Mars in Aquarius (Garth Allen)

[Jim Eshelman]

Hap Not So Happy
(from "Your Powwow Corner" by Garth Allen, American Astrology 4/57)

Readers acquainted with astrology's early literature know that the primary rulership of Aquarius was of rivers, canals and dams. Best known of these early sources, probably, is the poetry of Manilius which dwells almost exclusively on the waterway motif in connection with Aquarius, with direct references to "channels," "imprisonment of streams: and "curbing of waters." Authorities are agreed that Aquarius originally was a depiction of Hap, God of the Nile River and otherwise the zodiacal regent of the land of Egypt itself. As Egyptian Astrology disseminated itself through the then known world by the process of cultural osmosis, variations in the symbolism inevitably took place. The Babylonians kept Egyptian imagery more or less intact, since the Euphratean was also a "river" civilization. The Greeks, however, had little actual use for the waterway principle, so in Hellenistic astrology we find Aquarius associated with Deucalion, hero of the Greek deluge saga, still pouring from two jugs into the canyon where the waters of the flood finally subsided.

An even more popular adaptation of Hap's symbol in Greece was the identification of Aquarius with Ganymede, but almost unrecognizable except for the fact Ganymede is still found clutching a vase of some sort in his office as cupbearer and bartender for the bawdy guests and residents of Olympus. Roman Astrology, however, harked back to Egyptian origins to a greater degree, because the waterway motif of Aquarius jibed so naturally with vital Empire building projects and activities. So we find roman astrologers automatically referring to Aquarius in connection with aqueducts, channels, bridges, plumbing, dams, water divining and hydraulic devices of all types. Later in history, especially after the comatose Dark and Middle Ages, astrological symbolism underwent further alterations, until with the adoption of symmetrical schemes like the triplicities, the zodiacal imagery of Aquarius has all but been obliterated to the point where little attention is now paid to the "Aqua" in "Aquarius" even though every astrologers still scribbles two lines of rippling water every times Aquarius is written into a horoscope.

The biggest news story and most far-reaching current event of 1956, the Suez crisis with all its ramifications, was an offshoot of the Aswan Dam affair – an offshoot that got out of hand. An outstanding phenomenon in the heavens of 1956 was the plaguing of proud Jupiter by three oppositions from militant Mars. More than half of the whole year, Mars was transiting through Aquarius in the Egyptian zodiac, the strife creating planet having not spent so much time at one whack in that sector of the sky in seventy-nine years. We think that the Suez-Aswan affair, climaxing to an international military crisis with Mars in Aquarian is one of the most remarkable astrological "coincidences" of our time. Blood was shed in and around and because of Egyptian waterways in Hap's Land and the fate of the world hinged on this circumstance – as astrological picture astonishing for its simplicity as well as symbolic accuracy.

Incidentally, in terms of eras, Mars spends less time in the Aquarian region than in any other part of the sky, about a fifteenth of the time. During its present 656 day circuit of the Zodiac, Mars spent 184 days in Aquarius, fully 28% of the time, against its average rate of 6.7%. Our imaginations are stirred as we wonder what an ancient Egyptian astrologer would have told his Pharaoh in advance of such a situation!