Aquarius I: The Law of the Land
By Silverius Materi
A sour wind whips across the landscape, an excoriating blade. A stream, once tinkling with fresh water, now oozes a lurch of thick, bruise-black blood. It bends and wends its way through what once were foothills, now boils primed to burst through desiccated flesh. It leads to an orchard of gaunt phantoms, wanderers and exiles who, drenched by an opaque hopelessness, have halted walking and taken root, the ashen soil the only thing still willing to hold them. Their cricket-bone limbs contorted into shapes so sharp the mind flinches to look upon them. The fruit that hangs from these abysmal arbors grow like maggots bursting from a corpse and takes the form of slicked livers, coated thick in a resin of resentment, congealed by cruelty. This is what the earth has left to feed us based on what we have fed the earth.
The air signs commonly get tied up in the mental realm. The abode of ideas, thoughts, words, ideologies, concepts, and abstracts. I think Aquarius gets pulled (abducted?) into this realm even more severely at least, in part, because of modern pop astrology’s association between Aquarius and aliens. Regardless of where this association finds its roots, it can be tricky to conceive of Aquarius as belonging to somewhere other than the airy realm, somewhere distinctly not here. But what if, at least in this first decan of Aquarius, there is still a connection to the earth, to the beings of terrestrial terrain? After all, Aquarius’ glyph (♒︎) could be read as a mirror, a relationship between The World Above and The World Below. Of the sky that feeds the land with nourishing rain. Or, if that’s too far of a stretch, at least the relationship between one thing and another.
36 Airs of the Zodiac, most recently brought into astrological awareness by Austin Coppock in 36 Faces, associates Aquarius I with Dike, Greek goddess of justice, fair judgment, and the rights and civic expectations established by human law. It is she who brings down the sword when a boundary has been crossed and tallies out the consequences of a breach of right relationship. Initially, this judicial goddess makes a lot of sense for Aquarius I, particularly when we consider the decan’s association to the 5 of Swords in tarot.
Tarot readers often interpret this card as one of unfairness, pyrrhic victories, of cheating and underhandedness, of coming out on top but at what expense? The card, and by extension the decan, thus seemingly speak to those situations Dike would avert or resolve. She says, “Don’t treat other people like crap. Plain and simple.” But when Dike says “people”, she doesn’t exclusively mean other humans. Because while she is regularly considered the goddess of human justice, that is but one petal on the flower, one fruit hanging from the tree, one stream flowing into the sacred grove she deems to be her court.
We must remember, Dike is also one of the Horai, the Hours. Often three, sometimes four, yet also twelve in number, the Horai are goddesses of the revolution of the constellations and the turning of the seasons; stewardesses of the pastures and midwives to fecundity; protectresses of the gates of Mount Olympos with an investment in children, in those beings who cannot yet take care of themselves, who are dependent on the relational care of others. Farmers prayed to the Horai because it is they who bring the rain and other conditions necessary to grow crops. It is their understanding of the natural order of the cosmos which they bequeath to us that tells the planter the appropriate time to plant the seeds, when to water, when to harvest and how much to ensure everyone gets the nourishment they need. It is likely this ecological understanding of Dike and her sisters came first and only later became abstracted (Aquarius!) to more general understandings of order and justice.
So yes, Dike and Aquarius I do have something to say about how we treat other humans, but they also have something to tell us about how we treat the world around us and how the one mirrors (♒︎) the other. We can see this in the decanic rulers of Aquarius I: Venus via the Chaldean order system and Saturn via triplicity. This planetary pair asks us to be relationally (Venus) responsible (Saturn), to love (Venus) that which is Other (Saturn), and to have devotion (Venus) to the Land (Saturn). Hesiod in Works and Days describes how abiding by Dike’s laws results in the flourishing of said land:
“But they who give straight judgements to strangers and to the men of the land, and go not aside from what is just, their city flourishes, and the people prosper in it […] Neither famine nor disaster ever haunt men who do true justice; but light-heartedly they tend the fields which are all their care. The earth bears them victual in plenty, and on the mountains the oak bears acorns upon the top and bees in the midst. Their woolly sheep are laden with fleeces; their women bear children like their parents. They flourish continually with good things, and do not travel on ships, for the grain-giving earth bears them fruit.”
In a conversation with my friend Heather (who doesn’t have social media, meaning you sadly can’t benefit from her brilliance like I can), she talked about this in another way I think could be nutritive for all of us:
“What if as long as humans were balanced internally and with one another, the environment would always reflect that? And if a family got out of whack somehow then didn’t fix it it, then it would start manifesting externally like bad crops and no rain, which would disregulate the people even more until it was like barren wasteland? And then that state of disregulation was forced to spread. And that’s the true ‘fall from Eden’? So what if the shallow advice of ‘fix yourself to fix the world’ actually has weighty meaning?”
To Aquarius I, I think there serious truth here.
Something I find particularly interesting about Heather’s thoughts is that she evokes Eden. Even though we weren’t talking about this decan, it struck something in me because it’s not the first time I’ve seen that halcyon domain and its residents linked to Aquarius I. In fact, the preeminent text on the decans does the same.
Austin Coppock names this decan “The Mark of the Exile” in 36 Faces, conjuring Adam and Eve’s fratricidal son Cain and his eternal punishment for his misdeeds against his brother. While Coppock parses out the exilic qualities of this figure in relation to Aquarius I, I think his actions and their consequences hold wisdom worthy of Dike’s approval.
The Biblical narrative goes that Cain and Abel, sons of Adam and Eve, brought sacrifices before YHWH. Cain, being a farmer, offered grain. Abel, a shepherd, offered a sheep. YHWH approved of Abel’s offering and, in retaliation, Cain killed his brother. As consequence, YHWH cursed Cain to everlasting exile. Eventually, Cain built a city and sired a line of descendants, including the first blacksmith, Tubal-cain. While this story resonates with Aquarius I/5 of Swords’ surface themes of justice, misdeeds and their consequences, there is another character in the tale to whom Dike would listen.
Mari Jørstad in her essay, “The Ground That Opened Its Mouth: The Ground’s Response to Human Violence in Genesis 4” asserts that the purposeful use of active verbs and body parts when referring to the ground establish the Earth as a third agent in the Cain’s killing of Abel. “The ground opened its mouth to take the blood of Abel,” [emphasis mine], and, being a farmer, Cain has a direct relationship with the Earth, making them accomplices. Jørstad asks a pointed question: “does the intimate connection between humans and the ground mean that the ground mirrors or aids human action, regardless of the nature of that action?” (Did you catch the word “mirror” in there?) This question is one to consider deeply when looking at Aquarius I, as are its consequences.
YHWH goes on to proclaim a curse on Cain - a life of exile from other humans, but also from the ground itself. “When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength.” Could this “her” be Dike, using the sword she bears to cleave Cain from a relationship with the Earth? Though YHWH speaks the curse, it is, after all, described as coming, “from the ground” (4:11). As mentioned above, all this leads to the establishment of the first fixed human settlement and the industry of blacksmithing. Tubal-Cain goes on to inspire the creation of all those implements, the machines and tools, the technology, that further separate us from the earth and from each other.
While the sign of Aquarius as a whole and this decan in particular do speak of the exile, the outsider, the maverick, etc. I think it also speaks to the way we as a culture perpetuate the ideology that we are separate from the Earth. It points out to us the ways we continue to emphasize the primacy of the human mind and exile ourselves from the forces of nature. In Aquarius I I hear the whispers of Dike on the wind and see her face in the clouds. I hear her asking us, calling out to us from the ground, to come down from the sky and remember our relationship to the Earth, to see ourselves in the mirror that is the lake ever renewed by rainwater. To use all tools we’ve crafted, the swords and spades, to crack through the layer of concrete pictured in the 5 of Swords and get back being in relation (Venus) with the Earth (Saturn), before all the Earth has left for us is a curse from which we can never return.
About the Author
Silverius (he / him) is an astrolater and devotional astrologer. His main goal is to bring people into connection with the world(s) around them, to weave the stars into poetry, and to enliven the birth chart with one’s personal mythology. He found his way to astrology from tarot via the cryptic causeway of the decans, so this collaborative endeavour feels like the way to honour those phantasmagoric frontiers. You can find his devotional stellar poetry on his Instagram silvermattereye, as well as his musings on the mythopoesis of the cosmos on Threads under the same handle.
Instagram and Threads: Silvermattereye
REFERENCES
Coppock, A. (2014). 36 Faces: The History, Astrology and Magic of the Decans
Evelyn-White, H.G. (1914). Hesiod, Homeric Hymns, Epic Cycle, Homerica
Jørstad, M. (2016). The Ground That Opened Its Mouth: The Ground’s Response to Human Violence in Genesis 4. Journal of Biblical Literature, 135(4).
King James Bible. (2024). King James Bible Online. https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Genesis-Chapter-4/#11. (Original work published 1769).
A sharp and insightful take on Aquarius I! The connection to the Five of Swords adds so much depth—brilliantly articulated and thought-provoking.