Odd things happen to all of us on our way through life without our noticing for a time that they have happened.
Yes. This is truth. Odd things do happen to all of us, every few years or so, and we don’t notice right away that they have happened; we only notice the oddity of the incident or event later on.
However, odd things happen to Aquarians on the average of once a day or more, and the Water Bearers never notice what happens. Why should an Aquarian notice close encounters of the first, second, third, fourth, fifth or one hundred and sixty-sixth kind as unusual in any way? To Aquarius, odd is normal. Normal is odd.
When two of them link their auric patterns in a 1-1 Sun Sign relationship in any manner—at school, in an office, at home, in a space capsule, on a Ferris Wheel, or in a rowboat—Life becomes very odd to be sure, sort of upside-down pineapple-prune cake, zircle-and-zebra, Hobbity indeed, and Mad-Hatter-through-the-croquet-hoops. I will level with you. An Aquarian is as dingbatty, brilliant, genius-oriented, and patty-cake as they come. Two Aquarians together are exactly twice as dingbatty, brilliant, genius-oriented, and patty-cake as they come. Now you get the picture—the kind of picture you get when you gaze into one of those loopy mirrors in a carnival fun house. For, as I’ve written before, both in this book and in Sun Signs, Aquarius is the sign of genius and insanity, and it’s often difficult to draw a fine line between these two virtues.
You may place the entire basket of blame for this freaked-out age we’re living in right on their doorsteps. Of course, if you do, they will merely walk out each morning on their way to Disneyland, leap over the basket without even noticing it, then absentmindedly proceed to go about their business. Yes, Aquarians do tend to business, they believe in TCB (taking care of business). They mind their own and they fully expect you to mind yours. And so they will leap over the basket, without even noticing it, each morning of their lives. It might be a baby someone left on their doorstep. If so, it would have to cry out loudly if it expected an Aquarian to glance down and see it. These people are forever looking skyward, to the back of their heads and to the sides, but they never look down. That’s why they’re so seldom aware of any particular terrain they may be trespassing across and through. You might say they see it only with peripheral vision. But somehow, these two manage to find one another. I believe they may use radar. They don’t have to go into a store and buy a bottle or a carton of the stuff, mind you—they have it built into their Third Eye.
Aquarians are not to be insulted by all this, and they are not to parachute to the conclusion that I am putting them down. In fact (truthfully and sincerely) Aquarius just happens to be my personal favorite Sun Sign, next to Leo—and Aries, of course. A fine astrologer I once knew in New York called you Aquarians the torch bearers of human dignity. (That really startled me, because how can one associate anything dignified with people who go around standing on their heads all the time?) The very wise ancients called you the humanitarians of the planet Earth. At least one writer has called you the last hope for the human race. You are called brilliant and precognitive, inventive geniuses by most everyone who studies astrology. And you have also aptly been called the Leaders of the New Golden Age. Never mind all that. I call you nitzie, cuckoo, as unpredictable as a comic valentine sent to Quasimodo in the tower room of Notre Dame—with one foot in Heaven, one on Earth, your head in the clouds, and your ears fastened on the wrong way. In other words, weird. In addition, you are forever losing your contact lenses in the ice-cube tray of the refrigerator.
Aside to readers: Don’t worry, Aquarians are immensely flattered by having the foregoing qualities attributed to them. Strange? Not really. You see, Capricorns feel as though you’ve awarded them a Nobel Prize when you tell them straight out that they’re stuffy. Taurus folk swell up in pride when you tell them they’re as stubborn as glue—Leos smile benignly when you level with them about their insufferable arrogance, and … say, you know what? Everyone is weird. I mean, but EVERYONE! It must depend on the theory of relativity or something. There are, evidently, twelve groups of us here on this spinning ball, looking at life in twelve different ways. (Do you suppose that’s the tolerance lesson the Water Bearers are here to teach us?) Of course, the only sensible and true way to look at life is the Mars-Aries way. Someday that will be proven to be indisputably correct. Meanwhile, as a Ram myself, I refuse to argue the subject further.
Many people have written to me to ask why Aquarius is an Air Sign, and yet Aquarius is symbolized by the Water Bearer. They want to know specifically how a Water Bearer can be said to belong to the Air Element. I would like to take this opportunity to answer them.
I don’t know.
Why are you complaining? That’s a typical Aquarian explanation. As clear as the smog over Los Angeles. Mixing up the Air and Water elements doesn’t surprise me in the least, as an astrologer. And as you learn more about these off-beat, star-crossed creatures of creative confusion, it won’t surprise you either. Hopefully, the knowledge of the stars and planets will stop you all from writing in to ask something so foolish as an explanation of the why of anything related to the February-born. (Some Aquarians are born in late January, but most are born during the month of the groundhog . . which figures.)
Now, just image this. Two Water Bearers have discovered one another, in the playpen, in college, on a basketball team, in a hangar at Delta, or in the audience watching Star Trek. They are reading this book together. That is, one of them (excluding the playpen tots) is reading it aloud to the other, who is wandering around the room, watering and talking to the plants (but listening). The reader stops, about here … turns to the Aquarian with the sprinkling can, wearing the jump suit, and says: What in the world does this author mean? Is there something unusual about us? You have a Ph.D. in nuclear physics, I’m a brigadier general in the Salvation Army, we are clearly both intelligent, normal, unobtrusive, quiet people. This book insinuates that we are, in some way, ‘queer.’ Astrology can’t be accurate if it implies such a thing as that, don’t you agree?
The second Aquarian stops near the African violets, contemplates carefully, in an attempt to correctly analyze the question, then gazes at the other Aquarian, with a dreamy look, and answers: All the world is queer, save for me and thee … and sometimes . . (trailing off).
The first Aquarian interrupts, dreamily too: … . and sometimes thou art a little freaked … . . (completing the quote).
Thanks, buddy, for helping me out! I had forgotten the last line. You took the words right out of my subconscious, remarks the second Aquarian. I’m so absentminded sometimes.
| FIRST AQUARIAN: | We do seem to read each other’s minds a lot, don’t we? |
| Maybe we should take a course in ESP or something, so we can understand why we understand so much. | |
| SECOND AQUARIAN: | I don’t think so. That wouldn’t excite me. Why don’t we buy a book on picking up voices of the dead, instead? There’s a book called Breakthrough, published by Taplinger, or someone, that explains how we can pick up anyone’s voice, living or dead, with an ordinary tape recorder. They’ve already found it works at several major universities. Listen, did you see what I did with my watering can? |
| FIRST AQUARIAN: | You just put it in the bureau drawer. Was it empty? |
| SECOND AQUARIAN: | Oh, my gawd! It was still half full. Just look at my sweaters! They’re sopping wet. |
| SECOND AQUARIAN: | That’s my bureau drawer, and those aren’t sweaters, they’re my kittens. |
| FIRST AQUARIAN: | Well, I’m so sorry… . but what are your kittens doing in the bureau drawer? |
| SECOND AQUARIAN: | They always take their nap in there, because they like the smell of cedar. Don’t you remember? |
| FIRST AQUARIAN: | That’s right. I had forgotten. May I borrow your blow dryer to dry them off? Poor things. |
| SECOND AQUARIAN: | Never mind, I’ll dry them. You run down to the grocery store and get some peanut butter and dark chocolate. You can use my bicycle. But be careful. The rear wheel is missing. Just try to avoid heavy traffic. |
Do you see what I mean? The outcome of any sort of association, lasting from fifteen minutes to a couple of decades or to a lifetime, between two Aquarian individuals of any of the three or four sexes—is totally unpredictable. The only thing predictable about their relationship, whatever their age, weight, height, Social Security numbers, and previous references, is that they will immediately understand each other. That alone is a glorious miracle. A meeting between two people ruled by Uranus often (literally and seriously) brings tears to the eyes of each. It’s like that, when you’ve been thinking no one in the entire world will ever feel as you do about anything, or ever understand why you feel as you do about everything… . to find someone who smiles in recognition is a day to be marked on your Tolkien calendar as a RED LETTER DAY of unexpected, but warmly welcomed, peace and joy and good.
At long last, there’s another human being who will silently hike through the hills to hunt mushrooms with you, and not chatter every minute about matters of no consequence. Someone who knows where to look for Regulus and Spica on a starry summer night in the mountains, and can point out Arcturus too . . someone who has read Walden, by Thoreau, exactly twenty-three times, as you have … someone who is willing to punch every member of Congress in their windbags for refusing to honor and treat the American Indians with the enormous reverence and respect they deserve, let alone refusing to apologize to them for the theft of their land and their country. Someone who knows what a quark is, why the number nine is the Universal solvent, and also the Red Dragon of alchemy… . someone who’s aware that it’s time to either heal this planet or say a farewell to it… . someone who’s dedicated to waterless toilets, as the great hope for our future, which could bring the double blessing of once-more rich, fertile soil and pure, unpolluted waters on the Earth… . someone who wants to swim rivers, climb trees… . to be free… . rather than spend a lifetime in this loveless toil we fill our days with… . who believes in homeopathy and radionics because they work … someone who is at war with those who carve up the Earth and call it subdivision… . who is determined to halt the unnecessary medical and scientific slaughter of our living, terrified, animal brothers… . someone who is, in a word—sane.
Now you comprehend (I hope) what I meant by the nineteenth and twenty-first words of the sixth sentence in the third paragraph, at the beginning of this chapter. Let’s all say a silent and reverent prayer that more Aquarians find one another during this, their own age, which is now dawning. As we pray, we’ll be joined by Water Bearers Abraham Lincoln, Joanne Woodward, Paul Newman, Adlai Stevenson, Lewis Carroll, Mia Farrow Previn, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Professor Ray Neff … Jimmy Hoffa, Norman Mailer, Ayn Rand, Peter Gabriel, and Thomas Edison… . by all the helpless plants and animals and sea life… . the baby seals and their mothers… . the butchered cows and pigs and leopards… . Aquarians Charles Lindbergh, Vanessa Redgrave… . the Coyote tribe of Hopis… . Gina Davis… . Chris Rock… . . Jennifer Aniston, Alan Alda… Tom Brokaw, Stockard Channing… Christian Dior… . Alfred E. Neuman… . Ruth Edwards… . and Bilbo Baggins.
… also honorary Water Bearers Claire Faverone and Francesco Bernardone, of Assisi
… Jesus, the carpenter, and Mary Magdalene.
Aquarius Woman and Aquarius Man
What nonsense you talk, precious. No one can get into the house without knocking.
I think he comes in by the window, she said.
My love, it is three floors up.
… . oh, surely she must have been dreaming.
No. She is definitely not dreaming. Aquarian men do enter a room in a unique and unusual manner, like everything else they do. In fact, to enter a house, a classroom, a theatre, a stadium, a church, or a chicken coop via a window would be disappointingly mundane of a Water Bearer. He could clop in the door wearing water skis or snowshoes. I know an Aquarian (a grown-up one) whose hobby is walking on stilts—the kind I used to hobble on down the back alley when I was a child. He is the stilt champion of his neighborhood. Truthfully. Made his own stilts too. Water Bearer actor I know, named Bernie Friedman, skateboards around the block in the Bronx, on Cruger Avenue, checking on the scores of the local stickball games, the absolutely brilliant song lyrics he writes tucked under his arm, a tattoo of his favorite singer, Frank Sinatra, somewhere behind his left ear, nibbling on a kosher dill pickle and a freshly baked bagel—wearing a blue-and-white badge printed with the words: May the Force Be with You.
These male Water Bearers are, every last one of them, from outer space, which is their very logical excuse for being so spaced-out. I have an Aquarian friend whose initials are J. C. (no, not the Peanut King—and not that other one, although my friend is also of Hebrew descent. But he’s from Wantagh, New York, not Jerusalem). Anyway, Joel Cohen visited me recently. Before he arrived, he phoned and made an appointment with me for eleven o’clock A.M. When I asked him why he couldn’t come earlier, so we could have breakfast, he replied that he didn’t want to be committed to any earlier hour because he wanted to allow enough time for getting lost in trying to locate the meeting place. I found that quite sensible of him. Aquarians frequently get lost on the subway, on the freeway, at airports… . and sometimes, in their own homes.
In whatever manner the male Water Bearer may choose to enter a room, once he has entered, if there should be an Aquarian female present, their eyes will grin at each other immediately, then blink a few times, then wander to the ceiling. (Aquarian eyes are hard to pin down. So are Aquarians themselves.) If either of these two Water Bearers happen to be already committed, attached to someone else, engaged, involved in a romance, or legally wed, neither would dream of attempting to become more intimate emotionally. Infidelity is not part of the code of the typical Aquarian. (I can’t speak for the untypical ones, except to say that, if they morally transgress, there will be a good and logical reason, which may not make sense to anyone else, but will make perfect sense to them.) And so, should one or both of our typical Aquarians belong to someone else (be previously romantically committed), they will not fall madly in love, arrange a secret tryst, or break the rules in any way. Instead, they will just become close, platonic friends.
If they happen to both be uninvolved with others, and therefore technically free to search for true love at the time of their meeting, exactly the same thing will occur. They will become close, platonic friends. Often, for a fairly long period of time, considering that they are members of the opposite sex. Aquarians, both the girl and boy Water Bearers, think far more highly of friendship than they do of love. Friendship is their great goal in life—to be friends with every king, queen, prime minister, ambassador, peasant, beggar, chooser, fakir, baker, and candlestick maker… . every dog, cat, mule, rose bush, swallow, thrush, child, baby, president, ant, fly, horse, anteater, singer, dancer, clown, and elephant on this planet. Naturally, they don’t achieve this goal entirely. But they come surprisingly close.
Friendship, you see, they trust. But romance . . love . . represents to the Water Bearers a state of mind of which to be suspicious. Those few Aquarians whose Suns were extremely afflicted at birth by malefic planets from the fifth or eighth houses in their horoscopes, may lead shockingly unorthodox and promiscuous sex lives. But the majority of Aquarian men and women have this attitude in common—they think thusly: Romance leads to Love. Love leads to Sex. Sex is, quite simply, the study of two distinctly different types of plumbing. Once this difference has been discovered, established, and carefully tested a few times, to continue the research project indefinitely is a waste of time. There are too many fascinating subjects in the world to investigate for a person to spend all his (or her) time with just one.
Even Leo and Scorpio lovers must admit the Water Bearers do have a point there, theoretically, at least. Everything these Uranus-ruled people think, say, or do is theoretical—abstract or academic. Including falling in love, when they’ve decided it’s safe and sensible, but mostly because they are curious, and they can’t stand the mystery any longer . . the mystery of Him . . the mystery of Her.
The Aquarian male will require the woman he finally chooses as his very-own-to-pal-around-with-him-on-his-grand-tour-of-Life, to be more than just a wife, a mistress, a mother, and a maid. He will expect her to be a geisha girl, his confidante, his secretary, his confessor, his very-best-friend-in-all-the-world, his buddy, his partner in all his crazy, far-out, magical, and impossible schemes. She will also have to be fond of the rest of his friends (which could be a sizable group), be pretty good at doing math in her head, be able to tell the difference between Uriah Heep and Ophelia, and to have read and be able to intelligently discuss whether Sherlock Holmes was killed by Professor Moriarty or vice versa. (She doesn’t have to know the answer, just have an interesting opinion.) If the Aquarian woman he loves can manage all that, he might be able to manage a few miracles for her.
Of course, the Aquarian female will require essentially the same magic tricks from him. She’ll expect him to be far more than just a good breadwinner, husband, father, lover, and so on. He’ll have to be her guru, her judo instructor, her father, brother, very-best-friend-in-all-the-world, her Tibetan monk, her Romeo, her Valentino, her Cleveland Amory (referring to the latter’s notable crusade for the rights of animals), and definitely her Ralph Nader and her Amory Lovins (the Pied Piper of solar and other alternative energies).
He must, in all the important ways, remind her of the boy she first loved, the one who handed her a raggedy daisy behind the teacher’s back in algebra class… . just as she must, in all the important ways, strongly resemble the girl he first loved, the one with one blue eye and one brown eye, who was the most beautiful girl in his geometry class, to whom he loaned his handkerchief one afternoon when she was weeping inconsolably because she goofed her equilateral triangles.
You see, the requirements for forever-after love are so heavy with Aquarians, it’s little wonder lots of them never marry. You need a considerable amount of in-the-field experience to qualify for the job of his wife—or her husband. Not experience in the fields of love or sex or any of that nonsense, but in the field of ordinary living. Scratch that. Make it extraordinary living.
Once they’ve met each other’s delicate, complex, convex, and convoluted qualifications, and passed with an A-plus, this man and this woman will stand an excellent chance of achieving sexual harmony together. Both he and she instinctively know one of sexual love’s greatest secrets—that rarity makes anything in the Universe more exquisite, and lovemaking is no exception. Not that they will live platonically as brother and sister—no, far from that—but they will not, if they are typical Water Bearers, satiate their bodies with mating for the sake of mating alone. When they express their love physically, there will usually have been a gradual build-up of desire, beginning with their eyes grinning at one another over dinner or breakfast. I said usually. At other times (not often, but frequently enough) physical love between them will be sudden, unexpected, and explosive, with not a nuance of warning from either. Just instant need, followed by silent and instant fulfillment. It’s just possible that the Uranus boredom with over-experimentation in the area of sexual plumbing they both felt individually before they met wouldn’t be such a bad school of erotic research for lovers of all Sun Signs to attend, considering the value of its diploma.
If the Moon Signs and Ascendents of this 1-1 Sun Sign Pattern couple are harmonious, their potential for rainbows and leprechauns are as bell-ringing as they could hope for . . but if their Lunar-Solar positions or Ascendents are in conflicting aspect in the mutual nativities, there could be too much of a similar good thing (or weird thing) in their natures, and they’ll have to make some serious adjustments if they expect to be able to live together in peace.
For one thing, they may like one another’s friends too much. Most couples have problems because one or the other of them can’t get along with the other’s friends. Not this couple. Because they’ll be so curious and fascinated with their mutual friends, they may completely forget about their curiosity and fascination for each other, and wander off some night with one of the friends … not necessarily to have an affair, perhaps to discuss starting a discotheque for UFO pilots or opening a health food store for giraffes. Maybe to discuss the possibility of the Aquarian himself (or herself) running for President. It’s hard to keep romance alive when the kitchen is crowded with friends, the living room is crowded with friends—and the bed is piled high with the coats and scarves and sweaters of their continual flow of… . friends.
Another trait which can be a troublemaker if it’s overemphasized, for the reason that both Aquarians share it, is their mutual Fixity. Fixity is stubbornness, only a bit more so. In the Uranus-ruled man and woman, it’s woven through with their unpredictable behavior, so you might say that these two double up on the syndrome of inventive, unconventional stubbornness. Like, he will be adamant about allowing his dog, Jeep, to sleep with them every single night, curled under his chin. It’s difficult and slightly unaesthetic to kiss a man goodnight who is wearing a Labrador retriever puppy around his neck. You never know whether it’s the man you love or the dog kissing you on the nose. That can be disconcerting to a woman who wants to be loved to sleep. Or … she may be adamant about insisting on the right to drive his car, even though she pretzeled it around a mailbox two times in one week, and has a collection of parking and speeding tickets that fill up the glove compartment. That can be frustrating to a man who would like to be able to be assured of transportation on a fairly regular basis. It’s almost impossible to wheedle an Aquarian into changing his or her mind (and it’s totally impossible to make them do it) about anything whatsoever.
Fortunately, even the Aquarian man and woman who have negative aspects between their Suns and Moons have an easy solution to their areas of tension. They can concentrate on mutual—or even separate—goals of humanitarianism or scientific research. That way, they won’t have as much time to argue with each other’s Fixity. It’s a fact that many missionary couples, explorer man-and wife teams, and scientific researchers, collaborating authors, and so on … belong to this double Aquarian 1-1 Sun Sign Pattern. The two of them can always lose themselves together in dedication to an idealistic goal and, therefore, run less risk of losing each other through discontent and restlessness. They don’t have to go on safari together in Africa, climb the Himalayas in search of the High Lama, or work in a chrome-plated laboratory as a team. They can involve themselves in more normal, mundane teamwork, like training baby gorillas, starting a unicycle repair shop, testing faulty parachutes, researching out-of-the-body experience through catatonic trance in the Cheops pyramid in Egypt, or writing a book which explains that Cheops did not build the Giza Pyramid, and reveals who actually did build it… . in contented togetherness. Yes, I know these double career suggestions are not normal and mundane to you and me, but to the Aquarian man and woman they are not in any way abnormally far-out or freakish.
As I’ve mentioned before in this book, and also in Sun Signs, the Uranus-ruled man and woman believe in change—except as it relates to themselves. He may tend to believe everything and everyone in the world should change, including her (his buddy), but he refuses to make the slightest change in his own personal pattern of habits. She may tend to believe—and to refuse—likewise. Obviously, one of them will have to see the error of this sort of blindfolded thinking. Preferably both of them.
Their happier moments together will be when they spring surprises on each other. Aquarians love to both give and receive surprises. These two will seldom hint about their individual plans before they carry them out. The old Model T Ford he gives her for Christmas will be completely unexpected. The doghouse she builds for him, attached to their bed, where Jeep can sleep every other Tuesday night, will not be announced, but just be there, to shock him some morning when he awakens to think it’s Jeep kissing his nose, and finds out the puppy is snoring contentedly in his new home a few feet away—and it’s really his buddy who’s kissing him. His good old buddy, his best friend, the girl who looks so much like his first love, she’s made him forget her name. Whose name? The old flame’s name, I meant. But it’s also entirely possible for an Aquarian male to forget his wife’s name. Names are unimportant. He remembers the important things about her, like the way she looks when her hair is wet, after a swim or a shower . . the way her voices soothe his spirit when she reads him Tolkien bedtime stories at night… . and the way she fixes his spinach soufflé and prune whip every morning.
The Aquarian woman is absentminded too. She may forget her lover’s or husband’s name now and then, when she’s busy doing other things, like sawing the wood for his doghouse, or writing her thesis on the development of a camera to photograph scenes of the past, using quartz crystals in the lens . . but she’ll remember what really matters. She’ll remember how he was the first man who was able to point out Sirius and Orion to her in the sky . . who explained to her how the common usage of a waterless toilet might actually save the planet . . who gave her a subscription to National Geographic as a wedding gift, and a set of tools for tuning the car on her birthday. Then, of course, there are those moments of … instant need … and instant fulfillment… unexpectedly … and the way his eyes grin at her, afterward. These things she will remember forever, because they are matters of consequence.
| Aquarius | Pisces |
| Air—Fixed—Positive | Water—Mutable—Negative |
| Ruled by Uranus | Ruled by Neptune |
| Symbol: The Water Bearer | Symbol: The Fish |
| Day Forces—Masculine | Night Forces—Feminine |