The Arrival of a New Era

In what has already been a tumultuous year, this December the last grain of sand runs out in an hourglass that has been running the show for the last 200 years, and on the solstice we enter fully into a new paradigm. This year was the end, next year is the fallout of that end and the beginning of what comes next for generations to come. Find out more in this months journey.

One of the many benefits of taking astrology seriously is that it is a powerful tool for placing history in context, whether that history is our own or that of the world. The relentless march of time from seconds to hours, then days, weeks, months, years, decades and centuries challenges us to make sense out of the sequence of events by perceiving meaningful patterns in them. Historians do this all the time – the Stone Age, the Iron Age, the Bronze Age, etc. – because it is a way of placing large periods of time into a common framework that illustrates what they are generally about. Astrology has proved itself to be accurate and reliable as a method of organizing periods of history into such meaningful frameworks; I won’t argue that here, I would just point to the large body of work I have already written illustrating this at this site. I will point out however the little-known fact that up until about 500 years ago, there was an academically recognised method of the study of history that made explicit use of astrology in this way. It fell out of favour in the academic community along with astrology as a whole, but until then it was taken very seriously and was largely seen as complementary, just another way of looking at history – instead of a linear chronology of time, this view of history depicted time as being cyclical and periodic like the seasons of nature.

Astrologically, 2020 has been a year heavy with the energy of discord, division, death and endings – the pileup of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto in Capricorn, along with an extended 6 months of Mars in Aries (while Eris is also there), as I explained earlier this year, brought on the Coronavirus pandemic, enforced isolation, lock-downs and attendant financial disasters, probably the most divisive election contest in history and overall a rapid destabilization of world order. I also pointed out in a later article that 2021 is strongly influenced by a turning point energy that represents the emergence of new paradigms and the struggle for dominance between them. In this article we’re going to really pan out and look at a massive cycle that gives us the big picture and reveals that this turning point is the kick-off for what will take place over the next two centuries. In light of this information, what has happened this year can be seen as the last chapter of the last 200 years of our history, while 2021 is page 1 of the next. If humanity survives this 200 year period, which is definitely in question, we will not recognise it anymore. I will speculate on what is coming, but honestly the writing is already on the wall for those who know how to read it.

For now, just imagine you are transported back to the early 1800s. There are no cars, no electricity, few machines, people live mostly private, sequestered and rural lives, they are mostly still producing their own food and they do not have a lot of material things beyond what they need for survival, if they even have that. Notice the massive material change between their lives and yours now (just look at your kitchen or your bookshelf or your bathroom or whatever you are reading this on). For reasons that will be explained, the 200 years since then have their growth characterised as ‘slow, simple, plodding, steady, predictable, measurable’. Now, imagine that same degree of 200 years of change was instead characterised as “unrelenting, swift, complicated, dizzying, immeasurable, unpredictable, uncontainable” and you can start to see that what we are moving into makes those past changes pale in comparison. That’s the scale of events we are moving towards. Yes, we have already experienced a taste of that in recent decades with the arrival of the microchip, but that was just the setup for what is to come, and in fact the framework provided by astrology actually accounts for this rapid period as the last 60 years have been a transitional phase between the slower and more predictable and controllable energy of the outgoing cycle, and the newer, more breathtaking pace of the incoming one. In other words, the last 60 years, which have seen rapid change at an unprecedented rate, was all just a preview. We are about to go into top gear.

SYNODIC CYCLES

So what are we talking about here? We are talking, fundamentally, about something called synodic cycles, the period of time between one conjunction and another that is also involving the same two bodies. The cycle of the phases of the Moon is a synodic cycle, it begins at the New Moon and ends at the next New Moon. That’s all there is to it, really. The synodic cycle of Mars and Neptune, for example, is measured from one conjunction of Mars and Neptune to the next.

For obvious reasons it is the fastest moving planet of the two which will determine the length of time any particular synodic cycle will last. A cycle involving two very fast planets, for example Mercury and Venus, will be very short compared to one involving two very slow ones like Neptune and Pluto. It is also important to keep in mind that a synodic cycle is not the same as an orbit around the Sun, even when one of the planets involved in the synodic cycle is the Sun. An example can help you to visualise this. Imagine that the Sun and Mars are conjunct at 0° of Aries. Mars takes about 2 1/2 years to go all the way through all 12 signs. The Sun is faster and will go through all 12 signs in 1 year. Since it is the faster of the two, the synodic cycle will use its position to determine the next conjunction. The Sun in this example will steadily break away from Mars moving ahead of it in the zodiac at a regular pace, while Mars itself will move away from 0° of Aries at a slower pace until it goes retrograde and then direct again just before and after it is near the opposition with the Sun. Exactly one year from the conjunction, when the Sun returns to 0° of Aries, Mars will have moved on in the zodiac and so the Sun will have to go some extra distance before it can make a conjunction again. It will maybe take 14 or 15 months between one Sun/Mars conjunction and the next, not 12.

If a fast moving planet goes retrograde and returns to conjunct a slower moving one, that does not count as a cycle, just an extended beginning – the faster moving planet must orbit the zodiac and approach the slower moving object from the other side. So if Venus happens to go retrograde after a conjunction with Jupiter and conjoin with it a second and third time before moving away, that is just an intense and extended beginning to that cycle. Venus must go all the way around the Sun/zodiac, and approach Jupiter a fresh time before the cycle ends.

Assuming this is clear, the synodic cycle we are talking about here is the cycle of Jupiter and Saturn, with Jupiter being the faster moving planet. In other words it is the period of time between one conjunction of Jupiter to Saturn and the next. This works out as around 20 years, so the last Jupiter Saturn conjunction was in the year 2000, the one before that in 1980 and so on.

As I’ve explained in my book and throughout this journal, Jupiter and Saturn represent the march or mediation of the natural order. The 26 Keys says:

“The cycles of these two planets are approximately 12 and 28-30 years respectively, which means their focus is broader in terms of human experience, and they have more permanent effects as a result. The influences of the inner worlds and the Lights are often transient and pass in a matter of days or hours, while those of the Giants are self sustaining and enduring structures that stride across years of time. Hence, they are the principle players in the creation of material, astral and physical structures which have endured through time, including religions, sciences, nations, governments, cultures and philosophies. They bring about the continual emergence of these things through the ability to build one thing upon another, inflating them like gas balloons. They concern themselves mostly with building the individuality in the human being rather than the personality which is more the province of the solid inner worlds, but these distinctions are generalizations and not rules. All our astrology goes into a complex and is unified by us.
The fundamental property that these two planets share is their staging of the individuals life into discrete, measurable phases which give the larger whole a context of development. They give an overarching form and structure to life through which it is supported, expanded and given a fundamental shape. They allow the general meaning of experience to be apprehended because their patterns are so broad, and in doing this as time goes by they place our individual experience into a wider context, a context which opens the way for the outer worlds to manifest themselves.
Thus, both of these worlds can be regarded as the mediators of the natural order because they ensure that the development of the individual and personality (Lights and inner worlds) is kept in equilibrium with the laws of the greater universe (outer worlds) and that there is continuous growth and crystallization of this process.”

Operating together these two planets create the two fundamental concepts at play in nature, that of growth and decay, expansion and contraction, the Electric and the Magnetic. Through Jupiter the natural order is nurtured through commonality (I am like you, just as this flower likes to grow near this tree), a larger implicit order (the awareness that we are part of something bigger than ourselves) and the magnitude of possibility being expanded ever more as things pile up sequentially (the snowball effect), leading them to become more than the sum of their parts. It provides whatever is truly necessary for fresh growth. Through Saturn the natural order is given form and structure, it is the vehicle that processes time and an understanding, ultimately, of the laws which govern physical existence, fundamentally of cause and effect, the fact that we cannot run from or escape the consequences of the past, but must eventually face it and deal with it, often at a degree magnified by the fear of running from what we do not want to accept. It provides whatever is necessary for our maturity. In essence, Jupiter and Saturn are new opportunity and the consequences of the past. They are the energy that turns the Great Wheel of Fortune, its fixed centre and spokes and its ever revolving rim, the roots and trunk of a tree and its many leaves and branches. It is no accident that Jupiter is connected to Fire and Water signs and Saturn to Air and Earth, so that between them all 4 Elements are represented.

Viewing Jupiter and Saturn as contradictory forces is what often leads to problems in interpretations involving them – the classic question is, does the expansion or the limitation, the optimistic faith or realistic expectations dominate the outcome? Here the problem is that they are being viewed as contradictory forces in the first place when in fact they are more complementary, as the example of the tree makes clear. With a conjunction between these two there is a moment in which opportunity and karma align themselves, a time in which doors open in both directions, from the past and into the future. We close doors behind us – that is the ending and limitation brought by Saturn – as we open up new doors with fresh opportunity (to either repeat the same mistakes on a bigger stage, or to truly start over on a different long term path) – the abundant growth of Jupiter. They will not cancel one another out. They will kiss and hold hands. Some planets do resist one another’s embrace, but not these two. The deeper reality is that we are the divisive agent in this conjunction, for we have created a world of ‘haves’ and ‘have nots/have nothing’, as a consequence (karma) of our attempt to be absolute masters of the natural order.

What these planets bring with each conjunction is a new 20 year mini era, as can be seen by first the rise of mobile and internet technologies from 2000-2020, and the rise of home computers from the 1980s-2000. Before then, the rise of electronic appliances from the 1960s-1980s. In modern times these mini areas are often connected with new technology because our entire concept of progress in global culture is so technological, but in previous times (as well as in the more modern ones although this has been less influential) philosophy, theology, culture, art and politics have been catalysts.

THE GREAT CYCLE

Before delving into what this new conjunction looks like bringing, we have to pause so that I can explain why this particular conjunction is so significant. Through the natural marvel that is the orbital harmonic between these two planets there is an overall pattern to these conjunctions. Simply put, every conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn for a period of 200 years will take place in only one of the 4 Elements. So, all conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn will take place within a Fire sign for 200 years, and then they will move on and take place only within an Earth sign for the next 200 years, before cycling next to Air signs and finally Water signs. This is an 800 year cycle where conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn take place in each of the 4 Elements in turn.

There is also a transition period involved. Towards the end of a particular 200 year period in which the conjunction takes place in one Element, it will begin to appear in the next Element, planting the seeds of what will come. So while the conjunction takes place in Fire signs it will eventually begin to take place in Earth signs, with one conjunction still being 20 years apart from the previous one but broken up between the Fire and Earth signs. This transition period lasts several decades. During transition, the old order is failing and being eroded or undermined. Eventually the conjunction will no longer take place in the old Element and will only take place in the new one for over a century before the next transition period begins.

And that’s what’s happening now: we have reached the end of a 200 year cycle of Jupiter and Saturn conjunctions in the Earth signs, the Earth to Air transition period we started in 1961 is drawing to an end and the conjunction on December 21, 2020 will be in Air and thereafter followed only by conjunctions in Air, the next one in 20 years from now. The time of the Earth Element ended this year. That is a 200 year period of our history that has just concluded, and a new 200 year era is here, one that is dominated by the Air Element.

Additionally, for this conjunction they will be super close. If you look west about an hour after sunset on December 21st this year, you will see Jupiter and Saturn shining brightly in the left eye of Capricornus (as shown at the top of this post as well as below):

You have to go back to March 4 1226 (the previous Air sequence) to see a closer alignment between Jupiter and Saturn than this one, and back then you had to get up early to view them in the east before dawn. They were also in tropical Aquarius/constellation Capricornus. On Dec. 21st they will be separated by less than 1/5th the width of a Full Moon and appear like a double planet, allowing those with telescopes to view them both and all of their moons in a single field of view. The next time this degree of closeness occurs is 2080, then not until after 2400.

Here is this Great Cycle from recent history along with some notes on the changes produced from these times –

Water Sequence
120 year transition from Air began: Dec 25 1305
Main period: Feb 14 1425 – May 3 1583 (158 years). During the main period the conjunctions take place in 1425, 1444, 1464, 1484, 1504, 1524, 1544, 1563 and 1583.
80 yr transition to Fire until: Oct 17 1663. During the transition conjunctions take place in 1603 (Fire), 1623 (Fire) and 1643 (Water).
The Renaissance. Flowering of religious humanism, rediscovery of Greek philosophy, development of perspective in painting, movable type, De Vinci, Michaelangelo.

Fire Sequence
80 yr. transition began: May 3 1583
Main period: Oct 17 1663 – Nov 5 1782 (119 yrs). During the main period the conjunctions take place in 1663, 1682/3, 1702, 1723, 1742, 1762 and 1782.
60 year transition to Earth until: Jan 26 1842. During the transition conjunctions take place in 1802 (Earth), 1821 (Fire) and 1842 (Earth).
Age of Enlightenment/Rise of New World (America), era of bold discovery and conquest, Newton, Descartes, Bacon, rise of secular powers and violent revolutions.

Earth Sequence
60 year transition began: Nov 5 1782
Main period: Jan 26 1842 – Feb 19 1961 (119 years). During the main period the conjunctions take place in 1842, 1861, 1881, 1901, 1921, 1940 and 1961.
60 year transition to Air until: Dec 21 2020. During the transition conjunctions take place in 1980/1 (Air), 2000 (Earth) and 2020 (Air).
Age of Industry, Capitalism and Materialism. Rise of mass agricultural farming, population, urbanization, the stock market, corporations and political powers and nation states.

Air Sequence
60 year transition began: Feb 19 1961
Main period: Dec 21 2020 – Jan 14 2140 (120 yrs). During the main period the conjunctions take place in 2020, 2040, 2060, 2080, 2100, 2119 and 2140.
60 year transition to Water until: Nov 1 2219. During the transition conjunctions take place in 2159 (Water), 2179 (Air), 2199 (Air) and 2219 (Water).
Age of what is to come.

Earth so aptly categorizes the last 200 years of our history, an era where money and material power have been the chief currency of the natural order of life. As the Earths resources dwindle, however, and we move into a new era, the conjunction next month heralds the moment at which something less tangible displaces it as the power-broker. That is the first thing to take note of – this conjunction heralds the end of the current Earth powered paradigm and the beginning of a far less tangible, dependable and predictable one. Earth can be contained, weighed, it has substance, but Air is nebulous, weightless and without form. Things are about to get far less concrete and far more runaway and fluid. The rate and even the direction of human development is going to get very slippery. Just as we have seen a rapid and dizzying pace to life during the transition period with the introduction of world changing technology, that stream is now going to become a tsunami. Each decade will bring greater change and more innovation and novelty than the last. And all of this is going to change our brains, our intellectual capacity, our thinking and ideas, our scientific and technological paradigm, our forms of communication and transportation, our societies and all the things connected to Air.

It is a huge shift, and opens up plenty to talk about. Firstly, Aquarius is an Air sign, and so questions will inevitably arise for astrology about whether or not this is the beginning of the fabled age of Aquarius, a much longer 2000+ year period made popular by the Hippie movement. Actually, this is as good a time as any (there are others) to mark that period as “beginning”, I see this shift as a kick-off for something that will indeed shape the next two millennia. How it will shape our future is less clear but the analogy of the Air Element as it applies to the current state of the world provides us with many, many signposts as to what to expect in the next two centuries, should we manage to survive them.

In the short term what we can expect is that the technologies which are only now just beginning to filter into our world will have become commonplace in the next two decades. The first thing that comes to mind for me is household robots. They are already visible in society (as cleaners and gardeners) and will now diversify and develop to become as universal as mobile phones are. The same with personal flying drones, smart homes and devices, more advanced positioning technology, targeted infomercials, virtual reality, 3D audio and so on. This may also be about the arrival of early personal quantum computing. Major advances in A.I. also seem to be imminent, Siri being the prototype of others soon to come.

Many of these technologies raise questions about the future role of humanity itself. The Air Element is the most human Element of the 4 – Fire signs are represented by four-footed creatures, Water signs by many legged or no legged creatures, Earth signs are represented by one humanoid, one four-footed creature and one hybrid with two hooves and a fish-tail. By contrast, Gemini has two people, Aquarius has one human figure, and Libra is an object crafted and operated by human hands. This is, I think, a strong sign that humanity itself is one of the most important points of long term change over the next two centuries. Especially given the influence of conjunctions in Aquarius which start the whole sequence off, there is a high chance that this is the beginning of a transhumanist era in which we will redefine what being human is through genetic, technological and scientific breakthroughs. The arrival of more and more advanced forms of A.I. and robotic life also challenges the role of human beings in the natural order, not just physically – they could outlive us and be way smarter than we are – but more existentially it forces us to confront such philosophical questions as the nature of free will and the soul, whether slavery of non-biological life is not just more slavery, the nature of consciousness and intelligence, whether or not robotic minds can feel how things are and form astral bonds, even the apparently solid nature of reality itself. We may also discover the first forms of non-terrestrial life, or even find ourselves in contact with another intelligent civilisation. Both of these things would be revolutionary in terms of our understanding of what humans are and the questions we ask.

Air is also the Element of conveyance, of movement and transportation. One of the more obvious calls to make here is that the time of the electric car or some other form of vehicle has arrived. Yet we will likely also see the rapid development of space exploration and space tourism as well as new ways of transporting things from one place to another generally, such as the teleportation of data from one computer system to another without any intervening medium by a quantum entanglement. We must not overlook 3-D printers here either, a technology which by itself would fundamentally change all of our lives. If the world of 20 years from now is a world of printed goods it is just another way in which information has become the new currency, since physical objects will have their properties and values literally written into code. This code will be the thing that is bought and sold, it will be the new currency that represents the physical thing being purchased or sold in the same way that physical cash and coins have done so until now. The era of the Air Element also strongly signposts the rise of electronic currency or cryptocurrency in some form, as well as alerting us to the possibility of extremely revolutionary forms of currency such as social credit.

Here we can begin to uncover some of the darkness that lies in wait, at least potentially. If this coming age is to be an age of information where data is the most valuable form of currency, then who are the emerging giants? They are those companies with access to the most information – Apple, Google, Amazon, YouTube, Facebook and their coming descendants. Recently I read that in just one day, Google alone collect enough data on us that if you printed it out as a single sentence it would extend to the Moon and back, three times. I’m not sure if it’s true, it sounds about right, but even if it’s not it will be. This massive cache of information is just going to increase in value and worth. The age of information threatens to be an age of super surveillance, as many people are now waking up to. Totalitarianism, the total control of a society with complete subservience to the state by its people, is one of the threats we face as we navigate this period. Normalization of the practice of uploading your life, from the private to the trivial, will eventually take root in a future generation and people are in danger of voluntarily giving away all the information that will then be used to control their behaviour. With smart devices and smart homes, we may lose almost all or all privacy – it’s possible that future generations will always be potentially watched, even when sitting on the toilet. And worse, they may well think that this is ok, just the way things are. They will have been told that it is the way it is now, educated into that way of thinking by the media that surrounds them. The only way to have a private thought in such a society may well be to write it down in the old style when no one is looking, but you might want to burn it afterwards. The moment you speak it out loud, someone will have recorded it. If we also allow for the existence of nanotechnology and biotechnology, people will certainly begin recording their own lives for consumption online. Couple that with virtual reality technology and you may actually be able to live through a day in someone else’s life as entertainment or education.

The overlap between the new technologies that are dawning is the space in which we find the most unpredictability. Each one of them is unpredictable in its effects, but it is the combination of these things together that creates the complex and complicated scenarios bubbling with questions that are the core dynamic of the Air Element. How, for example, will the emergent technology of virtual reality affect our space exploration? What about robots and AI in the same field? What about cloning technology, biotech and genetic engineering, how will that interact with advanced AI and the questions it raises about consciousness, and how will it interact with electronic currency, will we all be altered at birth? The big question is, how far down these potential roads will we allow ourselves to go? The Air Element raises more questions than it answers, but it raises new, fresh and divisive riddles that require a clear head and a cold assessment of the facts.

This is an important area to understand if we are to collectively and individually navigate through this transition and provide strong guidance for generations ahead of us. The Air Element furnishes us with an abundance of intellectual data and knowledge, not just facts but also opinions, as well as ideologies that build themselves around specific ideas and also everything connected to the mind itself and how the human mind is individually like a fractal representation of the mind of society. However it does not provide much guidance morally, in fact it introduces moral conundrums and puzzles on a much greater scale, paradoxes and riddles which we encounter as we muddle our way through a labyrinth, a maze of complicated ethics, conspiracy theories and debates without ever having a reliable, dependable map, and its largely this confusing and chaotic journey that changes us the most.

With the Air Element, you have to remain detached and objective in order to assess information without the bias of your personal stuff putting it in a particular frame. You have to be considerate of concepts like what constitutes adequate evidence, the value of witness testimony, the balance of facts and your sources of information. When it comes to communicating your opinion you have to clearly label when something is your opinion or provide evidence for it if you claim it as factual, and you have to carefully choose the words you use to communicate the information you have to others. All of this is especially true as we move into a far more interconnected world as far as communication is concerned. The sheer amount of data that we will be forced to deal with on a daily basis will just exponentially increase, when it is already at a rate most of us find impossible to deal with today. This infoglut not only makes it easier for us to find out things that we want to know about, it can also devalue the meaning of all information, because it makes it that much harder for us to decide what is true. If we hear on one day that a particular study says X, and only a day later another study says -X, the information in both studies is called into question.

The point I’m making here is that too much information is a classic problem of the Air Element which in human individuals often renders them incapable of making decisions and turns them into little chaos machines for everything they come into contact with. These 3 signs escalate and complicate situations by adding options and more options, with the exception of Libra that tries to pacify and settle situations diplomatically, but Libra is also beset with indecisiveness because it is concerned with truth and fairness as well as equality and social justice – of the 3 Air signs, Libra is the one that tries to weigh the consequences of its choices, and this weighing can paralyze it.

We should also remember that these are divisive and argumentative signs that could split society into damaging cliques, subcultures and ideological factions – the potential for greater social interaction, justice and freedom is definitely there, but so too are the dehumanizing potentials that drive rifts into society. A great deal depends on whether we can learn to listen to one another again. It does no good if the badge someone is wearing or even seeming to wear means that we will not listen to them because we have reached the foregone conclusion that they must be wrong. There is no way to resolve disagreements this way.

This is a tricky path for us at the moment. The idea of free speech is very much of concern to the Air Element, and we see this idea coming up more and more in social issues and discussions alongside debate on what may or may not be ‘fake news’. Frequently I come across the notion that some things cannot be said, or just as frequently that someone’s free speech is being impinged when there is a strong reaction to it. Often the entities making these decisions are the same entities that are gathering all the information I talked about, and nobody has elected them to be arbiters of truth, while the people who complain about their free speech being shut down are seen trying to shut it down in others, and/or do not understand that the right to free speech does not include being able to say whatever you like with zero consequences. Regardless of what you may feel or think about the opinions voiced by some people, the fact that they can be banned and de-platformed in such a powerful way by any of these corporate entities or by peer pressure should be of concern to you. It might be an opinion that you disagree with now, but tomorrow it may be yours. Trial by social media and by big tech seems to also be a looming threat we must contend with.

There is another reason why this should be of concern to us, however, one that relates to the potential of the Air Element to bring about advanced forms of mind control, as well as the knowledge of how to break it. We already see the use that information technology has in mind control techniques – the ability to potentially influence national elections in the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal, for example – so we can only imagine the potential power it will have in the future. The amount of data these entities already have on you is probably more than you have on yourself, including the ability to accurately profile your personality, predict your habits and even to shape your behaviour, especially your commercial behaviour. Increasingly they control the media that we all consume as well, with mass media like television and cable networks struggling to keep up with the sheer amount of content that social media giants and the Internet produces every day. Essentially we are seeing the emergence of media giants who are also powerful information brokers in possession of a massive mindmap of the human race that continuously updates itself for them. If we add to this already dangerous picture the presence of powerful technology in the hands of everyone that can produce computer generated disinformation of any kind along with the potential for factional rifts and cliquishness, we begin to see the confusing time that is before us. It is going to become very difficult to separate fact from fiction and equally difficult to resist the many attempts to control your thinking by filling your mind with sets of powerful signals and data that have been carefully and intentionally shaped to produce a certain reaction.

This is how the mind control works – it knows you better than you know yourself, at least on some levels, and uses that advanced information to predict how to cause a certain reaction in you, for example the urge to get mad when you see a certain narrative or phrase. It relies on you being triggered by the information that you receive. By pushing a specific button in you, it elicits a predictable and intentional result. Once you have been triggered in the desired way, your actions have become controllable along with your thoughts and emotions. This is how it works with online trolls, big business, and mass media.

So this is how the mind control is broken as well – through being able to observe yourself, through knowing yourself well enough you can perceive how and when you are being triggered, you will be able to detach (there’s the key Air Element quality again) from your emotional reaction and can then elect to make up your own mind. Very simply, by maintaining an intellectual detachment from the information that is presented to you, you shield yourself from the mind control because it is dependent on you not having such intellectual detachment, dependent on you being a slave to your own habitual programs. A cold, rational assessment of the information is also the only way to sift the facts from the not so factual. Thus, the natural order will teach us all the need for this detachment in our dealings with one another, with our governments and authorities and in our interactions with the information we receive. We will need to become more intellectual, rational and clinical in order to counter the attempts at mass and individually targeted mind control, but as a consequence we risk a mad maze of abstractions while losing touch with the significance of feelings and emotions, developing a lack of empathic connection that leaves us increasingly isolated where it counts. We already see steadily increasing problems with forming resilient emotional connections in everyone born since the transition period, but very clearly in the teenagers of today. They are connecting with digital personas and online activities and losing the habit of building physical connections. Imagine the same trend with holograms or VR and AI you can have a full blown conversation with, perhaps never even knowing that it is not another human being.

Education is another key notion that connects to the Air Element, since it is the way in which we disseminate knowledge throughout society. The traditional, Earth Element system of education has been attendance in state run or private schools, colleges and universities – institutions which have been run by central bodies and authorities and which have a clear hierarchy and system. That seems set to fade into the sunset too, the reason being that such a system is unable to keep up with the rapid pace of progress and development that the information age and the age of technology is going to bring about. The pandemic and the lockdowns of 2020 have definitely shoved us firmly in the direction of transmitting education through the Internet, both for children and adults, and I imagine that this is now going to become more and more normal. In a way this makes sense as no school library can compete with the vast archive on the Internet, an archive that updates itself for free, but we have to be aware of the slippery slope that ultimately leads to all children being taught by nonhuman artificial intelligences.

In fact it’s the entire notion of an icy slope that we have to beware of throughout this era, as the developments and discoveries that we make all have the potential to run out of our control and create nightmare scenarios of chaos and confusion. Part of the nature of the Air Element is that it is elusive, and during this era we experience a growing inability to grasp the bull by the horns or take control of the reins. Unlike a path laid upon the ground that winds through distinct regions or terrain in sequence – first we go over the mountain, then through the forest, across the plain, and then the desert – a path through the air may go in any direction it likes, circling around if it goes off course, and it has an elevated perspective that sees the map of all the terrain laid out in a patchwork but does not take in any of the ground zero level details. From this perspective the devil really is in the details, and this is yet another reason why we must develop attention to the specific details and facts involved in things before we make a judgment about it. A lack of practical acumen is very dangerous when you are inundated with new information, it means you are likely to get lost in endless analysis and abstraction.

A case in point is astrology itself. There is no getting away from the fact that astrology is very much connected to the Air Element. It is the art of drawing analogy between the sky and earthly things, and the law of analogy is a property of the Air Element. Additionally, Aquarius is often cited as the sign most directly connected with astrology because it is symbolised by a human figure pouring a libation from the stars upon the earth. We have only to look at how astrology has been changed by the microchip during the 60 year transition period in order to see that it is one of the things being directly impacted by this shift. Before software and computer programs, all charts were calculated and crafted by hand, sometimes with a calculator. Astrology software not only changed this it made it possible for astrologers to generate vast quantities of data, some of which had been previously impossible or too impractical to generate. Additionally it allowed astrologers to begin talking to one another in a way that was unprecedented. On top of all this comes the discovery of many new objects within the solar system, some of which have significant size, and more recently a rise in popularity among the young with the influx of a vibrant new generation of astrologers who have grown up with the new technology. Simply put, the information age is changing astrology, and it will continue to, but it risks getting lost in abstractions and confusing innovations from the massive infodump (new objects) and advances in tech. This may ultimately be the end of the two-dimensional chart as we know it, since advanced computers and AI may find new and more engaging ways of presenting visualizations of the solar system, possibly involving virtual reality or holograms. It seems that the astrology of 200 years from now and perhaps even the astrology of 20 years from now will be very different. It won’t be the only thing!

Clearly these are revolutionary times that we are moving into, and while there will be some things that happen simultaneously and suddenly the slow pace of both Jupiter and Saturn also takes its time to play its cards. What we can expect in the next 20-40 years are multiple springboards that propel us suddenly into this new era, especially next year and around 2040, probably spearheaded by individual humans or groups of humans such as entrepreneurs, inventors and radical pressure groups. Further ahead we may witness the end of capitalism as we know it (though things historical always continue to exist in reduced form), but as to what will replace it, that is something we have to answer together. By being aware that we are moving into an era where the danger of mind control and super surveillance is very real, we may be able to circle around it from above and chart a different course, one that truly embodies the virtues of the Air Element – clarity, objectivity, true intelligence, equality, wisdom, the ability to ask the right questions and an awakened mind that perceives the interconnectedness of all things.

So, – mote it be!