18 Jan The Mark of Exile ~ Aquarius Season – January 19th – February 18th, 2022

“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

There is society where none intrudes,

By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:

I love not Man the less, but Nature more…”

– Lord Byron

The season of Capricorn has finally come to an end, leaving you to ponder its final lesson: that so much of life’s meaning is discovered in the struggle to remain awake to the sublime. In Capricorn, you were asked to keep your eyes open to life’s wonder and majesty, even during the long-suffering dark night of the soul. The strength you showed during Capricorn season will now be rewarded by tremendous inspiration as the Sun transits into Aquarius, transmuting the density of matter into the lightness of air.

When the Sun enters into Aquarius, the steep cliffs and mountain peaks flatten out to reveal an expanse of wilderness stretching on into infinity. Your longing for another world, a better world, stirs a vision of what’s truly possible for the future. And in this vision, humanity is healthy, spirited and united by love.

So far out in the zodiac, the atmosphere of Aquarius is thin and cold, its air is fluttering and fragile as a butterfly. Yet it goes where it pleases and it pleases wherever it goes. That’s the beauty of it.

Aquarius observes the dissolution between worlds, the place where dimensions bleed into one another like colors of the rainbow. Thus, the consciousness of Aquarius travels freely between the dimensions of spirit and matter. It is from this  inter-dimensional edge of reality where ancient wisdom is remembered and the future is dreamed into being.

Modern astrology attributes Uranus to be the ruler of Aquarius. But in traditional astrology, Saturn is the ruler of Aquarius, demonstrating that the mind evolves tremendously by adopting an objective or outsider’s perspective. This is why Aquarius traverses all things outside the status quo: the paranormal, paradoxical, and liminal.

As the 11th sign of the zodiac, Aquarius is the region where the Sun is approaching its final destination. As an air sign, Aquarius demonstrates the power of a focused mind to breakthrough the world of matter, to see beyond the matrix of space and time with the power of focused imagination. In Aquarius, Saturn reveals that the mind has the power to break through the finite limitations. Your soul is free and your spirit is boundless.  

And with the Sun’s transition into Aquarius, you will have an opportunity to break the conventions of mind and matter, seeing beyond obvious circumstances into a vision of a brighter future.

In Aquarius, the importance of the external world fades, giving rise to the internal world that can imagine what lies beyond, traveling far from the noise of the world in search of the sublime. 

And with Saturn transiting Aquarius until the spring of 2023, this season is heavy with the burden of power and responsibility. The increasing pressures of tyranny and oppression in the world are causing tremendous suffering, but many blackened spirits are hardening into diamonds right now. A great renaissance is on the horizon.

The spirit of Aquarius seeks to know infinity, to go beyond limitations. Thus, the mood becomes open to new possibilities and potentials. The mind becomes more experimental, appreciating novelty and originality more than ever.

But these leading edges of thought are forever darkened by a grim feeling of isolation. The Aquarian spirit knows that the farther you wander into the wilderness of your imagination, the more alone you feel.

The spirit of Aquarius bears the mark of the exile, the outsider looking upon the world from a distance. But there is rapture on the lonely shore.

The spirit of Aquarius stands alone, attuned to the collective consciousness- the group mind of humanity itself. On the frayed edges of reality, the Aquarian imagination sees ecologically and knows all time as eternally present.

To be alone can seem like a great punishment. But it can be a great luxury to those who seek to see beyond consensus reality. Aquarius has the unique ability to be alone while remaining deeply in love with humanity as a whole. 

At the dawn of 2022, the feeling of loneliness is palpable, hyper-inflated by the hyper-reality of fear that mandates people to treat their fellow humans like germs. Your soul aches from the pain because it is not normal and it never will be.

Watch my soul speak, you let the meds talk…

It must be accepted that the myth of progress has been a failure. Human happiness is not on an upward trajectory alongside technological advancement. Instead, a decidedly anti-human world has emerged, where everyone feels exiled. Nobody with any spirit really believes that this is the best humanity can do. 

Despair and alienation are now commonplace symptoms of being alive. And all this disfunction is built upon more slavery than human history has ever known. Even the privileged people in this system, have their humanity threatened by ceaseless artificiality, their spirit and imagination clouded by the pollution of light, noise and chemicals. 

Caged in a heartless algorithm, any human being can descend into madness: a paranoid android wound up by so many conditioned desires and facsimiles of feeling. Please, could you stop that noise?

Compliance with this system destroys creativity, stifles joy and destroys enthusiasm. Sometimes, violent sociopathy emerges. But more often, people die slowly from soul loss for which there is no medical treatment. 

But the spirit of Aquarius summons wild rebellion against all forms of tyranny and oppression. And offers the Saturnian wisdom needed to focus the collective imagination and build a civilization worth living and breathing in. Technocratic slavery is a dull vision for the future of humanity. There are many brighter worlds that can be born.

The wisdom of Aquarius demonstrates that all life is sacred and all souls are born free. Any functioning human society should naturally reflect these simple truths. 

The love for humanity inborn in the spirit of Aquarius will change the shape of history for the better in the decades ahead. The Great Conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn in Aquarius sparked an evolutionary current that will change the course of history over the next 200 years. Astrologically speaking, December 21st, 2020 was the end of the Industrial Era and the beginning of the Information Age

The mutation of the earth element into air signified the death of dogmatic materialism and the rebirth of a radical spiritual sovereignty. What is unfolding is an age that will be in closer communion with the realm of spirit as the true  source of all intelligence and information. 

In alchemy, operations of air are those of separating and sifting the mind from beliefs and ideas that ensnare it in repetitive patterns and rigid dogma. Thus, in the centuries to come, the orthodoxy of materialism will be sifted and will lose much of its power, just as Rome fell to the heretical religion of Christianity.

This is thematic of the first degrees of Aquarius, a place in the zodiac that Austin Coppock refers to as one of “exclusion and intentional exile.” He goes on to explain:

“For some, the exile from the standard reality system may be forced, but for others it is an intentional exodus, even a liberation. While the material circumstances that come with such choices are rarely luxurious, the spiritual benefits can be great. To gain a wider and deeper understanding of reality one must inevitably break with the orthodoxies of their time and accept the mark of the heretic.”

Technocrats of the 21st Century can only imagine the future through the expansion of technology, aka more surveillance and enslavement. But that is the imperial orthodoxy that will be broken by the heretical spirit of Aquarius which seeks true freedom of spirit, born from communion with the divine. 

Despite the unique challenges of this age, tyranny is nothing new and the human spirit always breaks free, evolves, and responds with a better idea. The soul of Aquarius guides you with the reminder that there is nothing on earth that can imprison a free mind and a free spirit. You are the master of your own mind.

The divine spark burns brightly beneath every darkened cloud. And the spirit of Aquarius speaks to your soul that was born free, as a divine child of heaven and earth: a spark of infinite intelligence, a flowering of the Creative Principle in the universe. We are the music makers. We are the dreamers of dreams. The pulse of that truth never fades and continues to guide the evolution of humanity.

Aquarius season is enriched by this fresh air, aerated and unbound, your imagination will begin to flower with new visions and inspirations. The mark of the exile is a free spirit.

Lord Byron, the Aquarian 

 

To connect with the unbound freedom of the Aquarian spirit, consider the life and work of the great Romantic poet, Lord Byron, who had his natal Sun, Venus, Saturn, and Pluto in Aquarius. As such, his life was marked by the pain of exile, loneliness and alienation.

He was an only child, raised in obscurity without a father. His foot was deformed, which attracted cruel bullying and solidified his status as an outcast. When he was ten years old, he inherited the title of Lord Byron, but never had enough money to embody the role of aristocrat. He inherited a giant home that he couldn’t afford to heat. Such is the journey of an Aquarius.

Blessed and cursed with great vision from the outskirts of consensus reality, Aquarians struggle to define their sense of self. But they have an uncanny ability to tune into the thoughts and feelings of the collective. Thus they can appeal to a mass audience, speaking to the evolutionary undercurrents of their time. The scholar Sir Walter Scott writes that Lord Byron was: 

“the first poet who, either in his own person, or covered by no very thick disguise…directly appeared before the public, an actual living man expressing his own sentiments, thoughts, hopes, and fears.” 

The story goes that Byron woke up one morning in 1812 and found that he was famous. He was 24 years old and had just published Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, a philosophical travelogue filled with yearning, hints of sex and heroics.

His Aquarian nature enabled him to stir the hearts of the public. Thus, his celebrity was an intoxicating mixture of loneliness and mystery. His persona juxtaposed the glamor of his youth and poetic brilliance with his suffering and solitude. Byron was beautiful and damned. The lonely space he occupied as an artist is expressed in Byron’s fourth canto of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, which begins with:

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

There is society, where none intrudes,

By the deep sea, and music in its roar

Freed from convention, tradition and routine, the pleasure in the pathless woods is an immersion into the wild web of nature, a tangle of fear and excitement. In the very next line, Byron imbues the image of a lonely shore with a feeling of intense joy.

I love not Man the less, but Nature more…

This poem celebrates solitude as an opportunity for revelation. In the vast emptiness, a deep peace emerges and the exquisite music of nature can finally be heard. And the best music evokes feelings where you’re not quite sure what the emotion is.

Byron’s celebrity may have initially offered him the acceptance in the world he had always craved. But the nature of celebrity includes the contradiction of love and hate, familiarity and distance. Only four years after he had published Childe Harold, he was exiled from England, forced to flee from mounting debts and rumors of incest and homosexuality. Though his personal fortunes suffered, his celebrity was only strengthened by the scandal. 

I loved — but those I loved are gone;

Had friends — my early friends are fled:

How cheerless feels the heart alone

When all its former hopes are dead!

What’s more amazing about Lord Byron is the true courage of his convictions. At 36, he went to war for Greece and died as a hero fighting for the country’s independence from Turkey. His body was brought back to England for a public funeral procession where the poet John Clare observed:

 “The common people felt his merits and his power and the common people of a country are the best feelings of a prophesy of futurity.”

The mark of the exile offers powers of observation that have a deep focus lens. This is why Lord Byron was able to articulate so well what it felt like to be alone in a world that was being rapidly industrialized and imperialized. The spirit of Aquarius defies conventionality, creating a unique vision of beauty and wonder from places on the outskirts, where space and solitude are plentiful.

Few are my years, and yet I feel

The world was ne’er designed for me:

Ah! why do dark’ning shades conceal

The hour when man must cease to be?

On the lonely shore, Aquarius offers the potential for paradigm shifts and ingenious insights. Those ready to free their mind and heart will find deep pleasure in that shiver of loneliness. For as you can feel from Lord Byron’s poetry, it is a tremendous luxury to be alone and yet at one with all of nature wild and free. 

Forecast for Aquarius Season

January 19th ~ Aquarius Season begins

Sun enters Aquarius, drawing the world soul into the wilderness of imagination.

January 23- Sun Conjunct Mercury Rx

On the morning of January 23rd, Mercury will make his Inferior Conjunction with the Sun at 3 degrees Aquarius. This transit is otherwise known as Cazimi, translating to “In the Heart of the Sun.” The image given here is one of a messenger entering the throne room of a great monarch.

With Mercury’s role as the messenger of the gods and Aquarius being the Water Bearer of the gods—the bridge between the human and the divine—the potential of this Inferior Conjunction is pregnant with profound possibility.

The Cazimi is a great seed moment, an opportunity for you to cry out to all that is holy and have your prayers heard. In this cosmic temple beyond the limits of space and time, you may commune with the divine and bear witness to a greater plan for your destiny.

The Cazimi at 3 degrees Aquarius is so close to the point where the Great Conjunction took place that it will drive you to revisit and revise some of the themes that you faced at that time. 

Mercury Retrogrades present the opportunity, in the words of Timothy Leary, to pick up the needle and move to another groove.

January 24th ~ Mars enters Capricorn

When Mars transits through Capricorn the planet of war is tempered by wisdom. From high atop the mountain peaks of Capricorn, Mars’ hunger for power becomes blessed by enduring patience and strategy. Nowhere else in the zodiac does Mars understand the rules of the game better. And nowhere else is there more potential to attain victory.

In Capricorn, Mars becomes ready to sacrifice rash emotions and immature desires for a wider vision and a greater purpose.

When Mars is in Capricorn, there is no flag waving, no unnecessary demonstrations of brute force. There is no time for elaborate punishments or bloodlust. The acquisition of power becomes a chess game, demanding a clear mind that sees three moves ahead. 

And the reward for playing is to ascend to new heights.

January 28 ~ Venus Direct in Capricorn

A sigh of relief can be taken when Venus stations direct after being retrograde since December 19. You’ve become more worldly in these last 40 days haven’t you? No doubt you feel somewhat ravaged by the pain, loss, and hard truths you’ve endured since the Venus retrograde began. 

But now, a tremendous period of blessings and rejuvenation can begin as the goddess of beauty and love returns to her magnetic place at the center of your heart. What the locusts have eaten will be restored. And the wisdom you have gained about the world is invaluable. You will not make those same mistakes again. After everything you’ve learned, you will magnetize a renewed sense of worthiness and you will naturally command more respect.

February 1 ~ New Moon in Aquarius + Chinese New Year

The New Moon in Aquarius signals the start of the Chinese new year. And it stirs with a volatile energy from a conjunction to Saturn and a square to Uranus. The mood is heavy and the square agitates a war between authority and rebellion, orthodoxy and heresy. 

Suffice it to say, this New Moon is not soft or nurturing. It will increase the sense of alienation and oppression, summoning a spirit of rebellion from many sides. This is the time to sober up from utopian delusions in order to avoid the dystopianism that surely follows. 

In Chinese astrology, the lunar new year is symbolized by the Water Tiger. The element of water is the strongest element, for it flows with all, becomes all, and breaks through all obstructions. And tigers are full of ferocious courage. Even house cats can never be fully tamed, so the spirit of the tiger will awakening the wild spirit of humanity.

February 3- Mercury goes direct

By the time Mercury stations direct in Capricorn, you will have moved to another groove that feels a lot more groovy to you. Whatever mental tape loops you were stuck on in January are now broken. You are free to see things differently now. In a very real sense, you’ve been given a deeper connection with nature as your greatest teacher. Nature is a language, can’t you read? 

Mercury’s retrograde through Aquarius and Capricorn will have made ancient Hermetic truths self-evident. All is mind. The inner world and the outer world are reflective of one another. Changes to one’s inner landscape become reflected in the outer landscape. All things in heaven correspond to all things on earth. And you are a universe in miniature. 

February 4- Sun conjunct Saturn in Aquarius

This conjunction between the Sun and Saturn at 15 degrees summons an intense moment of reflection. Something serious will be drawn to your attention that needs to be carefully studied, meditated upon and contemplated. Good judgement is being born from this moment, but only from those that demonstrate the utmost patience. The truth about a matter of life and death will be revealed to those willing to wait with supernatural poise. Listen carefully. 

February 16- Full Moon in Leo

This Full Moon is a radiant sunbeam that breaks through the wintry gloom. When the dim light of the Sun in Aquarius finds its reflection in the Full Moon in Leo, a seed of the Sun’s vitality radiates forth. The Moon in Leo is asks you to be like the Sun, blessing everything it touches with warmth.

It is so easy to love and bless your family and friends. But this Moon in Leo will ask the truly strong-hearted to bless even those that curse you. This is the radiant love that can heal the world. This Full Moon in Leo will inspire you to see that compassion is a story of suffering that has been fully healed by love. Whatever you can do to embrace your healing through love is the highest celebration of this moment.

February 17- Jupiter Sextile Uranus

Jupiter in Pisces sextile to Uranus in Taurus offers beautiful music to the cosmos, a harmonious vibration that won’t happen again for another 4 years. The influence of Jupiter with Uranus will summon a rare beauty of thought, one that comes from a divine origin to open your eyes, liberate you from bad habits, and inspire you to live more fruitfully and prosperously. This day opens a portal for tremendous spiritual and philosophical growth, sowing seeds of light that will flourish for many years to come. 

February 19th – Sun enters Pisces

After a long and tiring journey through the zodiac, the Sun’s transit through Pisces signals the end of a cycle. As the last sign in the zodiac, Pisces is the most spiritualized, the least embodied in the material world. As the conclusion of the Sun’s annual journey, everything takes on an elegiac quality as the Sun dissolves its light into the realm of dreams.