elemental wave chronicles - the jupiter-saturn...

by Kelly Lee Phipps © 2011

To ancient astrologers, the Jupiter-Saturn cycle comprised the focus of their outer planet activity. They met most their “mundane” astrological needs through Jupiter and Saturn transits. Jupiter completes an orbit every 11.88 years while Saturn takes 29.5 years. They come together to form the legendary “Star of Bethlehem” Great Conjunction once every 20 years. Jupiter symbolizes the Urge for Inspiration and the Need for Enculturation. Saturn symbolizes the Urge for Maturity and the Need for Structure. Together they work to shape civilizations as the cultural establishment cycle that manifests as Mature Inspiration combined with Structured Enculturation. These two juggernauts of the solar system meet in Signs of the same Element in a triangular pattern for about 200 years before they switch to the next Element, creating an Elemental Wave or series of trigon alignments. They flow from the Fiery Trigon to the Earthy Trigon to the Airy Trigon to the Watery Trigon and then repeat the cycle. The overall structure of society and the general shape of events shifts to match the vibration of the new Element. Fire symbolizes Essence, Vitality, Identity, Consciousness and Inspiration. Earth symbolizes Nature, Resources, Values, Structures and Life. Air symbolizes Awareness, Ideas, Thoughts, Concepts and Knowledge. Water symbolizes Imagination, Emotion, Empathy, Compassion and Soul Vision. There are also four interface periods when they are switching between Elements where they oscillate between the two given Elements. These periods tend to blend the various Elemental themes in cultural expression. The four pure Element periods are interlaced with the four mixed or hybrid Element transition periods over an 800 year span. In the tables included below, the Great Conjunction dates reflect the initial alignment of Jupiter and Saturn. In many cases they make three such alignments due to retrogradation continuing their

influence over a two-year period. In addition, when Jupiter and Saturn make their conjunction every 20 years, they plant a seed that gradually develops over the full twenty year cycle. In the first five years, a new tone is released and begins developing. In the second five years a structure is built to contain the vision and it flowers under the midpoint of the cycle: between ten years and the time when Jupiter opposes Saturn (which is happening as I write this with Jupiter at 14 Aries oppose Saturn at 14 Libra). Once the new structure is in place it is ready to begin disseminating and over the third five year period it starts to be integrated into society changing the way people live. During the last five year cycle, people and cultures begin to experience new benefits and reflect on how things have changed and wonder what it all means as the new cycle begins. Then after sixty years, the Great Conjunction returns to the same Sign (or shifts to the next Elemental Wave) and societies witness firsthand the long term affects of decisions made six decades ago. For example. in 1980-1981 CE, the Elemental Wave began it transition from the Earth Signs to the Air Signs with the Jupiter-Saturn Great Conjunction in Libra, the sign of social interaction, marriage, justice and equality. By 1986 CE (the five year mark) the divorce rate skyrocketed as people reacted against the inequality inherent in society, favoring the masculine. Scientists had been busy working on computers since the lunar landing at the midpoint of the

Elemental Wave Chronicles - The Jupiter-Saturn Cycle

1

Zodiac SignsZodiac Signs

AriesFire

TaurusEarth

GeminiAir

CancerWater

LeoFire

VirgoEarth

LibraAir

ScorpioWater

SagittariusFire

CapricornEarth

AquariusAir

PiscesWater

previous Conjunction that occurred in Capricorn/Aquarius in 1961 CE, a perfect synthesis of those two signs: a great accomplishment amongst the stars! By the 1981 CE conjunction, the Internet was being discovered and implemented and actually brought into collective consciousness as the midpoint of the cycle passed in 1991 CE (combined with the influence of the Saturn-Uranus-Neptune conjunction in Capricorn). In addition, humanity witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of Communist Soviet Union and the end of Apartheid in South Africa. By 1995-96 CE, the waning quarter of the twenty-year cycle, everyone was empowered to get on the Internet and answer those famous once-amazing words: “You’ve got mail!” Suddenly the globe was connected! I was quite surprised to find that there was no term in the English language for a 20-year span of time, besides a score of years. After trying to coin a new word such as quintury (twenty-percent of a century), a better term came to me one day when I was jogging that inspired the title of this work. Since Saturn, governing time, acts as the base planet of the cycle maybe we should rebrand a Saturnian term such as Chronicle (Greek Chronos). Technically, it actually works since a chronicle is an historical account of facts and events arranged in chronological order, as in a time line. I’m defining a Chronicle as a twenty year span of time marked out by the Jupiter-Saturn Conjunction. It was even more of a surprise to find that the ancients didn’t track this cycle back to discover these Elemental Waves and their influence on the shape of civilizations. Working with the Solar Fire astrological program combined with Wikipedia for quick reference of historical dates (checking other sources for accuracy), I was able to see the patterns and draw the conclusions in this work over a two month-long period of intense research that would have taken the ancient's lifetimes. First of all, they didn’t have an online searchable database of accurate historical records alongside an amazing program to track planet positions. Although, Kepler deserves great credit for popularizing the patterns of this conjunction, having discerned that the Jupiter-Saturn Conjunction in Pisces of 6-7 BCE was the probable Star of Bethlehem that the Magi followed across the desert to meet the incoming spiritual master of the incoming Age of Pisces (Jesus). As it turns out, the two planets had a similar declination south of the ecliptic during that alignment. Jupiter was located at a declination of about 6 degrees below the ecliptic and Saturn was about 7 degrees below the ecliptic, which would have been a sight to behold in the ancient world. It was a powerful moment in history when the Age of Aries was yielding to the incoming tidal Age of Pisces, which mathematically began when the Aries Ingress of the Tropical Zodiac aligned with the Aries point of the Sidereal Zodiac around 220 CE. The interface period between astrological ages that blends the imagery of the two archetypal fields (in this case Aries-Libra with Virgo-Pisces) can take 300 years. About 300 years after Christ’s death, Christianity was instituted as the state religion under Constantine of the Byzantine Empire. In 313 CE, Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, legalizing Christian worship, and became a great patron and saint of the Church.

The Big Picture - Uranus-Neptune Cycles

It also needs to be pointed out that the Uranus-Neptune cycle of 172-years unfolds alongside the Jupiter-Saturn Elemental Wave cycle, casting is own dynamic influence from the transcendent realms that inspires spiritual revolutions, radical changes in cultural ideals, and imaginative breakthroughs based on the Sign they meet in. It so happens that the Uranus-Neptune


2

Conjunction meets at the beginning of a Sign, releasing a new tone from the archetypal and spiritual dimensions followed by a second meeting in the same Sign 172 years later. The first meeting releases a new impulse that challenges the ideals, institutions and influences of the previous Sign. Then the second alignment in the same Sign illuminates the meaning of the cycle and presents us with an opportunity to perceive and instigate the larger mythic and spiritual vision. Essentially, the Uranus-Neptune cycle is an Elemental Wave in that it follows the Zodiac faithfully twice per Sign: Fire, Earth, Air, Water. For example, in 1821 CE, the Uranus-Neptune Conjunction occurred at 2 Capricorn followed by their second alignment at 19 Capricorn in 1992 CE after two previous alignments in Sagittarius that brought us the Age of Discovery and the Enlightenment from 1478-1821 CE. Occasionally there is an aberration where the Uranus-Neptune Conjunction falls so far at the end of one Sign that it only occurs once in the next Sign. The first aberration came in 576 BCE under the powerful triple conjunction discussed below. People were inspired to Initiate and Pioneer the beauty, presence, and natural peace of Taurus in teachings such as Taoism, Buddhism, Jainism and Zoroastrianism. In 1478 CE, the conjunction fell at the last degree of Scorpio and then the middle of Sagittarius. When one contemplates the mergence of those Sign’s symbolic natures: Change & Empowerment through Exploration & Education and remembers that the New World was discovered during that cycle, it takes on a world-changing power that had not occurred since the singular Taurus triple conjunction of 576 BCE. The Industrial Age began in the 1800’s as nations scrambled to build factories, railroads and corporations. With the return to an earthy, practical, industrious Sign like Capricorn in 1821 CE, it was time for the Industrial Revolution. By the midpoint of the first Capricorn cycle in the early 1900’s the world had batteries, phonographs, typewriters, automobiles, flight, relativity and the quantum hypothesis! By 1992 CE, corporations and industry controlled the fate of nations and the Internet was implemented to restructure the world. Back in 1821 CE the Jupiter-Saturn Elemental Wave was shifting from the Fire Signs to the Earth Signs, and thus the whole world was tuned into the price of coal and burning earth resources. By


3

Date UranusNeptune

Pluto

-917 9 29

-746 27 30

-576 11 11

-403 1 2

-231 19 2

-60 6 9

112 22 29

283 8 23

454 26 10

624 9 23

795 25 1

966 11 14

1137 28 17

1308 14 2

1478 30 1

1649 15 9

1821 2 29

1992 19 22

2163 6 4

2334 25 1

2509 12 17

2681 30 8

1992 CE, the collective focus on the Age of Information manifested and modern corporations are born from ideas like Facebook, Wikipedia, Google, Twitter and Youtube. There was also a rising collective concern for the environment. This is happening as the Jupiter-Saturn cycle is transitioning from the Earth Signs back to the Air Signs and hence the dominance of information, knowledge, concepts and intellectual exchange. This happened before in the Renaissance, the Byzantine era, the Hellenistic Greek period, the Helladic Greek period and the Sumerian Renaissance. The similarity between the present and these past renaissances in terms of intellectual revitalization and radical political, social, and economic changes was the realization that inspired this work. My theory is that the Jupiter-Saturn cycle, wrapped in the Uranus-Neptune Cycle, together work to advance civilizations while the Uranus-Pluto (141 alternating with 113 years) and Neptune-Pluto (495 years) cycles work to dredge up the collective unconscious and face us with the shadow of lost opportunities and force collective change as we witnessed in the Sixties (Uranus-Pluto in Virgo) and in 1893 CE (Neptune-Pluto). With Pluto’s recent demotion to a dwarf planet but still lord of the mythic underworld at the edge of interstellar darkness, it seems appropriate that Neptune, planet of the divine imagination and spirituality, utilizes it’s immense gravitational force to summon objects like comets out of this symbolic unconscious realm. When Uranus-Neptune-Pluto all three align once every 4000 years the world experiences a powerful transition to a new level of consciousness. Their last alignment at 11 Taurus around 576 BC introduced a spiritual revolution and great transformation. The next triple conjunction of all three outer planets doesn’t occur until 3370 CE in Gemini, the third stage of human evolution. The birth of civilization as we know it emerged from the alignment in euphoric mystical Pisces in the triple conjunction that occurred around 4529 BCE. Richard Tarnas described the impact of the 576 BCE Taurus alignment in vivid detail in the astrological documentary film “Return of the Magi”:

Every major civilization that we know of had an enormous spiritual and cultural awakening that we are still living the consequences of. Whether it was the Buddha in India, or Confucius and Lao Tzu and Taoism and so forth in China, Jainism in India. In Greece you had the beginning of the great philosophical tradition with Thales and Pythagoras. You had the beginning of Greek drama with Thespis and Greek poetry with Sappho. In the Judaic-Hebrew culture you have the tremendous transformation of the image of God that takes place through the prophets Ezekiel and Second Isaiah. It’s a truly extraordinary period. Even it seems that Zoroaster well may have been during that period. Many scholars center his activity at that time. And also the Orphic tradition in the larger Greek world is certainly reaching a creative moment. This is a period when simultaneously, the Plutonian empowerment on a deep evolutionary level is impelling, on the one hand, the Neptunian principle of the religious, spiritual and artistic imagination with the Uranian-Promethean awakening, a breakthrough to the new, all of which has this revolutionary affect on consciousness that really has transformed the world from then on. And for those people who have studied these cycles through history and come upon this one time when all three of the planets came into a triple conjunction, and see how absolutely and unprecedented and unique a period of historical transformation that took place at that time. Just seeing that has a kind of numinosity that many people get the shivers from because it is so extraordinary.1


4

1 Richard Tarnas: Return of the Magi 2008

Uranus-Pluto Elemental Waves

Despite the larger cycles that contain the Jupiter-Saturn Elemental Wave cycle, the cultural transformations in terms of the rise and fall of civilizations remain irrevocably connected to the Jupiter-Saturn cycle. However, the more irregular Uranus-Pluto Conjunction cycle also exhibits an Elemental pattern occurring in alternating periods of 141 and 113 years (see the table to the left). From their world-shaping alignment with Neptune back in 576 BCE in Taurus they kept meeting in Earth Signs until 182 BCE when they shifted to Air Signs until 581 CE. The end of the Earth Sign Wave marks the beginning of the transition in power from Greek to Roman society. The Jupiter-Saturn Elemental Wave was then shifting to the Water Signs assisting the rise of the maritime Roman Republic in the West and the Han Dynasty in the Far East.

Uranus-Pluto conjunctions occurred in the Water Signs from 581 until 1090 when they shifted to the Fire Signs. In addition, the Jupiter-Saturn Elemental Wave shifted to the Earth Signs in 1047. The Song Dynasty in China came to power alongside the Muslim scientific revolution. Gunpowder, the compass, clock towers as well as innovations in philosophy and literature occurred. The Fire of Uranus-Pluto brought the explosive inventions while the Earth of Jupiter-Saturn empowered the incredible industry and productivity of the Song Dynasty that rivaled the British Empire! Uranus-Pluto Conjunctions stayed in the Fire Signs until their recent shift back to Earth Signs in 1965-66 CE where they will remain until 2222 CE when they shift back to Air Signs.

All in all, we are headed for a fascinating intellectual revitalization beyond what we can even imagine in the coming centuries with the


5

Date UranusPluto

Element Neptune

-576 11 Earth 11

-436 20 Earth 19

-325 17 Earth 22

-182 4 Air 6

-68 1 Air 17

71 18 Air 29

185 11 Air 5

327 29 Air 16

440 22 Air 23

581 11 Water 5

694 4 Water 14

836 21 Water 25

948 16 Water 29

1090 2 Fire 12

1202 1 Fire 18

1341 11 Fire 2

1456 12 Fire 9

1597 20 Fire 18

1709 28 Fire 1

1850 29 Fire 7

1966 18 Earth 20

2105 7 Earth 26

2222 5 Air 10

combination of the Uranus-Pluto Air Sign Conjunction in 2222 CE, the Uranus-Neptune Aquarian Conjunctions of 2163 CE and 2334 CE and the current Jupiter-Saturn Renaissance Air Sign Wave from 1981 CE till 2219 CE. A mental world culture is emerging complete with holographic Internet and possibly interstellar civilizations able to communicate or travel across the great expanses of space through higher dimensions!

Whether technology gets out of control and wreaks destruction or we harness it to craft a global civilization with unique cultures spread across the earth, we will begin to realize our interconnectivity and interdependence. If the last shift in astrological ages occurred between 85 BCE and 220 CE when the Zodiacs were aligned, then the next interface period should span 2080-2380 CE. 2380 CE is exactly 2160 years (the length of an astrological age) after the 220 CE date when the Age of Pisces experienced its rise to power and social implementation. The year 2080 CE marks a special turning point in any case because that is the year that the Jupiter-Saturn Conjunction in Aquarius will occur with Uranus, truly an innovative era of brilliance. During the current Jupiter-Saturn hybrid Earth-Air Wave humanity has used its technology to confirm that earth-like worlds indeed orbit distant stars. In the coming Age of Aquarius I don’t think anything short of world destruction can hold the human imagination back from discovering a way to reach for the stars. It may take 400 years for us to colonize our own solar system, but sooner or later a discovery will be made that will give us the ability to travel to the stars and take our place in the galactic community. By 3632 CE in the Age of Aquarius (the equivalent of 1492 CE in the Age of Pisces), maybe a celestial Columbus will cross the great celestial sea to achieve orbit around an alien world.

Jupiter-Saturn Elemental Waves

Now that we’ve laid the foundation of the larger cycles of the outer planets it’s time to take our focus inward to discover the amazing and quite intimate cultural establishment influence of the Jupiter-Saturn cycle. Instead of laying down a mile of tables to present all the data (we’ll save that for later), I’ll just jump to the resulting conclusion. There are 8 unique periods that occur: four Pure Elemental Waves interspersed with four Hybrid Transitional Waves that effectively blend the themes of the two transitional Elements.

After the initial Fire Sign Wave, the cycle shifts to a transitional stage where the conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn alternate between Earth Signs and Fire Signs until it settles down into a pure Earth Sign period. Then after a time, the Earth Signs gradually progress toward the Air Signs and there is another period of transition between alternating Earth and Air conjunctions. Then the pure Air Signs take over for a period until they start alternating with the Water Signs. Then the pure Water Signs take over until they are in turn interrupted by the Fire Signs during an eighth and final transitional period that leads the whole cycle back to the pure Fire Sign conjunctions. This whole process unfolds over about 800 years (40 Chronicles), which I define as an Elemental Epoch. In general, the Pure Elemental Wave periods are longer lasting, averaging 80-180 years (4-9 Chronicles) while the Hybrid Transitional Wave periods are generally shorter lasting 40-120 years (2-6 Chronicles).


6

Sometimes a conjunction will happen so close to the end of a Sign during the transitional periods that one (usually Jupiter) or both planets will cross over into the next sign and then retrograde back into the Sign where they originally conjoined. When this happens history reveals that the themes of both Signs become strongly combined for the active cultures during that 20 years. Some of the greatest cultural advances have occurred during these rare split-Sign hybrid Jupiter-Saturn Conjunctions.

For example, in 1961 CE Jupiter met Saturn in late Capricorn and after flowing into Aquarius, went back into Capricorn where it effectively brought the Aquarius mythic archetypal imagery back into Capricorn and to Saturn’s structuring theme. During that cycle Americans landed the first man on the moon and the first computers were being designed! In ancient times, under the same Capricorn-Aquarius Conjunction of 364 BCE, Euclid and Alexander the Great were born, the Mayan Civilization appeared, the Mausoleum (one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World) was completed, and Aristotle uncannily argued for a spherical earth based on the curved shadow appearing on the face of the moon during a lunar eclipse! At another time in history when the Capricorn-Aquarius Conjunction occurred in 431 CE, the 3rd Nicene Council convened to codify the final shape of Christianity. Nestorianism and Manichaeism were condemned. While the Greek Philosopher Proclus at the Academy in Athens (exactly 800 years after Plato founded it) was developing the most refined Neoplatonic philosophy that led to his Elements of Theology among other great works.

Thematic “Zeitgeist” Sign Wave Patterns

During the Fire Sign Waves cultures become enterprising and excited about rapid land expansion, conquests inspired by charismatic leaders, scientific revolutions and innovative technological breakthroughs. The ancient early Bronze Age Akkadian Empire of the Middle East and the revolting American colonists who created the United States are examples of a pure Fire Sign cultures. During the Earth Sign Waves cultures settle down into periods of maximum productivity, craftsmanship, and manufacturing that solidifies into profitable trade with rising population combined with a renewed reverence for nature and longing for simplicity. Cultural solidification occurs. Industrial Revolution America from 1842 - 1961 CE and Song Dynasty China from 1047 - 1166 CE are perfect examples. In between pure Fire and Earth periods you see a fascinating mix of these themes resulting in hybrid Fire-Earth cultures like the Seljuk Turks of 1037 CE or the Persians under Nebuchadnezzar II, who built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The Air Sign Waves are the renaissance periods marked by intellectual revitalization with philosophical and scientific roots that drive social, political, and economic transformations. Examples of pure Air Sign cultures are the Mauryan Empire under Ashoka in India and the Israelite culture under King David. Even though the Hellenistic Greeks were a hybrid Earth-Air emergent culture, by the time Alexander came to power over Macedonia and completed his conquest, the new empire centered at Alexandria (location of the Great Library) unfolded under the Pure Air Sign influences. When the Earth Signs are transitioning to the Air Signs another brilliant hybrid Earth-Air blend of industrial and intellectual outpouring occurs like the current


7

cultural wave since 1981 CE with the advent of computers combined with the productive capacity that has been developing since the Industrial Age ignited in 1842 CE. The Mongols, the Guptas of India, the Byzantines and the Hellenistic Greeks were past examples of cultures that arose during the transitional period between Earth and Air Sign alignments. The Water Sign Waves bring periods of religious, spiritual and artistic revitalization producing fantastic visionaries with a boiling desire to explore the outer oceans of the world as well as the inner seas of the imagination. The Ottoman Empire of the Middle East under Osman I and the Mughal Empire of India were both pure Water Sign conjunction cultures as were most of the nations that dominated the Age of Discovery like Portugal, Spain, and England under Elizabeth. Unfortunately, history reveals that these Water eras also correspond to periods of rising slave trade such as during the Age of Exploration and the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza.When the Air Signs are blending with the Water Signs you get hybrid Air-Water cultures like the Tang Dynasty in China, the Arabian Caliphate, and the early Roman Republic where religions like Buddhism, Islam, and the Roman Pantheon captured both the collective intellect and imagination. They still flourish in dynamic and enduring ways. At the end of the Water Sign periods a blend of alternating conjunctions marks the last transition before the whole cycle is renewed with the pure Fire Wave taking over once again. In Water-Fire Sign blends you get powerful hybrid spiritual warrior cultures like the Shang Dynasty with their inventions, the Vikings with their longships that reached North America, and the Roman Empire with their Legions and roads. The Elemental Wave table below reveals the key dates when these 8 periods manifest. Each row comprises one Elemental Epoch.

Epoch Fire

FireEarth

Earth

EarthAir

Air

AirWater

Water

WaterFire

I 3203 -3025 BCE

3025 -2965 BCE

2965 -2826 BCE

2826 -2727 BCE

2727 -2647 BCE

2647 -2588 BCE

2588 -2468 BCE

2468 -2409 BCE

II 2409 -2290 BCE

2290 -2171 BCE

2171 -2052 BCE

2052 - 1933 BCE

1933 -1853 BCE

1853 -1744 BCE

1754 -1674 BCE

1674 - 1575 BCE

III 1575 -1496 BCE

1496 -1377 BCE

1377 - 1257 BCE

1257 -1139 BCE

1139 -999 BCE

999 -960 BCE

960 -821 BCE

821 - 781 BCE

IV 781 -642 BCE

642 -602 BCE

602 -463 BCE

463 -344 BCE

344 -225 BCE

225 -165 BCE

165 -29

BCE

29 BCE -74 CE

V 74 CE -154

154 -253

253 -332

332 -452

452 -571

571 -690

690 -796

796 -868

VI 868 -1007

1007 -1047

1047 -1186

1186 -1226

1226 -1305

1305 -1425

1425 -1603

1603 -1663

VII 1663 -1802

1802 -1842

1842 -1981

1981 -2020

2020 -2159

2159 -2219

2219 -2318

2318 -2457


8

The Shape of a Great Conjunction

When a Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn occurs its primary archetypal meaning infuses the culture with guiding imagery memes drawn from the Zodiac Sign that hosts it. The Element, Mode and Mythic Themes of that Sign work to inspire the current active cultures and individuals on the planet. When the Conjunction occurs at the end of a Sign and the two planets remain conjunct into the next Sign, the particular twenty year period takes on a hybrid combination of the two mythic themes (like in 1961 with the combination of Capricornian ambition and Aquarian innovation that lifted man to the moon). In addition, the aspects or geometrical angles to other planets (especially the slow-moving Outer Planets) work to heavily modify and influence the overall meaning and result of the Great Conjunction during that twenty year period, 60-years later when the original seed intentions reach full maturity, and throughout that Elemental Wave. Each Conjunction has an elegance, a rhythm, an archetypal texture. You can feel the shifts in societies and see the particular details of those changes in the aspects. As I contemplated hundreds of these alignments my mind and heart felt like they were sweeping over history in a trance-like dance of unique biographies and events in tune with celestial motion.

For example, in the year 769 CE, Jupiter and Saturn aligned at the first degree of Leo to begin a new Water-Fire hybrid Elemental Wave with an exact conjunction to Neptune, a trine to Pluto in Sagittarius and a sextile to Uranus (and Ceres) in Gemini. In fact, on Jul 9, 769 CE the Sun, Neptune, Jupiter, and Saturn all four occupied the first degree of Leo! Europe stood on the edge of a blade that threatened to plunge the Frankish kingdoms into barbarism, and was thirsting for new leadership and spiritual direction, both promises of the Water-Fire Wave. This was the famous era which initiated a collective Church-sanctioned devotion to icons - religious works of creative art capturing the archetypal imagery of both Leo (creative expression) and Neptunian spirituality. Basil the Great argued that “the honor shown the image passes over to the archetype.” Europe got its spiritual king in the rise of Charlemagne, whose mighty reign unified Europe and launched a spiritual revival of art, literature, architecture, and scriptural studies that ignited a moral regeneration of society. With Alcuin the English monk as his wise adviser along with a court full of an elite group of scholars and artists the way was paved for the Carolingian Revival. This sudden shift in the fortunes of Europe can be dramatically depicted by the heavenly symbols. With the Great Conjunction in the Sign of Leo aligned with Neptune, not only was there a symbol of a Spiritual King emerging, but also the beginning of devotion to religious creative art in the shape of icons amidst Byzantine oppression in the form of iconoclasms. This was further influenced by the harmonic empowerment of the trine to Pluto (transformation) in Sagittarius (religion/philosophy) which itself opposed Uranus in Gemini, the influence that added a sudden intellectual outpouring that symbolized an exciting, empowering synthesis (sextile) to the creative spiritual new beginning. Sixty years later, the conjunction of 829 CE saw the Abbassid-era Babylonian creation of the House of Wisdom, a great library and translation institute that became the unrivaled center for humanities and education in the world that would directly influence the Italian Renaissance in later centuries. Note that the sixty year final result was cross-cultural: a revival in Europe indirectly inspired the Abbasid dynasty.


9

Elemental Epoch I (3203 BCE - 2409 BCE): I chose to begin this sample of history during the Fire Wave that launched Elemental Epoch I. It occurred at the midpoint of the classical Age of Taurus (4100 BCE - 1940 BCE) when the first Bronze Age civilizations emerged and introduced advances in agriculture like the plough. The plough was as monumental to their society as the computer was to ours. Empires like ancient Sumer during the Ubaid Period where pottery, agriculture, animal husbandry, and metallurgy were peaking began about the middle of the Age of Gemini around 5300 BCE when the first primitive writing and the wheel were invented. By the midpoint of the Taurian Age, marked by megalithic monument building, goddess worship and religious reverence for bulls, early writing systems, religious practices, and metalworking

activities had become refined and large scale organization was the next step. The Age of Civilization had truly begun! The first Elemental Fire Wave begins with an amazing conjunction of Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto at 12 degrees Leo. The Uruk period in Sumer was peaking during this first Fire Wave. The Indus Valley Civilization was emerging in India to the east and the Early Dynastic Period of Egypt emerged around 3150 BCE to the west. The first Egyptian Pharaoh Narmar (the Scorpion King) was able to unify the two kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt. Across the world civilizations were inspired to erect spiritual monuments requiring major advances in the sciences of masonry, metallurgy, astrology, and mathematics. The earliest stages of Stonehenge in England, New Grange in Ireland, the Temple of Tarxien in Malta, and the Anu Ziggurat in Ur all began around 3100 BCE as if a collective instinct toward massive scale construction suddenly kicked in, inspired by the mythic themes of the Taurian archetypal builder symbolism. The Jupiter-Saturn Conjunction in 3124 BCE was opposing Neptune in Libra, square Pluto in Capricorn, and trine Uranus in Sagittarius. Then, twenty years later, the one in 3105 BCE was conjunct Neptune in Sagittarius, sextile Pluto in Aquarius and square Uranus in Pisces. The Great Conjunction in aspect to all three outer planets during two successive alignments stirred a revolution of consciousness across the planet. A stone potter's wheel found at the Mesopotamian city of Ur has been dated to about 3129 BCE. The Hindu

Kali Yuga supposedly began Feb 18th 3102 BCE and the Mayan Long Count started Aug 11, 3114 BCE. The biblical figure Methuselah, son of Enoch (the one who walked with the Gods, ascending into the heavens) was born around 3073 BCE. During Fire Waves cultures become enterprising and excited about rapid land expansion and conquest aided by charismatic leaders, scientific revolutions and innovative technological breakthroughs. With the conjunction to Pluto in the first Fire Wave Ingress chart we would expect an era of great transformation and empowerment. In fact, Neptune was at 1 degree Taurus (Generation of Spiritual Builders) trine to Uranus at 6 degrees Capricorn (Generation of Innovative Advisors), both supportive of the erection of great spiritual monuments under Plutonian charismatic nobility (Scorpion King).


10

Fire Wave IFire Wave I

DateBCE

JupiterSaturn

3204 12

3185 9

3165 2

3145 23

3125 17

3106 6

3085 27

3066 30

3046 17

The start of the 3rd millennium BCE occurred during the first hybrid Fire-Earth Wave that blent the fiery imagery of scientific innovation and land expansion with productivity, craftsmanship and trade. This time was unique in that it marked the end of the Neolithic Period as cultures gradually shifted to the Bronze Age. During this brief 60-year transition, scholars pinpoint the beginning of the Bronze Age Harappan of the Indus Valley, the Cycladian culture of the Aegean Sea (Troy was founded around 3000 BCE), the Helladic period in Greece, the Norte Chico civilization in Peru, and the Middle Jomon period in Japan. This awakening was amped by a Jupiter-Saturn-Uranus-Pluto conjunction in Taurus that sextiled Neptune in Cancer. While the Sumerians were diversifying metallurgy practices and establishing cities, the Egyptians developed hieroglyphics, the Chinese invented a potter’s wheel, and the first pottery appeared in Ecuador. In addition, the shekel was introduced in Mesopotamia around 3000 BCE as the first Taurian Age monetary unit of weight and measure, also reflecting the transition to the Earth Wave.

The first pure Earth Wave kicked off the world’s first archaic Industrial Revolution and population explosion. Craft and pottery production increased food supplies. 2900 BCE marks the beginning of Early Dynastic Sumer with the rise of Uruk. Ur became the richest city in the world, devoted to the patron deity Nanna the Moon, reflecting a natural reverence for the lunar exaltation in the Sign of Taurus. The Capricorn Jupiter-Saturn alignment of 2927 BCE was also conjunct Neptune, while the following Capricorn alignment in 2867 BCE was conjunct Uranus, delivering additional cultural doses of imagination and innovation. The Second Dynasty of Egypt began in 2890 BCE. In China, the famous Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors period began around 2852 BCE, which would eventually transform into the first Xia Dynasty.

The first hybrid Earth-Air Wave lasted 100 years and saw the development of the Earth Wave cultures and their continual development. With the Air Sign conjunctions there was an intellectual awakening that spurred many advances. The Sumerian cuneiform writing system is the oldest deciphered system. They were the first astrologers, mapping the stars into sets of constellations, many of which survived in the Zodiac and were also aware of the five visible planets. Many wars raged across Mesopotamia between rival cities and regions, forcing military advances like formations and divisions. They invented and developed arithmetic by using several different number systems. The Second Dynasty of Egypt began using the 365-day calendar in 2773 BC. 2750 BCE marked beginning of the Early Dynastic II period in Sumer. Also, the city of Tyre was found that same year.


11

Fire-Earth Wave I

Fire-Earth Wave I

DateBCE

JupiterSaturn

3026 7

3006 7

2987 22

Earth Wave IEarth Wave I

DateBCE

JupiterSaturn

2966 7

2946 15

2927 4

2907 22

2887 28

2867 10

2847 27

Earth-Air Wave I

Earth-Air Wave I

DateBCE

JupiterSaturn

2827 6

2808 17

2788 7

2767 15

2748 30

The first pure Air Wave only lasted 80 years, but a rare Grand Air Trine of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto formed during the Aquarius conjunction of 2689 BCE. During that twenty year transition into pure Air Signs, the Chinese Emperor Shannong invented tea as a beverage! By 2697 BCE, the Yellow Emperor lived in China, a polymath who worked in medicine, astronomy, and music. The Mesoamerican culture cultivated maize around 2700 BCE. The two famous Sumerian kings Enmerkar (Biblical Nimrod) and Gilgamesh (Biblical Noah) emerged around 2700 BCE, and the Epic of Gilgamesh was unfolding. Enmerkar, builder at Uruk, and possible architect of the Tower of Babel was apparently concerned with uniting the people under one language, emphasizing the Air Sign nature of this period. The period around 2700 BCE was also the beginning of the Old Elamite period and saw the first appearance of the abacus and

arithmetic tables. 2686 BCE began Old Kingdom Egypt under Pharaoh Djoser and his famous polymath vizier Imhotep, the world’s first renaissance man and Da Vinci of the early Egyptians. Imhotep was the High Priest of Ra, chancellor, administrator, noble, architect, engineer, carpenter, sculptor and physician. He was also known as Thoth and considered the God of scribes, writing, and literacy. The Minoans began their early Bronze Age around 2700 BCE and several locations became centers of craftsmanship and commerce. The first Air-Water hybrid

transitional period lasted 60 years consisting of mostly Air Element influence for the last 40 years before switching to pure Water. The cultivation and weaving of silk started to be a closely guarded secret in China around 2640 BCE, expressing both the protectiveness of the Cancerian alignment and the secretiveness of the Water Element. The Indus Valley Civilization reached its Mature Harappan period around 2600 BCE, the midpoint of the last Air-Water Wave alignment. They were famous for the first known urban sanitation systems, hydraulic engineering, public bath houses and an empire larger than both Egypt and Sumer combined, spread across modern Pakistan and northern India. Their worship of the Great Mother Goddess also developed into proto-Hinduism. They were a society of traders and artisans skilled at crafting toys, games, dice, ornaments, and figurines performing yoga poses. They

conducted their mercantile activities by land and sea, introducing the first system of uniform weights and measures (Libra Chronicle). Their society was a perfect expression of the Air (intellect) and Water (imagination) themes, but lacked the strength to endure, as they were eventually conquered by the fierce Aryans around 1500 BCE. 2600 BCE saw the end of the Early Dynastic II period in Mesopotamia and the beginning of the Early Dynastic IIIa period. The use of cuneiform writing in Sumer expanded beyond debt, payment and inventory lists to mail, history, legend, mathematics, astrological records and the formation of the first schools at temples, truly an intellectual outpouring. The Golden Age 4th Dynasty of Old Kingdom Egypt began with Sneferu about 2613 BCE. Khufu succeeded him around 2601 BCE, and was responsible for the construction of the Great Pyramid at Giza and the Sphinx (under Kafre).


12

Air Wave IAir Wave I

DateBCE

JupiterSaturn

2728 12

2708 29

2689 8

2669 24

Air-Water Wave I

Air-Water Wave I

DateBCE

JupiterSaturn

2648 7

2629 22

2609 29

The first pure Water Wave saw the completion of the Great Pyramid of Giza, aided by institutionalized slavery, under Khufu’s vizier Hemiunu around 2560 BCE when Neptune and Pluto conjuncted at the Aries Ingres Point, a new 495-year cycle that tapped into the first degree of the Zodiac! Around 2550 BCE, Mesannepada, the King of Ur, founded the First Dynasty of Ur, overthrowing the last king of Uruk. In Britain, the construction of the stone circle at Stonehenge began around 2500 BCE and continued for five hundred years. The Lagash Dynasty arose from 2500-2270 BCE, the first empire to wield terror as a weapon against enemies. The Stele of the Vultures monument came from this time. The temple at Lagash was devoted to Ninurta lord of the earth and the plough, their mythological equivalent to Saturn/Kronos. Lagash (meaning “storehouse”) was said to be a spiritual center known for its artistic development, which would match the imaginative and religious Water Wave symbolism. Two of the oldest trees in the world (the Methuselah and Prometheus Trees) began germinating during this period. The Hypogeum of Malta was constructed around 2500 BCE, a subterranean temple complex subsequently used as a necropolis. The eighth and final hybrid Water-Fire Wave period of the first Elemental Epoch began with the Jupiter-Saturn alignment of 2469 BCE in the Sign of Leo. 2450 BCE marks the Early Dynastic IIIb period in Sumer, the preSargonic period (before Sargon unites Mesopotamia under the Akkadian Civilization in the next pure Fire Wave). By the end of this wave (2409 BCE), Sumerian kings cease to be automatic high priests of the patron city deity. Semitic nomadic infiltration and conquest of Mesopotamia begins which would give rise to the Akkadians. During the Water-Fire transition, megalithic culture spread through Europe, the symbol of the Taurian Age of Great Builders. The Harappan Civilization in India peaked during this last hybrid Elemental Wave, built with the aid of institutionalized slavery.

Even with the faintest historical records and archaeological discoveries, we can retrace the dynamic shape and overarching themes of the 1st Elemental Epoch. Starting with the Scorpion King of the Egyptian First Dynasty under the Plutonic empowerment of the Fire Wave, we then saw the development of the Harappan, Cycladic and other cultures under the Fire-Earth Wave and the introduction of the shekel. During the first Earth Wave China makes its grand entrance with its 3 Sovereigns and 5 Emperors pre-dynastic era. Then the early Dynastic II period in Sumer ensues under the Earth-Air Wave leading to our first intellectual renaissance with characters like the Yellow Emperor, Gilgamesh, and Imhotep appearing in the pure Air Wave. As the Air-Water ensues, the Mature Harappan emerges, artistic masters of water storage and hydraulics. The First Dynasty of Ur flowed in with the pure Water along with Khufu in Egypt, who built the Great Pyramid at Giza at the pinnacle of this Elemental Epoch. Then as the Epoch ends with the hybrid Water-Fire Wave we see the spread of megalithic culture throughout Europe, the peak of the Harappan civilization in the Indus Valley, and the Semitic migration into Mesopotamia that leads to the rise of the Akkadian Civilization in the next Fire Wave.


13

Water Wave IWater Wave I

DateBCE

JupiterSaturn

2589 20

2569 1

2549 10

2529 27

2509 15

2489 16

Water-Fire Wave I

Water-Fire Wave I

DateBCE

JupiterSaturn

2469 4

2449 23

2429 26

Elemental Epoch II (2409 BCE - 1576 BCE): The second Elemental Epoch opened with another shorter impulsive Fire Wave that promised rapid land expansion and scientific revolutions. In Sumer, the so-called cradle of Western civilization, the Early Dynastic wars continued as individual cities vied for power over the region. 2350 BCE marked the end of the Early Dynastic IIIb period. 2345 BCE marked the beginning of the 5th Dynasty of Egypt and the end of the Old Kingdom. During this time another non-noble vizier called Ptahhotep emerged and authored a moral treatise of wisdom literature, the “Maxims of Ptahhotep.” The Old Kingdom oversaw the refinement of Egyptian artistic expression through masonry,

sculpture, and craftsmanship, but went into decline by the end of this Fire Wave, completely dispersing at the end of the next Fire-Earth Wave mired in civil wars, droughts and famines. The Harappan port city of Lothal was engineered with the world’s first known dock around 2350 BCE and, in addition to prosperous commerce involving metallurgy and jewelry, made advances in city planning, architecture, science, religion, and artistic expression. The primary new civilization that emerged around 2340 BCE under this Fire Wave was the Akkadian Empire under the Semitic chieftain Sargon. True to the age of Taurus, Sargon emerged from humble roots as a gardener. The Akkadians developed over centuries of Sumerian synergy and influence. Technological advances included “lost-wax” bronze casting which was previously thought to have been invented by the Greeks much later. Roads were built throughout the empire including postal routes with clay seals of Sargon and his son. The first collection of astrological observations and star omens was compiled for Sargon’s library and inspired their calendar. The city of Akkad (A.GA.DE in Sumerian meaning Crown of Fire) was devoted to Ishtar

(like Uruk in the last Epoch), the brilliant goddess of fertility, love, war and sex. In Sumer she was Innana with her holy city at Uruk. She was the courtesan of the gods and her cult involved sacred prostitution. She was also worshipped at Nineveh by the Assyrians. Besides the lions on her gate, her symbol was an 8-pointed star and, according to the Babylonians, she was the divine personification of the planet Venus/Aphrodite. 2333 BCE marked the beginning of the Gojoseon, the first dynasty and government system in Korea that the early Chinese referred to as the eastern barbarians. The Middle Bronze Age began around 2300 BCE, when metals came into common use throughout Europe. In alchemy the symbol for copper (bronze) was the same symbol used for the Goddess and planet Venus, governing planet of the Age of Taurus. As Ishtar guiding the Akkadians she acted more like Athena, Goddess of Wisdom and Battle Strategy. The Uranus-Neptune conjunction in Scorpio in 2295 BCE at the end of the Fire Wave was a sign of tremendous transformation to come, foreshadowing a time of both empowerment and destruction for the next 172 years.


14

Fire Wave IIFire Wave II

DateBCE

JupiterSaturn

2409 15

2389 9

2370 2

2349 23

2330 17

2310 6

During the extended Fire-Earth Wave, Egypt transitioned into its First Intermediate Period as the Old Kingdom collapsed under civil wars, droughts and famines. Enheduanna, the Akkadian high priestess of Nanna, poetess, and daughter of Sargon worked from the temple of Sin at Ur, between 2285-2250 BCE. She was the first poet in history known by name. Her work included hymns to the goddess in the “Exaltation of Inanna.” She stretched the use of cuneiform to include the third person. In 2240 BCE, Akkad surpassed Memphis as the largest city in the world. Unfortunately for the Akkadians, the Gutian barbarians, using hit and run tactics, swept down from the Zagros Mountains and utterly destroyed Akkad between 2215 - 2193 BCE, spelling a rapid decline to the empire right after the religion was instituted. Yu the Great, was the legendary founder of the first Chinese Xia Dynasty that began in 2205 BCE, best remembered for teaching the people techniques to tame rivers and lakes during epic floods. The Chinese civilization seems to prosper throughout history as the Earth Wave emerges. A Grand Water shifting to Fire Trine between Uranus-Neptune-Pluto formed in 2179 BCE and cultures faced an upcoming drought. The grand Trine formed a Kite pattern to Saturn in Taurus symbolizing a restriction of fertility. As the pure Earth Wave descended the severe aridification and drought that lasted a century is responsible for wiping out many Old World civilizations. 2181 BCE marked the official end of the Old Kingdom in Egypt right at the midpoint between Waves and the start of the First Intermediate Period that hosted the 7th - 10th Dynasties. Sumer was consumed with wars between the Gutian invaders who fought their way to the Elamites where their leader created a statue of himself. While Earth Waves normally bear the promise of productivity and population explosions, this particular wave had the reverse effect. Populations were devastated by the drought that swept over North Africa, Mesopotamia and India and productivity declined sharply. This is an example of a negative Earth Wave as people struggled to exist. Even in China, the flourishing culture was hit by a cooling caused by the drought that made rice paddies scarce and seeds

were not gathered. It may be that the Epic of Gilgamesh was recorded in the Deluge Tablet around 2150 - 2030 BCE. The Hebrew Calendar places the Great Flood around 2104 - 2103 BCE. In either case, intense drought or intense flooding led to the demise of Old World civilizations. Many historians place the beginning of the Xia Dynasty in China around 2070 BCE, and this may have been the time they re-emerged after the great wave of calamities that devastated cultures globally. The Xia Dynasty instituted the first known government system in China, lasting until 1600 BCE, essentially until the last Chronicle of Elemental Epoch II. During the last Chronicle of the Earth Wave in 2065 BCE there was an extremely rare Saturn-Neptune-Pluto Conjunction in Aries trine to innovative Uranus in Leo that helped shift the world into a new cycle and rise from the ashes of devastating climate change.


15

Fire-Earth Wave II

Fire-Earth Wave II

DateBCE

JupiterSaturn

2290 1

2270 22

2251 11

2230 6

2211 5

2191 26

Earth Wave IIEarth Wave II

DateBCE

JupiterSaturn

2171 16

2151 12

2132 1

2111 21

2091 25

2072 12

The following Earth-Air Wave rekindled hope as there was a collective restoration of civilizations that took place, bringing in the renaissance tide. It didn’t take long for civilizations to recover. In 2049 BCE, oak trees were cut in Britain to create the Seahenge monument, a wooden version of Stonehenge built in water. The year 2000 BCE was a monumental year in history: Stonehenge was completed, the palace in Minoan Crete was built, glass appeared, the first written accounts of schizophrenia occurred, the domestication of the horse occurred, and the

Middle Jomon period in Japan ended. Some scholars place the beginning of the Xia Dynasty, China’s first, at 2040 BCE paralleled by the beginning of the Olmec Civilization in Central America. The Middle Kingdom of Egypt also began in 2040 BCE, a period that hosted the 11th-14th Dynasties, starting with the reign of Mentuhotep II in Thebes. The 12th Dynasty from 1991 - 1802 BCE was the most stable dynasty before the New Kingdom period. Sumer also experienced a rebirth as the 3rd Dynasty of Ur emerged, lasting from 2047 - 1900 BCE. In fact, historians remarkably label this period as the “Sumerian Renaissance” under the wise statesman Ur-Nammu. Ur-Nammu was famous for the oldest known legal code in history called the “Code of Ur-Nammu.” He reconstructed roads, built the Great Ziggurat of Ur and restored order to a ravaged Sumer. The copper bar cubit of Nippur defined the cubit as 51.72 centimeters around 1950 BCE, another standard of measurement during the Earth-Air Wave. While Akkadian was used as the common language, Sumerian was retained as the primary language for religious, scholarly and artistic expression. Unfortunately, an Elamite invasion at the end of the Earth-Air Wave brought an abrupt end of the Ur III renaissance, but announced the beginning of the Age of Aries (1940 BCE - 220 CE) that would shape dynamic warrior civilizations to come.The second Air Wave was shortened by the 1953 BCE alignment that fell between Capricorn and Aquarius, but solid structures and ambition were required to get societies back on their collective feet again. 1900 BCE marks the beginning of the Minoan Old Palace period as well as the collapse of the last Sumerian Dynasty. The Harappan Indus Valley civilization went into decline due to invasions from the north. Senusret II was the fourth pharaoh of the 12th Dynasty of Egypt. He ruled from 1897 - 1878 BCE. He took great interest in the Faiyum oasis region and began work on an extensive irrigation system through the construction of a dike at El-Lahun (the location of his pyramid) and a network of

drainage canals to increase the amount of cultivable land. A smart goal after the severe drought period almost wiped out civilization. He also established the first known workers' quarter in the nearby town of Senusrethotep. El-Lahun would remain the political capital for the 12th and 13th Dynasties of Egypt. Amennemhat III was also a pharaoh of the 12th Dynasty of Egypt, ruling from 1860 - 1814 BCE, and is regarded as the greatest monarch of the Middle Kingdom period. He built a pyramid at his mortuary in Hawara called “The Labyrinth”, which included some of the most complex security features ever found in Egypt a tribute to his renaissance genius.


16

Earth-Air Wave II

Earth-Air Wave II

DateBCE

JupiterSaturn

2052 1

2032 3

2012 17

1992 6

1972 11

1953 29

Air Wave IIAir Wave II

DateBCE

JupiterSaturn

1933 16

1913 24

1893 6

1873 21

The hybrid Air-Water Wave transition period combined the intellectual growth of the Air Element with the spiritual and imaginative outpouring of the Water Element and many new developments resulted. The Egyptians warred with Nubia and Canaan between 1829 - 1818 BCE as a T-Square between Pluto-Neptune-Uranus formed in 1819 BCE. Incidentally, the beginning of the Hebrew Patriarchal Age started in 1827 BCE, followed by the birth of Abraham in 1812 BCE and a list of star names in the “Prayers to the Gods of the Night.” In 1813 BCE, the Amorites conquered Northern Mesopotamia. Abraham, father of the Israelites, might have been a wandering Amorite from Ur. 1806 BCE marks the traditional date of the decline of the Xia Dynasty. India reached its Iron Age around 1800 BCE. Hammurabi, meaning "Healer from Ammu,” was the king of the Babylonian Empire from 1792 - 1750 BCE just as the Jupiter-Saturn Conjunction was aligning in Cancer, the archetypal Sign of the Healer. He extended the city-state of Babylon's

control over Mesopotamia by winning a series of wars against neighboring kingdoms. Hammurabi is known for the set of laws called “Hammurabi’s Code,” one of the first written code of laws in recorded history. These laws were inscribed on stone tablets standing over eight feet tall. Owing to his reputation in modern times as an ancient law-giver, Hammurabi's portrait is in many government buildings throughout the world. In 1779 BCE, Zimrilim began his rule over the city of Mari (founded in 2900 BCE), a major trade post connecting Mesopotamia to the West. The citizens of Mari were well known for elaborate hair styles and dress and worshiped a vast array of gods and goddesses. Dagan, the deity of storms, had an entire temple dedicated to him, as did Ishtar, the goddess of fertility, and Shamash, the Sun god. In 1759 BCE, Mari was sacked by Hammurabi and slavery ensued. As the second Water Wave was underway, groups of nomadic shepherds from the Eurasian Steppes called the Aryans swept down through the Hindu Kush region into India to deal the final blow to the declining Harappan Civilization. 1750 BCE marked the official start of Vedic Civilization in India as the Aryan horse nomads merged with the Indus Valley early Iron Age culture. The concept of societal class and rigid rules of marriage were drawn from Vedic sacred texts. The highest caste, the Brahmins, provided intellectual leadership, specializing in poetry, preservation of the Vedas (sacred texts), and the performance

of rituals. Hinduism and Vedic Astrology stem from this creative period in Indian history. Although there was no push to expand across the sea, the spiritual and artistic revitalization produced visionary works that clearly crossed the inner seas of the imagination. 1700 BCE marked both the beginning of the Late Minoan period and the median date for the building of the Phaistos Disc, a fired clay disc from the Palace of Phaistos on the island of Crete. Its purpose, meaning and even its origin remains unknown, making it one of the most famous mysteries of archaeology. The fact that it dates to a Water Wave between Pisces and Scorpio alignments adds to its mystery. By 1700 BCE, Aegean metalworkers began producing decorative objects rivaling Mesopotamian jewelers, borrowing and improving their artistry during this Water Wave.


17

Air-Water Wave II

Air-Water Wave II

DateBCE

JupiterSaturn

1853 3

1834 18

1814 2

1793 11

1774 27

Water Wave IIWater Wave II

DateBCE

JupiterSaturn

1754 7

1734 25

1714 5

1695 18

At last we reached the end of the second Elemental Epoch with the final Water-Fire hybrid transition, which did not disappoint. The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus is dated to 1650 BCE. It dates to the Second Intermediate Period of Egypt and is the best example of Egyptian mathematics including arithmetic progressions and the computations of areas, volumes and pyramids. The earliest rubber balls were created around 1600 BCE as well, an invention that expresses the Water-Fire rapid-bounce dynamic perfectly. 1600 BCE also marked the creation of one of the oldest surviving astronomical documents, a copy of which was found in the

Babylonian library of Ashurbanipal: a 21-year record of the appearances of Venus, created during a Leo Chronicle that began with Jupiter-Saturn conjunct Venus. The previous Scorpio alignment 20-years before was conjunct Venus and Neptune, a spiritual revelation about Venus! The Venus Tablet is part of Enuma anu enlil ("In the days of Anu and Enlil"), a long text dealing with Babylonian astrology, which mostly consists of omens interpreting celestial phenomena, the ancient source of the astrological traditions. 1600 BCE also marked the beginning of the Bronze Age and Shang Dynasty of China, which endured until 1046 BCE. Jie of the Xia Dynasty was overthrown by Tang of Shang in the Battle of Mingtiao. They ruled in the northeastern regions of the area known as “China proper” in the Yellow River Valley Their civilization was based on agriculture, augmented by hunting and animal husbandry. In addition to war, the Shang also practiced human sacrifice. The capitals, particularly the later city of Yin, were centers of glittering court life. Over time, court rituals to appease spirits and ancestors developed, another activity symbolic of the watery connection to the past.

At the end of yet another Elemental Epoch we saw another series of civilizations and events that matched the symbolic meanings of the four Elements of the Jupiter-Saturn Great Conjunctions and the transition periods between them. The Fire Wave inspired the rise of Sargon of the Akkadians, led by Ishtar, followed by the rise of the Xia Dynasty under Yu the Great in China, preparing to take advantage of the Earth Wave. But alas, catastrophe struck with a worldwide drought that spelled disaster through deadly famines. When the Air Signs began making their appearance, hope returned with the historical Sumerian Renaissance and the rebirth of the Old World civilizations plus the addition of a new emergence with the Olmecs of Mesoamerica. The Middle Kingdom of Egypt produced the legendary stability of the 12th Dynasty under Senusret II and his heirs that was followed in the Near East with the glorious rise of the Babylonian Empire led by Hammurabi the Healer and Lawmaker. As the Epoch came to a close, the Aryans merged with the declining Harappan in the Indus Valley to give new life to the vibrant culture of Vedic Civilization that changed and shaped India forevermore. And finally, the epic rise of China’s Shang Dynasty during the last transitional wave brought the Elemental Epoch to a surprising conclusion.


18

Water-Fire Wave II

Water-Fire Wave II

DateBCE

JupiterSaturn

1674 3

1655 19

1635 24

1615 15

1595 28

Elemental Epoch III (1575 BCE - 781 BCE): In each conjunction, Saturn starts with gravitas and pressure to carve the essence of the Element and themes of the Sign that hosts the Great Conjunction into the contours of civilizations. Saturn emits the archetypal vibration of time. Then Jupiter comes to activate Saturn’s wisdom and experience by announcing a new order to cultures, a new division of power, opening frontiers within individuals who can perceive and heed the call to growth. Those who can stand in Jupiter’s thunder and lightning are empowered with faith to lead and inspire humanity forward in conscious evolution. The third Fire Wave ignited the seeds of multicultural growth planted in the last Epoch that were ready to burst with life under an opening Sagittarius alignment: the Shang Dynasty in China, the Vedic Civilization in India, the Babylonian Empire in Mesopotamia, the New Kingdom in Egypt, the Minoans at Crete, and the Olmecs in Mesoamerica. In addition, new vibrant cultures were ready to emerge. The early Mycenaeans of Greece and the Phoenicians were sprouting but didn’t come to term until the Late Helladic period. The Great Conjunction at 5 Sagittarius to start the Fire Wave was opposed to Uranus and trine to the incoming Neptune-Pluto conjunction in Aries, promising an

exciting period of dramatic change. Centered in Hattusa of Anatolia, the Hittite Empire charged south, sporting their deadly war chariots to sack Babylon in 1531 BCE. The Hittite military campaign caused internal dissension which forced a strategic withdrawal. Throughout the remainder of the Fire Wave, the Hittite kings were held to their homelands by dynastic quarrels and warfare with the Hurrian tribes to the east. The early Hittite rulers signed treaties and alliances with neighboring states, and were thus among the earliest known pioneers in the art of international politics and diplomacy. The 18th Dynasty of Egypt was one of the most famous in Egypt’s long history, spanning from 1550 - 1292 BCE. Amenhotep II, the seventh Pharaoh, reigning from 1427 - 1400 BCE, inherited a vast kingdom from his father Thutmose III during the Fire-Earth Wave that featured a dramatic Grand Air Trine Kite to focal Pluto in Leo in 1490 BCE. The Kassites of the Zagros Mountains conquered Babylonia in 1460 BCE, taking advantage of the Hittite retreat, and ruled for over 576 years, inspired by the innovative Uranus-Neptune Aquarius Conjunction of 1434 BCE. The Kassite kings maintained control of their realm through a network of provinces administered by governors and intermarried within royal families. The transformation of Southern Mesopotamia into a territorial state, rather than a network of allied or combative temple-cities, made Babylonia an international power. They established trade and diplomacy with Assyria, Egypt, Elam and Hattusa. The Hittite New Kingdom was established in 1430 BCE and the Minoan capital of Crete was conquered by Mycenae, setting the stage for their rise. It was also a period of sacred writings. The Rigveda text was composed between 1500-1400 BCE in India. 1444 BCE is the traditional biblical date for the Exodus of Israel from Egypt. Moses wrote the Torah around 1420 BCE. The 1416 BCE alignment was conjunct Uranus bringing a revolutionary tide.


19

Fire Wave IIIFire Wave III

DateBCE

JupiterSaturn

1575 5

1555 22

1536 6

1516 10

Fire-Earth Wave III

Fire-Earth Wave III

DateBCE

JupiterSaturn

1496 4

1476 20

1456 20

1436 10

1416 28

1397 25

During the third pure Earth Wave the Shang Dynasty of Yin moved their capital to Yin in 1350 BCE, initiating a Golden Age. Their capital had massive defensive walls 20 meters high. True to the Earth Wave, the Shang Dynasty engaged in large-scale industrial production of bronze-ware vessels and weapons. This production required a large labor force that could handle the mining, refining and transportation of the necessary copper, tin, and lead ores. This in turn created a need for official managers that could oversee both labor force and skilled artisans and craftsmen. The celebrated 18th Dynasty of Egypt had a glorious run during this and the previous wave. Famous pharaohs include Hatshepsut (1479 - 1458 BCE), longest-reigning queen-pharaoh of an indigenous dynasty, and Akhenaten (1353 – 1336 BCE), the "heretic pharaoh", with his queen, Nefertiti and famous son Tutankhamen (1341 - 1323 BCE). Akhenaten attempted to introduce monotheism based on the worship of the sun during his reign but after he died, his son re-established polytheism. In 1274 BCE, the great warrior king Shalmaneser I ascended the throne of Assur in northwest Mesopotamia to start the Assyrian Empire. The 1297 BCE alignment conjuncted Pluto and the 1278 BCE

alignment conjuncted Uranus. In his first year, Shalmaneser I conquered eight countries in the northwest. To the south, the 19th Dynasty of Egypt was underway as Ramesses II rose to power, considered the greatest, most celebrated, and most powerful pharaoh of Egypt, reigning from 1279 - 1213 BCE. Under Ramesses, a peace treaty was signed with the Hittites, the earliest known peace treaty in world history that occurred under the 1257 alignment that entered Libra 2 days after the exact conjunction. Ramesses relocated his capital to Pi-Ramesses in the Nile delta. He became one of the most prolific monument builders in history, using public art as propaganda. The third Earth-Air Wave began with justice and peace. With the rising Air Element, the Late Helladic Mycenaean Greek culture emerged. The solar eclipse on September 7, 1251 BCE at 10:13 AM in Thebes, Greece marked the traditional birth of legendary Heracles.

At the moment of the eclipse Scorpio was rising with Mars conjunct Pluto in Leo on the Midheaven in a Grand Fire Trine configuration with Saturn and Neptune! 1250 BCE saw the start of the Trojan War, waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans (early Greeks) after Paris abducted Helen from Menelaus, the Spartan king. The story, along with the Odyssey, was the centerpiece of classic Greek literature that inspired Greek Mythology and influenced Western civilization. 1250 BCE also saw the construction of the Twin Lioness Gate at Mycenae and the beginning of the great reign of Wu Ding over the Shang Dynasty. 1230 BCE was the traditional date Theseus slew the Minotaur in Minos on Crete, and returned as the King of Athens. 1198 BCE also marked the high point of the Phoenician maritime empire, the first culture to use the alphabet to facilitate trade, as the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction of 1198 BCE included Mercury. The last alignment coincided with the eruption of Icelandic volcano Hekla (Hell Gate) that cooled climates for 18 years!


20

Earth Wave IIIEarth Wave III

DateBCE

JupiterSaturn

1376 20

1357 11

1337 6

1317 26

1297 19

1278 10

1257 30

Earth-Air Wave III

Earth-Air Wave III

DateBCE

JupiterSaturn

1238 1

1218 21

1198 10

1178 11

1158 26

The third Air Wave brought climate change and the end to many civilizations in the west with the renaissance centered in the Far East until late in the wave when the Israelites emerged. 1125 BCE marked the reign of Nebuchadnezzar I of Babylonia, who pushed back the Elamites and waged war with the Assyrians. 1100 BCE marks the decline of the Mycenaeans and the start of the Greek Dark Ages leading up to the Archaic period starting around 800 BCE. The seeds of

Greek Mythology had been planted for future generations. The New Kingdom in Egypt reached its end in 1100 BCE as well. Around 1085 BCE, Jupiter-Uranus-Neptune-Pluto aligned in Aries trine Saturn in Leo! The Zhou Dynasty in China arose in 1046 BCE, marking the third Chinese dynasty in history characterized by an archaic feudal system under the “Mandate of Heaven.” The later rise of confucian bureaucracy, institutionalized ancestral worship, and native Chinese Taoist philosophy coupled with advances in agriculture, art and law made the Zhou the most enduring Chinese dynasty. It lasted until 256 BCE and birthed both Confucianism and Taoism, introduced iron and formed the earliest version of the modern Chinese writing system. In 1026 BCE, King Saul of the Israelites rose to power, succeeded by King David in 1003 BCE. With the arrival of the Hebrew culture at the crossroads of civilizations, it was truly an intellectual revitalization with social, economic, and political changes on many fronts. David is depicted as a righteous king as well as an acclaimed warrior, musician and poet, traditionally credited for composing many Psalms, a true Air Element renaissance figure. Around 1000 BCE, the Latins settled in Italy migrating from the Danube region and the Phoenicians developed the first alphabet, the precursor to the Roman alphabet. The hybrid Air-Water Wave transition only lasted 40 years with alignments in Cancer and Aquarius before shifting to the pure Water Wave. In 998 BCE, under the alignment in traditional Cancer, King David established Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. In 967 BCE Solomon the Wise, the Hebrew renaissance man, became King of the Israelites, starting a new Aquarius alignment era. To the ancients, King Solomon was a prophet and messenger from God. He was a talented man with versatile gifts including sagacity, wise judgement, deep understanding and spiritual insight. King David made him his heir, despite being the youngest son. The Temple of Solomon was built during

his reign and Israel prospered. People supposedly traveled from all over the world to consult the wisdom of Solomon. In the Far East, King Mu of the Zhou rose to power in 977 BCE, one of the most influential leaders of the dynasty famous for his transformation of the government away from a hereditary system to one based on merit and administrative skill. Chinese myths say that King Mu dreamed of becoming an immortal god, determined to visit the heavenly paradise to taste the peaches of immortality. One curious legend says that a Chinese artificer named Yan Shi crafted an automata for King Mu, a life-sized, human-shaped mechanical figure. With the Aquarius conjunction, even robots were imagined by classical mechanical engineers!


21

Air-Water Wave IIIAir-Water Wave III

DateBCE

JupiterSaturn

999 7

980 25

Air Wave IIIAir Wave III

DateBCE

JupiterSaturn

1138 15

1119 21

1099 7

1079 25

1059 29

1039 13

1019 30

The pure Water Wave only increased the vibration of spiritual wisdom on the planet starting with a Pluto conjunction in Scorpio. During the 900‘s in Vedic India, Yajnavalkya wrote the “Shatapatha Brahmana,” describing the motions of the sun and the moon, creation myths and the story of the Deluge of Manu. The Vedic Sanskrit text also describes the preparation of altars,

ceremonial objects, and ritual recitations and marked the beginning of the Upanishadic and Vedantic traditions of Hinduism. In the West, around 900 BCE, the Villanova culture emerged in Northern Italy and the kingdom of Kush south of Egypt. The Neo-Assyrian Empire began in 934 BCE and ended in 608 BCE, during which Assyria became the most powerful nation on earth, introducing the Aramaic language and slavery. In 872 BCE, an exceptionally high flood of the Nile covered the floors of the Temple of Luxor followed by an outer planet Grand Water Trine in 869 BCE. Shalmaneser III was king of Neo-Assyria from 858 - 824 BCE. He forced tribute from the Israelites and the Phoenicians and built the Black Obelisk to recount his war campaigns. In the 850‘s, under the influence of the fantasy-oriented Pisces alignment, Homer composed the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey,” transforming the Mycenaean dramas of this Epoch into poetry. They were the first works of Western literature that irrevocably influenced the development of Hellenistic Greek civilization in the next Epoch. 841 BCE marked the first year of consecutive annual dating of Chinese history. The Olmecs were beginning to build pyramids during the 800‘s. The third Water-Fire Wave opened with an amazing T-Cross configuration with an opposition of Pluto and Neptune both square to the Great Conjunction in Leo, truly a remarkable agitation in the heavens! The city of Carthage was founded in 813 BCE under Pygmalion of Tyre. The Archaic Greek City-States period started in 800 BCE and saw the rise of the polis (and slavery), the founding of colonies, the first inklings of classical philosophy, theatre in the cult of Dionysus, written language and poetry. In addition, the early Etruscan culture emerged, precursors to the Romans, in what became modern Tuscany, birthplace of the Italian Renaissance. The Third Elemental Epoch had come to an end, expressing the heavenly patterns to perfection. Starting

with the innovative Hittites and the enduring Kassites of the fiery waves, cultures exploded onto the world stage during the Earth Wave, unlike the last Epoch, where calamities dwindled populations. This time the Shang Dynasty at Yin created an unprecedented economy and Assyria, Mycenae, and Phoenicia prospered alongside the famed 18th and 19th Dynasties of Egypt that produced the great builder, Ramesses II. During the renaissance Air Wave we saw the emergence of the great Zhou Dynasty in China along with the world-changing Israelites. The Air-Water Wave brought no new empires, but the combined wisdom of Solomon and King Mu of the Zhou was enough to fuel generations to come. Finally, in the Water Waves we witnessed the Neo-Assyrian Empire emerge followed by the Greek City States to end their Dark Ages, shortly after Homer penned his great works. In India the Vedic Sanskrit works were being written while the first rumblings of the Romans were felt with the rise of the Etruscans.


22

Water-Fire Wave III

Water-Fire Wave III

DateBCE

JupiterSaturn

821 12

801 24

Water Wave IIIWater Wave III

DateBCE

JupiterSaturn

960 11

940 21

920 2

900 16

880 29

860 10

841 27

Elemental Epoch IV (781 BCE - 54 CE): The fourth Elemental Epoch opened with another Sagittarian alignment that included a conjunction to Ceres in Scorpio and the Moon and Uranus in Sagittarius, foreshadowing a bountiful and deep philosophical revolution that would change the world in exciting new ways and forever alter public approaches to the quest for meaning. At the end of this Epoch, under the “Star of Bethlehem” alignment hosted in Pisces, the Sign of the Mystic, Christ was born, the Messianic messenger of the incoming Age of Pisces. The Epoch began in 781 with the Neo-Assyrian Empire reaching the peak of its power after the conquest of the Israelites. In Egypt, the 23rd & 24th Dynasties ruled from Nubia. The Greek City-States formed colonies throughout the Mediterranean and Black Seas. The Vedic City-States of India codified their wisdom as the earliest Upanishads mark the beginning of Vedanta philosophy. The 8th Century BCE was a period of great transformation and is generally marked as the beginning of Classical Antiquity with the first Olympiad held in 776 BCE. The Sagittarius alignment of the fourth pure Fire Wave started things off competitively with the sporting event of the ages. In

771 BCE the Western Zhou Dynasty capital of Hao was sacked by barbarian tribes. King You was slain, but the Crown Prince escaped to start the Eastern Zhou Dynasty at Chengzhou. The Spring & Autumn period of Zhou China began in 770 BCE and lasted until 476 BCE. The city of Rome was founded on April 21, 753 BCE by the Etruscan Romulus. The founding happened under the influence of a Leo Chronicle where Jupiter-Saturn were conjunct Mercury, Venus, Pluto and trine to Mars in Sagittarius. In the foundation chart, Rome has an exalted Aries Sun rising conjunct Neptune and Jupiter in addition to Mercury and Uranus in early Aries! The Moon in Aquarius is opposite Pluto in Leo. The Medes of ancient Persia came to power in 728 BCE, forerunners to the later Achaemenid Empire. A unified Median state was formed and, together with Babylonia, Lydia, and Egypt, became one of the four major powers of the ancient Near East. Around 700 BCE, the Scythians migrated into Cimmerian lands and emerged as the dominant nomadic tribe of the Eurasian Steppes throughout the Epoch. The 701 and 662 BCE alignments occurred with a tight Mercury conjunction. February 11, 660 BC marks the traditional founding date of Japan by Emperor Jimmu. During the latter Fire Wave an alliance with the Babylonians (who gained independence from Assyria in 727 BCE) helped the Medes to capture Nineveh in 612 BCE, which resulted in the collapse of the Neo-Assyrian Empire under the Fire-Earth Wave. The empire began to unravel as numerous enemies made alliances and waged war from all sides. The Assyrians left the world stage permanently. These events gave rise to the Neo-Babylonian Chaldean Empire which dominated the region for the next century, making monumental contributions to astrology. Babylon became the largest city in the world. In 605 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar II succeeded his father Nabopolassar as King of Babylon, initiating a new era blending the Fire-Earth Wave themes.


23

Fire Wave IVFire Wave IV

DateBCE

JupiterSaturn

781 2

761 21

741 2

721 13

701 28

682 16

662 19

Fire-Earth Wave IV

Fire-Earth Wave IV

DateBCE

JupiterSaturn

642 11

622 25

602 30

As the pure Earth Wave began, Nebuchadnezzar II built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, a perfect expression of the Earth Element around 600 BCE. In India the age of the Mahajanapadas (16 Great Kingdoms) begins. Lydia was the first realm to invent coinage and to establish retail shops in permanent locations, true to the earthy theme of commerce and trade. The Greeks adopted both coinage and the alphabet from Asia Minor. During this wave, the dynamic super-conjunction of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto occurred (576 BCE) that irrevocably transformed civilizations. With philosophies such as Taoism, Buddhism and Jainism emphasizing nature, simplicity, pure being, and simplification along with the rise of the Greek philosophical, artistic and Orphic traditions, the world stage was set for a major awakening with the works of great people like Confucius, Buddha, Mahavira, Lao Tzu, Sun Tzu, Zoroaster, Heraclitus, Solon of Athens, Sappho of Lesbos, Thales of Miletus, Cyrus the Great, Daniel, Ezekiel, Pythagoras, Aeschylus, Epimenides of Knossos, Pindar, Thespis and Anaximander. The Axial Age had begun with an infusion of human talent like never before. In the Second Epoch, the population of the planet was devastated by climate change. During this Epoch, the reverse occurred, one of the greatest periods of humanity. The Greek philosophers taught that the four foundational elements of nature (Fire, Earth, Air and Water) constituted and governed the universe, producing cosmic harmony. 582 BCE marks the beginning of the Pythian Games followed by the Nemean Games in 573 BCE. In 570 BCE, Xenophanes argued for monotheism, visualizing the divine as an eternal being, spherical in form, the intelligent mover of all things, but decidedly non-anthropomorphic. The Temple of Artemis, another World Wonder, was constructed around 550 BCE at the same time as the Temple of Hera. The Persian Empire arose under the Achaemenid Dynasty of Cyrus the Great from 576 - 530 BCE. Cyrus built his empire by conquering the Medes, the Lydians and eventually the Chaldeans. The Babylonian Exile of the Hebrews ended in 538 BCE after the fall of Babylon to Cyrus the Great, who gave the Jews permission to return to Yehud province and to rebuild the Temple. His son managed to add Egypt, Nubia and Libya to the growing realm. Cyrus the Great respected the customs and religions of the lands he conquered, setting the model for centralized administration and establishing a government working to the advantage and profit of its subjects from his capital at Pasargadae. Cyrus was also recognized for his achievements in human rights, politics and military strategy as well as his monumental influence on both Eastern and Western civilizations. Darius the Great came to power in Persia around 550 BCE, organizing the empire by dividing it into provinces and placing satrap governors. He organized a new monetary system, and made Aramaic the official language. Darius also worked on construction projects throughout the empire, focusing on Susa, Pasargadae, Persepolis, Babylon, and Egypt. The Persian Magi, inheriting Chaldean astrology, were Zoroastrian astrologer-priests able to interpret the motions of the stars and shape destiny. In 519 BCE, Xerxes succeeded Darius as leader of the Persians just after the 523 BCE Virgo alignment conjuncted Neptune. In 510 BCE the Early Roman Republic began, governed by a constitution centered on the principles of separation of powers and checks and balances. Just as the period was drawing to a close under the last wisdom-oriented


24

Earth Wave IVEarth Wave IV

DateBCE

JupiterSaturn

582 16

563 9

543 4

523 28

503 16

483 15

Capricorn conjunction, another series of history-shaping great people came into being. In 484, Herodotus was born, the Greek “Father of History,” and the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy and arrange them in a well-constructed, vivid narrative. In 469 BCE the Greek philosopher Socrates was born, the pinnacle of philosophical wisdom expressed in human form. In 468 BCE, Sophocles was born, the most-fêted playwright in Greek dramatic competitions. Halley’s Comet appeared in 467 BCE as if to announce the end of this astonishing wave. In China the Sage Mozi was born around 470 BCE. Mozi was a carpenter and was extremely skilled in creating devices, designing everything from mechanical birds to wheeled, mobile "cloud ladders" used to besiege city walls. Despite the invention of coinage during this Earth Wave, the main expansion occurred through human resources. As the

Earth-Air Wave occurred the great general, orator and strategist Pericles guided Athens into a Golden Age where it became the chief center of education and artistic expression in the ancient world, the promise of the intellectual revitalization of the Air Signs. By 450 BCE, the Celts dominated northern Europe extending from Ireland to Asia Minor. Xerxes of Persia was murdered in 465 BCE and the Hellenistic Greeks were on the rise. Hippocrates, the “Father of Medicine,” was born around 460 BCE along with Democritus. Anaxagoras of Athens was teaching the cosmology of “nous,” the mind as an ordering force of the universe. Aristophanes was born in 446 BCE, a prolific and much acclaimed comic playwright of Athens. The Parthenon of Athena was completed around 438 BCE while the Statue of Zeus was completed in 433 BCE, the exact midpoint of the Taurus Chronicle. The Greek mathematician, astrologer, geometer and engineer Meton of Athens calculated the Metonic Cycle in 432 BCE along with a lunisolar calendar. Plato was born around 428 BCE the Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, astrologer, author of philosophical dialogues and founder of the Athenian Academy, the first institution of higher education in the

Western world. Along with his mentor Socrates and student Aristotle, Plato helped lay the foundations of Western philosophy and science. The Greeks invented the first catapult war machines around 399 BCE, the same year Socrates was forced to drink poison, condemned by the Athenians for his teachings. In 392 BCE, Isocrates set up his school of rhetoric. Philip II of Macedon was born in 382 BCE and came to power over Macedonia in 359 BCE. He was the father of Alexander the Great. Around 403 BCE, Confucianism was institutionalized in China with the Libra alignment trine to Uranus-Neptune in Gemini. The Chinese sage and philosopher Mencius, arguably the most famous Confucian scholar, was born around the 384 BCE alignment. The famous Greek polymath philosopher Aristotle was also born in 384 BCE. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology. Aristotle's writings were the first to create a comprehensive system of Western philosophy, encompassing morality and aesthetics, logic and science, politics and metaphysics. In the last Earth Sign alignment, the World Wonder Mausoleum of Halicarnassus was built around 351 BCE. The Mayan Civilization began in 354 BCE followed by the birth of Alexander the Great on July 20th or 21st, 356 BCE.


25

Earth-Air Wave IVEarth-Air Wave IV

DateBCE

JupiterSaturn

463 4

443 24

424 20

403 13

384 7

364 30

By the age of thirty, Alexander the Great of the Macedonian Empire was the creator of one of the largest realms in ancient history, stretching from the Ionian Sea to the Himalayas. He was undefeated in battle and is considered one of the most successful commanders of all time. Alexander was tutored by the famed philosopher Aristotle to start this Air Wave. In 336 BC he succeeded to the throne after his father Philip II was assassinated. Philip had united most of the Greek City-States using both military and diplomatic means. The famous city of Alexandria in Egypt was built in 320 BCE and became the largest city of the world as well as the site of the Great Library (under the influence of a Gemini Chronicle). Alexander’s huge empire became a highway of multicultural sharing from India to Greece. In 300 BCE, the famous mathematician Euclid of Alexandria was born, author of “The Elements.” Berossus of Cos was a Chaldean priest who settled on the island of Cos and is said to have first introduced natal astrology into Greece around 290 BCE. 287 BCE saw the birth of Archimedes of Syracuse, a Greek mathematician, physicist,

engineer, inventor, and astrologer regarded as the leading scientist of the era. Stoic philosophy traces its roots to 300 BCE as well. Stoicism was a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium. The Stoics considered destructive emotions to be the result of errors in judgment. Stoics were concerned with the active relationship between cosmic determinism and human freedom, and the belief that it is virtuous to maintain a will that is in accord with nature. Because of this, the Stoics presented their philosophy as a way of life, and they thought that the best indication of an individual's philosophy was not what a person said but how he behaved. In 312 BCE, the Seleucid Empire arose, centered in Babylon and led by one of Alexander’s greatest generals, Seleucus. The Carthaginians emerged as a major maritime power in the Mediterranean alongside the Romans. In 280 BCE the Colossus of Rhodes was built followed by the Pharos or Great Lighthouse of Alexandria, two additional ancient World Wonders. In 322 BCE, the Mauryan Empire in India united under Chandragupta Maurya lasting until the last Aquarius conjunction in 185 BCE. His grandson, Ashoka the Great ruled from 273 - 232 BCE. After witnessing the destruction of war firsthand, Ashoka embraced the teachings of the Buddha and renounced war and violence. While he maintained a powerful army, to keep the peace and maintain authority, Ashoka expanded friendly relations with states across Asia and

Europe and sponsored Buddhist missions. He undertook a massive public works building campaign across the country. Over 40 years of peace and prosperity made Ashoka one of the most famous monarchs in Indian history. Under this short, sixty-year hybrid Air-Water Wave three world-shaping powers emerged. China’s first imperial dynasty was the Qin Dynasty (221 - 206 BCE) under emperor Qin Shi Huang. The Qin had unified the Chinese Warring States by conquest and built the first version of the Great Wall of China, but the empire became unstable after Qin died. Within four years, the dynasty's authority had collapsed in the face of rebellion paving the way for the beginning of the Eastern Han Dynasty in 206 BCE. Given the rise of the Water Element, it’s not


26

Air-Water Wave IVAir-Water Wave IV

DateBCE

JupiterSaturn

225 5

205 5

185 21

Air Wave IVAir Wave IV

DateBCE

JupiterSaturn

344 20

324 15

304 5

284 25

265 27

245 16

surprising that the Han developed the oldest known stern-mounted rudder for ships, the first use of negative numbers in mathematics, raised-relief maps, and the hydraulic-powered spherical astrolabe. The famous “I-Ching” in its most complete version was compiled around 200 BCE. Hipparchus (190 - 120 BCE) was a Greek astrologer, geographer and mathematician who founded trigonometry and discovered the precession of the equinoxes. In the West, the rise of the Roman Republic occurred, marked by the 1st and 2nd Punic Wars with Carthage (241 - 210 BCE) led by Hannibal, who is regarded as the greatest military tactician and strategist in European history. The Parthian Empire also emerged under Mithridates I (171- 138 BCE) in Mesopotamia, even though it technically began around 247 BCE, overthrowing the Seleucid

Empire. Even though the Roman Republic traces its source to the last Earth Wave when Romans were sent to study Athens in 454 BCE, this rising Water Wave known for oceanic expansion and spiritual, artistic revival brought Rome to the center of Western civilization with the conquest of Macedonia in 148 BCE followed by the razing of Carthage in the 3rd Punic War in 146 BCE. With the emphasis on seafaring, the period witnessed the Mediterranean realms being slowly brought under Roman control, the resulting revival of Greek culture and the rise of slavery. Spartacus (109 - 71 BCE) led a major slave uprising against the Romans. The Roman general and statesman Julius Caesar was born on July 13, 100 BCE. He was instrumental in using his influence to transform the Roman Republic into an Empire, though it led to his assassination on the floor of the Senate in 44 BCE. The Roman philosopher, orator, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and constitutionalist Cicero was born under the 106 BCE Scorpio alignment. He taught the Romans the chief schools of Greek philosophy and created a Latin philosophical vocabulary distinguishing himself as a linguist and translator. Glassblowing was invented by the Phoenicians around 50 BCE and spread rapidly down the Roman roads. The Roman poet Virgil was born in 70 BCE followed by Ovid in 43 BCE. The final war of the Roman Republic pitted Marc Antony against Augustus Caesar (Octavian - Julius’ adapted nephew) in 31 BCE, marking the transition at the conclusion of a Scorpio Chronicle that changed the world! Octavian ruled from 27 BCE until his death in 14 CE. As the Leo alignment of the Water-Fire Wave in 26 BCE conjunct Pluto in late Cancer came to pass, the Roman Empire emerged under Augustus Caesar, the pinnacle of the martial Age of Aries. Despite these seismic shifts in power on the great stage of political events, their came a very conscious cry for compassion and the universal love reflective of the emerging Pisces Age from a manger in the far reaches of the realm as Jesus of Nazareth was born under the 7 BCE great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. While the Roman Empire would eventually dissolve, his message of universal love through service to humanity would only grow into the epic salvation theme of the next Age, institutionalized by the Byzantines.


27

Water Wave IVWater Wave IV

DateBCE

JupiterSaturn

165 9

146 17

126 3

106 20

86 26

66 9

46 25

Water-Fire Wave IV

Water-Fire Wave IV

Date JupiterSaturn

26 BCE

4

7 BCE

21

14 CE 5

34 CE 17

54 CE 29

Heron of Alexandria (10 - 70 CE) was an ancient Greek mathematician, engineer and inventor considered the greatest experimenter of antiquity. Heron published a description of a steam-powered device called an aeolipile. Among his most famous inventions was a wind-wheel, constituting the earliest instance of harnessing wind on land. Plutarch, the Greek Platonic philosopher, biographer, essayist and magistrate was born in 46 CE. The Han Dynasty was briefly interrupted by the Xin Dynasty. Wang Mang rose to power after several years of cultivating a cult of personality, proclaiming himself emperor in 9 CE. However, while a creative scholar and politician, he was an incompetent ruler, and his capital was besieged by peasant rebels in 23 CE. He died in the siege, and the Han Dynasty was restored by descendants of the former imperial clan as the new Western Han Dynasty, which lasted until 220 CE, the shift in the Ages. In 8 CE, the Chinese astrologer-historian, Liu Xin created his “Triple Concordance” astrological system, where he catalogued 1080 stars with 6 levels of magnitude, the synodic moon phase, the 19 years of 235 synodic periods, and calculated the year to 365.25016 (11 minutes off) as well as the planetary periods.

At the conclusion of the 4th Elemental Epoch, events had transpired that would lead humanity into the Age of Pisces. At the beginning of the Epoch the earth was ripe with the Age of Aries theme of courage through heroic action. Romulus founded Rome in 753 BCE during the opening Fire Wave. By the end of the Epoch Octavian-Augustus Caesar took command of the Roman Empire, the pinnacle of martial development. The innovations of the Greek & Vedic City-States, the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, the Medes, the Lydians, the Neo-Assyrians, the Egyptians, and even early Japan began the first wave. During the Fire-Earth transition the Chaldeans under Nebuchadnezzar II arose allied with others to bring an end to Neo-Assyrian dominance in the Middle East. When the Earth Wave began, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were completed and the earth was sown for the world-changing great conjunction of the outer planets that would reign over an explosion of human talent and awakening with the introduction of Buddhism, Taoism, Jainism, Greek Philosophy, etc. The Lydians invented coinage and fixed-location merchants! The world would never be the same as the Indian Mahajanapadas, the Persians and the early Roman Republic formed fledgling empires alongside the Greek City-States and Zhou China. I wondered what human talent would be left for the Air Element renaissance era? In the Earth-Air transition, usually marked by a turn toward intellectual revitalization, we saw the Celts spread out over Northern Europe, the Mayans rise in Central America, and Macedonia unite Greece with the philosophical age of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. The era of great thinkers was on! By the time the pure Air Wave flowed in with Alexander the Great creating an empire that stretched from Greece to India (the ancient world’s version of the Internet) the social, political and economic transformations were complete. The chief polymath of the Epoch, Aristotle, would go on to shape the minds of Western civilization. In the melting pot of cultural ideas and cultural memes that was Alexandria, the Great Library was built to accommodate generations of brilliant minds. The Hellenistic science/art of astrology itself was a synthesis of Greek philosophy and mathematics combined with Babylonian and Egyptian astrology that traces its source back to Alexandria. While Euclid was inventing geometry, Zeno was developing Stoicism. While the Seleucid Empire unified the Middle East the Carthaginians and Romans were capitalizing the Mediterranean. In India, the Mauryan


28

empire under Ashoka emerged to express the non-violent tenets of Jainism. When the Air-Water Wave came, the world was ready to witness rapid expansion across the sea combined with spiritual and artistic revival again. The Qin and the Eastern Han Dynasties arose in China and launched a vital new era in Asia with its imaginative watery inventions like the stern-mounted rudder for ships, the first use of negative numbers in mathematics, and the hydraulic-powered spherical astrolabe. Even today, the majority of Chinese people still claim Han descent. Buddhism was igniting in China after Emperor Ming of the Han Dynasty had a dream vision of a golden man. In the Middle East, the Parthian Empire took up the slack of many realms that had run their courses. In the West, the Roman Republic hashed it out with Carthage winning the right to lead civilization into the pure Water Wave. By the end of the Epoch, the old Greek philosophy-inspired Roman Republic was transformed into the mighty Roman Empire after the blood of Julius Caesar spilled on the Senate floor. In the last hybrid Water-Fire transition, as the Western Han emerged in Asia, Jesus of Nazareth was born to prepare the world for the illusive Kingdom of Heaven. Little did the world know at the time that the blood of this humble carpenter-prophet and his simple message of love without conditions would spread like wildfire down the thirsting, freshly-paved roads of the Roman Empire.

Elemental Epoch V (74 CE - 868 CE): The fifth Elemental Epoch marked not only the beginning of a new astrological Age (in 220 CE when the Tropical and Sidereal Zodiacs aligned) but also the beginning of the reverse precessional tour through the whole cycle of the Signs, the alpha and the omega. The Roman Empire, the Parthian Empire and Han Dynasty China were set to begin the Fire Wave of the 5th Elemental Epoch. Fire-Waves are known for their charismatic leaders, rapid land expansion and scientific breakthroughs and this period was no exception as the Romans expanded to create a vast empire led by a series of dramatic Emperors who claimed Britain. From 96 - 180 CE, the Five Good Emperors period saw the Empire reach its largest size. The Parthians were wedged between the Roman Empire in the west and the Kushan Empire in the east with the Arabian tribes to the south. The

Kushans (modern Afghanistan) emerged and spread rapidly across the Indian subcontinent and cultivated diplomatic ties to Rome, Parthia and China. The Han Dynasty continued its struggles against the barbaric nomad Xiongnu to their north, precursors to the Mongols. In 105 CE, Cai Lun invented the paper-making process. The Romans invented the Codex, which became the modern book. In the ancient world everything was written on scrolls, but the new codices (books) revolutionized printing and eventually surpassed scrolls during the next Earth Wave. One of the first heretics of the Christian era, Marcion of Sinope (85 - 160 CE) developed a unique theological system that spread quickly throughout the realm. Reacting to the popularity of Marcion's newfound sect, the new Catholic Church set out to systematize a set of beliefs that encompassed the entirety of orthodox Christianity. Marcion‘s church expanded throughout the known world within his lifetime, and was a serious rival to the Catholic Church. Marcionism was thus viewed as a catalyst for the development of the New Testament canon, the establishment of church law, and the structuring of the Church with its orthodox dogmas.


29

Fire Wave VFire Wave V

DateCE

JupiterSaturn

74 11

94 26

114 7

134 22

Claudius Ptolemy (90 - 168 CE), was a Roman citizen from Egypt who wrote in Greek. He was a mathematician, astrologer, geographer, scientist and poet. Ptolemy was the author of several scientific treatises. The first was his astronomical treatise now known as the “Almagest” or "The Great Treatise." The second was “Geography,” which is a thorough discussion of the geographic knowledge of the Greco-Roman world. The third was the astrological treatise “Tetrabiblos,” about horoscopic astrology. He also wrote “Harmonics” about the mathematics of music and “Optics” about light. He is another shimmering example of scientific revolutions occurring during Fire Waves. Vettius Valens (February 8, 120 - 175 CE) was a 2nd-century Hellenistic astrologer and younger contemporary of Ptolomy. Valens' major work was the “Anthology,” ten volumes in Greek written roughly within the period 150 - 175 CE. The “Anthology” is the longest and most detailed treatise on astrology which has survived from that period. Also Galen lived in 120 CE, a physician and author writing on astrology. Zhang Zhongjing was a Chinese physician (150 - 219 CE) who wrote a medical masterpiece called the "Treatise on Cold Pathogenic and Miscellaneous Diseases," that prescribed diets for health along with acupuncture, calisthenics, and moxibustion herbs, essentially the beginning of Chinese Medicine.

The Fire-Earth Wave oversaw the transformation of civilizations. Rome was plunged into civil wars. The Han Dynasty collapsed under corruption and rebellion as China entered the Three Kingdoms period (184 - 280 CE). The Parthian Empire was replaced by the Persian Sassanids (224 - 651 CE), considered one of Persia's most important and influential historical periods, constituting the last great Iranian empire before the Muslim conquest and the adoption of Islam. In many ways, the Sassanid period witnessed the peak of ancient Persian civilization under the Golden Ages of Shapur I and II. Persia influenced Roman civilization during the Sassanid period, and the empires regarded one another as equals, as suggested in the letters written by the rulers of the two states addressing each other as brothers. Sassanid society and civilization were among the most flourishing of their time, rivaled only by the later Byzantines. The sheer amount of scientific and intellectual exchange between the two empires is witness to the competition and

cooperation of these Western cradles of civilization. The most striking difference between Parthian and Sassanid society was a renewed emphasis on charismatic, centralized government, symbols of the hybrid Fire-Earth Wave. Artistically, the Sassanid period witnessed some of the highest achievements of Persian civilization, including amazing developments in astrology. Unfortunately, the later Muslim Arabs destroyed their great works. However, the greatest Arab astrologers that emerged were all Persians, proof that the Zoroastrian traditions of the Magi flourished under the Sassanids. Much of what later became known as Muslim culture, including architecture and writing, was originally drawn from Persian culture. Persian industry under the Sassanids developed from domestic to urban forms. Guilds were numerous. Silk weaving was introduced from China; Sassanid silks were sought after everywhere, and served as models for the textile art in Byzantium, China and Japan. Recent archeological discovery has shown that Sassanids used special labels (commercialized symbols) on goods as a way of promoting their


30

Fire-Earth Wave V

Fire-Earth Wave V

DateCE

JupiterSaturn

154 4

173 21

193 22

213 17

233 29

brands and to distinguish them between different qualities. So the pioneering idea of economic branding came to us from the Sassanids during a Fire-Earth Wave harkening back to the ancient shekel! The main exports of the Sassanids were silk, woolen and golden textiles, carpets and rugs, skins, leather and pearls from the Persian Gulf. There were also goods in transit from China (paper, silk) and India (spices), which Sassanid customs imposed taxes upon, and which were re-exported to Europe. During the waning era of the Fire-Earth Wave the world saw the development of Neoplatonism centered in Alexandria. Plotinus (204/5 - 270 CE) was a major philosopher of the ancient world who is widely considered the founder of Neoplatonism (along with his teacher Ammonius Saccas and primary pupil Porphyry. Neoplatonism was an influential philosophy in Late Antiquity. Much of the biographical information about Plotinus comes from Porphyry’s preface to his edition of Plotinus' “Enneads.” His metaphysical writings have inspired centuries of Pagan, Christian, Jewish, Islamic, and Gnostic metaphysicians, astrologers, and mystics. The Assyrian Neoplatonic philosopher Iamblichus (245 - 325 CE) was best known for his compendium on Pythagorean philosophy and his writings determined the direction of Neoplatonism during the Earth Wave. The East Germanic tribe called the Goths begin invading the Roman Empire around 238 BCE. In contrast to the cultured Sassanids, the Gothic invasions were brutal and barbaric. They stole things and burned places leaving ruins, which makes them a great example of a negative expression of the Fire-Earth Wave.

During the pure Earth Wave, Emperor Diocletian reigned over the Roman Empire from 284 - 305 CE and divided it into the Eastern Roman Empire and Western Roman Empire. Diocletian's reforms during the “Crisis of the 3rd Century” fundamentally changed the structure of Roman imperial government and helped stabilize the empire economically and militarily, defeating the rising Sassanid threat and enabling the empire to remain essentially intact for another hundred years despite having seemed near the brink of collapse. The last emperor to control both the eastern and western halves of the empire was Theodosius I. The two emperor system originally established by Diocletian fell into regular practice, and the east continued to grow in importance as the centre of trade, cultural expression, and imperial power, while Rome itself diminished greatly in importance due to its location far from

potential trouble spots like Central Europe and the East. Early in the next century Christianity became the official state religion, and the empire's old pagan culture began to disappear. When Constantine I was declared Emperor he legalized Christianity in 313 CE through the Edict of Milan and declared the death penalty for all Sassanid Magi in 321 CE. Shapur II of the Sassanids (309 - 379 CE) pursued a harsh religious policy as well. Under his reign, the collection of the Avesta, the sacred texts of Zoroastrianism, was completed, heresy and apostasy were punished and Christians were persecuted. The institutionalized conflict of religions had begun! This was the beginning of Christianity’s rise to political power that eventually shaped the religious beliefs of Western civilizations and dealt a fatal blow to astrological wisdom. It took three Nicene Councils of gathered bishops and many condemnations of splinter sects like the Nestorians and Manichaeans another century to discover what they actually believed in the form


31

Earth Wave VEarth Wave V

DateCE

JupiterSaturn

253 8

273 24

292 13

312 14

of the Holy Roman Creed. The early part of the 4th century was shaped by Constantine I, who became the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity as the Byzantines emerged. The Byzantines existed for over a thousand years (306 - 1453 CE). During their existence, the Eastern Roman Empire remained one of the most powerful economic, cultural, and military forces in Europe, despite frequent setbacks and territorial losses. Gaining sole reign of the empire, Constantine is also noted for re-establishing a single imperial capital, choosing the site of ancient Byzantium in 330 CE as the Earth-Air Wave was about to begin with a Libra Chronicle. General prosperity was felt throughout this period, but recurring invasions by Goths plagued the empire from 376 CE onward. These early invasions marked the beginning of the end for the Western Roman Empire. In India, the Gupta Empire emerged and replaced the Kushan Empire, lasting from 320 - 550 CE. The Hunnic Empire was established by the Huns, a confederation of nomadic Eurasian tribes from the steppes of Central Asia. They appeared from east of the Volga, migrated into Europe around 370 CE and built up an enormous empire

under the leadership of Atilla the Hun. Around 393 CE, the Catholic Church released orders to burn the Great Library, cancel the Olympic Games, and close down the Delphi Oracle to suppress polytheism and Hellenistic culture. In 412 CE there was a triple conjunction of Saturn, Neptune, and Pluto and another in 440 CE of Saturn, Uranus and Pluto that together spelled the end for the Roman Empire and the beginning of the European Dark Ages. Humanity it seemed was destined to experience a negative version of the Air Wave like the disastrous drought-stricken Earth Wave of the Second Elemental Epoch but this time a drought in awareness, ideas and knowledge. Fortunately, the famine of new ideas was isolated to Europe. Called the “Scourge of God,” Atilla ransacked Europe from 434 until his death in 453 CE, the span of time marked out by the Capricorn Chronicle that called for accomplishment and responsibility. His

Hunnic Empire stretched from Germany to the Ural River and from the Danube River to the Baltic Sea. During his rule, he was one of the most fearsome enemies of the Western and Eastern Roman Empires. The Hunnic mass migration into Europe brought with it great ethnic and political upheaval. In 447 CE, Attila turned the Huns back toward the Byzantines once more. His invasion of the Balkans and Thrace was devastating, with one source reporting that they razed 70 cities! The Eastern Roman Empire was already beset by internal problems, such as famine and plague, as well as riots and a series of earthquakes in Constantinople itself. Only a last-minute rebuilding of its walls had preserved Constantinople unscathed. Victory over the Roman army had already left the Huns virtually unchallenged in Eastern Roman lands and only disease forced a retreat after they had conducted raids as far south as Thermopylae. The dark side of Piscean Age salvation religions and the deification of the victim-martyr syndrome had come to pass. Chitzen Itza was completed in Mesoamerica around 455 CE as the ragged pilgrim


32

Air Wave VAir Wave V

DateCE

JupiterSaturn

452 23

471 13

491 10

511 29

531 21

551 15

Earth-Air Wave V

Earth-Air Wave V

DateCE

JupiterSaturn

332 6

352 21

372 25

392 12

411 24

431 29

Bodhidharma traveled the Silk Road to transmit Zen to Northern China. The first Shinto shrines were being built in Japan around 475 CE. Around 490 CE, the legendary King Arthur lead the Britons to victory over the barbaric Saxons who settled there in 440 CE giving rise to mythic stories of his Knights and the Heptarchy Seven Kingdoms period (500 - 850 BC). The Aquarian Chronicle of 491 CE was conjunct Mars and Uranus and square to Neptune creating a theme of liberated spiritual warriors serving a higher humanitarian call. The Merovingian Franks under Clovis I rose to power in Western Europe in 509 BCE and slowly united the renegade nations left over from the fallen Western Roman Empire. While Europe was being devastated by the internecine wars among Frankish kingdoms and the barbaric pillaging of the Huns following the institutionalization of Christianity as a tool for political control, the peace and prosperity under the leadership of the enlightened Guptas enabled the pursuit of scientific and artistic endeavors to flourish in India. As the pure Air Wave emerged, the Gupta Empire flourished and produced renaissance beings. Chandragupta I, Samudragupta, and Chandragupta II were the most notable rulers of the Gupta dynasty. This period was the Golden Age of India, marked by extensive discoveries in science, technology, engineering, art, dialectic, literature, logic, mathematics, astrology, religion, and philosophy that crystallized the elements of what is generally known as Hindu culture. The next time you attend yoga class, thank the Guptas! Science and political administration reached new heights. In stark contrast to the destruction experienced in Europe, the high tide of Gupta cultural creativity cascaded through magnificent architecture, sculptures, painting, and the inventions of chess and Indo-Arabic numerals. The Gupta period produced poets like Kalidasa, mathematician-astrologers Aryabhata and Varahamihira, author Vishnu Sharma and Hindu philosopher Vatsyayana who is credited with writing the “Kamasutra.”

The ephemeral Sui Dynasty (581- 618 CE) was an Imperial Chinese dynasty which unified China in the 6th century as the Air-Water Wave got underway during a Scorpionic Chronicle and a powerful triple conjunction of Saturn, Uranus and Pluto in Pisces. The word “Sui” in Chinese appropriately means “water.” Buddhism created a unifying cultural force that uplifted the people out of civil war and into the Sui Dynasty. In many ways, Buddhism was responsible for the rebirth of culture in China under the Sui Dynasty as another spiritual revival came under the Water influence. The Tang Dynasty (June 18, 618 - June 4, 907 CE) followed the short-lived Sui Dynasty, initiated under an Aquarian Chronicle. Under the cold, ruthless but visionary Empress Wu Zeitan (624 - 705 CE) the Tang Dynasty returned China to a Golden Age. Not only was it a period of progress and stability, it was also the greatest period for classical Chinese poetry. With the rise of Buddhism came an artistic and intellectual cultural revival combining the Air and Water Elemental themes. Encyclopedias and geographical works were first compiled and published, woodblock printing was invented, and through

the combination of land trade along the Silk Road and maritime trade by sea, the Tang were able to import many new technologies, cultural practices, rare luxuries like musical instruments, and contemporary items like chairs and stools. The Silk Road was re-established in 639 CE at the


33

Air-Water Wave V

Air-Water Wave V

DateCE

JupiterSaturn

571 4

590 3

610 25

630 14

650 11

670 30

midpoint of the Scorpio Chronicle. Chinese envoys had been sailing through the Indian Ocean to India since the 2nd century BCE, yet it was during the Tang Dynasty that a strong Chinese maritime presence could be found in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea. The governmental system was supported by a large class of Confucian intellectuals selected through either civil service examinations or recommendations. In the Tang period, Taoism and Buddhism reigned as core ideologies as well, and played a large role in people's daily lives. The Tang Chinese enjoyed feasting, drinking, holidays, sports, and all sorts of entertainment, while Chinese literature blossomed and was more widely accessible with new printing methods. Much more than earlier periods, the Tang era was renowned for its time reserved for leisure activity, especially for those in the upper classes. Many outdoor sports and activities were enjoyed during the Tang, including archery, hunting, horse polo, cuju football, cockfighting, and even tug of war! At the very beginning of the Air-Water Wave another spiritual revival was being silently witnessed as the Arabian prophet Muhammad was born, living from 570 CE until his death on June 8, 632 CE. In the 570 CE heavens, Saturn conjuncted Uranus and Pluto in Cancer to give rise to a fierce, powerful new tradition followed by a Saturn-Uranus-Pluto conjunction in Pisces all squaring Neptune in 582 CE that spurred the crystallization of a radical new form of spirituality. Muhammad was a trader who later became a religious, political and military leader. Muslims do not view Muhammad as the creator of Islam, but instead regard him as the last messenger of Allah, through which the Koran was revealed. For the last 22 years of his life, beginning at age 40 in 610 CE (the same Aquarian alignment that inspired Tang China), Muhammad started receiving revelations from Allah. The content of these revelations, known as the Koran, was memorized and recorded by his companions. During this time, Muhammad preached to the people of Mecca, imploring them to abandon polytheism. Although some converted to Islam, Muhammad and his followers were persecuted by the leading Meccan authorities. After 12 years of preaching, Muhammad and the Muslims performed the Hijra ("emigration") to the city of Medina in 622 CE. There, with the Medinan converts and the Meccan migrants, Muhammad established his political and religious authority. Within years, two battles had been fought against Meccan forces: the Battle of Badr in 624 CE, which was a Muslim victory, and the Battle of Uhud in 625 CE, which ended inconclusively. In 625 CE there was a triple conjunction of Saturn, Uranus and Pluto in Virgo that purified and shook civilizations. Conflict with Medinan Jewish clans who opposed the Muslims led to their exile, enslavement, or death, and the Jewish enclave of Khaybar was subdued. The scattered tribes of Ishmael had their vengeance with the beginning of hostilities between Jews and Arabs that is still fueling their conflict today. Meccan trade routes were cut off as Muhammad brought surrounding desert tribes under his control. By 629 CE, Muhammad was victorious in the nearly bloodless Conquest of Mecca, and by the time of his death in 632 CE (at the age of 62) he ruled over the entire Arabian peninsula. The Caliphate of the Arabs under the new Muslim theocracy began with Abu Bakr, Muhammad's companion and close friend, in 632 CE, after the death of Mohammed and a bitter civil war (Scorpio Chronicle). The Patriarchal Caliphate expanded the new empire quickly from 632 - 661 CE conquering Egypt (Coptic Period) and Sassanid Persia where the birthplace of Zoroaster was destroyed. Another severe religious blow to the Sassanid Magi! Then the Umayyad Caliphate from 661 - 750 CE added considerable territory including the rest of North Africa, Spain, and modern Pakistan. If it weren’t for the Bulgarian Empire, which reigned over Eastern Europe in


34

conflict with the Byzantines from 632 - 1018 CE, Europe would have been overrun by Muslim forces. A peace treaty with Byzantium in 681 CE and the establishment of the Bulgarian capital of Pliska south of the Danube mark the beginning of the First Bulgarian Empire, a state established by the Bulgars, uniting the local tribes. Under Terval (700/701–718/721 CE), Bulgaria stabilized its borders and established itself as a major military power by defeating a 26,000-strong Arabian army in 717 CE, thereby eliminating the threat of a full-scale invasion of Europe. By the end of the expansive religious Water-Wave, in 750 CE, the Caliphate of the Arabs stretched from Spain to India, taking shape under multiple Scorpio and Cancer Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions. As Buddhism was spreading through India and China, Islam flowed effortlessly through the Caliphate just as Christianity poured into the

minds and hearts of Europeans. Under the Abbasid Caliphate, Islamic civilization flourished in the Muslim Golden Age, with its capital at the cosmopolitan city of Baghdad. Philosophers Ibn Sina and Al-Farabi sought to incorporate Greek principles into Islamic theology, while others like the 11th century theologian Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali argued against them and ultimately prevailed. Sufism became a full-fledged movement that had moved towards mysticism and away from its ascetic roots, while Shi'ism split due to disagreements over the succession of Imams. The spread of Islamic dominion and institutionalized slavery directed against Christians induced hostility among medieval ecclesiastical Christian authors who saw Islam as an adversary in light of increasing Muslim converts. This opposition resulted in polemical treatises which depicted Islam as the religion of the antichrist and of Muslims as subhuman. This continual spiritual war of cultural memes has caused more death and division than anything in history.

The Carolingian Franks under Charlemagne came to power in 769 CE under the Jupiter-Saturn-Neptune conjunction. The unification of most of what is now western and central Europe under one ruler provided the fertile ground for the continuation of what is known as the Carolingian Revival. Despite the almost constant internecine warfare that beset the Carolingians, the extension of Frankish rule and Roman Christianity over such a large area ensured a fundamental cultural unity throughout the Empire. The period from the earliest recorded Viking raids in the 790’s until the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 CE is commonly known as the Scandinavian Viking Age. The Vikings renewed the practice of slavery during their raiding and pillaging. The Khmer Empire, inspired by Jayayarman II (802 – 830 CE), revived Cambodian power and built the foundation for the Angkorean empire, founding three capitals—Indrapura, Hariharalaya, and Mahendraparvata - the archeological remains of which reveal much about Khmer history. After winning a long civil war, Suryavarman I (reigned 1002–1050 CE) turned his forces

eastward and subjugated the Mon kingdom of Dvaravati. This period, during which Angkor Wat was constructed, is considered the apex of Khmer civilization. The Khmer kingdom became a


35

Water-Fire Wave V

Water-Fire Wave V

DateCE

JupiterSaturn

769 1

789 17

809 4

829 9

848 29

Water Wave VWater Wave V

DateCE

JupiterSaturn

690 19

709 23

729 11

749 29

large empire, and the great temples of Angkor, considered an archeological treasure replete with detailed stone bas-reliefs showing many aspects of the culture and musical instruments, remain as monuments to the brief but rich culture of the Khmer Empire.

The 5th Elemental Epoch began with such gusto as the Roman Empire, the Han Dynasty, the Parthians and the Kushans held the reigns of civilization, so certain in their power and unaware of the tsunami of religious transformation that was about to strike with the arrival of institutionalized Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism and eventually Islam. The Age of Pisces washed away the Roman Empire like ocean tides overwhelming sandcastles under the weight of disenfranchised barbarians like the Goths (Visigoths and Ostrogoths), the Huns, and then the Vikings, who wrought destruction from the sea. The Persian Sassanids tried to institutionalize Zoroastrianism, another dualistic religion that called for us to slay our “Ariman” darkness so we could uphold and befriend only the light of Ahura Mazda, another cultural attempt to push the shadows of our demons deeper. By the time the Goths had completed their siege of Europe, the Roman Empire was cracked into the Western and Eastern Realms, giving rise to the Byzantines under Constantine, defender of Christianity. Within a century, the new cultural center of Europe was quaking and suffering, barely able to hold back the fury of Atilla. The Merovingian Franks were able to pull it together in the Western Realms after they built a series of castles to fight among themselves in between barbarian rages. The underpinnings of the age of chivalry and feudalism that would emerge in the next Epoch were in place! India emerged as the golden light of the 5th Epoch’s renaissance era, but even they were inspired by the Hindu religion. The great minds of Europe and China wrote from the prisons of their fortifications. As the Air-Wave began the ill-tempered, profusely-bearded and humorous wide-eyed “barbarian” Bodhidharma transmitted Zen Buddhism to China! Many Western writers had a tremendous affect on the direction of astrology like Julius Firmicus Maternus (346 CE), Saint Augustine (354-430 CE), Paulus Alexandrius (378 CE), Hephaistio of Thebes (415 CE), Hypatia of Alexandria (350 - 415 CE), Rhetorius of Egypt (~ 600 CE), and Proclus of Athens (412-485 CE). Proclus was a Greek philosopher who set forth the most elaborate and fully developed system of Neoplatonism, writing the “Elements of Theology,” after being born on Feb 8th, 412 CE with a chart that featured an Aquarius Sun, Venus and Uranus triple conjunction square (90 degrees aspect of conflict for growth) to a Jupiter-Saturn-Neptune-Pluto-South Node massive conjunction in late Taurus. Would love to hear an astrologer attempt to counsel Proclus in the highest use of that aspectual power! By the middle of the Epoch the Tang Dynasty emerged in China, inspired by Buddhism, followed by the Caliphate of the Arabs equally inspired by Islam. The rest of the Epoch saw the expansion of these religious revivals, reaching their highest expression in the West under the reign of Charlemagne of the Carolingian Franks, who was crowned Emperor in 800 CE. In Arabia, writers like Abu Ma’shar were creating astrological, scientific and philosophical masterpieces that would fuel the 6th Epoch’s classic renaissance. The Khmers of Cambodia were the first culture to emerge that tried to synthesize a plethora of inherited religious systems. Starting with Brahmanism, which is derived from Hinduism and Buddhism, they combined the tenets of Theravada Buddhism with elements of indigenous ancestor-spirit worship, animism and shamanism. Angkor Wat was the spiritual center of their artistic and creative empire that still inspires Southeast Asia today.


36

Elemental Epoch VI (868 CE - 1663 CE): The 6th Elemental Epoch started as one of the lowest points in history for Europe and China, but one of the greatest cultural zeniths for Islamic realms. The usual expression of fire at the beginning would eventually lead to a massive industrial revolution under the Song Dynasty in China during the Earth Wave, followed by the actual historical Renaissance in Europe during the Air-Wave that would lead to and inspire the epic Age of Exploration during the Water-Wave. During the sixth Fire-Wave Islamic culture experienced a grand scientific revolution. Cordoba, the largest Muslim city of the world by 1000 CE, was home to about half a million people. Public hospitals established during this time, are considered the first hospitals in the modern sense and issued the first medical diplomas to license doctors of medicine. The University of Al Karaouine in Morrocco is the oldest degree-granting university in the world with its founding in 859 CE. The origins of the doctorate degree ("license to teach and issue legal opinions") began in the madrasahs, which taught law. The first establishments for taking care of the mentally ill were also created in the Muslim world. During this time, standards of experimental

and quantification techniques were introduced to the scientific process to distinguish between competing theories as well as the tradition of source citation. Ibn Al-Haytham is regarded as the Muslim father of the modern scientific method and often referred to as the "world’s first true scientist." Legal institutions were introduced in Islamic law including the concept of the charitable trust. By the end of the Fire-Wave, the first astronomical-mathematical treatise that include the law of sines was published and the famed hybrid library-university called the “House of Knowledge” was built in Egypt. In 871 CE, Alfred the Great led the Anglo-Saxons onto the world stage in England. The invading Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons and Jutes) helped craft the early English nation after the Heptarchy period ended in 850 BC. Combined with the later Norman influence, the English language that would become the common trade tongue of the world evolved. The Holy Roman Empire that rose under Otto the Great around 962 CE dominated Central Europe for a millennium. Emperor Otto I had the blessing of the Pope as the Leo Chronicle that began in 948 was conjunct Neptune in early Virgo as Uranus and Pluto conjuncted in Cancer. Otto had gained much of his power earlier, when, in 955, the Magyars were defeated in the Battle of Lechfeld. This marked the turning point in European history that cemented the indisputable power of the Catholic Church. Otto strengthened ecclesiastical authorities, chiefly bishops and abbots, at the expense of the secular nobility who threatened his power. To control the forces that the Church represented, Otto made consistent use of three institutions. One was the royal investiture of bishops and abbots with the symbols of their offices, the secure use of proprietary churches. In German law, any structure built on land owned by a lord belonged to that lord, and the advocatus, a secular manager of ecclesiastical estates was responsible for safety and good order. Otto also endowed the bishoprics and abbeys with large tracts of land, over which secular authorities had neither the power of taxation nor legal jurisdiction. Because Otto personally appointed the clergy, these reforms strengthened his central authority, and the upper ranks of the German church functioned in some respect as an arm


37

Fire Wave VIFire Wave VI

DateCE

JupiterSaturn

868 14

888 22

908 5

928 19

948 30

968 13

988 30

of the imperial bureaucracy. The High Middle Ages were launched. The year 1000 CE fell in the last Sagittarian Chronicle of the Fire-Wave with its focus on religion and exploration. The Viking explorer Leif Ericsson set out on his epic quest to the Americas around 1002 CE, landing on Baffin Island and Labrador, foreshadowing the discovery of the New World during the coming Water-Wave. Great stories like “Beowulf” and the “Tale of Genji” originated during this time period too, foreshadowing the invention of mass publishing.

During the short Fire-Earth Wave the Vikings colonized Normandy, a region in northern France, and became the Normans (Northmen). They were the descendants of the Vikings and the native population of the Western Franks. They played a major political, military, and cultural role in medieval Europe and the Near East, famed for their martial spirit and piety. They quickly adopted the Romance language of the land they settled, their dialect becoming known as Norman, an important literary language that later merged with Old English to form Middle English. The Duchy of Normandy, which they formed by treaty with the French crown, was one of the great fiefs of medieval France. The Normans are

famed both for their culture, such as their unique architectural and musical traditions, as well as for their military accomplishments and innovations. Norman adventurers established a kingdom in Sicily by conquest, and a Norman expedition on behalf of Duke William II led to the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 CE. Norman influence spread from these new centers to the Crusader States in the Near East, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. The Normans gradually began to dominate Europe as the Wave progressed, foreshadowing the French Empire of the 7th Epoch.

The Earth Wave resounded with the emergence and development of many new empires and dynasties. The Song Dynasty in China from 960 - 1279 CE had a monumental impact on the emerging 6th Epoch. True to the Earth Wave, there was a population explosion in China, doubling to 100 million and an economic and industrial revolution that spurred manufacture and production rates which rivaled even Britain’s coal and iron output in the early Industrial Revolution of the 7th Epoch! This growth came through expanded rice cultivation in central and southern China, the use of early-ripening rice from southeast and southern Asia, and the production of abundant food surpluses. Social life during the Song was vibrant; social elites gathered to view and trade precious artwork, the populace intermingled at public festivals and private clubs, and cities had lively entertainment quarters. The spread of literature and knowledge was enhanced by the earlier invention of woodblock printing and the 11th-century invention of movable-type printing. Pre-modern technology, science, philosophy, mathematics, engineering, and other intellectual pursuits flourished over the course of the Song. Inventions like the compass and gunpowder, changed the world. Ironically, gunpowder was invented by Taoist alchemists searching for the keys to


38

Fire-Earth Wave VI

Fire-Earth Wave VI

DateCE

JupiterSaturn

1007 14

1027 26

Earth Wave VIEarth Wave VI

DateCE

JupiterSaturn

1047 6

1067 22

1087 4

1107 17

1127 30

1146 18

1166 22

immortality! Philosophers such as Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi reinvigorated Confucianism with new commentary, infused with Buddhist ideals, and emphasized a new organization of classic texts that brought out the core doctrine of Neo-Confucianism. In Japan, the Fujiwara clan dominated the affairs of state as envoys began visiting China to study and import the bourgeoning culture.

During the opening Capricorn Chronicle of the Earth Wave, Europe was aflame with the Great Schism of 1054 that formally divided the state church of the Roman Empire into Eastern (Greek) and Western (Latin) branches, which later became known as the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church, respectively. This had a titanic impact on the economy. The Church split along doctrinal, theological, linguistic, political, and geographical lines, and the fundamental breach has never been healed, with each side accusing the other of having fallen into heresy and of having initiated the division. The Crusades started in 1095 and continued until 1291 CE. The legendary religious zeal of the Normans was exercised in religious wars long before the First Crusade carved out a Norman principality in Antioch. But the Crusaders were successful in directing their fiery battle prowess into the Conquest of Jerusalem. The troubadours began playing in Provence increasing artistic expression and their tradition subsequently spread into Italy, Spain, and Greece. Troubadours were composers and minstrel performers and poets during the High Middle Ages (1100 - 1350 CE). Italy first felt the changing tide in Europe from the 11th to the 13th centuries. In Northern Italy, a growth of population in urban centers like Venice, Florence and Milan gave rise to early organized capitalism and a more sophisticated, commercialized culture. The oldest modern European university in the world was founded in Bologna in 1088 CE. The great cathedrals had been rebuilt while the development of commerce and an agrarian revolution led to substantial migrations from the countryside to urban centers, creating the most urbanized societies in the world at the time. Rulers, nobles and wealthy people used patronage of the arts to endorse their political ambitions, social positions, and prestige. In 1104 CE, the Venice Arsenal shipbuilding lines were created to service the expanding sea trade throughout the Mediterranean.

Amidst such sweeping change, in 1129 CE, the Knights Templar military order was officially endorsed by the Catholic Church. With this formal blessing, the Templars became a favored charity throughout Christendom, receiving money, land, businesses, and noble-born sons from families who were eager to help with the fight in the Holy Land. Another major benefit came in 1139 CE, when Pope Innocent II exempted the Order from obedience to local laws. This ruling meant that the Templars could pass freely through all borders, were not required to pay any taxes, and were exempt from all authority except that of the Pope. With its clear mission and ample resources, the Order grew rapidly. Templars were often the advance force in key battles of the Crusades, as the heavily armored knights on their warhorses would charge the enemy in an attempt to break their lines. One of their most famous victories was in 1177 CE during the Battle of Montgisard, where some 500 Templars helped to defeat Saladin’s army of more than 26,000 soldiers. Although the primary mission of the Order was military, relatively few members were combatants. The others acted in support positions to assist the knights and to manage the financial infrastructure. The Templar Order, though its members were sworn to individual poverty, was given control of wealth beyond direct donations. A nobleman who was interested in participating in the Crusades might place all his assets under Templar management while he was


39

away. Accumulating wealth in this manner throughout Christendom, the Order in 1150 CE began generating letters of credit for pilgrims journeying to the Holy Land: pilgrims deposited their valuables with a local Templar preceptor before embarking, received a document indicating the value of their deposit, then used that document upon arrival in the Holy Land to retrieve their funds. This innovative arrangement was an early form of banking, and may have been the first formal system to support the use of checks; it improved the safety of pilgrims by making them less attractive targets for thieves, and also contributed to the Templar coffers. Based on this mix of donations and business dealing, the Templars established financial networks across the whole of Christendom. They acquired large tracts of land, both in Europe and the Middle East; they bought and managed farms and vineyards; they built churches and castles; they were involved in manufacturing, import and export; they had their own fleet of ships; and at one point they even owned the entire island of Cyprus. The Order of the Knights Templar arguably qualified as the world's first multinational corporation. And it began under the 6th Earth Wave that parallels the Industrial Revolution and the birth of modern corporations in the Earth Wave of the 7th Epoch.

The Chola Dynasty of India and the Fatimid Caliphate of Egypt reached their zenith in military might and international influence during the Earth Wave as well with a focus on commerce. The Chola was a Hindu dynasty that had evolved from the ancient Mauryan Empire under Ashoka. The Cholas left a lasting legacy. Their patronage of arts and zeal in building temples have resulted in some great works of Tamil literature and architecture. The Chola kings were avid builders and envisioned the temples in their kingdoms not only as places of worship but also as centers of economic activity. The Islamic Fatimid empire originated with the Berbers and spread out to conquer North Africa, centered eventually in Egypt. Egypt flourished as the Fatimids developed an extensive trade network in both the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean. Their trade and diplomatic ties extended all the way to Song Dynasty China. The Fatimid focus on long-distance trade was accompanied by a lack of interest in agriculture and a neglect of the Nile irrigation system. As usual, there was a focus on building and trade during the Earth Wave. Around 1037 CE, the Turkish Seljuk Dynasty also came to power in the Middle East over the fragmented Abbasid realms. They were a Turco-Persian Sunni Muslim dynasty that ruled from the Middle East through Central Asia from the 11th to 14th centuries. They were the target of the First Crusade. The dynasty had its origins in the tribal confederations of Central Asia. The Seljuks adopted the Persian culture and language and are remembered as great patrons of Persian culture, art and literature. They are regarded as the ancestors of the Turkish people. By

the start of the 6th Earth-Air Wave, the stage had been set for the High Middle Ages that inspired the intellectual Renaissance era, but not before a silken path was carved between the Far East and West. Since this Elemental Wave parallels our own Earth-Air Wave of the modern 7th Epoch, with Libra and Taurus Jupiter-Saturn alignments, it might be wise to pay special attention to its particular developments. Around 1186 CE, as the Libra Air Chronicle blew in the first windmills were erected, signaling a change in technology. Scholasticism reached its pinnacle as monks began translating ancient Hellenistic texts preserved by the Arabs and rediscovered during the reconquest of the Iberian peninsula and the


40

Earth-Air Wave VIEarth-Air Wave VI

DateCE

JupiterSaturn

1186 13

1206 26

Crusades. Unfortunately, the first Inquisitions were created to combat the spread of heretical ideas. Today their are great developments in education that stem from the Scholastic period. In 1189 CE, King Richard the Lionhearted went on the Crusades and defeated Saladin in 1192 CE. Wars driven by religious and commercial interests in the Middle East rage again today. In 1193 CE, the first Merchant Trading Guild appeared, signaling sweeping changes in economics. Today we have internet commerce. In 1198 CE, the Teutonic Knight brotherhood emerged in Acre, essentially a military guild of knights. It was formed to aid Christians on their pilgrimages to the Holy Land and to establish hospitals to care for the sick and injured. When the last earthy Taurus Chronicle came, the world heard the voice of Saint Francis as the Pope embraced his new Franciscan order in 1210 CE followed by the Dominicans in 1215 CE. The Muslim poet, jurist, theologian and Sufi mystic, Jalal ad-Din Rumi was born in 1207 CE. Oxford University received its charter (1214 CE) and the Magna Carta was signed in England (1215 CE), the beginning of the end for monarchial privilege, even though the faultless Pope declared it invalid. Magna Carta was the first document forced onto an English King by a group of his subjects, the feudal barons, in an attempt to limit his powers by law and protect their privileges. The charter was an important part of the extensive historical process that led to the rule of constitutional law. In practice, Magna Carta in the medieval period did not limit the power of kings, but by the time of the English Civil War it had become an important symbol for those who wished to show that the monarch was bound by the law. It influenced the early settlers in the New World and inspired later constitutional documents, including the United States Constitution. Similarly, in late Heian Japan, around 1186, the Kamakura Shogunate deprived the Japanese Emperor of political power. The rise of the Samurai warrior class paralleled the Knights Templar. This period is considered the peak of the Japanese imperial court noted for its artistic expression, especially in poetry (haiku) and literature. Today, Samurai, medieval knights, constitutional contracts, Saint Francis, and even Rumi are all popular again. Suddenly, under the exact Taurian alignment of 1206 CE, Genghis Khan united the tribes of the Central Asian steppes and the Mongol Empire began its unheralded expansion. It became the largest contiguous empire in world history, stretching from Eastern Europe to the Sea of Japan, covering Siberia to the north and extending into Southeast Asia, India and the Middle East. The empire grew rapidly under the leadership of Genghis Khan and then that of his descendants, who sent invasions in every direction. In 1215 CE, while the English were signing the Magna Carta, the Mongols conquered China. The vast transcontinental empire which connected the Far East with the West functioned as a cultural cleaning house for the Old World. New technologies, various commodities and ideologies were disseminated and exchanged across Eurasia ranging from cartography to printing, from agriculture to astronomy, from gunpowder to disease. Recreating the Silk Road, the Mongols forged extensive trade routes that were serviced by postal carriers. The empire was set up as a meritocracy honoring religious freedom where teachers, artists and lawyers were exempted from paying taxes. But mistakes and disobedience were severely punished. The empire began to split as a result of wars over succession, and finally dissolved completely into lesser realms in 1368 CE. The Mongol Empire had fractured into four separate khanates, each pursuing its own separate interests and objectives: the Golden Horde Khanate in the northwest, the Chagatai Khanate in the west, the Ilkhanate in the southwest, and the Yuan Dynasty in China.


41

By the time the pure Air Wave arrived in 1226 CE (paralleling 2020 CE of our time), it seemed like the whole world had already been turned upside down, and yet, the big changes were just getting started! The Air Wave renaissance periods are characterized by intellectual revitalizations rooted in scientific and philosophical traditions that cause massive economic, social and political transformations. The last Air-Wave witnessed the Church suppression of Hellenistic Greek culture that led Europe into the Dark Ages. In this Air-Wave, classical Hellenistic culture experienced a dynamic resurgence! A Chinese text of the Aquarian Chronicle midpoint records that the capital of the Song Dynasty held various social clubs that included a West Lake Poetry Club, the Buddhist Tea Society, the Physical Fitness Club, the Anglers' Club, the Occult Club, the Young Girls' Chorus, the Exotic Foods Club, the Plants and

Fruits Club, the Antique Collectors' Club, the Horse-Lovers' Club, and the Refined Music Society. The group expression of Aquarius was in high focus and their society sounded a lot like modern society. In 1227 CE, Dogen Zenji introduced Zen Buddhism to Japan after studying in China and created the Soto School during the detached opening Aquarian conjunction. This particular Air Wave became known as the start of the classical Renaissance that “rebirthed” Europe as it rediscovered its Hellenistic philosophical roots in the forgotten works of Aristotle and Plato combined with the Muslim refinements of the last two Epochs. Even the astrolabe returned through the Islamic nations. The great polymath Dominican friar considered the wisest man alive, Albertus Magnus (born in 1206 CE) argued for the peaceful co-existence of science and religion. Aristotelian knowledge being integrated into European universities represented a challenge to Christianity. For some, astrology was one of the most problematic areas of knowledge, motivating heated condemnations. Albertus, inspired by Ptolomy’s argument that a “wise man governs his stars,” wrote a book on astrology called “Speculum Astronomiae” where he presented a Christian defense of astrology, arguing that the wisdom of astrology perfects rather than negates free will! Albertus' writings included thirty-eight volumes, displaying his prolific habits and encyclopedic knowledge of topics such as logic, theology, botany, geography, astrology, astronomy, geology, chemistry, zoology, physiology, phrenology and others; all of which were the result of keen logic and observation. He was perhaps the most well-read author of his time. He digested, interpreted and systematized the whole of Aristotle's works, gleaned from the Latin translations and notes of the Arabian commentators, in accordance with Church doctrine. Most modern knowledge of Aristotle was preserved and presented by Albertus. Albertus’ pupil Thomas Aquinas (1225 - 1274 CE) was an Italian Dominican priest and an immensely influential scholastic philosopher and theologian. He was the foremost classical proponent of natural theology. His influence on Western thought is considerable, and much of modern philosophy was conceived as a reaction against, or as an agreement with his ideas, particularly in the areas of ethics, natural law and political theory. Past Air-Wave polymaths like Imhotep, King David, Aristotle, and Bodhidharma would be proud of these men’s accomplishments in light of the religious ignorance they faced. When Dante Alighieri (born in 1280 CE) finished the “Divine Comedy” in 1321 CE, both Albertus and Aquinas were called “great lovers of wisdom in the Heaven of the Sun.” Besides the intellectual geniuses of the era,


42

Air Wave VIAir Wave VI

DateCE

JupiterSaturn

1226 4

1246 20

1265 10

1286 9

the famous explorer Marco Polo made his epic journey to China with his uncles in 1269 CE, returning home 25 years later to introduce Chinese culture to Europe through his firsthand account. The famous painter and architect Giotto was born in 1266 CE. The year 1258 CE saw the birth of Osman I, founder of the Ottoman Empire that would last for six centuries. As the Mongol Hordes raged across Asia (Korea surrendered in 1258), the largest volcanic eruption of the Holocene Epoch occurred rocking Central and South America from Mexico to Ecuador and causing secondary calamities like pestilence, severe winters, and famines throughout Europe. As if echoing the destructive power of nature, the Battle of Baghdad happened that same year where the fierce Mongols burned the Imperial City to the ground, destroying the center of Islamic culture. Over one million people died in this cataclysmic clash of civilizations. The Mongols were to Islamic culture as the Huns were to Christian culture. When the ignorance and dogma of religion reaches a point where creative, critical and imaginative thinking are being suppressed, a horde of ruthless barbarians is unleashed! In northern Europe, the foundations of the Hanseatic Trading League were being formed quietly under the great wave of suffering that plagued the West. William Wallace challenged King Edward Longshanks in 1257, losing the rebellion and his life, but inspiring Robert the Bruce to rise and free the people of Scotland from English rule, the perfect justice for the midpoint of a Libra Chronicle. True to the Air Element, Japan was saved from a Mongolian Invasion by a kamikaze (Divine Wind) in 1281 CE during the Gemini Chronicle, followed by King Ramkhamhaeng of the Sukhothai Kingdom (1238 - 1438 CE) creating the Thai alphabet in 1283 CE. Then to add to the Gemini theme of commerce, the Republic of Venice began coining the ducat, a gold coin that became the standard of European coinage for the following 600 years.

The Ottoman Empire began its six century run in 1299 CE, but cemented its status as an empire when it rose from the ashes of the dissolving Seljuk Turks and diminishing Mongol threat during the Air-Water Wave. The Mongol Empire lasted until 1365 CE, right after the Black Death wiped out over a third of Europe’s population between 1348 and 1350 CE. It wasn’t the greatest cultural usage of an Aquarian Chronicle. Turkish Anatolia was divided into a patchwork of independent states. By 1300 CE, the weakened Byzantines had lost most of their Anatolian provinces to ten Ghazi principalities. One of the Ghazi emirates was led by Osman I (from which the name Ottoman is derived). He moved the Ottoman capital to Bursa and shaped the early political development of the nation. His reputation was burnished by the medieval Turkish story known as “Osman’s Dream.” In this foundation myth, the young Osman was inspired to conquest by a prescient vision of an empire (according to his dream, the empire was a big tree whose roots spread through three continents and whose branches covered the sky). As the imaginative Water Element alignments emerged, a vision inspired a great empire.

Other Mongol leaders emerged in later centuries, such as Timur (Tamerlane), who founded the Timurid Emirates in Central Asia. Persian literature and poetry occupied a central place in the process of assimilation of the Timurid elite to the Perso-Islamic courtly culture. Timur's


43

Air-Water Wave VIAir-Water Wave VI

DateCE

JupiterSaturn

1305 1

1325 18

1345 6

1365 8

1385 26

1405 24

descendant Babur later founded the Mughals in India. The state fell into a civil war while fighting the invading Timurid Emirates, which lasted from 1402 to 1413 CE, the last Aquarian Chronicle. It ended when Mehmed I emerged as the sultan and restored Ottoman power. His grandson, Mehmed the Conquerer, reorganized the state and the military, and demonstrated his martial prowess by capturing Constantinople on May 29, 1453, at the age of 21. Mehmed II made the city the new capital of the Ottoman Empire. On a spicy note, Thai royal cuisine traces its history back to the palace cuisine of the smaller Ayutthaya Kingdom (1351 - 1767 CE) that sprung up during an eclectic Aquarian Chronicle. Its refinement, cooking techniques and use of ingredients were of great influence to the diverse mix of Southeast Asian cooking that would lead to Thai cuisine. Ayutthaya was friendly towards foreign traders, including the Chinese, Vietnamese, Indians, Japanese, Persians (and in the next Water Wave the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and French), permitting them to set up villages outside the city walls. The 1305 CE Scorpio alignment occurred with the Uranus-Neptune conjunction of 1308 CE, influencing the next 172 years with the imagery of Scorpio, the archetype of the phoenix rising from the ashes. Passionate intense people were being born who would shift civilizations. Ibn Battuta (February 25, 1304 - 1369 CE), was a Moroccan Berber Islamic scholar and traveller known for the record of his travels and excursions published in the Rihla, "The Journey." His journeys spanned nearly thirty years and covered almost the entire known Islamic world and beyond, extending from North Africa, West Africa, Southern Europe, and Eastern Europe in the West, to the Middle East, India, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and China in the East, a distance far surpassing that of his predecessors and his near-contemporary Marco Polo. On account of the Rihla, Ibn Battuta is considered one of the greatest travelers of all time. He traveled more than 75,000 miles, a figure unlikely to have been surpassed by any traveller until the Age of Steam some 450 years later. When this Air-Water Wave began, the Renaissance scholar, poet and “Father of Humanism” Petrarch was born in Northern Italy (1304 - 1374 CE). His sonnets were admired and imitated throughout Europe during the Renaissance and became a model for lyrical poetry. Since Petrarch traveled and climbed mountains for pleasure, he was known as the first European tourist. Disdaining what he believed to be the ignorance of the centuries preceding the era in which he lived, Petrarch is credited with creating the concept of the historical "Dark Ages." His contemporary, friend and student, Giovanni Boccaccio (1313 - 1375 CE) was an Italian author, poet, and important Renaissance humanist. Boccaccio is particularly notable for his dialogue, which has been said surpasses in verisimilitude that of virtually all of his contemporaries, since they were medieval writers and often followed formulaic models for character and plot. Renaissance humanism of the Water-Air Wave was a reaction to the Scholasticism of the pure Air Wave. Humanism was an activity of cultural and educational reform engaged by scholars, writers, and civic leaders known as humanists centered in Florence and Naples. It developed during the Air-Water Wave as a response to the challenge of medieval scholastic education, emphasizing practical, pre-professional and scientific studies. Scholasticism focused on preparing men to be doctors, lawyers or professional theologians, and was taught from approved textbooks in logic, natural philosophy, medicine, astrology, law and theology. Rather than train professionals in jargon and strict practice, humanists sought to create a citizenry (including, sometimes, women) able to speak and write with eloquence and clarity. Thus, they would be capable of better engaging the civic life of their communities and persuading others to virtuous


44

and prudent actions. This was to be accomplished through the study of the humanities: grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry and moral philosophy. The intellectual Renaissance of the 12th - 14th centuries peaked with the more emotional, visionary and artistic Italian Renaissance during the last Aquarian Chronicle that occurred in 1405 CE. During the 1365 CE alignment in Scorpio both the Black Death and the Mongol Empire dissolved. That alignment formed a Grand Water Trine Kite configuration between Jupiter-Saturn in Scorpio, Neptune in Pisces, Uranus in Cancer and Pluto at the apex in Taurus opposing the conjunction. A great rejuvenating power had come over the earth to end the dark plague and the expansion of the civilized but ruthless Mongols.

When the sixth historic Water-Wave began in 1425 CE under a Scorpio alignment, the earth was ready for dramatic zeitgeist of change and its full expression of religious, spiritual and artistic revitalization. As one of the two longest running pure Elemental Waves in history (Nine conjunctions spanning 180 years) its watery power had time to coalesce and bring powerful inner and outer changes that inspired both Da Vinci as an artist and Columbus as an explorer. The only other Nine Conjunction Elemental Wave in history occurred during the opening Fire Wave of the 1st Epoch which inspired the Age of Civilizations entering the Bronze Age! This Water Wave appropriately became known as the Age of Exploration and Discovery. Prince Henry of Portugal had begun exploring the East Coast of Africa around 1418 CE and in 1427 CE, Henry's navigators discovered and colonized the Madeiras and the Azores. Henry also continued his involvement in events closer to home. In 1431 CE. he donated houses that would later become the University of Lisbon for the study of the sciences: grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, music and astronomy. On a dark note, Henry was involved in the beginning of organized African slavery reflecting back to past Water Waves. Bartolomeu Dias, a nobleman of the Portuguese royal household, was an explorer who sailed around the southernmost tip of Africa in 1488 CE, the first European known to have done so. Between 1497 - 1498 CE, Vasco De Gama sailed to India around the horn of Africa and returned to

establish the spice trade route that inspired the Portugal to colonize Mozambique. Magellan’s Expedition circumnavigated the globe between 1519 and 1522 CE, proving the earth was not flat after all! When Columbus discovered the New World in 1492 CE under the Scorpio alignment, change was eminent. A veritable avalanche of new empires appeared on the world stage including the Ming Dynasty in China, the Incas and Aztecs of the Americas and the Mughal Empire in India. The Ming Dynasty began rebuilding the Great Wall under the same Scorpio and Cancer Chronicles that saw the Han erect the first barrier. Spain and Portugal got things going under the 1494 CE Papal Treaty of Tordesillas that divided the world between them for colonization. As the Water Wave progressed, empires like Britain, France, and the Netherlands competed with the Spanish and Portuguese for the promise of new lands and prosperous trade in both the New World and Asia. Queen Elizabeth of the English Tudor Dynasty was born in 1533 CE (the midpoint of a Piscean Chronicle) and came to power in 1559 CE during a Scorpio


45

Water Wave VIWater Wave VI

DateCE

JupiterSaturn

1425 18

1444 9

1464 5

1484 24

1504 17

1524 10

1544 29

1563 30

1583 21

Chronicle. Her court astrologer and trusted consultant John Dee (1527 - 1609 CE) was a noted mathematician, astrologer, astronomer, occultist, navigator, and imperialist. He devoted much of his life to alchemy, divination, celestial language and Hermetic philosophy, inspiring Elizabeth to create her vast empire. Riding the tide of the creative revival in the enlightened cities of Northern Italy, a great stream of beings rushed into the world. Cosimo di Medici (1389 - 1464 CE) was the first of the Medici political dynasty, de facto rulers of Florence during much of the Italian Renaissance. Cosimo was also noted for his patronage of culture and the arts, liberally spending the family fortune (which his astute business sense considerably increased) to enrich Florence. In the realm of philosophy, Cosimo established a modern Platonic Academy in Florence. Lorenzo de' Medici (1449 - 1492 CE) was an Italian statesman and de facto ruler of the Florentine Republic during the Italian Renaissance. Known as Lorenzo the Magnificent by contemporary Florentines, he was a diplomat, politician and patron of scholars, artists and poets. His life coincided with the high point of the early Italian Renaissance; his death marked the end of the Golden Age of Florence. The fragile peace he helped maintain between the various Italian states collapsed with his death. Andrea del Verrocchio (1435 - 1488 CE) was an Italian sculptor, goldsmith and painter who worked at Lorenzo’s court in Florence. He worked in the serenely classic style of the Florentine Early Renaissance. His pupils included Leonardo da Vinci, Pietro Perugino and Lorenzo Credi, but he also influenced Michelangelo. Leonardo da Vinci (April 15, 1452 - May 2, 1519 CE) was an Italian polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance Man, a man of "unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive imagination." He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived. His main contemporary was Michelangelo (1475 - 1564 CE), who was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet and engineer.

Marsilio Ficino (October 19, 1433 – October 1, 1499) was one of the most influential humanist philosophers of the early Italian Renaissance, an astrologer, a reviver of Neoplatonism who was in touch with every major academic thinker and writer of his day, and the first translator of Plato’s complete extant works into Latin. His Florentine Academy, an attempt to revive Plato's school, had enormous influence on the direction and tenor of the Italian Renaissance and the development of European philosophy. His main original work was his treatise on the immortality of the soul “Theologia Platonica de immortalitate animae.” In the rush of enthusiasm for every rediscovery from Antiquity, Marsilio exhibited a great interest in the art of astrology, which landed him in trouble with the Roman Catholic Church. In 1489 CE he was accused of magic before the Pope and needed strong defense to preserve him from the condemnation of heresy. However, in 1513 CE, fourteen years after Ficino's death, the Roman Catholic Church declared the natural immortality of the soul as dogma; a doctrine accepted later by many Protestant thinkers. Marsilio Ficino, writing in 1492 CE, proclaimed, "This century, like a Golden Age, has restored to light the liberal arts which were almost extinct: grammar, poetry, rhetoric, painting, sculpture, architecture, music...this century appears to have perfected astrology."


46

Two noteworthy trends in Renaissance humanism were Renaissance Neo-Platonism and Hermeticism, which through the works of figures like Giordano Bruno, Cornelius Agrippa, Pico della Mirandola, and Campanella came close to constituting a new religion. They have had great continuing influence in Western thought leading to movements in esotericism such as Theosophy and the New Age movement, re-inspired by the emerging interface of the Age of Aquarius. Giordano Bruno (1548 - February 17, 1600), was an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician and astronomer-astrologer. His cosmological theories went beyond the Copernican model in proposing that the Sun was essentially a star, and moreover, that the universe was in fact infinite. He was burned at the stake by civil authorities in 1600 CE after the Roman Inquisition found him guilty of heresy for his pantheism and scientific free-thinking. In addition to his cosmological writings, Bruno also wrote extensive works on the art of memory and was deeply influenced by the astronomical facts of the universe inherited from Arab astrology, Greek Neoplatonism, and Renaissance Hermeticism. Cornelius Agrippa (September 14, 1486 - February 18, 1535 CE) was a German magician, occult writer, theologian, astrologer, alchemist, legal expert, and soldier. Count Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (24 February 1463 - 17 November 1494 CE) was an Italian Renaissance philosopher, famed for the events of 1486 CE, when at the age of 23, he proposed to defend 900 theses on religion, philosophy, natural philosophy, and magic against all comers, for which he wrote the famous “Oration on the Dignity of Man,” which has been called the "Manifesto of the Renaissance." Campanella (5 September 1568 - 21 May 1639 CE) was an Italian philosopher, theologian, astrologer, and poet. Campanella's heterodox views, especially his opposition to the authority of Aristotle, brought him into conflict with the ecclesiastical authorities. Denounced to the Inquisition, he was confined in a convent until 1597 CE and later tortured until driven to madness.

Even as the Catholic Church tried to either control, suppress or destroy this vital ocean of creativity and discovery, it had to face its own internal schism in the rise of Martin Luther and the Protestant Revolution. Luther challenged the idea that one could buy salvation in the afterlife through indulgences that merely enriched and empowered the Church in his “Ninety-Five Theses.” Then Copernicus published his “On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres” from his death bed in 1543 CE arguing for a heliocentric solar system that effectively displaced the earth from the center of the biblical universe. Copernicus was among the great Renaissance polymaths as a mathematician, astronomer, physician, quadrilingual polyglot, classical scholar, translator, artist, cleric, jurist, governor, military leader, diplomat and economist. Among his many responsibilities, astronomy figured as little more than an avocation - yet it was in that field that he made his mark upon the world. The Copernican Revolution inspired a generation of renaissance astrologer-astronomers like Tycho Brahe (1546 - 1601 CE), Galileo Galilei (1564 - 1642 CE), and Johannes Kepler (1571 - 1630 CE) who collectively transformed the way human beings conceived the universe.

Johannes Kepler's first major astronological work “Cosmographic Mystery” was the first published defense of the Copernican system. Kepler claimed to have had an epiphany on July 19, 1595 CE, while teaching in Graz, demonstrating the periodic conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in the Zodiac; he realized that regular polygons bound one inscribed and one


47

circumscribed circle at definite ratios, which, he reasoned, might be the geometrical basis of the universe. In October 1604 CE, a bright new evening star appeared, but Kepler did not believe the rumors until he saw it himself. Kepler began systematically observing the star. Astrologically, the end of 1603 marked the beginning of a fiery trigon (Water-Fire Wave), the start of the 800-year cycle of Great Conjunctions; astrologers associated the two previous such periods with the rise of Charlemagne (800 years earlier) and the birth of Christ (1600 years earlier), and thus expected events of great portent, especially regarding the emperor. It was in this context, as the imperial mathematician and astrologer to the emperor, that Kepler described the new star two years later in his “De Stella Nova.” In it, Kepler addressed the star's astronomical properties while taking a skeptical approach to the many astrological interpretations then circulating. He noted its fading luminosity, speculated about its origin and used the lack of observed parallax to argue that it was in the sphere of fixed stars, further undermining the doctrine of the immutability of the heavens (the idea accepted since Aristotle that the celestial spheres were perfect and unchanging). The birth of a new star implied the variability of the heavens. In his work “Harmonies of the World,” Kepler lays out the three Laws of Planetary Motion that, together with Galileo's discoveries, marked the beginning of the emerging Age of Enlightenment and the coming global Scientific Revolution of the 7th Epoch. The last Pisces Chronicle gave birth to both the British East India Company (1600 CE) and the Dutch East India Company (1602 CE) as if to emphasize the changing nature of global trade, foreshadowing

globalization.

When the final hybrid Water-Fire Wave emerged, the world had been utterly transformed again, marked by the appearance of a supernova in 1604 CE while Jupiter and Saturn were still aligned in Sagittarius! Queen Elizabeth died in 1603 CE, the same year this wave began, but not before the British Empire emerged as the first international naval superpower with colonies from America to India. The grand stage had been set for the 7th Epoch of the modern world and the people who would contribute to the next fiery trigon period stretching from the next Sagittarius alignment in 1663 CE to the first earthy trigon alignment in Virgo in 1802 CE. Rene Descartes published his famous “Discourse on Method” in 1637 CE during the Leo Chronicle. Francis Bacon (1561 -

1626 CE), the English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and father of the scientific method was appropriately knighted in 1603 CE. He was said to have pioneered the scientific revolution as the father of empiricism. His demand for a planned procedure of investigating all things natural marked a new turn in the rhetorical and theoretical framework of science. The last Water Sign conjunction in Pisces (1643 CE) marked the shift into the new 800-year cycle exquisitely. The Manchu Dynasty began in 1644 CE and lasted until 1912 CE. The mystical mathematician Blaise Pascal had his vision exactly under the midpoint in 1653 CE followed by the discovery of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon in 1555 CE. Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662 CE), was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Catholic philosopher. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuums and wrote


48

Water-Fire Wave VI

Water-Fire Wave VI

DateCE

JupiterSaturn

1603 9

1623 7

1643 26

in defense of the scientific method. In 1642 CE, while still a teenager, he started some pioneering work on calculating machines, and after three years of effort and 50 prototypes, he invented the mechanical calculator. Pascal was a mathematician of the first order. He helped create two major new areas of research: projective geometry and probability theory, which strongly influenced the development of modern economics and social science. In 1649 CE, Uranus and Neptune made their epic conjunction at 15 degrees Sagittarius, the center of the fire sign symbolizing the quest for truth, discovery, fields of knowledge called sciences, and spiritual meaning. The 7th Elemental Epoch was ready to begin: the era that would see the development of the modern world of fantastic inventions, machines and global problems. This Epoch would begin mankind's journey to the stars!

The 6th Elemental Epoch started with the Islamic cultural zenith and the rise of both the Anglo-Saxons and the Holy Roman Empire in Europe. The Anglo-Saxons combined with the Normans to eventually birth the most powerful nation on earth at the conclusion of the Epoch as the British Empire. During the Earth Wave, the world witnessed Song Dynasty China experience its population explosion and subsequent Oriental industrial revolution that sent Chinese exports to the far corners of the globe. The Earth Wave also gave us the Seljuk Turks, the Chola, the Fatimid Caliphate, Heian Japan under the Fujiwara and a new mutation in the Knights Templar, a spiritual warrior guild that acted as the model for the future of multinational corporations. When the scattered Eurasian Mongol tribes united during the transitional Earth-Air Wave the world was stunned as they created the largest empire in history governed by a meritocracy, complete with religious freedom, a postal system and national seal. During the returning rise of the Air Signs, the world was ready to begin writing things down and getting smarter with Scholasticism and the beginning of manuscript culture that acted as the earliest shape of the Renaissance guided by intellectual polymaths like Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, and Dante Alighieri. When the Water Signs began appearing again, the Italian Renaissance was in full swing combined with the rise of the Ottoman Empire that sparked a new Muslim revival in the Middle East that finally gave them control over Constantinople as Istanbul. The Age of Exploration was initiated as the tide of Water Sign conjunctions rose and a plethora of new seafaring empires appeared: Spain, Portugal, Tudor England, the Ming Dynasty, the Indian Mughal Empire, the Ayutthaya in Thailand, the Incas, the Aztecs and the Netherlands. By the end of 6th Epoch, the British Empire emerged as the first naval superpower with colonies spread across the earth. The astonishing supernova that appeared in 1604 to symbolize the start of the next and modern Epoch presaged mankind’s unquenchable desire to reach for the stars. By the start of the next Air Wave in 2020 CE we had already discovered atomic energy, landed on the Moon, dreamed of interstellar civilizations of the future through novels, television and film, sent probes to the far reaches of the solar system, engineered the Internet, and created a global satellite communications network. The 7th Epoch would truly be the pinnacle of human civilization! In the next series of conjunctions we’ll witness the birth of this startling New World and see how it formed. Then we’ll take a journey into the future by looking at the patterns of the past to arrive at a vivid glimpse of where we are headed as the authentic Age of Aquarius dawns.


49

Elemental Epoch VII (1663 CE - 2457 CE): The 7th Elemental Epoch started as an era unprecedented in the plight of the human soul in search of freedom and independence from worn ideologies. The noble divine rights and the unerring eminence of religion were about to meet their match in an era that would eventually lead to globalization and the dawning of the Age of Aquarius in 2380 CE, exactly 2160 years after the alignment of the Tropical and Sidereal Zodiacs. It all began with the British Empire that had spread its colonies across the globe as Europe witnessed the emergence of the Age of Reason. The seventh historical Fire Wave began with yet another Jupiter-Saturn Great Conjunction in the Sign of Sagittarius, the symbol of quests and the search for truth. The Russian Empire (1721 - 1917 CE) rose to become one of the largest nations in world history, representing a large disparity in economic, ethnic, and religious positions. Its government, ruled by the Emperor, was one of the last absolute monarchies in Europe. Most of the colonial powers had colonies and trade empires that stretched across the earth. The Spanish Empire focused on Central and South America with Portugal. The English and French focused their colonial efforts on North

America. The Dutch overseas colonial empire was based on military conquest of already-existing Portuguese and Spanish settlements, and not on discovery and colonization. For this, they were aided by their skills in shipping and trade and the surge of nationalism accompanying the struggle for independence from Spain. Alongside the British, the Dutch initially built up colonial possessions on the basis of indirect state capitalist corporate colonialism, via the Dutch East and West India Companies. With Dutch naval power rising rapidly as a major force from the late 16th century, the Netherlands dominated global commerce during the second half of the 17th century, a cultural flowering known as the Dutch Golden Age. The Netherlands lost many of its colonial possessions, as well as its global power status, to the British during the French Revolutionary Wars that began under the last Sagittarius Chronicle in 1789 CE. This was the age of the greatest land expansion that historians refer to as the Enlightenment or Age of Reason. It also inspired the greatest Scientific Revolution ever witnessed that reached its climax with the gradual discovery of electricity (energy) and a new planet called Uranus, the planet that symbolized revolution, invention, and enlightenment. It was discovered in 1781 CE, just months before the last pure era Fire Sign Conjunction that aligned with the galactic center in late Sagittarius. With the explosion of print culture, the masses were becoming educated and people were connecting with the birth of the public sphere and its egalitarian focus on the common concerns with arguments founded on reason. The scientific and liberated voices of Voltaire, Isaac Newton, John Locke, Montesquieu, Benjamin Franklin, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau were being discussed by an informed and engaged public who began congregating at coffee houses, salons and debating societies. People like Thomas Hobbes, Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz, Immanuel Kant, Adam Smith, David Hume, William Blake, Percy Shelley among hundreds of other great minds added to the bold collective conversation that would gradually change the world. The Enlightenment is held to be the source of critical ideas, such as the centrality of freedom, democracy and reason as primary values of modern society. This view argued that the


50

Fire Wave VIIFire Wave VII

DateCE

JupiterSaturn

1663 14

1682 20

1702 7

1723 24

1742 30

1762 13

1782 30

establishment of a contractual basis of rights would lead to the market mechanism and capitalism, the scientific method, religious tolerance, and the organization of states into self-governing republics through democratic means. Across the globe social and economic reforms were being made that included freedom of trade and freedom of religion that ultimately led the English colonies in North America to revolt against the tyranny of King George III. With no professional army or navy, they did not stand a chance against the mighty global superpower that was Britain. Armed with bold conviction in their fledgling Continental Congress and aided and supplied by the French, Spanish and Dutch, they fought the War of Independence between 1775 and 1783 CE and surprisingly won! The United States of America emerged to lead the world into the 7th Epoch of history.

The Fire-Earth Wave, despite being a mere 40-year period, helped to translate many of the ideas and innovations of the fiery trigon wave into practical application such as the invention and implementation of the Steam Locomotive in 1804 CE. In addition, the Earth Element was on the rise again as the United States granted corporations rights in 1819 CE. The next Uranus-Neptune “Spiritual Revolution” Conjunction occurred at 2 degrees Capricorn in 1821 CE, the same year as the Jupiter-Saturn Aries Conjunction, last of the Fire Signs. The fires of industry and factories were aflame with global aspirations as the first signs of the Industrial Revolution were witnessed. After the French Constitution of 1795 CE was signed, The French Empire under Napoleon arose, empowered by modern mass conscription. Napoleon took over most of continental Europe in his desire to be named Holy Roman Emperor by the Pope, but the nations of Europe banned together to defeat him. The decline of his empire began after the invasion of Russia in 1812 CE became a frozen disaster ending in retreat. In the end he was imprisoned on a remote island and died during the Uranus-Neptune 1821 Conjunction. The Earth Wave began with the same gusto as the Fire Wave to produce the largest Industrial Revolution and population explosion the world had ever experienced. Under the weight of massive-scale production and corporations that birthed the global Stock Market, the world changed rapidly. In 1844 CE the British Parliament passed the Joint Stock Companies Act allowing companies to form without a royal charter, followed by the inclusion of the principle of limited liability. With the Age of Steam at full capacity, the American Civil War was fought to end slavery (Earth Waves tend to end Water Wave enslavements, like Cyrus freeing the captive Jews) and the world marched toward its modern form complete with light bulbs, automobiles, airplanes and the power to unleash the atomic forces of matter itself. With great technological power came great ambition as the entire planet was engaged in the First and Second World Wars. America had to work with Britain and Russia as the Allies to defeat the Axis of the German


51

Fire-Earth Wave VII

Fire-Earth Wave VII

DateCE

JupiterSaturn

1802 6

1821 21

Earth Wave VIIEarth Wave VII

DateCE

JupiterSaturn

1842 10

1861 19

1881 2

1901 15

1921 27

1940 15

1961 26

Empire, Facist Italy and the Japanese Empire by dropping the first nuclear bombs that forced their surrender. The first oil well was created in 1910 CE and the battle between fuel types was won by gasoline, adding a new threat to civilizations with pollution induced climate change. The smoking, churning world was divided by superpowers locked in an ideological Cold War. The mighty communist Soviet Union and the capitalist United States fought for supremacy. True to its past nature, the Republic of China went to work with a new communist regime ready to out-produce the world during the Earth Wave it dominated throughout history. By the Sixties, after America raced to reach the moon and faced the Civil Rights movement, the public began to tire of the Vietnam War and mass protests ensued. The land of the free was locked in a bitter ideological war of its own between the supremacy of the past and the not-so-obvious rise of an interdependent global civilization. With mass communications and computers on the horizon, a deep longing for the Space Age had begun. At the end of the Wave, television shows like “Star

Trek” and films like “Star Wars” came out and people started to imagine humanity’s possible place within a galactic civilization. In 1981 CE, the new multicultural global civilization was set to emerge under the Earth-Air Wave. The first Air Sign Conjunction since the 12th century Scholastic Renaissance launched an unheralded new wave of awareness, education and knowledge with the birth of accessible, personal computers. The forty-year Age of Information began in earnest. During the midpoint of the Libra Chronicle, the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall collapsed and out of the ashes the European Union arose, the first time in history that independent European nations banned together to share one currency. The invention of the World Wide Web was the first true

sign that we were transitioning into the Airy Trigon Wave with its promise of intellectual revitalization and sweeping social, political and economic transformations. Uranus, Neptune and Saturn conjuncted in late Capricorn to mark both the height and the end of the Industrial Age. Books like “Harry Potter” made authors into billionaires, proving that ideas and imagination were the next wave of productivity. People began doing business through the Internet using corporate and personal websites. More information was shared, emailed, chatted, translated, electronically documented and displayed than in all of recorded history combined. With the importance of oil as the most valuable resource in the international marketplace, oil-rich nations like Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran became super-wealthy, but were still led by old-school Islamic totalitarian regimes. The Middle East began to tremble with the sound of Mongol cavalry again, and dictatorships began to fall to the power of Twitter. Websites like Amazon, Youtube, Facebook, and Paypal began to revolutionize and change political, social and economic structures, the hallmarks of the Airy Trigon renaissance wave! In the year 2000 CE, as Jupiter and Saturn conjuncted in one last Earth Sign before moving on to the true renaissance era of 2020 CE, people began worrying that computers would crash in the great worldwide Y2K scare, but nothing much happened until 2008 CE with America at war with the Middle East. As movies like the “Terminator” and the “Matrix” came out, people started worrying about a dark apocalyptic world taken over by the machines we built and the ever-looming fear of the end of the Mayan Calendar in 2012 CE caused mass hysteria. Movies, novels, and television began popularizing the theme of alien contact. All nations paid attention as the first African-American


52

Earth-Air Wave VIIEarth-Air Wave VII

DateCE

JupiterSaturn

1981 10

2000 23

president Barack Obama was elected in a nation that was built on African slavery and that people realized was being run by greedy, power-hungry corporations. And then the seventh pure Air Wave breathed over the earth in 2020 CE and the Global Renaissance began for the first time in history. Looking back at the Fire, Earth and Air Wave patterns how did civilizations develop? In the first Fire Wave we saw the birth of civilizations and the Bronze Taurian Age midpoint with Uruk, the Indus Valley and Egypt leading humanity forward into this experiment. Both the Kali Yuga and the Mayan Long Count began then, and in 2012 CE the calendar of the Maya is supposed to expire. Are we witnessing the end of civilization or are we transitioning into a new way of living on the planet? The next conjunction is at 1 degree Aquarius in 2020 CE right after Jupiter and Saturn meet Pluto in late Capricorn. So we can expect dynamic transformations of culture and another intellectual Renaissance period lasting for seven Chronicles. Let’s compare what is emerging in this Air Wave with what we’ve seen transpire in the Fire, Earth and Air Waves through history.

In the first Fire Wave of Elemental Epoch I, the Age of Civilization began centered in Sumer, Egypt and the Indus Valley. It was a huge leap in revolutionary inventions that moved us toward the experiment with the agricultural lifestyle and city-building. It took 5000 years to transition from nomadic tribes to settled villagers. In the next Fire Wave, the Harappan and Akkadian cultures exploded with revolutionary techniques, from city-planning and metallurgy to bronze casting and calendars. Religions were instituted and codified and then the barbarians came to ruin their day. The third Fire Wave experienced vast multicultural growth and many civilizations emerged while the first sacred writings appeared. By the fourth Fire Wave the Greeks were holding their

Olympiads, the Indians were developing their Vedanta philosophy, and Rome was founded. In the fifth Fire Wave, the Roman Empire dominated the world along with the Parthians of the Middle East and the Han Dynasty of China. The early Christians were spreading the Word while Ptolomy and Zhang Zhongjing were publishing legendary scientific works. During the sixth Fire Wave, the Islamic realm was having a glorious scientific revolution of its own leading to doctoral degrees and libraries stocked with wisdom. The Anglo-Saxons rose to power alongside the Holy Roman Empire under Charlemagne. Then the 7th Fire Wave saw the British Empire at its height and the birth of a new nation founded on the principles of equality, liberty, and freedom of religion and the pursuit of happiness. A unique constitution was drawn up and ratified by its founding fathers and they called this melting pot of the world America. This most recent Fire Wave gave the world the greatest Scientific Revolution in the history of humanity. We unlocked the secrets of Promethean Fire with the discovery of electricity and the discovery of Uranus helped us attain Enlightenment!


53

Air-Water Wave VIIAir-Water Wave VII

DateCE

JupiterSaturn

2159 8

2179 24

2199 29

Air Wave VIIAir Wave VII

DateCE

JupiterSaturn

2020 1

2040 19

2060 1

2080 12

2100 26

2119 15

2140 18

The first Earth Wave of Elemental Epoch I hosted the initial industrial revolution and population explosion with craft and pottery production increasing food supplies. China emerged with its famous 3 Sovereigns and 5 Emperors pre-dynastic period. The second Earth Wave went bad with total devastation due to wide-scale droughts, flooding and famines. It was as if the Earth reacted to the sudden shift from nomadic tribes to settled cultures, but we survived and the experiment barely continued. By the third Earth Wave the Shang Dynasty began large-scale production of bronze during its Golden Age. In the West, the Assyrian Empire came to power and Mesopotamia joined the famed 18th Dynasty of Egypt in a construction and production frenzy under Ramesses II. During the fourth Earth Wave, also known as the Axial Age, Nebuchadnezzar II built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the world awakened under the triple conjunction of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. The Persian Empire produced astrology, codes of laws, and mathematics while Greece gleamed with philosophy, music and poetry. The early Roman Republic arrived as well. Then the fifth Earth Wave saw the Roman Empire divided into the Eastern and Western realms and Constantine declared Christianity the state religion as the Ages shifted from Aries to Pisces. By the sixth Earth Wave, the world experienced the Song Dynasty’s enormous industrial revolution that doubled the Chinese population and brought us woodblock printing, gunpowder and compasses. The Earth Wave of the 7th Epoch produced the famous Industrial Revolution as we constructed railroads and unlocked the secrets of matter itself, producing atomic energy. We produced so many riches, so much stuff, so many gadgets, especially in America; yet we were still not happy and fulfilled. Everyone began clinging to the false security of houses full of stuff, more wealth than we could ever need or use cluttering our lives while some third-world nations could barely feed people. The era of materialism struck hard, creating wondrous products with a corresponding arid drought in our souls, expressed by many as a return to a life of simplicity and communal concern.

So where are we going next with our grand mastery of energy and matter? We are entering another renaissance Air Wave like ages past and the events will most likely be some combination of what has happened before. During the first Air Wave of Elemental Epoch I civilizations got their first taste of human genius with polymaths like the Yellow Emperor, Enmerkar, Gilgamesh, and Imhotep. Language seemed to be the focus with the Tower of Babel and the God of Scribes. By the second Air Wave, the artistic Harappan culture was flourishing and ready to be invaded by the Aryans to create the great Vedic civilization. Egyptians were using their minds to create irrigation systems, worker’s quarters and labyrinthine pyramids to try and avoid future calamities. The Sumerian renaissance was in full swing too. By the third Air Wave we experienced Greek mythology in real time and the Zhou Dynasty’s renaissance under the Mandate of Heaven. The Phoenicians created the first alphabet and King David of the Israelites penned the psalms. In the fourth Air Wave the great outpouring of Macedonian culture occurred as Aristotle tutored Alexander the Great to build an empire that would act like an archaic version of the Internet. Highways of intercultural exchange stretched from Greece to India centered in Alexandria. The development of Stoicism and the quest for moral and intellectual perfection began as the Great Library, Great Lighthouse and Colossus were engineered. Ashoka of the Mauryans in India was preaching non-violence and undertaking massive public works projects to improve the lives of his people. During the fifth Air Wave the Church suppression of Hellenistic


54

culture produced the Dark Ages in the West, the first negative renaissance expression that witnessed the rampage of the Goths, Huns and Vikings. The legends of King Arthur and the eventual rise of the Merovingian Franks under Clovis I were Europe’s intellectual saving grace. In India the Gupta civilization flourished and experienced their Golden Age with extensive developments in science, technology, engineering, artistic expression, dialectic, literature, logic, mathematics, astrology, religion, yoga, architecture, sculpture, painting and philosophy. They were the Hellenistic Greeks of their time and the source of Hindu culture. As Bodhidharma transmitted Zen Buddhism to China down that old Silk Road the Guptas back home were playing chess and designing the Indo-Arabic numerals that would become the number system of the modern world. Then the sixth Air Wave came with the vibrant Western rebirth of classical culture rediscovered through Arabic manuscripts. Marco Polo visited China to experience the vibrant social life of the Mongol-occupied Yuan Dynasty. Chinese inventions filtered back down the Silk Road even as Dogen Zenji brought Zen to Japan. Osman I created the Ottoman Empire, the center of Islamic culture for over six centuries. While William Wallace was busy liberating Scotland, the Sukhothai were crafting the Thai alphabet and Venice was minting the golden ducat to facilitate commerce for the next 600 years. In the pure Air Wave to emerge, starting in 2020 CE, it seems like we are ready to experience an unprecedented Global Renaissance, where a new generation of brilliant polymaths emerge. In the Fire Wave we unleashed electricity and experienced the Enlightenment, the greatest Scientific Revolution in history. In the Earth Wave we probed the secrets of matter and experienced atomic power and mapped the genome. We enjoyed and managed the greatest Industrial Revolution mankind has witnessed. It only seems natural to think that in the coming Air Wave that we would unlock the secrets of the mind and space to experience the greatest outpouring of awareness, ideas, thought, concepts and knowledge. We’ve already experienced a Dark Age of the mind and so I don’t think there will be another, especially with the powerful mental trajectory society is

traversing right now (2011 CE). With Air symbolizing space, we can only hope that we will learn to master the art of traversing the celestial sea and colonize our solar system and beyond. We’ve already discovered alien Earth-like worlds orbiting distant suns. Nothing can stop human ingenuity from contacting and visiting these worlds in future Air Waves. The common elements of past Air Waves point to advances in languages, translations of ancient texts, new systems to avoid or minimize calamities, new ways of storing and exchanging information, a realization of the power of myth in storytelling, new mutations in the audio and video industries with the advent of holograms, religious unity through combination and synthesis influenced strongly by Zen and Hinduism, international commitments to non-violence in the spirit of Ashoka, a new generation of modern chivalrous enlightened Templar Knights, advances and synthesis in


55

Water-Fire Wave VI

Water-Fire Wave VI

DateCE

JupiterSaturn

2338 3

2358 23

2378 21

2398 8

2417 5

2437 30

Water Wave VIIWater Wave VII

DateCE

JupiterSaturn

2219 15

2238 7

2259 4

2279 26

2298 15

2318 15

astrology with a return of the modern Magi, an explosion of Hellenistic culture at a global level of exchange, a Gupta-like renaissance in gaming and education, and a new tide of unique Chinese inventions flowing over a Silk Road that spans the globe through international trade. We’ve already experienced the birth of a generation of indigo geniuses destined to change the world. Seems like an exciting time to be alive indeed! When the Water Wave descends in 2219 CE, we’ll probably experience the greatest outpouring of artistic and spiritual revival possible. Humans will finally unleash the full power of their hearts, souls and imaginations by mastering Water and fluid dynamics. Imagine a society where every human being is expressing Da Vinci-like polymath integration, telepathy, empathy and accomplishment? Will we end human trafficking at last? And then what will befall our little blue planet in the 8th Elemental Epoch? By then we may finally be ready to embrace a global civilization and awaken to interstellar activity in the Scientific Revolution of the eighth Fire Wave.

Critical Turning Points in the Path Ahead

2080 CE: Jupiter-Saturn-Uranus in Aquarius opposing Neptune in Leo and sextile Pluto in Aries.2105 CE: Uranus-Pluto Conjunction at 7 degrees Taurus.2163 CE: Uranus-Neptune Conjunction at 6 degrees Aquarius.2222 CE: Uranus-Pluto Conjunction at 5 degree Libra.2334 CE: Uranus-Neptune Conjunction at 25 degrees Aquarius2357 CE: Uranus-Pluto Conjunction at 17 degrees Taurus.2385 CE: Neptune-Pluto Conjunction at 13 degrees Gemini conjunct Saturn and square Uranus in Virgo.

The dates above mark crucial turning points and new beginnings in civilization based on past events and the archetypal combinations involved. I’ve been studying the alignment in 2080 CE with special interest since I was fourteen and first got into astrology back in 1985 CE. One day, when I was scanning the future of outer planet activity in my teacher’s ephemeris, I saw that in 2080, Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus were all in Aquarius and I had a vision of the alignment. I looked at my sixty-two year old wise mentor, Bonnie Wingo, and said, “I think I just found the start of the Aquarian Age!” Years later I discovered that the Great Conjunction in Pisces in 7 BCE that birthed Christ also had Uranus in Pisces and wondered if these dates were connected. I still maintain great hopes of a global awakening to Zen-like Satori or Christ Consciousness during that date. The Uranus-Pluto alignment in 2105 CE will surely stir things up with an all-natural movement toward revolutionary simplicity and peace like the Sixties. Uranus always helps unconscious societal issues come to the surface and that time will revolutionize collective values. Uranus-Pluto aligns again at 5 degrees Libra in 2222 CE and then once again during the 7th Epoch at 17 degrees Taurus in 2357 CE to finish out its Earth Wave. We have two extremely exciting Uranus-Neptune Aquarius Conjunctions coming up in 2163 CE and 2334 CE which promise an unheralded technological and revolutionary vibe that favors astrological and cosmic consciousness. There was only one such alignment at 15 degrees Aquarius during the last 3600-year series in 1434 BCE when Babylon, under the wise rulership of the Kassites, became an international power establishing trade and diplomacy throughout the region. The Mycenaean Greeks were just getting going and sacred writings like the Rigveda and Torah were being crafted. In the past we saw an assortment of rogue Mesopotamian city states ban together as an international empire. Maybe this time we’ll see a world full of divided nations ban together as a


56

global village? What sacred texts for the Aquarian Age will emerge? Will we contact or be contacted by alien life? Technically, the Aries Ingress point will align with Sidereal Aquarius around 2380 CE, about the same time that the new Neptune-Pluto 495-year cycle begins. My view is that we began entering the Aquarian Age back in 1781 CE when Uranus was discovered but then the glass was just starting to fill with the cosmic pitcher waters of Aquarius. With at least 300-years of interface period to fully pass between Ages, that makes the 2080 CE alignment

the prime candidate for the glass being at least 75% full! By 2385 CE, the glass will be 100% full and we’ll see the Aquarian imagery in vivid display. The Neptune-Pluto Conjunctions are Elemental as well, but only over vast periods as they gradually progress through the Signs.

Spiritual Transformations - Neptune-Pluto Conjunctions

When Neptune and Pluto meet every 495 years they cause a spiritual transformation to occur on the planet where collectives must endure sweeping changes based on a combination of the mythic themes of the Signs, aspect patterns and what has been societally repressed. Pluto always dredges up what needs to be integrated from the Kuiper Belt darkness beyond Neptune. The one in 576 BCE also aligned with Uranus to mark the Axial Age of Awakening with Taoism, Buddhism, Jainism, Greek Philosophy, etc. Those triple conjunctions (bolded in the table) happen only once every 4000 years! The one before that aligned in the middle of the Age of Gemini in 5040 BCE in Aquarius. The Copper Age began with the invention of metallurgy and the Wheel. The first small urban centers in Anatolia and Mesopotamia flourished, perfect expressions of the Gemini Age mythic themes combined with Aquarian ingenuity. In addition, the development of writing systems began, expressed in the ideographic Vinca scripts and rice was cultivated in Southeast Asia. The next one that will include Uranus happens in 3369 CE in Gemini. Since Gemini is the third Sign of the Zodiac, I’m sure we will be involved in the 3rd stage of our evolution as a race based on how we harness the power of intelligence and intuition in the preceding centuries. The astute astrologer will realize that the rare Uranus-Neptune-Pluto triple conjunction skipped Pisces and Aries, going from Aquarius to Taurus. However, all three planets occupied Pisces in 4529 BCE with Pluto at 1 degree and Neptune conjunct Uranus around 21 degrees. According to ancient astrologers using the Whole Sign system this would count as a conjunction by sign. Incidentally, this was the time when the earliest settlements with shrines to Nammu the Earth Goddess and Anu the Sky Lord appeared, emphasizing the Piscean archetypal theme of unity through divine realization and the beginning of institutionalized reverence for Eternal Being. In addition, a massive quadruple Whole Sign conjunction in Aries of Jupiter-Uranus-Neptune-


57

Neptune-PlutoConjunctionsNeptune-PlutoConjunctions

Date Sign

5040 BCE 7

4544 BCE 19

4048 BCE 30

3522 BCE 10

3057 BCE 22

2560 BCE 1

2069 BCE 13

1571 BCE 22

1073 BCE 11

576 BCE 11

82 BCE 16

412 CE 24

907 CE 29

1400 CE 4

1893 CE 10

2385 CE 16

2878 CE 17

3369 CE 20

Pluto trine to Saturn in Leo around 1085 BCE also occurred. The 500-year period between this Aries super-alignment and the famous 576 BCE Axial Age conjunction saw the world reach the midpoint of the Aries Age (around 860 BCE) and the rapid development of astrology and science under the Babylonians. The 1085 BCE alignment occurred during the third Air Wave that saw not only the Babylonians emerge under Nebuchadnezzar I, but also the Zhou Dynasty of China and the Israelites under Kings Saul and David. Neptune was out of orb and didn’t reach Pluto until 1571 BCE. But this marked a major turning point in history when the ancient Sumerians were making records of stars and realizing the power of the Zodiac along the ecliptic. The Neptune-Pluto conjunction alone marks key turning points in history when collectives must face their shadows. The 2560 BCE alignment coincided with the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza at the Aries Ingress point that happened to oppose Uranus in Libra and slave revolts! The 82 BCE conjunction saw the rise of the Roman Republic and its transformation into the Roman Empire that included the birth of Christ. The Senate had to face its darkest fear of a popular general becoming an Emperor. The one in 412 CE (also aligned with Jupiter and Saturn in Taurus) saw the end of the Roman Empire with Atilla the Hun marching over the horizon and the beginning of the Dark Ages in Europe with the corresponding renaissance of the Guptas in India. One culture faced its worst fear while another realized enlightenment. In 907 CE, the Muslims reached their cultural zenith while the Holy Roman Empire rose from the ashes to mark a turning point in Europe’s destiny along with the Anglo-Saxons, who would evolve into the mighty British Empire. The 1400 CE alignment shifted the Sign of their meeting to Gemini and coincided with the Renaissance and the Age of Exploration. The next alignment in 1893 CE oversaw the birth of the modern world and the discovery of the psychological unconscious. The ancient Greek Underworld suddenly made a lot of sense! The next alignment in 2385 marks the end of the 7th Elemental Epoch and the authentic 100% point of the Aquarian Age dispensation.

Jupiter-Saturn - 60 Year Cycle

Every sixty years Jupiter the planet of faith and Saturn the planet of wisdom make three conjunctions spaced 120-degrees apart, with three oppositions in between. For instance, a conjunction in Aries will be followed by a conjunction in Sagittarius, which is followed by a conjunction in Leo. Then the cycle starts over in Aries. One of these conjunctions may switch to Taurus, Virgo or Capricorn to begin a new hybrid transitional period. From Saturn’s perspective, it’s successive alignments with Jupiter and the Earth are experienced as a beautiful 3-fold harmonic. Jupiter and Saturn’s orbits are in a 6:11 ratio. In between each conjunction, there is an


58

opposition that, over a 60-year cycle, paints a perfect picture of the Star of David pattern (see diagram). They start off in position 1 (conjunction) and oppose each other in position 2 forming an opposition. During the opposition the promise of what was initially released as seed potential is manifested in full awareness as people begin to react to and live the resulting realizations. Then they come back together in position 3, followed by another opposition in position 4, followed by the third conjunction at position 5, with a final opposition at position 6. In this cosmic dance, civilizations rise and fall, infused with new ideas and cultural memes based on the current paradigm of the pure or hybrid transitional Elemental Wave. This work was written under a Jupiter-Saturn opposition and spanned exactly 60-pages! Over 800 years, the cycle covers all four Elements and every Sign of the Zodiac is given a chance for expression in cultures. Saturn’s structuring properties work at several astonishing levels, revealing its Time Lord essence. It’s two Signs of Capricorn (past) and Aquarius (future) are opposed by Cancer and Leo, respectively. These two signs are governed by the luminaries of the Moon (Cancer) and Sun (Leo). Where Saturn takes 2.5 years to traverse a Sign, the Moon takes 2.5 days (and 2.5 years by progression). Saturn’s period is equal to the Synodic Cycle of the Moon (29.53059), reflecting the emotional and experiential components of the maturation process. The Sun takes 2.5 days to traverse a dwad (1/12 of a Sign) and 2.5 years by progression. The Dwads are symbolic fractals of the archetypal spectrum. So the Sun, Moon and Saturn are all intricately linked in time. In addition, Saturn is linked to Mars (the last of the personal planets and Neptune (last of the transpersonal planets as Pluto is now the dwarf planet lord of the Kuiper Belt region). Saturn’s Orbit invokes pi (3.14) twice: it’s radius is the circumference of Mars’ orbit and its circumference is the diameter of Neptune’s orbit. When contemplated for both its inner and outer structural beauty, the solar system is revealed as a highly tuned quantum resonant structure. Since Jupiter and Saturn have to do with the establishment and crystallization of cultures and civilizations, it may be that a person could compare his or her Moon Sign, South Node and Nadir by degree to the degrees listed on the Elemental Wave tables to see what cultures were emerging during those times. There may be several throughout history. It may be that there is a link between the decans or dwads that hosted the Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions and a person’s soul material inherited at birth. This idea came to me during the writing, but has not been tested. It may be that there is a connection of some kind to be discovered. If a person has a particular attraction, inner connection, or past-life memories related to a given culture, it may be insightful to look up the degrees of the Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions that were occurring when the civilization was in focus historically, and planets in the birth chart that occupy those degrees, may be informative about one’s connection to that cultural expression. For example, for years I’ve had a deep connection to Japan and even learned to speak Japanese. I had a past life flash of being a Japanese monk and rice farmer when I was accidentally wounded by sword in this lifetime in martial arts training as a teenager. While lying on the ground bleeding, the past life vision played in my mind. In the vision, my village was revolting against the imperial tyrannical rule of the Samurai lords of Heian Japan. When looking back at the 6th Elemental Epoch, the culture of Japan was listed at 1186 CE and came to power during a Libra Chronicle initiated by a Jupiter-Saturn alignment at 13 degrees. It turns out that I have Uranus at 13 degrees Libra, the planet of revolution! It may be that clues are implanted within the birth chart that are directly related to these historical spikes in culture. Enjoy the research!


59


60

Chronology of CivilizationsChronology of CivilizationsChronology of CivilizationsChronology of CivilizationsChronology of CivilizationsChronology of CivilizationsChronology of CivilizationsChronology of CivilizationsChronology of Civilizations

Epoch Fire

FireEarth

Earth

EarthAir

Air

AirWater

Water

WaterFire

I Uruk-Sumer

Early Dynastic

Egypt

Indus Valley

Harappan

Cycladian-Helladic

Norte Chico Peru

Jomon

Early Dynastic Sumer

2nd DynastyEgypt

Pre-Dynastic China

Early Dynastic II -

Sumer

Old Kingdom Egypt

Old Elamites

Minoans

Mature Harappan

Early Dynastic IIIa

- Sumer

Ur Dynasty

Lagash Dynasty

Great Pyramidof Giza

Early Dynastic IIIb

- Sumer

II Akkadians

Gojoseon Korea

Egyptʼs 1st Intermediate

Period

Gutians

Xia Dynasty Aries Age

OlmecsEgypt'sMiddle

Kingdom3rd Dynasty

of Ur

Minoan Old Palace

Egypt 12th Dynasty

SumerianRenaissance

Babylonians

Aryans

VedicCivilization

Late MinoanPeriod

Egyptʼs 2nd Intermediate

Period

Shang Dynasty

III HittitesEgyptʼs 18th

Dynasty

Sumer -Kassites

Hittite New Kingdom

RigvedaTorah

Assyrians

Egyptʼs19th DynastyRamesses II

Yin ShangDynasty

Mycenaeans

GreekMythology

Phoenicians

BabyloniaNebuchadnezzar

Western Zhou

Dynasty

Israelites

HebrewsRenaissance

Solomon

Zhou Renaissance

King Mu

Neo-Assyrians

VillanovaItaly

Kush - Nubia

Archaic Greek City-

States

Etruscans

IV Vedic City-States

ScythiansEastern

ZhouDynastyMedesLydia

Egyptʼs 23-24th

DynastiesJapan-Jimmu

Neo-BabylonianChaldeans

NebuchadnezzarII

Hanging Gardens

of Babylon

Mahajanapadas of India

AXIAL AGEBuddhism

TaoismGreek

Philosophy

Persians

Early RomanRepublic

Celts

Mayans

Macedonia-Phillip IISocrates

PlatoAristotleStatue of

ZeusArtemis Temple

MacedonianEmpire

ExpansionAlexander the Great

AlexandriaStoicismGreek

AstrologyGreat Library

SeleucidsCarthageMauryans

Qin Dynasty

Eastern Han Dynasty

Parthians

Roman RepublicMaritime

Expansion

Punic Warswith

Carthage

Roman Empire

Xin DynastyWestern Han

Dynasty

Jesus the Christ-

Christianity

V RomanEmpire

Expansion

Indo-IranianKushans

Xiongnu

Persian SassanidsShapur I

Goths

3 Kingdoms-China

Eastern & Western Romans

Pisces Age

SassanidsShapur II

Byzantines

Guptas

Huns

Britons-Heptarchy

Merovingian Franks

EuropeanDark Ages

GuptaRenaissance

Sui DynastyTang

Dynasty

Coptic EgyptUmayyad

ArabCaliphateBulgarians

Abbasid Caliphate

Sufism

Carolingians Franks

Vikings

Khmers

VI IslamicExpansion

Anglo-Saxons

Holy Roman Empire

Normans

England

CholasSeljuk Turks

Song DynastyFatimid

CaliphateFujiwara Japan

Knights Templar

Heian Japan

Mongols

Scholastics

Sukhothai

Ottomans

Renaissance

Golden Horde

ChagataiIlkanate

Yuan DynastyTimurid

Emirates

Ming DynastyMughals

SpainPortugalBritainFrance

NetherlandsAztecsIncas

British Empire

Manchu Dynasty

VII United States ofAmerica

Enlightenment

French Empire-

Napolean

American Expansion

Industrial Revolution

Axis & Allies

European Union

Soviet Collapse

Internet

2020 - 2159

Global Renaissance

?

2159 - 2219

?

2219 - 2318

?

2318 - 2457

?

Aquarius Age

elemental wave chronicles - the jupiter-saturn...

Documents