The Approaching Revolution — A Solar Eclipse in Aquarius on the Horizon

Hey everyone. This is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology [https://nightlightastrology.com/].

Today we're going to take a look at the solar eclipse in the sign of Aquarius that is coming up. I have a deeper reflection, sort of essay meditation that I wrote on this upcoming Eclipse that I'm going to share with you today that will take us into some of the ancient, sort of mystical roots of Aquarius, a sign that we don't always consider to be so mystical.

I think as soon as we start talking about Aquarius in terms of groups of people and the technological innovations that come about, like the internet or AI, there's something about Aquarius that feels so mental and technological that we forget that its origins are actually deeply mystical. So I want to try to get back to some of the mystical roots of this sign and take a unique angle on this upcoming Eclipse.

Now there will be opportunities for us to look at this eclipse from a variety of other perspectives. So this is just one more to consider. We'll do some horoscopes eventually, and take a look at this from the standpoint of previous nodal cycles in Aquarius and Leo, because that's also fascinating. But some of those things I will actually allude to in today's talk as well.

So we'll be developing some ideas from this talk as we go on anyway. That's the agenda for today. Remember to like and subscribe, share your comments, your reflections. It's always nice to hear from you all.

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So February 17, we have a very late degree Aquarius solar eclipse. The nodes are out of sign, but this is officially our first eclipse in Aquarius before the nodes change signs. In August, we have a solar eclipse in Leo in August, and in late July, we'll have a full moon in Aquarius that is conjoined with Pluto, while also opposite Jupiter, at the same time that Jupiter's cazimi.

So it'll be a Jupiter Pluto opposition with with a full moon in Aquarius opposite, uh, sun. That's cazimi. I can almost promise you that some of the things we are talking about today will recur in late July and early August, most notably among them, the Aquarius Leo themes.

But I think we're in a year where we are going to see some very powerful astrological symbolism when it comes to this Aquarius Leo axis, changes of leadership are very common, regime changes, changes of political and social direction can revolutionize very quickly and rapidly with this axis, what to speak of Saturn and Neptune meeting, or Uranus trining Pluto Uranus going into Gemini.

So with all of that in mind, and it being such a big year, I have been trying to work a little bit more deeply into the space of Aquarius with the solar eclipse coming up, I prepared something today. Remember that I've said this a few times on the channel, but I am right now in pre drafting mode for the next book I'm going to write.

I'm in the process of editing and finishing a book, and then we'll be starting in on another one later this year. Some of you will be joining me for the first draft of that book because of the Kickstarter, so that'll be fun. But as I'm pre drafting and kind of finding my voice, I've been using some of those attempts at writing to to use for content, is what I'm trying to say.

So today I have a meditation that I've prepared, and I'm I'm sort of speaking off from it a little bit. I usually read what I've written pretty close, but then we'll kind of go off in my own directions at times too, if something comes up. So anyway, but this is mostly a written meditation on Aquarius and the solar eclipse in Aquarius, I hope you will enjoy it and take something good from it.

All right, here we go. There are moments as an astrologer now over 16 years where more than the heavens seem to be simply mirroring something they seem to be instead of just simply mirroring something, they seem to be asking something. Will you do this? Will you go here? Will you become this like an invitation rather than just a mirror?

And it's peculiar because sometimes the heavens just in its constant revolving just beautifully mirrors, and doesn't need to say anything more than just providing this meaningful mirror. But then there are certain moments where something is being asked of us, as though we are in some moments meant to choose how and where and when we will participate in something that we're being asked to co create.

This is a perennial and archetypal experience that I think belongs somewhere in the sign of Aquarius. Honestly, these invitations from the heavens to participate in the creation of a new Cosmos, of a new world. They have to feel like invitations, because otherwise we would be constantly resigned to the forces of fate. We would be throwing up our hands and not believing our efforts and actions mattered.

Aquarius has a peculiar way of inviting participation, because it's not so much an invitation to do this as much as Aquarius provides us with an invitation to let this go. Aquarius is not really inviting us to become more in a heroic sense, as much as it is offering us an opportunity to empty something.

You can see this in the image of the water bearer in many constellation images who is pouring out the picture of the heavenly waters into the sky, down to the earth. This sense of emptying is natural to the sign of Aquarius, and it stands in a kind of beautiful juxtaposition to the fullness, the Royal fullness of the Sun in Leo, in this Saturn ruled sign, there's a sense of emptying something that is full in the opposite sign across many different spiritual and religious traditions on our planet, this gesture appears again and again, and it wears a lot of different names and different faces, and It is associated with different myths.

In the Christian theology that I grew up in. It is sometimes called kenosis. And I'm may not be pronouncing that exactly right, but that's an approximation, as far as I understand. It comes from the Greek word Keno, meaning to empty, to pour out, to relinquish. Mm. Now, I grew up a Christian in the church, so this language is familiar to me, but it doesn't have to be familiar to you to get something out of it. Doesn't you don't have to be a Christian to gain something.

From the perspective in an early Christian hymn preserved in the book of Philippines, Philippians. Excuse me, the Philippines. In the early Christian hymn that was preserved in Philippians, Jesus is said to quote, not clung to equality with God, but emptied himself taking the form of a servant. This is deeply Aquarian, and this is starting to get into the mystical nature of the sign of Aquarius, because in this Christian mythos, divinity is revealed in the person of Jesus, not through dominance or transcendence, but through voluntary descent, through vulnerability, through restraint, through power, choosing limitation in a love that is refusing to try to grasp anything through control or power or want.

I think that this voluntary descent of something heavenly to something earthly often finds itself articulated in the astrological symbolism of Aquarius. Aquarius is kenotic. It's really important to distinguish between Aquarius as the water of the heavens and the one who carries it and distributes it. The distinction is really important, because the water bearer pours something essential and heavenly into the world while remaining paradoxically untouched by it.

The water isn't just personal nourishment, although it can fill personal needs. This kind of water is meant for circulation. It's meant for the collective. It's meant for life beyond the self, although it can also fill the self. Aquarius is a sign that frequently gives without possessing and transmits without consuming. In that way, some people have sometimes thought you can think of Aquarius like an electrical grid or the, you know, the kind of nervous system of the body it doesn't possess. It just transmits and moves and circulates.

Now, the mythic figure associated with the sign of Aquarius, and this, some of these canodic images, is Ganymede. Ganymede is, if you don't know, he's abducted by Zeus. He's a mortal. He's a human. He's abducted by Zeus. He's taken to Olympus to serve as a cup bearer to the gods. So first of all, he's chosen. He's desired by the Divine. He's elevated by the Divine. He's even immortalized, but at the cost of his own ordinary human life.

And so He is described as honored yet alienated, exalted yet bound to service. He belongs, sort of everywhere and nowhere at once. And the role of the cup bearer in this story, this astrological story, carries this very peculiar little detail and irony, traditionally, the cup bearer drinks first from the King to ensure that the wine is not poisoned.

Isn't it interesting, though, that here we have a God making a mortal his cup bearer, a God who is immune to mortal harm, but nevertheless, we can see that need for a human cup bearer as a desire for intimacy with what can kill, with what is mortal, his love and desiring and sort of coveting of Ganymede and making Ganymede the cup bearer, the one who can taste the mortal poison.

That's that is, that is betraying the interest that the divine has in mortality. It's, it's giving it's like a little secret in the story that gives it away. The gods are interested in us. They're actually interested in and want to be as close as they can to the Mortal Realm, just like all of us are interested in what is other, what is different.

So the mortal becomes a bridge in the Ganymede story. Ganymede is the one who can taste risk, vulnerability and being finite, this is already kenotic, or this is a form of kenosis. It's not humiliation, but it's a kind of proximity purchased through vulnerability. The Immortal is drawing near to mortality through one who can suffer. You see how the Ganymede story parallels very closely some of the details of the Christ story.

God's Son chosen special but not because he won any competition. Just happens to be beloved of God, and it's the proximity that Jesus will have to mortality and death, not through his power and omnipotence that draws the omnipotent figure down and into the space of vulnerability and frailty and mortality.

This is these symbols of the the God wanting to empty itself of mortality and be proximately close to the emptiness of form in the material world, the what the Buddhists tell us, right? Everything is always changing. And so there's some way in which everything is always being emptied out. As soon as it happens, it's gone. As soon as it happens, it's poured out. It the moment is like a full cup as its instantaneous passing into the next is it being emptied.

Buddhism is very kenotic, but so too are all these traditions that are seeking for the transcendent divinity, which is often thought of as overarching power or control or mastery, and is undying and sort of permanent, that that seeks this emptying of itself so that it can taste and touch what dies and what is mortal.

Now this starts. It may sound a little abstract philosophically, but follow me here, because it becomes really tangible and easy to track once we pull a few more threads all the way through. Aquarius is traditionally ruled by Saturn, and that's important because it keeps the sign of Aquarius from drifting into abstraction or sentimentality.

It's very important, because sometimes people think of Aquarius like the Age of Aquarius, and we start thinking about it like it's this, I don't know, like a utopian birthday party or so or something, but Saturn, as we know, is the planet of time, of limitation, of exile, of outcasts, of obligation, of endurance of old age, disease and death under Saturn's governance, Aquarius doesn't promise ease, it promises something more like meaningful burdens.

Saturn is always teaching us that certain callings are not chosen because they're pleasant, but because they're necessary to be set apart under the banner of Saturn astrologically, is often to be misunderstood, to be resented or to be envied. Ganymede is resented by the gods the other gods. He's also resented by people. You know, Christ is rejected. So the Aquarian archetype frequently carries the mark of a scapegoat, chosen without consent, elevated without any sovereignty, tasked without any kind of applause.

So kenosis, under Saturn, becomes a discipline and a meaningful burden of service and sacrifice and self emptying for the good of something bigger, so that something bigger can circulate, so that something heavenly can be poured out and into this fallen world. So to speak, it's a kind of holding back or emptying oneself so that something larger can pass through and circulate.

This is also present in the Hermetica. If you don't have a taste for Christianity, then think about hermetic philosophy. In the Hermetica, spiritual awakening comes not through an accumulation of some substance or some knowledge or some status or some level it comes through interior emptying. The initiate is instructed to strip away identification with the body, not that does not mean distreat bad treatment of the body. It means to strip away identification with the body, with extremes, with passions that are too much and with any kind of social persona that inhibits the ability to receive heavenly Gnosis that is always pouring down and through.

Heavenly Gnosis can't descend and circulate through us where pride and self importance have blocked any openings. Revelation doesn't occur from the standpoint of hermetic philosophy, because the soul captures truth and understands and grasps it, because it becomes transparent enough to see it. It becomes clear enough to be a vessel and a medium for it.

We think sometimes truth is something we understand. But I think what's so beautiful about the Hermetica, anyways, is it says no truth is something that starts flowing through you. You understand it because it's flowing through you, not because you're holding it and attaching some kind of social merit to it, and you can feel some of the subtle contrast with the sign of Leah, which also has its own values and virtues to add to the conversation.

But you can feel it Hermes himself is a mediator, a translator, a psycho pomp. He's not a sovereign God at all. He's a circulator of meaning between worlds. He doesn't rule heaven. He moves wisdom between heaven and earth, and this is all deeply Aquarian. Knowledge flows only where there is space being made, even the orphic. Let's try another one. If you've ever heard anything about the orphic Hymns. They are quite beautiful. They offer a more ecstatic, if not a little bit more violent, form of kenosis.

In the myth of Dionysus, the god is dismembered, he's scattered, he's consumed, and humanity is born from the mingling of divine ash and the Titanic residue. Divinity, in this sense, doesn't visit the world, it is torn apart into the world. And that also carries some resemblance to both Ganymede and to the figure of Christ, mythologically speaking, Christ is put on the cross and torn apart, and then it is the resurrected form of that torn apart body that serves as this kind of alchemical symbolic bridge between the heaven and earth, between Olympus and the world, so to speak.

And similarly, Ganymede, by taking up this position of emptying in service, being a sort of prisoner of the gods, captured and yet disseminating the heavenly nourishment of the Divine. We need these figures that act as intermediaries. They're servants. Sometimes they even become martyrs. Sometimes, like Dionysus, for their active service to be generative, they have to be literally dismembered and torn apart. This is not easy stuff, and yet it's stuff we should be talking about with an upcoming solar eclipse in Aquarius in Buddhism.

Here's another place kenotic pattern. It's not called kenosis, but it takes another form. The Buddha renounced power, luxury, kingship, so to speak, he was a prince Not, not to gain status, like, look at me, I'm so renounced, but specifically to awaken from illusion, because it was the emptying that facilitated the awakening. And so in Buddhism, enlightenment is not an acquisition, it's a release, where Jesus or Christ empties himself into suffering love, the Buddha empties himself into insight and compassion.

Hermes recommends emptying your mind so that Gnosis can flow. Zeus is somehow capable, and the gods are capable of bringing something heavenly to earth through the act of an intermediary, sort of suffering, servant Taoism, another one I love. These are all my favorites. As you guys know who watched my channel, I think this is maybe the most cosmic articulation, honestly in the Tao Te Ching, emptiness is not just sacrificial, because what we're talking about right now can, you know, can drift into a bit like the suffering servant, the martyr, the intermediary that suffers, carries a weight, a burden, but brings something nourishing.

But in Taoism, emptiness is not just sacrifice. It is usefulness. Lao Tzu says we shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want. That's a modern English translation. Of course, the Tao doesn't impose. The Tao Te Ching tells us that it withdraws, and as it withdraws, it nourishes. It doesn't claim credit, and as it lacks the desire to claim credit. It gives all credit.

Power circulates through restraint. The sage leads not by asserting, but by giving and emptying and valleys water and shadow become metaphors for where true potency lies. And so, in a way, Taoism is like natural, elemental, animistic kenosis, no drama. It's inherent in nature. Don't necessarily need a crucifix or martyrdom or big theatrical acts of suffering servants, although that can be very Aquarian. The Taoist version is actually nature does this, if you just watch the natural flow of the Tao, is that it empties things that are full.

And think again of the fullness, almost as a contrary image of the in Leo, like the fullness of the sun and the way that fullness is also an important archetype. It's not that emptiness is better than fullness that would be silly. You know, it's like because they're in a conversation and in a dialog. But when we think about a solar eclipse coming up in the sign of Aquarius.

With the North Node in the sign of Aquarius, we are talking about the door opening in front of us as a canodic door, as a door of emptying, as a door of serving, as a door of meaningful burdens that we carry for the sake of enlightenment, or for the sake of enlightenment for humanity, enlightenment, enlightenment for ourselves.

Solar eclipses tend to mark resets of identity and purpose on a personal level, collectively a little different. It's a moment an eclipse is when the light by which we know ourselves or a sense of life, direction or purpose is briefly, briefly darkened. And so when that happens, and then the light returns, it can be almost like a kind of invitation.

I started off saying, sometimes it feels like the heavens are inviting us to something. I honestly think it's mostly our willingness to participate that avoids us feeling like we were abducted. But even then, the urgency with which the call takes place can feel a little dissociating. Can feel like some part of us has been abducted by the urgent course of history.

A canodic North Node Aquarius Eclipse. I don't think it says, What do you want to become like some brave, heroic solar eclipse? They often feel like that. I don't even mean to make fun of it. It's just by by contrast, an Aquarian canodic Eclipse says, What are you being asked to carry it's not necessarily glamorous. Where do you have to step back so that life can move forward? Or what privilege certainty or attachment is asking to be relinquished, not just as a punishment, but as a kind of meaningful offering?

This call will express itself differently for every person in different areas of life. We'll get to those when we get to our horoscopes, but you may notice that it coincides with the need to release a certain degree of status of recognition or of control because of something that you feel called to serve. But in order to serve it, you have to empty something else.

There's a role of service that feels meaningful, but it could be relatively, maybe not entirely, but relatively invisible. There could be a season of alienation that slowly but steadily clarifies your vocation in life. I remember, as someone with the South Node in Aquarius, right on my midheaven, very familiar with this. A lot of my 20s were spent going through, you know, a long period from high school onward, of social alienation, not compared to what some people experience. But it was my own little version of it.

I was bullied in high school, fell out of alignment with the Christian church, felt like a lot of people in my life suddenly thought I was going, you know, straight to he double hockey sticks. And it was that alienation that started slowly clarifying my my direction, eventually to becoming an astrologer, to drinking Ayahuasca, to blazing my own path.

There was a sense I remember when I handed in my resignation to the senior pastor of my church when I was a youth minister. I remember that well, and I specifically remember by the way that was happening while Neptune was in my 10th house, making aspects in Aquarius. I remember when that happened, knowing that it was so clear to me that I didn't fit in.

In this deepening inner sense of alienation from the Christian church was slowly but steadily clarifying where I wanted to go, but first I had to empty myself of my Christian identity. That was really painful. It was really hard, and one of the ways of measuring in, I want to be careful saying this, but one of the ways of measuring like is this really the direction is there should be some proportional sense that there's there's some something pretty deep that needs emptying if it's going to be filled at an equally deep level with something new and exciting.

You know what I mean? Sometimes it's a simple thing that can end up being a huge thing that you have to let go of. A kenotic opening can feel like a confrontation with envy, misunderstanding or projection, because Aquarian figures or Aquarian periods of time in our life, where our life purpose is defined by Aquarian kenotic Ganymede, like roles or segues will often elicit envy, disrespect.

Misunderstanding, projection, and so being the black sheep, being the outsider, having to deal with not feeling like you fit in, and yet having to empty yourself of any pride, any need that the ego has, it's essential, and that doesn't mean it's easy, but it's like, you know, I think back again to my little example of leaving the youth ministry, leaving the Christian church.

Well, I knew how to if I had stayed in that world. I knew very well how to achieve a pretty high degree of, you know, accomplishment. I had a path laid out, but my dad as a pastor, I knew how you had to act and behave and all of those things I could have. I could have just stayed there and probably not dealt with misunderstandings or projections or whatever.

The point is that when you know you have to go in a direction and you know you're going to be met by certain people or groups that maybe you previously were aligned with that will not understand you or not agree with you, but you've got to do it. People wonder why in 2020 ish, 21 there, it seemed like a lot of people were becoming radicalized.

What we mean by that? I'm I just mean it generally, whether it's a conspiracy theory someone gets really obsessed with maybe even a pretty meaningful, exciting one, a religious group or and I even think to myself, I was getting really deeply involved with the bhava to yoga community that I was a part of, right? But why was that happening, and why was the need to empty yourself of what anyone thinks about you a part of that for a lot of people, because we had a Jupiter Saturn conjunction in Aquarius that year, similarly kenotic.

In order for this thing to work, I have to empty some other sense of what matters or who cares about me socially, there might be a responsibility that cannot be delegated. You have to take it on. Kenosis is hard because, like Saturn itself, it sets the status quo against an image or a vision or a direction that we have to take moving now into a different future, and in order to go in that direction, for whatever reason, the only prerequisite is that you drop everything on the trail beside you.

You just kind of have to go, Oh, okay. Like, I won't be able to understand what I'm going to do next, or I won't be able to carry it or serve it, or I won't be able to connect with it or get the clarity that I need from this path. Unless I have, I have to, like, empty some things. So there's the Water Bearer who wants something to flow through us. But what can flow through us if there's no space that's been created?

Aquarius reminds us you're not the source of the water. You are its steward. It's not surprising that one of the oldest ways of talking about kings and their court advisors who are often astrologers. Is through the Leo Aquarius access a king has to rule and take up the mantle of being full, the full emblem of life and light and guidance and law and whatever, in an archetypal sense. You know, Kings queens, that's what they do.

What is the you know? What? Does? What is the role of the Aquarian court astrologer? It is to be the constant reminder to the king that you are a steward. And there are these larger patterns. There's this larger heavenly wisdom before you do something, before you say something, before you create a new policy. You need kenosis, which is connected to Kairos. Right timing, felt timing.

How can you be in touch with the kairotic sense of the right time to do something in alignment with the Tao, in alignment with larger cycles, unless you have emptied yourself? The basic act of emptying oneself, if you're a king, is to accept the guidance and counsel of someone outside of yourself, the court astrologer, the Aquarian, right? This is archetypal.

There's lots of ways of thinking about astrologers and kings and whatever throughout the whole zodiac, but this is a frequent one, because Aquarius says you are not the source. You are the steward of the source. And Saturn is always reminding us in this sign, that stewardship is a kind of sacred service to something bigger than ourself that has a cost.

And the mystics in kenotic, Aquarian fashion in the ancient world, reminded us all the time, emptiness is not just lack, it's capacity. It's a capacity to let something flow through. So at moments like this, the sky is not asking us to shine brighter, even though there's a solar eclipse happening. And a lot of the times we talk about solar eclipse like, how are you going to redefine your purpose?

But this is a weird year, right? Because we're later in the year, we're going to get Jupiter in Leo, opposing Pluto. In Aquarius with a solar eclipse in Leo. What it means to feel special is so deeply connected to whether or not you're doing something that warrants feeling special about yourself. You know what I mean? It's like for any of us.

We know what that's like. It's hard to take pride in something that you don't feel authentically aligned with in service, like, oh, I this is what I'm doing with my life. On some level, feels like something I can get behind, something I believe in. This is a year that has a lot to do with who and what we can get behind, because we believe that it is part of something bigger.

Aquarius reminds us that we're not always meant to shine brighter, but rather to make space, to pour out something that we carry as an active service. So something larger and more truthful, maybe even more communal can take shape. I think that the water bearer is often a servant, sometimes suffering, whose job it is to empty a pitcher, because the world is thirsty.

How could you possibly know how to empty a pitcher unless you yourself have been emptied out enough to carry what's in the vessel. Pour it through yourself, only if there's been space to get it in there. So just some deeper philosophical reflections about this upcoming Eclipse, I hope they're useful. It's a fascinating theme to consider, and one of the things we'll do later when we look at the historic Eclipse cycles is look at some of the things that were happening around Aquarian eclipses.

One that comes to my mind is Nelson Mandela being released from prison, for example, as the North Node Solar Eclipse and Aquarius in proximity to that event and to lots of other things, lots of distributions of water, collectively and socially, you could say, and also the theme of like people that seem chosen in some way by the course of destiny to serve something bigger, whose contribution is often defined more in terms of their sacrifice than of their heroic success.

Anyway. All right, I'll leave it there. I hope you guys are having a good week and that this was, this was interesting. So have great weekend. We'll see you again on Monday. Bye.