Love Note #3: Keep the Faith, Aquarius Season & Tribe Love
Reflections on a full moon in Leo, softness in rigor, and rejection.
Hey there,
Wake up.
Start fresh.
Forgive everybody for everything.
Don’t be afraid to say: I love you more than my commitment to uphold this version of myself.
Keep the faith.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Alice Walker and her legacy this Aquarius season. She is, along with Ntozake Shange, one of the writers of my life. Between her collection of essays In Search of our Mothers’ Gardens and The Color Purple, both books are sacred artifacts to me. I saw the Broadway revival of “The Color Purple” three times sitting in second-row orchestra seats and wept tears of joy. Reading her essay, “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens,” changed or maybe solidified the professional trajectory of my life.
As I got older, I realized this same Alice Walker was also the mother of Rebecca Walker of White, Black & Jewish. I struggled to reconcile the genius who so lovingly and compassionately wrote about our foremothers with the woman who disowned her daughter for wanting to have children. The young woman who pretended to be Zora’s niece to restore her resting place to an altar of beauty, a worthy tribute. A spunky, sad, and lonely girl who left Spelman College and went to Sarah Lawrence to pave her own path. The way Alice talked about the loneliness and cruelty of her black girlhood, there was no way she could recreate that for anyone much less her own child.
A few years ago, when Alice gave an interview for the New York Times Book Review and gave her current reading list, it included a well known anti-Semitic writer. I was reminded about this disjointedness that shadows the Aquarian archetype and why Saturn, as the traditional ruler of Aquarius, is still relevant and vital.
Electrifyingly brilliant. But rigid.
Fiercely compassionate. But impersonal.
Attending to the ancestors while abandoning your children.
Caring for a community of writers, artists, and students, but despising your family.
Upholding, embodying, and espousing radical values at the expense of enriching people’s hearts.
The Aquarian spirit is not just the yearning and desire to be free, but it is a rebellion birthed of repression. It is fundamentally contrarian. It is a response to a world that does not value the needs of individuality. Thus rebelliousness is a symptom of knowing that one does not and cannot belong to the status quo. The symbol for Aquarius, two jagged glyphs, is often mistaken for streams of water or air currents, but they are serpents (akin to the one in the Garden of Eden) revealing hidden knowledge.
Aquarius glyph
Stephen Forest, in his book The Inner Sky, describes the endpoint of the Aquarius archetype.
“But in acquiring that knowledge Eve did something more. In that single rebellious Aquarian act, she gave birth to a quality far more precious than safety, far more precious even than wisdom. She gave birth to human freedom.”
The water bearer brings forth what they’ve been denied. Saturn-ruled signs can be found opposite the lights (Sun and Moon) on the zodiac wheel. What happens when we are not touched by the light of belonging (Sun/ Leo)? Too often, the “rebelling just to rebel” happens. Aching to be different because you know it’s forbidden. There’s a crack in the systems and subsystems that everyone is buying into, and you can see right through it.
Here’s why Saturn’s rulership of Aquarius still matters: it’s not being awakened or liberated that leads to revolution. It’s rigor. What is more Saturn like than rigidity? When we shift from building to innovating, we find pride, identity in otherness. We give up on the structure and choose ourselves. However, we must ask ourselves in reclaiming our discarded parts, sometimes ferociously, are we breaking or recreating the wheel? So often, the virtuosity of self-reclamation denies compassion; it denies love.
I like to ask my water-bearers, how many egos have you been willing to cut down to make society better? What would it mean to start with your own? Admit that you did that thing that’s entirely out of character for you because of fear. Fear will make us reject the possibility of intimacy and understanding before we try.
For so long, we’ve believed that being different/ eclectic/ genius means being alone. Love reminds us that life alone might be possible, but is it worthwhile? Admit that you are lonely in your revolution. No matter how different you feel, I don’t give you permission now or ever to be an island. You are loveable, even in awkwardness and rebelliousness. Your radical vision for us all doesn’t require your perfection, or even neverending consistency, only willingness. The tenderness you are seeking that you’re worthy of is waiting for you. Find the right people. Remember what it felt like to be the outsider and lovingly restore people who fall short of your uncommunicated expectations and society’s unspoken rules. Rules we don’t even know we don’t know.
Take care of the friendships that still have love left in them.
Believe that your people are out there.
Keep the faith.
Parting Words & A Poem
Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 The Message (MSG)
9-10 It’s better to have a partner than go it alone.
Share the work, share the wealth.
And if one falls down, the other helps,
But if there’s no one to help, tough!
Galatians 6:1-3 The Message (MSG)
6 1-3 Live creatively, friends. If someone falls into sin, forgivingly restore him, saving your critical comments for yourself. You might be needing forgiveness before the day’s out. Stoop down and reach out to those who are oppressed. Share their burdens, and so complete Christ’s law. If you think you are too good for that, you are badly deceived.
Be nobody's darling;
Be an outcast.
Take the contradictions
Of your life
And wrap around
You like a shawl,
To parry stones
To keep you warm.
Watch the people succumb
To madness
With ample cheer;
Let them look askance at you
And you askance reply.
Be an outcast;
Be pleased to walk alone
(Uncool)
Or line the crowded
River beds
With other impetuous
Fools.
Make a merry gathering
On the bank
Where thousands perished
For brave hurt words
They said.
But be nobody's darling;
Be an outcast.
Qualified to live
Among your dead.
—Alice Walker
Thank you for reading this to the end, as always.
May we soar, beam, and thrive. Asė.
With gratitude,
Love,
Steph Gee
If it's right for you, book a session, and let's talk about your grow up and glow up.
Originally posted via Substack on Jan 28, 2021.