the
dawning of the age of aquarius
Astrology
teaches that everything moves in cycles and circles.
Alan Oken
The New Age, or the Age of Aquarius, are terms that have floated through
mainstream Western culture since the 1960s with various meanings. From
astronomical explanations to a questioning of astrology’s current
relevance, including a resurgence of the ancient wisdoms, as well as
the arrival of a spiritual supermarket, (complete with a range of alternative
‘products’), this transition of Ages is a time of great
awakening and tension. With a cuspal period of about 300 years, the
shift in collective consciousness is bound to be filled with both excitement
and confusion.
Astronomically, the turning of the Ages refers to the precession
of the equinoxes due to the combined effect of the tilt and
wobble of Earth. At an angle of 23.5 degrees, the inclination of Earth
is what creates seasonal variation. The projection of the Earth’s
equator on this angle out into space is called the celestial equator.
The constellations are a fixed belt of stars mapped out on the plane
of the ecliptic (the apparent path the sun traces through the sky although,
actually, that which the Earth travels around the sun) and is what the
Greeks projected the sidereal zodiac onto in the 2nd century BC. The
point where the celestial equator and the ecliptic plane intersect marks
the Vernal, or Spring, equinox and also determines the Age we are in
– at the moment it is at approximately 5 degrees Pisces (Diagram
1). In approximately 2,100 year cycles, the Vernal point shifts one
sign westward (moving 1 degree back every 72 years) making a complete
cycle, or Great Year, through the twelve signs in about 26,000 years.
The precession creates a journey of the tropical zodiac through the
sidereal zodiac, or constellations on the ecliptic plane.