The Age of Aquarius

Do you remember how this used to be presented as a dawning new age of harmony and enlightenment for humanity? How we were moving forward into a bright future in which all men would be brothers, and spiritual benevolence would be everywhere? The idea never made much sense. Given how unenlightened we were at the time, such a radical transformation, even if initiated by rays of cosmic power beaming down onto the Earth, as was occasionally postulated, seemed very improbable. Furthermore, it was not in the tradition of any of the major religions, most of which seemed to anticipate a spiritual decadence at the end of the age, not the precise opposite to that.

The Age of Aquarius is supposed to start when the sun at the time of the vernal equinox moves out of the constellation of Pisces into that of Aquarius. This movement takes place because of the phenomenon known as the precession of the equinoxes which is caused by a shift in the orientation of the Earth's axis which completes a full revolution roughly every 26,000 years, during the course of which the sun in springtime moves through each one of the 12 constellations that lie along the ecliptic. So far, so astronomically good.

The problem is that no one knows where Pisces ends and Aquarius begins so a definite time for this transition cannot be pinned down. Never mind, the idea is that as the sun approaches Aquarius at the onset of spring in the northern hemisphere, the Aquarian influences will start to be registered by humanity. In fact, the discovery of the planet Uranus in the 1780s (though it had been observed before) is sometimes taken to be the beginning of Aquarian forces making an impact on the mind of humanity, and that time does coincide quite nicely with the Age of Enlightenment and the end of long established ways of being as new ideas erupted into human consciousness.

This brings us to what the Aquarian influence might entail. Aquarius is an air sign, concerned with thought, reason, democracy, freedom, humanitarianism but also rebellion. It is definitely a sign of the rational mind. Now, all these things have certainly become much more prominent in human consciousness over the last 250 years, and they are becoming ever more so. Aquarius rules things as disparate as electricity and computers, both of which could be taken as defining the modern age. It seems that there really is an Aquarian influence at work.

But wait a minute. These things aren't really spiritual, are they? They might represent a kind of progress on the purely human level but if it's spirituality you want then the Piscean influence, the one that is supposed to be fading out and is regarded as representative of old, unenlightened, passé ways of thinking, is actually a better bet. For Pisces is the sign at the end of the cycle of 12. It shows completion. It is concerned with compassion, intuition, imagination, wisdom, mysticism and the like. It has its negative side, of course, but so does Aquarius which can become cold, amoral, overly fixated on rational thought and dismissive of faith and intuition.

The point I am trying to make here is that there is nothing about Aquarius, as understood astrologically, that indicates any tendency to higher spiritual consciousness. Yes, it is more intellectually focussed than Pisces but there is not much faith or imagination or humility or love about it. In fact, it is the sign of the type who loves humanity but has no interest in individual human beings. A sign of abstract theory and dispassion rather than real feeling. To be sure, it strives to be fair but more because of logic than any real sense of heart. Pisces is a much more spiritually-oriented sign, and that is the one we are currently leaving.

Of course, evolution may well include a focus at different times on different aspects of the whole of the psyche. A focus on developing mind may be the current priority.  But this is by no means necessarily a spiritual thing and, in fact, is capable of a great deal of anti-spirituality if it is not done under the directing influence of a strong spiritual sensibility, but that is not a natural attribute of the Aquarian mentality. The advent of Aquarius, if a real thing, does not necessarily lead to a spiritually advanced society, as the dreams of a few 20th century mystics hoped to persuade us, and could well end in something very different. If the present is anything to go by, the latter scenario is more likely but it is a reckless person who thinks he can predict the future. Only God knows.

Disclaimer: I don't have any planets in either Pisces or Aquarius in my astrological chart.