Nature of Life vs Inspiration and Ideaflow: the Fixed Axis of Creation in Astrology

Understanding an astrology sign, or an axis (opposite signs), is insightful to the nature of human beings and the archetypal systems of life.

While archetypes about consciousness, human interaction, and the nature of reality are visible through the lens of astrology, in my opinion astrology is very literal. Those who embody the energy of a particular sign literally are made of that energy, and literally clash with another particular energy, or be fulfilled by another energy. It’s insightful to understanding consciousness to understand astrology, but it is also very literal.

This article will explore one “cross” in astrology: 4 signs that square and oppose each other.

As we explored in this past article, squares are possibly the most difficult astrology aspect. As we wrote here, opposite signs are actually very similar sometimes.

When you put 4 squares together and 2 oppositions, you get a “grand cross”: 4 planets squaring and opposing.

In astrology, there are also 3 modalities for a sign: Cardinal, Fixed, and Mutable. It works with the way of the seasons, like winter or summer: the season starts with the Sun entering a Cardinal sign. The middle of the season is the Sun in a Fixed sign, and the end of it occupies a Mutable sign. Chronologically moving through the zodiac (the belt the Sun travels on, or the ecliptic), signs are Cardinal, then Fixed, then Mutable, and it repeats 4 times.

So this creates “crosses” of signs that are of the same modality: there is the Cardinal Cross, the Fixed Cross, and the Mutable Cross.

This article is a reflection on the Fixed Cross. It is composed of the Leo/Aquarius axis squaring the Taurus/Scorpio axis, as depicted here:

I was thinking about the Fixed Cross and realized it can be described as the axis of life/death squaring the axis of life-force, ideas and energy. It leads one to wonder about the relationship between reality and the end of reality, life and death, comfort and deprivation, and the ideaflow and life-force that fuels the human experience. Somehow these forces square and clash while having some unifying quality, as the other 2 squaring axises in astrology have.

These are some of the qualities of Taurus/Scorpio and Leo/Aquarius.

Leo

Leo energy (with Sun, Moon, or any planet in Leo) is dominant, sunny, warm and full of gravity. The Sun is Leo’s “planet.” Leo has social sense, a feel for the skills and crafts of life, a feel for the arts and creation in a wholesome, normal kind of way.

The Leo/Aquarius axis is about creation. It’s about ideas, skills, crafts, music and the arts, everything involving creation.

As the Sun’s rays illuminate every planet in the Solar System and activate everything, Leo has the same type of ability to create, initiate activities, use leadership, and generally set things in motion.

Aquarius

Aquarius is the opposite flavor of “creation” energy from Leo. Leo is warm and sunny with its propensity toward wholesome, kind of universally understood forms of art. For instance, country music if you were raised in the Southern US, or warm, wholesome folk music of your particular region.

So Aquarius is artistic and intelligent in the opposite flavor: the strange, sciency, complex, cold and detached but highly advanced direction of thinking. It’s without social sense and very strange, but very deep into whatever idea it follows.

Aquarius energy appreciates creation like Leo, but it takes it to another level, far from regular arts and crafts and into a strange place.

Aquarius is both the revolutionary and the technocracy which may enslave it. Its the lifeblood of thought, the spark of electricity in the mind itself, and a major factor in driving society. As the Sun and Leo illuminate everything and serve as a central driving force for things, Aquarius/Uranus is like an electrical signal that powers consciousness when it comes to ideas.

Taurus

Taurus could be considered the sign of Earth. It was worshiped as something like a God of fertility about 4,000 years ago, when the annual Equinoxes occurred in Taurus from about 4400 to 2200 BC.

Taurus is about home, stability, food, and the core necessities in life being fulfilled. It’s like the foundation for a solid life: food, water, shelter. It is very fixed and set in its ways, because that’s how a foundation of necessities in life should be.

Scorpio

Scorpio is very starkly opposite to Taurus. Scorpio energy often invites scarcity, struggle, deprivation, and the end of stability. However, in an individual with Scorpio energy, this can be resolved early in life and this energy is transmuted into something emotionally rich and useful if the person finds peace within themselves.

Scorpio is the energy of death, the energy of deprivation, of facing hard truths, and the end of lies and falsehoods due to Scorpio making a lie rise to the surface and be exposed.

Scorpio and Aquarius clash hard as squaring signs, but in ways they are very similiar in their convictions. The two signs are sometimes thought to represent the North and South Nodes: Aquarius being the North Node and Scorpio the South Node The nodes are spots where eclipses occur, with the 2 points taking 18 years to go around the zodiac, thought to be the origin of age 18 as a marker of adulthood.

Scorpio’s purpose is not an easy one. While Scorpio people might feel cursed, they simply seem to be tasked with digesting hard truths, feeling things to the deepest and darkest levels, and showing people what they are hesitant to look at.

So understanding how these energies really seem to be, from hard first-hand observation, we are left with a few archetypes to consider.

The Leo/Aquarius axis seems to be about creation, ideas, skills, music, the arts, and the things human beings create in life.

The Taurus/Scorpio axis seems to be about the polar opposites of life and death: stability, groundedness, and a foundation vs the deep depths of emotion and truth, no stability, and no foundation.

Does this mean that creativity, ideas, and the arts inherently go against the grain of stability, of necessities being taken care of in life?

Could this explain the “starving artist,” the introverted quality of thinkers and revolutionaries, or the nature of life and reality seeming to clash with the flow of creativity that runs through people? The very nature of life and this reality might go against the grain of the Sun, of creation and idea-flow. In this existence, the laws of Earth and nature might restrict our flow of consciousness.

Perhaps this is an explanation for why the truth, knowledge, scientific advancement, personal ambition, the arts, and all of these things seem to go against the grain of survival, stability, facing the realities of life and death, ect. Perhaps there is an inherent tendency for truth and information to be persecuted and suppressed in this existence. Maybe one would go as far as to suggest this reality is coded, some kind of virtual reality simulation type thing where these are the rules: our souls are solidified in our bodies at birth, a snapshot of the solar system’s energy at that moment, and the solar system is a soul-incarnating-machine.

Exploring these representations of consciousness is a mental exercise that inspires further exploration of the self, the meaning of life and this existence, and all kinds of other things.

This is also relevant because this year and next, the eclipses are occurring in Aquarius and Leo. The Moon’s North and South Nodes where eclipses occur, critically important points about everyone’s collective lessons and directions, are in Aquarius and Leo. The collective lessons and direction are in conflict with Taurus and Scorpio right now, so we might find ourselves in a moment where ideas, inspiration, the crafts and arts of life, and all those Leo/Aquarius things are in conflict with the nature of tangible reality, life and death situations. There may be comfort and stability vs instability and deprivation type scenarios.

I think astrology can inspire creativity and a deeper understanding of things, by enabling the mind to think about things in this way.

(Image credit: NASA, NASA)