Rewind: Aliens, UFOs, Cults and the Sign of Aquarius

Hi everyone. This is Achuta Bhava from Nightlight Astrology, and today I'm doing a little fun, zany encore presentation in my great conjunction series on Jupiter and Saturn's upcoming conjunction in Aquarius.

Just by chance, I had a friend who told me about the fact that HBO had done this series on the Heavens Gate cult from the 1990s. He asked, "Is there anything connected with the upcoming Aquarius, the planets moving into Aquarius, and especially Pluto coming into Aquarius in 2023? Do you think there's going to be an upsurge in cults?"

I was like, "Yeah. I mean, that actually had come up in my mind as I was planning the series, and I sort of didn't want to touch it. Sometimes you start talking about certain subjects, and you just attract the weirdness that surrounds the subject. So you're like, Nah, maybe I won't go near that."

But I thought, "You know what? After I actually took a look at the first episode of the Heavens Gate documentary that just came out on HBO, it spurred all of this research I ended up doing over the past few days, just for fun."

I was thinking I might throw together a video looking at two different interesting topics that definitely have a correlation with the sign of Aquarius: UFOs, alien abductions, and Starry cults.

So, that's what we're going to do today. This is just for fun and to show you how zany and weird the sign of Aquarius can be—sometimes in all the best ways, and sometimes in really crazy ways.

And why is that? Why is Aquarius sometimes associated with cults? Of course, not all cults are bad things either. Let's talk about that a little bit as well today.

Before I dive into all of this, I wanted to remind everyone that my Kickstarter is still running through the last 40 days of the year. I fundraise to support my work in the year ahead. If you guys enjoy this channel, I would really appreciate your support.

We are getting closer—about 450 backers now, moving towards 691 to break last year's record. If we do that, there's still time left. I feel like, is it possible to reach 1,000? Maybe, we'll see.

So anyway, when you donate and support my work in 2021, you can pick up a number of different rewards that I offer: different recordings and classes that I sell exclusively through the Kickstarter as rewards and thank-you gifts for your donation, as well as 50% off all of my online classes in 2021.

My Year One, Ancient Astrology for the Modern Mystic class, Year Two class, and Horary class are all on sale. It's a great time to save if you want to do that as well.

Alright. Well, thank you, everybody, for your support. Let's dive into this very bizarre topic I have for today.

So, cult—where does the word come from? A particular form or system of worship? That's the definition and etymology from Latin: "Cultus," care, labor, cultivation, culture, worship, reverence. It can also mean something tended or cultivated.

It also has this connotation of certain rites or rituals being performed as part of a religious or spiritual group or community. The occult, another important word, means a secret not divulged, or something hidden, concealed, or secretive.

Both of these words, in the history of human religion and spirituality, don't necessarily have a negative connotation. They may, through the popularization of more destructive or infamous cults—cults of personality, for example—where people took their own lives or experienced tragic outcomes.

But throughout history, people have used the words "cult" and "occult" to simply signify religious sects or groups. The occult, in particular, often refers to groups containing hidden or esoteric teachings.

By no means do I want to say that Aquarius' association with the occult or cult matters implies a dark, heavy charge against people with Aquarius energy in their charts.

I have an Aquarian midheaven in my birth chart, in my 10th house. I grew up in a church and was a youth minister in various religious and spiritual organizations. I've also been part of several different groups—Ayahuasca communities, and now a bhakti community.

So, I think all of the things I'm going to talk about with Aquarius today can easily apply to things that are generally healthy, good, and normal—things we all participate in.

I want to say that first, so everyone knows this is not an attempt to "dump on" Aquarians for being weird or culty in a negative sense. It just struck me as a fun and zany topic to dive into. But there's real correlation with it, which is why I find it so fascinating.

Now, let's refresh on why Aquarius may have something to do with these weird topics I'm going to talk about today.

For what I'm going to talk about today are alien UFO and alien abduction stories. I'll also talk about cults, famous cults, and cult leaders. And then, just generally, I'll mention a variety of different people, in both positive and maybe more weird ways, who have some association with either Jupiter or Saturn in Aquarius—just again, all for fun today.

One thing that I think is really interesting is that one of the most famous alien abduction stories is sometimes called the Hill abduction story. I just learned about this from Barney and Betty Hill, an interracial couple from the 60s. On September 19 and 20th of 1961, they claimed that they were abducted by aliens.

One of the reasons this story is cited so regularly is because it sort of helped popularize the alien abduction experience. It started to become more noticed and recognized in popular culture from this moment forward.

What I find really interesting about it is that on these days—let me actually put this up on the screen so you can see it—when I saw this, I was like, wow, maybe it's just a coincidence, but still, it’s a zany, fun, weird one. So, we're going to go back in time quickly here, and I want to show you what was happening on the days that they claimed to have been abducted.

Let's go to September 19, 1961. I goofed up earlier, it was 1961, not 1960. So now, I'm going to show you what was happening. You may not be as mind-blown as I was, but I thought this was just crazy.

First of all, on September 19, 1961, I want you to notice which two planets were in the same sign together. Oh, look, there’s Jupiter and Saturn in Capricorn together again, right? Jupiter is just about to ingress into the sign of Aquarius. On the day this all happened—September 19 and 20th—the moon was also in the sign of Aquarius. It passed over that Saturn-Jupiter conjunction and moved into Aquarius.

This is one of the iconic cultural moments in the modern history of the alien abduction story. I just think that’s crazy—an interesting coincidence that this sequence of events was happening then, and is happening again now.

The reason I say this, of course, is one of the points I’d like to make over and over today: If we see recurring stories, themes, or patterns, it shouldn’t be totally surprising.

In April of 2020—let me just show you this one. In this past year, in April of 2020—let’s go back now. Probably many of you already know this, but right as Saturn and Mars were ingressing into the sign of Aquarius...

Surprise, surprise. The Pentagon released information to the public about UFO sightings. There you have Saturn entering Aquarius, and suddenly there’s this big story in the news about the Pentagon releasing previously classified information.

If I understand this correctly, if someone out there knows more about this, please share the details in the chat box, but they released information about various UFO sightings. I think a number of these were already known, or the footage from some of them had already been out there, but I don’t think that's a coincidence again.

So, another interesting moment in the history of aliens and UFOs, relevant to what's going on right now. There’s definitely a connection with this otherworldly alien-UFO thing.

Carl Sagan—do you guys know who Carl Sagan was? He had Saturn in the sign of Aquarius.

Now, one thing that’s interesting is that Cosmos, the show that helped popularize space travel, astrophysics, black holes, and all sorts of sci-fi physics concepts, came out in 1980—right as the new Jupiter-Saturn conjunction in air signs was beginning. It’s this iconic show that fits the space and airy themes, right? And it was released just as that new Jupiter-Saturn conjunction was happening in air signs.

I didn’t put that together at first, even though I had mentioned him as a Saturn in Aquarius figure in a previous talk. So, that’s interesting.

Let me just look up one thing really quickly that I just thought of. Okay, so, yeah, that’s what I thought.

Let me show you this too—I just literally thought of this, and I was like, oh, of course, it was released around this time.

Carl Sagan had a very famous movie based on his work called Contact. It was about making contact with aliens. It starred Jodie Foster, who I believe has Saturn or Jupiter in Aquarius as well.

In 1997, Jupiter and Uranus were conjoined in Aquarius. They were co-present with one another when Contact was released. Now, that 1997 date is going to come up again a bunch in this presentation, so just bear with me here. But you can see that airy, spacey quality, right?

In fact, SETI—the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute—was founded around that time as well.

I want to show you this date that came about. SETI came about in let's see here, November 20, 1984 let's go there for a second. November 20, 1984 and check this out, search for extraterrestrial life Institute SETI. Very interesting that the day that it came out, came out, they founded the LLC paperwork that afternoon. And isn't it interesting that, whoops, isn't it interesting that the moon was going into a conjunction with Pluto in um in Scorpio and squaring Mars, who had just ingressed into Aquarius? Isn't that fascinating? I just you can't make this stuff up, that there's that continues to be these really important connections with Aquarius, surrounding important milestones or iconic moments historically around aliens, the search for extraterrestrial lives. You know, Carl, Sagan, Cosmos, there's so many. And the alien abduction story that I mentioned earlier, and this the repeats and repeats and repeats. I tried to narrow my focus just to make the point. And if you guys find more connections, interesting dates or birth charts, or, you know, founding Corporation charts like this one, this is really fun stuff to just, you know, it's just fun stuff to do occasionally. If you find anything else, please put it in the comments section, because today I'm just sort of, you know, I slapped this together, and I'm sort of winging it. So let's ask the question, though, why would Aquarius be associated with alien, alien abduction stories, UFOs and things like that? Well, it goes back to this idea of, let's just, for the sake of making it a little simple, let's just talk about Ganymede again, the water poor, this is the most the bright, shining example of humankind, who is abducted by a higher being, a God. So Zeus, this higher, you know, God slash demi god, abducts a human being because they're fascinated by them. You know, Zeus. Says fascinated by Ganymede, and there's a lust, a desire, a coveting. And remember, COVID. We talked about the etymology of that word in a previous part of this series. COVID means also to want something, perhaps at the detriment of that beings rights. I think that's really interesting, because there's this weird way in both the alien abduction stories where a person seems to lose their rights, like they're taken against their own will, or there's also this sense of whether or not the alien life is hospitable to the safety or concern of the individual. For example, in the movie contact, if you guys ever saw that movie, the aliens appear in a form that won't scare or that will be peaceful. To Jodie Foster I think that's really super interesting. So this question about hospitable foreign life and things like that. Interestingly, one of the things that psychiatrists claimed that their explanation for why Barney and Betty Hill had this alien abduction experience, whether they had it or not, I don't know, but one of the things that they said was that, well, it must have been the pressure of being this kind of alienated interracial couple in the early 60s, when the civil rights movement was, you know, starting to really it was, it was building such a ton of momentum around that time, you know. So there is this, this theme of alienation, of of abduction, of coveting or desiring something that's beautiful but taking it, and also the the special or chosen one that has some connection to the stars or the gods. These are all themes that sort of permeate Aquarius in general on a like an archetypal, mythological and even pop cultural level. So let's talk about cults and cult leaders that have that kind of Starry and these are sort of dark examples that I'm going to go through, but I will redeem it at the end by going through light examples that show us that, you know, it's not all crazy sauce and Aquarius cults and cult leaders. Bonnie nettles was an Aquarius rising. She is the one who teamed up with Marshall Applewhite to form the Heavens Gate group. And those are the ones that they if I remember, not mistaken. I didn't watch the whole documentary. I just watched the first episode. And I honestly, I honestly don't think I can watch the whole thing. I just, you know, I don't know. I'm just, I'm not a big TV person in general. Bonnie nettles was an Aquarius rising, and she was thought to be the one that really kind of harnessed Marshall Applewhite, bizarre personality, in order to form the Heavens Gate group, she kind of empowered him in his delusions. So delusions of grandeur. There's a lot of other interesting there's a lot of other interesting dimensions to the timeline. For example, in on March 26 1997 let's check. Let me show you this again. Remember this is going back to right around the time that contact was released, March. Sorry. Hold on.

 

Here it is, and let me show it to you. This is the day that they found the bodies of the Heavens Gate cult members who had taken their lives and hoping to catch a spaceship to the next level, to heaven. And what do you know there's, there's a cameo in all of these from Scorpio, by the way, but the moon is in Scorpio that day, squaring Uranus and Jupiter in Aquarius. And remember, this is right around the same time that that iconic Carl Sagan movie contact comes out. Isn't that fascinating? I mean, just an interesting and it's kind it's obviously a tragic story, but an interesting connection, nonetheless. So, Moon was in Scorpio, squaring Jupiter and Uranus that day. So scoring squaring Jupiter and Uranus, yeah. So um, Charles Manson, another famous cult leader, had the moon and Saturn in Aquarius, as well as squaring planets in Scorpio. That Scorpio combination seems to be part of it. And I think that that might be a little bit more of the occult nature that might add some of the hidden, darker and more violent aspects of of those dynamics. Like, I've noticed that when you plug in the square from Aquarius to Scorpio, you often get that like, I've actually, I've literally had sessions with people in my 10 year career who have been who are actually part of some of some really famous cults. And one pattern that I've noticed has been the square between the sign of Aquarius and Scorpio, where the the sense of something angelic, other worldly, special, divine. Nine chosen that very that Ganymede myth, that water poor myth, and sort of celestial meets something that might be a little bit darker or more malicious. And that's the kind of Mars, watery Mars influence of Scorpio. Again, are these signs? Is there anything wrong with these signs? And, oh, if you have these signs, there's something wrong with you? No, not at all. We're just we're highlighting one of the the weirder dimensions of Aquarius. And you'll notice that Scorpio comes up in a lot of these too. There's one that's, I throw this in, not because it fits the same bill as the rest of them, but the Rastafarians, for example, Bob Marley born with the sun and Aquarius and the Moon in Scorpio. And he was, of course, involved in the, you know, the Rastafarian cult. And that is, it's a religious cult. So I say cult respectfully. And, you know, it's not like, again, it's not like, necessarily, like an evil word, but that was, you know, definitely like, if you've ever looked into what Rastafarians believed, like they had some really unique beliefs. Obviously, some of them are really sort of peace loving, and others are really weird. Like, I don't know if you've ever really looked into it, and no disrespect, because, you know, I don't know my own religious community, the bhakti community, has a really bizarre past as well. And actually, the founder of the Hare Krishna movement, when it was brought to the United States, he was just a monk who came over and got it going. He had an Aquarius rising right? It was by and large for a lot of people around the 60s, for many people considered it a cult, and it's had to evolve and grow into, you know, kind of carrying the mantle being like a responsible religious community. Then had to, it's had to weed out certain elements of fanaticism over the years and stuff like that. So there that you'll see that Aquarian thing in a lot of different religious and spiritual groups and organizations in general. And not all of them are necessarily bad. A lot of them are by and large that you might see a lot of themes of pacifism, peace, it's not all murderous. It doesn't all end in suicide. Or, you know what I mean. So anyway, another one that comes from the 90s that has this weird history is David Koresh. You guys remember the Waco, Texas compound. David Koresh had the moon in Aquarius, and while Saturn was in Aquarius in the early 90s, they were his at the branch of Dravidians, or whatever they were called. They were found dead after a blaze at their Waco Texas compound. All of that started to be triggered. I think it was pretty close to Aquarius season. It was like in February of what 9290 I can't remember, but any rate, at any rate, when they found everyone dead in the compound that was a Saturn and Aquarius moment in the early 90s. There are some interesting connections with the Jim Jones timeline, the Jim Jones cult, if you know about that one, but not his birth chart, per se. I'm not going to go into those because they're a little scattered. There's another one, another guy named Joseph De mom, bro, I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that correctly. Who's the leader of the Order of the Solar Temple. He had an Aquarius mid heaven and rose to power while Saturn was in his mid heaven, prior to another, you know, suicide murder spree that ended that that cult. L Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, was born just as like, literally, as you know, Mars and Uranus were ingressing into Aquarius. I think that's interesting. I pay a lot of attention to planetary ingresses at the time of birth. So even if a person isn't born with planets in Aquarius, if they were born as planets were just about to enter Aquarius, I'll tend to read that chart is that the Aquarian themes and that those planets and the Aquarian themes will rise to prominence as the life goes on. I think that's really interesting. Not only that, but on May 9, 1950 on the day that Dianetics was published, the moon had ingressed into Aquarius. Dianetics becomes the book that ends up launching the entire Church of Scientology. Not only that, but you can see, for example, Tom Cruise big into Scientology Saturn in Aquarius. Okay, so that's just, you know, again, a scatter shot of interesting parallels. And what do those cults have in common? Oh, a lot of them involve trips to the stars. A lot of them involve the sense of a special kind of chosen Messiah, like figure, which Ganymede is definitely associated with. Not Not it's not really the Christ motif, which I personally tend to when people say that Jesus has a lot to do with Pisces or Aries, those signs, especially Aries, seems to me to be a really good one for Jesus, and that I could do a different talk on that sometimes, because people are always like Aries. Why? But there's some really interesting reasons for that anyway. That's an aside, but the Ganymede is more like this special. Well, it has a messianic quality to it, but there's also this kind of Starry, airy, ascending to Olympus quality that's very otherworldly. It's not like the consecration of a martyr, which is connected to the word Mars, and that's why I tend to like Aries for Jesus, kind of a shepherd figure, which is connected with Aries too, but at any rate. But these are kind of like other worldly. There's a sense of other worldly savior or Messiah, you know, hop on the spaceship, you know, and again, depending on what it's combining with in the chart. It's not usually just that Aquarian quality, but there's something maybe connected with it. And again, like, if I look at, you know, my own life, I have an Aquarius mid heaven, and I had a really charismatic father who was a preacher, my life changed dramatically when, you know, I had the position of being the president of a youth organization in high school. I was this kind of charismatic leader. And I was a kind of charismatic youth pastor, and then met really charismatic Shamans in the Amazon drinking crazy potions, you know, and, and, and, of course, now I'm into bhakti yoga and and astrology, and I've had really interesting charismatic kind of other worldly teachers in my life, and a lot of that is fit with transits to Aquarius in my 10th house, when Neptune ingressed into Aquarius, in my 10th house, I met some of the most important and other worldly philosophy teachers in my life who just inspired me to be thinking about things in very esoteric and multi dimensional ways. I had my first Eastern philosophy teacher, when Neptune ingressed into Aquarius in the 10th. I got really into the underlying Taoist philosophy of Star Wars when Neptune ingressed into Aquarius in the 10th. So you'll see that that Aquarian nature is pretty broad, but there's often this kind of spacey, other worldly, messianic quality to it. I consider those things to tone my work. If you listen to my channel, you'll notice that I'm always talking about this kind of the need for this kind of other worldly, spiritual focus. So I think that all of those things can, they can express themselves in a range of ways. And it's not always going to be, you know, David Koresh, or, you know, the Heavens Gate people, or whatever, again, just to redeem some of the Aquarius who Aquarians who are listening to this, you know, let's talk a little bit about Jupiter and Aquarius. You've got Albert Einstein. There's a gifted genius space child, right? You have Barack Obama, who was seen as this kind of cultural icon,

 

Diana, Princess of Wales. You do have dark examples as well, like Joseph Stalin. You have Helena Blavatsky, who is really a leader illuminary in the Theosophical Society. And that is also another one of these really interesting kind of spiritual esoteric cults that has this kind of Starry dimension to it. You have dark figures, though, like Pablo Escobar, Fidel Castro. You have playboys that have a weird cult following, like Hugh Hefner. You have the chosen child of Michael Phelps this like, like, Olympian athlete. And there's a real, there's a weird way in which he has this kind of Ganymede status. He's, he's like one of the most decorated phenoms of all time as a swimmer. You have Dave Chappelle, who is also, to me, is like he was a wonder kid when he first came out right. And you also have people who are kind of the weird alien otherness, like Dennis Rodman, Boy George HP Lovecraft, Miles Davis, Enya, how about Alan Watts as a philosopher, right? So, really interesting figures with Jupiter and Aquarius and Saturn in Aquarius. You know, I already went over some of these, but Tom Cruise, Charles Manson, interestingly, Saturn in Aquarius. Michael Jordan, if there has ever been a cult surrounding a sports figure, it might be Michael Jordan. In fact, they were saying that the Air Jordan logo was, at one point, the most recognized symbol in the world, next to the cross. Just think about that for a second. Then there was, you know, there's Nietzsche, there's Salvador Dali, there's Alistair Crowley. These are all Saturn and Aquarius figures, Carl Jung who are also, by the way, and no one ever wants to say this, but the Jungian world is a cult. And I'm not saying that in a negative sense. I'm just saying he was a cult leader. Now, he was a cult leader again, that I would say is on this on the side of being really interesting, really intelligent, very progressive, revolutionizing astrology, you know, kind of bringing astrology back. But he also, he's into some really weird shit, like to just to be totally honest, like, you know, think about the Red Book, or just think about the Red Book for a while, if you've ever read it. I mean, you know what? I mean. So it's Carl Jung is. Is, he's a cult, and he's got a fascination. He he develops a cult following a school that comes out in his name, a whole style of of work that comes about in his, you know, in his own mode. So again, note, I don't mean that negatively, but the people that like to paint Carl Jung as this kind of pioneering intellectual who is, like, well respected in academic, in the academic canonical sense. No, no, he, he has, he's like, he has this dimension to him that's well respected academically and intellectually. But he's also, he's into the I Ching. He's into astrology. He's into esoteric things. He's into the the realm of the unconscious and going into these bizarre altered states, and he develops, in some ways, a crowd around him that is, you know, that worships Him. And one of the things I loved about James Hillman, who was one of his students, was that James Hillman said there's a cult of of people around Carl Jung that are following him like he's the letter of the law coming down from the mountain, you know, with Moses. And actually, what we should be doing is taking the best ideas, but living the way he lived. He left he led a psychological life. It's not like he he didn't want us to be clones of him. He wanted us to think and learn and live with psychological depth and and meaning and keep going. But you also have this phenomenon where a lot of people you know, a lot of the times, what happens with great teachers, as we know over the over time, is that rather than emulating the way they lived and doing it in our own way, we end up doing exactly what they do and sort of becoming clones of someone, and that's also gets into this weird dimension of Aquarius that has to do with like teachings. But then they can get kind of robotic and mechanical, and they can start to get like, cloned and hard, and that's kind of part of the saturnine dimension of Aquarius, where there's a rigidity around something that is very beautiful and almost like ethereal, and then somehow it becomes like mechanical and sort of artificial. So you have to watch for that a little bit as well. At any rate, these are just the ramblings of a zany Friday show about starry cults, aliens, abductions and other fun Aquarius stuff. So I hope that you enjoyed this today. Please leave other connections that you see or you can make in the comment section. Keep it kind. Keep it civil. I delete comments that are jerky. You know, even if you make a good point, if you do it in a jerky way, I tend to delete it in the meantime, my Kickstarter is doing pretty well. We're moving towards 691 backers. That's our goal. I really appreciate your support. If you're able to donate, feel free to pitch in, pick up a reward reading or one of the gift lectures that I give that's totally exclusive to the Kickstarter, or 50% off one of my astrology programs in 2021 so I hope you guys are having a great Friday. Hope you have a great weekend here. And thank you guys again for your support. And I hope you enjoyed this little encore. Jupiter Saturn talk. Alright, take it easy. Everyone. Bye.