Time passes; the progress of life displays itself as the panorama of history. Human growth, the rise and fall of civilizations, follows the inevitable pulse of change as it etches evolution with millennia, epochs, and eras. Human growth can be measured by the climatic changes that have determined its course. Just as a plant’s life may be marked by the procession of day, night, day, night, day, so may human growth follow the civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Crete, Athens, Rome. Life can be viewed as growth, organically and cyclically; the understanding of the present, the eternal now, is cultivated by understanding how the seeds of the future take root in the soil of the past.
As 1976 begins, the modern world is nearing a climax. Contemporary humanity exists in a world where the relative pursuit of happiness of one nation can be significantly affected by the problems, crises, and desires of another, no matter how far away. Individual fulfillment is becoming increasingly reliant upon global awareness, such that the mistake of one nation may mean the destruction of all. Humanity must change.
Astrology is the study of celestial cycles as they pertain to terrestrial growth cycles. Humankind studied the wax and wane of the moon as the Nile was flooded and fields fertilized, and watched the ebb and flow of seasons. Gradually, it became known that the solar system lies in a two-dimensional disc and above and parallel to it, lies an ellipse of seven stars, referred to by many American Indian tribes as the seven great fathers. The north pole of the earth follows this ellipse and over a period of 25,800 years points to each star successively. By 2050 A.D. the north pole will be pointing most directly at Polaris. Five thousand years ago it pointed to Alpha Draconis; five thousand years hence it will point to Alpha Cephei. Each 25,800 year cycle can be divided into twelve ages or epochs corresponding to the signs of the zodiac, and each age of 2,150 years can be viewed as a great month, convening upon a single period in history. The Great Sidereal Year can provide a framework for viewing human progress.
The Piscean age came into being between the Second Punic War of 200 B.C., when the Roman Republic finally defeated the Carthaginian Empire and emerged as a new focus for human civilization, and the birth of Christ, who, symbolized by the fish, personified the Piscean traits of compassion, self-sacrifice, and faith. As far back as 323 B.C., Alexander emerged with the vision of blending the races (Pisces), but his method of conquest was typically Arian and his efforts remained only two years as a transitional shift from one age to another. Pisces is the compassionate self-sacrifice of the individual for the common good, the blending of individuals into a collective well-being, a service of God. The teachings of Christ emulate this ideal; the Catholic Church sought to create one worldwide faith of compassion and service and achieved a great deal of success from within the Roman Empire.
Almost as the Roman Republic changed into an empire, with the advent of Caesar and Augustus (symbolic of the Anti-Christ), Christ was born and the Christian element began its work. Pisces has two sides, and with the vision of ideal faith there exists also the illusion behind which hides deceit and corruption. The Catholic Church preaching self-sacrifice and love became a powerful arm of wealth and war contradicting its own belief. Even to this day one must separate an absolute faith (Pisces) in leaders with the logic and reason of the facts concerning them (Aquarius). As the transition to the Aquarian age continues, humankind must try to break out of the vision of limitless grandeur that its seemingly endless supply of resources has granted it, realize the logic and limitations of its scientific abilities, and become aware of the mass of humanity whose global needs must initiate a necessary world cooperation, as continued strife has its own inevitable conclusion.
Aquarius represents collective cooperation and the highest achievements of the arts and sciences necessary to facilitate it. Typically, the symbol of Aquarius is man, the common man. Many believe that the American, French, and Russian revolutions signal the close of the Piscean age, because common people sought a more democratic or cooperative form of government that no longer relied on faith in a divine monarch. The Aquarian age may have been initiated with the application of electricity, the discovery of atomic energy, and the institution of the United Nations. However, it is only obvious that the new governments arisen from the ashes of monarchy are still deceptive, that atomic energy may have brought with it more of a crisis than a solution, and that the United Nations exists in name only.
The Aquarian age is all about people, all people. Aquarius, opposite Leo, the sun, is the night sky, the limitlessness of individual stars in the galaxies of the universe the limitless masses in the galaxy of human evolution. Aquarius is the collective dynamics involved in the integrative functioning of a whole system. It is individuals evolving together and aware of all of the individuals of the whole in which each is just a part, none any better or greater than the next, but each one infinitely unique and profound. If the individual, in an Aquarian sense, can have a concept of the whole, the goal to be resolved, his role in encouraging its end, and totally fulfilling himself in the process, will unfold. Ideas will be set into action, revolutions won, ingenious concepts expounded, inventions created, or terrifying manias unleashed. Aquarius is the spark, when all the components are in place and the circuit complete; Aquarius is the electricity flowing from one electron to the next, making one function, one unit, one light. Aquarius is the masses who are really America, who are really humankind. Aquarius is E Pluribus Unum (out of the many, one).
The Aquarian age can bring the hope of global harmony — the prodigious cultivation of the arts, profound advances in science, every individual worthwhile enough to be free to express his creative potential, and no man placed in divine excellence alone. Each age is a cycle, a phase of development with an inception, a climax, and a conclusion. In the beginning of the cycle, the phase of organic development, the seeds of the age germinate and initiate an influx of new concepts and ideas, gradually affecting a preliminary change; but it is not until the middle of the period, the height of the age, that the energies become formally actualized and the potential realized. The birth of Abraham, and inception of the Hebrew race, opened the age of Aries c. 2300-2100 B.C. But it was not until the thirteenth century B.C. that the Hebrew race, after the use of lamb’s blood (young ram) on Passover, was led out of enslavement in Egypt by Moses. The Catholic Church realized its peak as it enflamed the Christian armies of Europe to scourge the infidels, the non-believers, of the Middle East in the name of God and the compassion of Christ at the height of the age of chivalry in the eleventh century A.D. It is most likely that it will take mankind some time, perhaps a thousand years, to actually cooperate successfully to the advantage of the world as a whole. Humanity may not reach a utopic existence in the next 2,150 years, but the need for change has definitely established itself. Humankind must intelligently cooperate with itself, its natural resources, its technological production (both achievements and pollutions), and its nuclear power, in order that it may progress in its own evolution. Aquarius rules evolution and the goal of evolution. However, it does not take astrology to inform humanity that it must learn to live together on the same hunk of matter floating in space.
