Happy Valentine’s Day, everybody. I still have no entirely convincing explanation for why the most romantic day of the year arrives under Aquarius. Scorpio and Halloween make immediate sense to me; there is darkness, intensity, obsession, transformation, the occasional emotional haunting. Very on brand. Thanksgiving falling under Sagittarius also feels appropriate for you Americans, with all the gratitude, abundance, excess, travelling, storytelling, and eating enough food to require a small crisis afterwards. Aquarius and Valentine’s Day, though, leaves me scratching my head a little.
Perhaps there is a wider symbolism hiding in it. Aquarius is never especially interested in keeping things small or private. It thinks in terms of humanity, collective experience, social connection, and the invisible threads joining people together. Valentine’s Day, for all its roses, chocolates, awkward restaurant bookings, and people pretending they didn’t forget until lunchtime, is one enormous public expression of love taking place across the world at roughly the same time. Seen this way, perhaps Aquarius fits after all. Love stops belonging only to two people staring into each other’s eyes and turns into this huge cultural ritual where everyone is talking about affection, connection, relationships, longing, rejection, romance, and who did or did not receive flowers.
It is probably the best astrological argument I have for explaining why all this lovemaking is happening during a month that isn’t exactly ruled by Venus, the planet traditionally associated with love, pleasure, beauty, attraction, and all the lovely things people suddenly remember they care about once February 14th appears on the calendar. Star IQ also offers an interesting explanation of Aquarius and love, for anyone wanting to explore this connection a little further. I had hoped to write a proper Valentine’s post, although my body has apparently decided to celebrate the occasion in its own deeply unromantic fashion. I have developed a bad cold and a particularly nasty earache, which is currently showing me a level of devotion I didn’t really ask for. So while other people are exchanging kisses tonight, I will be doing everyone a public service by keeping mine firmly to myself.
There is a certain irony in being one of the infected on the most romantic day of the year. Nothing quite says Valentine’s Day like tissues, blocked ears, and wondering whether breathing through both nostrils was once a privilege you failed to appreciate. Still, romance shouldn’t disappear just because I look and feel as though I have been personally rejected by Cupid and then run over by his chariot. There are plenty of relationship astrology topics already waiting for you on the website, so if you are feeling romantic, curious, heartbroken, suspicious, obsessed, happily attached, unhappily attached, or simply interested in why human beings insist on making love quite so complicated, you have plenty to read or revisit (look under Venus aspects mostly).
Perhaps it is Aquarius’s little contribution to Valentine’s Day after all. Love is this enormous, messy, slightly ridiculous human conversation about connection. We all want it, fear it, misunderstand it, idealize it, complain about it, write about it, lose it, find it again, and occasionally catch a cold right in the middle of celebrating it. Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone. I hope yours involves considerably fewer germs than mine.