Ray Grasse
Signs of the Times : Unlocking the Symbolic Language of World Events
(Chartottesville, VA: Hampton Roads Publishing, 2002, 297pp.)
Each major writer who analyses the transition from the Piscean period to the Age of Aquarius does so by looking at what he feels are the key signs of transition but also in terms of the ideas and discipline with which he is most at home. C.G. Jung’s important analysis Aion stresses psychological archetypes and the role of symbols. Sri Aurobindo, although he had withdrawn from active anti-colonial politics, saw in political events such as the rise of Hitler and the independence of India the signs of the passing of one age and the start of the next. Marilyn Ferguson, active in mind/brain studies, stresses shifts in consciousness in her well-known book The Aquarian Conspiracy . While drawing to an extent on all these earlier writers, Ray Grasse, trained in film making and analysis, highlights popular culture, especially films, as a reflection of the fading of Piscean values and the progressive flowering of the Aquarian age. Thus, by studying the recurring themes already surfacing throughout popular culture, we can discern the broad trends that are forming deep in the collective unconscious and will continue to take shape in the millennia to come.
The Piscean period, which we can date from about the year one of the common era to the year 2000, is the only Great Age for which we have real, worldwide historical records. For the two earlier age — Aries (2000BCE to 1 CE) and Taurus (4000BCE to 2000BCE) — we have archeological evidence and some art from a few regions. Thus, to be on solid ground, we must base Great Age analysis on the study of the most recent two thousand years.
We see the start of the Piscean period in the Mediterranean area — to be expected from a sign represented by two fish — a nearly closed sea around which flowered major societies: Classic and Hellenistic Greece and Rome, followed by Spain, Portugal, France, and England — all became politically great powers with worldwide cultural influences. The Piscean period is marked by two religious cultures: Christianity — the birth of Jesus is often used as the major symbolic start of the Piscean period — and the second Piscean faith, Islam.
If the hypothesis of a Piscean-to-Aquarian progression is correct, we should look for signs in two areas: a shift away from Mediterranean-influenced civilization and a fading of both Christianity and Islam. The shift in symbols for the age would also indicate a geographic shift in power and influence from the Piscean fish (the sea) to Aquarius — a person pouring water, indicating land in need of irrigation or water conservation. We can look for signs of a shift toward states or combination of states with large plains in need of water management for prosperity. Such a hypothesis would indicate at least four states with large plains that would take the lead in the transition to a new age: the United States, Russia, China, India, and perhaps Brazil. The signs of the USA-Russia-China-India as great powers are relatively clear.
There is less agreement on the fading of Christianity and Islam. Yet as Ray Grasse notes “The Aquarian Age will probably sweep away many of the emotional and religious trappings that characterized Piscean-Age consciousness and replace them with a more sober and clear-eyed approach to reality.” The current growth of political Islam may be due to the unconscious realization that its time on the world stage is over, but some Muslims are reluctant to leave the stage before the curtain falls.
Yet if we turn back to analyse the ending of the Age of Aries (75BCE to 1 CE) , the time of the birth of Jesus, we see that there was suffering. Every transition between two Great Ages results in suffering, and the suffering is greatest when fear, a clinging to the past, or an exuberant eagerness to race ahead introduces tensions, inner conflicts, and false expectations. For a new age to emerge, there must be courageous servants of the cyclic purpose. All deep and radical transformations require an illumined mind and an all-encompassing heart.
Ray Grasse’s book and his useful bibliography make an important contribution to the study of this period of transition. If the dawning of the Age of Aquarius is to mean more than a line from a popular song, it will require more efforts along the lines of Ray Grasse’s serious and even approach.
Alice O. Howell
The Heavens Declare: Astrological Ages and the Evolution of Consciousness
(Wheaton, IL: Quest Books,2006, 281pp.)
There are a number of currents of thought which hold that humanity is coming to the end of an historical cycle and is entering into a new age with the start of the new millennium. The most widely spread of these currents of thought is a complex of ideas and practices known as the New Age or the Age of Aquarius. The contemporary New Age began as a movement based on astrological interpretations of history. Every two thousand years or so humanity moves into a new age in which civilization is predominately influenced by the qualities of the particular astrological sign that rules that age. As Alfred North Whitehead has written “In each age of the world distinguished by high activity, there will be found at its culmination some profound cosmological outlook, implicitly accepted, impressing its own type on the current springs of action.”
Thus the Age of Aquarius derives its name from western astrology which holds that each astrological age is determined by the passage of the Earth’s vernal equinox within a particular constellation. It is said that we are transiting from the Piscean period, which inaugurated the Christian era (symbolized by the fish sign used by the early Christians) to the Aquarian Age symbolized by the bearer of water. In this astrological tradition, the Piscean period was preceded by the Age of Aries and the Age of Taurus, of which the ram and the bull are the symbols — animals which are significant in earlier spiritual traditions.
The New Age is often seen as a movement toward self-discovery, a way to harmonize self-awareness with a consciousness of the totality of Nature. In addition to developing earlier forms of Western psychology, there is a growing interest in discovering the Higher Self drawn from Indian philosophy, with its emphasis on yoga, tantra, and the energy centers of the body (the charkas and the kundalini). The Tibetan forms of Buddhism, the Japanese school of Zen, Taoism and its techniques of acupuncture have also contributed much to New Age thought and techniques.
In the New Age there will be a realignment of the Yin and the Yang, the balance between feminine and masculine energies. This balance must be found within each person but also within society as a whole. The role and energies of women must be brought to the fore to balance again what has been a long dominance of the masculine, the patriarchal nature of our institutions. The ever-increasing role of women and women’s groups is a sign of this re-equilibrium.
The New Age draws much of its energy from its emphasis on synergy — the parts working for the common good. As the anthropologist Gregory Bateson has written, our task is to discover “the pattern that connects”, the wholeness underlying the diversity. This implies a New Age way of thinking in terms of patterns and wholeness, interconnections and reawakening.
At the end of each Age, a challenge appears that sets the stage for the coming age, our challenge is to see the unity of life. We are in a watershed period between two ages that requires a radical shift in how we understand human nature and our interdependent relationship with our environment. In this new planetary era, a harmonious future depends on our capacity to live beyond self-interest and to strive for the common good. Most significantly, New Age thought stresses that the common good is not just for the well-being of the human community but for all the kingdoms of life.
Alice Howell, influenced by the work of C.G. Jung and astrological analysis has written a useful guide to the start of the New Age.
The United Nations General Assembly has proclaimed in Resolution A/61/L22, the year 2009 as the International Year of Reconciliation “recognizing that reconciliation processes are particularly necessary and urgent in countries and regions of the world which have suffered or are suffering situations of conflict that have affected and divided societies in their various internal, national, and international facets.” The Resolution was introduced by Nicaragua’s representative who stated that “reconciliation between those estranged by conflicts was the only way to confront today’s challenges and heal wherever fraternity and justice were absent from human relations.”
Yet we need to ask how can genuine reconciliation take place between people and groups with bitterly held beliefs and a violent history? How can the needs for national healing be reconciled with the demands for justice by the victims of terrible violence?
The General Assembly resolution gives a partial answer by stressing that “dialogue among opponents from positions of respect and tolerance is an essential element of peace and reconciliation.”
For there to be a respectful dialogue among opponents, certain barriers that prevent negotiations must be dismantled as a sign of a willingness to enter into a process of negotiations. Some barriers are physical, some psychological, others ideological. These barriers must be overcome if we are to progress on the long road to reconciliation. Let us, with the New Year, start now both as individuals and as members of movements in the spirit of the historian Howard Zinn’s “People are Practical”
They want change but feel powerless, alone,
do not want to be the blade of grass that
sticks up above the others and is cut down.
They wait for a sign from someone else
who will make the first move, or the second.
And at certain times in history
there are certain intrepid people who take the risk
that if they make that first move others will follow
quickly enough to prevent their being cut down.
And if we understand this, we
might make that first move.
…And if we do act, in however small a way,
we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future.
The future is an infinite succession of presents,
and to live now as we think human beings should live,
in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself
a marvellous victory.
Rene Wadlow, Representative to the UN, Geneva, Association of World Citizens
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Signs of the Times : Unlocking the Symbolic Language of World Events
(Chartottesville, VA: Hampton Roads Publishing, 2002, 297pp.)
Each major writer who analyses the transition from the Piscean period to the Age of Aquarius does so by looking at what he feels are the key signs of transition but also in terms of the ideas and discipline with which he is most at home. C.G. Jung’s important analysis Aion stresses psychological archetypes and the role of symbols. Sri Aurobindo, although he had withdrawn from active anti-colonial politics, saw in political events such as the rise of Hitler and the independence of India the signs of the passing of one age and the start of the next. Marilyn Ferguson, active in mind/brain studies, stresses shifts in consciousness in her well-known book The Aquarian Conspiracy . While drawing to an extent on all these earlier writers, Ray Grasse, trained in film making and analysis, highlights popular culture, especially films, as a reflection of the fading of Piscean values and the progressive flowering of the Aquarian age. Thus, by studying the recurring themes already surfacing throughout popular culture, we can discern the broad trends that are forming deep in the collective unconscious and will continue to take shape in the millennia to come.
The Piscean period, which we can date from about the year one of the common era to the year 2000, is the only Great Age for which we have real, worldwide historical records. For the two earlier age — Aries (2000BCE to 1 CE) and Taurus (4000BCE to 2000BCE) — we have archeological evidence and some art from a few regions. Thus, to be on solid ground, we must base Great Age analysis on the study of the most recent two thousand years.
We see the start of the Piscean period in the Mediterranean area — to be expected from a sign represented by two fish — a nearly closed sea around which flowered major societies: Classic and Hellenistic Greece and Rome, followed by Spain, Portugal, France, and England — all became politically great powers with worldwide cultural influences. The Piscean period is marked by two religious cultures: Christianity — the birth of Jesus is often used as the major symbolic start of the Piscean period — and the second Piscean faith, Islam.
If the hypothesis of a Piscean-to-Aquarian progression is correct, we should look for signs in two areas: a shift away from Mediterranean-influenced civilization and a fading of both Christianity and Islam. The shift in symbols for the age would also indicate a geographic shift in power and influence from the Piscean fish (the sea) to Aquarius — a person pouring water, indicating land in need of irrigation or water conservation. We can look for signs of a shift toward states or combination of states with large plains in need of water management for prosperity. Such a hypothesis would indicate at least four states with large plains that would take the lead in the transition to a new age: the United States, Russia, China, India, and perhaps Brazil. The signs of the USA-Russia-China-India as great powers are relatively clear.
There is less agreement on the fading of Christianity and Islam. Yet as Ray Grasse notes “The Aquarian Age will probably sweep away many of the emotional and religious trappings that characterized Piscean-Age consciousness and replace them with a more sober and clear-eyed approach to reality.” The current growth of political Islam may be due to the unconscious realization that its time on the world stage is over, but some Muslims are reluctant to leave the stage before the curtain falls.
Yet if we turn back to analyse the ending of the Age of Aries (75BCE to 1 CE) , the time of the birth of Jesus, we see that there was suffering. Every transition between two Great Ages results in suffering, and the suffering is greatest when fear, a clinging to the past, or an exuberant eagerness to race ahead introduces tensions, inner conflicts, and false expectations. For a new age to emerge, there must be courageous servants of the cyclic purpose. All deep and radical transformations require an illumined mind and an all-encompassing heart.
Ray Grasse’s book and his useful bibliography make an important contribution to the study of this period of transition. If the dawning of the Age of Aquarius is to mean more than a line from a popular song, it will require more efforts along the lines of Ray Grasse’s serious and even approach.
Rene Wadlow
The Heavens Declare: Astrological Ages and the Evolution of Consciousness
(Wheaton, IL: Quest Books,2006, 281pp.)
There are a number of currents of thought which hold that humanity is coming to the end of an historical cycle and is entering into a new age with the start of the new millennium. The most widely spread of these currents of thought is a complex of ideas and practices known as the New Age or the Age of Aquarius. The contemporary New Age began as a movement based on astrological interpretations of history. Every two thousand years or so humanity moves into a new age in which civilization is predominately influenced by the qualities of the particular astrological sign that rules that age. As Alfred North Whitehead has written “In each age of the world distinguished by high activity, there will be found at its culmination some profound cosmological outlook, implicitly accepted, impressing its own type on the current springs of action.”
Thus the Age of Aquarius derives its name from western astrology which holds that each astrological age is determined by the passage of the Earth’s vernal equinox within a particular constellation. It is said that we are transiting from the Piscean period, which inaugurated the Christian era (symbolized by the fish sign used by the early Christians) to the Aquarian Age symbolized by the bearer of water. In this astrological tradition, the Piscean period was preceded by the Age of Aries and the Age of Taurus, of which the ram and the bull are the symbols — animals which are significant in earlier spiritual traditions.
The New Age is often seen as a movement toward self-discovery, a way to harmonize self-awareness with a consciousness of the totality of Nature. In addition to developing earlier forms of Western psychology, there is a growing interest in discovering the Higher Self drawn from Indian philosophy, with its emphasis on yoga, tantra, and the energy centers of the body (the charkas and the kundalini). The Tibetan forms of Buddhism, the Japanese school of Zen, Taoism and its techniques of acupuncture have also contributed much to New Age thought and techniques.
In the New Age there will be a realignment of the Yin and the Yang, the balance between feminine and masculine energies. This balance must be found within each person but also within society as a whole. The role and energies of women must be brought to the fore to balance again what has been a long dominance of the masculine, the patriarchal nature of our institutions. The ever-increasing role of women and women’s groups is a sign of this re-equilibrium.
The New Age draws much of its energy from its emphasis on synergy — the parts working for the common good. As the anthropologist Gregory Bateson has written, our task is to discover “the pattern that connects”, the wholeness underlying the diversity. This implies a New Age way of thinking in terms of patterns and wholeness, interconnections and reawakening.
At the end of each Age, a challenge appears that sets the stage for the coming age, our challenge is to see the unity of life. We are in a watershed period between two ages that requires a radical shift in how we understand human nature and our interdependent relationship with our environment. In this new planetary era, a harmonious future depends on our capacity to live beyond self-interest and to strive for the common good. Most significantly, New Age thought stresses that the common good is not just for the well-being of the human community but for all the kingdoms of life.
Alice Howell, influenced by the work of C.G. Jung and astrological analysis has written a useful guide to the start of the New Age.
Rene Wadlow
Rene Wadlow
The United Nations General Assembly has proclaimed in Resolution A/61/L22, the year 2009 as the International Year of Reconciliation “recognizing that reconciliation processes are particularly necessary and urgent in countries and regions of the world which have suffered or are suffering situations of conflict that have affected and divided societies in their various internal, national, and international facets.” The Resolution was introduced by Nicaragua’s representative who stated that “reconciliation between those estranged by conflicts was the only way to confront today’s challenges and heal wherever fraternity and justice were absent from human relations.”
Yet we need to ask how can genuine reconciliation take place between people and groups with bitterly held beliefs and a violent history? How can the needs for national healing be reconciled with the demands for justice by the victims of terrible violence?
The General Assembly resolution gives a partial answer by stressing that “dialogue among opponents from positions of respect and tolerance is an essential element of peace and reconciliation.”
For there to be a respectful dialogue among opponents, certain barriers that prevent negotiations must be dismantled as a sign of a willingness to enter into a process of negotiations. Some barriers are physical, some psychological, others ideological. These barriers must be overcome if we are to progress on the long road to reconciliation. Let us, with the New Year, start now both as individuals and as members of movements in the spirit of the historian Howard Zinn’s “People are Practical”
They want change but feel powerless, alone,
do not want to be the blade of grass that
sticks up above the others and is cut down.
They wait for a sign from someone else
who will make the first move, or the second.
And at certain times in history
there are certain intrepid people who take the risk
that if they make that first move others will follow
quickly enough to prevent their being cut down.
And if we understand this, we
might make that first move.
…And if we do act, in however small a way,
we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future.
The future is an infinite succession of presents,
and to live now as we think human beings should live,
in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself
a marvellous victory.
Rene Wadlow, Representative to the UN, Geneva, Association of World Citizens
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