In our last/first post on the astrological ages, we established what an Astrological Age is, and why it is what it is. With that now out of the way, it seems like a good idea to contemplate a few items having to do with what we know about/from Ages past – and what that can tell us about today, tomorrow, and times yet to come.
Being that we have an easy 5,000-6,000 years we can look back at (recorded human history), even granting that people/writers of history tend to fudge a few facts here and there to suit themselves (or keep rulers of the day from cutting off their head, not that it always works…) let’s put up two ‘preceding’ Ages.
The first would be the Age of Pisces…that which is now fading away.
The Age of Pisces
The second would be the Age of Aries, the era which came before the Age of Pisces. (Remember? Astrological ages roll back through signs because this is all about Earth’s pre-('pre' as in 'before')-cessional cycle.
.
.
The Age of Aries
With each astrological age lasting 2,160 years, we use 2010 (for convenience) as our “start date.” And that gives us a ‘dawning’ year for the Age of Pisces as being around 150 BCE. And going back yet another 2,160 years, we arrive at a ‘dawning’ period for the Aries Age as being somewhere about the the time BCE 2,310 rolled through.
Okay…now to something which sounds a bit esoteric but really isn't hard and is both practical and informational when traipsing through the land of asterological age. Namely, what is each Age called? No, I don't mean “Aquarian Age" or “Aries Age,” and I'm not referring to 'that (blank blank blank) Age' ...or am I referring to calling some Age Fido or Fifi or some other fru-fru name.
What I’m referring to here is the 'casual nickname' ages have come to be known as among metaphysicians and other philosophical types.
What I’m referring to here is the 'casual nickname' ages have come to be known as among metaphysicians and other philosophical types.
The Age of Pisces has long been called The Age of Knowledge. And considering how much 'knowledge' about our planet, our bodies and life itself we've accumulated during these past 2,000-plus years, that seems not an unlikely name. Heck - here at the end of the Age of Pisces, we had arise among us what has very commonly come to be more commercially known as the Information Age.
But hey! Information isn't wisdom. And what separates them?
For that, we consider Pisces as a water/emotional sign and reconcile the idea of Pisces as wisdom because when knowledge (or information) is exposed to and converted by exposure to hard won (emotional) experience, what results is wisdom. Wisdom is something greater, more applicable, more universal than knowledge because wisdom takes into account the stance, need and feelings of those around us.
And that’s Pisces. Pisces is nothing if not a universal experience of emotions…or the emotional collective…or the common (emotional) chord. Pisces represents the means, the moments, the wisdom which allows us to understand our experience in universal terms, which connects us to ourselves and each other through joy and pain and longing and sorrow and hope and disappointment.
For that, we consider Pisces as a water/emotional sign and reconcile the idea of Pisces as wisdom because when knowledge (or information) is exposed to and converted by exposure to hard won (emotional) experience, what results is wisdom. Wisdom is something greater, more applicable, more universal than knowledge because wisdom takes into account the stance, need and feelings of those around us.
And that’s Pisces. Pisces is nothing if not a universal experience of emotions…or the emotional collective…or the common (emotional) chord. Pisces represents the means, the moments, the wisdom which allows us to understand our experience in universal terms, which connects us to ourselves and each other through joy and pain and longing and sorrow and hope and disappointment.
Against this we have information, a conceptual word. Knowing is about being informed - having the facts. Wisdom is knowing what it means if those facts get applied to and in real life.
Information is not a water sign word. It's an air sign 'theory/concept' word.
During the Piscean Age, Aquarius - the sign of information and systemic knowledge has been on the 12th house of the Age. And that we come to what modern society calls 'the Information Age' at the end of the Pisces Age era - that is simply an incredible marker.
That's human instinct in sync with Earth-time.
Information is not a water sign word. It's an air sign 'theory/concept' word.
During the Piscean Age, Aquarius - the sign of information and systemic knowledge has been on the 12th house of the Age. And that we come to what modern society calls 'the Information Age' at the end of the Pisces Age era - that is simply an incredible marker.
That's human instinct in sync with Earth-time.
Looking at this, we might say that the keyword for the sign on the 12th house of the age as interpreted through the ruling sign of the Age gives us a colloquial name of that age and tells about a great focus of that Age.
So what about the Age of Aries? During the Aries Age, Pisces was on the 12th house. The keynote there would be faith. And with Aries - sign of I AM - on the 1st house, are we surprised that this was indeed the Age of Sun Kings and Pharoahs - single (I AM) people who embodied divinity?
The Age of Aries doesn't get talked about much - though it's interesting, to be sure. Should we think of it as the Age of Divinity? That might well be apt. Having learned how to subsist and survive ('civilization' and cultivation as we know it having arisen in the Taurus Age which ran before that of Aries) the Aries Age was full of this who are we, how do we come to be alive and questions about where and in whom the power of life and death is vested.
This idea of relating the Age to qualities of its 12th house sign is really not so odd considering how the 12th house of any chart is the place we look to for a universal experience (and) universal challenge. This holds in a personal chart, it works in a corporate and national chart. So why not the chart of an Age?
That's one of the lovely things about astrology - once you know how it works, it simply works that way over and over again. It's just learning the basics which is a (insert favorite term here).
Getting back to the point, what all this suggests is that if we want to look ‘ahead’ (rather immediately ahead!) into the Aquarian Age, we should start with the sign on the 12th house of the incoming Aquarian Age.
And thus, with a wave of magical digital wand, I here conjure for you yon chart of said Aquarian Age…
So what about the Age of Aries? During the Aries Age, Pisces was on the 12th house. The keynote there would be faith. And with Aries - sign of I AM - on the 1st house, are we surprised that this was indeed the Age of Sun Kings and Pharoahs - single (I AM) people who embodied divinity?
The Age of Aries doesn't get talked about much - though it's interesting, to be sure. Should we think of it as the Age of Divinity? That might well be apt. Having learned how to subsist and survive ('civilization' and cultivation as we know it having arisen in the Taurus Age which ran before that of Aries) the Aries Age was full of this who are we, how do we come to be alive and questions about where and in whom the power of life and death is vested.
This idea of relating the Age to qualities of its 12th house sign is really not so odd considering how the 12th house of any chart is the place we look to for a universal experience (and) universal challenge. This holds in a personal chart, it works in a corporate and national chart. So why not the chart of an Age?
That's one of the lovely things about astrology - once you know how it works, it simply works that way over and over again. It's just learning the basics which is a (insert favorite term here).
Getting back to the point, what all this suggests is that if we want to look ‘ahead’ (rather immediately ahead!) into the Aquarian Age, we should start with the sign on the 12th house of the incoming Aquarian Age.
And thus, with a wave of magical digital wand, I here conjure for you yon chart of said Aquarian Age…
The Aquarian Age
(The frame on this graphic is color keyed to correspond Aquarius
as the sign on the 1st house of the Aquarian Age)
…on which 12th house we find Capricorn, the sign before Aquarius.
Capricorn is the 12th house of the Aquarian Age
(The frame on this graphic is color keyed to correspond Capricorn
as the sign on the 12th house of the Aquarian Age)
There are many, many keywords for any sign. But when you talk in this kind of global sense, words like time, structure, responsibility, pragmatism...even 'career' doesn't see as applicable to this discussion as a term like 'governance' (government) or...commerce.
Understanding why takes going back to that 12th house precept. The 12th is the house of universal feeling and thus commonalties and the common chord. Thus the thing we're talking about has to be a global concept. We can take a Capricorn term like 'responsibility' and combine that with Aquarius as the sign of information, society/social systems, economics, functionality, income and the ethics of freedom....and come up with ideas like 'social responsibility' and 'structural economics' and that may well encapsulate part of what is going on...but in the end, what the Age is likely to be about is Commerce. Social commerce, economic commerce, informational commerce - the commerce of ethics - it's all commerce.
So I would nominate the Age of Aquarius as the Age of Commerce, yes.
And that's one side of this 12th house/1st house 'typification' of the Age. Yet the flip would also be true, namely that since the 12th house is always where we are challenged and what challenges us, this may have some serious implications.
Take for instance, the 12th house as the house of 'old age wealth.' All three water houses - 4, 8, 12 - and the signs naturally associated with them - Cancer (4), Scorpio (8), Pisces (12) are associated with wealth. Cancer is the 'wealth' of childhood (the situation we are born into), Scorpio is the wealth developed/built up during our adult years (including inheritances) and Pisces is old age and all the finances we receive at that time or which are generated "without our working for them." So Pisces/12th house wealth includes not just things like pensions, and mechanisms like the US Social Security system but annuities and royalties.
As we have moved into the dawn of this incoming age, more and more people are moving into what we might call 'individual commerce' - many of them aided by the internet. With Capricorn on the 12th house, commerce would become a universal tool.
It also becomes a universal challenge. Will companies employ people as they have? Throughout the Piscean Age there has been a 'cradle to grave' mentality regarding profession and often, companies being passed from parent to child. But during the Age of Pisces, the structure of the chart of the age favored that - Scorpio (sign of inheritances) on the 9th house of legalities (and therefore wills) is just one sign of same.
But that's now changing.
I'll put this another way: the 12th house, except when we accept its limitations, BECOMES our limitation.
We are therefore probably being asked to accept that either we work (Capricorn) for our pensions (12th house) or we assume responsibility (Capricorn) for our end-of-life finances.
With all this in mind, and allowing for the enormity of the pain, would it not on the astro-instructive level not be entirely apt that there have been so many disruptions of commercial investments? Or that - using the United States merely as an example (not that there aren't others!)....that in the US huge companies like GM, private-public companies like the US Postal Service and any number of states are putting their citizens (and the nation) on notice as to their inability to continue to support pension plans as originally designed?
Understanding why takes going back to that 12th house precept. The 12th is the house of universal feeling and thus commonalties and the common chord. Thus the thing we're talking about has to be a global concept. We can take a Capricorn term like 'responsibility' and combine that with Aquarius as the sign of information, society/social systems, economics, functionality, income and the ethics of freedom....and come up with ideas like 'social responsibility' and 'structural economics' and that may well encapsulate part of what is going on...but in the end, what the Age is likely to be about is Commerce. Social commerce, economic commerce, informational commerce - the commerce of ethics - it's all commerce.
So I would nominate the Age of Aquarius as the Age of Commerce, yes.
And that's one side of this 12th house/1st house 'typification' of the Age. Yet the flip would also be true, namely that since the 12th house is always where we are challenged and what challenges us, this may have some serious implications.
Take for instance, the 12th house as the house of 'old age wealth.' All three water houses - 4, 8, 12 - and the signs naturally associated with them - Cancer (4), Scorpio (8), Pisces (12) are associated with wealth. Cancer is the 'wealth' of childhood (the situation we are born into), Scorpio is the wealth developed/built up during our adult years (including inheritances) and Pisces is old age and all the finances we receive at that time or which are generated "without our working for them." So Pisces/12th house wealth includes not just things like pensions, and mechanisms like the US Social Security system but annuities and royalties.
As we have moved into the dawn of this incoming age, more and more people are moving into what we might call 'individual commerce' - many of them aided by the internet. With Capricorn on the 12th house, commerce would become a universal tool.
It also becomes a universal challenge. Will companies employ people as they have? Throughout the Piscean Age there has been a 'cradle to grave' mentality regarding profession and often, companies being passed from parent to child. But during the Age of Pisces, the structure of the chart of the age favored that - Scorpio (sign of inheritances) on the 9th house of legalities (and therefore wills) is just one sign of same.
But that's now changing.
I'll put this another way: the 12th house, except when we accept its limitations, BECOMES our limitation.
We are therefore probably being asked to accept that either we work (Capricorn) for our pensions (12th house) or we assume responsibility (Capricorn) for our end-of-life finances.
With all this in mind, and allowing for the enormity of the pain, would it not on the astro-instructive level not be entirely apt that there have been so many disruptions of commercial investments? Or that - using the United States merely as an example (not that there aren't others!)....that in the US huge companies like GM, private-public companies like the US Postal Service and any number of states are putting their citizens (and the nation) on notice as to their inability to continue to support pension plans as originally designed?
Let's turn this wheel yet one more time, looking at 'government' not just as the governing body of a country but also as a form of business. Governments employ thousands and sometimes millions of people in keeping a nation running, supporting its necessary infrastructure and maintaining a military as protection for that nation.
What the US is going through, what Iceland has been through, what Greece is going through - this is all metaphysical handwriting on the wall. And it's being written on that wall with a very special kind of paint which far from fading, grows more obvious as time goes on.
Maybe with regards to pensions this means that age (Capricorn as time and therefore, on the 12th house, 'life span') as pertains to retirement has to be considered. Will countries and companies end up adjusting the age at which a retirement pension gets paid out in some sort of 'floating' ratio to our increasing life span?
Will business become so much the individualized notion that by the time the Aquarian Age comes to its end (as the years 4,150 - 4,170 come to be) we are all internationalized, having done away with nationalism?
Astrological Ages do not go gently into the night, not to return for another 23,000 (or so) years. Especially with insecure humans in charge, neither is the passing from one Age to the next a clap on, clap off sort of operation.
What the US is going through, what Iceland has been through, what Greece is going through - this is all metaphysical handwriting on the wall. And it's being written on that wall with a very special kind of paint which far from fading, grows more obvious as time goes on.
Maybe with regards to pensions this means that age (Capricorn as time and therefore, on the 12th house, 'life span') as pertains to retirement has to be considered. Will countries and companies end up adjusting the age at which a retirement pension gets paid out in some sort of 'floating' ratio to our increasing life span?
Will business become so much the individualized notion that by the time the Aquarian Age comes to its end (as the years 4,150 - 4,170 come to be) we are all internationalized, having done away with nationalism?
Astrological Ages do not go gently into the night, not to return for another 23,000 (or so) years. Especially with insecure humans in charge, neither is the passing from one Age to the next a clap on, clap off sort of operation.
Every time the ages change, it's a pretty turbulent time. So even though we don't like the turbulence, even though hard times are hard times and even though the tragedies which inevitably accompany such upheavals always horrible...it may be comforting - in a sense - to know that what is happening now is a natural part of greater cycles.
No one ever likes being phased out. Not if you're an employee, not if you're a national ruler, not if you're a maker of horse buggies being told there's this new-fangled thing called an automobile. And yet the birth-growth-maturation-aging cycle is universal. It happens to us as people, it happens in our family generations, it happens with the flowers out in your yard, it happens with nations, with societies, with ways of life.
There are nations - like Egypt or China - which survive and go on. They deal with their palace revolutions, they revamp how the nation operates and life goes on.
We can look around us and know it's a turbulent time...and we can take a step back and look at the structure of the Ages and realize this should be a turbulent time.
The process of 'educating' the human race as we pass through the cycles of the astrological ages seems rather pendulum-like. As a race, mankind seems prone towards swinging back and forth between extremes. Here at the end of the Piscean Age we are seeing a substantial uptick in the use of threat AS threat - be that through religion or coercion or torture or shame or any other way...right as might and might as right are two very familiar forms of the two fishes which have been gaining strength now for quite a few years.
And yet the incoming Age continues to assert itself with greater and greater strength through transmission of information and natural assertion by people of the concept of human equality. These are entirely Aquarian concepts.
So as we finish up the Piscean Age, Aquarius as 12th house to Pisces brings about the downfall...the classic 12th house limitation. How? Through the refusal to accept.
Remember? The 12th house, except when we accept its limitations, BECOMES our limitation.
A few more thoughts, then we'll end for today (aren't astrological ages interesting?)
One: if you look at history books (or Wikipedia – suit yourself) what you'll note as you thumb through the centuries is how ‘world power’ shifts on a pretty regular basis. Life doesn’t end just because some other nation takes the lead…it just changes.
And the real point here is how power seems to flow from east to west – in the direction of the Sun’s ‘apparent’ movement across our world. (Yes, it's actually the Earth turning, but...)
No one ever likes being phased out. Not if you're an employee, not if you're a national ruler, not if you're a maker of horse buggies being told there's this new-fangled thing called an automobile. And yet the birth-growth-maturation-aging cycle is universal. It happens to us as people, it happens in our family generations, it happens with the flowers out in your yard, it happens with nations, with societies, with ways of life.
There are nations - like Egypt or China - which survive and go on. They deal with their palace revolutions, they revamp how the nation operates and life goes on.
We can look around us and know it's a turbulent time...and we can take a step back and look at the structure of the Ages and realize this should be a turbulent time.
The process of 'educating' the human race as we pass through the cycles of the astrological ages seems rather pendulum-like. As a race, mankind seems prone towards swinging back and forth between extremes. Here at the end of the Piscean Age we are seeing a substantial uptick in the use of threat AS threat - be that through religion or coercion or torture or shame or any other way...right as might and might as right are two very familiar forms of the two fishes which have been gaining strength now for quite a few years.
And yet the incoming Age continues to assert itself with greater and greater strength through transmission of information and natural assertion by people of the concept of human equality. These are entirely Aquarian concepts.
So as we finish up the Piscean Age, Aquarius as 12th house to Pisces brings about the downfall...the classic 12th house limitation. How? Through the refusal to accept.
Remember? The 12th house, except when we accept its limitations, BECOMES our limitation.
********************************
A few more thoughts, then we'll end for today (aren't astrological ages interesting?)
One: if you look at history books (or Wikipedia – suit yourself) what you'll note as you thumb through the centuries is how ‘world power’ shifts on a pretty regular basis. Life doesn’t end just because some other nation takes the lead…it just changes.
And the real point here is how power seems to flow from east to west – in the direction of the Sun’s ‘apparent’ movement across our world. (Yes, it's actually the Earth turning, but...)
Do I think that means China or some other Oriental nation is next in line to be Earth's next great superpower? Yes. I also suspect the world’s by-now (increasingly) well-networked economies are what will insure that everybody continues to exist. After all, nobody collects debts from countries (or populations) which have been wiped off the map, and mankind shows no sign of giving up measuring most things with money.
Two: There are subsets to Astrological Ages. They have mini-ages which appear to be set off by clocking rounds of the rulers of a given age. For the Age of Pisces, that would have been Jupiter and (everybody’s fave...NOT!!) Neptune.
And that would be why this astrologer suspects that the upcoming Neptune shift into its home sign of Pisces will mark a period of substantial highs and really distressing lows.
But that would be fairly typical for a period in which one astrological age relinquishes to a next. We humans really hate change. We love it as an idea but we hate it when it comes time to deal with the messiness of implementation (just ask your local governmental official – they'll probably shudder deliciously!)
Saturn as photographed by the Cassini spacecraft
photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The incoming Aquarian age will be governed by Saturn as the effort to build a sound foundation…and Uranus as the signature of whether the foundation(s) you have built are sound – resulting in great advancements and success - or unsound, in which case you will reap great destruction, dis-tress, anarchy and stress/unrest.
And with this in mind, we do remember how all the turmoil currently churning through the Middle East east began with January’s Saturn going retrograde?
And do you know Uranus is about to enter Aries here in a few days?
Yes, we really are attending the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Humans being what they are, we tend to think mostly in terms of Now – the moment of our lives. And that’s reasonable. It’s hard to look any farther than our own survival and the world we build for our kids.
But that’s just the point. Tomorrow isn’t going to be what Today is. Time does not go backward. The precession of the Earth is a formulaic counter-winding of nature...which we won't get into just now.
Right now what is important is how the Uranus-Neptune urge to escape and deny or ignore and just wish or hope or 'tend only to your own' is very high.
But that urge isn’t going to work. Long after my voice is silenced, we will all know…that.
It hasn't, it doesn’t, and it never really ever works.
It's time to look ahead.
It hasn't, it doesn’t, and it never really ever works.
It's time to look ahead.
Very interesting. I like the idea of the 12th House "working" in Age charts just as it does in national, corporate and personal charts.
ReplyDeleteI am surprised to see you dub the Age of Aquarius as the Age of Commerce....Commerce seems so unlike what we have been given to view the Aquarian Age as, in the popular New-Age mythos.