New Moon in Aquarius 12º February 1st, 2022: THE STILL CENTER
saturn and honey, ‘Still’
Aquarius has an incredible meditative quality to it – a unique ability to be very still (it’s a fixed sign ruled by slow-moving Saturn) in the middle of a noisy crowd (Aquarius is an air sign) and not lose its center. We see some of the worst of Aquarius when it loses that still center and gets swept up by the crowd, morphing into just another head on the Hydra. We’ve seen this often over the last two years while Saturn’s been in Aquarius. The more fearful we are (Saturn), the more easily we’re swallowed by the herd (Aquarius), and these are fearful times.
We’re surrounded by noise 24/7, a never-ending circus of people + algorithms dancing around us trying to sell us their message, and deep, primal fear creeping in like a black mold in the walls. Saturn in Aquarius has been asking, flatly, how much fear, chaos and unrelenting noise will it take before you finally become ‘the still point of the turning world’? With this new moon conjunct + ruled by Saturn, and square chaotic Uranus, this is one of many big questions to sit with.
“At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.”
—T.S. Eliot
Saturn shows itself as both the fear and the solace. Saturn’s joy in the 12th doesn’t just signify imprisonment but also Hermit-esque retreat and meditation, silence and solitude, tranquil places, and the still, quiet center of a human being. Aquarian “detachment” isn’t just robotic and unfeeling, but really being able to see reality and simply acknowledge it, kinda shrugging at it, like, oh, there it is, holding it at a far enough distance that your eyes can actually focus. Observing the wind and becoming the eye of the storm.
This new moon is a potent moment to begin to breathe – we may want to change the world, but first we have to steady (Saturn, fixed-sign Aquarius) our own breath (airy Aquarius) and come into the inner temple. (That’s one way to become a channel for the ecstatic flow of Uranian genius anyway.) Focus on inner stillness, meditation (whatever that means for you), observation > reaction. Something about alternate nostril breathing as hell seeped into my ears this fall made me realize that Saturn in Aquarius is becoming the calm quiet inside of the noise. That’s how you glow in something this dark.