The Cosmic Story of Our Times

The Cosmic Story of Our Times

            Many people feel there is nothing we can do to change course, sure that we are headed for destruction.  They turn to The Book of Revelation, or the Prophesies of Nostradamus, Edgar Cayce and now 2012, and believe that the end of the world is upon us.   At the same time, other people are turning to a personal spiritual path for answers to the pressing concerns in their lives.  Whether people turn to non-traditional or fundamentalist religions, tarot readers or E. T. channelings, Native American, Wiccan, Western or Eastern mysticism, there is a feeling that we are approaching a crisis point and the world as we know it will never be the same.  If movies are any indication of collective apocalyptic fantasies, then we are projecting vast destruction coming at us from the rest of the universe. 

            Aside from older movies such as E.T. and Star Trek, these new stories tell us that either space rocks or exploding stars are about to destroy us or that aliens from outer space want to overwhelm us for some diabolical end.  Or that 2012 will bring the total destruction of our world.  But this lack of imagination cannot be overcome until we become conscious that we are caught up in fears.  We see on the movie screen the projections of the fears of our primitive, reptilian brain, which is trying to overwhelm our fragile civilized consciousness.   These reptilian fears - fight or flight, them or us, life or death – are also represented by the dragon of Revelation, the regressive pull of human unconsciousness and fear, which tries to devour the heavenly Woman and her Child.   The old order is aggressively trying to keep the new life that is being born from growing to maturity, because it does not want to let go of its power. 

     But the natural laws of the earth say that all things must die, so new life can grow.  All of us have a chance to look at our beliefs about life and  the future of our world, for it is our beliefs that control our behavior and allow for new possibilities . . . or not.   Before we begin to create the future, we have to look at what unconscious story is shaping our present consciousness and our world, for it is always the story going on behind the scenes that shapes reality. 

     What story is giving shape to the chaos of our times? 

Many people believe we are living in the End Times, and this belief is shaping personal values and world events. Many other people don’t know what to believe because they don’t have a story to frame what’s going on in their lives.  But our ancestors went through their own chaotic times and there is a memory of it within the collective unconscious, and so within each of us. So whatever our conscious beliefs, this story of the End Times affects all of us, because it has been percolating in the collective unconscious for thousands of years, and so lodged deep within the human psyche.  There is an unconscious archetypal ‘end time’ framework that will use whatever kinds of energies we lend it.  That’s why it’s so important for each of us to use our life energies in a conscious, loving way.  This is how we create the future, because the archetypes are awake and alive within the chaos.  How the energy forms around them will determine what our future looks like.  We have a choice about the outcome.   

We seem to be at the in-between time, a time when the old tide is pulling out and the new is beginning to flow and surge in.  So there are tidal eddies.  As we shift out of the perspective of the religious Piscean Age and into the more secular Age of Aquarius, the still powerful influence of the old religious myths have to be understood if we want to come through this time of chaos and change to create a new reality.  Perhaps this test of getting through the End of the Age is the only way for us to grow up and realize we are meant to be conscious spiritual beings, and that we can either create Heaven here on Earth or destroy life on this planet. 

The Hopi Prophecies

There are many End Time stories from many different cultures.  The Hopi prophecies speak of the emergence of a new world.   The Hopi Nation is the Record Keeper of the Native Americans. The Hopis call this time in history The Fourth Age of Man.  According to them, the earth has been wiped clean three times already.   The first time was by Fire; the second time was by Ice; the third, most recent, time was by the Flood, approximately 11,000-12,000 years ago. According to the Hopis, we are about to enter The Fifth Age called "The World of Illumination".  But before this world can emerge, we will have to go through a purification in which we will be tested to see if we can make a leap in consciousness.  This purification is meant to bring us into balance and peace.  We will all be asked to choose our path: the path of greed and comfort and profit, or the path of love and strength and balance.  The Hopi Prophecy Rock at Oraibi shows the ‘two-hearted’ people, people who think with their heads instead of their hearts.  It is talking about us!   Many native prophecies call for the rebirth of Feminine Spirit to heal the land, and many Native elders point to the birth of two white buffaloes in the last decade as an indication that White Buffalo Woman – the Great Mother goddess – is watching over us in this time of purification.  If our left-brain society, which is oriented to a masculine consciousness of individuality and rationality, and lives in the head, continues to reject the heart – which is feminine and knows by intuition and feeling – then the purification will become self-destruction.   But if we heal ourselves and think with our hearts, the world of illumination will be born.³   This new world comes about because the Woman’s child will doing things differently.

2012 and the Mayan Prophecies

There are other prophecies that speak of the changing of the Ages.  The one people are talking about is based on the Mayan calendar.⁴   The Maya had an incredible understanding of time.  Many Westerns have heard that the Mayan calendar is coming to an end; in fact, we are supposedly in the last year of the calendar.  There is a perception that this means that the end of the world is coming in the year 2012, but this is misleading and once again shows a very Western perception of the ending of things.   We don't value cycles.

            The Mayans tracked cycles within cycles within cycles of time.  Their calendar acted as a harmonic calibrator, linking and coordinating the earthly, lunar, solar and galactic seasons.   The calendar says that a rare astronomical and mythical event will occur on the Winter Solstice of 2012.  On that day, there will be a cosmic alignment between the Earth, Sun, the Pleiades star cluster and the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, called by the Maya the Sacred Tree.  On December 21, 2012, the sun will rise at the center of this Sacred Tree, the womb of the Milky Way galaxy, which represents the World Tree and the Tree of Life.  

 On that day, the Maya predict that all the diverse cycles of time-keeping will simultaneously turn over and start again, vibrating to a new era.  It might even symbolize the end of a Great Year, the 26,000 year cycle that spans the whole zodiac.  This alignment with the center of the Milky Way galaxy will supposedly align Earth with the spiritual intentions of the rest of the galaxy, as well as bringing these placements into alignment with the constellation of the Pleiades, the crown chakra of the galaxy.  While some people believe world-shattering destruction awaits us, the symbolism also tells us that we will receive divine guidance and wisdom.  While this myth does not relieve us of the duty to solve the problems we have created for ourselves, it does say that we will have the help of cosmic energy to create a new world.  As Gregg Braden says:

Fortunately, our ancestors left us everything we need to meet the challenges of a great world age. It's not only about cycles. It's about our ability to recognize patterns and where we are within the cycles. While quantum scientists tell us that we can never predict an exact future, what we can predict are cyclic probabilities for the future. This is precisely what the existence of repeating cycles of time demonstrates. Each time a cycle appears it repeats the general conditions that make something possible, rather than a precise outcome. Just as the conditions in Earth's atmosphere can create the perfect environment for a tornado without ever actually forming one, time's cycles can bring together all of the circumstances that led to an event in history, without that event occurring again in the present.

The key here is that the ingredients for a repetition are present and the situation is "primed." The way those conditions play out, however, is determined by the choices that we make in life. The beauty of such an understanding is that along with the moments in our time that are ripe for war, suffering, and chaos, we can also pinpoint the moments in our future that are ripe for peace, success and stability.

If we know where we are in a cycle, then we know what to expect when it repeats.

To know in advance where our choices can have the greatest impact tips the scales in our favor as we complete the cycle that holds our well-being and, ultimately our survival, in the balance. And that is the beauty of Fractal Time. Because the rhythms and patterns of nature tell us precisely when we can expect the repeating cycles of the past, they also tell us when we have the greatest opportunity to change the hurtful and destructive patterns of the past-the choice points-that create the new cycles of life!⁵
 

The Precession of the Astrological Ages

The ancient Greeks believed in the changing of the Aion, a change that is brought about by the precession of the zodiac, which is caused by the wobble of the Earth’s axis.  This precession causes the vernal (spring) equinox point to slightly shift against the backdrop of the constellations through time: this point, which moves backwards through the constellations, is now at the beginning of the constellation of Pisces and is moving into the constellation of Aquarius, the water-bearer, who pours out a stream of water into a fish’s mouth.   Each age, a period of about 2100 years, brings in a different vibration and energy, reflecting the evolution of human consciousness.  As one age ends and another begins; there is a time of transition, when the energies of both ages mix, causing confusion until things settle down.  According to this theory, we are living in such a time.  

Ray Grasse, in his book on the astrological ages, Signs of the Times,⁶ gives examples of these astrological Ages, past, present and future.  I thought you might like to see how the character of each age is defined by the celestial mythology of the zodiac.

The Age of Taurus (an Earth sign) 4200-2100 BCE, was the age of monumental earthworks and construction.  These Taurean builders achieved an astonishing mastery of matter that has proved durable (like Taurus) down through the ages.  We are still in awe of the Great Pyramid and Stonehenge, which date from this age.  During the age of Taurus the bull was symbolically worshiped as the Egyptian bull-god Apis, as the golden calf of Moses, and by Poseidon’s white bull who fathered the Minotaur in Crete.  The Great Goddess was worshiped in Egypt as Hathor the Golden Cow.  The Earth was sacred and people knew that their prosperity, fertility and very life depended on the Earth.

The Age of Aries (a Fire sign) 2100BCE -1AD, was the age of the warriors from Greece, Persia, India and Israel.  The Great Ram was worshiped in Egypt as well as in Israel. The Golden Fleece was sought by Jason and the Argonauts.   This was the age of the hero, and of the awakening of patriarchal self-awareness that gave form to individual ego consciousness (just like the sign of Aries, which represents the search for self identity).  As the inner consolidation of the human ego took place, outer empires rose and fell.  This was the beginning of the rise of monotheistic religions.  Aries’ cry of “I am” is echoed in the name of the Jewish God Yahweh  “I am that I am”.

We are now at the end of the Age of Pisces (a Water sign),1 - 2100AD, called the Age of Faith, which uses the symbolism of water in its religious beliefs: baptism, walking on water, changing water into wine.  The symbolism of the fishes of Pisces was taken over by the early Christians when they used the sign of the fish to indicate Christ, the fishermen who became apostles, and the eating of fish (the sacred food) on Friday.  Jesus Christ became the god-image of the Piscean Age.  At its best, this Age taught humanity to relate to the divine and to the world in a more emotional way, adding a new element of compassion and faith to society.  The world of the imagination also became important, both in religious experience and in art.  Since the sign consists of two fishes swimming in opposite directions, the negative side of the Piscean Age ushered in dogmatism and persecution in religion.  As a sign concerned with matters of faith, this was an age of religious extremes and intolerance.  Many believed that suffering and guilt (Piscean qualities) were synonymous with spirituality.  It was an age of neurosis, martyrdom and sado-masochism as well as an age in which humanity was learning to transcend the ego and surrender personal desires in service to higher ideals.  The water element at its most refined is concerned with the principles of sacrifice (to make sacred), nurturing, worship and devotion.  Not my will but Thine.   The Piscean Age brought a sense of inwardness, a sense of personal conscience and moral responsibility to the human experience.

The Age of Aquarius, (an Air Sign) 2100-4200AD, is upon us.  Aquarius will be more concerned with Ideals than feelings - an age of the awakening of the Mind and its vast potentials, as well as the urge for true freedom.  We experienced a preview of what this new age will be like when Uranus, the planet that rules Aquarius, transited through Aquarius from 1996-2003.  The giant advances in technology and research, especially in the fields of information and communication, are the first step to creating a unified world. The idea of a global village springs from it. The brilliance of the Aquarian mind reflects the working of the Cosmic Mind.  Mental telepathy and other unexplored talents of the human mind will probably be at our disposal.  In terms of religious beliefs, there will hopefully be tolerance and the knowledge that all paths lead to Spirit.  Hopefully too, science and spirituality will work together to bring us to our human potential.   Carl Jung saw the Age of Aquarius as an age when the Archetypes are lived consciously by humanity.    There is the possibility that if we can stand up for our ideals now when the world seems so dark, we might usher in a golden age of consciousness, of equality and creativity, of law and justice, unseen in these previous ages.  But there is always a shadow side to everything, and so our ideals must be grounded in reality and never taken to extremes, such as forcing our ideals on others or trying to ‘create’ perfect human beings.   Aquarius’ shadow can turn idealism into fanaticism and judgment.