Aquarius

AQUARIUS

January 21-Febmary 19 Birthdays

Birthstone: Amethyst

Best day: Saturday

Element: Air

Type: Fixed

 

It is said that 82 percent of the people in the Ameri­can Hall of Fame are Aquarians. The list of respected po­litical figures born under this sign is much longer than average, too, and includes such outstanding names as Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Adlai Steven­son and possibly George Washington (whose true birth­day seems to be in doubt). The list of famous scientists who are Aquarian born includes such original thinkers as Francis Bacon, Charles Darwin and Thomas Edison.

 

With no intention of disparaging these truly remark­able achievements, it must also be said that the preoccu­pations of Aquarians are those that would tend to make them famous as political figures or scientists: this is the sign of wide-ranging human brotherhood, arising from a search for truth that leaves no room for intolerance or conformity to outmoded ideas.

 

There's no question about it—you Aquarians are dif­ferent from other people. The petty concerns and emo­tional confusion that often cloud the thinking of others are not likely to affect you much. Your vision is broad and your viewpoint is intellectual rather than emotional Your approach to the truths of life is openminded. You are willing to weigh the pros and cons of every theory, neither seeking to prove or to disprove but primarily to uncover the truth. Truth is your major goal in life.

 

It would seem that this would make you a scholar, but actually the contrary is the case. You begin your person­al revolution quite early in life; as soon as you are capa­ble of analytic thinking you begin to challenge the au­thority of your schoolbooks. Consequently you may be a dropout, since it is easy for you to become dissatisfied with the slowness of classroom education, where most classes are geared to less eager and curious minds than yours. You discover that experience is your best teacher, and then you leave school to continue your researches on your own.

 

This is your weak point; you rarely discipline yourself to stick with a subject long enough really to probe it to its depths. Somewhat like the other highly intellectual sign, Gemini, you are in danger of becoming a mental dilettante, knowing a little bit about a great many sub­jects but not enough about one. You might bear in mind that almost every Aquarian who has achieved great things has had the help of a rising sign which added the necessary persistence to your originality and curiosity.

 

Thomas Edison, for instance, has patient Scorpio rising, and it is said that he tried thousands of formulas before he found a light bulb that worked. Franklin D. Roose­velt and Charles Dickens, whose famous novels are all thinly veiled indictments of man's inhumanity to man, had hard-working Virgo rising, which added practicality to their Aquarian visions of service to humanity.Even without the help of a particularly favorable ris­ing ago, though, you can be a tireless worker if your in­terest is aroused. What usually arouses your interest, be­sides curiosity, is the chance of helping humanity—hu­manity as a whole, that is, rather than any specific per­son.

 

You tend to think in very large terms and to make plans that cover large numbers of people. This is an ex­cellent attitude for a politician, who needs to think in such terms, and is one of the reasons why Aquarians are so often successful in politics.

 

When it comes to individual relationships, though, your attitude does not work quite as well. Your sympa­thy is impersonal; there are even times when you get a little annoyed if a particular person, for individual rea­sons which may be perfectly valid, refuses to conform to your grand plan. On the whole your attitude toward people is kind, gentle and tolerant, but even then it is sometimes misunderstood because the interest you give to someone one day you give to someone else the next day. Anyone who is possessive or egotistical enough to imagine they have captured your entire attention is in for a rude shock.

 

This is especially true when the other person is of the opposite sex. Aquarians are naive in their search for truth; they imagine that everyone else understands what they are doing. Of course, this is rarely the case, and the other person is all too likely to interpret your personal and penetrating questions as romantic interest—which usually is the farthest thing from your mind. This can lead to some rather embarrassing situations, on both sides—especially as you are inclined to be rather brusque and abrupt in informing them of their mistake. For all your tolerance and kindness, you have little capacity for seeing the other person's emotional stress and getting out of the situation in a way that will spare his or her feelings.

The fact is that you .yourself are intellectually curious rather than emotionally touched by other people and

*********

 

ber that he had a favorite phrase he kept using repeated­ly. Bat you haven't related to him personally, and as an individual, aside from his ideas, he is a blank.

 

Sometimes your friends find this uninvolved attitude disconcerting to the point where they want to sever the relationship with you. This is a mistake; being a Fixed Sign, you are exceptionally loyal to anyone who has earned your friendship. You may not be able to suffer with diem as, for instance, Pisces would do, but you are always ready to listen to their troubles and to lend a •helping hand if you can. You seldom break up a friend­ship unless there is what seems to you a very good rea­son to do so; and in that case you can seem abrupt about it. Actually you have been turning the matter over in your mind for quite awhile, but you won't have thought to mention it to the other party and so your de­cision may seem very sudden to him.

 

This is the way you are with all your ideas; you are quite fixed about them until someone suggests a new idea which seems to have some merit. Then you will turn the new idea over in your mind and suddenly you wfll change your expressed opinion. You have no hesitan­cy at all about saying something completely different today than you said yesterday, because you are more concerned with truth than with consistency. This does not always go over well with people who don't think but stick with preconceived ideas or prejudices. You are not one of them, though; you are the enemy of all precon­ceived ideas because you turn your personal searchlight of truth on them and discard them if they prove value­less to you.

 

You dare even to turn your spotlight on those bastions of faith, politics and religion. In your politics you are the despair of the "party liners" who vote blindly, year after year, for the same party. Because of your receptivity to new ideas you are more likely to be liberal than conserv­ative, but your real loyalty goes to someone you can be­lieve in intellectually, regardless of party. In religion you insist on being a free thinker, and are more likely to be a reverent agnostic than anything else. You yourself like to plan along big lines, so you can see the sense of a larger-than-human plan for the world; what doesn't seem to you to make sense is the stratified concepts of the organized religions.

 

In lie case of both religion and politics, though, yon believe in giving "equal time" to all philosophies. You are too openminded to be a fanatic about any particular belief, even if ft is one you have thought about for a long time and decided is right for yourself. Besides, you enjoy debate about any subject as long as the other per­son has ideas you feel are worth listening to.

 

All these big ideas sound somewhat other worldly to (he ordinary person's concept of life, and there are times when Aquarians are accused of being inefficient—that is, they can't quite operate in the world of everyday affairs. This is unfortunately often true. You are so busy think­ing large thoughts that you can stumble badly when ft comes to bringing your ideas down to earth.

 

When a sudden emergency arises, you are unable to cope with it; your mind is full of vast, impersonal visions with an eternal significance but no relation to the prob­lem at hand. If you are working on an ordinary job—not one that claims your intellectual interest and therefore all your energies—you are inclined to be a daydreamer whose ideas are not really valued for what they are worth. Someone who takes over in an emergency and actually does something—even if it is the wrong thing—is more likely to get credit than you.

 

You are, besides, inclined to be seemingly lazy, be­cause your mind has raced ahead of the job and is al­ready picturing the end results. That makes it difficult for you to sit down and actually get the job done. You do try, though; if you are in a job that can use even a part of your vast mental resources, you work tirelessly and never watch die dock. It is up to you to get such a job, because you are never able to tie yourself down to routine patiently, saving your real energy for after-work boors.

 

Being rather impractical in afl ways, including money, you cannot count, as many people do, on getting your incentive to work from an especially high-paying job. Beyond the ordinary expenses of living, money means fittle to you; you need a valid reason before you will exert yourself for financial gain. If someone you love needs something., like an expensive operation, you will sacrifice your other interests and take any job that pays well; but once the crisis has been taken care of you will revert to your idealistic ways about money and will leave a job if all it has to offer is a good salary.

 

You are the same way about other material things too. For instance, you may like flowers, but you can get just as much enjoyment out of a public park as you can out of maintaining your own private garden. You don't mind sharing your enjoyment with the world—you are con­stantly sharing with everybody anyway. And you don't especially want the exertion of having your own garden; you are too busy thinking, reading, studying, investigat­ing, to spend time working on it

 

CAREER POSSIBILITIES

 

Because you get along with people so well and so much enjoy seeing new faces all the time, you may do reasonably well in any job that involves meeting people. But you are not really satisfied unless you are not only meeting them but helping them, so you are better in, for instance, social work or labor union organizing than in being simply a "greeter" like an airline hostess or a re­ceptionist

 

Politics is your very special field, because here your fresh ideas, hieing for people, broad viewpoint and hu­manitarian impulses all have a chance to be used. Of course everybody can't be President, but you could ben­efit at least your own community, and probably enjoy yourself immensely, if you ran for some local office. On a smaller scale, yon can use the same talents in teaching, especially in college where your students would be old enough to provide you with mental stimulation.

 

Your ruling planet Uranus governs the new, unusual, unexpected and original, and you can do well in almost any field where you have a chance to contribute some­thing unique. Inventing is one such field, but there are numerous other places where horizons are constantly being enlarged and your original ideas could help. Al­most any branch of science would fit this requirement.

 

Uranus also governs electricity, which opens up the whole field of radio and television; automobile or air­plane mechanic, manufacturer or salesman; motion pic­ture producer, telephone operator, lighting specialist, telegrapher, electrician and so forth.

 

Astrology is ruled by Uranus too, as are many occult fields. Evangeline Adams, the great astrologer who al­most singlehandedly raised the status of the field from black magic to science, was an Aquarian. Work in astrology would satisfy you in a personal way, too, be­cause it involves dealing with people and helping them.

 

If you have any talent for writing, this too could be a most satisfactory field because it gives you a chance to express your advanced ideas and gives the world a chance to benefit by them. In writing you could also present the humanitarian ideals you cherish; it is almost as good a forum as politics for rendering service to hu­manity.

 

HEALTH

 

Your constitution is inclined to be as middle of the road as your habits of mind; you do not go in for ex­tremes in any direction. Aquarians on the whole are nei­ther exceptionally robust nor exceptionally puny, and your moderate way of life generally helps you maintain good health,you are not especially interested in exercise, since your time is so taken up in other ways. But you don't need it to work off nervous energy, as some other signs do; ordinarily if you are busy with mental activity you enjoy, your health does not suffer by the lack of physical 'action. Without intellectual stimulation, however, you may begin to worry about your health and may actually worry yourself sick—though, with your constant curios­ity, it is unlikely that you will remain without intellec­tual stimulation for long.

 

Overindulgence in food or drink is not usually one of your faults; in this way as in most others you are rather disinterested in common everyday routine. You will eat what you need to stay healthy, but you are not likely to stuff yourself.

 

Aquarius rules the calves of the legs, the ankles, teeth and circulation. Of these, your biggest problem is likely to be with your circulation; with an extreme lack of physical activity you may find that your hands, and especially your feet, are likely to be colder than normal For this reason, if for no other, it wouldn't hurt you to get out and take a walk once in a while; you can think while you're walking, you know.

 

LOVE AND MARRIAGE

 

You may talk about love quite a lot, and you may write beautiful love letters, surprising the other party with the poetic feelings you express. But this is decep­tive; when it comes right down to doing anything about love you tend to be overly idealistic and to spend a long, long time thinking it over before you come to a definite decision—by which time the one you have finally discov­ered you love has probably found someone more impul­sive.

 

You have a big problem when it comes to love, in any case. Hie broad tolerance and fellowship you feel for the whole human race is hard to bring down to the level of one individual. Then even if you find someone you can concentrate on, your love is still on'the mental plane and he or she may want someone with more fire. This can lead to frustration and emotional scenes on die other person's part, and you find this emotionalism hard to tolerate.

 

Marrying a jealous or possessive person would be a se­rious mistake for you, too, since you often have as many friends of the opposite sex as those of your own sex—and you like to continue the friendship after marriage, in­cluding intense intellectual discussions that can look very suspicious to your marital partner. Some conflict on this score can be avoided if your mate understands you, and you take care always to inform him or her before you go off alone with the other party.

 

An individual horoscope is necessary to determine the proper marriage partner for any particular person, but generally speaking you would find your most suitable mates in the other Air Signs, Libra and Gemini, who share your intellectual preoccupations, or the Fire Signs, Aries, Leo and Sagittarius, who can keep your interest stimulated and add warmth to the relationship.

 

The Water Signs, Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces, are deeply emotional and would be hurt, jealous—and prob­ably furious—at your impersonal attitude. The Earth Signs, Capricorn, Taurus and Virgo, would give practi­cality to the marriage, but would be a dead weight to your high flights of imagination and originality.