During our road trips as a kid, my father would always play the “Age of Aquarius – The 5th Dimension,” since then, I’ve been intrigued by this so-called Age of Aquarius – when and what it would look like. With its uplifting plays on Aquarius’s utopian and visionary aspects, the catchy song is filled with “harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust abounding” with “the mind’s true liberation.”
But since this song hit the Billboards, we’ve been privy to what vision without warmth and heart can lead to ever more tech systems that imprison our imaginations while seducing us with the allure of ease. In general, we’ve been focused on the fantastic images that this last Air Sign can reveal, such as community, the power of groups, and the magical gifts of technology and science that promise to solve all our issues. This very dream has, in many ways, taken root in Silicon Valley and its offshoots worldwide: God may be dead, according to Nietzsche, but the Tech Gods are here to save the day. It’s not an inflated vision, incomplete.
We are still determining when we move from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius. There won’t be one date on the calendar – bam! There we have it. It will look more like an estuary, where the freshwater river will meet the ocean, resulting in brackish water that is somewhat salty but not as salty as the ocean. It is an ambiguous cultural time that will take many years to move from Pisces to Aquarius. Still, we’ve been in those brackish waters for at least a decade. The ever-connectedness of our world through social media already illuminates the light and shadow of Aquarius: my individuality (even my eccentricity) is written mainly in social platforms where the algorithm gods place us in echo chambers of affiliate individual and group identities. Meanwhile, instead of simplifying our identities, these look more like fractals, ever multiplying and gaining complexity.
On Shadow
Astrological signs come in pairs of opposite complementary signs. Imagine a see-saw, where on one end is Aquarius and on the other Leo. If they move too quickly, the see-saw will bounce hard between lifting Aquarius and lowering Leo. If you’ve played on a see-saw as a kid, you know that the challenge was to balance so that you and your friend could hover mid-air without touching the ground or being bounced to the top.
When I think about any of the signs, I think about its opposite complementary sign as a realm that can gift hidden tools and wisdom to help them better explore the sign they’re focusing on. I’ll use myself as an example: I’m a Sun Gemini, accompanied by Mercury, Venus, and Saturn, in the sign of the Twins. That’s a whole lot of Gemini to harness. I can easily get lost in the shiny labyrinth of information and ideas, challenged to get to the story or point – as it’s happening now. So I look to my Sun’s opposite sign, Sagittarius, for inspiration and focus. Sagittarius isn’t about the data details but asks what the story is.
What’s the motivation?
What is its quest and bigger picture?
In my mind’s see-saw between Gemini and Sagittarius, I leave the scattered information gathering of the Twins and hop to the other side of this metaphorical see-saw to see what my inner Centaur can teach me about the story that is forming from my information collecting. It’s not about becoming a Sagittarius in this case, but using its gifts so that I can be a better Gemini. In this case, Sagittarius is the shadow side of my Gemini Sun, gifting me a focus on seeing the bigger picture and finding the story among the threads of information.
The word shadow needs a new P.R. campaign. Shadow isn’t just all the ‘negative’ or ‘bad’ stuff that our Christian culture, in its duality, tends to make things be: it’s either good or bad. No. Shadow is also where we relegate our inner gold, soul’s wisdom, deepest desires, and talents. I like to think of our shadow as a spacious basement in our houses, filled to the brim. Sure, there’s a lot of junk in there, things left from generations ago and needing to be discarded. But it’s also a place where we may find a symbolic object that you may think is junk but could be taken to the Antiques Roadshow, only to find out that it’s worth thousands. One just never knows with shadow: monsters may be princes and princesses under an enchantment and that, once acknowledged, are finally free to be their beautiful selves.
The Leo Shadow
Leo sits on the other side of the Aquarius see-saw. In the body, Leo corresponds to the heart, back in general, and the spinal cord. At the same time, Aquarius is linked to the circulatory system, the body’s electrical system (due to its Uranian connection), and the ankles and the Achilles tendon. It’s interesting to see how the heart and circulatory system work in partnership, reflecting the connection of Leo and Aquarius. Seeing this connection, the shadow of Aquarius’ ability to circulate ideas/ideals through our social and community systems, as if spreading the ideas that have been pumped by a heart at the emotional center of our culture.
The ideas, theories, visions, and ideals that Aquarius is so famous for ruling have come from the emotional heart at the center of our culture. What might that be? Regarding Leo, I think about the question: What is the heart of the issue? What is a particular idea’s emotional heart, need, and desire?
Let’s take a small slice of Aquarius’ realm (I invite you to think of astrological signs as realms of experience, not only as a personality Rorschach test*): technology.
What is at the heart of its development?
What is the emotional need for creating these?
Much good has come from technology, but of late, with A.I. being out of the genie’s bottle, at least for us common folk down here away from the ivory towers of these tech corporations, there’s been a mix of optimistic and fearful regards towards this genie.
What might it mean to our future?
Is it a friend or foe?
What is at the heart of this drive towards creating it in the first place?
Take another sliver: social media. Here’s a place where we see both the light and dark aspects of the Leo-Aquarius see-saw: one’s performance of an ideal of who they want to be and how they want to be seen, garners acceptance into specific groups (either literal or of ideas/ideals) rigidifying their persona, and leading to an ever farther disconnection to their true sense of self. For those prone to an external locus of self and identity, it’s easy to get lost in how one is accepted and received by the outer group, while the inner sense of self may become malnourished.
However, the other aspect of Leo as a shadow to Aquarius is its more creatively affirming aspects of warmth, generosity, personal touch, and heart. One is seen and valued for uniqueness, not just because they adjusted to the group’s ideals and rules. One is a person, respected in their personhood, and not just a digital or anonymous number.
Remember that one characteristic of Aquarius is detachment. Depending on context, this is a gift but can also ostracize and isolate.
Why this matters
This is a simplistic start to a bigger idea ricocheting my mind for now. As I look around for what is being shown in our stories, media, and news, but also noticing what my clients are bringing to our coaching sessions, I wonder with some concern for the loss of heart and drive of the ‘machine’ as author Paul Kingsnorth writes about as “the nexus of power, wealth, ideology and technology that has emerged.” His writings illustrate the darker aspects of an Aquarian age sans the Leonine heart, provoking reflection and questioning. Today’s writing is about setting a starting point for further exploration of the see-saw between the experiential realms of Aquarius and Leo.
But how does this affect us individually?
Where do Aquarius and Leo live in us, not to mention in our birth charts? How does each one of us balance between detachment and even the feelings of being an outcast or too different for our milieu of the challenging aspects of the Aquarius realm, with the need to feel optimistic, warmth, playfully confident, and sovereign in our lives that the realm of Leo gifts us?
Because of the less attractive aspects of Aquarius’ dark aspects and an unacknowledged shadow, Leo comes down to this:
“I’ll punch you in the face with my individuality.” Says Aquarius rigidly in its ideology of identity without Leo’s warm generosity.
P.S. – *This is my first attempt at this exposition on Aquarius/Leo. It’s not about describing people’s Sun Sign but exploring the signs as realms of experience. At first, there are the less creatively affirming aspects of Aquarius. Future articles will tackle the more creatively affirming aspects of the Waterbearer.
Photo Credits:
Main image: Susan Wilkinson- via Unsplash
Subsequent images: Pawel Czerwinski, Susan Wilkinson, and Adrien Converse via Unsplash
