condition: suspension

Aquarius full moon, Saturn retrograde, Jupiter cazimi

I just got off the phone with a friend. I was checking in about his sick dog. We also talked about our friend, who is experiencing a different malady of the self-inflicted sort.

The vocabulary of this chat was distinctly airy and vertical. This is heavy. Putting her down. The gravity of the situation. His fall from grace.

It reminded me of the astrology of the moment: a full moon in an air sign, Aquarius, ruled by Saturn who is currently stationing retrograde.

I am reading this full moon as a challenge to find lightness amid a feeling of inevitable weight.

A possible remedy? Suspension.

Last spring I came across this Yoann Bourgeois performance, just as Saturn was entering Aries, its sign of “fall”. It’s not long, and is a good meditation on the vertical and suspension.

Like so much these days, most of it happens in the air.

While the arc of this year bends toward the fire element, this week veers into a small pocket of air — full Moon in an air sign, plus 3 other planets in the element.

Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn spend a majority of their time in fire signs this year, but within the firestorm of 2026, July is a breath of not-so-fresh air.

Suspension is a distinctly airy word. Suspension means being above something, but only temporarily. Bourgeois is suspended when his body is poised on the precipice of the stairs, where he hovers between footing and flight. To be suspended is to be above a descent that is possible or likely. Suspension forestalls descent.

A variety of astrological conditions can raise suspension and the specter of descent. Earlier this month I explored Jupiter’s descent into the invisible — a yearly transit we’re now halfway through — as a queue to get loose. Dionysus might give you a glass of wine to suspend your obligations, if temporarily. Eventually we all find our way to the ground.

It is now the Jupiter cazimi in Leo. Have you loosened? Have you found lightness in your being? Have you gotten in touch with your heart of hearts?

If this month’s music has jovial queues, they may feel awkwardly timed this week, the air of which is overwhelmingly Saturnian. A foreboding pressure and weight dominates. One’s first reflex may be to tighten or buckle. But what is the point of tightening when you’re already mid-air? As Bourgeois shows, falling doesn’t have to be grave.

The flight and fall of Saturn in Aries

Bourgeois turns fall into flight. He finds grace and intention through a play of limpness and control. I watch and end up feeling lighter myself.

In his book Air and Dreams, the French philosopher Bachelard explores the artistic spirit of the air element. In his theory of the case, the emotions evoked by art vary in their heaviness or lightness, which calls the art’s “vertical differential.” He treats rising as the primary, positive direction, and the very goal of art. Contrastingly, heaviness is something more like the default “drowsiness” of our being. For Bachelard, it is the job of art to stir our spirits from this drowsiness and excite us along a vertical axis — skyward.

As a dancer and choreographer, Bourgeois has referenced Bachelard’s philosophy and explored falling in numerous pieces — most notably Celui qui tombe, “the falling one,” which stages 6 dancers on a spinning, undulating platform.

Compared to the trampoline piece, Celui qui tombe seems to give a distinctly negative “vertical differential.” The sense of gravity is relentless. Everyone ends up in the same place — on the ground.

But is there not also beauty in this? In falling? Succumbing? The inevitable? Myself, I do not feel heavier after this piece. I feel a part of something, a suspended something that knows it is falling, but hasn’t fallen yet. I still have air.

Bachelard’s thought actually addresses why this may be: falling is not the opposite of flying. Falling through the air is the psychological mirror of flight. We are not talking about falling into darkness, as in a fall into the abyss (Bachelard reserves abyssal falls for his books on water and earth.) Falling in the air keeps some trace of air’s own lightness. Gliding. Suspended. Not dropped so much as hovering — held. Free? Bachelard seems to agree with the Presocratic philosopher Heraclitus’s mystical maxim: The way up and down are the same.

While our times may seem at times abyssal, I don’t think they are. Perhaps the so-called Age of Air is an age of falling, that is the mirror of flight. A collective condition of succumbing to the current, letting loose from the earthy materials hoarded for centuries, and leaping into the embrace of the sky.

Updated diagram showing the macro-arc of “the Age of Air” inaugurated by the Jupiter-Saturn cycling moving to air signs for 200 years.

This full moon highlights the relationship between Aquarius and Aries, signs which are often framed in terms of “the collective,” Aquarius and “the individual,” Aries.

Of course, there is a lot more to these signs than this simple framing of personal-collective, but it demonstrates how this full moon might pull on themes of how individuals, individual efforts, and personal crises relate, or fail to relate, to collectives, collective efforts, and shared crises — crises which may be felt or talked about as “falls.”

I have written elsewhere about the astrological condition of “fall” or depression in terms of humility, being humbled, and humbling oneself. If we look to the Greek term “tapeinoma,” we find the meaning humble, as in physically low-lying, such as lands close to the water or even a prostrating body. The word also has a connotation of socio-economic class — humble as in poor.

What if this full moon in Aquarius, ruled by fallen Saturn, could be about humbling oneself to a process — a fall — that is bigger than any individual or their ability to rise above? The wind rushing by my face is the wind rushing by yours. I am here, as untethered as you. I am here, free-falling as you. What forms of collectivity might become possible if we suspend the notion that gravity is optional for some of us and not others?

Station as suspension

Last week an LGBTQ bar in San Francisco called The Stud had their Instagram account suspended by Meta. Apparently, a single Instagram user had reported a number of posts promoting the bar’s events. The user filed the complaints under “human trafficking.” This is obviously absurd.

Given the sudden takedown of The Stud’s account, it appears that Meta has transitioned its reporting system to be more or less completely AI-monitored, with little to no human input. I’d like to believe that if people had been involved in the process in any way, they would not have let the account of a local bar in the Bay Area where Meta is headquartered, be suspended.

This suspension came at a crucial time for the bar, as it happened right before an important weekend in the San Francisco nightlife calendar — with hardly any notice.

This unfortunate series of events took place during the retrograde station of Saturn. The sudden and erroneous suspension resonates with Saturn’s fallen position in Aries: a platform (Saturn) haphazardly (Aries) restricts a small business in the LBGTQ community (Aquarius).

Fortunately, the bar’s account was reinstated yesterday after public outcry — but not until after the weekend had passed.

Popstar Lady Gaga performing at The Stud in San Francisco in spring of 2008, before she was big time.

There is an odd power dynamic at work here. As decisions are increasingly outsourced to systems that use artificial intelligence in the place of human beings, we are seeing growing influence on the part of individuals with questionable, if not malicious intent.

However, I also want to model wisdom from the eco-philosopher Timothy Morton that is good Saturn in Aries remediation (Morton was born with the Moon conjunct Saturn in Aries):

“This myth that we must immediately know what the other is, or who the other is… that seems really damaging to me. A genuine encounter with another person is going to be an encounter with a fundamental kind of uncanny strangeness.”

So, to the person of questionable if not malicious intent who falsely reported The Stud’s Instagram for human trafficking: I don’t know you. I release my knee jerk reactions of who I think you might be, and judgments about you. You and I are both in this moment of falling, together. After all, it’s not just accounts that are getting taken down.

Hopefully companies like Meta will reconsider the extent to which they give over platform governance to non-human agents. In any case, the situation highlights the fraught relationship in our current moment between technology platforms, communities, and individuals outside those communities who seek to do them harm.

Aquarius: fixed but flexible

This station comes at the very moment of a full moon in Saturn’s sign, just as the North Node is also entering Aquarius. From a whole-sign house perspective, the Aquarius area of one’s chart is about to become extremely dynamic.

The literal suspension of Saturn’s motion between direct and retrograde mirrors a feeling of being in between directions. Should owners of other gay bars feel more confident or less confident now that The Stud has experienced this? Will safeguards be put in place to make sure rogue internet warriors don’t have this amount of power over community institutions? My guess is: they don’t give a damn. So how should The Stud and other outsider organizations plan?

Saturn retrograde tests the sustainability of plans and structures. With Saturn in Aries, deviating from a plan may be necessary for reasons you could not have anticipated, like the Meta ban. But there’s also a caution here against deviating unnecessarily, giving things a chance to bear fruit. It may be less about throwing the baby out with the bathwater (i.e. The Stud abandoning Meta altogether) and instead having contingencies in place so as to stay flexible.

As it concerns the Aquarius house of your chart, I see this full moon as the calm before the storm. A moment to pause and gather oneself in preparation for the strong winds ahead. Don’t assume they’ll be against you. They might be at your back. More likely, they’ll unpredictably blow back and forth.

With Saturn transiting my 6th house where I have several planets natally, I’ve been practicing weightlifting. The gym has been my main Saturn laboratory (and admittedly one that seems to have little if nothing to do with the lofty things I said earlier about Aquarian collectives!)

As anyone who’s gone down that road knows, the first year or so of focused weightlifting is a revelation because the gains come so much more quickly than they will at any time after. At this point for me, I’ve been at it for long enough that progress doesn’t come so quickly — those infamous “newbie gains” are long gone! But still I thirst for fast progress.

My personally scaled version of humbling myself to the process has been embracing that small progress IS progress — and it’s actually the only way. Or at least the only safe way…

I see a lot of people in my demographic (young-ish men) choosing fast but dangerous paths that I hope the Saturn retrograde has them reconsidering! Saturn in Aries is the age of Maxxing — selecting one variable to “optimize,” even at the expense of all others, and often with a focus on short-term benefit rather than long-term sustainability. Testosterone replacement therapy has been in the news this month.¹ Anabolic steroid-use and male body image issues seem to be at an all-time high.² The downsides of these therapies are well-documented, and serious.³

A month ago I started a lifting program that is almost maddeningly simple, methodical, and slow (Jim Wendler’s 5-3-1, for those wondering.) It would be all too easy for me to “program hop” and try something else. But then what’s the point of having a program at all? I have a lot to learn, as demonstrated by this video of a deadlift personal record (yay!), during the Saturn station in my 6th, where I strained my neck (no!), knocking me out of training for a week. (Now I know to keep my head down mid-rep!)

The structures one implements need time to work. Being consistent with a “sub-optimal” plan pays off a lot more than being inconsistent with a great plan. A related Saturn retrograde experience might be needing to adjust plans to reflect the realities of what is sustainable for you to do consistently. Since my neck strain, I’ve had to take a few days off from training. Obviously, I’m not going to bust my body just on principle.

Further reading on Suspension

I highly recommend an article by two environmental anthropologists on suspension. When it comes to this “age of air,” I think they get it like few do.

The article is available for free through the Journal of Cultural Anthropology: View of Condition—Suspension

For now,

Drew

1. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/20/what-to-know-about-testosterone-replacement-therapy.html

2. https://karger.com/ear/article/29/2/99/836188/Anabolic-Androgenic-Steroid-Use-Patterns-and

3. https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/104/4/1069/5096841