I was talking to my sister on the phone this morning. She lives in Toronto and is a teacher there. She spoke about trying to get to work in the cold weather and how cars get stuck on the freeway and lock traffic. Later in the conversation we were talking about kids with cell phones in class, and she mentioned they’re handy to have if you’re in a lock-down situation. A lock-down? Yes, in case you’re being held hostage. Huh? Once again I wondered why anyone would want to live and work in such a place; yet millions of people do. I’m in the minority, apparently. This got me to wondering what we’re all doing.
Of course I understand the necessity of living in the city – work access, if nothing else. And people love the convenience of city life too, I suppose. Most Candians feel very strongly about environmental issues, and have even pressured Harper into declaring himself ‘green’. Yeah, right. Ditto for Bush in the
US. He’s got the nerve to declare himself green, even though he’s single-handedly the worst polluter on this planet and everyone knows it.
I suppose I’m not a lot different from most other spiritually based folks. When I don’t understand something, I look to others of my religion who might shed some light for me. This time it was Doreen Valiente, in the form of her book “Witchcraft for Tomorrow.” She wrote a beautiful introduction to the book during which she explains what’s going on in the world today via astrology. She explains what was meant by the Age of Aquarius, which we rarely hear about anymore, but is certainly still in effect, in spite of the fact that there’s all this pollution and violence. She says there are three kinds of motion our planet goes through: 1. the rotation on its axis – which gives us a 24 hour cycle of day/night
2. the rotation of the earth as it moves around the sun – which gives us the calendar year
3. the circling of the earth’s axis, a very slow motion, like a spinning top – which gives the apparent altercations of the poles of the heavens, and the shifting of what astronomers call the ‘equinoctial point’.
This rotation takes about 25,920 years and is called The Great Year, consisting of twelve “months” of 2,160 years and can be divided up and named in the same manner as the usual zodiac. The equinoctial point is observed to move 1 degree every 72 years, which is the average lifespan of a human being. This makes one ‘day’ of the Great Year, which has 360 ‘days’ divided into twelve ‘months’ of thirty ‘days’ each, corresponding to the 360 degrees of a circle.
At this moment the equinoctial point is in the sign of Pisces and it moves backward, (because normal earth rotation moves forward), into the Age of Aquarius. This of course, takes much longer than a ‘day’ to complete, and the process has been happening slowly for a long time. There are conflicting opinions about when the ‘click’ into the new age is finally completed. Valiente states that some calculations put the date at 2160 or even later, but The Order of the Golden Dawn puts it at 2010. I’d tend to think they’d be the accurate estimate, but that could be wishful thinking on my part. I’d like to think I’ll live to see this wondrous new age. Aquarius is ruled by two planets: Saturn and Uranus. Saturn stands for things which endure – roots in the ancient past. Uranus is on the other hand, the revolutionary, bringer of what is new and strange, even bizarre. One can see the influences of both in the world today.
Computers are certainly a manifestation of the new age and so are all the new technological stuff we like to use. But history is also more important, as humans realize in greater numbers that we can’t truly understand who we are now without seeing where we’ve come from.
I believe that humans are in their infancy – the toddler stage. We’re still egocentric, thinking we’re the most important beings in the universe. We tend to clod around in the clumsey manner of a two-year old, breaking things and putting things in wrong places and generally making a mess as we learn more about ourselves and the planet we live on. This planet, our Mother, is now in the process of disciplining us, as all diligent mothers have to do. At the same time, She must put to rights what we’ve broken, and sometimes that’s not possible. Precious lifeforms have been lost. Precious areas destroyed, as we thrash around, doing what babies do.
But we’re getting a little old for that now. It’s time to move into a different way of learning, something that doesn’t involve the destruction of all we’ve come to hold dear. Traditionally we’ve explored the planet by destructive methods, but now we’ve got enough technology to make other choices. I believe that most people are waking up and realizing we’re creating a hell out of the gorgeous heaven we’ve always known. I believe that we’ll overcome the problems which threaten our lives: global warming, polution, violence, poverty and disease. I don’t think it will all happen in my lifetime, but I believe it will one day, and that somehow it won’t be too late.
