When I think of the spirit of Aquarius, I think of the Nile River. Every year in ancient Egypt melting winter snow flowed from the Ethiopian Mountains into the Nile, essentially flooding the city surrounding. Since it was their only water source, a small flood or no flood meant famine, so they depended on this annual cycle for the following years crops. Change wasn’t easy. Each year they had to plan on the potential that their home and livelihood might be entirely wiped out. Yet to this day, the Egyptians still love their Nile. When I visited Cairo in 2008, they still called the river a precious jewel of Egypt. In Cairo, modern Egyptians stay up late- and one of their favorite things to do was strolling the Nile, where they’d convene for midnight family picnic dinners, or a date, setting up camp along the board walk and catching up with friends.

Aquarius knows upheaval goes hand in hand with evolution and progress, and so did the Egyptians, who planned for this cyclic, disruptive time. Upheaval was the price of progress for the Egyptians (and perhaps still is). The Nile’s radical upheaval could liberate people of their houses and property, but the payoff was the abundance that followed every flood.

In our lives, when we’re unconscious or consciously repressing the truth, that’s when the full force of Truth awakens us like the flooding Nile River. A client of mine spent a long time avoiding a nagging feeling that she was being lied to by her partner. One day, in classic “out of the blue” fashion, her husband told her he wanted a divorce. Transiting Uranus had just entered her Eighth House of intimacy. Uranian events may seem sudden, but that’s only because we’ve disconnected from our inner rudder of truth. Like an earthquake, when Uranus delivers a surprise into our life, the tension has been building for a long while. Carolyn Casey says: “Like Pluto, Uranus plays hardball. Uranus has no tolerance for people who are unhappy in any area of their life (job, relationship) but who aren’t working on getting to the emotional truth.”

Can we, like the Egyptians, learn to embrace the liberating exhilaration of periodic, radical change? My client did. She woke up to her authentic self, and wondered why she had been hiding her for so long. She’s now having the time of her life. Just as the Nile River wiped everything clean so the land could prosper anew, after we’re liberated into truth, abundance follows. Yet how often we prolong actually following our truth, creating unnecessary drama. As Carolyn says when talking about a client she consulted who wanted to quit her job, but didn’t so was fired, “We might measure our evolution by our capacity to learn to skip the unpleasant melodrama and go more gracefully to the liberating outcome. Just quit the job.”

Aquarius New Moon heralds a season of change, a time when we can intentionally invoke the spirit of truthfulness, authenticity, renewal and cleansing. Look to where this New Moon falls in your chart as an area where you can experience authenticity and positive breakthroughs. Do you need a dose of truth? Seek out Soothsayers and Truthsayers – friends you trust, to tell it how it is. Heed the spontaneous call of your intuition. What we label as “crazy talk” is often our intuition trying to burst out and bring more clarity and truthfulness to a situation.

Embrace the restless spirit of change at this New Moon, the exciting promise of being set free into a more radically authentic version of your self. If you’re feeling tense or uncertain, ask, Where in my life do I want lightning to strike? Whether you want to experience a truer, freer, more vibrantly alive relationship with your partner, or a radical overhaul in an area of your life, consider this: You don’t have to do anything but express an intention for authentic change. You don’t have to know the answers, or know how something will come about. By willingly offering your self to the God of Change, the question itself becomes the lightning rod.

image source: Goddess Art Print Star- available on Etsy.com