Celestial Water
“Unfulfilled desires prove the existence of heaven,” thundered the campus Lutheran pastor at the beginning of a sermon decades ago.
Out of all the sermons I heard during the first half of my life, this is the only sentence that I still vividly remember.
He was referring to a passage by C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity, where Lewis says, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world” (p. 136).
But not all unfulfilled desires point upward to heaven. Some point inward, to the shadow. With the Sun conjunct Pluto in Aquarius right now, we can look at the desires we’ve buried and maybe even been ashamed to admit. What if even those are part of the “celestial water” Roberto Gambini mentions here:
What then is the image of Aquarius? A man, the Waterman, holding a cup in each hand. With one he collects water that falls from the sky, which then is poured into the second cup…. So the task is to collect fresh water and pour it into another recipient. When we note a dream we collect celestial water. When we connect meaningfully to archetypal images we gather water from the unconscious and then transfer it to the other vessel, which is our science, our profession, our way of doing things. In this way perhaps we can unlock new dimensions in our growth and development (p. 35, Soul & Culture).
The first cup catches all the water from the unconscious, light and dark. The alchemical work is in the transfer: can you pour shadow water into your daily life too? Can you admit to the “common pool” that you long for things you’ve been taught you shouldn’t want or that have to wait for heaven?
“Aquarius is pictured as a water bearer pouring water into a pool. I like to think of this as the image of the coming time when each and everyone of us brings to a common pool the water we have gathered from our unique and individual sources, from our encounters with the unconscious.” — Russell Lockhart, Psyche Speaks
What celestial water have you caught? What dream, what sentence, what moment of transcendence are you still carrying in the first cup?
The second cup is waiting–your work, your relationships, your daily life. Pour it through. Then bring it to the pool.
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Very interesting! I didn't know this representation of the Water Bearer with two cups -