In Esoteric Astrology, the Tibetan describes the twelve zodiac signs in terms of three groups:

• Signs of preparation: Aries Taurus, Gemini, Cancer,

• Signs of crisis: Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio

• Signs of service: Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces

This is not about the signs our personal planets may occupy, but rather our ascendant. It refers to our Soul's journey through the twelve signs of the zodiac, which begins in Aries and spends up to eight incarnations in each sign. So we can see that over time, there is a slowly unfolding developmental process happening. Each of us will, eventually, experience every stage on this journey.

Preparation can be thought of as a time of discovery - it doesn't relate exactly, but just for the purpose of understanding we might think of it as similar to the developmental stages of human life, albeit over a much longer timespan. Preparation would be like infancy and childhood - a time of discovery, experimentation and rapid learning - as we discover what we are, and what we may become.

Crisis can be thought of as the time of being put to the test. This is a vital stage because it is only through experiencing challenges, really being stretched, overcoming them and meeting the next challenge, that we discover our potential, grow, and reach our fullest capacity. Practice makes perfect as they say! This is the time when, like an athlete, we are really pushing, developing, and maturing our highest capacities. It is a time of growth and maturity.

Service is the time when our Soul has matured. Even though we may not have awakened to it at the level of the personality, our Soul has the wisdom and the capacity to be of benefit to others. We can be of service because we have the ability.

By the time our Soul reaches the sign of Aquarius, it has the capacity to be of great service to humanity: we only need to awaken and recognize it. If you haven't done so yet, I highly recommend reading The Twelve Labours of Hercules: An Astrological Interpretation, and contemplating Hercules' challenge for each of the twelve signs. It tells us much about the Soul's journey through the signs from Aries to Pisces.

In Hercules' test for Aquarius, he is challenged to muck out stables that hadn't been cleaned for many years and so were caked in filth. He succeeded by redirecting a river.

The metaphor is telling us about the highest Soul purpose of Aquarius. When we look to the state of humanity it seems we have an impossible task, because of the thousands of years of conditioned negativity encrusted onto the collective human consciousness. Yet the Tibetan Master is pointing directly to the solution. Rather than trying to solve the problems from the same conditioned state of mind that created them, the solution is to redirect the river of human consciousness!

This is easier said than done and unlike Hercules (who in myth was the son of a God) most of us will need all of our incarnations until we arrive with a Soul in Aquarius to develop the capacity of focusing and directing our consciousness*. Even then we might not get it first time around and may need to go around the carousel again!

Once we have this high capacity then we may fully understand the significance of the Soul Keynote of Aquarius:

*The meditations in the Living Soul Astrology course provide excellent training, guidance, and practice in resting the "the natural state", a precursor to the higher states of consciousness that are experienced in Aquarius. Read more...

The above post is an excerpt from "Soul Sign Explorations: deeper expeditions into Soul Astrology from Life's Greatest Adventure"