Who is “Jada Water”?
In The Healing Wisdom of Africa, Dagara teacher Malidoma Somé writes about how most indigenous cosmologies (the way a given cultures sees the world, providing a foundational model for life itself) are built on the understanding that the same natural elements and energies that form and give function to the Earth, Moon, cosmos and everything else in existence are present and reflected within us as well, both in terms of our biology and our consciousness.
The Dagara break their cosmology down into five categories—Fire, Water, Earth, Mineral and Nature—but I find it best for me (for now) to work with the four-element model that’s more familiar to me and most Westerners: fire, water, air and earth. According to Somé, “individuals are born embodying one of these elements as their essence and carrying the rest at a variety of levels as support elements.” Not to brag, but I effortlessly seem to embody several.
Earth? 🌱 Easy.
Fire? 🔥 Fa sho.
Air? 💨 Absolutely.
But water? 🥵 Tuh.
When it comes to water, I got work to do.
I’m sure I knew this on a subconscious or unconscious level, but it wasn’t until I learned it within the context of my astrological chart that I was able to connect the dots and see it so clearly.
Like, yes, I inherited my “hostess with the mostess” gene from my mama’s side, but the placements in my birth chart show why I was more likely to advance that tradition than abandon it. I have an Earth Moon and Rising sign, and according to Somé, Earth energy represents the principle of inclusion and the importance of visibility, symbolizing “the mother on whose lap everyone finds a home, nourishment, support, comfort and empowerment.” People with prominent earth energy care “as much for the crooked as it does for the honest,” wanting to make sure everyone is seen and feels like they belong.
Same goes for my propensity for passion, vision and, yes, combustion. My willingness to “challenge everything and everyone.” My insatiable yearning for connection. “Fire is like a connecting rod, an open channel,” Somé says, “with an eye to the world of the ancestors and the spirit.” It’s like they get struck with lightening—a great vision or idea from the great beyond—and become the conduit for us to commune with other life, “present, past and future.” My Venus, Mars, Saturn and Uranus are all in Fire signs, and yep, I’m heavy on all of that.
And, of course, the ability to communicate those ideas—to strike up a conversation with just about any damn body; to get in folks heads and listen for meaning regardless of language; to seduce and socialize with nothing but de words in dis mouf—that’s that Air sign Sun and Mercury baybeee!! (Air is most similar to Mineral in Dagara cosmology.) “Mineral people are storytellers, fascinated with myth, tradition, and rituals, versed in dealing with metaphors and symbols. In Africa, they are the town criers who know what happens now and what has happened for countless generations. They constantly remind us in stories, proverbs, songs and poems the deep healing significance of staying connected. They know how to praise and how to warn.”
I wouldn’t say I’ve mastered embodying the highest forms of all three—at least not all the time, at the same time—but for better or worse, these are all lightwork.
And then we get to💧water.
In a very real sense, your girl is DRY. Parched. I’m not totally foreign to Water energy, as I do have watery Neptune in the 1st house, impacting and muddying up my Capricorn rising, but it’s not prominent in my chart and, by extension, my life. Besides, Neptune is the planet of illusion and delusion, casting a foggy haze over whatever it touches, so even if other people are able to perceive some watery essence in me, I can’t really see it. According to Somé, Water people are willing to immerse themselves in their own depths, and those of others, to grapple with grief and dance with devastation in order to reconcile and soothe emotional disorder. When it comes to me and my own life, it can feel like I don’t have access to or know how to navigate that energy at all. But not only do I really need “the vitality and blossoming that comes from successful self-immersion” to be a more balanced person, I need it to be the person I’m meant to be. Not just for myself but for my community.
Because you know the only other place I have Water in my birth chart? The North Node. The placement that Jan Spiller says signifies “the basic lesson underlying this entire lifetime.” According to Spiller, who wrote my favorite resource on the Nodes, Astrology for the Soul, “the sign in which the North Node falls denotes the psychological shift that needs to occur within the personality,” in order to resolve our deepest core issues, undo our most dire areas of disfunction, ease our internal stress—as well as the stress we cause others or our environments—and to more easily navigate the rough waters of life. Mine is in Pisces, the pinnacle of watery energy. The Empress of Emotion. The literal and figurative ocean.
For many of us, learning the lessons and embracing the energy of our North Node means releasing our reliance on the internal tools, resources and ways of being that are most accessible to us and we’re most comfortable with (Earth 🌱 , Fire 🔥 and Air 💨 for me), and stepping into the unknown for the sake of growth. Instead of just coasting on muscle memory, it means carving out new neural pathways and engaging whole new muscle groups to help lift the burdens of life. It means allowing ourselves to be as eager and open to trying new things as we were when we were kids. Jumping into life (or the house where our North Nodes sit in our birth charts) with the excitement and confidence of The Fool card in the Tarot.
Unsurprisingly, many of us fight tooth and nail to stay on the path we find most familiar. “Everything in you may resist it,” Jan writes, and boy did I. My resistance was so strong that just reading about the path prescribed for people with their Pisces North Nodes pissed me off so bad that I literally threw the book in the trash* the first time I read it. But chile, when the dire disfunction stemming from my elemental imbalance had me down bad enough, I knew that following my North Node was the only path that would lead me to my version of “up.” “If you do it anyway,” Jan said, “a shift will happen for you.” And it did.
So, re-naming myself Jada Water represents a sort of death and rebirth for me. Like Jan said, it wasn’t “me” that died, “it was the fear that attached itself to [me].” It’s my way of honoring this effort to renew, restore, rebalance and realign with the purpose I’m meant to fulfill in this lifetime, for myself and for the collective. It’s a way of encouraging and reminding myself to embody and embrace that energy; to “remember to remember,” as Jan says, my who, what, how and why.
So allow me to reintroduce myself. I’m Jada Water. Who are you?
*I got it out the next day, but still!
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