Seasonal Star Cycles

Aquarius the Water Bearer #2
Archangels and Folk Souls are the realms of Aquarius.
January 2008

Elizabeth Ault MA, CPCC
 
January 19th- February 19th

We progress now, from Capricorns’ view from the mountain top to the Aquarians’ perspective. The Aquarian looks up at the spacious realms above and asks the question: "Who resides in the higher realms?" The world of Archangels, Folk Souls and cultural anthropology are the realms of Aquarius. Typically Aquarius is pictured as the Water Bearer carrying a yoke with two buckets of water. He quenches our physical and metaphysical thirst, and nourishes life. The Greeks demoted him to a water boy for the Gods. Previously the ancient Chaldeans pictured a Celestial Being pouring out gushing waters from a large urn for this constellation. In these waters is a bright fixed star called Fomalhault, its other names are: mouth of the Southern Fish and St. John the Baptists’ star. The implication is that this star and this constellation, also known as the Angel Man, are harbingers of mans’ evolution through higher initiations to come. According to Rudolf Steiner, "What once could be found only in the heavens, must now be sought in human realm."1...." thus it is of supreme importance to know thyself, seriously..."2

Legends reveal that the Folk Soul or spirit of a region, helps generate the face of the geography, the climate, even the specific sounds to the native tongue, and the physical and cultural distinctions of one tribe or nationality to another. The Folk Soul colors the types of legends and spirituality a clan of humans will be attracted to. These Folk Souls can also be seen as Archangels. They are to a region what a Guardian Angel is to a human. Their natures are as different as the organs in our body.

The inventive Aquarian may have futuristic visions. He’s drawn to observing natural phenomena, Feng Shui, and the arrangement of objects in space. They are innovative, rebellious and can be driven for intellectual stimulation. Their task is to allow silence to become discretion and meditative power; to cultivate the capacity for discernment and to pursue knowledge of the essential, intuition and inner knowing. Herbert Witzenman contemplated the virtues of Aquarius. He said, "Silence is the concentration of force."3

The challenge is to allow inner access and alignment with our higher self, meditative prayer and inner guidance versus allowing mental and verbal clatter to dominate. Will one entertain mental noise or meditation? The lower aspects of Aquarius may appear as lust for knowledge and indiscriminate involvement. They can be the "know it alls" of the Zodiac. The urge of the Water Bearer is to nourish and warm the soul enough to discover their higher nature. When they fail to achieve this, they may end up providing cold, dry pontification. The Aquarian can be a good team player. They may enjoy humbly working behind the scenes for the upliftment of a group or mankind.

When proclaiming the dawn of the Age of Aquarius, the Sun is still not up yet in the sidereal zodiac. The urges of the age are already percolating through mankind though. The Aquarian Age actually begins astronomically, at the Spring Equinox, March 21st, in the year AD 2375... The Sun will stand in front of the edge of the constellation of Aquarius, from the vantage point of Earth at this time. This can be seen with our eyes. It will last 2,160 years, as all known epochs do and will complete in the year AD 4535. Then we will regress into the age of Capricorn, because the astrological ages progress backwards. All if the Mayan prophecies regarding the implosion of our concept of time in AD 2012 prove to be false.

The Age of Aquarius is all about brotherly and sisterly love; developing the capacity to merge with our inner self, tuning one’s intuition and working together for the good of all. During this epoch of 2,160 years, mankind will attempt to find greater harmony, connection and conversation with planetary, stellar, celestial beings, and the Earth herself. Humanity will also develop greater harmony with fellow humans and most importantly with themselves. The Hermetic axiom, "As above so below" becomes more enlivened as people become more acquainted with thinking through the heart. These impulses are currently developing within humankind. "The complete cycle of all twelve zodiacal epochs is known as the Great Solar Sidereal Year, which takes 25,920 years."4

Unpredictable Uranus reigns over the constellation Aquarius. Uranus is like the lightning bolt, that suddenly and vividly illuminates a black sky, giving a momentary enlightened vision, that may change perspectives forever... Sudden intense awakening with insights that cut through our normal perception of reality may appear, all without a word.Awareness takes evolutionary leaps as we approach the coming Aquarian Age.

This month while the cold winds howl, we can allow those thoughts, dreams and intentions that came to us in the depths of stillness to steep. This is a time to release everything to spirit for a kind of blessing and let it return or not. Just like the seeds buried in the Earth, under snow, the chosen ones begin to tingle and awaken in preparation for sprouting this year, while others lay dormant for a future time or to become compost. Forty days after Christmas (Feb. 2) Mother Mary took Jesus to the temple to receive a blessing, be given his name and be baptized. Now is the natural time to name that which has been gestating inside us these sleepy months, to be born in the future. Some ideas will end up in the compost pile while others may return to us somehow blessed on their quest for manifestation. To be in tune with the ebb and flow of the supportive laws of nature helps create lives that grow in harmony.

1. Rudolf Steiner excerpt from “Earthly Knowledge and Heavenly Wisdom” lecture 5 February 10, 1923
2. Rudolph Steiner’s Man-Hieroglyph of the Universe pg 45
3.Herbert Witzenmann Anthroposophical Society article on Virtues 1963
4. by Robert Powell from a Whitsun lecture, Stuttgart, June 6, 1984. Found on the web @ http://www.vermontel.net/~vtsophia/shore2.htm Dates for the Age of Aquarius were confirmed here.