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Aquarius
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Aquarius, the Water-Bearer, falls in the depth of winter, when the year's cold is at its most settled and the world is stripped back to its structure. The sign inclines toward principle, originality, detachment and a concern for the group as much as the individual. It values friendship, freedom and fair systems, and it is often ahead of its time. Its gift is clear, independent thinking; its difficulty can be aloofness, or holding to an idea more firmly than to the people it was meant to serve.
Element, mode and polarity
Aquarius is an Air sign of the fixed mode. Air gives it an intellectual, social cast; the fixed mode makes its convictions steady and sometimes stubborn — Aquarius changes the world more readily than it changes its mind. It is masculine (active) and diurnal. Its fellow Air signs are Gemini and Libra; its fellow fixed signs are Taurus, Leo and Scorpio.
Rulership and dignities
- Domicile: Saturn in traditional astrology, its day house (Capricorn is the other). Modern astrologers give Aquarius to Uranus, and many read both.
- Exaltation: no traditional planet is exalted in Aquarius.
- Detriment: the Sun, whose home Leo lies opposite.
- Fall: none in the traditional scheme.
In a chart
Planets in Aquarius tend to express themselves through ideas, groups and a wish to do things differently. The Moon here often needs space and may process feelings by thinking about them; Mercury inclines to inventive, objective, sometimes contrary thinking; Venus favours friendship within love and room to breathe. The Sun, in detriment, may find its identity less in personal glory than in belonging to something larger. The house with Aquarius on its cusp is often where a person seeks freedom, community and reform. With Aquarius on the Ascendant, Saturn (and, for modern astrologers, Uranus) becomes the chart ruler, and the person often seems friendly yet a little reserved, and distinctly their own.
The tradition
Ptolemy counts Aquarius among the solid signs and gives it, with Capricorn, to Saturn: cold signs opposite the luminaries' houses, suited to the planet whose nature is cold and whose orbit lies farthest from the Sun and Moon. Lilly calls Aquarius "aierial, hot and moyst", of the airy triplicity, "diurnal, sanguine, fixed, rational, humane, masculine", Western, "the principall house of Saturn, and house wherein he most rejoyceth". It governs the legs and ankles. Its places are hilly, uneven ground, freshly dug earth, quarries and mines, vineyards, and spots near a little spring or conduit; in a house, the roof, eaves and upper parts. Lilly describes a strong, well-composed body, not tall, a longish face, and often a fair skin with sandy or flaxen hair. Its colour is a sky colour with blue; among its countries and cities he names Westphalia, Piedmont, Hamburg and Bremen. The Air triplicity is ruled by Saturn by day and Mercury by night.
In the tarot
The Golden Dawn's correspondences, which most English-language decks follow.
Major Arcana: The Star
Its three decans: Five of Swords (Venus, 0°–10°), Six of Swords (Mercury, 10°–20°), Seven of Swords (Moon, 20°–30°)