For most people in the western world, astrology is just the sun-sign. Astrologers are not so circumscribed – they know that the sun-sign is just one of a huge number of influential astrological factors including the ascendant, moon signs, aspects and so on that are available in interpreting and predicting events associated with a person, object or event.
When it comes to the astrological ages, the situation is, in a way, almost reversed. The average astrologer has usually heard of the Age of Pisces, Age of Aquarius and plus some earlier ages such as the Age of Cancer – with each age somewhere around 2155 years each. This is akin to sun-sign astrology. The astrological age in play at any time in history is just one of many factors of the astrological influences that can be extracted from them.
Firstly, each age has three age-decans of almost 720 years each. Secondly, each age has twelve sub-ages of almost 180 years each. These again have three sub-age decans of almost 60 years each and 12 micro-ages of approximately 15 years each – and it does not stop there. Micro-ages have 12 nano-ages of approximately 15 months each, and in the last few years, I have even been employing pico-ages that are only about 5 weeks in length. These pico-ages provide valuable insights into subtle financial market gyrations. (For more details on the mechanics of the astrological ages, see The Age of Aquarius for Dummies.
The upshot of all these sub-periods is that when any historical event or current affair is examined, it has to be correlated to the appropriate sub-period of an astrological age, otherwise it is like a client wanting to know their future but only provide their sun-sign!
For any astrologer wanting to learn about the sub-periods of the astrological ages, the best sub-periods to commence with are the sub-ages because a new sub-age arrives approximately every 179 years. Compare this to an age of some 2150 years – the common thread that must remain historically relevant for over 2,000 years, is very thin. The common thread associated with a sub-age is far shorter and thicker – and thus easier to identify.
The focus in this article is upon the sub-ages that have been experienced within the current Age of Aquarius to date and specifically upon new cultural, social or political movements that have “revolutionised” western society with the arrival of every new sub-age commencing with the 15th century. It seems that the world is always in decay, but decay can be taken only for so long. Since the arrival of the Age of Aquarius there have been three large scale revolutions in western society, and we are again facing the problems and issues of another deterioration of western society requiring another revolution?
The three revolutions that have occurred since the arrival of the Age of Aquarius are related to the first three sub-ages within the Age of Aquarius.
Capricorn sub-age (1433 – 1612)
Sagittarius sub-age (1612 – 1791)
Scorpio sub-age (1791 – 1970)
The Capricorn Revolution
What was life like in 1433 AD at the arrival of the Age of Aquarius? It was medieval! The greatest institution in western society was the Roman Catholic Church that was riddled with extreme corruption and people could purchase their way to heaven by buying indulgences, thus supplying a steady income stream to the church. Society’s perspective was based on the extremely conservative Christian tradition and there was no room for rationality or empirical evidence if the Bible had already commented upon a particular subject. Furthermore, the church was able to dream up dogma on just about anything based on their religious concepts. People lived in a fantasy or what the world was, what it existed in, and how things worked. People could be burnt alive for being witches. It was an abject state of affairs and it made living more difficult than necessary as delusion, corruption and ignorance were accepted as real.
So what happened to correct this absurd state of affairs? It all started with the appearance and evolution of Protestantism in Europe commencing in 1529. The term derives from the letter of “protestation” from German Lutheran princes in 1529 against an edict of the Roman Catholic Church Diet of Speyer condemning the teachings of Martin Luther as heretical.
In the 16th century, Lutheranism, or associated reformed churches, spread from Germany into most of Northern Europe by such reformers as John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli, and John Knox. Protestants developed their own culture, which made major contributions in education, the humanities and sciences, the political and social order, the economy and the arts, and other fields. The Protestants brought the first modern revolution to western society. In their day, they were the revolutionaries.
The changes brought about by Protestantism include a massive drive to educate their youth. For example, when the Puritans arrived in Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1628, they founded Harvard College only eight years later. Protestants believed that God gave them the power to reason, greatly contributing to the modern Scientific Revolution. The main part of the Protestant’s moral code was industry, frugality, calling, discipline, and a strong sense of responsibility – all strong Capricorn archetypes. In tune with the arrival of the Age of Aquarius, Protestantism was almost pure democracy in its internal structure compared to the Roman Catholic Church. This new culture underpinned the formation of the USA.
It should also be noted that the modern Scientific Revolution appropriately commenced with this Capricorn sub-age but the first Age of Science or Scientific Revolution commenced in Ancient Greece in the previous Capricorn sub-age (551 BC – 370 BC). According to Nick Campion, this previous scientific revolution was “perhaps comparable to that which transformed European though from around 1500 to 1700, from Copernicus to Newton.”[1]
The Sagittarius Revolution
The bourgeoisie benefited from the Sagittarius sub-age and their “revolution” brought wealth to poverty-stricken western culture. There were many
revolutions in Europe in the early 1600’s because
There is nothing which stirs and angers the people more than food shortages and the cost of bread.[2]
The common term the “nouveau riche” also applied to the bourgeoisie as a derogatory term by the aristocracy against people that made their wealth from business. In the 17th and 18th century, the bourgeoisie were in battle against the Law of Privilege – the divine right to rule by the nobles and aristocracy. The English Civil War (1642–51), the American War of Independence (1775–83), and French Revolution (1789–99) were partly motivated by the desire by the bourgeoisie to rid themselves of the feudal and royal encroachments on their personal liberty, commercial prospects, and the ownership of property. The extent of the bourgeoisie revolution in England is framed by one history book as “England, Towards a Bourgeois Monarchy”.[3]
In tandem with the bourgeoisie revolution was another major Sagittarius archetype – international travel and affairs. This sub-age saw the flowering of the great joint-stock companies which emerged in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe which served a leading role in spurring on global commerce and colonization. The two most famous companies were the English East India Company and the Dutch East India Company – both from Protestant countries. The end result of the bourgeoisie revolution was the beginning of the Industrial Revolution leading to the greatest economic boom and population explosion the world has ever experienced.
The Scorpio Revolution
The two signs strongly related to revolution are Aquarius and Scorpio, so any Scorpio sub-age within the Age of Aquarius is going to be highly revolutionary, and this sub-age lived up to its archetype. The great revolution of the Scorpio sub-age was the Workers’ Revolution who basically took on the baton from the bourgeoisie and virtually eliminated western aristocracy in a little over a century. The plight of workers at the beginning of the Scorpio sub-ages was pitiful. The first excesses of the Industrial Revolution had created factories involving long hours, child workers, dangerous conditions and low pay while too many bourgeoisie owners behaved like Scrooge McDuck.
At the beginning of this sub-age in 1791, almost the whole of western society remained firmly under control of monarchs and the aristocracy with the
bourgeoisie making great inroads – the USA being the key exception to monarchy. By 1970, only vestiges of monarchs remained.
However, the workers were not just against the aristocracy, they were also against the bourgeoisie – the owners of businesses. The key year was 1848 when there were a series of political upheavals throughout Europe. It remains the most widespread revolutionary wave in European history. As a result, significant lasting reforms included the abolition of serfdom in Austria and Hungary, the end of absolute monarchy in Denmark, and the introduction of parliamentary democracy in the Netherlands. Austria and Prussia eliminated feudalism by 1850, improving the lot of the peasants. European middle classes made political and economic gains over the next 20 years; France retained universal male suffrage. Russia would later free the serfs on February 19, 1861.
A key expression of the Workers Revolution was trade unions. They were banned in the UK in 1799 and severely repressed until 1824. More permanent trade unions were established in the UK from the 1850s. They were finally legalised in 1872 (in the UK).
The working class was not content to just being limited to forming trade unions, it was from the excess of extremists elements of the working class that brought the Russian Revolution in 1917 resulting in the communisation of much of the Eurasian land mass by 1950. The workers finally got rid of the nobles, bourgeoisie and church – but this excess has been brought back to earth not long after the arrival of the Libra sub-age in 1970. Nevertheless, something that is never taught in schools is that under the Scorpio sub-age (1791 – 1970), the biggest revolution the world has ever experienced took place.
The Libra Revolution
Each of the above revolutions arrived due to mass discontent of a significant part of western society against limitations and strictures placed upon them. The limitations usually come from entrenched anti-democratic forces. If history is any guide, then the current Libra sub-age (1970 – 2148) should produce another “revolution”. However what kind of revolution will Libra produce, as it is not a zodiacal sign renown for revolutionary intensity? It may be better to say “evolution” in place of “revolution” but with the understanding that the result is the same – a major change in direction against an entrenched force.
What are the problems that exist in western society that require an evolution/revolution to fix? It is not hard to see what the problem is – it is the agenda of most western nations promoting extremists capitalism. The role of capitalism in the world today represents the opposite extreme of communism of the last century which was in reality extremist socialism. Capitalism places money at the top of the totem pole, and this has resulted in the ongoing expansion of climate change due to out-of-control pollution in all of its forms and guises. It has also produced a ridiculous situation whereby as of 2015, the richest 1% of the world’s population now owns 50% of its total wealth.[4]
What many people are ignorant about is that when the first western democracy appeared in Ancient Greece (appropriately under the influence of the last Aquarius sub-age), the Athenians were not looking for democracy, they were just looking for a way to prevent utter chaos in their society due to the shenanigans of the rich.
The Libra revolution is firmly in place – it started with the Peace movement, hippies and the appearance of post-modernism in the 1960’s and 70’s. So powerful and noticeable was this period that it is taken as granted in the American media that the 1960’s and 70’s was the Age of Aquarius with many contemporary writers and media articles waxing lyrical about the Age of Aquarius as if it was a 20 year age! The 1960’s and 70’s was not the beginning of the Age of Aquarius but the high-point of the Scorpio sub-age and overflow (1791 – 1970 – 2148). Both Scorpio and Aquarius are revolutionary signs, so the revolutionary energies are high (pun not intended).
We are not looking at a violent and turbulent revolution because Libra is in the mix. Not only does the Libra sub-age begin in 1970, coinciding with the
Scorpio sub-age overflow, but we are also slowly approaching the high-point of the massive Libra age-decan and overflow (1433 – 2148 – 2863) and Libra is opposite in nature to violent Aries. Violent Aries is in for a surprise as Libra grows in strength, as aggression and violence will be replaced by peace and harmony, but not necessarily agreement. We can expect a bi-polar world of some sort or another, probably split between totalitarian and democratic states with China at the apex of the totalitarian model (China also has a strong association with Libra). We can also expect by the middle of the 22nd century that western nations will be relatively split between environmentalists with progressive agendas and died-in-the-wool capitalists keen to make a profit, but more constrained than the current free wheeling extreme capitalism that is currently running the world.
We are not going to see a perfect world (if such a thing is remotely possible), but a world that has been further tweaked, in the same way that the previous three sub-ages have seriously tweaked western society. One of the reasons why so many people feel anguish at the current state of affairs in the world is that a small but significant percentage of western society has moved their heads into the new reality. From the perspective of the new reality, the current situation of an anachronistic billionaire at the helm of the greatest nation in the world is just pure anathema, which combined with the ongoing and accelerating worldwide environmental disaster, billions spent on armaments when many many millions of people still starve and suffer – is just to hard to bear. Major revolutions and evolutions are a multi-century affairs, and those that have the new consciousness will need to include patience and forbearance into their psychological outlook.
The outlook and consciousness of the standard bearers for change in western society will also evolve and develop over the coming century and more. Some years ago a came across the small movement that promoted non-aggressive communication, which was looked upon like veganism as just being an idealistic extremist agenda with little of no relevance for the wider society. Recently, I also heard an interesting personal outlook for the new age that is developing that went something like this:
Do not offend anyone.
Do not take offence from anyone.
Do not retaliate or take revenge against anyone that has offended you.
This kind of outlook is the harbinger of the world that is coming. It is a recipe for harmony, understanding and consciousness. It will not be a perfect world, but it will resolve some or many of the problems and injustices that remain prevalent in the world. Most science fiction writers, novels and movies get the future completely wrong. The common Hollywood expectation is either a world with more advanced technology in a corporate fascist environment or a post-apocalyptic world with numerous hardships and privations in an environment of survival of the fittest or most dangerous. Neither of these two scenarios align with the current growing strength of Libra in the world.
I have been writing about the good news of where the world is heading for some time, but we will only see the early stages. Already the LGBT community is experiencing the benefits of this change, and the ongoing equalization of the sexes has made another step forward in the Me-Too movement. If you are focused upon where we are going, and avoid focusing upon the inequities in the world carried forward from the past, the world suddenly becomes a better place in your personal bubble.
Some of my previous posts on where the world is heading are listed below:
Females, Women and Feminists in the Age of Aquarius
Will New Agers Rule the World?
The Future of Capitalism in the Age of Aquarius
A Celebration 7,000 Years in the Making
Gemini’s Role in our Modern World (or Battle of the Brains)
Is the World a Calamity in Progress?
The Real Revolution in the USA
Note: the above was adopted from an article published in the FAA Journal Volume 47 No. 3, June 2017 published by the Federation of Australian Astrologers
References
[1] Nicholas Campion, “The Dawn of Astrology”, Continuum, London, 2008 p.74
[2] “The Collins Atlas of World History”, London, 1987, p 158
[3] “The Collins Atlas of World History”, London, 1987, p 156
[4] Daniel Bentley, “The top 1% now owns half the world’s wealth”, Fortune, Oct 15, 2015, http://fortune.com/2015/10/14/1-percent-global-wealth-credit-suisse/
Demystifying the Aquarian Age 
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