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The Water-Carrier. |
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Neptune was dicovered in Aquarius in 1846. |
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Aquarius is an old constellation. As the Water-Carrier
he is carved in stones of the Babylonian Empire and probably is still older
than that period. |
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Aquarius as the God of the Waters must have been regarding
as a good god by some and a bad god by others, depending on the prevailing
climate of their region. To the Egyptians, Greeks, and others who
lived in lands plagued by a dry climate, Aquarius surely was looked on
as a kindly god who brought rain when they were most needed during the
planting season. The Babylonians looked on Aquarius as a bad god
and referred to the month when the Sun was in Aquarius as the month of
"the curse of rain." |
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In ancient Greece, Aquarius is identified with a man and
his wife known as Deucalion and Pyrrha. According to the myth, in
1500 B.C., Aquarius caused a great flood to wash over Earth. Deucalion's
father advised his son and wife to build a great boat and stock it with
provisions. They did and the two floated in the world-sea for nine
days and nine nights. Eventually the ran aground on Mount Parnassus. |
Safe but lonely, the two sole survivors
of Earth walked about as the waters became lower and exposed more and more
land. What were the two to do? They appealed to an oracle and
were told to "… throw over your shoulders the bones of your mother."
Deucalion guessed that "the bones
of Mother Earth must be stones." So as the two walked along the picked
up stones and kept tossing them over their shoulders. After a while
they looked behind them and there were people. The stones that Deucalion
had thrown had become men and those thrown by Pyrrha had become women.
And so Aquarius became known as the
taker of life and the giver of life. This myth of a world flood and
then a rebirth of life on Earth is a common one and can by found in many
myths.
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In Egyptian mythology, he pours water into the Nile River
at the season when the Nile normally overflows its banks, this brings the
much needed water to the farmlands bordering that great river. |
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The Arabs, dependent on the water of the rainy season, saw
Aquarius as a bucket because their religion forbids them from showing pictures
of any living form. |
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In modern times this constellation was immortalized by the
counterculture of the 1960's, which proclaimed the Age of Aquarius.
This was a bit premature as the Aquarian age will not actually begin for
another 600 years. As astrological age is identified by the name
of the constellation in which the vernal equinox (the position of the Sun
on the first day of spring, March 21 is located. This location moves
slowly from one zodiac constellation to the next as a results of Earth's
procession. |
