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This article was published on the Holistic Junction web site on January 30, 2004 under the category Astrologers:
Gawky Nerds, Absent-Minded Professors and Mad Scientists ... is that the Aquarian Age?
by Nancy R. Fenn (Email: parklanenancy@hotmail.com)
 Aquarius the WaterBearer is really an air sign. It's all about vibes. But what exactly does the Aquarian Age mean and when does it begin?
There is much difference of opinion among professional esoterics and much confusion among the general public about what the Aquarian Age means and exactly when it begins. Some feel it has already begun. Aleister Crowley, for example, claimed in 1904 to have personally ushered in the Aquarian Age. Here are some of the other leading contenders for the beginning date.
Aleister Crowley - 1904 Carl Jung 1997-2000 Sir Isaac Newton - 2060 Dane Rudhyar - 2060 reckoning from the Birth of Christ - 2160
According to Naomi Bennett at AccessNewAge Online, "Robert Hand in the essay, The Age and Constellation of Pisces, ... calculates the first star in Pisces to cross the vernal point at 111 BC, which would place the Age of Aquarius to begin near 2,060 AD. Carl Jung supposedly predicted 1997-2000. Aleister Crowley as noted above, feels he personally brought in the New Age.
Aleister Crowley is a colorful character who participated with other British artists and aristocrats in associations such as the "Order of the Golden Dawn. Among other famous members of the "Order" were: Dr. William Wynn Westcott, S. L. MacGregor Mathers, Dr. William Robert Woodman, Dr. Israel Regardie, William Butler Yeats, Arthur Edward Waite (of the Rider-Waiter Tarot deck) and Paul Foster Case. The women of the "Order of the Golden Dawn" were written about in a book by Mary Katherine Greer entitled, cleverly, "Women of the Order of the Golden Dawn".
If you are interested in a modern day Mystery School of good repute, try typing "Builders of the Adytum" or B.O.T.A. in a search engine. B.O.T.A. was founded by "Order of the Golden Dawn" member Paul Foster Case and is based out of Los Angeles.
Israel Regardie has also written some books that purport to reveal the secrets of the "Order", making them available to the public for the first time.
Notwithstanding the above, since the "Ages" or "eons" are actually based on something astrological and astronomical, perhaps astrologers would have the best idea among the esoterics. And considering that we are dealing with eons, periods of time in 25,000 year cycles, perhaps a few decades of transition are to be expected.
Most everyone has heard about the "Age of Aquarius" primarily because of a popular song in America performed by the Fifth Dimension, from the musical Hair, which came out during the height of the hippie era and the Vietnam War. These are the lyrics.
When the Moon is in the seventh house And Jupiter aligns with Mars Then peace will guide the planets And love will steer the stars This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius The age of Aquarius
Aquarius Aquarius
Harmony and understanding Sympathy and trust abounding No more falsehoods or derisions Golden living dreams of visions Mystic crystal revelations And the mind's true liberation
Aquarius Aquarius
When the Moon is in the seventh house And Jupiter aligns with Mars Then peace will guide the planets And love will steer the stars This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius The Age of Aquarius
Aquarius Aquarius
The person who wrote that song knew just "enough" astrology! The aspects mentioned are peaceful ones but have nothing to do with the eons or "ages" which we will discuss here.
The fact that we are currently in-between the Age of Aquarius and the preceding Age of Pisces, is a result of something called the Precession of the Equinoxes, the slow retrograde or apparent backward motion of equinox points along the ecliptic. For the last 2,000 years, the sun has been drifting across Pisces during the spring equinox and gradually appearing now in the constellation Aquarius.
Equinox points are the change of seasons: spring, summer, fall and winter. For this discussion, we refer only to the spring or vernal equinox.
The ecliptic is the belt marking the sun's apparent path among the stars during the year as seen from the perspective of the earth. It is also called the Zodiac.
The Precession of the Equinoxes is caused by the gravitational pull of the sun and the moon on the earth. Because of this, there is a slow rotation of the earth's axis that runs in approximately 25,920 year cycles, called eons in astrology. For this reason, at present Polaris is the North Star (the star that orients us due north) but in the times of the Egyptians, the pole star was Alpha Draconis and in 12,000 years it will be Vega. [For an interesting article on the ancient view of the sky before the separation between astrology and astronomy, see "Fixed Stars, Not Fixed Fates" on my website.]
The Precession's movement is retrograde, or opposite that of the planets around the sun, resulting in a rotation of the constellation in which the spring equinox occurs every 2,160 years or 1/12th of 25,920. In other words, the spring equinox occurs in a different sign approximately every 2,160 years. Opinions differ as to when the cycle starts, but Christ's birth coincided so neatly with the Precession into Pisces, there is an urge to mark this as the beginning of the Piscean Age. We will discuss this further in a moment.
At this point, I would like to refer you to the historical timeline I've included at the end of this article, for your reference. A good estimate for the date of the beginning of the Age of Aquarius could be 2060, the date described by Rob Hand. It could also be 2012 or even 2,160 if we date the Age of Pisces from the birth of Christ. But there are two other important people who have chosen the date 2060. Dane Rudhyar, a famous astrologer of great repute picked it as the beginning of the Age of Aquarius and Sir Isaac Newton, (yes!), the man who discovered the Law of Gravity, picked it as the apocalypse or the Second Coming of Christ. This may surprise you, so let's talk for a moment about the new and emerging Sir Isaac Newton.
The world knows Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) as the father of modern physics, but as a man of his age, he also explored the world metaphysically, spending much time on prophecies and predictions. This was not unusual for those times, though to contradict the Catholic Church was, of course, heresy. Men of science were alchemists as well as chemists, who explored astrology as well as astronomy and other forms of esoteric wisdom. The right and left brain were not harshly separated as they are now.
Papers of Newton's which had been in the hands of an eccentric Jewish collector recently surfaced and have been studied to reveal "thousands of pages show[ing] Newton's attempts to decode the Bible, which he believed contained God's secret laws for the universe" ["AnaNova Online"].
According to a recent article in "AnaNova Online", the scholar who has been examining Newton's papers, Stephen D Snobelen, indicated that Newton predicted that "the Second Coming of Christ would follow plagues and war and would precede a 1000-year reign by the saints on earth -- of which he would be one." Although reluctant to set a specific date, the most definitive date he set for the apocalypse, scribbled on a scrap of paper, was 2060.
According to Malcolm Neaum, producer of a BBC documentary about Sir Isaac Newton called "The Dark Heretic", "[Newton] spent something like 50 years and wrote 4,500 pages trying to predict when the end of the world was coming. But until now it was not known that he ever wrote down a final figure. He was very reluctant to do so."
Interesting that he would pick the beginning of the Aquarian Age, which would be the end of the world as he knew it. Newton was called a heretic in the documentary because he would have been fighting against the beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church at a time when that was a life-threatening proposition. The eon, or "Great Year", as I explained earlier, spans 25,920 and was discovered, as were so many things, by the ancient Chaldeans or Babylonians (present day Iraq, Syria and southeast Turkey).
The Chaldeans observed that the Zodiac constellation of the spring equinox changed every 2,160 years and from this and the 12 constellations of the Zodiac, deduced that there was a "Great Year" of 25,920 years (2,160 x 12).
There is no exact date to pinpoint when these ages crossover. Sometimes the solar birth of Christ is used to mark the beginning of the Age of Pisces, 1 CE, because it is such an obvious coinciding, or coincidental event. Jungian psychology uses the word coincidence or synchronicity in a special way which means two things occurring at the same time have meaningful significance.
Moving backwards from the Piscean Age through the Age of Aries, we begin with the Age of Taurus in the year 4600 BCE. Here is a table setting forth the Ages and some of the inherent symbolism.
From approximately 6000 to approximately 4600 BCE was the Age of Gemini. The symbol for this eon was "the Star Children" (Adam and Eve). You understand that during this time men/women were evolving from apes.
From approximately 4600 to approximately 2400 BCE was the Age of Taurus . During this time period there was the long, stable and Taurean dynasties of Egypt, bull gods such as Baal of Sumeria, idols such as the "golden calf" mentioned later in the Book of Moses, Diana of Ephesus (bedecked in bull's testicles), the Minotaur and the bull dances of Crete. The Age of Taurus is considered the time of the earth goddess which gave way to the warlike patriarchy of the Age of Aries.
From approximately 2400 to approximately 600 BCE was the Age of Aries. This was the time of warlike societies emerging from the decline of Egypt. The gods of these civilizations were the warlike Marduk of Babylon, wrathful Yahweh of the Old Testament and legends such as Jason and the Golden Fleece. It was the fleece of a lamb that Jason was pursuing in the myth. From approximately 600 BCE to approximately 2012 (?) CE was the Age of Pisces where Christianity predominated. Fish were a major symbol of early Christians. It was also the time of sacrificed gods such as Jesus and Odin or Wotan., both of whom were "hung".
The Age of Aquarius goes from approximately 2012 to 4172 CE and features symbols such as the computer, the committee, the mad scientist, the iconoclast and the technocrat.
When some people hear of the Aquarian Age, they dream of a Utopian time when all men will be in brotherhood. This is a natural urge of idealistic people but is not necessarily connected with the sign of Aquarius, any more than any other sign and particularly no less than Pisces.
World peace and brotherhood has been our dream throughout the Piscean Age as well. At the beginning of the Piscean Age, we in the Western World ushered in a god who taught brotherly love but this god was accompanied by more wars than I have time to list, beginning with the Crusades in the 1300s. Almost all wars fought on the European continent for hundreds of years were religious wars, not to mention our regular invasions of the Holy Land, another of which is taking place as I write this.
Perhaps a Utopian time of peace and prosperity will come, but while we are waiting, it might be more fruitful to explore the qualities of Aquarius and its ruler, Uranus, both good and bad, to see what other possibilities may be unfolding.
First, let's take a minute to look more closely at the Age of Pisces. Pisces is symbolized by two fish, each swimming in a different direction and they are connected by a cord.
Fish were a major symbol for the Christian religion which has been a predominant influence on the world since the inception of the Age of Pisces. This would be considered a meaningful coincidence in Jungian terms.
During the 2,000 years of Christianity, the world has been dominated by people who worshipped a god with Piscean qualities and values: sacrifice, denial of the physical, denigration of the flesh, the earth and the feminine because of its association with the earth.
We collectively have worshipped a god who elevates suffering to an ecstatic art and who asks that we worship him by denying ourselves things like sexual pleasure in this world to triumph in another. In some extremes, for example during the Middle Ages, earthly life was considered to be of no value at all, only something to be suffered through.
The images that prevailed during the Age of Pisces are of a god wearing a crown of thorns, dripping blood and tears, often with eyes rolled back into the head or head fallen on chest. Such a god-symbol could give strength to people in the Middle Ages who had lives of short span and limited possibilities which included much suffering for lack of food, warmth and shelter.
The European peoples who dominated the world stage during the 2,000 years of the Age of Pisces held forth this image and conquered others in its name. People and cultures which did not project images into the heavens in the form of Zodiac constellations have other collective mythologies and worldviews which include other images, time frames and mythologies. A very powerful discussion of this process is contained in Carl Jung's book, called "The Aion: Research into the Phenomenology of the Self". Chapters are devoted to:
* Christ, a symbol of the self * the sign of the fishes * the prophecies of Nostradamus * the historical significance of the fish * the ambivalence of the fish symbol * the fish in alchemy * the alchemical interpretation of the fish * background to the psychology of Christian alchemical symbolism * Gnostic symbols of the Self
Jung's thoughts are further amplified in an excellent book which is a commentary on Jung's work, called "The Aion Lectures" by Edward F. Edinger.
In writing on this topic at the age of seventy-five, Jung prefaces his book with these words: "I write as a physician, with a physician's sense of responsibility, and not as a proselyte. Nor do I write as a scholar, otherwise I would wisely barricade myself behind the safe walls of my specialism and not, on account of my inadequate knowledge of history, expose myself to critical attack, and damage my scientific reputation. So far as my capacities allow, restricted as they are by old age and illness, I have made every effort to document my material as reliably as possible and to assist the verification of my conclusions by citing the sources." May, 1950 C. G. Jung
This is the same spirit in which I am writing.
There are other themes that differentiate the Age of Pisces from the Age of Aries. During the Arian Age, "god" in the Western World was represented by Yahweh of the Old Testament, a wrathful and tyrannical god befitting the warlike nature of the cultures which sprang up between approximately 2400 and 500 BCE. This god, Yahweh, would strike out and punish swiftly. He was a righteous god, a god of vast retributive powers. This is the god that Jung wrote about in the powerful book, "Answer to Job". In this book, to vastly oversimplify, Jung seems to suggest that the evolution of the god in the New Testament was a result of man's questioning the tyranny and unforgiving nature of a god like Yahweh and demanding a "better" god, a just and compassionate god instead. Again, to oversimplify, one can see that the evolving god is also projecting a quality which has evolved in mankind. This book is well worth reading and contemplating.
So the Piscean god, Jesus, is a compassionate and forgiving god. These are also Piscean qualities.
One significant change I've seen that portends the dawning of a new age is pictures of Jesus smiling. In some pictures which were passed along to me on the internet, Jesus had beautiful white teeth (!) which he showed in a wide grin as he laughed and played with children. I was startled to realize I had never seen a picture of Jesus smiling before. This is radical change in representation of the major icon of the Piscean Age, Jesus the Christ, perhaps preparing to morph in to the Aquarian Age. These pictures can be viewed on my website. Take a close look at these drawings and get a real sense for the change in feeling tone. I am quite sure I have not seen pictures like this before in my life.
Before moving on to the Age of Aquarius, you may want to pause for a moment and visit the website created by Deborah Houlding at www.skyscript.co.uk, a beautiful UK website for professional astrologers, to learn more about the sign Aquarius and its ruler Uranus.
Ms. Houlding herself is a very "Aquarian" person herself, with South Node in Aquarius, Saturn in Aquarius in the 8th house and Sun in the 11th.
In proposing some possible events or "flavors" for the Aquarian Age, I'll be choosing a few "visions" of what might come. Remember that the Aquarian Age will evolve over the next 2,160 years, so don't rush out and do anything about it just yet! Winston Churchill was a fiery Aries type (North Node in Aries with four planets in fire). He was naturally pugnacious and like most fiery people, didn't know what to do with himself while "waiting for the action". He is also a very Aquarian "type" with his Saturn in Aquarius opposite Uranus in its own house, the 11th. Winston Churchill thought war was man's natural state.
So, while keeping in mind a Utopian desire for brotherhood and peace on the planet, let's take a look at the more probable Man as Warrior in the Aquarian Age.
In his book about the evolution of military leadership, "The Mask of Command", John Keegan, former Senior Lecturer at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst in the UK (the school Prince Harry will be attending) wrote of five commanders and their "heroic" leadership styles:
* Heroic Leadership - Alexander the Great (ancient Greece) * The Anti-Hero - Duke of Wellington (Battle of Waterloo) * Unheroic Leadership - Ulysses S. Grant (American Civil War) * False Heroic: Hitler as Supreme Commander (World War II) * Post Heroic: Command in the Nuclear World (John F. Kennedy) - Cuba Missile Crisis
This is an important and thoughtful book about the evolution of an area of human life that many "New Age" people will not explore but which a preeminent thinker like Winston Churchill believes is the dominate characteristic of human beings. Many of us would like to believe otherwise but must still deal with present realities on the planet, doing what we can to further enlightenment and evolution.
Heroism and a heroic style of leadership belong to the sign Leo. Aquarius is the opposite sign and embodies characteristics of detachment, equal membership in a group, committee style deliberation and subordination of individual will to the good of group. These are the characteristics I believe Keegan has identified in the behavior of John Kennedy during the Cuba Missile Crisis and which he proposes as an excellent approach to a future nuclear world.
Before I continue this discussion, let me refer back to Carl Jung's "apologia" and assure you I am apolitical. If anything, I am not an admirer of Kennedy, especially after recent news of his medical condition which I had suspected. However, in his role as President and Commander of the Armed Forces, he received high marks from an expert military historian.
Keegan chose to discuss the Cuba Missile Crisis of October 14-27, 1962 as an example of post-heroic leadership and command in a nuclear or "total war" world. He chose this incident for three reasons. (1) It was the only nuclear incident for which there is a detailed account. Robert Kennedy, brother of the president and US Attorney-General, wrote about it in "Thirteen Days". (2) It was presided over by someone who had previously used the heroic style of leadership to the hilt (Camelot, etc.) and (3) it was swiftly and successfully conducted in post-heroic style. These are the qualities Keegan ascribes to effective military leadership.
* The imperative of kinship - a commander can be neither too close nor too far from the men he commands * The imperative of prescription - every commander needs to convey an impression of himself to his men ("Feldherrnrede", the general's speech before battle) * The imperative of sanction - notwithstanding the "Feldherrnrede", it is delusional to think that men can be made to fight solely by encouragement, flattery (medals and booty) and inspiration - thus, coercion must be applied * The imperative of action - the essentials of which are "knowing" and "seeing" (particular knowledge of the enemy's whereabouts, strength, state, capabilities and intentions) * The imperative of example - "The first and greatest imperative of command is to be present in person. Those who impose risk must be seen to share it...." [Keegan]
Having established these criteria, Keegan goes on to explain how they are included and transcended in a nuclear or "total war" environment. He says, "The sequestration of the commander from risk in nuclear-weapon states is, for all the paradox it entails, a perfectly proper procedural response to the dangers by which they are encompassed.... The President is, in short, like the wise elder of a pre-heroic society, an inhibitor of conflict, not its instigator, director or leader."
Keegan describes President Kennedy's handling of the Cuba missile crisis as "post-heroic in manner and resolved with rapid and complete success."
Keegan explores the reasons for this. "The first was President John F. Kennedy's determination that the three competing velocities of the crisis -- the velocity of the Russian initiative, the velocity of the necessary American response, and the velocity of assessment and decision -- should be identified and separated. The second was that assessment should be entrusted to a group of men, the Executive Committee (Ex Comm), chosen for their expertise and sagacity, relieved temporarily of other responsibility and convened to meet outside his presence. The crisis therefore developed, as far as was possible, in a way which ensured that the velocity of events did not accelerate the velocity of decision-making, with all the undesirable consequences of rushed and unconsidered judgment that might otherwise have ensued...."
Keegan continues, "The nature of the decision-making appears, in retrospect, the most impressive and significant feature of the crisis. The Ex Comm decided at the outset not to organize itself in a hierarchical way; it forswore 'leadership' from the start. 'We all spoke as equals,' Robert Kennedy recalled. 'There was no rank ... we did not even have a Chairman ... the conversations were completely unstructured and uninhibited. Everyone had equal opportunity to express himself or to be heard directly.' Some found the burden of equal responsibility too heavy to bear. Dean Rusk, the Secretary of State, underwent what Kennedy described as a nervous breakdown early on and thereafter absented himself. McGeorge Bundy, the National Security Advisor, proved incapable of a consistent line.... But that at least demonstrates that the Ex Comm avoided 'groupthink'. In fact, and despite the insistence of its only military member, General Maxwell Taylor, on advocating military action, the Ex Comm took only three days to reach a majority decision for blockade....
"The history of the Cuba crisis therefore offers both reassurance and hope that future nuclear crises may be resolved as rationally and harmlessly."
"Mankind," states Keegan, "needs not new hardware but a change of heart. It needs an end to the ethic of heroism in its leadership for good and all. Heroism, as we have seen, is not a necessary constant in the way that societies work. Heroism is an irrational and emotional response to challenge and to threat.... "The traditional means by which the leader sought to validate his followers' sharing of the risk he led them to face -- the cultivation of a sense of kinship, the use of sanction, the force of example, the power of prescription, the resort of action -- now all fail. Indeed, what is asked first of a leader in the nuclear world is that he should not act in any traditionally heroic sense, at all. "An inactive leader, one who does nothing, sets no striking example, says nothing stirring, rewards no more than he punishes, insists above all in being different from the mass in his modesty, prudence and rationality, may sound no leader at all. But such, none the less, is the sort of leader the nuclear world needs, even if it does not know that it wants him." Students of astrology will recognize the hero (Leo) and his Aquarian antithesis in these descriptions of leadership by John Keegan, one of the foremost writers of enlightened military history in the world today.
These qualities could be construed as Aquarian especially in contrast to the "heroic" Leo:
* inactive * does nothing * sets no striking example * says nothing stirring * reward no more than he punishes * insists above all in being different from the mass in his modesty, prudence and rationality
Keegan is describing the extreme committed detachment of the stereotypical Aquarian. In his book, "The Mask of Command", John F. Kennedy was rated highly on this score.
Another person who personifies what may be some of the emerging Aquarian Age qualities is Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche, who was born in 1844, was certainly a man ahead of his time but, again, in talking of eons, a hundred years is not significant. As we have discussed, the beginnings and endings of the eons are a blend in time. One hundred or more years may be spent in transition.
Nietzsche personifies the outstanding characteristics of an Aquarian, including some of the characteristics which may result in a downfall. One of these characteristics is relying too much on the Mind. There is more to being human than the Mind and this is one of the issues that will surely confront us as the Aquarian Age develops forward.
Nietzsche personified three characteristics that may emerge in the Aquarian Age: iconoclasm, emotional "hardness" and asexual or transsexual behavior. Nietzsche seemed to identify himself as this new type of man. He described himself as a walking time bomb. He declared God dead, meaning the God of the Christian era. It might be true that Aquarians have no "gods" but the Mind. Nietzsche railed against the religion that enslaves as Aquarians rail against any kind of enslavement, especially of the Mind.
Nietzsche called for a certain quality of emotional hardness which is precisely how Aquarians strike Pisceans and the quality that would have to be emphasized in a transition from Pisces to Aquarius. [Aquarians are not in fact "hard", they are rational types where Pisceans are feeling types. Aquarius, though called "the WaterBearer" is, of course, an air sign. To water signs, air signs always seem "cold". Air tortures water.] Nietzsche did some radical things such as becoming sexually involved with his sister and speaking about it publicly. Iconoclasm such as this is characteristic of Aquarians who are frequently noticed to have "unusual" sex lives, such as androgynous and bisexual. Mind you, by Aquarian standards, nothing is that unusual. That is what it means to be an Aquarian, an individual.
Each Aquarian, however, is also an individual. This generality should not be applied to every Aquarian you know but rather considered in relation to their complete chart and other factors. Saturn was the esoteric ruler of Aquarius and there are some conservative Aquarians like Ronald Reagan. (They probably have Mercury and Venus or Mars in Capricorn.)
That Nietzsche himself did not make this transition to the Aquarian Age well is evidenced by his mental breakdown, precipitated by seeing a horse beaten. Perhaps the softness of the Piscean Age called him back from his Aquarian heights. Well, he was a man of transition, no wonder. I imagine many of the first crabs slid solemnly back into the watery world of the ocean for good, too!
I have written at some length about Nietzsche in an astrological tutorial which explores "schizophrenia" as an adaptive advance in brain evolution, albeit imperfect in 1844.
Iconoclasm, emotional "hardness" and androgynous or bi-sexual behavior are some of the common characteristics of archetypal Aquarian energy.
In personality typing, I am attracted to the INTJ "Mastermind" as an Aquarian type. This is according to personality typing as elaborated by David Keirsey on www.keirsey.com . Both Sir Isaac Newton and Friedrich Nietzsche were outstanding examples of this type but another more fruitful example may be Peter the Great because of his ability to achieve in the outer world. Dwight D. Eisenhower and Stephen Hawking are also Masterminds. Close cousins are the INTPs or "Architects". They are introverted rationals like the Masterminds but use perceptivity instead of judgment as a preferred method of processing information. These rationals may fare better in the transition from Piscean to Aquarian Age as perceptivity is a quality of Pisces while judgment is a quality of Aquarius. Typical Architects are Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin.
Considering how early in time (relative to the predicted times for the Age of Aquarius) these people came, it is interesting to see the degree to which they are able to straddle the eons, as it were. Nietzsche did not succeed and lost his Mind, never to regain it during this lifetime. It was an emotional experience which triggered this event, indicating perhaps an over dependence on the Mind -- not yet well integrated for the Aquarian approach to things. Darwin's discoveries were made with blinding headaches. This phenomenon has been associated with great advances in evolution during the Piscean Age. I am in the process of finding other examples to add to this paragraph. Perhaps you can email me with some rationals of great genius (brain evolution) who had negative experiences from the way they processed information "rationally".
Robert McNamara -- he of the Vietnam war -- is a Mastermind. Errol Morris' new documentary "The Fog of War" is being released across the nation as I write this. In a review for Prospect Online Magazine, Sydney H. Schanberg asked the question, "The Robert McNamara of Errol Morris' new documentary is clearly a tortured soul. But is he tortured enough?"
I would recommend watching this movie and examining it closely for a study in the Aquarian type of personality and some of its pitfalls. The issue could be Vietnam or any other issue. The point is to study how this type of person makes decisions. This could be the wave of the future.
I have written extensively about the Mastermind Peter the Great in my eBook, "You Can Be an Introvert and Win".
The laws of Nature compensate and balance in all things and in the Aquarian Age it will be no different.
People and events will arise to challenge the detached mental and group consciousness of the Aquarian. Some "warm" and "truly heroic" individuals will merge to propose counterbalancing values, processes and approaches to reality and to command. Some will emerge to speak for the individual outside the group and to espouse individual excellence. Again, John Kennedy was an excellent example for the Aquarian Age because he at first espoused a high heroic ideal with his vision of Camelot. In a crisis, he turned to creating a group consciousness instead.
Sometimes art can help us understand personality types. The personality types that are mental, like Aquarians are called RATIONALS according to Keirsey Temperament Theory. On his site, www.keirsey.com, David Mark Keirsey writes, "Rationals are not well represented in movies, given that the other temperament[s] do not understand them in meaningful matter. Either they are portrayed as gawky nerds, absent-minded professors, or diabolical mad scientists. Not often subject to biographical movies that are popular, for most of their lives are not very interesting to the other temperaments.
There are four different types of rationals: "Fieldmarshals", "Masterminds", "Inventors" and "Architects". For a complete description of personality typing, visit www.keirsey.com . In the meantime, the descriptive names should give you a pretty good idea of the territory we're covering. These are some of the movies Keirsey has come up with to illustrate the characteristics of the typical rational type. They might be worth a look to better understand the future.
Fieldmarshal Rational (extroverted): "MacArthur" with Gregory Peck as General Douglas MacArthur.
"My Fair Lady" with Rex Harrison as Professor Henry Higgins. Real life examples of this type are Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington.
Mastermind Rational (introverted): "Contact", based on a story written by a famous rational and scientist, Carl Sagan.
"A Beautiful Mind" - John Nash was played by Russell Crowe.
Real life examples of this type are Peter the Great and Sir Isaac Newton.
Inventor Rational (introverted): "Tucker: The Man and his Dream" with Jeff Bridges as Tucker
Real life examples of this type are Buckminster Fuller and Walt Disney.
Architect Rational (introverted) "The Story of Louis Pasteur" with Paul Muni as Louis Pasteur.
"The Fountainhead" with Gary Cooper playing Howard Rourke.
Real life examples of this type are Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein.
Lord Admiral Nelson, Britain's most beloved national hero, represents three qualities that I think may be emerging in the Aquarian Age, teambuilding, innovation and social anarchy or disobedience.
Nelson was one of the principal team builders in military history. He essentially introduced the concept into the Royal British Navy in the early 1800s. Lord Nelson kept all his officers informed of his battle plans so they could think for themselves and take advantage of opportunities that presented themselves. He got to know his officers well enough to read their minds and understand how they thought. He called his captains his "Band of Brothers" while they called themselves, "the Chosen Band".
Nelson began his career with genius and erratic behavior bordering on insubordination and continued in that vein his entire life. He broke through traditional ways of doing things to win some victories early on, establishing his reputation for brilliance in action. He changed some of the things the Royal Navy had been doing for over 200 years.
In addition, Lord Nelson, while married himself, had a flagrant love affair with Lady Hamilton, even living in a "m?nage a trois" with her and her husband, who pretended not to know what was going on. Lord Nelson flaunted his affair rather than hypocritically hiding it like so many of his fellow officers. It did cause him problems with his men from time to time.
It is characteristic of Aquarians to shock and surprise those around them because they generally refuse to be hypocritical. In a way Nelson's behavior reflected a "higher truth" in that he refused to "live a lie".
The myth of Prometheus is one often attributed to the Aquarian personality. In many cultures, there is a god or godlike person, sometimes a goddess, who brings the "civilizing" gifts of fire, letters and cultivated crops to "the people".
In ancient Greece and Rome, the figure who did this was named Prometheus. His name means, literally, forethought. In order to bring the gift of fire to humans, Prometheus had to do this behind the back of the King of the Gods, Zeus.
When Zeus found out that Prometheus had stolen fire and given it to humans, he tormented Prometheus for all eternity by tying him to a rock. An eagle eats out his liver which grows back at night and is eaten again the next day.
Stealing from the gods is dangerous business, as any Aquarian can tell you. An excellent recent example was the bizarre flooding of the Danube River in Europe a few years ago. The unheard of heights of the river flooding were blamed on agricultural short cuts being taken in the Austrian Alps. Mother Nature takes revenge when she is tampered with. Another example would be the hothouse effect due to changes we are making in the air on earth.
We can see the same example in the human body. When someone is given a drug to counteract one symptom, it usually creates another symptom.
This is likely to be a theme during the Aquarian Age. For every scientific advance we have made, there is going to be a price to pay.
In conclusion, we have explored some likely dates for the official beginning of the Aquarian Age. Through the lives of people like Aleister Crowley, Sir Isaac Newton, John Kennedy, Friedrich Nietzsche, Robert McNamara and Lord Admiral Nelson, we have looked at some of the characteristics of the Aquarian Age as they may be exhibited through the person in command.
Aquarians are not "gawky nerdy", "absent-minded professors" or "mad scientists. The characteristics that better describe them are iconoclasm, emotional "hardness", bisexual, asexual or androgynous orientation, teambuilding, innovation and perhaps some social anarchy (from behavior that shocks conservative people to a general disregard for rules).
In addition, we may see a gradual replacement of the icon of Jesus with something that is indicative of Aquarian values, such as the computer, the committee, the scientist, the group, the mind or the iconoclast.
Along with the Aquarian Age, there will be other new images emerging. One of the images that seems to be emerging consistently over the past hundred years that portends Aquarian matters, is the "space alien". Such an entity is invariably depicted in an egg shape with huge, dark oval eyes.
The movie "2001 Space Odyssey" presented a blend of the embryo and space alien in a powerful image that has been absorbed into the collective of thinking Europeans and Americans. Many of you are familiar with it.
Look again at the glyph for Aquarius (below) and begin to imagine what form of electrical energy or "vibes" will be "worshipped" in the Age of Aquarius.
Some of the activities my students and I have identified as likely to develop in the Age of Aquarius -- remember this takes 2,160 years -- are these Uranian ruled matters:
1. cloning 2. creation without intercourse (petrie dish life forms) 3. vibrational and sound healing 4. healing by altering DNA 5. telepathic communication 6. computer dominance 7. everyone looks alike 8. the line between male and female dims 9. cosmic worldview (orientation into space) 10. brotherhood and equality 11. one universal language on earth, perhaps non verbal 12. energy surgery; that is removing malignancies and fixing things without actually entering the physical body 13. elimination of emotion, passion and concepts of heroism and romantic love
Historical Timeline of Our Brief History upon this Earth The Evolution of Hominids: 5,000,000 to 25,000 BCE 5,000,000 - 1,000,000 BC: Australopithecus 2,200,000 - 1,600,000 BC: Homo habilis 500,000 - 80,000 BC: Homo sapiens
Foraging Societies: 30,000 to 8,000 BCE c. 27,000 - 23,000 Dolni Vestonice
Settled Agricultural Societies: 10,000 to 3,500 5,000 BCE: Catal Huyuk
Prototypical Urban Societies: from 3500 BCE 3,300 BC: Sumerian cities 3100 BC: Beginnings of Egyptian civilization 2500 BC: Harappan Civilization in India 1800 BC: Shang dynasty in China 1200 BC: Olmec culture in Mesoamerica AD 400: Jenne-Jeno in Nigeria
River Valley Empires from 3200 BCE to 200 CE 3200-1500 BC: River Valley Empires 2000 - 200 BC: Barbarian Invasions and Imperial Responses 600 - 400 BC: The "Axial Age"
Unification and Interaction in Eurasia: 200 to 1500 CE 130 BC- AD 200: Formation of the Eurasian Ecumene 200-900: Barbarian Invasions and internal turmoil 630-725: The Age of Islamic Expansion 1200-1350: The Age of Mongol Dominance 1350-1700: The Second Age of Islamic Expansion
Unification and Interaction between the Hemispheres: 1500 to 1800
The Formation of World Culture: 1800 to present
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