The award for strangest astrology goes to Hair for ‘Aquarius’

June 9, 5:00 AMAstrology ExaminerMaria Barron

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“When the moon is in the seventh house” may be the most evocative and memorable opening phrase in musical theater. The slightly mysterious first words of the opening song immediately tap into the overall feeling of the Broadway show Hair, which won a Tony Award Sunday for Best Revival of a Musical. It’s a lyrical, dramatic, “mod” yet vaguely Shakespearian-sounding phrase.

The funny thing, though, is that the moon in the seventh house has precisely nothing to do with the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, which the song triumphantly heralds. Or at least it didn’t until Hair debuted with the song “Aquarius” in 1967. Now people ask me about it and I have to tell them no, that’s not a real clue to the dawning of the age.

When the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets and love will steer the stars
This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius

Oops again. The conjunction that occurs when “Jupiter aligns with Mars,” is actually somewhat aggressive, fairly common and again utterly irrelevant as a signpost for the dawning of the age. But if the songwriters mangled the details, their hearts were in the right place and clearly tuned into the point in time where the edges of the ages began to merge.

Transition of the ages

Imagining a time when “peace will guide the planets and love will steer the stars” is apt in this time of transition between the ages of Pisces and Aquarius, a transition that pretty clearly began in the 1960s and is still going on. In these times, the age-old Piscean dreams of redemption and transcendent peace overlap with the advancing Aquarian ideals of liberated individuals living rationally in cooperation and community. Neither age is automatically better or more wonderful, and Hair combines some of the most soaring symbolism of each.

Empirically, the great ages move backwards through the signs of the zodiac as the wobble in the Earth’s rotation ever-so-slowly moves the point where spring begins backwards against the backdrop of stars around the Earth. Like everything in astrology, it’s a physical phenomenon in space that seems to reflect in changes in lives and times. Ages are on average 2,155 years long, but some are longer and some shorter.

The Piscean Age symbolically dates to approximately 2009 years ago – you know; when they went back and retroactively restarted time with the Year 1 after the life of Jesus changed everything. The Aquarian Age begins sometime in the next 60-600 years, and its literal or metaphoric Year 1 will probably be recognized retroactively as well. The Age of Aries preceded the Piscean Age and the Age of Taurus preceded Aries.

Dancing in the astrological playground

Gerome Ragni and James Rado, the authors of Hair, thought of themselves as part of a youth movement on a trip of liberation, guided by peace and love, when they created their American Tribal Love-Rock Musical. The authors “played with the idea that this movement was connected astrologically to the heavens, to the coming of the Age of Aquarius,” Rado said this year.

They were definitely in the right playground there. Any movement that puts emphasis on both individuality and commonality is a strong match for Aquarian symbolism. Beyond that, Ragni and Rado just got a little carried away with poetic license. They did choose some nice starry symbolism for their “Aquarius” lyrics. It’s just that most of it is un-Aquarian and unrelated to the cycling of the great ages. The most truly Aquarian lyric of the song is the brief mention of “the mind’s true liberation.” Now that’s Aquarius.

Admittedly, their lyrics are far prettier than something like: “When a line drawn through the center of the Earth and sun at the vernal equinox, along the intersection of the celestial equator and the plane of the ecliptic, points to the constellation Aquarius instead of Pisces in about the year 2595, then the themes of individuality and community will permeate the times.” That’s a lot harder to sing or even listen to – even if you add the caveat that we probably have been influenced by the coming age for decades.

Expanded Aquarian lyrics for the new version

Ragni died of cancer in 1991, but Rado delved again into the Aquarian theme for the revival of the musical, expanding the lyrics of “Aquarius” with a new verse that suggests his recognition that we are still waiting for the age to dawn.

As our hearts go beating through the night, we dance into the dawn of day
To be the bearers of the water, our light will lead the way
We are the spirit of the Age of Aquarius

You certainly can’t quibble with dancing beings of light. This time he didn’t cross himself up with houses and planets. Although the new refrain that follows the new verse seems a little forced, touching on a number of ideas from auras to angels that have generated interest in these times, this verse is right to focus on pre-dawn times. That is still where we are.

This verse also hints at the importance of bearing the best of the dreamy Piscean waters forward into the drier, wind-blown garden of Aquarius, an airy intellectual sign that is likely to glorify rationality above inspiration, emotional feelings of love, or pretty much anything else. That is the sad side of the Age of Aquarius.

You can hear the full recording of the new “Aquarius” and see all the expanded lyrics at Rado’s website. A new Broadway cast recording went on sale digitally May 26 and quickly became iTunes’ top-selling soundtrack. The CD goes on sale in stores June 23.

So what is the seventh house and all that?

The moon is always in someone’s seventh house. It’s in my seventh house for two or three days each month, just as it is in yours or anyone else’s. Those are different days for different ones of us, depending on our moment of birth, but for each of us they signal pretty good times to fall in love. The seventh house in a person’s birth chart is the house of marriage and partnerships, which are one-on-one relationships ruled by Libra. Aquarian relationships are 11th-house matters that are not one-on-one; they’re “One for all and all for one.”

And what about Jupiter aligning with Mars? Jupiter rules Sagittarius while Mars rules Aries. Representing good fortune and willfulness respectively, Jupiter and Mars make a powerful conjunction when they come into alignment each year, but it’s not a particularly Aquarian one.

The root lyrical problem, I suspect, is that Aquarius is ruled by Uranus. And nobody can sing the name of that planet without cracking up.