Dawn Bodrogi  ✦  The Inner Wheel  ✦  Mundane Astrology

A friend of mine recently saw the revival of the musical Hair! For days, she couldn’t stop singing that song. You know the one — about the Age of Aquarius, the Moon in the 7th house, Jupiter aligning with Mars. According to the song, this interesting little alignment is supposed to bring harmony, understanding, sympathy, the whole lot.

I’ve always found it amusing that this song, which promoted the whole idea of the Age of Aquarius and astrology itself to the public, has got all of the astrology completely backwards. Every astrologer knows that Jupiter/Mars tends to escalate war. Jupiter inflates Mars aggression and gives it purpose — which often sends people with Jupiter Mars contacts to the military. As for the Moon in the seventh house at the same time as a Jupiter Mars contact, that would encourage us to use the newly aligned aggression on others. A line-up like that is a perfect chart for the beginning of a war, or at least a good punch-up.

Yet this little song has lulled us for decades into an ideal of Aquarian utopia. The Age of Aquarius will solve all of our problems. This, to me, is very much illustrative of mindless Aquarius Group Think: if a lot of people are singing it, it must be true.

The Flower Children Were Piscean

The song came out of the flower child era, which is forever linked with the Age of Aquarius. But there is very little within that scene that was Aquarian, save for its emphasis on egalitarianism. The lack of boundaries, the ideal of universal peace, the drugs, the woo-woo mysticism, the music — all firmly within the Piscean realm. If ever a movement was a child of Neptune, that was it.

In my opinion, we are still very much enmeshed in a Piscean world view, and still coping with the shadow side of Virgo. But at the same time, we are streaming ahead into the Aquarian era via the proliferation of technology and the freedom of information. Aquarius is, after all, an air sign.

Leo and Aquarius: The Axis of Power

In basic astrology, Leo is the sign of the individual — of the I as King. Aquarius is the sign of the public, of society in general, of the whole as opposed to the I. It governs group expression as opposed to individual expression. Does group expression automatically translate into humanity and compassion? Not necessarily. Aquarius can be about the domination of the group at the sacrifice of the individual. It’s about the ideal of egalitarianism — not the messy business of putting it into place.

Ask Robespierre, who wrote feverishly about equality and purity while sitting behind shuttered windows that shielded him from the stench of the blood in the streets. Like many revolutionaries before and after him, his ideal of an egalitarian society conveniently left out rights for anyone who disagreed with him. The French Revolution coincided with the discovery of Uranus, the ruler of Aquarius.

There is a great deal of difference between the ideals of Neptune — based on an empathetic world without boundaries — and the ideals of Uranus, which are based on an ideal of world order. Aquarius is an idealist, not necessarily a compassionate one.

The Air Signs and the Path of Mind

Aquarius is a fixed sign — and here we come to a problem. How do we attach fixity to air? Gemini, ruled by Mercury, is pure Mind as information gatherer. Libra, cardinal air, is Mind as connection. In theory, we move from Relating Mind to some kind of universal agreement expressed in Group Mind. We gather information, we talk, we compromise, and we come to a conclusion. This is the natural path of the air signs.

However, humans being what they are, we come to flawed conclusions. One for All is fine — but All must also be for One. The great flaw of Group Mind is that, when the process is thwarted, it sacrifices the individual for the whole. The notion of the scapegoat belongs to Aquarius.

Uranus represents the higher plane of Mercury — the Higher Mind of genius, of intuitive wisdom, of information that does not have to be processed but comes directly from above. But when is our flash of wisdom a product of Higher Mind, and when is it just a product of our overblown need to be special?

Freedom Without Responsibility

The dangers inherent in the incoming Aquarian Age are many — but none so potent as the notion of freedom without responsibility. It’s the absolute absence of Leo, whose king is responsible for the fortunes of his kingdom. Aquarian excesses are corrected by Saturn. As the fallout from financial deregulation has proved, freedom carries a price. Saturn’s rule over the material world puts a natural check on Uranian impulses. We need the check of Saturn to rein us in. Let’s not forget to test our Uranian knowledge to see whether it works in the world.

The French Revolution ended not with a new Utopia, but with an Emperor. It took a dictator — and a Leo, at that — to correct the excesses of Robespierre’s Uranian vision. The freedoms inherent in our society provide us with great joy, but they need to be checked — not by institutions, but first by ourselves.

The next time you’re tempted to beep your horn, or watch that lousy television show that comes on after the good one, think twice. You may change the world.

Go deeper

The Foundations Book by Dawn Bodrogi

For a deeper understanding of how Saturn, Uranus, and the Leo/Aquarius axis work in the chart and in the world — Dawn’s Foundations Book is the essential companion.

→ The Foundations Book — all ebook retailers

The next time you’re tempted to beep your horn — think twice. You may change the world.