A picture is worth a thousand words, they say. So when I was asked to distill some ideas for an issue of The Mountain Astrologer devoted to the Leo/Aquarius axis, I immediately thought back to one image that, to my mind, best captured the essence of this zodiacal dynamic:

 

 

Two or three children on a playground, laughing and singing in blissful abandon, while circled around them are a dozen scientists in white lab coats, carefully observing and recording every move for a research study on the nature of play.

 

 

As with all symbolic images, this one offers a number of diferent levels of meaning, and for that reason provides a useful point of departure for exploring a few of the many themes associated with the Leo/Aquarius polarity. As I hope to make clear, understanding this vital zodiacal polarity is not only important for understanding our personal horoscopes, but for unlocking the significance of the pivotal historical period we find ourselves about to enter: the much-heralded Age of Aquarius.

 

 

The Dance of Fire and Air

Where does one begin when trying to understand this polarity? One way is to consider the elemental symbolism associated with these signs: Leo represents the principle of fire, while Aquarius represents the principle of air.

 

 

First, let’s look at fire. Of all the elements, this is the one most associated with life’s vitality itself. Like our children romping on the playground, Leonine fire is the principle of pure experientiality, of being-in-the-moment. At its most spiritual, Leo therefore exemplifies the ideals of courage, enthusiasm, and even spontaneous, enlightened awareness. The Budd­hists have a saying: “Spontaneity is the mark of the Buddha.” Leo embodies this spontaneous, playful awareness at its most dynamic, with its fixity compressing this essence and burnishing it to a diamond-like brilliance. At its worst, this same principle can express itself as self-centeredness or an inability to stand outside one’s own perspective in order to see things—or oneself­—objectively.

 

 

On the other end of things, Aquarius expresses the principle of air, the element most associated with the principle of rationality, and mind. Like those scientists on the fringes of our theoretical playground, air stands outside the field of activity to best observe and conceptualize it and systematically relate it to other ideas and systems. In contrast with the fiery principle of pure being, Aquarian air represents the principle of understanding.

 

 

At its highest, Aquarian air therefore confers the objectivity and the discernment necessary for effective decision-making, planning, and clear communication. Your ability to read these words right now are made possible through the mediating element of air. But at its worst, Aquarian air can be detached to the point of coldness, standing so far outside of direct experience that it loses touch with the emotional realities of both oneself and others. The famed detachment of Aquarian former president Ronald Reagan offers an example of this.

 

But how exactly do these different archetypes interact with one another? Traditional astrology informs us that fire and air are complementary and feed one another in symbiotic ways. But, as we shall soon see, the truth of the matter can be far more complex than this.

 

 

The Individual/Group Dynamic

As individuals, how do we reconcile our own needs or behaviors with those of the group? And in turn, how does the group impact on our personal lives?

 

These are just a few of the concerns driving this zodiacal polarity. On the one hand, Leo stands for the principle of the reigning individual, shining before all in his or her uniqueness. At the other end, Aquarius is the common person, mingling with the masses. In political astrology, Leo is therefore associated with government by monarchy or theocracy, where power is focused in a single royal or religious figure, while Aquarius relates to democracy and government by the common man/woman. In short, Leo rules from the top down, whereas Aquarius rules from the bottom up.

 

Whenever this zodiacal polarity is prominently displayed in someone’s horoscope, we often see a concern with integrating personal values with those of the collective. When Leo is more dominant (say, by planetary emphasis), individuals might gravitate toward positions of eminence, toward being the ringleader in social undertakings; but with Aquarius more emphasized, the individual may feel a greater attunement with the group, the masses.

 

Sometimes, the house placements involved hold the decisive clues as to which direction this will take. For instance, one client of mine had multiple planets in Leo positioned in the 1st house, opposing Aquarius planets in the 7th. Throughout her life she found fulfillment as a charismatic motivational speaker standing before hundreds or even thousands of people. With Leo so prominent in the 1st house, she enjoyed the role of "star" to the hilt. Yet another client of mine had virtually the same planets in the same signs, except positioned in precisely opposite houses (Leo on the 7th, Aquarius on the 1st). For her, this polarity manifested as the compulsion to attend workshops led by charismatic figures and to identify with the masses rather than take on the starring role herself.

 

On the global scale, planetary configurations involving these two signs often bring about historical events which dramatize that group/individual dynamic en masse. When Leo is dominant over Aquarius, for example, there may be events which highlight the ability of lone rulers or nations to affect larger collectives,  constructively or destructively. As one example, a much-talked about solar eclipse in August of 1999 featured a powerful Sun-Moon conjunction in Leo, and opposing planets in Aquarius — Leo dominant over Aquarius, in other words. On the exact day of the Full Moon after that eclipse (traditionally, a major trigger mechanisms for eclipses), Chicago’s O’Hare airport, one of the world’s largest, was essentially shut down for hours because of a lone individual bolting the wrong way through a security checkpoint. As one TV commentator remarked later that evening, “This incident illustrates how a single individual can disrupt the entire system.”

 

On the other hand, a good example of how the collective might impact the life of a single individual or leader would be the Gulf War of 1991. The most significant outer-planet aspect taking place during this conflict was Saturn in Aquarius opposite Jupiter in Leo. (The war itself lasted from mid January to early April; the Jupiter-Saturn opposition was exact on March 15, 1991.) This powerful dynamic found explicit expression in the host of international players involved in the conflict: George Bush and his coalition of nations (Saturn in Aquarius), collectively setting limits on the expansionist ambitions of a renegade would-be king, Saddam Hussein (Jupiter in Leo). In a stunning example of historical syn­chronicity, this event was paralleled by another development that erupted into public attention during that same period: the Rodney King incident, which came to light in early March. In a manner almost identical to the United Nations’ actions toward Hussein, this urban incident likewise involved a band of disciplinary figures (Los Angeles policemen) beating down on a lone “expansionist” figure, a speeding motorist—by the last name of “King,” no less!

 

With the slow rise of the Aquarian Age, we are already seeing the erosion of longstanding monarchies, and their replacement by democratic forms of government. And in many of these instances, we find powerful configurations occurring in the signs Leo and Aquarius as well. To cite a classic case, all of the major events of the French Revolution occurred in tandem with powerful astrological aspects between Leo and Aquarius (chiefly centering around a major Uranus-Pluto opposition of the period). 1

A contemporary expression of this same archetypal trend has been the increasingly aggressive behavior of the media toward royalty in recent decades. A prime example was the tragic death of Princess Diana in 1997. On hearing news of her fatal accident while being pursued by paparazzi, I remarked to the person with me at the moment that it would be worth looking for any oppositions between Leo and Aquarius at the time of the crash (Leo ruling royalty and Aquarius ruling the mass media). “In fact,” I added, “it would be especially fitting if it turned out to be the Moon in Leo, since Princess Di is a symbol of female royalty.” Lo and behold, on drawing up the horoscope for August 31, 1997 (12:25 a.m. CED; Paris, France), that's precisely what I found: Moon in Leo opposing planets in Aquarius.

 

Stardom/Privacy

Princess Diana’s life and death call attention to another expression of the Leo/Aquarius axis in our own time, that of the curious phenomenon of celebrity. As suggested earlier, Leo is the sign most commonly associated with society’s “stars” — and quite fittingly, too, since it’s the only sign governed by an actual star rather than a planetary body. In older times, the stars of our world generally consisted of political or religious leaders of one stripe or another. But with the advent of modern telecommunications and pop culture, we’ve witnessed a new­found democratization of celebrity, with the opportunity for ordinary people to rise up out of complete obscurity into positions of fame. Theoretically, at least, anyone can become an object of worship now, and attain their own “fifteen minutes of fame,” as Andy Warhol described it. Disposable deities, you might say.

 

But this newfound opportunity, provided by mass media, telecommunications, and social media, comes with a price. While each person now has access to the eyes and ears of the world, so the eyes and ears of the world now have growing access to our personal lives, through information about our spending habits via credit cards, our communications through phone records and Internet messages, and even data about our actions in public places via surveillance cameras and spy satellites. Movies like Enemy of the State or The Truman Show dramatize this predicament through stories of individuals whose personal lives are subjected to pervasive high-tech surveillance.

 

Creativity

Another key concern of the Leo/Aquarius axis centers around the expression of creativity in our lives. At the one end, Leo expresses the notion of personalized creativity — the lone artist painting in his loft, or the musician composing at her piano, for instance. On the other hand, Aquarius governs all forms of group creativity, where individuals band together to merge their creative energies toward a single project. A modern example of this would be an average film production, where one might find literally hundreds of individuals pooling their energies toward creating one movie.

 

In actual practice, of course, the notion of “group creativity” is a double-edged sword. At its best, it gives us ensemble work of the most brilliant type, as with films like The Godfather, Citizen Kane, or 2001: A Space Odyssey, or through popular musical groups like the Beatles. To my mind, the modern symbol that best captures the essence of Aquarian group creativity is that uniquely American art form, jazz. In contrast to Piscean-Age art forms like the Gregorian choir, where individual creativity is  surrendered to a higher ideal, the jazz band encourages group cooperation without denying individual creativity. A thematic structure is still followed, yet it's loose enough to allow for personal freedom of expression. That's a description which also applies, incidentally, to the political structure of a nation like the United States, with its 50 independent states that ahere to a federal constitution. On a technological level, Aquarian Thomas Edison pioneered a jazz-type approach to innovation with the unique workshop environment he developed, which saw an entire team of thinkers pooling their efforts toward conceiving new inventions.

 

At its worst, the notion of group creativity calls up images of faceless bureaucracies, or “beehive” societies, where individual creativity is essentially squashed by the collective machinery. One doesn’t have to look far to find examples from our own time of the way creativity has become constrained by corporations and the “vested interests of the stockholders,” to cite just two cases. Nowadays, independent artists find themselves faced with the Faustian bargain of compromising their visions by having to contend with virtual armies of marketing consultants, corporate bureaucrats, and test audiences to get their work out into the marketplace.

 

But as bleak a scenario as this may seem, I believe there is still reason for hope. While there's no doubt the world has become more cor­por­atized, we still manage to see impressive books, films, and musical compositions emerging out of the system with some regularity. Also, the Internet has introduced a new wrinkle by allowing independent artists to use modern telecommunications for displaying their works before a worldwide audience, thus bypassing the corporate distribution process. Even in the corporate setting, the “jazz” approach has had an impact on the managerial styles of some businesses, with lower- and middle-level employees given greater input in running their companies. So while we have a long way to go, to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the death of modern creativity may well be greatly exaggerated!

 

Pleasure

A close cousin to creativity on our chain of correspondences is the notion of pleasure, with each end of the Leo/Aquarius polarity approaching this area in its own unique way. For instance, Leo governs pleasures of a more personal sort, such as with adults having a romantic affair, or children romping on our proverbial playground. By contrast, Aquarius governs group pleasures involving many individuals together, as we might see in a theme park like Disneyland or Universal Studios. In such environments groups of individuals come together and might take a virtual ride into outer space, venture down simulated jungle rapids, or thrill at the sight of electronic dinosaurs clawing at them. But perhaps the most pervasive form of Aquarian pleasure in our time is that of mass entertainment, expressed through media forms like films, TV shows, or radio broadcasts. With a television show, for instance, it’s possible for millions or even billions of people around the world to enjoy the same show at the exact same moment.

 

Examples like this point up several other key aspects of  Aquarian pleasure, such as its heavily technological nature, which would include video games, virtual reality devices, and even Internet chat rooms—as well its more cerebral character. As an admittedly extreme example, just imagine an Internet party of astrophysicists swapping jokes about the Grand Unified Theory! In contrast with the immediacy of Leonine play, Aquarian pleasure generally involves an element of detachment where the participant is somehow removed from the heart of experience. Not unlike our scientists standing outside of the playground looking in, an average TV viewer experiences the action vicariously and indirectly, more as a spectator than a player. And notice the impersonality implied here as well: With an ordinary television show, you can have literally millions of viewers sitting around at the same moment, watching the same event — yet all of them are completely separate from one another. So it may well be that the Aquarian Age will usher in a time when we all “come together as one” — though this could well take a more technological turn than many are expecting.

 

Chance

In traditional astrology, gambling is said to fall under the rulership of the 5th house in the chart — the house naturally associated with Leo;2  To my mind, this has always concealed a deep esoteric truth. Why? Because in addition to being a form of play, gambling — like most of the other areas we’ve been exploring thus far — involves a certain element of chance, of randomness. For whether we talk about romance, creativity, conception, or childbirth, we are, in each case, looking at something essentially spontaneous and unpredictable. Conceiving a child is one of life’s greatest crapshoots, not only in terms of whether pregnancy will occur but as far as the kind of child one might bring into the world.

 

Correspondences like that open a window onto a deeper truth of both Leo and the 5th house, namely, that the spontaneity expressed in these areas reflects the free-flowing qualities of Spirit itself, of that innermost fount of consciousness where energy unfolds openly and intuitively, unfettered by logic or calculation. In moments of play or creativity, we tap into this divine, creative source of being; that's even reflected in our use of the term re-creation when describing ordinary pastimes. Gambling likewise stems from this same divine impulse, though for more distorted and self-aggrandizing reasons.

 

So how does this principle of spontaneity or chance manifest when filtered through the opposite sign of Aquarius? For one, it gives rise to mass games of chance, as well as technological and corporatized forms of chance. In stark contrast with the more traditional scene of a few individuals standing around throwing dice into the dirt, the emerging Great Age has already introduced bustling amphitheaters that accommodate thousands of individuals playing electronic slot machines side by side. The house of worship for many these days is a modern-day shrine to chance like a Las Vegas casino, where an entirely new different of gods is invoked in the hope of altering one’s fate. In a more positive way, our earlier example of the jazz band might reflects a more Aquarian approach to chance, since it's based on the concept of group improvisation, a creative form based on one’s response to the unpredictabilities of each moment.

 

Environments like Disneyland or Las Vegas also express a distinctively Aquar­ian approach to chance in their shared concern with controlling the unpredictable. At an amusement park like Disney­land, for example, engineers take activities which traditionally involved huge elements of risk and bring them under tight supervision, in order to best provide the customer with all the thrills and vicarious enjoyments of chance-laden experiences, but without all the messy randomness and unpredictability. Rather than risk one’s life going out on a big-game safari, one can experience a simulated version of the same thing, all from the safety of your electronically guided car.

 

And, while childbirth has always been one of life’s more unpredictable activities, scientists are learning how to reduce the element of chance there as well, with new advances in fertilization and genetic engineering. The striking film, Gattaca, features a scene that beautifully illustrates this dilemma: Set at an unspecified point in our future, a couple comes into a fertility clinic to consult with a corporate counselor on planning out the features of their next child. The counselor tries to convince them to go all the way and pick out every characteristic of their future child; but they are resistant, wondering if it wouldn’t be nice to leave just a little bit to chance and randomness. The counselor seems perplexed as to why anyone would even want to leave any part of the conception process to chance. In much the same way, the Aquarian society of our future may be one where, for better or worse, we attempt to control as many elements of randomness and unpredictability in our world as possible — in short, to harness chance.

 

This same archetypal polarity may also explain efforts by modern scientists to unlock the "laws of chance" in many different shapes and forms. Entire disciplines have sprung up over the last century which attempt to uncover the hidden order beneath life’s apparent randomness. These disciplines include statistical theory, Quantum Physics with its notions of "probability theory," the revolutionary new science of Chaos (complexity), and even the emerging field of synchronicity studies. Consider Chaos theory, for example. Researchers contend that by carefully observing the complex behaviors of phenomena previously thought to be purely random (say, the behavior of motorists on a freeway or gas molecules moving about a room), it's possible to discern the hidden laws that govern these patterns.

 

In our personal horoscopes, significant aspects between the signs Leo and Aquarius sometimes indicate an effort to balance personal spontaneity with the restrictions of social convention. At their most constructive, our collective behavioral codes serve to channel or restrain the wilder expressions of our fiery personal impulses — the result being a little something we call “civilization." In our own horoscopes, configurations between Leo and Aquarius can act themselves out through our interactions with those around us, with others mirroring back one or the other extreme of that polarity. As just one example, individuals with a prominent Leo/Aquarius might themselves be largely spontaneous, while their spouses or business partners might be heavily rational or detached in their temperament, or vice versa.

 

The One and the Many

Another metaphor that I find useful in explaining the distinction between Leo and Aquarius draws from the field of medical astrology. Traditionally, Leo is associated with the heart while Aquarius is often associated with the distribution of the blood via the arteries. Viewed symbolically, that tells us an important insight into the archetypal processes underlying these two signs. Simply put, Leo is the principle of centralization, while Aquarius is the principle of decentralization.

 

This dynamic helps explain several of the areas we have been looking at thus far. For instance, when we say that Leo rules government by monarchy, we understand it is because monarchy centralizes the power of the nation into a single king or queen, who is analogously the “heart” of a country; by contrast, dem­ocracy decentralizes power to the furthermost “branches” of society, i.e., ordinary men and women. Whereas Leo is the principle of the One, Aquarius is therefore the principle of the Many. Or think of this visual analogy: Leo may be compared with pure white light, while Aquarius could be compared to the prismatic breaking up of light into multiple colors, into a spectrum. Hence, while Leo is more monolithic in focus, Aquarius has a more kaleidoscopic agenda, with its greater emphasis on diversity.

 

In light of such correspondences, it is not hard to understand why Aquarius is symbolically linked to systems, networks, and associations of all kinds. On the global scale, that may suggest that the next Great Age will be an era of complex alliances and networks of many types—political, social, or technological . Systems within systems within systems. We even see the multi-perspective qualities of Aquarius in such modern developments as postmodernism, with its splintering of traditional Truth into multiple truths and world views — but that’s another essay altogether!

 

When unity-minded Leo is added to the Aquarian mix, we find a concern with creative networking, or with unifying diverse elements into an over­arching network. Examples of this on the collective scale would be organizations like Jesse Jackson’s “Rainbow Coalition” or the United Nations, where we see diverse peoples or races joined together in their common interests. On the level of personal horoscopes, this axis is often emphasized in the charts of thinkers or philosophers with a capacity for synthesizing diverse ideas and intellectual systems within unifying paradigms. Examples of this would be Carl Jung (July 26, 1875), H.P. Blavatsky (August 12, 1831), and the founder of psychosynthesis, Roberto Assa­gioli (February 27, 1888), all of whom suggested new ways of synthesizing or reframing traditional ideas. A more recent example would be transpersonal psychologist Ken Wilber (January 31, 1949), whose horoscope features a prominent link between these two signs. Over the last two decades, Wilber has been involved with synthesizing diverse systems into unifying frameworks of various types. Fittingly, perhaps, the title of his first published book was The Spectrum of Consciousness.

 

Leo and Aquarius in the Chakra System

I believe it’s possible to uncover a still deeper level of meaning to this zodiacal polarity, by considering where it falls in the context of the yogic chakra system. As I discussed in chapter 6, many esotericists, both East and West, have suggested a close relationship between astrological symbols and the psycho-spiritual system of the chakras. According to this set of correspondences, Leo is associated with the point of the “third eye” (Ajna chakra), while Aquarius relates to one side of the lowest “root” chakra (Muladhara).