The Astrological Ages: Themes Past, Present and Possible Futurisms

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.
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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.

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.

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.  

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…

 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?

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.

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...)

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.

The Astrological Ages: An Overview

The Dendara Zodiac: one of the earliest renditions of the zodiac

known. 'Discovered' by Napoleon's troops and now housed at

the Louvre in Paris, the greater structures of Egypt's Dendara

Temple are decidedly off the "regular tourist" track but

well worth visiting.

Humans being humans, there are certain parts of all the various things we do and get into in life which tickle our individual fancy. When it comes to astrology, the Astrological Ages is on such a list in my world...the 'why' of which I hope to show you over a series of posts to be sprinkled amongst all else as the schedule allows.

So let's start with this...those of you who are either…say, over 50 or into current Broadway productions are probably familiar with the musical ‘Hair’ and it’s ballyhoo song: Age of Aquarius.

Well, that 'Age of Aquarius' thing is real. And yes, this is  the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, which is a big reason why a lot of things are happening now.

It’s taken me a while to figure out how to take on this gigundo subject…so let’s make a start of it. And as we start, I want you to remember that this is only the dawn of this incoming age.

Ergo, let us being, starting with what is like as not, the most basic of basic questions:

WHAT ARE ASTROLOGICAL AGES?

....Yes, this would otherwise be known as ‘what are they and why the fig should I give a peach pit about them?’

But however you position this first brick in the proverbial yellow brick road, when it comes to Astrological Ages, this would be the most basic of foundational questions.

And lucky for us, it's one with a pretty basic answer!

First, envision our planet Earth as the quintessential globe we all knew as kids. Yes, it's back to Romper Room!

So okay: there's that Earth planet globe thing, with a “stick” stuck through it showing the north and south poles...

 

And no, that imaginary stick doesn't go just straight up and down. The Earth rotates on its axis - yes. But the planetary ‘up/down’ is a different imaginary line from that which is the axis around which Earth rotates.

The up/down line is something we would draw perpendicular to Earth’s orbit around the Sun - as in this second here-now picture...

That ‘axial tilt’ (as it’s called) is currently about 23.4% off “true perpendicular” …though such a thing really doesn’t exist in the world of space, which is why those periodic frenzies about ‘OMG – the universe is going to turn over’ always make me laugh! I mean…how can you turn over if there’s no ‘up’ or ‘down’? Such things are so a construct of our everyday human life – like the idea that north is ‘up’ on a map and south is ‘down.’

I actually once had a teacher who so hated how his students were always referring to north as ‘up’ and south as ‘down’ that he had a special set of maps made for our classroom which were to our eyes on their sides or upside down. Going from one to the other he eventually broke us of that nasty little ‘up’/’down’ habit, which is maybe why I’ve reacted to it ever since.

But back to the subject…the Earth rotates on around its axis, right? That’s why the Sun appears to rise in the east and set in the west. The Sun isn’t actually rising…the Earth is just going around and around, making it seem like the Sun rises. You know, from the point of view of someone living on Earth.

That one idea – that we are on Earth, is why astrology is geo (Earth) centric (centered). Astrology is the study of how the contiguous energetics of the universe affect us here right here on Earth.

Okay! Now with all that dully mulled over, imagine a top…

Perhaps you’ve watched a top or gyroscope spin? If so, you’ve probably noticed how the top of the top (that always sounds wrong!) …how it describes a little ‘wobbly’ circle of its own as the top spins?

Little do you know (probably because you never needed to) but that little circle goes in a direction which is opposite to the direction in which the top is spinning.

So…you know the word “procession”? It means to ‘go along forward.’ The ‘cession’ part is the getting your get-along along while the ‘pro’ part is the ‘forward’ bit.

This matters because Earth does the same thing as that top. As Earth spins, that ‘stick’ which we think of as stuck through Earth also sloooowly, sloooowly describes a “backward” circle. So it doesn’t pro-cess, it pre-cesses…it cycles backwards.

There are only a very few things in astrology which seem to go ‘backward’ but precession is one of them. Over a big long period of time, Earth’s north pole makes a slow circle of its own, moving in a direction opposite to that in which the Earth turns.

(This is sounding a little like a soap opera, but…)

So how fast does this little precessional thing happen? Answer: the Earth’s rotational axial tilt point precesses one degree back in 72 years.

About in the better part of a lifetime, in other words.

Among other things, this means that Polaris – the star we think of as the “north star,” isn’t always the north star! Who would’a thunk, right?

Okay…so here’s the math. No - don't panic! It's pretty simple. There are 360 degrees in a circle, and it takes the Earth 72 years to move one degree in its precessional cycle. So if we want to know how many Earth years pass by in one earthy precessional cycle, here would be the equation...

72 (years) x 360 (degrees) = 25,920 years

Not hard, right?

Okay...on to our next concept!

(And yes, I promise, it all amounts to something!)

There are twelve zodiac signs. (And if you're in doubt about that, you're on the wrong blog page. Try THIS ONE.)

Anyway....since the circle of the zodiac wraps Earth 360 degrees all the way around, that means that all we have to do is divide 25,920 (years) by 12 (signs), and that will give us the number of years it takes for Earth’s axis to move backward (pre-cession) through one zodiac sign:

25,920 (years) divided by 12 (signs) = 2,160 years

..

So! It takes Earth 2,160 years to move (backwards) through one zodiac sign.

Et, voila! The astrological term for 25,920 years is ‘an astrological Great Year.’ And the astrological term for one-twelfth of that Great Year is an Astrological Age.

Twelve Astrological Ages equal one Great Year. Make sense?

Given that astrological Ages move backward, if this is now the ‘dawning of the Age of Aquarius’ (go ahead – sing to yourself!) ….that means that we are just leaving what Age?

Answer: the Age of Pisces.

Here's a basic chart wheel for the Age of Pisces:

The Piscean Age

And here is the basic chart for the Age of Aquarius:

The Age of Aquarius

Even if you don’t know signs and such, it’s pretty easy to see that the wheel rotates - backward - by one sign as one Age becomes a next.

And that’s the point: the ‘wheel’ of the zodiac – the 12 signs of the horoscope, they each have ‘set’ meanings. Those meanings correspond to the signs of the zodiac when the zodiac is portrayed as a “natural zodiac wheel” – a term you see me use more or less often:

What happens with astrological Ages is that as each one comes along, we get an “overlay” of affects...okay, except during the Age of Aries, when the Age and the natural wheel lined up.

And when was that, you ask? Well, if we are now moving into the Aquarian Age and exiting the Piscean Age, that means that about 2,160 years ago would have been the  end of the Age of Aries.

So...figuring from 2010 (because it's handy) that would push us back to a rough date of 150 BCE as being when the Aries Age was ending...making - which would make the years around 2,300 BCE being when the Aries Age was coming into being and the Taurean Age was ending.

Got all that? If not, just go with it for a moment.

In the meantime (while those numbers sink in) I'm going to remind you how Pisces is a sign in which we confront and feel our feelings -and thus learn to have faith in how we feel. Or our ability to deal with or even honor our feelings - or anything of a feeling nature, like an oath or promise.

Does that draw a dotted line for you to  spirituality? If not, maybe you're confusing spirituality - the ability to be okay with one's internal sense of 'feelingness' with religion - and they are absolutely, positively not the same thing! Spirituality is our ability to feel ourselves having faith. But that faith doesn't necessarily have to be in a greater power. It could be just having faith that (yes, Annie...) the Sun will rise again tomorrow. Or in mom's promise that if you clean up your room every day for the month she'll reinstate those privileges you lost through disobeying house rules.

Spirituality is our rightness with our sense of faith - whether that's in some idea, some person, some promise...whatever. Religion is a codified set of rules which is supposed to teach us what we should have faith in. Whether we have faith in a religion is thus about whether we agree with what the religion teaches and the boundaries, standards and strictures it sets. Some of us go there, some of us don't. But whether or not you've 'got religion' has nothing (NOTHING!) to do with whether you are a spiritual person!

But that spirituality and religion have been a big Piscean Age deal? That's real. And that's actually pretty darn astrologically apt, seeing that in all Piscean questions, it is not the question itself (i.e.,: do you believe) but our reaction to the question and how we emotionally react to the asking and to our feelings about being asked which is the whole big Piscean deal. So! That the Age of Pisces – among other things – has been a time in which religion has been such a huge cause of argument pro/con, I love it/hate it, live by it/ignore it...that works! That totally works.

And that people have killed over religion? That just tells us how far we can go with this Piscean alienation problem. The Piscean positive is acceptance. The litany of Piscean negative starts with rejection, alienation, shaming, retribution and abandonment.

As for that Aries Age – the Age of Aries would have extended from roughly 100 BCE (let’s round off for ease of adding here)….to roughly 2,200 BCE. If you’re anything close to a history buff and I say to you Aries is the sign of I AM, then it shouldn’t be any surprise to not only find this a time of Sun kings and Pharaohs, but when monotheism gave rise to a Judaic culture which, as we know so well thanks to Cecil B DeMille, identifies the God force as the concept of that which causes all to exist – that “I Am” thing.

Among other things, this gives us a really, really interesting way to look at religions – if nothing else! Those which came to be during the Piscean Age would carry that very distinct GOD/mankind (dominant-submissive, teacher-student, divine-mortal, perfect-imperfect, rich-poor, powerful-weak) theme. I’m not saying any religion is right or wrong here – my personal views on such don’t seem particularly important here.

But the point of why I bring this up is. That which comes to be during a given astrological Age bears the conceptual dynamics of that Age. 

So when does this Age of Aquarius start? Oh…around  sorta kinda about now. It’s been starting for a while and it’ll be a while yet until were totally out of deep Pisces water. Why? Because Ages don’t turn on and off like a light switch – they blend, one into another, rather like seasons meld together...one ends, another begins, there are days of this, days of that until finally the incoming season asserts itself.

Another way I tend to think of this is as the colors of the rainbow.

 A dispersive prism, splitting white light into it's

component color parts - a rainbow

photo credit: Spigget

Why a rainbow? Because the component parts - the individual colors - of a rainbow are rather like the individual signs, granting there aren't as many of them. And as the Wheel of the Age turns, each of those colors will fall on a different house. So if we're talking about the Age of Pisces as spirituality, yes...part of that is because Pisces itself - the sign on the Ascendant of the Age - is a sign which 'tests' our emotional spirit. But how that operates in detail - that we would look at by also looking to the 'natural' houses of spirituality and religion (the 12th and the 9th) and where the signs naturally associated with those houses now fall.

In the case of the Age of Pisces, we know where Pisces (natural ruler of the 12th) is - during the Piscean Age, it's going to be on the Ascendant. But the sign of religions...Sagittarius (religion being a set of codified teachings) - during the Age of Pisces, Sagittarius has been on the 10th house of 'rulership.'

Hence much attempt to be 'top' religion, and the tendency for kings and rulers to be swayed by and challenged as to what their religious beliefs are...religion as a 'ruling' force in the world...and the efforts of some governments to use Sagittarius in its other voice: as an exploration of 'rule of law' (codified correctness in thinking) rather than the Sagittarius/Piscean combined sense of religion. When a nation, person, community goes for this 'separation', they use both sides of this combo, but separately - as in, you do the right thing (Sagittarius) or you'll be sorry (Pisces as self-regret).  

That's just a droplet of an idea on how the Ages work. Any given subject changes from Age to Age in accordance with where the signs which 'naturally' rule that subject fall.

And if you want to get even more exotic about this (which as an astrologer I tend to do at least when I'm doing research)...then you follow the patterns of ruling planets through signs at least partly as a signature of the Age.

Which among other things says a lot about the fact that Neptune will soon be entering its home sign of Pisces. That not only emphasizes Neptunian precepts, but also suggests that as of Neptune's ingress into Pisces (April 2011) levels of imagination, projection, elation and disappointment will all rise. It's the point of Pisces as two fish swimming in different directions - the polarization of emotionality and all which prompts, tempts or produces our emotions is going to become more 'at extremes' or polarized.

For some, this will be educational - it will teach them to hope and work towards goals but not to go so whole-hog into some 'dream' or 'idyllic' image. For others it will be just the opposite - they'll go more towards the hope, the optimal, the 'it could be...' and sometimes win and sometimes have their hopes dashed like a high wave against a cliff.

The thing to remember is that this isn't going to be about the good or bad the world or life. Neptune is about our ability to deal with our emotionality and acceptance of realities.

And here where the Piscean Age is drawing to an end, Neptune hitting its home sign suggests we may well be in for some big highs and lows. Might they be even bigger since by the time Neptune's next ingress into Pisces happens about 164 years from now we'll be pretty much in the Aquarian Age?

That's possible.

Going back to that point about Pisces being two fish swimming in different directions...what thinkest you if I suggest how that might represent the powerful and the meek or the rulers and the ruled, leaders and citizens (or leaders and followers), bosses and workers, teachers and students? And what if I say all that and then tell you that Aquarius at its higher level of function...is all about ‘universal equality’? Does that begin to ring a bell about why there might be so much tumult here where one Age melds into the next?

In the past several decades, every nation and population on this planet has been agitating for more freedom – a distinctly Aquarian thing. Pisces is the fantasy of the sultan and his slaves, the dominant and the submissive, the head of household and his subject family.

Oh – did I mention Aquarius does away with gender bias?

In these last years and decades, haven’t we seen the shift of gender roles? However you describe it and whether its been peaceful or disastrously contentious, both women and men are saying they care more and more about what has ‘traditionally’ been the role of the opposite sex. More women are in leadership roles. More men are caring more and more about being nurturing figures to their children.

As I started out saying, this is a huge and complicated subject. But as the days and weeks go by, between all other things going on, I think it’s useful to take a gander at how we can look at these precepts and see so much of what is going on in the world.

And in our lives. After all…we now have parents born plainly under the end of the Piscean Age who are having and raising little Aquarian Age munchkins. How confusing is that – on both ends of the parent/child transaction!

Understanding the why’s and what’s involved here won’t make it distinctly easier…but like the old sage said: knowledge is power. If you as a parent can get a better hold on why your child thinks like someone born on another planet – it’s not the ‘other planet,’ its that the planet you’re both living on is moving from one Age to a next.

And kids…? It’s not that your parents are ‘old fogies,’ it’s that they were brought up literally thinking in a different temporal language. On one level, how fascinating is that? And lest you think but I’m an Aquarian Age person – that’s all I need to know! ….think again. For one, the Pisces Age is still doing a substantial amount of splashing around – just look at all the power struggles going on in this world!

There’s also that Astrological Ages (read: history) teaches that those who learn from what has been are able to build fastest and most profitably. So don’t ignore those fish tales!

One more item, then I’ll close for today: this may be coming at this Astrological Age thing from a slightly different perspective, but when we look at horoscopes and we ask ‘how often do they repeat?’… if you use JUST our solar system’s real planets plus Moon and Sun (no asteroids, no TNOs, etc.) and all the house cusps - if you run the numbers out using just that, the answer is (yes,) 26,000 years.

And a Great Year is 25,920 years long?

Got it?

This is just the beginning of what I hope will be a long conversation about Astrological Ages. I invite you to write me (or comment) on specific subjects you'd like to see discussed. One of these days (when I get more tech savvy) I'll even start looking for ways astroPPM can be turned into a truly interactive conversation.

In the meantime, we'll just keep exploring. More on Astrological Ages to come!