The star sign Aquarius: the sign and the age

An age is named after Aquarius, and that age is better known than the sign itself. Anyone whose birthday falls between 20 January and 18 February gets to hear about it sooner or later, usually as a compliment. The two have far less to do with each other than the shared name suggests.

Why nobody can say when it begins

The name of the age comes from a very slow shift in the sky. The spring equinox, from which Western astrology counts its circle, drifts backwards through the constellations; the process is called precession. At present that point lies in the constellation Pisces and is closing on Aquarius. When it arrives there, the Age of Aquarius begins on this reckoning, and a stretch of that kind runs to a good two thousand years.

Only it does not begin on any day that can be calculated. Where one constellation ends and the next starts is not a fact of nature but an agreement among people; the binding version was settled by the International Astronomical Union in 1930, and older maps drew the lines elsewhere. Depending on which of them someone takes, the years that come out lie several centuries apart — and on such a day there would be nothing to see in any case. So there is no date to argue over, only a disagreement about where someone draws a line. The matter became a catchphrase at the end of the 1960s, carried along by the 1967 musical “Hair”.

It has nothing to do with your birthday

Suppose people agreed on a year all the same: little would be gained by it. A world age would take in everyone at once, those born today as much as those born sixty years ago; so it sets you apart from no one. Your sun sign at least does that, even if only from some eleven twelfths of humanity.

On top of that, the two details come from different calculations: the age is read off the constellations, your sun sign off the spring equinox. That both are called Aquarius is a coincidence of names and not a connection. What the twelve signs describe one after another is set out under zodiac signs.

Leo stands opposite

More rewarding than the age is a comparison that lies close at hand. In the circle, Leo stands opposite Aquarius, and the two take up the same subject from either end. What occupies Leo is what makes a person exactly this one person; for that it needs someone who sees it in exactly that way. What occupies Aquarius is what holds good for everyone alike; any answer that is true for one person only strikes it as suspect.

When fairness is the yardstick

In everyday life this shows in small things. When something scarce is being shared out — tickets, days of leave, the one free evening in the week — an Aquarius divides it so that the division can be justified in front of everyone concerned. That is a strength, and in a group it is noticed at once. The person alongside, who had hoped that in their case an exception would be made, hears a clean piece of reasoning and still feels passed over.

Both are right and are talking about different things: the one about fairness, the other about being somebody’s exception. The difference here is not one of affection but of yardstick. An Aquarius who gives one person preference has the feeling of becoming unfair; someone who is never given preference has the feeling of being interchangeable. Anyone who can keep the two sentences apart argues a good deal more briefly here.

What an age cannot do

In the end two pieces of information of very different reach stand side by side, and the larger one is the emptier. An age covers some eighty generations; whatever is ascribed to it cannot be tested against a single life. A sun sign, by contrast, is a tiny detail, one among many in a birth chart — but it can be measured against an ordinary day: against a share-out you made, against an argument in which you stood on principle.

The way back from the big name to the small finding is worth taking, then. What the rising sign further shifts in this picture is set out under the ascendant.