A revolution for whom?
Third quarter moon in Aquarius, May 20, 2025
This is a moon of confusion. This moon inhabits the realm of Aquarius, a dissociative and airy realm in which the personal comes last before the needs of the collective. One feels this in both the Saturn-ruled signs, Capricorn and Aquarius, but particularly in Aquarius where it feels both luminaries are at a disadvantage. You’d think, for an air sign, they would have all this clarity and brightness, but instead there’s a sense that the “I” and “you” are subsumed to the “we,” disciplined to support the aspirational goals of the collective.
This moon also squares the sun in the last degree of Taurus, a space of consolidation and release, with Uranus so close in proximity that it’s part of the show. Uranus has been steamrolling us into the future whether we like it or not. I find myself recalling something about the transition from feudalism to capitalism, so I went to confirm my thoughts, and see this transition is far more contested that I’m about to present.
What seems safe to observe is there was no revolutionary moment in which there was decided end to feudalism and beginning to capitalism. There were absolutely legal interventions, violence, and wars that pushed the transition. But in some senses, the transition occurred because the merchant class grew rich and powerful enough that they could influence governments to begin to serve their interests, while the landed aristocracy lost their power and influence.
This story, or I guess the myth I’m telling today, feels germane to this moment of the moon. Earlier I said that Uranus has been steamrolling us into the future, but nothing about this future was inevitable or necessarily desired by all humans everywhere. A certain influential faction of people have the position and influence to get the government to create policy favorable to their interests. After investing so much in AI, companies are making us use it, finding ways to make us want to use and depend upon it, and as often happens case a whole swath of people will decide, are deciding, they cannot live or think without it. What didn’t even exist three years ago will now be trumpeted with the language of human rights and one will be accused of ableism for questioning if the enormous costs of energy and impact to the environment isn’t worth these gains.
We are in the midst of a revolution—not one of organized conflict, at this moment, but a revolution in economy, politics, and culture. This moon is also in the last degree of Aquarius, with the sun reflecting upon and dissolving all that it’s picked up on its journey through the sign. The third quarter is a phase of integration and dissolution. In Slow Magic, I associate it with the stage of fruit in the growth cycle. Fruit is the culmination of the work, creating produce that carries the seeds of the next growth cycle. To free those seeds, the fruit must be consumed, or broken apart, or rot. The gas that causes the fruit to ripen and become delicious is also what causes it to decay and break apart to become soil for its seeds. It is a time of delighting in what has occurred, discerning what to do with the harvest, and shedding what is no longer needed.
In the chart of this moon, I see the moon and sun’s rulers both hanging out in the twelfth house. Saturn in Pisces, also in the last degree, is only a few degrees away from Neptune in Aries. Venus is also in Aries, but with a distance in which she’s less involved in that connection. Saturn and Neptune seem to be in a slow-building romance that will keep unfolding over the next year or two, climaxing in a full conjunction next year, but now they feel like two magnets close enough that their fields are beginning to pull on each other.
Saturn wants to crystalize, build, and establish while Neptune wants to dissolve and dream. In Pisces, Saturn is in a strange position, but I hear him speaking to confusion about ideals and aspirations. Saturn has been on a journey in learning to dream big and hope in spite of all odds, and feels a vision that is so clear and precise that it seems it cannot be an illusion. Saturn dreams of vast empires, of making things great again, of existing in a world of psychic power that overcomes physical limitation, but Saturn also is physical limitation, decay, and the end of great things. Neptune, too, feels like a warrior intoxicated by her own illusions, willing to fight and die for things that make no sense, willing to go to war over things she knows to be lies or things she’s convinced herself are real in spite of knowing they are not.
In essence, the reality principle is in a delusional submarine, while the transcendent function is in an armed tank. We are getting the foretastes of what is to come there.
In summary, this lunation is harvesting and integrating the work of this lunar month, looking at the winners and losers of the great shifts that are occurring, and thinking on what greater dreams, what greater causes, what great missions are worth this sacrifice.