The Elements in Astrology: Water
Part 4 in a series
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Remember how I told you in the last installment, on the element of earth, that the closer you look at each element alone, the weirder it gets, like looking at each of your eyebrows?
Well, here we go again, so bear with me. I started thinking of water and its relationship to the Moon, both as the planetary ruler of Cancer, and because of its impact on the most obvious water to me - the oceans. I live about a 15 minute walk from the Puget Sound, which is part of the Pacific Ocean, so I see the different tides almost every day, but I had only a vague understanding of the Moon’s role in them.
Oh my goodness! Do you know how many videos are out there explaining this? And that almost all of them are incorrect? So, if you google it, please do not watch any of them that say the tides are a bulge caused because the Moon’s gravitational force is pulling the ocean toward it and then the Earth follow and the opposite side ocean is then bulging. Wrong - o! If you want to learn, this video from PBS seems to get it right. It is really complicated, so I would rather you just go watch it later. For now, let me just tell you that that particular science rabbit hole didn’t yield anything insightful for this episode.
However, it did align naturally with other things I know about the element of water in astrology. There is a cyclical nature, but the cycles are not exactly the same and they depend on many factors. There is also a push and a pull involved in the cycles. The second chakra, or sacral chakra, also ties in, as its element is water, and it reflects a changing level of consciousness, which made me again connect to changing tides.
The consciousness which changes is that our understanding of self now includes an awareness of others, or a feeling of unity to a feeling of difference. Similar to the many tiny shifts in motion of the individual water molecules of the ocean adding up to the tides, our many tiny shifts in understanding our body’s reaction (feeling) to external stimuli add up to our emotions, which can also be high or low like the tides.
Let’s begin with Cancer, which is ruled by the Moon, and is the cardinal (initiating) of the three water signs. Remember those cycles, that push pull? Wow does cancer feel that. Like all signs of the zodiac, there is an innate pull to differentiate, to expand into something else, because our soul put us in this body in order to have experiences which lead to evolution. However, remember Cancer is a crab and has a shell. It goes through the discomfort of having new experiences and small changes until it is about to burst from its shell and then it tends to freak out a bit and want to retreat into safety.
Cancer energy feels that it is responsible for carrying all the memories of its loved ones, so it is really scary to change too much. What if something important gets lost? This is where the Capricorn pull of its polar axis must come into play, or other energies in the birth chart. At some point, Cancer kind of has to say “screw you, carry your own memories” and get on with its life. This sign is known to be the most nurturing yet it is also the best at self-nurturing when it acknowledges the need.
While Capricorn may be surprisingly sentimental because it tends toward nostalgia for a certain time period, Cancer is more practical in that it experiences all of the subtle changes because its ruling planet is the most changeable of all, the Moon, which changes signs every two and half days.
The second chakra is also associated with sexuality and pleasure, which leads me to the second water sign, Scorpio. I am so tempted to look up memes of over-sexed Scorpios right now, but I will not because I am a serious astrologer. While some of the memes may be partially true, it is not casual sex that drives Scorpio energy. It is the need for intimacy, that deepest psychological knowing of the other person. For sure, what brings pleasure to the other person, but also their most messed up secrets!
Scorpio has dual rulership, Mars from Hellenistic astrology, and Pluto from modern astrology. These two are the most intense planets, making Scorpio, in my opinion, the most intense of the zodiac. In fact, many astrologers jokingly call it “the fire sign of the water signs”. From the god of war, Mars, Scorpio gets a pretty darn high tolerance for pain, brutality, and the darker side of human nature. From Pluto, the stamina to live amongst that pain for quite some time. Honestly, if teammates were allowed in the Hunger Games, I would choose all Scorpios.
Scorpio energy is also that of dramatic transformation, like a death and rebirth. Perhaps it is this drive to transform which can lend itself to seeking intimacy, because when you get that close to another person, a part of you risks dying for the sake of the relationship. Scorpio energy knows intuitively that not to risk transformation is dying in a different way, the death by a thousand cuts method.
Our third water sign is Pisces, the 12th sign of the zodiac. Oh yes, I neglected to say that Cancer is the fourth sign, associated with the fourth house, which relates to home, family of origin, and ancestors. And Scorpio is the eighth sign of the zodiac, which relates to the eighth house. The eighth house, along with the twelfth house, are perhaps the heaviest and most mysterious of the zodiac. The eighth is where everything taboo falls: sex, death, other people’s money, other people’s stuff - generally an intense house like its rulers. The twelfth house is the end of a cycle and the culmination of basically everything.
Which makes Pisces a difficult to pin down sign. In fact, its glyph are two fish swimming in opposite directions yet tied together - huh? I liken it to trying to grasp a slippery fish, and the tighter you squeeze, the more likely it will slip through your grasp. Like Scorpio, it also has dual rulership. Jupiter in the Hellenistic tradition and Neptune in modern astrology. What those two planets’ energies have in common are lack of boundaries (or perhaps in Jupiter’s case, lack of respect for), on the spectrum of impracticality, and wanting to be somewhere other than the present reality.
I have to admit, I have a watery chip on my shoulder about Pisces energy. It is where my North Node lies, in my fourth house. I was so comfortable in the Virgo end of the pool, which of course, is not a pool at all, but a highly organized and clearly defined useful structure. I had pretty awful experiences with home and family of origin (4th house), and in my western science trained world, there was not much opportunity to consider the larger meaning of life (Pisces). Life forced me to do the Scorpio transformation by pushing me into the Pisces pool, and here I am.
Where exactly? I think to understand Pisces, we have to suspend disbelief, and just feel. At some point you have to admit that what you feel is the truth, even if it doesn’t fit into a clean structure or match anything you have experienced. If you feel it, and it feels true to you, that is reality. You can see how Pisces energy can range from idealistic (Jupiter’s influence) to dreamy (Neptune’s influence).
What happened to me was that as I was determined to finally get alcohol out of my life (I wrote about Neptune in my first house here), and my neural pathways were open for reconstruction, they also opened access to other realms in the form of past life memories and mediumship (and lately animal communication - yay!). I put up a good fight to remain on the rational Virgo side of the street, but ultimately, I just couldn’t live there anymore. The evidence that I was picking up was enough to sway even the staunchest non-believer, because what I was seeing and knowing were things that I couldn’t possibly know.
So we have come full circle, which is oh so appropriate for Pisces and this series on the elements in astrology.
I hope this has been a helpful perspective and that you are now consciously curious about the element of water in astrology!
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