Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Age of Aquarius?

I had a poster ask about the Age of Aquarius, what is it? and what is its significance?

Ok, as always I like to start these discussions with my favorite hippy-dippy Youtube video

Alight! The solar year is 365 days and some hours, and is the time it takes for the Sun to move through all 12 signs/constellations of the Zodiac. The astrological great year is approximately 25,800 years and is the amount of time it takes for the Sun at the Spring Equinox to pass through all 12 constellations. This takes place because of the precession of the equinoxes. Each Sign's age is around 2,150 years.

The cycle goes against the order of the signs so the Age of Aquarius follows the earlier Age of Pisces. This is an example of mundane or geopolitical astrology on a truly vast scale!

Ok, so there's no doubt that the Age of Aquarius exists insofar as the Sun has or will eventually be in the constellation Aquarius at the time of the Spring Equinox, but what does this mean?

First problem is that unlike the boundaries of a sign, which are designed to be very, very precise, the boundaries of a constellation are very imprecise. When you are dealing with thousands of years, a few minutes of longitude make a big difference. Thus no one agrees about whether the Age of Aquarius has already started or when it will start, estimates varying over several thousand years.

Next, since the Aqe of Pisces, Aquarius, etc., each last over 2,150 years, there is an incredible amount of history, culture, etc., taking place, too much to accurate characterize with one sign. Think about Sun signs, with 6 billion people on the planet, each Sun sign has 500 million people each, scattered over the entire globe in many countries, cultures and ages. How accurately does their Sun sign reflect them? Not much, so how accurate can the Zodiacal Ages be?

So given that we have no idea when the Ages start or stop and the vast over generalization that the signs represent when characterizing 1,000s of years of history and culture, while they are very interesting for personal meditation and individual philosophical inspiration, they are of little practical use to astrologers for predictive purposes.

Traditional Astrology Reading List

I've been getting lots of inquiries recently about how to get started in traditional astrology and what books to read.

Here is my Traditional Astrology Reading List

Note that many of these books are traditional sources, ie written before 1700. There are a few good contemporary books written on traditional astrology which I have noted. I do get complaints about traditional sources being in "Old English" Note that actual Wikipedia on Old English was spoken and written in the early Middle Ages and is basically a foreign language. A text from say 1647, like Lilly's Christian Astrology is early modern English and a native English speaker, with some application, can learn to read it easily. Just start googling words you don't know!

One of the key missions of my courses, and I focused in on this specifically in the Natal Astrology Course is to make sure that graduates of my courses are fully able to read and use traditional sources. This allows you to go further than the handful of contemporary traditional astrology books and use ALL traditional sources in English!

Ultimately, it's my belief that if you are serious about learning, practicing and mastering traditional astrology you need to take a course with a teacher. Still by reading the books on my Reading List you can "get your feet wet" and get a good introduction to traditional astrology and magic.