Bird's Eye View

This time of year can be one of the most challenging. It is often the bleakest moment, when the winter has already seemed long and yet spring seems so far away. Celebrating Imbolc is something we have, as a society, forgotten, in the busy bustle of modern life. But in these difficult times it is possibly the one ritual we need most if we are going to find our way out the darkness and learn to overcome our fear of it. Rekindling the light that we found at the Winter Solstice is an imperative when the news is overflowing with tragic events of war and disasters, and we can only see chaos and corruption within our institutions and those seemingly in power.

As I said in my last blog, this archetype and the previous one, Capricorn, are concerned with our structures within our society, and if we wish for change, we have to be aware that the old ways of ruling aren’t going to change by themselves, it is up to us, the people, to find new ways of working. 

The problems start when we cling to the belief that the people with power are the few,  those seemingly 'in control’. We miss the idea that they only have the power because we have given ours away and handed it on a plate to them. The moment we realise that this power is within each of us and what power we have as a collective, is when things will start to change.

The Aquarius archetype teaches us that we are each a unique individual, but that we only can shine (this is held by the opposition, the Leo archetype) when we come together as the best versions of ourselves to form a collective that brings all the positives together. This beautiful air sign, the last of the three enables to discover the best way to do this. Having saved our soul in Capricorn as an individual, we now know how to sort out our own problems and this means we can find the best solutions as a collective, and this is represented by the world of science.

One of the Aquarius symbols is the perfect mirror showing how we have got this wrong. 

If we see the image of the bird flying over head as the individual remaining aloof and choosing to feel separate from the world below, then this relates to how we are taught to believe we live on the earth; disconnected but feeling superior, 

How are we to break this misconception?

For many years I felt this image conveyed the shadow aspect of this air sign, leaving us stuck in our heads. 

The world of science (another symbol of Aquarius) gives us the potential to problem solve our way out of our crises. To me however, this was also part of the problem, because science was born out of our disconnection to earth. I am not implying that science is bad, but like everything humans discover, in the wrong hands - those disconnected from their hearts - it becomes corrupted.  

The world of science discovered the telescope and in the 1780s man saw Uranus for the first time. This planet is now the ruler of Aquarius, it has a revolutionary energy, and was discovered in the time of the French and  American revolutions. It was also the time that electricity was discovered, setting our world alight. This unseen planet, now revealed, set us on a path of discovery. One of the most imperative things it is asking us to discover, is our awareness of our collective unconscious. This would enable us to find the bonds that connect us all,  

The bird that is found in this archetypal story, and in the Glastonbury Zodiac (on the Tor itself), is the phoenix who has to die in order to rise out of the ashes. If we are to make the changes most people would like to see in our world, change war into harmony, impoverished communities into ones enjoying health and well-being, we have to come down from the skies and discover that we are of this world and not on it. One thing science is teaching us is the delicate balance of nature and how we are disrupting it to our detriment as much as any other living being in this world.

Our sense of superiority will be our undoing. 

However, as ever, there are always more ways to see this. What filled me with fascination is how a view can be flipped on its head. It was explained to me, that the idea of the bird flying overhead isn’t only a negative thing. It can be positive if we choose to see it as the archetype that takes the role of the witness. Part of our journey is about understanding that we are stuck in our heads, in our egos, and this has taken us on a road filled with pain and trauma that has been passed down over the centuries, over millennia. 

If we are going to heal this hurt, which seems like an overwhelmingly huge challenge, we need to be able to step outside our sense of being just an individual, a limited human existence. This begins with learning how to be our own witness. Like a mother tends a child, we can tend and heal our own inner child by creating space around our sense of self. This gives room for our soul to enter the story and help us to grow into our true power. Once we have opened ourselves to this broader view, this bird’s eye view, we will begin to see how we are a community of beings and a collective so much greater than we think we are. 

I have faith that there will be a time when we stop giving away our power to the few and spread it evenly to all of the earthly beings who share this beautiful planet with us, 

Then we can choose a kinder way to live on this earth, a way of trusting, caring and loving our fellow humans, and all who inhabit this world. This is so much simpler that we believe, but until we take that higher path and are able to see a better way for ourselves we will continue live in the small version of our lives.

My friend, Chrissy Philp, the author of the book The Golden City, called this time, as we move into the age of Aquarius, the Cosmic Mind. I believe this encapsulates the times to come perfectly and beautifully.