A Toe Dipped One Step Deeper In…

2.28.05

… last week, when Chiron entered Aquarius, the sign of the new age (suspend instinctive reaction to cheesy overuse of term 'new age'), where it will reside until 2010, to serve as a bridge between our present consciousness and the vastly different one that will unfold, increasingly rapidly, into the end of this decade.

This 'new age', the Age of Aquarius… we've heard about it before, and I promise we'll hear about it again. We know which astronomical phenomenon it is that astrologers are interpreting as a macro-level transition of ages (that is, precession of the equinoxes), but we can't really imagine the full significance of what this shift means.

These astrological ages are over 2,000 years in duration. With our relatively shrimpy life-spans, we cannot achieve any adequately sagacious perspective from here. It was only less than 500 years ago—or roughly within the last one-fourth of our current Age of Pisces—when Copernicus dared to suggest the Earth wasn't the center of the universe after all. (Ooof, foiled again!) Everything we've since learned about our measly existence in these cosmos has come to light in the waning final quarter of a single age.

And the cusp-of-the-ages period in which we reside promises even more twists and turns, chaotic and metamorphous and jarring. Is it any wonder so many of us share the sentiment these times are uniquely dramatic, intense and often anxiety-provoking? That's just how profound change is.

As I see it, Chiron's movement into Aquarius is one of a series of critical planetary transits that proclaim the beginnings of the Aquarian Age, a dawning with no 'official' starting-gate. We can look back to February 1962, when all seven planets from Sun and Moon to Saturn aligned within a relatively tight orb during a solar eclipse in Aquarius, an energy boost that initiated the revolutionary fervor imprinting the remainder of the decade of the '60s. More recently, Aquarius's ruler Uranus spent a chunk of time in its Aquarian home-domain (1995/6-2003), igniting a massive technology boom that rapidly changed our lives and brought the world closer together. And then, when Uranus moved into Pisces (2003-2010/1), while Pisces's ruler Neptune continued trekking through Aquarius (1998-2011/2), they formed a long-term mutual reception, the affinity created when two planets dwell in each other's ruling signs.

This current Uranus-in-Pisces/Neptune-in-Aquarius mutual reception serves as a resonant reminder of our present positioning at the nexus of the Piscean and Aquarian Ages. And it continues through 2010, the same stretch as Chiron's transit through Aquarius. This combination indicates we are in a period of deep social and spiritual preparation—one into which we just dipped our toe a step deeper last week—in advance of the monumental events looming at the border of our next decade.

During a relatively brief interval of time, commencing around 2008-9, we will witness a lot of intense astrological activity: movements of outer planets into new signs (Pluto into Capricorn; Uranus into Aries; Neptune into Pisces), major conjunctions (Jupiter/Neptune/Chiron; Jupiter/Uranus) and an ultra-provocative T-square involving heavyweights Saturn, Uranus and Pluto in the cardinal signs. All this leading up to and framing the 'what does it mean?' end to the ancient Mayan calendar in 2012, right as Venus makes her second of two rare transits across the face of the Sun…

…but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

We are here now, not there yet. And Chiron has just barely poked his head over the crest into Aquarius. His presence in the sign of universal brother-and-sisterhood is tentative, as he still plans to pop back into Capricorn for a bit (Jul 31-Dec 5, 2005) before committing to a longer cruise with the water-bearers.

As such, I humbly offer tentative thoughts on Chiron-in-Aquarius's implications… and I do so in free-spirited language appropriate to this transit's ultimate promise for mending the rift between conformity and rebellious individuation, as we are being called toward fuller and humbler expression of what makes us special without too insistently freezing out and flipping off those we intellectually associate with 'problem' instead of 'solution'…

… this Other, that population who's been abstracted into the category of 'not one of us', is neither problem nor solution, any more than any one of us is only victimized or victimizer, the injured or the injurer… the cure is in the cause, the homeopathic synthesis of polarities to bring the stalemate conflict into holy trinity: Wounded, Persecutor, Healer… but to do so, we must swap destinies with Prometheus, and now to grasp our sure mortality and, through that, end our suffering…

… blue states/red states, upper/lower chakras, Saturn and Uranus duking it out, with the head of a man and the rump of a horse as our body and mind… both/and… everyday, for everyone to win, reintegrate the slate, unite in perfectly flaw-filled perfection…

… do we deeply consider our destiny, or let the wave of party line wash us over with its truths, repeated enough, with full-color photos photoshopped to make them truer, bluer, newly with less waste, a waist that wouldn't support that frame, the shame … does the higher being starve itself, or overeat to puke the goods, immobilize itself, its head inside a mason jar, talking wildly of the Paris hack, drugs to soothe the ravage of its phantom limbs… or should its Luddite beast reject this luminous link to future worlds and spaces, marvels, health, an instant to transmit your love across the globe, enough for all (if only we'd share it), the chills from being smart enough to grow and reach and be more than before… maybe regulated dosages of snack-sized radiation ain't so bad in quantum land…

… head and body, man and beast, the crisis over being on the ground… you don't remember how we chose it, all this flesh and fever, needing not to be so light for long enough to learn to be the light, with consciousness… must we think away the earth, then wonder where it went and how to get it back, rejecting so-called opposition flat, until we need its non-pollutant mercy fuels to get us off the island? Rigidity suits no one, least of all your private healing.

Be all the way in it, with everyone else, knowing they too are all the way in it.

Balances: (a) Conform in respect, but not by killing spirit. (b) Individuate through acceptance of essence, but not in reaction.

There will be more.