Integrating astrology, mythology and spirituality, this book is a reflection on the themes of the astrological ages across the past 13,000 years and is an exploration of what astrology has to tell us about the meaning of the changes happening globally and culturally in this time. We are currently on the cusp of the Age of Aquarius, at the end of a 26,000 year precessional cycle and, according to ancient prophecies, at the close of a world era. With the recent discovery of the planetoids Sedna and Eris, new forms of consciousness are entering our awareness. Through listening to the messages of the stars and planets, we find guidance for our lives in this intense time of change. We live in a sentient universe, which is calling us back into relationship with the cosmos and with the Earth. In remembering our source (the galactic center), reconnecting with the spirit in all of life and in becoming centered within ourselves, we gain meaning and wisdom for who we are and who we are becoming and find a path for the healing and evolution of ourselves and our Earth.
Finding Our Center
Wisdom from the Stars and Planets in Times of ChangeBy Heather M. EnsworthiUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2009 Heather M. Ensworth, Ph.D.
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4401-8392-8Contents
Acknowledgments..............................................................................................ixIntroduction.................................................................................................xiPART ONE SETTING THE STAGE...................................................................................1Chapter One Living in a Time of Transition.............................................................3Chapter Two Seeking the Wisdom of the Past.............................................................13Chapter Three The World Tree: The Milky Way, Galactic Center, and Celestial Pole.........................17PART TWO EXPLORING THE ARCHETYPAL THEMES OF THE AGES.........................................................25Introduction.................................................................................................27Chapter Four The Age of Leo.............................................................................29Chapter Five The Age of Cancer..........................................................................35Chapter Six The Age of Gemini..........................................................................41Chapter Seven The Age of Taurus..........................................................................46Chapter Eight The Age of Aries...........................................................................58Chapter Nine The Age of Pisces..........................................................................65Chapter Ten The Age of Aquarius........................................................................71Conclusion...................................................................................................79PART THREE MOVING INTO THE NEW AGE...........................................................................81Chapter Eleven Liminal Periods: Transitions between Ages..................................................83Chapter Twelve Seeking Guidance for This Time of Change...................................................87Chapter Thirteen Sedna: The Newly Discovered Planetoid and the Inuit Goddess of the Sea.....................89Chapter Fourteen Our New "Dwarf" Planet Eris, or Xena.......................................................101Chapter Fifteen Around the Wheel and Back to Center........................................................108Chapter Sixteen Finding Our Center.........................................................................112Chapter Seventeen Pluto at the Center........................................................................117Chapter Eighteen Conclusion: Coming Full Circle.............................................................119Afterword Circles Within Circles.....................................................................129Bibliography.................................................................................................131
Chapter One
LIVING IN A TIME OF TRANSITION
We are currently in a transition time between ages. We are leaving the Age of Pisces and are on the cusp of a new age, the Age of Aquarius. Ancient myths and modern science teach us that such periods of transition are marked by global and social turmoil. These are times that are stressful for the planet from a geological standpoint and also from a cultural or sociological perspective and involve significant shifts in human consciousness.
The cycle of astrological ages is related to the precession of equinoxes. Our Earth revolves around the Sun and rotates on its axis. However, our view of the sky gradually shifts over time (one degree every seventy-two years) due to the precessional cycle. The traditional understanding of this gradual movement of the Earth's axis in relation to the sky is that the Earth has a slow, wobbling movement due to the gravitational pull of the Sun and Moon, resulting in the shifting of the Earth's axis over time.
The visible manifestation of this is in the gradual changing of the celestial pole and the slow shifting of the constellations in the sky. For example, in 3000 BCE, the polestar was Alpha Draconis, but now our polestar is Polaris. (See Figures 1 and 2 below.)
About two thousand years ago, the constellation Pisces began to rise on the horizon at the time of the spring equinox, but now we are gradually moving toward the constellation Aquarius rising at that time of year. This shifting of the vernal rising of constellations is known as the precession of equinoxes. Each age lasts approximately 2,160 years.
Of significance is a recent different scientific hypothesis for the precessional motion proposed by Walter Cruttenden of the Binary Research Institute in his 2005 book, Lost Star of Myth and Time. A similar view has also been suggested by Dr. Richard Muller of the University of California, Berkeley, and Dr. Daniel Whitmire of the University of Louisiana. These researchers speculate that our Sun is part of a binary star system. This means that our Sun is gravitationally bound with another star, not yet identified, with both orbiting around a common center. Astronomers have noted in the past several years that binary star systems are common in the Milky Way galaxy. If this is the case, then the precessional motion is not due to the wobbling of the Earth's axis but rather due to our Sun's movement, which pulls our solar system in a gentle arc through space. The time that it takes for our Sun to complete one orbit would be the equivalent of the full precessional cycle (approximately twenty-four to twenty-six thousand years). As Cruttenden explains:
Just as the spinning motion of the Earth causes the cycle of day and night, and just as the orbital motion of the Earth around the Sun causes the cycle of the seasons, so too does the binary motion cause a cycle of rising and falling ages over long periods of time, due to increasing and decreasing electromagnetic effects generated by our Sun and nearby stars. (Cruttenden, "Precession of the Equinox: The Ancient Truth Behind Celestial Motion," binaryresearchinstitute.org)
If in fact we are part of a binary star system, think how this would affect our understanding of the universe and of ourselves. Our overemphasis in modern Western culture on separation and individuation would be called into question, and in a deep and profound way, we would need to understand ourselves, our solar system, and our universe in a relational context.
Some of the researchers advocating the binary star theory believe that the star that we are orbiting with is the brightest star in our sky, Sirius. It is noteworthy that this star has been sacred in many ancient cultures. The Dogon culture in western Africa has honored Sirius for over five thousand years. Interestingly, long before the modern scientific discovery that Sirius is a twin star with Sirius A orbited by its invisible twin, Sirius B, the Dogon tribe worshipped both and were able to describe Sirius B as an invisible, heavy, but very powerful star. They believe that Sirius is the axis of the universe and the source of all life. In ancient Egypt, Sirius was worshipped for thousands of years (beginning about 3000 BCE) as the primary mother and life-giving goddess Isis, who was seen as the source of life and as the one who helped souls to incarnate on this planet. Many other ancient cultures honored Sirius as a primary deity. Perhaps these ancient cultures had knowledge that was subsequently forgotten in more recent times.
Whatever the cause of the precessional motion, it is significant and has been studied by humans for millennia. Initially, it may have been charted through the movements of the stars, particularly heliacal rising stars (i.e., those rising with the Sun) and the polar stars. Later, the constellations that follow the line of the Sun, Moon, and planets in the sky, the path of the ecliptic (about twenty degrees wide), were viewed as important markers of the seasonal cycle of the year and the larger precessional cycle. Many ancients referred to the planets as the "wandering stars," moving against the backdrop of the constellations. We know that the ancient Chinese and Babylonians originally developed a zodiac with six signs by the sixth century BCE. Later, about 630 to 450 BCE, ancient cultures created the zodiac with twelve signs, similar to the one that we use today (see Robert Hand, "History of Astrology - Another View," p.2).
While Hipparchus, a Greek astronomer who lived around 147 BCE, has been credited with the discovery of the precessional motion, many scholars believe that it was much more ancient in origin. Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend in their seminal book Hamlet's Mill, describe how cultures around the globe and across human history have understood this slow, gradual process of the precession of equinoxes. These ancient cultures' astronomical knowledge of this phenomenon was embedded in their mythology, and these authors cite over two hundred myths from thirty different cultures around the globe, some dating back to the Neolithic (early prehistoric) period, that encoded numbers and references pertaining to the precessional cycle.
Many of these myths speak of this process as the "grinding of a mill," with the axis of the mill as the line reaching outward toward the polestar in the sky. These cultures often referred to the "four corners of the Earth," which are the world "pillars," or equinox and solstice points marking the framework of their world in that time. With the precessional motion, the framework of the world (i.e., the solstice and equinox points and the polestar) gradually shifts. Many of the myths from around the globe tie this shifting of the equinoxes and the times of transitions between ages as fraught with pain and danger. These myths associate images of "floods," "deluges," or cataclysmic disasters of some sort with these precessional changes.
In recent years, through scientific research, we have come to understand that the precession of equinoxes is also related to the patterns of glaciation and deglaciation. These periods of transition between ages have been associated with natural disasters that the ancients were attempting to warn us about. Scientists now know that the onset and retreat of ice ages are related to three factors in the Earth's orbital geometry: the obliquity of the ecliptic (which is the angle of the Earth's axis of rotation as well as the angle between the celestial equator and the ecliptic), the eccentricity of the Earth's orbit (i.e., the elongation of the Earth's path around the Sun, see Figure 3 below), and the axial precession (see Hancock, Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization, pp. 271-272).
These factors affect the amount and intensity of sunlight and the patterns of global warming or cooling that lead to changes in the ice ages. What is important to note here is the level of sophisticated understanding on the part of ancient cultures about the gradual movements of the stars and how this had a profound effect on the world. Their myths were attuned to these patterns in the sky and their meaning for us on Earth in a way that we in modern times seem to have forgotten.
Not only does the precession of equinoxes cause changes in global climate patterns, it also relates to shifts in our social and political ways of being. Many ancient cultures viewed our development globally as cyclical rather than linear. These periods of advance and decline relate to the precessional cycle through the zodiac, or the Great Year. If in fact our precessional cycle is related to our being a part of a binary star system, Cruttenden and others speculate that these cycles may relate to the electromagnetic fields that our Earth moves through in space as we complete this approximately twenty-six-thousand-year orbit. Perhaps we advance in our consciousness and development as we move closer to the gravitational center of that orbit and decline as we move away.
Whatever the cause of the cycles, from a cultural perspective, these periods of shifting between ages are times of tumult as we let go of certain patterns of social, political, and religious organization and move toward new ways of being. Such periods are often characterized by a significant degree of backlash, or reassertion of the old forms in a more rigid and exaggerated manner in reaction or resistance to the process of dissolution and change. The forms that the backlash takes are shaped by the themes of the age that is ending. In our current time, for example, we are seeing an increase in terrorism arising from fundamentalist religious groups. These terrorists are often sacrificing themselves in a form of martyrdom for their religious cause. These are exaggerated expressions of the archetypes of spirituality and sacrifice that are characteristic of the Piscean Age.
In this book, we will examine in more depth the archetypal patterns of the astrological ages across human history and seek to understand the themes of these eras. We will look in depth at the Piscean Age of the past two thousand years and seek to understand the new ways of being that we are moving into in the Age of Aquarius.
This understanding of the archetypal energies inherent in the patterns of the sky and reflected in events on Earth is very ancient. Yet we are beginning to see this awareness resurface in our modern times. Richard Tarnas, in Cosmos and Psyche, traces the way in which this ancient attunement to archetypal patterns and to the sense of our living in a creative and intelligent cosmos was gradually lost following the Copernican revolution and the Enlightenment over five hundred years ago. He describes the way in which we now live in a narrowly defined world of "science" and a "disenchanted" universe. With amazing hubris, we assume that our capacity for creativity, consciousness, and symbolism are uniquely our own rather than being an extension and reflection of those qualities in the cosmos. He argues convincingly that we live in a sentient and meaningful universe, and that it is to our own peril for us to continue to blind ourselves to that deeper reality.
I would posit that the conflict between these worldviews, the one of the universe as a mechanistic "other" to be analyzed versus the cosmos as a relational context of meaning, purpose, and vast intelligence actually began as we moved into the patriarchal era (around 3000 BCE). This loss of connection with the sentient nature of the universe may also relate to the cycles of advance and decline related to the binary orbit of our Sun with its companion star.
According to the interpretation of the Hindu yuga cycle (i.e., the Hindu epochs associated with the precessional cycle), we are emerging out of the Kali Yuga, the lowest phase of consciousness in which people live in a materialistic manner with a primary focus on physical reality. According to this system, much of the wisdom of the past and energetic and spiritual understanding of the earlier ages is lost during the Kali Yuga or Age of Ignorance. It is a time of wars and of vying for power, with world leadership moving from being primarily in the hands of women to those of men.
According to the Indian yogi Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri (guru of Paramahansa Yogananda), the zenith of this twelve-hundred-year Kali Yuga phase was during the Dark Ages, or AD 500 AD. Since AD 1700, we have been moving into a higher phase of consciousness, the Dvapara Yuga. This yuga lasts twenty-four hundred years and is characterized by increasing scientific and spiritual understanding, awareness of subtle energies, and an understanding of the unity of all of life, as well as an increase in the prominence of the sacred feminine.
We will explore these shifts in consciousness in more depth in the coming chapters. As Tarnas notes, this ancient wisdom and renewed spiritual awareness began to resurface in modern times through Jung's depth psychology and his depiction of archetypes as principles embedded in our individual and collective unconscious. According to Jung:
The content of the collective unconscious is made up essentially of archetypes. The concept of the archetype indicates the existence of definite forms in the psyche which seem to be present always and everywhere. Mythological research calls them "motifs" ... This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is inherited. It consists of pre-existent forms, the archetypes, which can only become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to certain psychic contents. (Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, pp. 42-43)
This concept calls into question the Cartesian notion of "I think, therefore I am" and of the postmodern notion that all of our theories and understandings of the universe are based on the projections of our own thoughts and beliefs or that we have the capacity as individuals to shape our own reality. While we have conscious choice in our lives, we are also part of larger cosmic currents of change. The Jungian archetypes hearken back to ancient wisdom that we are in fact formed and shaped by the currents of an archetypal field that is beyond our control and beyond our full conscious comprehension. In attuning to that field and aligning ourselves with those larger forces and patterns, we not only come back into balance and right relationship with the life around us but also step into a greater sense of our own wholeness. As we face this crisis of transition, it is more critical than ever before that we see the nature of the universe and our own lives in a clearer and more holistic way rather than remaining blinded by our false presuppositions and by our disconnection from the world around us.
As we move through this time of change, we need to be aware of the phases inherent in such global and personal transformations. The anthropologist van Gennep, in his classic book, The Rites of Passage, stresses how major developmental shifts (whether individual or collective) are marked by certain phases of separation, transition, and then incorporation. Rites of passage parallel a death-rebirth process. We leave the old state, go through a transitional period, and then move into the new state or way of being. Ancient rituals and ceremonies celebrated these rites of passage and helped people through this transformational process. Today, unfortunately, in modern Western cultures, we have neglected this process and these types of transitional rites. In particular, we have minimized or repressed the critical importance of the liminal period, that time between the old and the new. This is a critical phase for releasing the old patterns and preparing or receiving initiation into a new form. In our movement away from a cyclical developmental view toward a more linear, exponential one, we have neglected this rich and important part of the change process.
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Excerpted from Finding Our Centerby Heather M. Ensworth Copyright © 2009 by Heather M. Ensworth, Ph.D.. Excerpted by permission.
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