Happy Birthday Aquarius
John Jocelyn 'Meditations on the Signs of the Zodiac' A Rudolf Steiner publication.
Aquarius – The Waterman
Aquarius, the Waterman, is symbolized by The Man who bears a water pitcher out of which there flows the water that revitalizes the Earth, dried up for want of the spirit of truth and the wisdom of love. This water of life rejuvenates humanity, parched for lack of truth and love. As an object of meditation, this symbol is immensely rich, especially in this day of dearth of the Spirit, on the threshold of the Aquarian Age. In this sign of the Son of Man, the matured man comes more than man – a man Christed with the help of the Angel in man, a man become all things to all men, a ‘Perfect Man.’ Awakened responses to this Angel-Man sign deals with the individual, yet in the sense of the Christ-universal; hence it fosters friendship and brotherhood. The Waterman is bound up with the human and the humane; it embraces all humanity, and its characteristic features is its love of human beings, a feeling of cosmic kinship with all mankind.
As a man’s physical form is the mould that some time must receive the higher birth, the spiritual birth of the Christ, so Aquarius is the matrix sign that receives, synthesizes, and balances the forces of all the other zodiacal signs. The centering powers of the Zodiac are the four fixed signs, each fixed sign having two companion-signs, as it were, one on each side. Taurus, the Bull, is the fixed, centering force between Aries and Gemini; Leo, the Lion, between Cancer and Virgo; Scorpio, the Eagle, between Libra and Sagittarius; Aquarius, the Man, between Capricorn and Pisces.
The eagle, representative of the bird creation, bears in its whole body specialized forces that correlate with the human head. The lion is largely a rhythmic system. The bull is predominately a digestive organism. Man combines and harmonises these three elements of the eagle, the lion, and the bull- head system, rhythmic system, and metabolic-limb system- in a balanced manner. Thus, Aquarius, the Man, is the sign of signs, the synthesis of all of the twelve signs of the Zodiac. It is understandable, therefore, that Aquarius should rule the science of the stars.
In Aquarius, the highly evolved individual matures into a spiritualised being, the ‘perfect man’ of Christ, described by St. Paul in Ephesians 4:13 ‘Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ’. This describes the balanced Aquarian, one who has come of soul age by making independent, though coordinated, the soul forces of thinking, feeling and willing, correlated, respectively, with the head and nerve-system, the rhythmic system, and the metabolic-limb system.
Today, most Aquarians are as yet far from being perfect men. No man takes the lofty love and light of Aquarius, nor becomes a member of that brotherhood of initiates fitted to take the love of heaven and earth and to transmute the hate received from the reactionary and retarded people, nor becomes worthy to serve as a leader and spokesman for mankind, unless he has met, and is moved by, his higher self, the Christ-Angel within, called by St. Paul ‘the Lord from heaven’. Highly evolved souls, responding to the mighty mood of Aquarius, become conscious of the Spirit in the Earth, the Cosmic Christ, as well as conscious of the guiding eternal being, the spiritual self within. These awakened ones become conscious cooperators with the Christ in the evolution of the cosmos. The Aquarian Age, the age of altruism and brotherhood- when the Sun by precession of the equinox will be in Aquarius for 2160 years- will not properly prevail until the Sixth Post-Atlantean Civilization, which will follow our present one*. For brotherhood to blossom then, preparation must be made now. The preparers are those awakened ones who respond to the spiritual call of this Angel-Man sign, as did John the Baptist, the preparer for the Christ.
*In approximately five hundred years, the vernal equinox will be in Aquarius. Our present Fifth Post-Atlantean Civilization will continue into the fourth millennium. Meanwhile, two other factors should be considered, which have an influence similar to that of Aquarius. One is the transition at the turn of the last century, from the Dark or Iron Age, which had lasted for five thousand years, to the Age of Light. The other factor is the advent of the New Age of MICHAEL, which began in 1879 and will last for about three to four hundred years.
Seven Archangels – the Six Planetary Intelligences and the Sun Intelligence, Michael – in regularity of rotation serve as regents, directing and guiding the evolution of mankind by determining the fundamental character of successive minor ages. Gabriel, the Moon Intelligence, introduced during his regency, which came to an end in 1879, the impulses that entered strongly into the physical bodily nature of man and centered man’s attention on physical heredity, natural science, and nationalism. In contrast to the forces of Gabriel, those of Michael, the Sun Intelligence, work intensely into the spiritual being of man, then into his soul nature, and finally into his bodily nature.
The Michael impulse manifests as spiritual intelligence, cosmopolitanism, and cosmic Christianity. It is Michael’s task to conquer the Ahrimanic Dragon of materialism and to regain control over Cosmic Intelligence, which in earlier ages was instinctive, then became earthly and individualized in man. With the aid of Michael – now the Countenance of the Christ, as formerly he was the Countenance of Jehovah – man will be able to spiritualise his intelligence and the conditions of life that immerse him so deeply in matter. Present impulses, bearing an all-embracing human character that is cosmopolitan and spiritual, arise from the Michael forces as well as from those of the Waterman. Although the flowering of the Aquarius Age is still a long way off, a few forerunners are already sowing the seeds that must be planted now if their fruit – brotherhood – is to ripen in the future. B.J.
In John the Baptist there lived an Angel who had to go before to announce the approach of the Christ-Ego that would live in Jesus of Nazareth as the Lord from heaven. John the Baptist who baptized Jesus in the Jordan, was able to be the bearer of this Angel because he had taken his initiation in the sign Aquarius, the sign of the Angel. In virtue of John’s baptism with water, there was brought about a loosening of the etheric body from the physical body during the immersion. At that moment, the baptized were made incisively aware of the significance of the impending Mystery of Golgotha, the great world-historic Event and Deed of Christ.
He who receives a solar initiation in the Waterman acquires a special power of effecting in human souls a higher birth, a changed consciousness, so that the soul forces of thinking, feeling, and willing become subject to the higher Ego, the Lord from Heaven. The developed soul – the Son of Man – meets and merges with the Son of God, the Spirit principles from above, in a divine marriage. Through baptism with water, John the Baptist, the Waterman, brought to birth in the baptized the needed light of self-knowledge. The one essential urgently needed today is self-knowledge that at the same time is world-knowledge. This true knowledge flows from the fount of the cosmic Christ-ethers by way of the Uranian sign of the Son of Man, Aquarius, for it is in this sign that the individual, soul-matured and Christ-conscious, can say ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’.
The purpose of Aquarius is fittingly pictured by the symbol of the man pouring water out of an urn upon the earth. This is no ordinary water, but the new Christ-etheric, vivifying, spiritual force. Aquarius has specific rule over the ethers. Increasingly will man’s vision be opened to the etheric world. Aquarius might thus be designated ‘the Etheric Man’, although in the Moon Period, the preceding embodiment of the Earth, it was literally correct to call this sign ‘The Waterman’. Prior to this, man-in-the-making had a body consisting only of warmth and air, brought over from still earlier times, the Sun Period and the Saturn Period. In the Moon Period, there was added the fluid element, esoterically known as ‘water’ and, along with this, the astral body, which gave consciousness to man. The influence that brought this about came from the region of the Zodiac which we designate as the Waterman Aquarius.
It was during the Moon Period that the Hierarchy of the Angels were at their human stage. Now, during our Earth Period, they are a stage higher, being one remove above man, just as the animals are one remove below man. The Angels live in the etheric as we do in the physical. The Christ who appeared in physical form in Palestine nearly two millennia ago in the man, Jesus of Nazareth, may be seen from our century onward, in a etheric body, visible to those who have raised their consciousness to the etheric. Never again will he appear in an earthly, physical body. Because Aquarius is correlated with the Hierarchy of the angels, with the Etheric Christ, and with the angel in man, and furthermore because the fluid-organism in man is esoterically associated with the etheric body, we may rightly designate the Waterman as the Etheric Man.
Intense sensitivity is a pronounced trait of Aquarius, a sensitivity that is mental, psychic, and spiritual. It is likely to hurt or incommode those lacking in true self-knowledge or wisdom. In highly evolved Aquarians, well aware of the wisdom of love and truth– of whom Plato still shines forth with rich radiance, along with his last-century expositor, John Ruskin- the light of the solar Logos is revealed. Neither man individually, nor mankind as a whole, comes of the age in the sense of Christ-soul, until man reaches into the forces of Aquarius and expresses them positively. When this occurs, both man and mankind may be designated as thinkers and knowers of truth. Aquarius, then, may be set down as the sign representing man become matured in Christ, in virtue of whom he bears a share of the burden of the planet and ever seeks to refresh and restore the parched earthly souls with his spiritual water.
In this fixed air sign, Aquarius, thought power is fixed or concentrated until thinking becomes incandescent or alive in an etheric sense. In connection with this living thinking, we see a reference to the true Aquarian quality of livingness in the words of the Christ, ‘Because I live, ye shall live also’. Aquarius is the sign of the Man, as its symbol indicates, and the word ‘man’ is derived, as some say, from the Sanskrit manu, which means ‘to think’. Through making thinking firm and alive in Aquarius, life as last because life in the sense of the Christ-Spirit, the higher Ego, the true ‘I’. for this reason, John the Baptist says with truth, ‘He (the Christ-Ego) must increase, and I (the lower Ego) must decrease’.
The hieroglyphic symbol of Aquarius, consisting of two wave-like lines, reveals much more than can be mere words to those in whom the mood of meditation is innate. Here the intellect is helpless, but meditation is fruitful. In the cyclic evolution of the Ego through all the signs of the Zodiac in successive earthly lives, Aquarius is the sign where the circle is left behind for the spiralling ascent in mental, psychic, and spiritual progress. In this sign is the needed fixed-air quality and the dual forces of polarity, symbolically expressed by the two wavy lines, indicating the cosmic ethers in constant movement, equalizing and harmonizing the lower Ego and the higher ‘I’. The first symbolizes ‘the first man Adam made a living soul,’ whereas the second indicates ‘the last Adam made a quickening spirit’. The first man – the lower Ego and astral man caught up in the senses – ‘is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven’ (1 Corinthians 15: 45,47). Thus the symbol of Aquarius shows the interplay between the depths and the heights; it conceals the mystery of Man and of the Christ, the mystery of human life and destiny.
In every sign of the Zodiac there are souls that respond to the negative influences, which are the reverse of the awakened response. In Aquarius are many who have not yet been ‘made a quickening spirit’. Among them are swollen egotists, hidebound and pridehound. The higher birth does not take place until man reverses and raises his rhythm, correcting ill destiny and bringing the lower Ego into a growing power of fine self-control through self-knowledge. All too often, Aquarians display a static quality, an element of inertia, indicating that the soul’s awakening has not yet taken place; their promises remain unfulfilled, and they fail to put into practice the truth they readily sense, for instance, the spiritual equality of all men. Because of their laziness, their splendid faculties go to seed. Some of them advocate impractical, utopian ideas, and many are still spiritually asleep. Although the majority of individuals as well as all nations still seek their own interests, the influence of this humanitarian sign is nevertheless making itself felt among the ranks of the people. Acts of altruism, group awareness, and free activity are evident everywhere.
The idealism of God is the inner motive power of advanced Aquarians. They best express their ideals and make them a reality in terms of social life, for a love of human souls is the strongest quality of this sign of humanity. They feel not only the pulse of the people en masse, but the soul of each individual touched or passed; hence arises the living power of genuine friendship and true brotherhood. Emerson has rightly said, ‘A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature’. The fifteenth chapter of the Gospel of St. John also makes plain the value of friendship, for there the Christ says, ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth; but I have called you friends’ (St. John 15:13-15). We may add by way of explanation, ‘The servant (the lower man or personality) knoweth not what his lord (the higher Ego, his angel) doeth’. Man ceases to be in the ‘servant’ class and to be antisocial, once the forces of Christ-friendship are found in Aquarius through the spirit of love and truth; and this is the truth that makes man free, for there is no other freedom. No soul can work its way to this freedom of Christ or be born of the light, until it realizes spiritual intelligence and intelligent love.
He who would seek an understanding of Aquarius to grasp its esoteric significance must meditate much and often upon this fifteenth chapter of St. John’s Gospel. It shows what hatred the awakened or Christed Aquarian must take from the world and then transmute, to help the world in its evolution. The Lord says, ‘If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love its own; but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you … But this cometh to pass, that the word might be fulfilled that is written in their law, They hated me without a cause’ (St. John 15:18,19,25).
No man could murder another if he were aware of and alive to the Spirit of Christ; certainly, no evolved Aquarian could, for his etheric sensitivity relates his individual etheric body with the etheric body of the Earth. This means, the evolved Aquarian is aware of the Etheric Christ who envelops our planet and transforms it and humanity, so that eventually the Earth may re-unite with the Sun. The Christ-born and etheric-consciousness Aquarian experiences all humanity in himself. He knows nothing of aliens or foreigners; he actually experiences the truth expressed in the motto of the Great Seal of the United States, ‘E pluribus unum’ (out of many one; or, many in one), which portrays the gift of God into which humanity will come as ever more men open themselves to receive the Christ-Spirit. Since the United States of America – which the Moon in Aquarius and Uranus ascending- is an Aquarian-Uranian country, whose inhabitants are from all races and nations, we find here the early evidences of this spirit.
To Aquarians, no one is a stranger or an alien, not even the person who lacks love entirely, or who loves himself solely, or who isolates himself by race or narrow-minded nationalism. They know that, basically, all human beings are related, despite marked differences in their evolutionary status. Clannish or tribal ideas are anathema to Aquarians; thus they view racial leaders as atavistic, anti-Christ agents, seeking to separate and segregate, to delay if not thwart the Christ-freeing, individualizing evolution of millions of Egos. In Aquarius, the sign of the Son of Man, combining the forces of the whole Zodiac, all inequalities of race, color, nationality, creed, or caste disappear, and the glory of God becomes ascendant and manifest in men, cleansed and purified in their soul-body, which confers the gift of white raiment and a consciousness connecting them with the Christ. The advanced Aquarians seeks to have human beings become not only citizens of the world but, what is more, citizens of the cosmos.
In Aquarius, the various influences making up the sum of the Zodiac converge and constitute the power of the Christ-impulse. In this sign is the irradiating core which is the manifesting Son, the Christ-whole. Only if one knows the whole- all the signs of the Zodiac- can one truly know the parts that form the whole. In Aquarius, such knowledge makes man a knower of truth in proportion to his purity. Thus, evolved Aquarians recognize no race or citizenship, essentially, save that of Christ citizenship. In their eyes, all inequalities of race or religion are effaced by the beautiful unity in diversity, that coat of many colors, which is the glory of God manifesting as men become mature and perfected through the transformation of their soul into the Son of Man, meet to receive the Son of God.
Spiritual intelligence in the sign of the Angel in Man, Aquarius, leads to intelligent love and friendship. It gives the urge to make friendship operative- an urge which everyone’s own Guardian Angel impresses every night upon the astral body during dreamless sleep. (Rudolf Steiner, the Work of the Angels in Man’s Astral Body, London: Anthroposophical Publishing Company, 1960) In our waking hours, it is our vital task to make friendship a fact, spreading creative friendship wherever we go, and recognizing the hidden divinity in every human being.
My Angel comes in sleep each night
To bathe my soul with heav’nly light,
And to imprint upon my heart
The need, on waking, to impart
Real friendship to each soul I meet,
And the divine in each to greet.
B.J.
The pictures imprinted on the astral body by the Angel are to bring man to the realization that in the future no one will find peace in the enjoyment of good fortune while those about him are unhappy or in distress. The Angel gives the impulse to unite the human race in perfect brotherhood – the ideal of this Angel-Man sign that rules universal humanity.
Thus, the most telling trait of Aquarius is a flair for friendship; its essence is altruism, the quality of the angel in man. Angels outstream love that seeks no return, and they love without ceasing. Through their love for humanity, Aquarians, such as the reformers, knowers, and friends of men, John Ruskin, Charles Dickens, and Abraham Lincoln, become monumental as they revitalize the idea of Christ-truth and the wisdom of love, and practice the friendship of all mankind through spiritual understanding.
Evolved Aquarians, having gained Christ-wisdom, achieve self-knowledge and voluntarily elect to cooperate for the common weal. Under the impulse of the Water-bearer, man does not surrender his unique selfhood to any communistic regime, but offers his gift of God for the use of all, as a service valuable to the entire cosmos. Man must first be properly individualized in Christ before a true collective state or world is possible. All socialistic and communistic experiments at this time will fail, as they deserve to do. Aquarius is a sign of free air. No true Aquarian souls conceive or carry the idea of any compulsory labor service, or any subordination or subjugation to the demands of a soulless system, or to the will of some individual. The Christ does not coerce; nor would any soul ripened and evolved in this sign of the Son of Man.
Aquarius is the opposite of the royal and kingly sign Leo, in that it fosters democracy. In Aquarius, we may attain to genuine democracy and, at the same time, to the dignity of man; this will be the more apparent the more men will take in and work with the wisdom of love and the spirit of truth. The creative force of friendship draws together all those of a common mind and purpose. Aquarius makes active the healing bond of genuine brotherhood, that fraternity based not on blood ties but on a kinship of souls alive with intelligent love and spiritual intelligence. Advanced Aquarians are the pacemakers and the peacemakers for the spirit of truth, and they are able to provide continual inspiration to their co-workers, associates, and friends who become inert or depressed.
In Aquarius, the ideals of friendship and a successful social system must become concrete fact in operative. More than any other sign of the Zodiac, Aquarius strives to make ideals become real, practical, working facts of life. However, since mankind clings with tenacity to the outmoded, save for machines, clothes, et cetera, Aquarian ideas meet with opposition, as many inventions also met with intense hostility. When even some mechanical inventions meet with such opposition, it is easy to see why mankind only slowly entertains the truth of repeated earth lives – reincarnation – and the power of man’s self-made destiny or karma. But this shows the foil of Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers set against new truth and the Christ-life power in man and Earth. The advanced Aquarian, aware of and responsive to the Christ-etheric world, can never change his conviction of truth or move from his fixed purpose.
The air signs represent man’s power to think; the quality of ideation lies within the air signs. The gift that distinguishes man and raises him above the animal is the power of thought and speech. Not one of the air signs – the Twins, the Scales, and the Man – is symbolized by an animal; the airy element is free of and separate from the earth. Therefore, we see that individuals born under or in air signs, especially those born in Aquarius – the sign of the Son of Man, or the Man, he who is the thinker – are least of all influenced by the merely earthly element. In Libra and Aquarius, and to a lesser degree in Gemini, we see a transcendence of earthly logic, the intuition providing a firsthand touch with the realm of truth, the archetypal realm of ideas. Yet, the faith of Aquarius must be rooted and grounded in knowledge; the spirit-lighted reason must be able to solve the riddle of life and death in such a way as to satisfy both the mind and the innate religious sense.
As a sign of fixed air, Aquarius dislikes indecision and disloyalty. The Aquarian has convictions of truth by which he abides with rocklike firmness and according to which he acts, regardless of the world’s disapproval. As a Christ-etheric sensitive, he knows that the suggestions he receives are from a realm more rarefied that that of the earth. He obeys such touches with truth, and when his soul is well matured and expresses wisdom, such Water-bearer can pour from his pitcher into human hearts, or into the parched environment of this time of spiritual inanition, the veritable water of Christ-life.
This creative, cosmic sign is ruled by the awakener, Uranus, which means ‘heaven’. It orbits beyond Saturn, which is the outermost planet arising within our solar system. Uranus, Neptune and Pluto had a different origin; hence they are referred to as transcendental planets. The retrograding moons of Uranus put it into a different category from the planets inside its orbit. The axis of Uranus is almost at right angels with the axis of the Earth. It is not surprising, therefore, that Uranus tends to upset convention and to break up everything rigid and standardized. It makes non-conformists and reformers. It brings completely new orientation. To those who can respond, the orientation is cosmic in scope. The influence of Uranus is lightning-like, always acting with surprising suddenness and speed, and producing unexpected events.
Sometimes Saturn is assigned as co-ruler of Aquarius. The importance of Saturn and Uranus depends on one’s stage in evolution. Weak souls that have not learned the lessons of the other signs – especially of Capricorn, which is ruled by Saturn – may still need the pedagogy of Saturn and make little response to Uranus. In the course of time, all human beings will awaken and mature to proper attunement to Uranus. At present, undisciplined Egos react unfavorably, unpredictably, and erratically to its influence. The more mature the individual, the more does he manifest the cosmic, liberalizing, progressive, and cohering influences of Uranus the planet whose name means heaven.
Persons born with the Sun in Aquarius, who have attained to maturity in their spiritual life, ever seek the life principle, because Uranus stands for the life-producing causes behind all things, whereas Saturn, also called Chronos, being the Guardian of Time, gives the earthly conquest. This planet of Time, Chronos, seems a strange companion of the Christ-etheric planet of lightning-like, shockingly sudden, unexpected effects, Uranus. The lower qualities that manifest in the unevolved Aquarians do so because these souls have not made peace with Saturn, the producer of patience through lives of helpful hindrance, and because they have not resolved in themselves the contradiction caused by these two contrasting planets, Saturn and Uranus – Time and that Power beyond Time. Through Uranus, time and the earth-forces may become invested by the Spirit.
Undeveloped Aquarians choose to live in the personality, perverting the individuality rather than raising it. These immature, unripened souls sacrifice principle for lustful, egotistical, earthly power and personal aggrandizement. In the negative souls in this sign we see the Uranian influence expressing itself as downright anarchy, and venting itself in a fiery and erratic temper. They show extreme independence and a volcanic, seething unrest and perversity. In some souls the fumes of anger are held in silence, producing a rage far worse than one that is openly released.
It should be noted that periodic states of silence, seemingly strange, are characteristic of Aquarians. In fact, one of the marked traits of this sign is the need and will to be quite and concentrated, to be utterly alone at times, and to resent any interfering annoyance from others. The maxim given by Rudolf Steiner as an exercise for the month of February, ‘Reticence becomes meditative power’, is therapeutic for Aquarians. In silence is their strength. The truly mature and evolved Aquarians possess all the practical and persevering qualities of the preceding Saturnine sign, Capricorn, yet with the added Uranian power of instant intuition, lofty ideals, and a natural ability and ease in reading character. They are refined, artistic, intelligent, faithful, and humane. Inwardly tranquil, very quite, but extremely intense, strong, forceful, incandescent souls, they impress one with their innate, etheric, psychic power and marked mentality, combined with a disposition delightfully open and naïve. The joyousness of this angelic sign sometimes gives an air of apparent frivolity, and this tends to mislead others as to the true worth of Aquarius. Being hypersensitive and high-strung, they act with swift speed. Although they are able to resist fatigue, they are apt to injure their health if they apply themselves incessantly to some particular prolonged work. Exposure, likewise, may be a cause for ill health, for Aquarius rules the sense of warmth, making Aquarians particularly sensitive to atmospheric changes and fluctuations in temperature. There is a tendency to poor circulation and cold feet. The ankles are the gift of Aquarius to the marvelous physical body of man.
Aquarians have a marked psychic power and an intuitive mind, the effect of the Christ-etheric element, making them as powerful and intense as the natives of Scorpio, yet with a quality and impression different from that of Scorpio for in Aquarius there is an airy-etheric-mental something which ever eludes or transcends the understanding of even those souls with fine insight into human character. Evolved Water-bearers who are idealists and inventors possess a force that masters and rises above matter and transcends time, enabling them to think and to be far ahead of the times in which they live. When we survey the innovations and inventions that mankind owes to Aquarians such as Ruskin, Dickens, Lincoln, and Edison, we see the influence of Uranus, the planet of heaven that awakens humanity and unifies the various members of man, to make him whole.
The effects of this sign of the Son of Man is well seen in some of its best representatives. In the last century, the contemporary humanitarians, Charles Dickens and John Ruskin, each in his own unique manner, disclosed a vast understanding of humanity and possessed the literary gift of this sign. Certainly they were reformers and pointed to the need for the raising and regeneration of the race. Ruskin declared the urgent need for scientific intelligence in England during the middle of the last century. How was he able to foretell to woe and sorrow that England was bringing down on her head through intellectualism? Why was his forte-friendship so active with creative Christ-force? Because he was one of God’s messengers and prophets using an Aquarian human garment. He had Aquarius rising, with the Sun and Jupiter therein. The element of universal friendship and brotherhood inheres in this Angel-Man sign, and this becomes as though radioactive in the highly evolved, bestowing on them the art and genius of bringing men together and making them a power for peace. Theirs is the wisdom of love animating the soul to express the divine.
How remarkable the active clairvoyant thought of Charles Dickens and his gift of setting down in extreme caricature the evil conditions in England in the last century! He exposed man’s inhumanity, lusts, and lies; he came, as did the other great Uranians, in the role of a reformer, to do away with the outmoded and to bud the new. His work, like that of all the others animated by the same power, declares that special spontaneity which gives electrical, effective action through the vast force of the mighty Uranus.
In America, we see an outstanding Aquarian in Abraham Lincoln. He strove to hold together two hostile factions, the North and the South, at a time of crisis, when the forces of schism were at work. He brought unification to the nation as well as emancipation of a race from slavery, leading to eventual equality before the law. Here we see the fusion-force of friendship, ‘With malice toward none; with charity for all’. He was slain and sacrificed for his great work, as often happens when greatness is not recognized by the ignorant, or is thwarted by the conservative, or eliminated by the envious.
Emmanuel Swedenborg, the great scientist, who was born in Stockholm in 1688 and died in London in 1772, had his Aquarian Sun in the degree of ‘Providence’. In 1744, in his fifty-sixth year, he became aware of the spiritual world, gaining etheric clairvoyant vision in virtue of his vast love for knowledge resulting from preparatory work done in preceding lives. Thus, in the last third of his life, he abandoned his scientific pursuits, to use his gracious gift of clairvoyance, with all his energy and industry, in the investigation of the facts and laws of the spiritual world. Charles Darwin was another Aquarian who was a scientist. He discovered the principle of the evolution of physical forms, but not the spiritual life principle that evolves the forms to ever greater and finer perfection.
He who has ears to hear can detect the love of God and the world of Spirit in the music of Mozart, for his music is simply an up-welling, outflowing force of the divine archetypal heavenly world whose spiritual harmonies he transposed into air-borne earthly sound. Here was an Aquarian angel and a lover of men portraying the sweetness of that love in divine tones. Franz Schubert was another Aquarian who poured forth his soul in his lovely songs and symphonies.
In Aquarius, the sign which synthesizes all the signs of the Zodiac, there comes at last into being the Perfect Man. Through his evolutionary schooling, a mature, evolved Aquarian has at his disposal consummate faculty and facility in body, soul, and spirit. Through such Aquarian force, foremost and always there arises an impulse toward the new, the unexpected, and unique. Aquarius and Uranus are incessantly alive with invention and innovation, and to Aquarian souls is given the building, budding process, bringing renewal to man and planet. This sign symbolizes the Son of Man who pours out living, spiritual water, which gives on-going, forward-flowing, and upward-spiralling motion. Thus the Waterman serves the evolutionary process in a most positive way.
Aquarius and its ruler, Uranus, stand for and bring ‘all things new,’ so that ‘old things are passed away’. Here are the sign and the planet of new outlook and new ideas, beyond the staid and the standardized. They bring the unusual and unique, suddenly, and with unexpected surprise effects. What Aries initiates, Aquarius and Uranus bring to manifestation. To the new that arises in Aries, they seek the etheric essence of all things and, beyond that, the soul-spiritual. The wisdom and beauty they experience they attempt to introduce into a world that is often hostile. We have only to glance at the men who dissolve the past and create the new, whether they be our contemporaries or lived in past ages, to see the forces of this sign of the Son of Man.
One of the greatest and most influential, yet also one of the most misunderstood and most persecuted, Aquarian apostles of freedom and democracy, in both the Old World and the New, was ‘the man without a country’, Thomas Paine. It was he who conceived the idea of the United States of America and who, together with Thomas Jefferson, had much to do in framing the Declaration of Independence. His electrifying writings in the days of the Revolution filled soldiers and civilians with renewed enthusiasm and aroused instantaneous action, so that it was said, ‘America owes as much as the pen of Paine as to the sword of Washington’. His words in The Crisis became the battle cry of the new republic:
‘These are the times which try men’s souls … Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered. The harder the conflict the more glorious the victory. That which is won too cheaply is esteemed too lightly. Heaven knows how to put the proper price upon its goods and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom be not highly rate. Up! Lay shoulders to the wheel! Show faith by work, that God may bless you. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink. He whose conscience is firm pursues principles unto death’.
How truly Aquarian and Uranian!
Why was Charles Lindbergh the cosmic election to make the first solo flight across the Atlantic to Paris? Or, why was it Douglas Corrigan, of the same Sun sign, who repeated the solo flight, landing in Ireland instead of France? They possessed the impulse for innovation. In these souls there lived the Aquarian element of the new which gave such splendid performance in the air, for this sign rules the ethers and the air.
In the field of inventions, we may note Thomas A. Edison, an Aquarian etheric-sensitive. His electrical inventions were numerous, but the achievement that he cherished most was his invention of the phonograph, an instrument connected with sound. Edison’s sensitivity to the ethers gave him access to the region of archetypes, the realm of ideas and truth, hence his inventiveness and his urge to produce the new, which has transformed our civilization. Electricity is light that disintegrated in matter. This sub-material force has revolutionized the world in a very short time, and with this innovation has come the mass of other inventions, all of which are the result of the Sun, by precession of the equinox, coming into an orb of influence with Aquarius.
The innovations of the greatest of musical colorists, the creator of a new mode in music, Richard Wagner, wrought changes that affected the whole musical world. Upon his head descended bitter hate, because he brought new musical ideas, introduced the New Age Christ, and told of this New Day in his music dramas, especially in his last and greatest work, the consecrational ‘Parsifal’. With his Moon joined to the Part of Fortune and the Moon’s South Node in Aquarius, and Mars in the same sign, Wagner strove more than all others to unify art, science, and religion – the Aquarian ideal. He died disappointed because people were not yet sufficiently advanced to comprehend this expression of the whole in Aquarian manner.
Aquarius, as the archetypal-force sign, is seen in its universal scope as it acts and expresses itself through men such as those just mentioned. In the Water-bearer, as in no other sign of the Zodiac, we see the union of art, science, and religion and, truly, these three are one, just as God is ever Three in One. The beauty of God’s unity in diversity is shown in the universality and comprehensiveness contained in Aquarius, the coat-of-many-colors sign.
The ancient prophets who taught humanity had as their essential make-up this living, spiritual water, the power to light the way and weld mankind through right leadership. The prophet whose initiation was that of the Waterman is the mighty John the Baptist. Under the influence of Aquarius, he tells humanity that something new is entering into man and into the Earth, and that the Lord of all, who makes men free and complete, the Christ, is at hand. John’s message called upon people to change their ways. This man was much more than a man, as we, who know the living water he poured, can see, for here is the great leader and prophet of the past returned to announce the New Day and Way of the Christ, the very fulfillment of friendship spoken of in the Gospel of St. John 15:13,14 ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I (Christ-Ego) command you’. This love we see sadly lacking in our own blood-stained century given over to materialism. But this is a passing, temporary phase in evolution, through a necessary one for the development of the earthly Ego, the brain-bound man.
The great men whom reference has been made portray the progressiveness and the intense humanity that live in the souls of all true Water-bearers. It is a divine compassion that expresses truth through the wisdom of love, which is true philosophy- literally, the love of wisdom. Advanced Aquarians naturally carry this force, which combines the whole range of zodiacal powers, thus making them friends and knowers of men. In Aquarius, there is instant intuition and the capacity to read human character with electrical-etheric Uranian effect. If the power of radiance shines through Leo, then the element of etheric incandescence provides the light of Aquarius. With this true insight into souls, the outer veneer of society is swiftly dismissed and the man is seen in his actual worth. Thus the Aquarian beholds the seeming orphan, humanity, for mankind remains orphaned in a very true sense so long as it refuses to take in the Christ-light power and allow love to irradiate the soul. This power to perceive the real man- seeing at the same time the personality yet by-passing it and envisioning the soul of man in its true character- leaves the Aquarian often mentally and psychically isolated. Friendship cannot become a living reality on Earth so long as people remain antisocial, and this is the reason for strife, warfare, and lack of understanding and friendship among nations and races.
Evolution is not only cyclic but spiralling in its periodicity; so it is essential to realise and bear in mind that the point on the circle of the Zodiac where the spiral starts which lifts man in soul-ascent and mental expansion, is here in this sign, Aquarius, which at the same time provides stability. No man is truly sustained or secure as a law unto himself, certainly not one possessed of the key to heaven admitting him to the light of the Logos, until he vitalizes in himself the Aquarian fixed force of divine stability. Instability results from living solely in the temporal personality; stability is derived from the higher Christ-self, the eternal entity of God. No man is conscious of his higher self until his purity had led him along the way of truth to freedom. In Aquarius there occurs in cyclic fashion that revolution which produces a contingent revelation, the new ‘take-off’ on a new spiral. As in the life of an individual, so in the life of our planet, there comes now a new ‘take-off’ and a new order of things for the world, as by precession of the equinox we are approaching the Aquarian Age. In spite of hatred, fear, and reaction, the world and humanity are moving into a new field of force, the force of the humane sign of friendship and truth, the Water-bearer.
Why is the essence of this sign love itself? Why does it take in all mankind? What makes evolved, matured Aquarians humanitarians, and why do they constantly go out in service to others? What makes them mouthpieces for humanity, and why are they exponents of wise compassion? What is the reason for their belief in, and expression of, the efficacy of intelligent love? Why do they insist on making ideals real now, and not in some distant day far remote? Why do they bearers of ‘good tidings of great joy to all people’? Why do they preach the gospel of the New Age of Christ, friendship, and brotherhood, and so heal the sick? And why do they teach away from the lunar law and accepts the grace and truth of the Christ Sun-Son? The mystery behind, and the answers to, all these questions are implicit in the symbol of this sign, for Aquarius holds the mystery of human destiny, which is inseparable from the Mystery of Golgotha. In this zodiacal sign, man becomes connected with and cognizant of the Christ in himself and in the Earth; man becomes a Christ-man and knows his own angel; he becomes the ‘Perfect Man’.
Souls who walk in the light of Aquarius cease to be separative and disruptive, and they learn to realize the unifying element which is Christ-Spirit. He whose evolution ascends to a lofty spiral in Aquarius never seeks for himself but is ever joyously outgoing in true love for others. The forte of Aquarius is friendship, and its keyword is ‘I know’. Friendship implies forces that unify, and in union lies love. Those who live in the love of truth have the wisdom to know. True, living thinking makes the knower. All those highly evolved souls in this sign who are well seasoned by repeated well spent in all the signs of the Zodiac know the truth through their conscious connection with Christ. The capacity to know and to manifest friendship, imparted by this sign, gains significance if we remember that this is the sign that rules the ethers, and it is the ether of Christ’s body that permeates and envelops the entire Earth.
Aquarius indicates the divine hermaphrodite, combining the male and the female principles inherent in every human Christ-Ego, portrayed in the two wavy lines representing this zodiacal sign. Here we see the forces of the Moon and the Sun, the elements of water and Spirit. Christ Jesus, speaking to Nicodemus, an initiate of the lower degrees, said, ‘Ye must be born again, ye must be born of water and of the Spirit, if ye would enter into the kingdom of God’. This spiritual birth is the sacrament that brings completion to man.
Aquarius stands also for the woman clothed with the Sun, and the Moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. These twelve stars are the twelve signs of the Zodiac, all of which are so many initiations that come to final expression in this sign, Aquarius. The Moon is the feminine principle, the lower, lunar Ego with imaginative faculty and form-giving power, the brain-bound, earthly man, which we designate as the separative personality. This Ego raises and refines itself to the stage of a Son of Man. The Sun is the higher Ego, the spiritual man or Son of god, who reaches down to the rising Son of Man. Their union is a heavenly marriage taking place in the earthly body, producing the perfected man.
The whole of the Zodiac is expressed in Aquarius, and this is why this sign rules the stellar wisdom and why all advanced souls in Aquarius strive to express life- art, religion, and science- in the sense of a whole and thus as a unity. Aquarius has been called the captain of the host, for it comprehends all the forces of the Zodiac in their sum and substance. In the sign of the Son of Man, man becomes more than man- a ‘perfect man’ who has learned the lessons of all the Zodiac. He who expresses the wisdom of love and truth is consciously or unconsciously clothed with the Christ-etheric forces and thus waters the world of humanity with an intelligent love and is spiritually active.
Always does active Aquarian power give the ability to destroy the old, separative, crystallizing influences in man and planet, releasing forces to produce the new thing, idea, teaching, or process. It parts from the past to fashion the future, there lies concealed the mystery of the eternal now. It is these Aquarian souls, who in some way have touched eternity, who have the power to woo and weld men into a true and lasting unity of peace maintained by the positive, creative, corrective action of the wisdom of love. No true union of mankind in the bonds of peace will be realized till this friendship of Aquarius provides the all-permeating, unifying element.
The fourth chapter of St. John’s Gospel describes the meeting of Christ Jesus with the woman of Samaria at the well. He meets her freely, without slight or snobbery, making her wonder why he, a Jew, was conversing with her, a Samaritan woman. Jesus then says to her, ‘If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, give me to drink, thou wouldst have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water. The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then hast thou that living water? Art thou greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well?’ (The lunar law, symbol of involution and Jehovah). The Christ answered her, saying ‘Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life’.
Who would not work for this eternal essence of God, this spiritual life of Christ, whose flow wells up, in, and through the solar system, yet whose fountain force is in the water of Aquarius, we must look upon Christ as the living water. To produce the new on Earth and in man requires the creative budding and building forces of this sign of the Angel-Man, the Son of Man, Aquarius, with the spiritually electrical power ray of Uranus. Whatever the wisdom or work needed to bring true advancement in art, religion, or science, the force that brings the new into manifestation flows into the world from the creative element inherent in the Waterman, the sign of the living water of the Spirit. This sign allows the supra-personality to express itself through the earthly personality; thus the Aquarian can say, ‘Not I, but Christ liveth in me’. But only the spiritually awakened Aquarian on the lower rungs of evolution remain static because of the negation, and sometimes, the laziness, which the fixed signs produce.
Although all air signs give mental activity, with little desire for the earthly, Aquarius is the sign that focalizes and fixes ideas and images, so that they become real and concrete. In this sign, the subjective mental image, the thought, develops into objective, concrete reality, and so Aquarians transmute the ideal into the real, making the thought take form in the realm of the physical. Gemini is omnivorous in seeking knowledge and wisdom, and it sets in motion a mental action that irradiates thought as from a point to all parts of the periphery. Libra perceives the whole, then sorts, sifts, and finally seizes upon the real in thought. In Aquarius, however, that which is true becomes the grist for the mental mill. In this sign, thought actually becomes anchored, arrested by the pure force of the will.
No man can become free until he knows the truth, and this freedom may be gained in this sign of the Son of Man, because man may raise himself as a qualified Christ-soul up to the light of the realm where truth abides. In the Gospel of St. John 16:12-14 Christ says,
I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself, but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak, and he will show you things to come. He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and show it unto you.
Indications of the Aquarian spiritual water are to be found in the Gospels and throughout the rest of the New Testament in statements pointing to the New Age, telling of a humanity reborn and made free through a knowledge of the truth. The forces of the future flow from Aquarius, revealing ‘things to come,’ in true, Uranian, innovating, originating manner, and ‘turning the world upside down.’ The Aquarians named in this chapter were men whose lifework shaped events or brought out new concepts of teachings that helped dissolve the past and to usher in the new. From Aquarius flows that creative life urge which is the Christ-impulse itself.
When man gains liberation from his brain and his senses, he knows the truth and ‘things to come’. At present, man sees objects such as tables, chairs, houses, trees, and clouds as realities of the spiritual world; but equally real to him will be the realities of the spiritual worlds, which a new vision will open to him when, through self-development, he meets the requisites for this higher sight. The living feeling for the universal all, which man formerly had, he lost centuries ago in order to attain to Egohood and to conscious life on the physical plane, but now the time has come to acquire again the spiritual inwardness of life by means of spiritual-scientific knowledge livingly received, so that something new lives in the soul.
There are so few true thinkers because so few are willing to form concentrated, one-pointed, fixed, and intense force in ideation, a requisite of truly living thinking. Only as man trains himself to think livingly will his negation cease, and the blind will no longer be led by the blind. In the evolved Aquarian, the power of living thinking penetrates to reality with truth-telling soul insight, the fruit of intuition, which tells of an intense inner repose. This repose may be likened to the relaxed, effortless poise that a cat displays when sitting for hours at the hole of a mouse, with her muscles relaxed, yet with intense alertness and instant readiness to strike. Without this intensity of inner quite- a poise that spells patience and power- no messages are received from the higher realms of truth by way of the higher self, and no ideas, inspirations, or invention flow. Indeed, ‘Reticence becomes meditative power’.
Our present age bears out the fact that there is a lack of true thinkers, in this time of intellectualism, productive of a materialism which bespeaks not firsthand knowledge of the Christ-truth. Men observe data and tabulate findings rather than think. Yet the Christ says, ‘I am the light of the world’, which means that he is the Spirit of our entire solar system as well as of our planet and of man. A few vanguard scientists of the Spirit have become conversant with the spiritual realms and their beings, and have made the science of the Spirit available in terms which the intellect that is open to truth can comprehend and put to the test of life. He alone becomes free through knowledge of truth who has learned to think. Such a thinker is so spiritually sensitive and essentially etheric that he grasps a higher reality. Through his Uranian-Aquarian force, he creates a vortex so active, so intensely penetrating that he can raise himself in soul to the archetypal plane, wherein are to be found all those living beings whose singing and weaving word gives expression to everything on our Earth. At such moments of mental intensification, the Aquarian thinker reaches into the great reservoir of archetypal reality and, through the Spirit-quickening Uranus, his mind is vividly vitalized; he receives the creative light of heaven and brings down into the earthly sphere of the mind that which is both new and true.
Only those souls that by their own work and effort through many lives have secured the ‘oil’ for their lamps, are prepared to meet the bridegroom, for they have the light within which is essential to moving consciously in the spiritual worlds. This oil can neither be borrowed nor brought at the last minute; it can only be garnered through wise work well done with glad love through lives. Without this oil, no man becomes a true thinker, conscious of the Christ and aware of the Spirit as an earthly Ego. All those Egos who have not acquired the oil for their lamps will be decidedly disqualified and refused admittance, for without light they remain in darkness and stand without the gate. Many will find themselves thus standing in darkness at this critical turning point of time, when every soul is making its own choice as to its advancement in evolution. Thus does Christ say, ‘Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of Man cometh’. (St. Matthew 25:13)
He who has perfected himself to the point where his personality becomes radiant with his supra-personality, through his lower Ego becoming merged with and amenable to his higher spiritual self, has reached up to the sphere of the Spirit and the consciousness of Christ. Such a soul, though purely human, has made union with the divine and has become a Son of Man conscious of the Spirit in his earthly mind and possessing knowledge of higher realms and spiritual beings. All men who become consummate and angelic men in Aquarius, do so because their creative work through many lives has earned them the right, and won them the reward of friendly cooperation of the little elemental beings, the wards and children of the Angels, the beings living in the etheric world, which interpenetrates the physical world.
There are four ethers, four elements, and four kinds of elemental beings: the gnomes, related to the earth; the undines, to water; the sylphs, to air; and the salamanders to fire. In the etheric world, they have play, a play that at the same time is a service to active duty to Angels, to men, and to the world, for these little elementals form the forces for our earth. They work unseen, for the most part, for only few can see them. Thus these little workers, although they do so much for man, get no credit for their work, as do the bees and beavers. These elementals fashion all things, from the body of a bee to that of a baby, from the lowliest soil we tread upon to the highest mountain, from the blast of a siren to the most exquisite and sweetest sound our ears can hear. No music, no words, voice, or writing, nought would be formed or finished here on Earth, whether of earth, water, air, or fire, without the incessant work of these nature spirits, often called the fairies. Everywhere are they to be found, differing in different localities of the world.
Man has an etheric body, also called the vital body, life body, or the body of formative forces, which gives him life and makes him what he is today, with all his habits and his memory. The quality of a man can be known by his etheric body. The ethers, so important to know and to study, are ruled by Aquarius. Aquarians are therefore etherically sensitive and they sense more easily the truth, for truth is anchored in the etheric body. Not only do they know themselves, objectively and detachedly, but knowing themselves they know also all other selves. They instantly perceive the truth in people and in places. They see the designs of others; they divine and discern the true nature and being of anyone standing before them, even if they would shield their soul’s gaze from any false or ugly sight, sound, or scent.
They have a deep understanding of human nature and are able to help the insane. They are ever ready to be of service to those who ask for help or advice, and often they do good in silence. There is a latent, if not active, an interest in man’s connection with the cosmos. Once their attention has been drawn to spiritual science, they gain a comprehensive grasp of it. It is through their hypersensitivity and their command of the elemental beings- the fruit of the angelic forces- that the evolved Aquarians become such consummate artists, teachers, musicians, inventors, reformers, and pacemakers of the New Age. Such souls have the Christ in some degree evolved in them through their expression of truth and love, which brings, working joyously and creatively in fine cooperation with them. Failure to attain or accomplish is the result of man’s etheric impurity, his deficiency in a love for truth, and his shortcomings where love is concerned; the man who fails is not true to himself in the sense of the higher self. Millions are figuratively chained to the earth because of their materialism and intellectuality; or, filled with egotism and pride, they live in an illusory dream world, being unable to maintain a balance between the below and the above in the true Christ-Aquarian sense.
Advanced individuals predominantly under the influence of Aquarius make touch in some wise with the fount of all forces, the region of thought and the archetypal realm, so that new impulses are made reality in the world. Examination of these Aquarian innovations usually reveals their power to bond men more closely in brotherhood and friendship. An Aquarian, when addressing someone, always gives him the direct challenge of the eye, ever expecting that his quite his incisive gaze will be returned. The Water-bearer seeks the truth, knowing that as the truth is sought, the soul is ennobled and enriched. Only as a man begins to discern the sublime and see himself as a being wrought out of the very substance of the sublime can he recognize his own divinity. It is God’s plan for every man to become a master; the apprenticeship, however, to this mastery, is served on Earth as man’s Ego evolves through many lives, incarnating in the various signs of the Zodiac and reaching perfection at last in Aquarius, the sign of zodiacal synthesis.
It is fitting, therefore, that Aquarians should be the symbol for the Gospel of St. Matthew, which portrays Christ Jesus primarily as the Man. St. John gives us the soaring Scorpion-Eagle thoughts of the Christ. St. Mark presents the Leo-Lion Sun power of the Son of God. St. Luke pictures divine compassion and love, symbolized by the sacrifice of the Taurus-Bull. The three elements of thinking, feeling, and willing are balanced in Man-Aquarius.
St. Matthew traces the genealogy of Jesus through ages of time, a very special body was prepared within the Hebrew race, which thereby performed a mission for the whole of mankind. In the unique Man, Jesus of Nazareth, there incarnated the Christ at the Baptism by John the Baptist. It is significant that St. Matthew is the only gospel writer who relates that Christ Jesus, at the moment of betrayal addressed Judas, his betrayer, as ‘Friend’ (St. Matthew 26:50). Throughout his Gospel St. Matthew describes Christ Jesus as the Son of God in the human form of Man. This very highest ideal-man become God-man – became a reality in Christ Jesus. Our remoteness from this divine goal, which is our human destiny, fills us with hope that we may ultimately attain this highest measure of Man.