When Worlds Collide:

Understanding the Dynamics of the Shifting Great Ages

by Ray Grasse
When European explorers first arrived on the shores of North America and encountered the indigenous peoples there, the gulf separating these two cultures religiously, socially, intellectually made for a challenging experience on both sides of the divide. Their respective attitudes toward many things stemmed from fundamentally different worldviews, and posed a series of both problems and opportunities for these cultures as they attempted to adjust to the other's lives. Whenever civilizations separated by geography first come into contact, it's an especially sensitive time when the possibilities for either triumph or tragedy are heightened and can be tipped by even the smallest of variables. But that same double-edged potential exists at the meeting point of cultures separated not just by space, but through qualities of time. Let me explain. The Turning of the Ages For many astrologers, the grand sweep of world history can be understood, at least partly, in connection with the doctrine of the Great Ages. According to this theory, roughly every 2,100 years the global zeitgeist experiences a seismic shift in its attitudes and beliefs. As the Vernal Point that point in the sky where the Sun resides on the first day of spring slowly moves backward and positions itself against a new zodiacal backdrop, a corresponding change takes place in the collective psyche, which reflects itself in our myths, symbols, and customs. As Ive suggested elsewhere,1 the transition between Great Ages likely doesnt occur on a single day or year, but evolves very slowly over many years, perhaps even centuries. We might liken it to the incoming tide, which arrives in waves rather than all at once. These historical waves can, in turn, be associated with key astrological periods, such as alignments between Uranus and Pluto or between

Uranus and Neptune, to cite just two examples. So, even though an emerging Great Age may not make its presence fully felt for several centuries yet, its possible for its influence to surface into global consciousness centuries ahead of time, in assorted symbolic ways. The essential point is this: When paradigms associated with different Ages come into contact, the result can take many different forms and unfold through a wide range of dynamics. Like citizens of separate civilizations meeting for the first time, the encounter between denizens of different Age paradigms can be peaceful or turbulent, constructive or destructive. In this article, Id like to propose a set of four primary dynamics associated with this age-shifting process. Among other things, grasping these patterns can help us to better understand not only key trends of ancient history, but also many historical developments already taking place around the world now, as we find ourselves perched on the threshold between the Piscean and the Aquarian epochs.

Rome persecuting Christians in the Coliseum

Dynamic 1: The Old Order Resists the New

At the threshold between Great Ages, the encounter between different worldviews can be like tectonic plates butting up against one another, with the resulting friction sending faint rumblings throughout the collective unconscious. At first, those subterranean vibrations are sensed primarily by societys living antennae the artists, mystics, and philosophers of the world, who express those intimations through their teachings and/or creative works. Initially, the larger society tends to react to these unwitting vanguards with either confusion or apathy, but as the differences between competing worldviews grow more pronounced, defenders of the old regime can set out to repress or even destroy those heralding the new one. When the first shoots of Piscean Christianity began appearing two millennia ago, for example, Rome gradually shifted from an attitude of uneasy tolerance toward the followers of the fish (ichthys) to one of persecution. Ironically, after the Piscean Age itself became entrenched as the dominant new religion, Christian authorities eventually turned their sights on those early proponents of the next Great Age, and figures like Giordano Bruno and Galileo found themselves persecuted for espousing ideas in

keeping with the secular and scientific values of the coming Aquarian paradigm, rather than those of the Piscean one. That conflict between different value systems continues through to the present day, with many Christian fundamentalists resisting the rising tide of Aquarian science and secularism. It erupted with a vengeance when Charles Darwin proposed his theory of evolution in the mid 19th century, and echoes even today in the speeches of conservative political candidates expressing their own reservations about the findings of science. We see that tension as well in the ongoing debate over abortion, with largely Christian pro-life advocates on one side reflecting a Piscean sympathy for the unborn, and pro-choice advocates on the other side reflecting a more Aquarian emphasis on personal rights and independence. Robert Zemeckiss film, Contact, based on the Carl Sagan novel of the same name, features a subplot involving religious fanatics who are upset over a high-tech NASA mission to send an astronaut into deep space, and who set out to destroy the experimental craft designed to whisk its occupant (played by Jodie Foster) to a far-off destination.2 This resistance to modernity is fundamentally archetypal in nature, born of the clash between radically different paradigms, and it underlies the actions of Islamic extremists, too. In areas like Afghanistan, we see Taliban members trying to prevent women from seeking an education as men do. Such is the ferocity of those still rooted in Piscean Age values who find it hard adapting to the values of a new age. Pisces, like its sibling, Sagittarius (both signs being Jupiter-ruled), has a dark side that can include dogma: an inflexible attachment to belief systems and religious ideals. This way of thinking about the world refuses to take the liberal sentiments of an Aquarian revolution lying down.

Dynamic 2: The New Order Resists the Old

The resistance of one Great Age to another can go in both directions, however. Case in point, the biggest box office hit of the 1960s was Robert Wises film version of the Broadway musical, The Sound of Music. I had known that it premiered in 1965, the same year as the first UranusPluto conjunction of that decade, and might therefore hold some astrological significance, but I put off seeing it for years because I feared it was little more than light entertainment with no deeper value. So, imagine my surprise when I finally caught up with it and discovered that the films core narrative revolved clearly around the shift from Pisces to Aquarius! Consider the films central story of a young woman named Maria (played by Julie Andrews) who lives in a Catholic convent and aspires to be a nun. As the plot unfolds, she finds herself attracted to the patriarch of a local musical family shes been called on to tutor, a Captain Georg von Trapp (played by Christopher Plummer). They eventually fall in love, and after much soul-searching, Maria decides to leave her life of religious service behind, to pursue a life of romantic happiness in marriage.3 Viewed archetypally, that break from the Church symbolizes the shift from the religious orientation of the Pisces/Virgo era, geared as it is toward self-sacrifice and otherworldly ideals, to that of the Aquarian/Leo axis, with its emphasis on secular values and concerns like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That symbolism in The Sound of Music is essentially the same as that found in the earlier film, The Jazz Singer. A technical landmark, it was the first feature-length film with fully synchronized sound to

come out of Hollywood, and it proved a tipping point in how movies would be made from that point on. (Its release on October 6, 1927 coincided with the departure of Uranus out of Pisces into 0 Aries an obvious portent of new beginnings.) Like The Sound of Music, the film depicts a character struggling with a life-changing decision to leave a life of religious service behind to pursue a more secular calling, performing in that most Aquarian of all musical forms, jazz. The struggle to break free from the grip of an earlier paradigm has its analogy in U.S. politics, too. When the earliest settlers came to American shores, it was ostensibly to escape religious persecution in the Old World. Because of that, the Founding Fathers set out to create a constitution that drew a line between church and state, so as to create a nation of laws that (ideally) operated free from the grip of religion. These are relatively nonviolent examples of how one Great Age can uncouple itself from another. But as I mentioned, this transition can sometimes take a more violent turn, with the new order actively seeking to repress or crush the old one. The Biblical story of Moses rejecting the golden calf is an oft-cited example of that, and has been interpreted by various esoteric commentators as symbolizing the shift from the Taurean Age to the Arian one, with its own icon of the ram. A similar example from more recent times is Herman Melvilles great novel, Moby Dick. Like Moses and the golden calf, Ahabs efforts to destroy the great whale can be interpreted as the violent casting out of Piscean Age forms and values by the incoming Aquarian Age. On another level, its tempting to see Melvilles tale as a portent of the great cataclysm that was about to shake America to its core just one decade later the Civil War. Here, too, we saw a clash between Ages being acted out, with the Union forces, symbolizing the values of freedom (led by Abraham Lincoln, an Aquarian born on the same day as Charles Darwin, incidentally), seeking to overturn the slavery-based world of the U.S. South. Although very different on its surface, the same essential dynamic was at work more than a century later in the tragic story of government agents attacking David Koreshs religious compound in Waco, Texas. Whatever ones own political thoughts about the attack or its justification, the symbolism is clear: a secular government imposing limits on a religious community i.e., Aquarius restricting Pisces. The fact that the attack took place precisely as the planetary rulers of Aquarius and Pisces moved into alignment, when Uranus conjoined Neptune in 1993, succinctly underscores the archetypal meaning of the event.

Dynamic 3: The Old Order Embraces the New

Fortunately, the encounter between Great Ages isnt always destructive or acrimonious, as shown by those instances where an older era not only tolerates the newcomers traditions and values, but even embraces them wholly as its own. For example, after leading a campaign of persecution against devotees of the newly formed Piscean Christian faith, Roman authorities under Constantine wound up adopting Christianity and making it the state religion for the entire Empire. The result was a curious hybrid of Arian and Piscean energies, as reflected in the underlying militarism that characterized much of the emerging Roman Catholic faith. Onward Christian Soldiers! In our own time, we find similar expressions of that hybridization with movements like the Christian Science church, a 19th-century offshoot of Christianity spearheaded by Mary Baker Eddy (born on July 16, 1821 under a conjunction of Uranus and Neptune). It retained the essential principles of Piscean Christianity but refashioned them for comparatively modern tastes, even to the extent of inserting the word science into its title. While the Piscean era was based more on an ethos of self-denial and a dependence on external agencies for ones salvation, the emerging Aquarian Age has been introducing a different mindset, one geared more toward personal empowerment and responsibility for ones own salvation. Consciously or not, the Christian Science church drew on these Aquarian sentiments in its rejection of notions like Hell and atonement, while emphasizing the power of each individual to improve or even heal themselves through a proper use of the mind. Another example of an older tradition being receptive to an emerging one is present in modernday televangelism, where we see traditional churches incorporating modern media technologies in order to preach the gospel to ever wider audiences. A more ironic expression of that same alliance between old and new is visible in how Islamic fundamentalists in the Middle East have been adopting high-tech tools like cell phones, text-messaging, and video technologies sometimes in order to combat the evils of modernity!

Here is still another example: In the 1960s, pop music took an unexpected turn when a Belgian religious sister by the name of Jeanine Deckers (born October 17, 1933) scored an international hit with the French-language song, Dominique. She was widely known as the Singing Nun, and her step from the convent into the high-tech entertainment field likewise reflected a shift from the Piscean world to the secular and technological Aquarian era. Much the same symbolism showed itself in another prominent icon of the 60s, Sally Fields Flying Nun character from the television series of the same name. To astrologers, aviation is an Aquarius-ruled activity, so the image of a Christian nun becoming airborne speaks to yet another metamorphosis of Piscean religiosity into the Aquarian values of freedom!

Dynamic 4: The New Order Embraces the Old

In contrast with tales like those of Moses rejecting the golden calf or Ahab attacking the great white whale, its not always the case that an incoming Age rejects or represses the previous one, since there are times when people committed to the new order are eager to find ways of drawing on the legacies of an earlier one. A simple example from popular culture is the music of groups like Enigma, which blends Aquarian techno arrangements with the sounds of Piscean-era Gregorian chants. Along similar lines, Walt Disneys film Fantasia (released in November 1940 during a trine between Uranus and Neptune) drew from well-known pieces of classical music and reframed them in the context of modern media technology. The merging of new and old values has also started showing itself in more political and economic forms, too. For instance, communism is a distinctly Piscean Age system that requires citizens to surrender their ownership of money and possessions to the larger community theyre part of. By contrast, capitalism is a more Aquarian system in that its based on an ethos of independence, allowing individuals to acquire personal savings while determining their own futures. But if unhinged entirely from socialistic values, free market capitalism can easily mutate into a self-centered, every man for himself system that discards compassion in favor of pure self-aggrandizement. To my mind, a more enlightened capitalism would be one that honors personal wealth and entrepreneurial drive while incorporating a certain degree of socialism, such as providing safety nets for the elderly, the sick, or victims of natural disasters a balancing act between Aquarius and Pisces, you could say. Thats a balancing act that the U.S. (among other nations) has been struggling to perfect for years and one it will probably be struggling with for years to come. A cinematic expression of that economic interface between Pisces and Aquarius was portrayed in Steven Spielberg's film Schindler's List, released in late 1993, precisely as Uranus and Neptune moved into conjunction. Set in Nazi-governed Germany, the film told the true story of a successful entrepreneur who used his business skills to protect scores of otherwise doomed prisoners in a brutal concentration camp. This

offers a good example of how the sometimes cold-blooded machinations of Aquarian corporatism can be employed toward the common good, when tempered by the compassionate effects of Piscean values. The ability of one Great Age to mine the archetypal ore of an earlier one can also take a more mythological turn, as when an emerging era appropriates the religious stories and symbols of an earlier time and re-clothes them in more contemporary garb. That sort of thing has been going on since time immemorial, of course, such as when Christianity recast the resurrection saga of Osiris as the story of Jesus, or when the Hebrew scribes refashioned the flood story of the Babylonians as their own. But this tradition of putting old wine in new skins persists even today, though more conspicuously in the realm of popular entertainment than in formal religious settings. Take Keanu Reeves character Neo in The Matrix, who reinvents the mythic motif of the dead-and-resurrected hero as a modern-day cyber-superman. Or consider the original 1951 film version of The Day the Earth Stood Still, which revolves around the tale of a Christ-like alien who comes down to Earth in a spaceship, is then crucified and later resurrected, and finally ascends back up into the heavens. Years ago, I attended a lecture by the films director, Robert Wise, and during the following Q&A session, I asked whether the parallels between his movie and those of the Biblical Jesus were intentional, since they seemed so striking. He answered that they never really considered that correspondence until others started pointing it out after the movie was released. This simply goes to illustrate something that mythologist Joseph Campbell often pointed out that creative individuals sometimes tap into universal themes from the collective unconscious without even realizing it.

New Myths Rising?

Sometimes, there can be subtle changes in this recycling of timeless myths, which can provide us with clues about the shifting lessons of the emerging paradigm. For example, Stanley Kubricks film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, features a story that echoes the traditional heros journey in obvious ways: An individual is called upon to engage on a great quest (in the movie, an astronaut embarks on a mission into outer space); he encounters challenges along the way (i.e., the spaceship's computer HAL malfunctioning); he reaches his destination and is transformed by it (the astronauts experience within the psychedelic stargate); and finally returns to civilization (the embryonic star-child returning to Earth at films end). But there is a difference: In earlier times, the traditional obstacle or challenge faced by the hero usually took the form of a threatening person or creature, such as a great dragon; however, in 2001 the challenge takes the form of a great, powerful computer. What might this tell us? One way of interpreting this is that the real challenge facing modern humanity is the rational mind itself. Whereas earlier cultures had evolved primarily to an emotional stage, modern humans have collectively

developed to a more mental level, principally through the influence of computers, media, widespread literacy, and more accessible educational opportunities. Still, with that shift has come a series of both blessings and drawbacks. The rational mind opens up doors for us, true, but if left unchecked, it can also be our undoing. Like the astronaut in 2001, it may prove necessary for us to unplug our rational minds if we hope to reach our true wholeness as individuals not in the sense of discarding the mind entirely (note that 2001 doesnt show the astronaut destroying the computer but simply taking its more problematic functions offline), but rather by making sure that it doesnt overpower us.

When Paradigms Meet: Conflict or Cooperation?

The four dynamics described above are only a few of the possible ways the encounter between two Great Ages can unfold, but they serve to illustrate both the perils as well as the potentials that can occur when dramatically different paradigms come into contact with each other. To a certain extent, of course, conflict may be unavoidable, just as labor pains are unavoidable for many women during childbirth. The essential point to be made here, though, is this: The outcome isnt necessarily a negative or violent one in every case, as some of those writing on the Great Ages seem to suggest. There is ample room for creative interaction to take place in the encounter between paradigms, at that threshold between Ages. For me, one image that beautifully illustrates that harmonious bridging of old and new is from the 2002 film, Whale Rider. The movies central character, a young girl from New Zealands Maori tribe, is shown struggling to reconcile her burgeoning independence with the more traditional ways of her community. An iconic sequence in the film embodying the marriage of old and new ways centers around her finally learning to ride atop a great whale out in the ocean. Needless to say, this image reflects a very different symbolism from that expressed in Melvilles novel! To my mind, it speaks instead to the possibility of drawing on the gifts and legacies of a passing era, rather that simply rejecting them wholesale, and it reflects her communitys attempt to balance both tradition and modernity, rather than a single-minded insistence on one or the other. An emotional high point of the film comes when the young woman delivers a heartfelt speech to her community in which she utters these distinctly Aquarian words, illustrating the intersection of old and new: But we can learn, and if the knowledge is given to everyone, then we have lots of leaders, and then soon every one will be strong, not just the ones that have been chosen.

Reference and Notes

1. See my book, Signs of the Times: Unlocking the Symbolic Language of World Events, Hampton Roads, 2002. 2. My thanks to Laurence Hillman for suggesting this interpretation of the films story. 3. Maria's story of leaving the Church behind is just one of two interlocking themes in The Sound of Music that illustrate the tug of war between the Piscean and Aquarian eras. In the movie, the von Trapp family finds itself increasingly pressured by the encroaching Nazi regime, and desperately struggles to break free from its oppressive influence. Note that the Nazi Party was actually a hybrid of two different Ages: On its surface, it embraced certain trappings of the emerging Aquarian era such as high technology, the power of mass media, and progressive attitudes toward health care (warning of the dangers of tobacco, asbestos, and other toxins long before most other countries did) but at its heart, it embodied the most dogmatic instincts of the Piscean Age. (Remember, not only was Christianity the state religion of Nazi Germany, but its chief icon was a twisted cross a climactic perversion of Piscean ideals and dogmatism.) By contrast, the von Trapp family represented the urge toward creative freedom, an impulse more aligned with the incoming Aquarius/Leo axis. The Nazi partys efforts to squelch that freedom symbolized a desperate final push by members of the receding paradigm to subvert the potentials of an emerging new one. The movies happy ending, with the familys escape out of Nazi-controlled territory, speaks to the ideal of a final release from the suffocating grip of a bankrupt worldview.

2012 Ray Grasse all rights reserved Ray Grasse is author of Signs of the Times: Unlocking the Symbolic Language of World Events, a study of the emerging Aquarian Age, and The Waking Dream: Unlocking the Symbolic Language of Our Lives, a study of synchronicity and symbolism. He has an active astrological practice and can be contacted at jupiter.enteract@rcn.com; Web site: www.raygrasse.com