At 10° Aquarius we encounter A Man Who Had For A Time Become The Embodiment Of A Popular Ideal Is Made To Realize That As A Person He Is Not This Ideal. Bummer. This symbol is ruled by Capricorn in a 12-fold sequence which can portray a backsliding, dissident energy, just as it expresses a stickler, throwback one. Saturn rules Capricorn and that planet’s namesake god is a deposed figure who used to rule a golden age, no longer doing so. Capricorn men in particular can be a bit been-there-done-that, jaded, even dour and dejected. Meanwhile the sign of Aquarius, which boasts many a guru gone bad, can take that fixed-air status of the sign (an inalienable ideal) and personify it only to realize that human imperfection will see one fall short of sustaining said ideal.

This holds true in all our perceptions. Who among us has projected our notions about others onto them, expecting them to live up to the ideal (that flag we saw flying in the previous symbol), not taking into account their all-too-human natures. If someone ever puts me on a pedestal, I for one will be sure to knock down that expectation, for better or for worse. And typically I have a hard time with individuals who would have you identify them with some image or high principle. Right away I pull out a pin and start to bust their balloons.

People do this sort of thing, especially, in love where they expect an individual to fill a void in their lives. In Tarot, the Star card depicts the water bearer—a star is the perfect expression of the sign’s fixed-air signature. And so we have seen the female archetype of the stellar (but descending) goddess in such characters as Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire and Estelle in Great Expectations. Great Expectations indeed; whether of others or of ourselves—this is where the disconnect between who we are and whom we are meant to be becomes more gappy. The star on the big screen isn’t what is projected.

This degree in astrology might point to a potential to experience a high point of popularity that will have a shelf life with which to be reckoned. This is very much a theme of our male Capricorn chapter in Sextrology called The Stickler. Capricorn, like his archetypal god, Saturn, is typically wistful for a time in the past; yes, it might be some golden age in which he didn’t even live; but it will also apply to a period of his own young life. Golden years, Go-oh-old, wah wah wah. Capricorn David Bowie knew what we were talking about. As did J.D. Salinger’s young characters all of whom had problems with modern life and the phoniness it presented.

On the subject of one’s own fleeting popularity, it has the same pattern as trauma. It isn’t about the golden era of one’s ubiquitous celebrity, nor is about the downpoint or fall that one might be experiencing in the present; rather it is how one negotiates the gap between those two experiences. Fame, popularity, like all tangible terrestrial things, are ephemeral and the understanding of that should direct us toward putting our faith in that which might be eternal. In simpler, earthier terms, what can we learn about ourselves and our character, what is the takeaway, from a period of popularity after that spate has ended. We must reevaluate ourselves. We must justify the difference between who we are and the archetype we projected which, really, might just be an element of self, a most popular one, captured in the wax like those figures in the Sabian symbol from two days hence.

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