in your life? What must be release so that a vitalized energy can return… expanding the shape of your vision… bringing primordial star-fire to the shape of life and perceptions of self.
With the Sun in Leo, are we clinging to something based out of pride, ego, or vanity? As the moon tilts across the heavens, would it be possible to release whatever has become toxic, at the risk that in letting go we might make space for a greater version of that very thing we cling to so tightly?
It is studied that collectively, we influence one another through the energetic frequency that our hearts emit. Hearts create energetic atmosphere. a “ripple of energy”.
The HeartMath Institute came up with a hypothesis in 2012, that a strong collective emotional intention has a measurable impact on the earths geomagnetic field and ionosphere. “these are protective layers around the earth that are a part of the earth as a living system. Mass human emotion effect these fields, and these fields also effect us… If this works then we will have proved all of our thoughts, feelings, prayers, intentions are more real than we ever believed before.” Watch this short video to hear it from an expert.
Through the ongoing study they have mapped that when there is a global emotional response to something, the earth harmonizes with the human emotion. It has been tracked through a system of magnetic field detectors. The HeartMath institute even has a calendar of events where you can tune into these collective moments . And when we are in a negative state? Responding to crisis? The earth sends out an energetic stress wave. It’s all connected.
As the wave peaks right before the break, how do you feel?
As the summer builds from the primordial wave of cancer season, to the blood pressure wave of the heart this Leo season, check your pulse. How do you regulate your energy… how do you become the visionary of your own life, how do you ride the waves?
Aquarius. The infinite awareness. The expansive sky, the space shapes around the heart, mind and emotions. regulated, we enter a coherent state, becoming capable of accepting the necessary change that is required to evolve. Access to intuition and clarity opens… to change, to adapt, reformulate, progress, become outlaws, release what is stagnant, reorient, rebel, sparkle just a little more… a shimmer of what it feels like to go between the known and the unknown… the realm of potential. A room of one’s own. A dimension to reality unfolding more creatively than ever known before… it is within you, and around you, always.
“...But beauty must be broken daily to remain beautiful...”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves
