The Dark Moon Path begins its inward spiral as the Dark Moon moves into Aquarius, an air sign. Aquarius is a breath, which breezes into a wind in Gemini and a storm in Libra.
The story of Aquarius beins on Mount Olympus. Zeus, the father of the gods, falls in love with the Trojan youth, Ganymede. Gannymede is a youth of incredible beauty, more handsome than any other mortal, male or female. Zeus transforms himself into an eagle and swoops down and kidnaps Ganymede. Zeus carries the youth to Mount Olympus where Ganymede becomes a cupbearer to the gods. To appease the youth's family, Zeus gives them great riches and a promise. When the mortal Ganymede dies, Zeus places him in the stars as the constellation Aquarius. Ganymede shines forever in beauty and the love of Zeus. A cynical thought does creep in because Zeus' young male lover fares much better than the women Zeus variously loves, kidnaps, and impregnates.
The air sign of Aquarius is concerned with mental and social development. Aquarians are progressive, altruistic, tolerant, and inventive, committed to change, often at any cost. Turned inward, Aquarians can be disorganized, cranky, rebellious without a cause, fanatical, tearing down without building up, detached, aloof, and unthinking. Turned inward, Aquarius is unprincipled, erratic, and unfair.
In esoteric terms, the element of air concerns itself with the mind and the rational self. Air is about understanding and the ability to think and to plan. Air moves humans from the imperatives of physical need to the realm of ideas and thought. The intellect excites air signs, and the life of the mind, engaged in study and reflection, is an exceptionally exciting one for air signs.
The Air Maiden shows herself as an altruistic idealist, dedicated to her causes whatever they may be. She lives the life of the mind and the intellect. If she has not combined her intellect with the understanding of the life of the spirit, she can be dispassionate, dismissive of the feelings of others, and unthinkingly cruel. A woman of intelligence and intellect, she may be unable to tolerate people who are less intelligent or less idealistic than she. If the Air Maiden is hard on others, she is even harder on herself. She turns the critical power of her intellect inward onto herself and criticizes herself with unimaginable cruelty. She needs to learn compassion in order to become fully herself. She looks into the abyss of the soul and see the Dark.
During the time when the sun is in Aquarius, pagans celebrate the holiday of Imbolc, a celebration of the triple goddess Brigid, the fire goddess and guardian of the well. She rules over creativity, dedications, initiations, and the consecration of new tools. Imbolc is a holiday that celebrates new beginnings, the time when things begin to grow. The spark of creativity happens and life begins to take shape. Imbolc is the seedling nestled beneath the ground in the warm heart of the earth mother, just beginning to germinate. The seedling is putting forth its new shoots, beginning to push its way to the surface and to the sun. It is a hopeful, happy holiday.
The dark side of Imbolc is inertia. In the bleak winter landscape, it is hard to imagine new growth and green seedlings at the beginning of February. Even if the temperatures are warm, there is ice, flooding, and the general havoc of rough weather. It makes a person want to curl up in a ball and not move.
The opposite of hope is despair. The opposite of growth is not death, but inertia or depression. Depression is not the negative feeling of being "bummed" if the car does not start or your hair looks bad, but deep dark paralysis of the whole being. You can't move, you can't think, you can't cry, and you can't laugh. You are paralyzed and numb.
This numbness influences our behaviour and we may lose interest in the things that give us joy. We lose our appetite for good things such as food, sex, and pleasure. We are unable to experience pleasure or reward. There is no quality to life.
Depression is an unseen disorder and many people suffer from it in varying degrees of severity. As we move through Aquarius on the Dark Moon Path, we explore the unseen. We look into the abyss of ourselves to see what is there and this is very scary. As we deepen our spiritual work, we find that there are spirits and beings around us, willing and wanting to help us. Unseen, they help us manage our world. As our awareness increases, our awareness of the unseen increases. We see more clearly and with more compassion. You need to look at faults and strengths as two sides of the same coin. A strength taken to an extreme is a fault. By shifting our vision slightly we can reframe a fault into a positive characteristic, which, with work, can be a real strength.
Bravely, we can move to the abyss and look into ourselves. We can look clearly with our minds and we can look compassionately with our hearts. With that process we can transform the Air Maiden of Aquarius into an emotional adult committed to social change and intellectual challenges.
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