Aquarius: Reflections on Idealization and Belonging

I began writing this essay on the night of February 9th 2025 with the Sun and Mercury conjunct in the third decan of Aquarius in the shadow of the Leo Full Moon. Pluto occupies the first decan of Aquarius.

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Peter Paul Rubens - The Abduction of Ganymede

"Tros, who was lord of the Trojans, and to Tros in turn there were born three sons unfaulted, Ilos (Ilus) and Assarakos (Assaracus) and godlike Ganymedes (Ganymede) who was the loveliest born of the race of mortals, and therefore the gods caught him away to themselves, to be Zeus' wine-pourer, for the sake of his beauty, so he might be among the immortals.”
- Homer, Iliad 20. 232 ff (trans. Lattimore) (Greek epic, 8th B.C.)

Ganymedes, the youngest son of King Tros of Troy, exuded such perfection in his beauty that Zeus, Lord of Olympus and King of the Gods, could not help but sweep the boy up in a swirling wind and whisk him away to the realm of the immortals where his youthful beauty would remain eternalized. Ganymede’s task in this realm would be to serve the nectar from which the gods sustained their own immortality and to be Zeus’ lover. An ode to Ganymedes praises, "Lovely his body's grace, that spring-tide hour of beauty, which long since freed Ganymede--so willed Kypris (Cypris) [Aphrodite]--from death's relentless power.” The abduction of Ganymedes frees the young man from the inherent suffering of mortality described elegantly by the Buddhists as sickness, old age, and death. It is from this Greek myth that is consanguineous with the constellation of Aquarius, alternatively named “the water pourer”, from which I conclude the essential centrality of idealization within the Aquarian archetype.