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IT IS WELL TO BE AWARE OF THE SHADOW OF OUR EPOCH!!!

Firstly in SHORT:

Aquarius is about Abstract Spiritual Principles or "LAWS" which it sees as divinely given. All we need do is align ourselves with these `Laws' and all goes according to the divine plan. No prizes for guessing what's up if things don't go right - Yes!!! You're out of alignment!!

Leo (Bright Aquarius' shadow) is about subjectivity and and individual and egotistical perpective and in the context of the epochal changes leads to individual greed, ambition, and aspirations, all especially in a spiritual sense. All the things the Aquarian age says its not about but secretly/ unconsciously desires.

The AQUARIUS - LEO axis leads to a cult of success based on the perception that of the individual who aligns to the spiritual laws being the successful one. Oprah Winfrey, an Aquarian, typifies this in America by combining individual socio-economic success with so called spiritual values and implying that one depends upon the other.

Now if you want a LONGER version I will begin with a look at the Piscean Epoch and its shadow side, Virgo.

The shadow of the Piscean (Christian) age with its imagery of mystical union, martyrdom, surrender and self sacrifice is a particular type of rampant materialism, obsessed with ordering the world and reducing everything to materialistic causes. It has reached its peak during the last century of mass production, scientific materialism and the secularisation of society. Values such as materialism, the `protestant work ethic', `cleanliness is next to Godliness', the moral tone of the Victorian era which was only finally broken in he 1960s and 70s and scienific materialism as the tool of classification in which nature is brought under human dominion are the hallmarks of the closing stages of the Piscean epoch. Yet how utterly un-Piscean these values seem. But it has a very definite `logic' astrologically for the values of the late 19th and first half of the 20th century are utterly Virgoan - negatively Virgoan that is, the shadow of a sign is always the negative of its opposite.

Neptunian immersion in the collective culture at a materialist level is the unconscious expression of a Piscean shadow as superficial and literalistic Virgo qualities. Virgo rather than offering appropriate compensation for overly Piscean values becomes the prison warder who chains mysticism to a stone of materialism and leads us an to economic paradise premised on mass production and loyalty to productivity as the source of the collective good - shopping malls and cyberspace are the transitional spaces through which we will enter the Uranian Utopia of the Aquarian age which is to follow. Trancendent it truly is. We have transcended all understanding of the sacredness of matter/Mater, for transcendence too has its shadow as loss of consciousness. So we live in the projection of an ideal which bends matter to the undifferentiated utopian visions of all being part of the great economic oneness and material security as the divine order.

We must beware the next phase when mighty Uranus (Ouranos the Sky God) takes over and abstract vision and spiritual principle replaces undifferentiated oneness as the utopian paradise after which we yearn.

The emergence of a secular rationalistic society also logically proceeds from Christian monotheism and the institutional Christian church. Science has become the `One God' with the power to transcend matter (or struggle free of `Mater' ) which Christianity always foretold. Science and Protestantism emerged in parallel to extend the battle against the many gods of pagamism and Catholicism. Death and the body are the great enemies which genetic engineering, cloning and virtual reality will free us from, when transcendence becomes not mere visionary escape, the promise of the hereafter, or an earthly paradise of economic order and plenty but the death of Death and the immortality of the body.

Aquarius is about Abstract Spiritual Principles or "LAWS" which it sees as divinely given. All we need do is align ourselves with these `Laws' and all goes according to the divine plan. No prizes for guessing what's up if things don't go right - Yes!!! You're out of alignment!! At the rational materialist level this translates to what I will call Scientism, the religion of science as the one God who promises transcend- ence of physicality whilst remaining physical. At the purely Aquarian level this is the promise of absorption into the unity of alignment to spiritual laws (Aquarius) whilst maintaining individual goals of achievement and recognition (Leo).

Leo (Bright Aquarius' shadow) is about subjectivity and and individual and egotistical perspective and in the context of the epochal changes leads to individual greed, ambition, and aspirations, all especially in a spiritual sense. All the things the Aquarian age says its not about but secretly/unconsciously desires. Much of what is touted in the New Age wears a cloak of individuality but is really individualism - they are different. One is about a truly unique and solitary path, unfettered by the claims of loyalty to collective values - INDIVIDUATION in Jung's terms; the other is about self serving cloaked in undifferentiated collective values of spirituality and spiritual laws - individual responsibility means I get what I want by adhering to universal laws; INDIVIDUALISM - its Aquarius-Leo dynamics again.

The AQUARIUS - LEO axis leads to a cult of success based on the perception of the individual who aligns to the spiritual laws being the successful one. Oprah Winfrey, an Aquarian, typifies this in America by combining socio-economic success with so called spiritual values. She is successful because she understands universal spiritual laws and is able to maintain her alignment to them, and she holds out the promise that we can have what she has - a personal trainer and motivational expert helps of course. Many of her shows (good word for the Leo shadow) tell us how we too can be `New Age' successes.

Is the New Age and Aquarian consciousness really our deliverance or just another phase in which we are challenged to redeem the shadow of our epoch or be subverted by it? I suggest the latter.

And what will be the shadow of the bright Aquarian New Age? It is as I indicated egocentric and individualistic Leo, the performer par excellence. Already early in the Aquarian age we can see the Leonine shadow at work behind the bright vision of Uranus, performing his/her tricks to sell you the bright ideal and vision of healing, utopia, transendence or personal success.

So back to Aquarius which brings not a grounded and practical structure and earthy matrix (which Saturn would offer) but visionary spiritual principles as guiding structures in a time when the world is seen as being brought to either its scientific/economic peak (rational materialist view) or its physical end (extreme New Age Ascensionist view). You only need to look at the Ascension mythology which abounds on the internet to see this latter view at work. Its time to step off the ground of Mater/matter as she is no longer relevant; we are all to be given (in some stories only those of us who are chosen) light bodies - bodies more acceptable to the airy sky god who locked his earthy children the Titans (including Saturn) in Tartaros because they offended him. And all this is a very individual and at the same time collective process. Economic rationalism offers us the secular version in which the breaking down of collective structures is paramount as economic power is increasingly devolved to individuals and individual responsibility becomes the high principle of the new economic order. Alignment to the theories of economic rationalism, in which material life is subjected to purely abstract economic laws (equivalent of New Age spiritual laws), is the highest form of personal and commercial achievement.

At the every day level economic rationalism subverts all material value and replaces it with theoretical and abstract values. Most of the worlds economy is now based on things that do not physically exist. Where actual commodities are traded their value has little to do with actual materiality and more with speculation about their future value. All this supposedly runs according to a set of rational laws which if individuals understand and apply lead to success and wellbeing for all. Never mind that it doesn't seem to be working, we're obviously not aligned to the economic laws properly yet - we'll call in the IMF or World Bank to tell us how to align to the economic revelation and all will be well. We trade in abstractions; futures, shares, currency speculation, information itself, forgetting that all these, and that grand new tool of technology cyberspace, are mere spectres, shadow shows in which we have forgotten the shadow puppets which lie behind them. Nonetheless we assign them value and trade in them regardless of the supreme sublimation and inflation that they represent.

Or the scientists promise us freedom from the body's imperfections and the vaguaries of nature via genetic engineering and cloning with the ultimate promise of a victory over death - look only to the Square of the Leo/Aquarius axis to Taurus/Scorpio to understand this one. And while we await these developments we can escape in to cyberspace and virtual reality.

All this is seen as based on the power of individuals and the right to trade as individuals. Individual ownership and initiative is raised to its highest pinnacle of idealisation in this Brave New World (Age?) of economic rationalism, with never a thought for those who are condemned to the economic scrap heap - the rationale is that everyone who wants to can become a millionaire - just look at and listen to Oprah Winfrey! It just a question of individual will and getting your vision statement right and working out the right affirmations. If it doesn't work you're just not getting the mental picture together enough, so back to the personal motivation expert and the mental drawing board and have another go at, maybe you'll get it next time?

The New Age itself is a manifestation of this same consciounsness in `spiritualised' form. Workshops on all forms of spiritual cum psychic business are big business in New Age circles; everything from prosperity consciousness and crystal healing to shammanic drumming and chanelling are everywhere. No one any longer asks whether the participants are actually suited to the `commodity' being offered, they may have to turn people away if they did that. No one would let you in to a conservatorium of music without the prerequisite `gifts' and experience but in the commerce of the New Age its rare that anyone bothers to ask of such matters.

Here I am touching again on the shadow of the Aquarian age. It is a sort of false individualism and appeal to egocentric desire to be one of the special and gifted ones. What ought to be recognised as true of every one, each in their unique and separate way to be recognised and encouraged and trained under the personally watchful eye of an elder, is made a matter of commerce. This allows indiscriminate trading in what was once sacred knowledge to take place and turns gifts into currency so be sold like so much produce at a market. The necessary basis of real learning, the love and respect of teacher for pupil, pupil for teacher, guru for chela, chela for guru, master (sic!) for apprentice and apprentice for master (sic!), and their mutual love of what passes between them is debased.

That is not to say that everyone should not have access to finding out what their gift may be but rather a lament that so few are willing to say when no gift is apparent and even suggest and alternative gift and agency of help. (Why give business to a competitor?) Everywhere training is being offered in everything from dream interpretation to rebirthing to Reiki to channelling with hardly a question asked as to the qualifications of the trainers or the trainees. Its just assumed that everyone has the right to train and be trained. Everyone has a right for their real gift to be seen and acknowledged and to be given the appropriate opportunity to develop it if they will, no more, no less but this is rarely what's on offer. What people make of a gift is up to them.

I teach people about dream interpretation and astrology but I would not claim to train them. I know some of them are naturals and some will never grasp these disciplines in more than a rudimentary way. There's nothing wrong with that, all I offer is to show them what may be possible and encourage each to understand her/his gifts to what ever extent they exist, just as I expect when I go to learn from some-one else.

All of this has had its expression in other ways in other epochs of course. This is just my personal if somewhat passionate reflection on the particular issues we face under the AQUARIUS-LEO axis.

In closing I quote Jung:

"What is it in the end, that induces a person to go his/her own way and to rise out of unconscious identity with the mass as out of a swathing mist? Not necessity, for necessity comes to many, and they all take refuge in convention. Not moral decision, for nine times out of ten we decide for convention likewise. What is it, then that inexorably tips the scales in favour of the extra-ordinary? It is what is commonly called vocation: an irrational factor that destines a person to emancipate him/herself from the herd and from its well-worn paths. True personality is always a vocation and puts its trust in it as in God....But vocation acts like a law of God form which there is no escape...He must obey his own law, as if it were a daemon whispering to him of new and wonderful paths. Anyone with a vocation hears the voice of the inner person: he/she is called."

Copyright Rodney Ravenswood 1998