Signs of the Times: The Structure of Time

Chaos: The science of Chaos Theory gives us a valuable scientific perspective concerning these times we currently live in. Chaos Theory is physics as it describes real life situations rather than highly controlled experiments within a physics lab. The essence of Chaos Theory says that any stable system will remain stable up until a certain point. During the long period of stability small changes are added to the system requiring small adjustments that work to keep the system stable. Eventually, there comes a point where the system can no longer adjust to the accumulated changes, and the system slips into a period of chaos. Within this chaos, seeds of a new stability are planted that will grow to create a new more stable system. This new system will be a quantum step above what existed before. There will be a higher level of harmony and stability than existed in the old system. In this way the system grows and evolves.

History: This scientific theory is a perfect explanation of what is happening with astrological ages. The entire precessional cycle defines a complete system of human growth and stability. With each age, and with each era and phase, new energies are expressed within that system. The system adjusts according to the astrological signs involved in order to maintain the overall harmony and stability of that cycle. When time reaches a Virgo or Pisces trigger period, history slips into a period of relative chaos. These are cleansing periods. Virgo rules disintegration and extinction, while Pisces rules dissolution. Our present time period is part of the much prophesied chaos period that we call the Apocalypse.

This is a natural process, and we should not be afraid of what is happening. It is an essential part of our evolutionary process of growth. In Pisces fashion the enemies that warriors looked for during the Age of Aries became internalized during the Age of Pisces. Satan became the enemy for the Church. On a subtler level that enemy is fear itself. Our fear. We need to move our feelings and thoughts into an internal environment of happiness and joy if we are to align ourselves with the seeds of new creation.

Humanity is going through a necessary and powerful transition, and we need to embrace this process. While this cleansing is going on, it becomes essential for humanity to let go of our attachments to all of the old paradigms, and become the seeds that will grow into the new paradigm.

Religious Structure: Religion arises out of the structure of the zodiac. In antiquity the sign Taurus was seen as the natural first house sign rather than Aries. With this placement a powerful mythological motif emerges that has tremendous significance for humanity. There can be seen a vertical planetary axis down the center of the zodiac that is Biblical in nature.

The five planets that were known in antiquity each rule two signs, one masculine and one feminine. Saturn at the top rules Capricorn and Aquarius. With Taurus on the Ascendant the midheaven is between these two signs. Below that Jupiter rules Sagittarius and Pisces. Then we have Mars, and then Venus at the center of the circle. Below Venus is Mercury. While Mercury rules two signs, Virgo and Gemini, it also rules the quality of division. Saturn at the top rules limitation, indicating single pointed focus. All outside distractions are cut away. This hierarchy gives us the image of a mountain, the archetypal sacred World Mountain, with the pointed peak at the top and wide based division at the bottom. Below Mercury the two luminaries, the Moon and Sun each rule only one sign, indicating that division has become manifest. These signs, and their ruling planets, sit side-by-side as the base of this World Mountain called Sinai.

This mythic axis mundi has another archetypal image associated with it. These seven planets arranged in this hierarchy correspond to the Seven Days of Creation in Genesis. All creation myths follow a line of descent from above to the watery land of Cancer at the bottom. Cancer is a water sign and rules all things involving the land. It rules foundations. The Garden of Eden, or Pleasures, corresponds to the zodiac as it arises and encircles this central axis. The Garden contains trees and fruit, indeed all of life. Into the Garden, the Red/Passionate man Adam is inserted in order to till the soil, or Adama, the feminine form of Adam. In the center of this Garden there is the Tree of Life/Tree of Knowledge of Duality. This tree is the same planetary axis that creates the World Mountain. Going up the axis, it is the Tree of Life. Descending this axis, it is the Tree of Knowledge of Duality.

When Adam and Eve left the Garden in order to continue the process of creation, they entered the realm of duality, of created diversity, where pain balances pleasure, and death balances life. This realm is the cycle of time that revolves through the twelve areas of life and evolution. This is the outer ring of animating principles that comprise the zodiac, astrology, and life. It is no accident that the offspring of Eve, and those of her descendents, are pictured as warring twins, duality fighting for supremacy, striving to seek balance. This creative descent eventually ends with the astrologically dynamic twelve sons of Jacob surrounding the lone daughter, the thirteenth child, Dinah, as the center of the zodiac, sitting in the place of Venus.

Religious History: Today, in the section of time/life that we call Pisces, we tend to view our religions as being separate from each other, each one being the purveyor of truth while the others are pagan, infidel, or gentile. This is not really the case. All religions are valid expressions of the zodiac. They cannot be otherwise. They are all dynamic expressions of the Pisces paradigm. As we transition towards the Aquarius paradigm, all of these religions will have to change themselves to become equal members of a more interactive exchange of spiritual knowledge that will express the Aquarian ideals of brotherhood, and world culture.

During the Age of Cancer, 8640 to 6480 BC, religion was highly matriarchal. Cancer rules women and motherhood. It is ruled by the Moon. We cannot say what religious thought really was like before this time, but during this age religion was likely based on the ideals of the Divine Mother and worshipping the Moon. Women ruled, or came to rule the tribe because the mother was astrologically elevated in status over all other parts of her family, including the men, who were astrologically seen as young (Leo) and in need of direction. Still today, our relationships too often fall back on the archetype of the wife as mother and the husband as the immature son. The mother created agriculture and settled homey communities.

During the following Age of Gemini, 6480 to 4320 BC, the rule of the goddess divided, in Gemini fashion, into large pantheons of gods and goddesses. Imagery found at Catal Huyuk in Turkey from around 6500 BC show the mother giving birth to a wide range of animals (animating intelligences) as the foundation for a new pantheistic understanding of life on earth. Art went from representational to abstract symbolism, illustrating the mental processes that created a new religious paradigm for this age. This abstraction illustrates the wide-ranging division of the religious paradigm into smaller intellectual parts, which allowed for better understanding of the whole.

With the Age of Taurus, 4320 to 2160 BC, religious thought turned towards wealth and prosperity. The matriarchy became more hierarchal and rigid. The Ens of Mesopotamia and the Pharaohs of Egypt were essentially the managers of the sacred warehouses, and goods, money and wealth became a powerful symbol of divine grace. All very Taurus. The temples became central warehouses where all of the wealth of their respective civilizations were collected, and from where that wealth was evenly distributed based on class distinctions. The matriarchy was at its height, and wealth was intimately connected with the feminine. The burial rites of the rulers, complete with immense wealth and all their retainers, indicate the focus on Taurus material comfort that was a predominant part of their religious worldview.

The Age of Aries, 2160 to 0 BC, was a pivotal period for humanity. This age brought with it a change in religious rulership. The older matriarchal religions gave way to new masculine patriarchal religions after 2500 BC all around the globe. The older feminine rule had become too rigid, and the incoming Aries energy of independence, overcoming challenges, and the impulse to fight for victory all rose up against the established rule, and men and the masculine paradigm gained the upper hand.

Hero mythologies were created to honor the new warrior paradigm of Aries. The young hero fought for, and won freedom for the individual to stand up against the matriarchal Taurus collective. War was invented in response to Aries energy on a large scale and new militaristic empires were created. The source of feminine power was their menstrual blood. War was a means for men to shed their own “menstrual” blood and find their own power in that blood. War and mortal combat were spiritual paths to glory and heaven. Our own Old Testament is a portrayal of this Aries warrior mentality. Our Old Testament god is a warrior god leading his army of “Chosen” in conquest of the promised land of the Canaanites.

Because this was such a dramatic reversal of an older and well-established religious ideal, the feminine religions were labeled as pagan, gentile, and infidel. Because Aries rules individuality along with war and challenge, the new patriarchal religions also saw themselves as separate from each other. Masculine solar religions became competitive, feeling that they had the stronger god. As we got closer to the Age of Pisces this became the “one true teaching”, an idea that has created, and still is creating much death and suffering today.

With the Age of Pisces, 0 BC to 2160, religions turned their focus inward and upward towards the Piscean ideals of transcendence and otherworldly attainment. These religions all were based on the idea of a huge Piscean cosmic battle between good and evil, with a man’s soul as the prize to be won.

Heroes became saints, gurus and holy men who wandered the country without personal possessions or worldly attachment. In the Orient the astrological wheel of life came to be seen as a Pisces prison, and the goal of the spiritual quest was enlightenment and release from imprisonment on the wheel. In the Christian West, Satan was elevated to the status of pure evil, and the religious goal was to attain the glory of Heaven. In this process, Satan was to be defeated and the devotee was to find the transcendent glory of god and salvation. On the negative side, Pisces rules fear. Because of this age of fear, Satan was seen everywhere, leading to centuries of insane hatred and violence against women, pagans, and even other Christians.

Religions, mythologies, and spiritual paths change with every age. They do so in order to remain dynamic and relevant to the collective consciousness of humanity. The spiritual lesson of Pisces is that both sides of creation, light and dark, are valued spiritual aspects of God. Pisces is pictured as two fish swimming in opposite directions, implying duality and opposing forces, such as good and evil. Yet these fish are connected at the heart indicating that love and compassion, and heartfelt understanding are the true goals of Pisces spirituality.

From this perspective, if we take away our fear and the patriarchal need for competitiveness and supremacy, we find that all religions practicing during this age have been true Pisces religions. All of them profess compassion and loving forgiveness. The Golden Rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, is supreme in all of them. Yet we give into our fear and insist on retaining our need to remain separate from all others, fearing them and spitting out diatribes against them.

Now we approach the Age of Aquarius, 2160 to 4320. Religions, mythology and spiritual direction are already undergoing a major shift in response to the change in astrological energy. Collectively we are striving to leave behind the Pisces sense of fear, imprisonment and suffering that characterize our present religious view, and embrace the Aquarian ideal of manifesting all of our collective and individual hopes, dreams and wishes. In Pisces we humbly asked for grace, often from the position of being unworthy servants. In the very near future we will stand up as sons and daughters of god in our own right and manifest for ourselves. In this process the New Age ideals of mentally focusing our thoughts, setting our intentions, and stating our desires and repeating those thoughts over and over again will become invaluable additions to prayer and meditation.

Aquarius rules science indicating that science will become a major component of our future spiritual thought. Scientists will need to get past their fear of religion and god, and embrace areas of metaphysics as their next area of study. Science will eventually discover laws of nature that will help humanity connect our physical universe with elements of ourselves that are more etheric or spiritual.

Religions of Aquarius will be more organizations rather than rigid bureaucratic institutions. Like community organizations there will be a great deal of shared information and understanding between religions, as they all will seek to help each other reach out to interested people around the globe.

The Age of Aquarius will be the Golden Age promised in the teachings of religions from around the world. Christ will return and usher us into the glorious Millennium of Christ. The Jewish Savior will finally arrive and bring in the golden age. The Islamic Mahdi will return to do the same thing. Buddhists await the coming of the Maitreya Buddha, while Hindus await the Kalki Avatar inaugurating the dawning of the Age of Enlightenment. In the Americas this will be the return of the Pale Prophet and the transition from the fourth to the fifth world.

Before this can happen we have to transform the fear, violence and hatred that is connected with the chaos of the prophesied Apocalypse and the “end of the world”. We are in a period of Chaos. While these things play themselves out on the world stage, we all have the free will option of becoming seeds of harmony within this chaos. These seeds will become the foundation for a new civilization based in love and prosperity for all.

With Aquarius we have both emotional and mental power to create something different. This is the nature of our seed value in this period of chaos. If we fear these prophecies then we enliven them with our focus on them. We can change these prophecies. That is the Aquarian nature of the seeds that are now planted. The fear of the Apocalypse will help to create the Apocalypse. We cannot afford to even consider fear in our lives anymore. Leave fear to the outside world and become loving and positive in your outlook. Become an integral part of the seed process. These seeds of love and positive thought are the salvation and foundation of the new Aquarian paradigm that is growing within this chaos period of transition.