Full Moon in Aquarius — August 2, 2012, 03:27 UT

This is the Water Carrier’s Moon. A young man bent down on one knee and pouring water out from a jar, is the symbol of Aquarius, the sign of this Full Moon. We are pampered with abundant wisdom of the gods for to be spread out to our brothers and sisters on Earth.

Aquarius is an air sign in spite of its association with water. The other two air signs are well represented in the chart. In Gemini there are Venus, Jupiter, Ceres and Vesta; in Libra we find Mars and Saturn. The element of air is mental and social. Air is moving and reaching everywhere. Brotherhood, freedom, knowledge and inventiveness are attributes associated with Aquarius.

Uranus, the ruler of Aquarius, is brainstorming us with his electrifying impulse from Aries. Pallas Athene in conjunction with Uranus, aids him. Pallas Athene is known for her wisdom and strategy skills. The Moon supports them with a sextile. The brightly burning Sun in the fire sign Leo is in trine to the Pallas-Uranus conjunction. Jupiter’s magnifying touch comes in the form of a sextile from Gemini. The Moon forms a flowing trine to Jupiter and the Sun supports him with a sextile.

Mercury, the messenger and communicator, is the ruler of Gemini. At the moment Mercury is retrograding in Leo. It is interesting, that Mercury is in conjunction with asteroid Ganymed, which is named after the personification of the Water Carrier in Greek mythology. According to the myth, Zeus (Jupiter) fell in love with young Ganymed and took him to mount Olympus to serve as cup-carrier to the gods.

The traditional ruler of Aquarius is Saturn, and the modern ruler is Uranus. Many astrologers have noticed, that a more suitable name for the planet Uranus would actually be Prometheus. In Greek mythology, Prometheus was an intelligent Titan, who is said to have created man out of clay, and stolen fire from gods and given it to humankind. Quoting Richard Tarnas:

“The more I examined the matter, the more I realized that every quality astrologers associate with the planet Uranus was reflected in the myth of Prometheus: the initiation of radical change, the passion for freedom, the defiance of authority, the act of cosmic rebellion against a universal structure to free humanity of bondage, the urge to transcend limitation, the intellectual brilliance and genius, the element of excitement and risk.” And he continues: “And the resonant symbol of Prometheus’s fire conveyed at once several meanings – the creative spark, cultural and technological breakthrough, the enhancement of human autonomy, the liberating gift from the heavens, sudden enlightenment, intellectual and spiritual awakening – all of which astrologers consider to be connected with the planet Uranus.”

Aptly the Sun is now in conjunction with asteroid Prometheus emphasizing the Aquarian theme.

Different types of celestial objects – asteroids, planets, trans-Neptunian objects — work on different levels of human experience. Asteroids orbit the Sun between Mars and Saturn, while trans-Neptunians reside far out in the distant part of our solar system. Respectively, asteroids are considered personal and their transits don’t last very long, whereas trans-Neptunian objects are transpersonal and working on wide scale. The Full Moon squared two distant objects in Scorpio, Deucalion and Ceto. These two have stationed direct after the New Moon two weeks ago.

Ceto is a Centaur-like binary object on an elliptical orbit around the Sun. The orbital period is almost 1000 years. Because of the elliptical orbit, it spends in a centaurean way a very long time (+365 years) in certain zodiac signs, and travels quickly (in 5 years) through others. Ceto came to perihelion in Leo in 1989 and was travelling inside the orbit of Uranus at that time. At the moment while moving further away in Scorpio, it is already slowing its speed, but still going relatively fast. This is why its conjunction with Deucalion, a cubewano with an orbital period of only about 295 years, has lasted – and will still be lasting — for many years.

Deucalion is another mythic Greek figure to be identified with Aquarius, the Water Carrier. He was a son of Prometheus, and the equivalent of Noah in the Greek version of the flood myth. Flood myths are creation myths, where the flooding waters are cleansing humanity. In Greek mythology Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha survived the deluge by building an ark with the aid of Prometheus. Deucalion and Pyrrha drifted to the high mountains, where an oracle told them to “throw the bones of their mother” behind them. They came to the conclusion that their mother is Gaia (Earth) and stones are her bones. They threw rocks behind their shoulders, and the rocks became men and women and repopulated the Earth.

The message of the Water Carrier pours through in many aspects of the chart, in various levels and with varying intensity. The rains of the Water Carrier are a gift from the gods to us.

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