You are something the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is something that the whole ocean is doing.
~ Alan Watts

Aquarian work is universal work, as alluded to above by Alan Watts, reflecting on how the work of the individual is to serve the Whole. This reflects the notion of the “holographic paradigm,” which I first encountered in the mid-1980s upon moving to California from the East Coast, in the then-popular book The Aquarian Conspiracy by Marilyn Ferguson. The holographic paradigm referred to the interconnectedness of all existence, with the whole reflected within each part. The entire web of life, including consciousness and the invisible realms, is of a piece. From this perspective, everything affects everything else, including material plane existence. This is the principle underlying the resonance of the astrological archetypes.

Writer, Trappist monk, and mystic Thomas Merton—whose Sun, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Uranus, and North Node were all in Aquarius—beautifully exemplifies Aquarius’ wide-seeing consciousness, as well as its reclusive tendencies. While living in retreat from ordinary life, Merton contributed greatly to the ideas of the time, both politically and spiritually, through his many writings. He wrote:

My job is to press forward, to grow interiorly, to pray, to break away from attachments and to defy fears; to grow in faith, which has its own solitude, to see an entirely new perspective and new dimensions in my life. To open up new horizons at any cost. 

Tension of the Opposites: Self vs. Community

Merton’s book Thoughts in Solitude is aptly named, given that Aquarius, while aspiring to Unity, also carries the torch for personal individuation as separate and apart from the group, due to its Uranus influence. To achieve an authentic, separate identity, solitude is necessary. One cannot individuate, or easily innovate, from within a group. Here is a central paradox of Aquarius—it is determined to live for and embrace the collective, and yet it urges us to develop our uniqueness.

It seems to me that this tension between wanting to contribute to society, to be part of something—whether a movement, a team, a cause, or a community—and wanting to be alone, in order to connect with oneself and the vast other-than-human world that exists beyond the self, whether that of nature and the stars, or other planes of existence and ways of knowing, will be baked into the years ahead, with Pluto now concentrated through the Aquarian theme until 2043/44. The Pluto “game” of transformation, if you will, will be an Aquarian one.

Intentional time taken in solitude will be needed in order to deprogram ourselves from centuries of Capricornian and Piscean conditioning. But coming out of isolation—a disease of our time—and joining our essential selves with community will be an equally vibrant theme. The collective needs individuated selves. Individuals need to express in the collective.

Aquarius works in tandem with its polarity partner, Leo. Finding release from our acculturated beliefs and ways in part requires coming down off the ego-obsession of distorted Leo energy. Exaggerated self-focus and self-aggrandizement is another sickness of our time, necessitating the antidote of the Aquarian vision of all beings as equally special. We need to achieve the Goldilocks effect here—finding just enough ego to make an authentic, creative contribution, while offering it in service to a shared vision that welcomes and honors the greater community of Life.

Turning to the other-than-human community, I have been learning about African elephant tribes and their behaviors through the graceful work of writer and conservationist Eleanor O’Hanlon [75], who travels to and shares about some of the world’s oldest and wisest animal beings. The mores of the ancient elephants provide a powerful window into the integrated Aquarian-Leo polarity, given that they are very social animals—even democratic (!), allowing anyone—even the young—to at times influence the elder leaders’ decisions, while also conveying an enormous amount of Leonine love to their family members. This love is lavished upon the infants, through the touch and play offered by many elders, as well as on the deceased, for whom continued reverence is shown both in memory and in actions. (Elephants spend sometimes weeks standing beside the boney remains of their dead.)

In Aquarian fashion, elephants’ seeing stretches beyond the now, into deep time, picking up on the vibrations of their ancestors. We might take them as a model in reclaiming the wisdom of our own ancestors, honoring their suffering, as well as the value of the lived experiences of our own personal past. In our post-modern “screen era,” excessively mental Aquarius energy—isolated, detached, and often overly captured by futuristic visions (such as the virtual world of Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, and Jeff Bezos’ outer space exploits)—risks forgetting that love and passion are the anchors of earthly life. Bringing in the heart center, and playful camaraderie, as elephants and other animals know to do, is key.

The Human Flaw, or Trauma Signature

Connecting to our non-human kin can help us connect back to our own essence, which is the process of individuation that Uranus calls us to. But this is delicate work. In his book Healing the Soul, Mark Jones discusses how the unique “genius” within, signified by Uranus, is often entangled within a trauma signature. As the higher octave of Mercury, Uranus corresponds to the higher mind function that contains many long-term memories and strata of awareness, not just traumatic ones. Successfully mined, with attendant healing work, these memories hold gems that can unlock keys to our genius.

Author and philosopher John O’Donohue alludes to this in discussing the notion of our flaws, stating that beauty (relevant, I feel, to our essence or genius) comes into a person through the “frontier” of limitation, confusion, anxiety, and helplessness (what we might call our “flaw”), and that if we can embrace this with graciousness, we enter a doorway into another rhythm of life, one that takes us down new pathways not previously travelled.

This speaks to me of the new and unknown territories that Aquarian reframing presents, when we are able to touch a fixed point of vulnerability within us, hold its fracturing of our “hope for order,” and thereby open a chink or window into a new light that can shine both into and from us. This is what trauma healing entails. The “tragic flaw,” like Uranus and the Aquarius archetype, breaks patterns of familiarity. It is the part in us that doesn’t fit, doesn’t belong, doesn’t meld with convention. “The world is a strange place to be,” O’Donohue says, “and we are strange creatures. But strangeness needn’t be frightening—it’s what we see when we glimpse a wild animal, and they then quickly move away.”

Wild, All-Seeing Mind

No surprise, then, that Aquarius is linked to wild nature, and thereby the wildness within us, as this speaks to the part of us that has not been tamed, domesticated, colonized, or robbed of its vitality—vitality being the nature of genius and innovation. Spending time in nature, or with wild beings, or tuning into the natural rhythms of the seasons helps us reconnect to our instinctual self, where our inherent essence can truly shine. And it matters, in the changing and challenging times at hand, how many of us are able to connect to our essence.

A blog post from author and theologian Matthew Fox on “The Divine Eyes” of visionary artists Alex Grey and Hildegard von Bingen [79] speaks to this. The post includes a painting of Grey’s called “The Green Hand,” with many eyes peering out both from within and around many green hands. The painting was created in homage to Hildegard’s concept of viriditas, or “the greening” of the earth and all human work that honors it. It also speaks to the awareness that consciousness permeates all life. Fox writes:

Hildegard talks about “the living eye,” while calling the Holy Spirit “a fire that penetrates everything,” and God the Creator “a brightness that shines,” and Christ the “flashing forth that radiates divine fire.”

In my own earlier Aquarian explorations into the unknown, through the medium of The Painting Experience, I found myself painting multiple eyes in parts of my paintings, indicating the witnessing presence both within and without that I instinctively felt. This valuable “process work” helped open a door to my own unique essence, or Uranian knowing.

Navigational Tools for Aquarian Times

Speaking of eyes, one of the gifts of Aquarius is its expansive vision, which takes in the whole from a bird’s-eye, or cosmic view. Learning how to look wide, far, and deep helps us overcome our modern-day myopia and adopt a more inclusive perspective on life. This affords us some detachment from the small (albeit large-looming) dramas of our own lives.

A suggestion for learning to see with new eyes in the course of our ordinary lives is to take regular “awe walks,” as described by UC Berkeley psychology professor Dacher Keltner. [80] He points to the capacity for awe to help us “get off ourselves,” as was said in the days of Werner Erhard’s EST trainings in the 70s. Good medicine for these over-amped Leonine selfie times. Keltner describes his research results:

We found evidence that the self can extend into the environment. In the awe-walk condition, people’s selfies increasingly included less of the self. Over time, the subjects drifted off to the side, showing more of the outside environment—a street corner in San Francisco, the trees, the rocks around the Pacific Ocean. Over the course of our study, awe-walkers reported feeling less daily distress and more prosocial emotions such as compassion and amusement.

Anything that invites people back into relation with the all-that-is serves as a valuable tool for Aquarian times. And circling back to the theme of change, I came upon a recent blog post from Richard Rohr, Franciscan priest and writer, called “To Live is to Change.” [81] In it he points out that being resilient means making the decision to remain open to ongoing growth and change.

While all archetypes are of course needed, all being part of Life, Aquarius’ beckoning toward taking new perspectives and adopting new stories is going to be vital to our capacity to move through the months and years ahead. We are cautioned by the wisdom of Indigenous elders, however, not to seek change or “progress” for change’s sake, a trend that has led our civilization down its self-destructive path, causing us to lose respect for the time-tested rhythms and cycles of Life. We need to open to change, while also submitting to the slower, larger rhythms of life, invoking Capricorn’s gift of patience.

Seeds of Change

Top-down, hierarchical rule has been the “operating system” throughout the 2,000-year Piscean era that has preceded the Aquarian one, Pisces being the sign of “the savior” on high. The excesses of greed and domination this system has devolved to became more acutely evident while Pluto, with its laser-sharp penchant for exposure of truth, completed its journey through Capricorn—significator of corporate and other hierarchical systems. Now, with Pluto in Aquarius, and beyond that, with the longer-term Aquarian Age, we can expect a shift, with the “messiah” concept reemerging through Unity, not a single, gifted individual or charismatic leader.

But in present times, we can no longer deny the corruption of the outdated structures that have dominated us, and initially at least we are seeing a tightening of the noose—with the “few” at the top becoming fewer, and ever richer.

Behind the scenes of “convention,” however, in keeping with the Aquarian theme of idealistic visioning, there is forward-thinking transformation work taking place across the planet in multiple realms. Some of these endeavors prioritize shadow and trauma healing work (which astrology helps access and deepen understanding of) so as to ready us with core stability and resilience for hard times ahead; others prioritize development of human and technological systems that integrate with the earth’s natural intelligence. Ultimately, of course, inner healing and outer ecological and societal balancing must be woven of a piece.

Enter Deep Time

Applying ourselves to the task of living now as if we were already in the future we dream of suits the Aquarian perspective of the multi-dimensionality, or circularity, of time. Re-membering ourselves in connection to the past, and to our ancestors, acquires new value. In what ways can we bring into the present parts of ourselves or our forebears that shone in the past? What positive, peak-moment memories can we recall from our own lives that can serve us now? Considering how time can be bent and melded, and how the natural world itself is having to adjust to off-kilter timings caused by global warming, we too might consider adjustments to our own relationship to time.

From a deep-time, “big picture” perspective, East Indian author and researcher Bibhu Dev Misra, in his recent book Yuga Shift, posits that the end of the current Hindu Kali Yuga era of “vice and misery” (this being the fourth, and darkest, of all of the Vedic eras) arrived in March 2025. There have been much earlier, and much later, dates posited for the end of this roughly 3,000-year (according to Misra) Yuga, or “age of the world,” but in a hopeful and fascinating conversation with astrologer Daniel Giamario [84], Misra argues the mathematical premises of his prediction.

He also suggests that until 2040 we will see a period of major transformation—of simultaneous collapse and emergence—during which old structures are obliterated, and new wisdom and understanding quicken. It will take a strong act of will to break through the “assault on consciousness” that these final years of decline will present, but if we can remain open in our hearts, and conscious of our soul’s work, we can make an important contribution toward the “enlightenment process” taking place beneath the surfaces, as the next Yuga promises to be built on more virtuous ground than our own. After this period, cosmic events will tilt the balance in favor of good over evil, he states. May this notion give us sustenance as we continue with our own inner healing work, and inner and outer activism.

Carl Jung, in his book The Undiscovered Self, repeatedly stresses that the development of our authentic individual self is key to the positive evolution of humankind. He writes:

It is, unfortunately, only too clear that if the individual is not truly regenerated in spirit, society cannot be either, for society is the sum total of individuals in need of redemption… [the individual] is the one important factor, and the salvation of the world consists in the salvation of the individual soul. 

May this be a process that we are each called into, in our own ways, this creative and uplifting dance between healing and awakening the self, and serving in community, as we move forward into the unknown. May we plant and tend with care and love the seeds of new life in our own small lives, knowing we are a vital part of the larger web of the whole of life.

Excerpted with permission from: Dance of the Archetypes: How Astrology Informs Our Lives & Connects Us to the Earth, available HERE.