The star sign Aquarius: distance, ideas and a mind of its own

Aquarius carries water in its name and belongs to air all the same. The picture behind the sign is a water carrier: someone tipping a jug and pouring out what is in it. What is meant is not the water but the pouring – handing on something that does not belong to one person alone. If your birthday falls between 20 January and 18 February, your Sun is in this sign. The date of the changeover depends on the year, though. If you were born right at the beginning or right at the end of that span, it is worth looking at an ephemeris for your year of birth.

The third air sign

In astrology air stands for what passes back and forth between people: thoughts, language, arguments, plans. All three air signs work with it, each in its own way. In Gemini air is curious and quick, in Libra it weighs and looks for balance, in Aquarius it goes to the root of things. Aquarius asks less often what happens to be the custom and more often why it is the custom – and whether it has to remain one.

As the eleventh sign, Aquarius lies in the middle of winter, and its mode is fixed. That surprises many people: from a sign that stands for innovation one expects volatility. In fact it is steady in its convictions – flexible in the means, not in the substance. What each of the four elements describes is set out under the four elements.

Saturn and Uranus

Classically Saturn rules this sign – the same Saturn that also rules Capricorn and stands for form, limit and duration. Uranus was not discovered until 1781, and modern astrology assigned it to Aquarius. Since then the sign has carried two signatures: one that builds structure and one that breaks it open.

That both are meant explains Aquarius better than either on its own. It is not the chaotic type that many a description makes of it, but rather the person who knows an existing order exactly and therefore knows where it gives way. A word about scale: Uranus takes about 84 years for one orbit and stands in the same sign for some seven years. It touches everyone born in those seven years alike; it becomes personal only through its house and its angles in your birth chart. What the individual celestial bodies mean you will find under the planets.

Distance is not coldness

In everyday life what strikes people first is a certain distance. Aquarians like to look at a situation from a step outside it, even when they are in the thick of it. In a conflict that is worth its weight in gold: they rarely take personally what was not meant personally, and they will still listen to two people quarrelling when everyone else took sides long ago.

For people who need warmth quickly, that is exactly what is wearing. An Aquarius comforts by explaining – and misses the mark, because the person opposite did not want an explanation but company. If you are built that way yourself: a short sentence does more here than the best analysis. “That sounds rough. Tell me.”

Friendship, groups and a mind of its own

In the usual arrangement the eleventh house goes with the eleventh sign, and there the subject is friendships, groups and goals. Friendship is the key this sign plays in most surely: a wide, loose network of people one likes, and beside it a small number who really come close. That is not a contradiction.

Two things are worth knowing when you are dealing with an Aquarius. First: pressure does not work, a good reason does – and then it takes patience, because the answer rarely comes in the same conversation. Second: space is not a whim but the condition under which this person stays themselves. It only stays honest, though, as long as that space does not turn into an excuse. “I need space” can also serve as a way of never having to have a conversation that is overdue.

What the sun sign leaves open

Not every Aquarius is the headstrong type of the description. The Moon, Mercury, Venus and above all the ascendant shift the picture considerably. There are very domestic, very attached Aquarians whose own mind only becomes visible when someone tries to tell them what to do. You will find the whole series of signs under the zodiac signs.