Core Astrological Contributions

Barbault revolutionized 20th-century astrology by moving away from fatalistic interpretations toward statistical, psychological, and cyclical frameworks: [1, 2, 3, 4]

• The Cyclic Index: Barbault developed a mathematical approach to mundane forecasting by charting the total angular distances between the outer planets (Jupiter through Pluto) over time. Sharp drops in this “Cyclic Index” historically correlated with major world crises, wars, and recessions, while rising peaks correlated with stability and progress. [1, 2, 3, 4]

• Astro-Psychoanalysis: In 1961, he published De la Psychanalyse à l’Astrologie (From Psychoanalysis to Astrology), a seminal work mapping Freudian concepts onto structural components of the birth chart. [1, 2]

• Computerized Astrology Pioneers: In 1967, Barbault co-founded Ordinastral-Astroflash in Paris, introducing the world’s first computerized astrological chart calculation and interpretation engine. [1, 2]

• Academic Leadership: He served as vice president of the Centre International d’Astrologie for 14 years and founded the respected journal l’Astrologie to encourage rigorous, evidence-based research. [1]

Famous Historical Predictions

Barbault frequently isolated himself in remote areas to analyze calculations objectively without being swayed by contemporary media. His methodology led to several notable projections: [1, 2, 3]

• The Rise and Fall of the USSR: Decades in advance, Barbault tracked the Saturn-Neptune alignment cycle to successfully forecast a massive restructuring of the Soviet Union in 1953 (the year Joseph Stalin died) and its eventual final collapse in 1989. [1, 2]

• The 2008 Economic Crash: He successfully warned of a deep global financial and economic crisis occurring between 2008 and 2010. [1, 2]

• The 2020 Global Pandemic: In his 2011 article A Survey of Pandemics, later highlighted by The Astrology Podcast, Barbault calculated a dangerous convergence of slow-moving outer planets. He wrote: “It may well be that we are seriously threatened by a new pandemic in 2020-2021”. [1, 2]

Key English Publications

While the majority of his extensive catalog remains in French, two principal texts have been translated into English for global students of his methodology: [1, 2]

• Planetary Cycles: Mundane Astrology (Translated and published by the Astrological Association).

• The Value of Astrology (An overview of classical traditions, statistical attempts, and modern psychological applications). [1, 2, 3]

WESTERN ASTROLOGICAL ANALYSIS

Usually, when I come across Andre Barbault’s horoscope, it is in Placidus house format, with the statement that Andre had his Uranus in his 1^st house as if this were a foregone conclusion. It is not. The whole sign house application to Andre’s Western horoscope shows that he had an Aquarius ascendant, with Uranus, his ruling planet, in his 2^nd house. Did Andre have a strong financial focus in his life? He certainly did!

He was not born into wealth and grew up in a very modest, or even a poor household, with his father a blacksmith. Andre was self-made when it came to wealth. He sold massive numbers of copies of his astrological works. The 12-volume Zodiaque series, which Barbault directed and largely wrote, reportedly sold more than 2.5 million copies from 1957 onward. Yves Lenoble describes this as one of the major events in the history of French astrology—the “Barbault effect.”

There are also hard sales figures for individual books:

• Traité pratique d’astrologie (1961): 130,000 copies

• Petit manuel d’astrologie (1972): 180,000 copies

These figures are given by the current publisher/distributor description of the Barbault collected Astrologie. Another biographical source puts Traité pratique d’astrologie (Practical treatise on astrology) at approximately 150,000 copies. Further evidence that his ruling planet is located in his 2^nd house is from a 1984 article describing Astroflash as receiving approximately 300 customers per day, with an international clientele and franchised operations abroad. It explicitly identified Barbault as the astrologer who designed the programs. And a 1985/86 L’Express report, reproduced in Skeptical Inquirer, gives an actual company revenue figure. Astroflash had revenues of 10 million French francs in 1984, approximately US$1 million at the time.

Barbault’s participation in Astroflash was controversial among French astrologers. His critics accused him of “selling out” by collaborating with a computerized commercial astrology operation. Lynn Bell records that some astrologers strongly opposed the computer reports and that Barbault was attacked for his participation.

So we can say with considerable confidence that Barbault was a commercially successful author, not merely an astrologer who happened to publish books. This is a direct reflection that his 2^nd house was strong, and with his ruling planet located in the 2^nd house, this was the case.

Another significant divergence between whole sign houses and ascendant-based houses, such as Placidus, is the 10^th house, in the Placidus version (see below) there is nothing that stands out, unlike whole sign houses, which has his natal Mercury – the sign of books and business, located appropriately in his 10^th whole sign house.

Barbault was born about four hours after a lunar eclipse. In his Placidus chart, this is in his 7^th house, but in his whole sign house horoscope, it is in his 8^th house. Which house was his eclipse located? Interestingly, both houses have excellent claims for this placement. In his Placidus horoscope, the eclipse in his 7^th house explains his marriage to Jacqueline Barbault for about 69 years. A posthumous tribute states explicitly that he lived with the same wife for 69 years. Jacqueline was not merely his wife: she was described as his dedicated collaborator and secretary, helping protect his time and enabling him to concentrate on his research and writing. They remained together until their deaths on October 7, 2019, Jacqueline dying in the morning and André later that day.

Furthermore, Barbault was able to successfully partner with at least one major business figure with financial assets to invest in Barbault’s astrological commercial ventures. A strong marriage in addition to a major business partner certainly promotes the 7^th house (though this is readily explainable in his Vedic horoscope).

However, referring back to Barbault’s whole sign house version, the eclipse is in Barbault’s 8^th whole sign house, placing a focus on rich business partners. Barbault certainly had one. The key person was Roger Berthier, a French businessman and co-founder of the Euromarché supermarket chain. According to Astroflash’s own history, in 1966 Berthier conceived the idea of producing personalized horoscopes using computers and approached Barbault to supply the astrological interpretations.

Berthier appears to have had substantial financial resources. One history of the project says he acquired an IBM 360 computer for approximately $US250,000, employed a computer programmer, and commissioned Barbault to write the interpretive material. When demand proved strong, Berthier turned the project into a separate commercial enterprise, Astroflash, which opened premises in the Galerie des Champs-Élysées in 1968.

However, it is Barbault’s Vedic natal horoscope that displays the really interesting insights. No matter what a Western astrological analysis can provide, the Vedic analysis tends to be better at describing someone’s role in the world. Vedic astrology deals more with the fundamentals compared to Western astrology, which is heavily biased towards psychological analysis.

Barbault’s Vedic natal horoscope is a wealth of information. Firstly, Barbault not only has five items in his 8^th house, but in Vedic astrology, the 8^th house is also unequivocally the house of astrology. Having this many items in one house is very unfortunate unless one of the items is a ‘leader’. In this case, Rahu is stationary and thus even stronger than being exalted. Therefore, Rahu is the leader of the pack and can beneficially direct its energies. This is further promoted by the fact that Rahu is futuristic and can often see or perceive the future – a useful attribute for an astrologer.

Secondly, Barbault has a raja yoga in his 7^th house because Mars rules the 10^th house and Venus the 9^th house and any connection between these two most powerful houses gives results. When these two houses are connected, a raja yoga (kingly union) forms. Barbault had a remarkable business partner and marriage portended by this raja yoga. Furthermore, this raja yoga shines this very positive energy directly back onto Barbault’s 1^st house, as Vedic opposition aspects are not negative as in Western astrology. This is excellent for public recognition and the 7^th house is the house of business – something Barbault seriously capitalized upon in his life.

The most intriguing possibility with Barbault’s Vedic horoscope is that it seems to replicate the main techniques he pioneered in his astrological research. He pioneered the conglomeration of planets as a technique, yet this is what he has in his Vedic natal horoscope. If you ignore the ascendant and Ketu (the moon’s south node), which are only mathematical points in the sky anyway, everything is bunched together within 54 degrees straddling only three houses. This is remarkable, and I rarely come across such a tight or focused horoscope.

Finally, the icing on the cake is that Barbault was born in a very special generation for astrologers. Without getting into detail, astrological generations are created from micro-ages within the astrological ages. If each approximate 2150-year astrological age has twelve sub-ages of some 178 years each, these can be drilled down into, with each sub-age containing 12 micro-ages of almost 15 years each. Each half of a micro-age (i.e. 7 ½ years) creates a generation, though sometimes they behave as complementary pairs.

For example, take the most recent Sagittarius micro-age (1940 – 1955), which followed the Capricorn micro-age (1925 – 1940). The first generation in the Sagittarius micro-age is the Capricorn-Sagittarius generation (1940 – 1947), mimicking the combined influence of the Capricorn overflow energy and the arrival of Sagittarius. The second generation is the Sagittarius-Sagittarius generation (1947 – 1955) – commonly called the Baby Boomer A generation. With the arrival of the Scorpio micro-age (1955 - 1970), the overflow of the Sagittarius influence combines with the new Scorpio micro-age to create the Sagittarius-Scorpio generation – commonly labeled as the Baby Boomer B generation (1955 – 1970). The common element in both Baby Boomer A and B generations is appropriately Sagittarius. Sagittarius explains why this generation boomed.

For Barbault, being born in October 1921, this places his birth in the Aquarius micro-age (1910 – 1925), and more importantly, in the second half of this Aquarius micro-age, so Barbault was born in an Aquarius-Aquarius generation. You cannot get a more Aquarian generation than this 7 ½ years. Every 178-year sub-age will only have one Aquarius-Aquarius generation, and this is where Barbault was born. He was born into a period that was primed for astrologers, as Aquarius is the strongest sign for astrology in general.

Following are some other notable astrologers born in the same Aquarius-Aquarius generation.

Sybil Leek (1917–1982) — born February 22, 1917. She became one of the most recognizable occult and astrological personalities of the twentieth century, particularly in Britain and the United States. She was also an extraordinarily prolific author.

Doris Greaves (1919–2007) — born July 29, 1919, in Melbourne, Australia. She was a major figure in Australian astrology and a founding figure in the Federation of Australian Astrologers.

A. Nelson Page (1919–1970) — born February 25, 1919, in London. With Vendel Polich, he developed the Polich/Page or Topocentric house system and worked extensively on mathematical approaches to primary directions.

Alexander Marr (1919–2000) — born April 12, 1919. He was a Swiss-born German astrologer and programmer who was among the earliest astrologers to use large computers for astrological calculations, beginning in 1964.

John Addey (1920–1982) — born June 15, 1920. He became one of the major British research astrologers of the twentieth century, particularly through his development of harmonic astrology. His work also attempted to extend the statistical tradition associated with Michel Gauquelin.

Jeff Mayo (1921–1998) — born October 7, 1921. He founded the Mayo School of Astrology in 1973 and became an important British teacher and author. Astro-Databank classifies him among the notable/famous astrologers and specifically as a founder/originator.

Manik Chand Jain (1920–1982) — an Indian astrologer and author, particularly associated with Hindu astrology. His books included Destiny and the Stars, Astrology in Marriage Counseling and Karmic Control Planets.

Marion D. March (1923–2001) — born February 10, 1923. She became internationally known as a lecturer and teacher, helped establish the United Astrology Congress, co-founded Aquarius Workshops and co-authored the six-volume The Only Way to Learn Astrology.

Linda Goodman (1925–1995) — born April 9, 1925. She is arguably the most commercially successful astrologer in this cohort. Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs became the first astrology book to reach the New York Times bestseller list, helping propel popular astrology into the mainstream.

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If we apply the same generational formula employed above, we can examine astrologers born in previous Aquarius-Aquarius generations. The Aquarius-Aquarius generations since the arrival of the Age of Aquarius are:

1746 – 1761 in the Sagittarius sub-age (1612 – 1791)

1582 - 1597 in the Capricorn sub-age (1433 – 1612)

The Sagittarius sub-age

The 1746 – 1761 Aquarius-Aquarius generation fell under the influence of the Enlightenment, which, amongst other things, was associated with the Leo sub-age decan and overflow (1612 – 1672 – 1731), and with Leo directly opposed to Aquarius, this was an historical period seriously set against astrology, so much so that astrology almost disappeared from Europe. Nevertheless, one serious astrologer was found, and one famous promoter of the esoteric, including astrology.

Willem Bilderdijk was born 7 September 1756 in Amsterdam, with Astro-Databank explicitly classifies him as a Dutch poet and astrologer. A scholarly study by Joris van Eijnatten, “In horoscopo spectandae: Willem Bilderdijk en de astrologie, 1790–1797” examines his astrological work in detail. It shows that Bilderdijk studied astrology, constructed his own horoscopes, made extensive astrological calculations, kept tables for lunar cycles, calculated sign/month cycles, developed a system of planetary rulership over periods of his life and used astrology for prediction of future events.

Most remarkably, the study says that his museum contains about 3,000 handwritten astrological texts/notations. So Bilderdijk wasn’t merely someone who had a passing interest in astrology. He appears to have been a serious private practitioner and student of astrology. And he was an important intellectual figure in his own right. Dutch literary scholarship describes him as one of the outstanding figures of his generation and a major Dutch Romantic poet.

William Blake was born 28 November 1757. Blake was not an astrologer but he had an extraordinary astrological connection. His horoscope was actually cast during his lifetime and published in Urania, or the Astrologer’s Chronicle in 1825, two years before his death. The astrologer R. C. Smith published it, apparently obtaining the birth information through Blake’s friend, the artist and astrologer John Varley. Blake was a major intellectual/artist of the Aquarius–Aquarius generation whose life and work were deeply entangled with astrology and occultism, but who was not himself principally an astrologer.

The Capricorn sub-age

The 1582–1597 Aquarius-Aquarius generation

Jean-Baptiste Morin de Villefranche (1583–1656) is the standout astrologer of this generation – the first such generation in the Age of Aquarius. He was born 23 February 1583 at Villefranche-sur-Saône. He was simultaneously an astrologer, astronomer, mathematician, physician, professor of mathematics, and author. He eventually became professor of mathematics at the Collège Royal in Paris, a position he held from 1630 until his death. His great work was Astrologia Gallica (French Astrology), a massive 26-volume work published posthumously in 1661. It became one of the most influential works of traditional astrology.

Morin was not an astrologer living outside the scientific establishment, as science and astrology had not yet parted ways. He was a mathematician and astronomer with a professorship at the Collège Royal, while simultaneously practicing astrology. He had prestigious clients including Cardinal Richelieu, Marie de’ Medici and Louis XIII. And he was involved with the very astronomical revolution that was transforming the period. He worked with Pierre Gassendi, while simultaneously opposing Galileo’s heliocentric cosmology. That makes Morin almost an archetypal figure for the transition between the old and new intellectual worlds.

When will the next Aquarius-Aquarius generation appear? In our current Libra sub-age (1970 – 2149), the Aquarius micro-age is 2073 – 2088, so the next Aquarius-Aquarius generation will be 2080 – 2088. However, Aquarius is not the only sign that my research indicates is strongly aligned with astrology. The other two key astrological signs are Cancer and Scorpio. We recently had a Scorpio micro-age (1955 – 1970), so the most recent Scorpio-Scorpio generation was 1962 – 1970. This generation of Scorpio-Scorpio astrologers includes Deborah Houlding, Brian Clark, Jeff Green, Erin Sullivan, Steven Forrest and Jessica Adams.

There is no suggestion that any astrologer born in an Aquarius-Aquarius, Cancer-Cancer or Scorpio-Scorpio generation is granted superiority over any other astrologers born in different generations. I have not done enough research to perceive any differences between astrologers associated with Scorpio and Cancer. However, what we do see is a remarkable concentration of quality, but instances of this quality can appear at any time.

For example, modern Western astrology was instigated by Alan Leo (1860–1917), often called the “father of modern astrology.” He founded Modern Astrology magazine in 1895 and helped transform astrology from a primarily predictive practice into a more psychological and character-oriented system. His books were enormously influential in establishing the form of astrology that became dominant in the 20th century. He was associated with the Theosophical movement, which strongly influenced his interpretation of astrology. Some of his important works include The Art of Synthesis, How to Judge a Nativity, The Key to Your Own Nativity, and Astrology for All.

His birth on 7 August 1860 places him in a Gemini micro-age (1851 – 1866), and because he was born in the second half of this micro-age, he was born into a Gemini-Gemini generation. He was a prolific author. However, the Gemini micro-age is an air micro-age, so he was born under the influence of an Aquarius micro-age decan and overflow (1851 – 1856 – 1861). Currently, I only employ micro-ages as generational markers, but perhaps there are sub-generational markers associated with micro-age decans? Never a shortage of research ideas in macro-astrology.

Finally, it is worth commenting on his major planetary alignment of July 2026 that supposedly was meant to lift the world up in some major way. First, we can say it didn’t do so instantly, as the world remains a basket case in September 2026. Some astrologers believe it is a trigger for something that will unfold later – years or even decades later. However, being an accidental astrological forecaster, I fail to see how Barbault could predict such a radical event, as nothing like what he predicted has previously occurred in the world. It’s funny how people think that a world based on illusion and delusion can be magically lifted up, as if the world accidentally got into an elevator that took it to a higher plane. This approach is due to the overwhelming power of Pisces in the world. In the first half of the Aquarian age, Pisces is the most powerful sign in the world, and this is occurring now. Pisces will believe anything.

I have a vested interest in Barbault’s planetary alignment of July 2026, as we moved into our new house with Barbault’s specific planetary configuration incorporated in the horoscope for the house. This configuration is termed “Barbault’s Basket”.

Despite the uncertainty over Barbault’s July 2026 planetary configuration, he was an astrologer extraordinaire and worthy of the examination provided in this post.

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Introduction

Something has changed in America over the last number of decades. It is difficult to find an American today who does not sense that the country has entered a different historical climate. Political life has become increasingly polarized while confidence in public institutions has steadily declined over recent decades and are now contested with an intensity few generations have experienced. The media, universities, the judiciary, large corporations, and even science itself have become subjects of public distrust.

Internationally, America’s strategic dominance is no longer taken for granted following failures in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Iran. Economically, extraordinary wealth coexists with growing insecurity and excessive debt. Socially, many citizens feel that the nation has become less cohesive than at any time in living memory. None of these observations are particularly controversial.

Historians point to changing demographics, globalization, technological disruption, constitutional tensions, declining civic participation, economic inequality, and the disruptive effects of social media. Political commentators naturally interpret these developments through ideological lenses. Economists focus on structural change. Sociologists examine cultural fragmentation. Each explanation captures part of the picture.

I am presenting a different possibility. What if America is subject to waves that enhance or detract from average expectations? Based on sub-periods of the Age of Aquarius, America is currently passing through a Winter period – or, to be accurate, coming to the end of its Winter period in 2029. Not a metaphorical winter, nor simply a period of political disappointment, but one phase within a much longer civilizational rhythm—a rhythm extending across centuries rather than mere election cycles.

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that the long-term development of American civilization displays recurring historical seasons that correspond to an independently derived macro-astrological chronology based on the astrological ages and their sub-periods.

During the past four centuries, America has evolved from scattered colonial settlements into the most influential civilization of the modern era, and I have previously promoted it as the age-empire of our times – specifically the Pisces age-empire, or more correctly, the Pisces-Aquarius age-empire. Throughout the last few centuries, America has experienced repeated periods of confidence, expansion, innovation, and institutional consolidation, alternating with periods of increasing conflict, fragmentation, and uncertainty. The question is whether those alternating trajectories follow a recognizable chronological pattern. My research indicates they do, and that they are linked to a combination of sub-periods within the Age of Aquarius.

Spring is associated with emergence, optimism, experimentation, and growth. Winter is characterized by fragmentation, institutional stress, declining confidence, and internal conflict. Neither season is permanent. Each prepares the conditions for the next. American history has passed through three Springs and almost three Winters since the first permanent English settlements in North America at Jamestown, Virginia.

The Historical Question

Historians have always searched for patterns within the apparent chaos of historical events. Some have interpreted history through economics. Others have emphasized geography, religion, technology, climate, institutions, or military power. Each perspective identifies genuine forces that influence the rise and decline of civilizations. Yet none has produced a generally accepted chronology capable of anticipating the broad trajectory of historical development over centuries.

The problem is obvious. Historical explanation is usually retrospective. Once events have occurred, historians naturally seek the causes that best account for them. This approach has produced enormous insight into the mechanisms of historical change, but it rarely predicts the direction of civilization before the evidence is available. Macro-Astrology approaches the problem differently. Rather than beginning with historical events, it begins with chronology derived from the astrological ages.

America’s documentary record is extensive. Its historical development has been relatively continuous since the establishment of permanent English settlement not long after the start of the Age of Aquarius in the 15^th century. Most importantly, its evolution encompasses episodes of extraordinary national confidence (Spring) alternating with periods of profound internal crisis (Winter). These periods are derived astrologically.

Chronology Before History

Every serious historical investigation begins by establishing its chronological framework. Historians routinely distinguish between the Classical world, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution. These chronological divisions provide the scaffolding upon which historical interpretation is constructed. Without chronology, history becomes a disorganized sequence of events.

Macro-Astrology proposes a different chronological framework. Rather than dividing history according to political or cultural milestones, it derives long-term historical periods from the precession of the equinoxes—the slow westward movement of the equinoctial points through the zodiac over approximately 26,000 years.

The chronology employed throughout this article is not based upon the conventional “Age of Aquarius” literature that has circulated since the twentieth century. Instead, it derives from a geometric subdivision of the precessional cycle into progressively smaller periods, creating a hierarchy of ages, sub-ages, micro-ages, nano-ages, and their associated decans. Earlier articles in this series describe that chronological framework in detail and explain the methodology by which the dates have been determined. [For those wanting more details, see Age of Aquarius for Dummies ]

America’s Astrological Signature

Macro-Astrology proposes that each country, nation or political entity possesses a dominant astrological signature—a recurring pattern of archetypal influences that shapes its long-term historical development. The United States has a relatively unique astrological signature by the combined influence of Pisces, Aquarius, and Capricorn but with Pisces the most powerful of the three. Together, these signs repeatedly express themselves through themes of religious idealism, visionary experimentation, technological innovation, institutional construction, exploration, expansion, and the continual reinvention of society.

Yet every dominant pattern carries its own inherent tension. Opposing these three signs stand Virgo, Leo, and Cancer. These opposing archetypes appear as recurring sources of civilizational stress to the USA. Their significance becomes increasingly apparent during America’s Winter periods, where questions of institutional confidence, political authority, cultural identity, and social cohesion repeatedly emerge.

That observation forms the basis of a broader theoretical proposal explored later in this article. For the present, however, it is sufficient simply to recognize America’s dominant astrological signature and to examine whether the chronology derived from it corresponds to the historical record.

The Historical Seasons of American Civilization

Table 1 – each line in the above table represents a 15-year micro-age with a start date, end date, and its influence extending another 15-years to the overflow date, which provides identifiable periods of almost 30-years each. For the purposes of this exercise, the individual zodiacal signs are not where the focus lies, but the groupings of three micro-ages that produce periods of Spring and Winter.

Colonial Spring (1567–1627)

The Birth of an American Civilization

During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, England’s ambitions in North America evolved from tentative explorations into permanent settlement. Earlier European expeditions had mapped coastlines, traded with Indigenous peoples, and established short-lived colonies, but permanence remained elusive. The decisive transition occurred with the founding of Jamestown in 1607. Despite famine, disease, financial hardship, and conflict, the settlement survived. It represented something fundamentally different from previous ventures: the beginning of continuous English occupation.

The arrival of the Mayflower at Plymouth in 1620 added another dimension to this emerging civilization. While Jamestown was established primarily as a commercial enterprise, Plymouth was founded by religious dissenters seeking the freedom to build a new society according to deeply held convictions. These two settlements embodied themes that would recur throughout American history: economic opportunity alongside idealism, material ambition balanced by powerful moral and religious aspirations. This reflects the impact of Pisces’ duality, with Pisces the most dominant sign associated with America. Over the 26,000 years of a cycle of the astrological ages, the greatest power experienced by Pisces in that cycle occurred in 1433 AD at the end of the Pisces age and beginning of the Aquarian age. America’s birth occurred very close to this monumental Pisces time, and this is why Pisces is in America’s astrological signature, and it is the strongest influence within the signature. It also explains why Aquarius is also in America’s astrological signature, as modern America was born in the new Age of Aquarius.

The colonial population remained small, scattered, and vulnerable. Life was harsh. Mortality rates were high, food supplies uncertain, and relations with Indigenous nations alternated between cooperation and conflict. It is worth noting that the birth and first Spring of the USA was under the influence of the Capricorn sub-age (1433 – 1612), explaining why Capricorn is also in America’s astrological signature. Yet beneath these hardships (associated with Capricorn), lay a remarkable historical trajectory. Settlement expanded steadily, institutions gradually took shape, representative assemblies emerged, and local communities developed increasing confidence in their ability to govern themselves.

Most importantly, the colonies began to acquire an identity distinct from England itself. Although the settlers remained loyal English subjects, the realities of life in North America encouraged practical (Aquarius) independence. Distance from London required local decision-making. Environmental challenges rewarded innovation and adaptability. Religious diversity (Pisces), though limited by modern standards, proved greater than in much of Europe. A frontier society gradually emerged whose experience differed fundamentally from that of the mother country.

Viewed from the perspective of later centuries, this period possesses many of the characteristics commonly associated with historical beginnings or springtimes. Institutions were created rather than inherited. Social structures remained fluid. Economic opportunity encouraged experimentation. Communities expanded into new territories with remarkable optimism despite persistent adversity. Above all, the future appeared open rather than constrained by the weight of established tradition.

The Colonial Spring was neither peaceful nor prosperous by later standards. Disease, starvation, financial uncertainty, and conflict accompanied almost every stage of settlement, as a key sign associated with the Jamestown settlement was from Capricorn. In macro-astrological terms, the period corresponds closely to the predicted characteristics of a Spring: a season of beginnings, experimentation, institutional formation, and expanding confidence as the overall pattern.

Colonial Winter (1642–1701)

Fragmentation Without Unity

The Winters of America are created by the three contiguous micro-ages of Virgo, Leo and Cancer opposing the astrological signature of America – Pisces, Aquarius and Capricorn. The relative astrological uniqueness to the USA is that the three micro-ages of America’s astrological signature, and their opposite signs, are adjoining, so usually all three signs for spring occur together chronologically, creating distinct seasons of spring in the ongoing saga of the USA. The same applies to winter.

The optimism that accompanied the establishment of England’s first permanent American settlements gradually gave way to a far more uncertain world. The colonies continued to grow in population and geographical reach, but the broader trajectory became increasingly fragmented. Political instability, religious conflict, frontier warfare, and imperial intervention repeatedly interrupted the emergence of a coherent colonial identity.

The transformation reflected developments on both sides of the Atlantic. The outbreak of the English Civil War in 1642 shattered political stability throughout the English-speaking world. Colonists found themselves divided by loyalties to the Crown or Parliament, while the upheavals of the Commonwealth and Protectorate reverberated throughout the American settlements. Colonial governments increasingly reflected competing political and religious allegiances imported from England rather than a shared American purpose.

At the same time, relations between European settlers and Indigenous nations deteriorated dramatically. King Philip’s War (1675–1678), sometimes known as the First Indian War, one of the bloodiest conflicts in American colonial history relative to population. The war was the greatest calamity in seventeenth-century New England and is considered by many to be the deadliest war in Colonial American history. Entire communities were destroyed, frontier expansion temporarily halted, and the fragile confidence of the colonies profoundly shaken. Although the English ultimately prevailed, the war left deep psychological scars and reinforced the sense that colonial survival remained uncertain.

Internal tensions also intensified. Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia during 1676 exposed growing dissatisfaction with colonial leadership, frontier security, and economic inequality. Although the rebellion failed, it demonstrated that conflict no longer existed solely between colonists and external enemies. Increasingly, political divisions emerged within colonial society itself. Bacon’s Rebellion was the first rebellion in the North American colonies in which discontented frontiersmen took part. A somewhat similar uprising in Maryland involving John Coode and Josias Fendall took place in 1689.

Imperial policy contributed further instability. In 1686 the English Crown established the Dominion of New England, abolishing several colonial charters and attempting to centralize authority under royal control. The experiment proved deeply unpopular and collapsed following England’s Glorious Revolution in 1688, yet it revealed the continuing tension between colonial self-government and imperial administration.

Perhaps no episode better symbolizes the anxieties of the period than the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, primarily correlating with the Cancer micro-age and overflow (1672 – 1687 – 1701), with Cancer focused upon women. Although involving relatively few individuals, the trials reflected a society characterized by fear, religious suspicion, social instability, and uncertainty regarding legitimate (Capricorn) authority. Salem has endured in historical memory precisely because it encapsulates the psychological climate of the age.

Meanwhile, rivalry between England and France transformed North America into a theater of imperial competition. Frontier settlements remained vulnerable to raids, shifting alliances with Indigenous nations, and the strategic ambitions of competing European empires. Expansion continued, but it occurred within an environment increasingly defined by insecurity.

Yet despite these difficulties, the colonies did not collapse. Population growth continued, commerce expanded, and new settlements were established, and many of the institutional foundations created during the previous Spring remained remarkably resilient. Winter did not reverse history. Instead, it redirected its trajectory away from cohesion toward recurring fragmentation. Only with hindsight does the deeper pattern become visible. The colonies emerged from this period larger than they had entered it, yet not substantially more unified. They remained politically separate, economically diverse, religiously divided, and culturally provincial. The idea of a single American civilization still lay in the future.

National Spring (1730–1791)

Revolution and Nationhood

By the early eighteenth century, the historical trajectory changed once again. The colonies remained separate political entities, but the forces that had previously emphasized division gradually gave way to new currents of integration as again, the three key signs of America’s astrological signature were energized. Religious revival, intellectual exchange, commercial expansion, and growing resistance to imperial authority began to create a shared American consciousness that transcended local loyalties.

The First Great Awakening played a significant role in this transformation. Traveling preachers crossed colonial boundaries, encouraging ordinary people to think beyond their local communities. Although primarily a religious movement, it also contributed to the emergence of a broader American identity by creating networks of communication and shared experience stretching from New England to the southern colonies.

Economic growth reinforced these developments. Population increased rapidly, commerce flourished, and improved transportation strengthened connections between the colonies. Increasing prosperity encouraged confidence while also fostering greater expectations of political participation and self-government.

Relations with Britain gradually deteriorated after the Seven Years’ War. Attempts by Parliament to raise revenue through measures such as the Stamp Act and the Townshend Acts encountered widespread colonial resistance. What began as disputes over taxation evolved into a more profound debate concerning representation, constitutional rights, and political legitimacy.

The resulting American Revolution (1775 – 1783) transformed thirteen separate colonies into participants in a common national enterprise. The Declaration of Independence in 1776 expressed not merely political separation from Britain but a new conception of sovereignty rooted in universal principles rather than inherited authority.

Victory in the War of Independence represented only the beginning of nation-building. The weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation soon became apparent, leading to the Constitutional Convention of 1787. The resulting Constitution created institutions capable of balancing federal authority with state autonomy while establishing a durable framework for representative government. The ratification of the Bill of Rights further strengthened public confidence in the new political order.

Few periods in American history display such sustained institutional creativity. Political structures were invented rather than inherited. National identity expanded rapidly. Confidence in the future proved extraordinary. The young republic possessed neither great wealth nor military dominance, yet it exhibited remarkable optimism concerning its historical destiny.

This period represents one of history’s most successful examples of civilizational consolidation. Separate colonies became a nation. Local identities were supplemented by national allegiance. Institutions created during these decades have continued, with modification, for more than two centuries.

National Winter (1806–1866)

A House Divided

The first great test of the young republic came with the War of 1812. Often overshadowed by the Revolution and the Civil War, it nevertheless exposed the fragility of the nation’s institutions. The conflict divided public opinion, strained federal finances, disrupted trade, and revealed significant weaknesses in military preparedness. The burning of Washington by British forces in 1814 symbolized the vulnerability of the republic only a generation after independence. At the same time, fierce political opposition to the war, particularly in New England, culminated in the Hartford Convention, where some delegates openly discussed constitutional resistance and even the possibility of secession. Long before the Civil War, therefore, questions concerning the durability of the Union had already begun to surface.

Although the war ended without major territorial changes, it left a lasting legacy. It strengthened American nationalism while simultaneously exposing the constitutional and sectional tensions that would deepen throughout the nineteenth century. In retrospect, the conflict foreshadowed many of the divisions that later culminated in the Civil War.

The optimism that accompanied the birth of the American Republic did not disappear overnight. The United States continued to expand westward, its population increased dramatically, commerce flourished, and democratic participation broadened. Measured purely by economic and territorial growth, the young republic appeared remarkably successful. Yet beneath this expansion lay a deepening fault line.

The central question at this time concerned the nature of the Union itself. Was the United States a compact between sovereign states, or a single nation? Closely bound to that constitutional debate was the increasingly irreconcilable issue of (Pisces) slavery. As new territories entered the Union, each admission intensified the political struggle over the nation’s future character.

Compromises repeatedly delayed confrontation but failed to resolve it. The Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act each attempted to preserve political equilibrium while simultaneously exposing how fragile that equilibrium had become. Public debate became increasingly uncompromising, newspapers reflected growing sectional identities, and political parties fractured. Violence erupted in Kansas years before the Civil War formally began. Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860 convinced many southern states that constitutional accommodation had reached its limits.

The Civil War represented not merely a military conflict but the greatest constitutional crisis in American history. Four years of unprecedented destruction tested every institution of the young republic. More Americans died than in any other conflict before or since. Entire regions were devastated and families divided. The nation’s political future hung in the balance. Yet Winter did not destroy the civilization. It tested it. All previous age-empires were also very conflicted at times, such as Ancient Rome and Ancient Egypt.

The Union survived because its institutions proved stronger than the centrifugal forces threatening to dissolve them. Reconstruction, however imperfectly implemented, marked the beginning of another long process of national reintegration. This Winter ended in 1866 with the nation preserved but profoundly transformed. Slavery had been abolished, federal authority had emerged substantially strengthened, and the constitutional order had survived, though at immense human cost.

American Spring (1895–1955)

The Rise of a Superpower

Following several decades of reconstruction and industrial expansion, American civilization entered one of the most dynamic periods in its history. Industrialization transformed the economy at extraordinary speed. Railroads linked a continental nation. Electricity revolutionized production and domestic life. Mass manufacturing, scientific research, and technological innovation reshaped daily existence. Waves of immigration supplied labor, enriched American culture, and expanded the nation’s productive capacity.

The Progressive Era reflected widespread confidence that institutions could be reformed to meet the challenges of modern society. Government expanded its regulatory role while education, public health, and infrastructure underwent substantial development. International events accelerated America’s transformation.

Although initially reluctant to assume global responsibilities, participation in the First World War marked the country’s emergence as an international power. During the interwar years American industry, finance, and culture exerted growing worldwide influence despite the severe interruption of the Great Depression. The Depression itself represented the greatest economic crisis in modern American history, yet it ultimately reinforced rather than destroyed confidence in national institutions. Roosevelt’s New Deal demonstrated the remarkable adaptability of American constitutional government during periods of extreme stress.

The Second World War completed the transformation. By 1945 the United States possessed unparalleled industrial capacity, unmatched military strength, and enormous international prestige. Europe and much of Asia lay devastated while American productive capacity expanded dramatically. Scientific achievement culminated in the atomic age. Higher education flourished. The American middle class expanded rapidly. The nation entered the post-war era with extraordinary confidence in its institutions and its future. Rarely has a civilization experienced such sustained momentum across so many dimensions simultaneously. This Spring period elevated the USA to the age-empire of the current Pisces-Aquarius age, comparable to Ancient Rome, Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia from previous ages.

America’s Winter of Discontent (1970–2029)

A Civilization Under Strain

Historical winters rarely announce their arrival. Like the changing seasons of nature, they emerge gradually. Institutions that once appeared secure begin to lose public confidence. Political disagreements become increasingly difficult to reconcile. New technologies transform society more rapidly than existing institutions can adapt. American civilization continues to innovate and often grows wealthier, yet beneath that prosperity a growing sense of uncertainty develops. Such appears to have been America’s trajectory since approximately 1970, which was not just aligned to the three micro-ages antithetical to the American dream – Virgo, Leo and Cancer but also the arrival of the Scorpio sub-age overflow (1970 – 2149)

The neutral decades immediately following the Second World War had produced extraordinary confidence. The United States possessed unmatched industrial capacity, expanding prosperity, broad trust in public institutions, and unprecedented international influence. Yet during the early 1970s, several developments signaled that the post-war order was beginning to change and the first chill of the approaching Winter. The Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal profoundly affected public confidence in political leadership. Trust in government, once remarkably high, began a decline from which it has never fully recovered. At the same time, inflation and the oil shocks of the 1970s exposed new vulnerabilities within the American economy.

The opening years of America’s Winter were marked by two watershed events. In 1971, President Richard Nixon suspended the convertibility of the U.S. dollar into gold, bringing the Bretton Woods monetary system to an end and inaugurating a new era of fiat currency, expanding credit, and increasing public indebtedness. The decision transformed the international financial order. The dollar became a fully fiat currency, providing governments and central banks with unprecedented flexibility in managing monetary policy. It also removed an important external discipline on the expansion of public debt and the creation of credit.

During the decades that followed, the scale of federal borrowing expanded dramatically. Public debt, which had remained comparatively modest during much of the post-war period, increased almost continuously, eventually approaching US$40 trillion during the present Winter. Economists continue to debate whether this development represents a necessary adaptation to the modern global economy or a growing structural weakness. Whatever the ultimate judgment, it reflects a profound transformation in the financial foundations of the American state, as many economists indicate that the debt is now too large for the USA to repay.

Three years later, Nixon’s resignation following the Watergate scandal profoundly undermined public confidence in the presidency and accelerated a broader decline in trust toward political institutions. Together, these events signaled not simply changes in economic policy or political leadership, but the beginning of a deeper transformation in the financial and institutional foundations of American civilization.

Meanwhile, another revolution was quietly reshaping civilization. Globalization integrated world markets to an unprecedented degree. Manufacturing dispersed across international supply chains while finance became increasingly global. The Internet and later social media transformed communication, commerce, education, and politics with extraordinary speed. More recently, artificial intelligence promises changes comparable to those produced by electricity or the Industrial Revolution.

Paradoxically, these decades witnessed some of the greatest technological advances in human history while also experiencing increasing political polarization and declining institutional confidence. Material prosperity continued to expand for many Americans, yet social cohesion weakened. Confidence in government, the media, universities, corporations, and other traditional institutions steadily eroded. Political debate became increasingly adversarial, while Americans found themselves divided not merely over policy but over competing understandings of history, identity, and national purpose.

Internationally, the strategic environment also changed fundamentally. The brief period of uncontested American predominance following the Cold War (1947 – 1991) gradually gave way to a more competitive multipolar world. New geopolitical rivals emerged, and assumptions that had shaped American foreign policy for half a century required continual reassessment.

Viewed individually, none of these developments necessarily indicate civilizational decline. On the contrary, American universities remain among the world’s finest, its scientific achievements continue to reshape modern life, its entrepreneurial culture remains extraordinarily dynamic, and its military capabilities remain unmatched in many respects. Innovation has not ceased. Indeed, it has accelerated.

What distinguishes the present era is therefore not decline but fragmentation. The dominant trajectory of American civilization has become increasingly characterized by institutional strain, constitutional tension, political polarization, financial expansion, cultural division, and uncertainty regarding the nation’s future direction. These developments strongly resemble the recurring dynamics observed during earlier Winter periods, even though they occur within the vastly different technological and geopolitical environment of the twenty-first century.

Winter, however, is not an ending. Like every previous Winter identified in this chronology, it represents one phase within a continuing historical cycle. The same civilization that now appears divided retains enormous creative capacity. The forces that generate fragmentation also produce adaptation, innovation, and the conditions from which the next historical Spring may eventually emerge. Many commentators and influencers are predicting the demise of the USA in the relatively short term, but this really is just the accumulated negative reaction to the end stage of the latest American Winter (1970 – 2029).

The present era should not be understood as one of simple national decline. American civilization remains one of history’s most innovative, productive, and influential societies. Yet its dominant historical trajectory since approximately 1970 has increasingly emphasized institutional stress rather than institutional confidence, fragmentation rather than cohesion, and structural uncertainty rather than settled consensus. The end of Bretton Woods, the unprecedented expansion of federal debt, the globalization of finance, the digital revolution, and the decline of public trust collectively illustrate this transformation. Taken together, they correspond closely to the Winter trajectory independently predicted by the macro-astrological chronology.

Table 2. Predicted Historical Seasons of American Civilization

The Pattern

Three times American civilization entered periods characterized primarily by emergence, integration, institutional creativity, confidence, and expanding collective purpose regardless of any problems encountered. Three times it entered periods marked predominantly by fragmentation, constitutional tension, declining institutional confidence, and internal conflict but survived each of them.

The remarkable feature of this sequence is not that every event conforms to the chronology, but rather, it is that the chronology itself was established independently of the historical comparison. If these recurring historical seasons are genuine, they support the micro-age structure within the astrological ages. I believe that the historical evidence presented thus far establishes the pattern of alternate Spring and Winter periods with ‘neutral’ intervening periods.

Conclusion

History, Chronology, and the Seasons of Civilization

The purpose of this investigation has not been to explain every event in American history through astrology. Instead, a more modest question has been examined. Can an independently derived chronology anticipate the broad trajectory of historical development before the evidence is considered?

Across more than four centuries, the macro-astrological chronology identifies alternating periods of emergence and fragmentation, institutional confidence and institutional strain, national integration and internal division. The chronology was established independently of the historical comparison. The historical evidence was then examined to determine whether these predicted trajectories corresponded with the evolution of American civilization.

No historical model achieves perfect correspondence. Every Spring contains conflict. Every Winter contains creativity. Indeed, one of the most striking observations emerging from the present investigation is that America’s Winter periods have often remained eras of remarkable innovation. During the current Winter, the United States continues to lead the world in artificial intelligence, biotechnology, aerospace, scientific research, finance, and entrepreneurship. Winter has not extinguished American creativity. Rather, it has coincided with increasing institutional stress, constitutional tension, financial stress, political polarization, and cultural fragmentation.

This distinction is important. The Macro-Astrology presented here suggests that civilizations appear to experience recurring historical seasons. Spring favors emergence, confidence, institutional construction, and collective purpose while Winter favors fragmentation, institutional stress, constitutional tension, and profound adaptation. Neither season is permanent. Each prepares the conditions for the next. The implications extend well beyond the United States.

Many adherents to traditional astrology have regarded opposite signs as complementary or opposing expressions of the same archetypal principle. The historical evidence examined here suggests a different reality. A civilization’s dominant astrological signatures may simultaneously generate their own recurring vulnerabilities, expressed through the activation of their opposite signs.

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Recently, I have been studying the remarkable research of the relatively unknown French historian Evelyne Latour, whose doctoral dissertation and subsequent 1998 article represent one of the most detailed historical investigations ever undertaken into the origins of the modern doctrine of the Age of Aquarius from the French perspective. What emerges from her research is a story very different from the one most English-speaking astrologers have inherited.

There is no evidence that the modern doctrine of the astrological ages was the work of one brilliant individual. Nor was it developed within the mainstream astrological tradition. Instead, it evolved gradually over approximately 150 years through the efforts of astronomers, historians, antiquarians, philosophers, engineers, comparative religion scholars, and Christian esoteric thinkers. Each contributed another piece to an evolving intellectual structure until, by the early twentieth century, something recognizable as the modern doctrine had finally emerged. This may be one of the most surprising historical discoveries in this field of astrology.

It also raises an important question. If the doctrine was largely constructed by scholars whose primary interests lay outside technical astrology, to what extent did their own intellectual backgrounds shape the chronology and assumptions that later astrologers inherited? Were they able to maintain astrological integrity in developing the astrological ages? That question does not diminish their achievements. It simply reminds us that every historical idea reflects the intellectual world in which it was created.

Building a Doctrine

One of Latour’s most valuable insights is methodological rather than chronological. She encourages us to stop looking for the “inventor” of the Age of Aquarius and instead to examine how the doctrine evolved. Ideas rarely appear fully formed. They are built over time. One generation poses a new question; the next supplies part of the answer; another generation reorganizes the material into a more coherent system. Eventually the finished structure becomes so familiar that the stages of its construction are forgotten. The doctrine of the astrological ages appears to have followed exactly this pattern.

To appreciate the process, imagine the doctrine as a cathedral under construction. The foundation stones were laid during the French Enlightenment. Over the next century and a half, successive builders added walls, arches, windows, and towers.

Charles-François Dupuis (1742–1809): The First Stone

Every building begins with a foundation, and the modern doctrine begins with Charles-François Dupuis. A distinguished Enlightenment scholar, astronomer, lawyer, and politician, Dupuis devoted much of his career to demonstrating that the myths and religions of the ancient world preserved astronomical knowledge in symbolic form. His monumental Origine de tous les cultes argued that celestial phenomena—particularly the zodiac, the Sun’s annual motion, and the precession of the equinoxes—provided the hidden structure underlying many religious traditions.

Dupuis did not create a doctrine of astrological ages. His contribution was more subtle but ultimately more important. He established that precession could be treated not merely as an astronomical discovery but as a historical key to understanding the evolution of human belief. Without that conceptual shift, the later doctrine would have lacked its intellectual foundation.

Only sixteen years after Dupuis published Origine de tous les cultes, the Scottish scholar William Drummond published Oedipus Judaicus (1811). Discussing ancient astronomy, Drummond explicitly referred to the Sun at the vernal equinox passing from Taurus into Aries, making Aries “the first of the zodiacal constellations.” Whether Drummond arrived at these ideas independently or was influenced by continental scholarship remains an open question, but his work demonstrates that similar lines of thought were already emerging within the English-speaking world. Drummond did not promote astrological epochs based on precession.

François Delaulnaye (1759–1830): History Begins to Move

If Dupuis supplied the foundation, François Delaulnaye began constructing the framework. An antiquarian and historian with wide-ranging interests, he appears to have taken the next logical step by exploring whether precession might illuminate not only mythology but the succession of civilizations themselves.

This distinction is important. Mythological symbolism explains the past; historical periodization explains change. Somewhere between those two ideas lies the beginning of the modern doctrine of the astrological ages. Whether Delaulnaye deserves recognition as the first thinker to move decisively in that direction remains an open question, but his work clearly belongs among the essential stages in the doctrine’s evolution.

Alexis de Sarachaga (1840–1918): A Community of Ideas

By the late nineteenth century, the discussion had moved into an entirely different environment. Alexis de Sarachaga, an engineer, industrialist, and devout Catholic intellectual, founded the Hieron of Paray-le-Monial as a center for the study of symbolism, comparative religion, archaeology, sacred history, and science.

Here the doctrine acquired something it had previously lacked: an intellectual community. Ideas were no longer developing in isolation. They were being discussed, refined, and integrated within an organized circle of scholars. This institutional setting proved as important as any individual contribution because it allowed the doctrine to mature collectively rather than remaining the work of isolated thinkers.

Jeanne Lépine: The Missing Architect

Among the many surprises in Latour’s research, none is more striking than the role she assigns to Jeanne Lépine. Outside France, her name is virtually unknown, yet Latour argues that she was one of the principal architects of the modern doctrine.

This is where the story becomes especially significant for astrologers. If Latour is correct, many of the ideas commonly associated with Paul Le Cour had already been formulated within the Hieron before Le Cour presented them to a wider audience. Exactly which ideas originated with Lépine remains one of the central questions I hope to answer once further translation of Latour’s work becomes available.

Paul Le Cour (1871–1954): The Great Popularizer

Paul Le Cour occupies a unique position in this history. Through his journal Atlantis and his influential writings, he brought the doctrine of the Age of Aquarius to an international audience. His achievement should not be underestimated. Popularizing a complex body of ideas is itself a major intellectual accomplishment.

Yet Latour encourages us to see Le Cour as the heir to an existing tradition rather than its sole creator. One of the questions I hope to investigate further is whether Le Cour was the first author to employ the formal expression “Age of Aquarius” as the name of a historical epoch. If so, that would represent another important milestone in the doctrine’s evolution. If earlier examples emerge, they will be equally significant.

A Doctrine Born Outside Astrology?

The most thought-provoking aspect of Latour’s reconstruction is not simply the chronology but the intellectual background of its principal participants. With the partial exception of Le Cour, they were not practicing astrologers. Their interests lay elsewhere: comparative religion, sacred history, Christian symbolism, archaeology, philosophy, and astronomy. Their common concern was to understand the spiritual meaning of history, not to refine the technical practice of astrology.

That observation raises a question which, surprisingly, has received very little attention. If the doctrine of the astrological ages emerged primarily from circles devoted to esoteric Christianity rather than from technical astrology, to what extent did theological assumptions shape the chronology that eventually became accepted by astrologers? For example, the traditional commencement of the Age of Pisces with the life of Jesus aligns naturally with a Christian interpretation of history, yet it remains a matter of debate whether that chronology follows most convincingly from the astronomical evidence itself. The consensus amongst many researchers is that it does not. The conventional Vernal Point approach to calibrating the astrological ages has the Age of Pisces commencing centuries after the life of Jesus. It seems that the esoteric Christian researchers moved the goalpost to ensure Jesus commenced or was in the Pisces age.

The advances made in the development of the doctrine of the astrological ages were offset by researchers heavily biased in their embrace of Christianity. Their allegiance to Christian principles was greater than their desire to maintain astrological integrity.

Earlier Possibilities

More than a century before Dupuis, the German Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher (1601/2 - 1680) attempted one of the most ambitious syntheses of Egyptian religion, Hermetic philosophy, Chaldean astrology, Kabbalah, and sacred astronomy in his monumental Oedipus Aegyptiacus (1652–1654). Although modern Egyptology has rejected Kircher’s interpretations of hieroglyphs, his work helped create an intellectual climate in which ancient religions were increasingly interpreted through astronomical symbolism rather than solely through biblical history. Whether Kircher himself explicitly connected the precession of the equinoxes with successive historical epochs remains an open question deserving further investigation.

The Next Stage of the Investigation

The French story is only the beginning. By the late nineteenth century, the Age of Aquarius had entered English-language literature, and by the 1920s books devoted entirely to the subject were appearing in Britain and the United States. Germany followed its own path. How these traditions relate to the French development remains one of the great unanswered questions in the history of modern astrology. That investigation may become a future project.

If Evelyne Latour reconstructed the French chapter of the story, the next task is to discover how the doctrine crossed linguistic, national, and intellectual boundaries before becoming one of the defining ideas of modern astrology.

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More on Charles-François Dupuis (1742 – 1809)

Dupuis produced Origine de tous les cultes, ou Religion universelle (Origin of All Cults, or Universal Religion) . While its final massive multi-volume version was widely circulated in 1795, Dupuis initially published his core breakthrough text and early formulations in 1791. Another French writer, François-Henri-Stanislas de l’Aulnaye, also published L’histoire générale et particulière des religions in 1791 building on similar astronomical frameworks.

The Book’s Astrological Focus

Dupuis’s work was pioneering because it was one of the first major Enlightenment-era texts to systematically link the history of human religion to the precession of the equinoxes and the concept of astrological ages.

• The Solar Myth Theory: Dupuis argued that all ancient mythologies, gods, and world religions (including Christianity) were not based on historical individuals, but were instead allegorical representations of the movement of the sun, stars, and constellations.

• Tracking the Great Ages: He traced how religious symbolism shifted over thousands of years as the spring equinox sun moved backward through the zodiac. For example, he connected the ancient worship of bulls to the Age of Taurus and the rise of Jewish and Christian imagery to the Ages of Aries (the sacrificial ram/lamb) and Pisces (the fish).

• The First Modern Mention of the Aquarian Age: Historically, Dupuis’s work is recognized as the first to specifically calculate and consider the structural implications of the precession of the vernal equinox into Aquarius, which he mathematically argued had conceptually begun its transition in the early 18th century (around 1726).

Dupuis’s radical thesis that religious “god-images” shift concurrently with the great astronomical cycles laid the foundational framework for 19th-century esotericism and, much later, Carl Jung’s psychological analysis of the astrological ages.

Key Core Themes

1. The Solar Myth Theory

Dupuis explicitly strips religion of its supernatural or historical claims. He posits that the “Gods” of antiquity are personifications of the Sun, and their stories mirror the sun’s annual journey through the 12 signs of the zodiac.

• The Solar Christ: In Dupuis’s analysis, Jesus Christ is not a historical figure but a classic solar deity. He maps Christ’s life directly to the solar cycle: born at the winter solstice (when the sun is “reborn” and days begin to lengthen), surrounded by 12 apostles (the 12 signs of the zodiac), and resurrected at the spring equinox (when light triumphs over darkness).

2. The Precession of the Equinoxes & Astrological Ages

A central pillar of Dupuis’s work is the precession of the equinoxes—the slow, mathematical backward wobble of the Earth’s axis that shifts the spring equinox sun into a new zodiac constellation roughly every 2,150 years. He argues that as humanity shifted into a new astronomical “Great Age,” its religious imagery shifted accordingly:

• Taurus (The Bull): Linked to ancient Egyptian bull worship (Apis) and Persian Mithraic bull-slaying myths.

• Aries (The Ram): Linked to the Jewish Passover lamb and the Egyptian god Amun (depicted with ram horns).

• Pisces (The Fish): Linked directly to early Christian symbolism, where Jesus is represented as a fish and his followers are “fishers of men.”

• Aquarius: Dupuis mathematically estimated the transitional boundaries of the precession, helping lay the groundwork for what esotericists would later call the “Age of Aquarius.”

3. The Corruption of Primordial Science

According to Dupuis, religion began as an enlightened, proto-scientific tool. Ancient astronomers created myths as an easy mnemonic device to help agrarian societies remember when to plant, harvest, and navigate. Over generations, however, the original astronomical keys to these allegories were lost. Priests and ruling classes institutionalized the literal stories, transforming a rational science of nature into dogmatic, superstitious religions used to control the masses.

References to the precession of the equinoxes

Dupuis was thoroughly familiar with ancient astronomy. In Origine de tous les cultes he repeatedly discusses:

• the movement of the heavens

• the zodiac

• the fixed stars

• the equinoxes

• the changing relationship between constellations and the seasons

• ancient calendars

• astronomical symbolism in religion

These are precisely the ingredients later writers transformed into the doctrine of astrological ages.

Zodiacal symbolism

Already in the Preface Dupuis explains that religious myths are fundamentally astronomical. For example he writes that his work concludes with

“...a summary of the celestial sphere, astronomical science, a nomenclature of the constellations, and an explanation of the fictions made concerning them...” (Original Preface, p. xv in the introductory pagination.)

That is an extraordinarily important statement because it shows that his method is based on astronomy rather than purely mythology.

The zodiac as the key to religion

Further into the book, he explains the symbolic meaning of Aries, Taurus, Leo, the Bull, serpent symbolism, solar myths and the the annual cycle. For example, on one page discussing Platonic cosmology, he writes about

“...the animals of the Zodiac, the Lion, the Bull, Man and the celestial Eagle...”
(Printed p.255.)

and explains their cosmological meaning. That directly connects with later nineteenth-century writers who interpreted these zodiacal figures historically.

Dupuis repeatedly argued that changes in religion occurred because the vernal equinox moved into different zodiacal constellations. For example, in explaining the frontispiece he writes that: about 4,000 years earlier the Sun opened the astronomical year in Taurus - therefore the Bull became the sacred symbol of religion. Later, because of the precession of the equinoxes, the Sun entered Aries and religions then replaced the Bull with the Ram. He states:

“The precession of the equinoxes successively makes the Sun correspond to the different signs of the Zodiac at the spring equinox.”

and

“About four thousand years ago the Sun opened the astronomical year placed in Taurus.”

He immediately continues that all cults centered on the Bull belong to that period, while later religions adopted the Ram. This is essentially an Astrological Age theory, although Dupuis never developed the modern “Age of Aquarius” terminology or doctrine. Instead, he is saying: precession, different equinoctial sign, different dominant religion. That is extremely close to later Age thinking.

Postscript

One reason I have included this section on Charles-François Dupuis (1742 – 1809) is that he predates the later confusion in the late 19^th century of who invented the astrological ages. Dupuis is already discussing aspects of the astrological ages a century earlier but using different terminology.

From an astrological perspective, Dupuis is right on time, because he first published in 1791, the same year that the Scorpio sub-age (1791 – 1970) commenced. Hipparchus, who discovered precession of the equinoxes around 125 BC, did so in the previous Scorpio sub-age (178 BC – 1 AD). The three signs associated with astrology, when viewed from the perspective of the astrological ages, are Aquarius, Scorpio and Cancer. In both periods, the Scorpio sub-age is in its respective Cancer sub-age decan, and so two out of the key signs of the day were associated with astrology. For 1791, all three signs are activated, as 1791 is located in the current Age of Aquarius (1433 – 3581). It was perfect timing.

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Why should the astronomical technique developed by Hipparchus for measuring precession for astronomical purposes also determine the calibration of the astrological ages for astrological purposes?

Surprisingly, there is no historical evidence that Hipparchus intended his method to define astrological ages, nor is there evidence that anyone else did for almost two thousand years. This raises an important historical question. Did modern astrologers unknowingly apply the wrong astronomical calibration to a doctrine that was reconstructed in the nineteenth century by researchers who were not primarily astrologers anyway?

The Forgotten Assumption

Around the late second century BC, Hipparchus discovered that the Vernal Equinox slowly moved westward against the background stars, a phenomenon now known as the Precession of the Equinoxes. To measure this movement, he selected the Vernal Point (VP)—the position of the Sun at the spring equinox (zero degrees tropical Aries) —as his reference point. It was an elegant mathematical solution. The Vernal Equinox already occupied a privileged place in Greek astronomy and was inherited from previous cultures, making it an ideal astronomical reference. Hipparchus could have chosen numerous other celestial markers, but the Vernal Point provided a stable coordinate from which precession could be measured accurately.

However, measuring precession and defining astrological ages are two entirely different questions. Hipparchus only developed an astronomical calibration technique. He did not propose an astrological chronology. There is no surviving evidence that Hipparchus ever connected his discovery of precession with a sequence of astrological ages. Even more remarkable is the silence that followed. For nearly two thousand years after Hipparchus, no surviving astronomical or astrological literature describes a doctrine of successive Ages of Aries, Pisces, Aquarius, and so forth.

The familiar Age of Aquarius narrative appears only in the late nineteenth century, when a number of esoteric writers adopted Hipparchus’ Vernal Point as the natural calibration of the ages without explaining why this particular astronomical technique should also define an astrological doctrine. That assumption has rarely been questioned since, but the occasional researcher such as Sepp Rothwangl, an Austrian archeo-astronomer, has also discovered this major discrepancy.

Ancient Astronomy Was an Observational Science

The difficulty with the modern approach becomes apparent when we examine how the ancient world actually observed the heavens. Ancient astronomy was overwhelmingly observational. Astronomers did not begin with mathematical abstractions such as employed by Hipparchus. They began with what could actually be seen.

This is one of the central themes of Rumen Kolev’s analysis of Babylonian astronomy. The Babylonian tradition placed overwhelming emphasis upon direct observation of visible celestial phenomena. Light itself carried religious significance, while the principal moments of observation occurred around sunrise and sunset, when stars first appeared or disappeared. Similarly, Otto Neugebauer demonstrated that Babylonian astronomy was fundamentally concerned with events occurring on the horizon. Long before sophisticated mathematical astronomy developed, calendars were regulated by the visible heliacal risings and settings of stars and constellations.

The heliacal rising of Sirius inaugurated the Egyptian year. Babylonian astronomical texts recorded heliacal risings of major stars and constellations centuries before Hipparchus. Even Hesiod refers casually to the heliacal risings of Arcturus and the Pleiades, suggesting that his audience regarded such observations as common astronomical knowledge. In short, ancient astronomy primarily understood the heavens through visible phenomena.

The Hidden Inconsistency

Here an inconsistency emerges. Nicholas Campion has observed that observational astronomy cannot meaningfully place the Sun inside a visible constellation, because whenever the Sun is visible the stars are not. This simple astronomical fact exposes the central weakness of the modern doctrine of the astrological ages. If the zodiacal constellations were originally established through observational astronomy, why should their long-term chronology suddenly be calibrated using an invisible mathematical position? The observational framework and the mathematical framework are not identical. They answer different astronomical questions.

The Forgotten Calibration

Before dawn, approximately one hour before sunrise, the stars remain visible while the Sun is still below the horizon. This was precisely the period most valued by ancient observers. At the spring equinox today, the Sun occupies the constellation of Pisces according to Hipparchus’ mathematical Vernal Point. But the constellation of Pisces itself cannot be seen. Instead, the last zodiacal constellation visible above the eastern horizon before daylight overwhelms the stars is the constellation of Aquarius.

The distinction is profound. One method identifies the invisible position of the Sun. The other identifies the last visible zodiacal constellation. Both are astronomically legitimate. But only one belongs naturally to the observational astronomy from which the zodiac originally emerged.

Why the Two Systems Differ

The difference between these two calibrations is not mysterious. The Earth rotates approximately 360 degrees every twenty-four hours. In two hours, roughly thirty degrees of the ecliptic rise above the eastern horizon (i.e., one zodiacal sign). Therefore, in approximately one hour, about fifteen degrees rise. Since each zodiacal sign spans thirty degrees, the visible heliacal constellation naturally appears approximately half a sign ahead of the mathematical Vernal Point. This produces a difference of approximately fifteen degrees, or roughly half an astrological age—about one thousand one hundred years. John H. Rogers independently estimated that the difference between these observational approaches amounts to roughly one thousand years, remarkably close to the displacement produced by the heliacal calibration.

The famous disagreement over the beginning of the Age of Aquarius may therefore arise not because one astronomical method is incorrect, but because two entirely different astronomical perspectives have been confused or mixed up.

Clues from the Development of the Zodiac

Additional evidence may lie in the historical development of the zodiac itself. The zodiacal constellations did not emerge simultaneously. Instead, archaeological research suggests they developed gradually over many centuries, even millennia. Alexander Gurshtein has argued that this development may have broadly paralleled the changing seasonal framework created by precession. Although his reconstruction remains controversial, it suggests that the evolution of the zodiacal constellations may have preserved an awareness of the long-term celestial change due to precession of the equinoxes long before Hipparchus.

This possibility is reinforced by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend in Hamlet’s Mill, which proposes that many ancient myths encode symbolic descriptions of precession rather than merely religious narratives. Although many historians remain unconvinced by its conclusions, the work demonstrates that the possibility of ancient knowledge of precession cannot be dismissed.

A Different Interpretation of the Ages

If the zodiac originated within an observational tradition, then perhaps its long-term chronology should also be interpreted observationally. The issue is therefore not whether Hipparchus measured precession correctly. He undoubtedly did. The question is whether a mathematical calibration designed to measure precession should automatically determine the chronology of an astrological doctrine that emerged nearly two millennia later. Once this assumption is questioned, the chronology of the astrological ages deserves to be reconsidered from first principles.

The familiar Age of Pisces and Age of Aquarius may not be incorrect because Hipparchus was wrong. They may be incorrect because later astrologers applied the right astronomical instrument to the wrong astronomical problem. The consequence is profound. The difference between the modern Vernal Point chronology and the ancient observational chronology is approximately half an age. When many contemporary astrologers state that the Age of Aquarius will arrive around 2600 AD, if you deduct 1,100 years, or approximately half an age, the Age of Aquarius arrived around 1,500 AD. If the ancient observational astronomical framework is restored, the Age of Aquarius is not a future expectation. It has already been unfolding for centuries in the same way that historians tell us that modernity has also been unfolding over the same centuries.

As the above graphic displays, currently at the Vernal Equinox, the rising Sun (VP) sits in the constellation of Pisces, though the constellation of Pisces cannot be seen, because whenever the Sun is visible it is daytime and the stars are not visible. The Vernal Point will remain in the constellation of Pisces for many more centuries.

However, if you are awake one hour before dawn (see above) at the same date but one hour earlier, there is no Sun visible but the surrounding stars are still visible on the eastern horizon. The last stars seen rising up from the eastern horizon before the sky turns blue is the constellation of Aquarius. This is the system that the most ancient star gazers applied when the zodiacal constellations were created.

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But first, here is a small medley of historians’ opinions on the arrival of our modern age.

The opening statement by the cultural historian and astrologer, Professor Richard Tarnas, in his book Cosmos and Psyche is that the “modern self” appeared slightly more than 500 years ago.

Tarnas claims the convulsions of the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Scientific Revolution gave birth to the modern world and the modern mind. Tarnas also states that within a generation, mankind moved from their medieval predecessors and assumed superhuman status with the likes of da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Columbus, Luther, and Copernicus. He elevates the achievement of Copernicus as representative of a “fundamental intellectual turning point”—as a high point of human reasoning, introducing the modern age to the world.

The eminent British historian Arnold Toynbee (1889–1975 AD) in Mankind and Mother Earth states that between c.1400–1550 AD, the traditional picture of social habitats around the world was totally transformed, as knowledge of different cultures became widely available. Toynbee states this change was sudden and brought immediate changes of fortune to many people, some for the better and many for the worse.

The Mainstream of Civilization asserts that the characteristics of the modern world appeared by 1500 AD. The Columbia History of the World claims that the period, one century on either side of 1450 AD, was enormously fertile in innovation, and that the Renaissance was not so much a rebirth of ancient culture as the beginning of the modern world. The Waves of Time by George Modelski places an historical focus entirely on the period since 1500 AD, which he claims is the beginning of the modern international system.

In a nutshell, it is easy to see that experts in history believe not only that a new age commenced, but also that they called it modernity. Guess what Aquarius rules - it rules modernity, or at least that's what Rex E Bills states in his The Rulership Book (p 88).

So I asked my AI research assistant which century over the last 2,150 years is the most pivotal, dynamic or stands out in a concrete way? One century in the last 2,150 years should include the start of an astrological age. AI’s answer was clear and concise. The fifteenth century is the most remarkable century over the last 2,150 years. This is, coincidentally, the same century I discovered over 40 years ago as the start of the Age of Aquarius through rectification with history.

The Fifteenth Century: The Century that Reprogrammed the World

History has known many remarkable centuries. The seventeenth century witnessed the Scientific Revolution; the nineteenth century unleashed industrialisation; the twentieth century transformed warfare, technology, and communications. Yet most great centuries build upon foundations that already exist. They accelerate, modify, or perfect structures that are already in motion.

The fifteenth century was different. Between 1401 and 1500, humanity crossed a civilizational threshold. During these hundred years, the political, economic, technological, and psychological operating systems of the world were fundamentally rewritten. The consequences of this transformation continue to define modern civilisation more than five centuries later. The fifteenth century represents not merely another period of historical change, but a hinge in world history: the point at which the medieval world gave way to the foundations of modernity. The fifteenth century was the real dawning of the Age of Aquarius.

The first great transformation was informational. Around 1450, Johannes Gutenberg’s movable-type printing press made possible the mass replication of information on an unprecedented scale. For the first time in history, knowledge could be reproduced, disseminated, and preserved at speeds impossible in manuscript cultures. Information ceased to be the monopoly of clerical and aristocratic elites.

The implications were immense. Literacy expanded. Intellectual networks developed. Ideas could travel independently of their creators. Human cognition itself became increasingly networked, laying the foundations for later scientific, political, and religious revolutions. In many respects, the printing press was the fifteenth-century equivalent of the Internet: a communications revolution that permanently altered the way human beings stored and exchanged information.

Only three years later, in 1453, another event of immense significance occurred. The fall of Constantinople ended the thousand-year history of the Eastern Roman Empire and over 2,000 years of Ancient Rome, which makes astrological sense, as Ancient Rome was the empire of the Aries-Pisces age (715 BC – 1433 AD). The event was far more than the destruction of a city. It redirected trade routes, accelerated European interest in maritime alternatives to eastern commerce, and helped set in motion the great voyages of discovery that followed. Geopolitically, the fall of Constantinople acted as a catalyst, forcing Europe to look outward.

Simultaneously, the Renaissance entered its mature phase. Although the Renaissance had emerged gradually over previous centuries, with the emphasis on looking back to Ancient Greece and Rome, the fifteenth century witnessed its consolidation as a major intellectual movement, breaking new ground. Humanism increasingly challenged medieval metaphysics as the principal engine of intellectual life. The individual, rather than inherited authority, became the center of inquiry. Classical texts were rediscovered and reinterpreted. Curiosity, investigation, and human potential assumed an importance that would permanently alter Western civilization.

Then, with the energy of the Pisces age peaking at its end in 1433 AD, there came the oceanic voyages that changed the shape of the planet. By the end of the century, the Atlantic world had been opened permanently. Portuguese exploration along Africa’s coasts, followed by Columbus’s voyage in 1492, fundamentally altered humanity’s geographical horizons. What had previously been regional civilizations increasingly became components of an interconnected global system for the first time. Globalisation, in its modern sense, had begun. It did not wait for the hippies of the 1960s or 70s to start the pseudo-Aquarian age, as the real Aquarian age arrived in 1433.

The consequences were revolutionary. Trade networks expanded across oceans. New colonial powers emerged. Precious metals flowed between continents. Population movements accelerated. Disease ecologies became globalized. Agricultural products crossed oceans and permanently altered diets and demographics on multiple continents. The world ceased to consist of largely separate regional systems and increasingly became a single interconnected economic organism.

Perhaps no development illustrates this transformation better than the great bullion flows that followed the discovery of the Americas. Within a few decades, American silver transformed not only Europe but also Asia. Inflation accelerated. State finances expanded. Imperial systems grew in scale and sophistication. Monetary systems became increasingly integrated. The foundations of global capitalism were laid. The effects were permanent.

The fifteenth century, therefore, stands apart because it did not merely produce dramatic events. It changed the architecture within which all subsequent history would occur. It created modernity’s informational networks, initiated global trade systems, transformed money and finance, accelerated the velocity of ideas, established the foundations of European global dominance, and set in motion the processes that would eventually produce scientific and industrial civilization.

Other centuries are intense. Some are revolutionary. Some are transformative. The fifteenth century is something different altogether. It is the century that reprogrammed the world. It was not simply a surge in historical activity. It was a hinge upon which an old civilisation turned, and a new civilization began.

If the fifteenth century AD marked the arrival of a new age, which my research clearly indicates was the arrival of the Age of Aquarius, then 2,150 years earlier, there should have been the arrival of the Pisces age. Historical events confirm the pivotal role of the 8^th century BC.

The Eighth Century BC: The Axial Ignition

If the fifteenth century AD reprogrammed the operating system of the modern world, then the eighth century BC may have been the moment when humanity’s cognitive architecture itself underwent a profound transformation. It is not simply an eventful century, nor merely a period of political upheaval or imperial expansion. Rather, it represents one of the most synchronized and consequential inflection points in recorded history. Something unusual occurred during these hundred years. Across multiple and largely unrelated civilizations, human beings began thinking in fundamentally new ways.

It was not an age of destabilization. It was an age of ignition, which makes sense when it is taken into account that the primary sign of this age was Aries. Historians often refer to this period as the opening phase of the Axial Age, a term popularized by the German philosopher Karl Jaspers. The Axial Age is usually dated to approximately 800–200 BC, but the eighth century BC stands apart because it marks the beginning of this remarkable transformation. It is the century in which the spark first appears.

Its uniqueness lies in its simultaneity. Across widely separated societies, developments emerged that seem to point toward a common shift in human consciousness. In Greece, the long centuries of the Greek Dark Age came to an end. Alphabetic literacy spread, making knowledge more accessible and durable. The epic traditions associated with Homer emerged, preserving cultural memory while simultaneously providing a framework through which later generations would explore questions of heroism, morality, and human purpose. The polis, or city-state, became increasingly consolidated, laying the foundations for political experimentation, civic participation, philosophy, and eventually democracy itself.

In the ancient kingdom of Israel, monotheistic thought deepened and acquired an increasingly ethical dimension. The prophetic tradition gained strength. Identity became defined not merely by tribal ancestry but by moral obligations and covenantal responsibilities. Questions of justice, righteousness, and ethical conduct assumed a central role in religious consciousness.

To the east, the Neo-Assyrian Empire expanded into the dominant power of the Near East. Yet its significance lies not simply in conquest. The Assyrians developed increasingly sophisticated systems of administration and imperial governance. Power became more systematic, organized, and bureaucratic. Government was increasingly conceptualized as an abstract structure capable of administering large and diverse populations.

Meanwhile, in China, the Zhou dynasty provided a framework of relative stability within which the earliest foundations of later Chinese philosophy began to emerge. The intellectual traditions that would eventually produce Confucianism and Daoism had not yet reached their mature forms, but their conceptual groundwork was being laid. Questions concerning ethics, cosmic order, social harmony, and proper conduct were beginning to be approached in increasingly abstract and reflective ways.

Taken individually, these developments are important. Taken collectively, they are extraordinary.

The eighth century BC witnessed an expansion of alphabetic literacy, the rise of universal moral inquiry, the emergence of codified legal and administrative systems, political experimentation, and increasingly sophisticated forms of large-scale governance. More importantly, it marked a transition away from purely inherited mythic consciousness and toward reflective thought.

Human beings increasingly began asking enduring questions:

· What is justice?

· What is truth?

· What is the proper relationship between the individual and society?

· What obligations do human beings owe to one another?

· What principles should govern human conduct?

These questions have never disappeared. They continue to shape philosophical, religious, and political discourse more than two and a half millennia later.

The significance of the eighth century BC, therefore, lies not merely in political events or imperial developments. It represents a profound cognitive restructuring of civilization itself. Human consciousness appears to have crossed an invisible threshold, moving increasingly from inherited myth and customary practice toward ethical reflection, philosophical abstraction, and self-conscious inquiry.

Very few centuries in history display such a level of coordinated transformation. It combines three exceptionally rare characteristics.

1. Multiple civilisations underwent major transformations at roughly the same time.

2. These transformations exhibited a common tendency toward abstraction, ethical universality, and reflective thought.

3. The intellectual and moral frameworks that emerged continue to structure human civilization to the present day.

The religious historian Karen Armstrong claims in her book The Great Transformation[ that from 800 to 200 BC saw the emergence of the great philosophical or religious heritage of four separate and major cultures. Furthermore, Armstrong claims this period was the most significant turning point in history, and that the focal point of the period 800 to 200 BC was the sixth century BC, when the Israelites first documented their oral traditions, producing the early part of the Old Testament (Talmud). In India, both Buddhism and Jainism were founded, and the Hindu Upanishads were written, and Confucius and Lao–Tzu appeared in China. The Greeks produced Pythagoras and their seven wise men, including Thales (c.624–545 BC) —the original absentminded professor and Solon (c.640–550 BC) , who provided the foundation for the Athenian democracy.

Nicholas Campion, who specializes in the study of cosmology in culture and astrology, notes a historical similarity between the eighth to fifth centuries BC and 1500 to 1700 CE. He recorded a scientific revolution in each of these time periods. Both these periods coincide with the beginning of the Pisces and Aquarian ages.

For students of the astrological ages, the eighth century BC possesses an additional fascination. If certain historical periods act as previews of future civilizational developments, then this century may represent one of the most remarkable examples in history. It does not signify collapse, nor merely refinement of existing traditions.

It signifies awakening. It is the moment when human civilization begins consciously to reflect upon itself. It is the century in which humanity started asking questions whose answers are still being sought today.

And for that reason, the eighth century BC may be regarded as one of the most structurally pivotal centuries of the last three millennia—a moment of axial ignition whose consequences continue to reverberate throughout history and, perhaps, a distant preview of intellectual and social tendencies that would later find fuller expression in the Age of Aquarius itself.

Postscript

Many times astrologers have explained to me how the Age of Aquarius arrived in the 20^th century, with one stating that space missions and man landing on the moon in the 1960s and 70s was obviously the start of a new age. Getting spaceships up to the moon required centuries of scientific research and breakthroughs. It is necessary to trace the origins of such research and breakthroughs to see when the era began that enabled people to set foot on the moon!

We don’t go to historians to get our horoscopes, but this is what astrologers do, astrologers behave as if they are experts on history, when an astrologer is only an astrology expert, or learning to be one. When you put a room full of pseudo-historians who are astrologers in a room, the 20^th century is the most popular for the start of the Age of Aquarius. Do you really think the arrival of a bunch of hippies starts an astrological age?

I did not know virtually anything of the above when I first commenced researching the astrological ages in 1987. What I did in 1987 was a simple rectification exercise based on the dwadasamsa division of the zodiacal signs, which creates 12 sub-ages in each age of around 178 years each. These I employed geometrically, when most research astrologers of the time preferred all sub-ages in any age commence with Aries and finish with Pisces. This approach is the farthest away from reality.

It took me about 6 weeks, but I finally discovered the Aries sub-age due to the early stages of the Renaissance. To decipher the Aries sub-age, I had to learn about the Overflow Effect - one of the most critical elements in the understanding of the astrological ages. The Aries sub-age was the second-to-last sub-age in the Age of Pisces. I then found the Pisces sub-age at the end of the Pisces sub-age, and the Capricorn, Sagittarius and Scorpio sub-ages as the first three sub-ages of the Age of Aquarius. Scorpio was easy to identify due to the development of nuclear weapons and energy. Each sub-age was relatively easy to distinguish once the basic time framework was in place.

This early epiphany in 1987 allowed me to perceive that the Age of Aquarius arrived in the 15th century, purely from the rectification of history with the sub-ages. Historians see the same historical events, and have come to the same conclusion without knowing anything about astrology - modernity arrived with the Age of Aquarius in the 15th century, sending the Dark Ages into the past. When it comes to the astrological ages, contemporary astrologers remain in the Dark Ages.

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A wave begins at the start of its age, gradually gains strength, reaches its maximum power at the end of the age, and then continues into the following age. The overflow into the next age is more influential than the age itself. This changes everything.

The Hidden Structure of the Ages

The easiest way to visualize the age system is as a series of nested layers, like an onion.

· The outer layer is the age itself of 2,150 years each.

· Inside each age are twelve sub-ages of 178 years each.

· Inside each sub-age are twelve micro-ages 15 years each.

· Inside each micro-age are twelve nano-ages of 15 months each.

Each of the above layers repeats the same zodiacal sequence found in the layer above it. The result is a hierarchy of repeating cycles or fractals operating simultaneously across history. It could be called fractal.

Astrologers, and even AI, complain about all these sub-periods of the astrological ages. It all seems too hard and complicated, but that is merely due to a lack of familiarity. If you want to deeply understand the astrological ages, you need to understand all these sub-periods, and how they interface with each other, including taking the Overflow Effect into account.

Why the Sub-Ages Matter More Than the Ages

The broad ages establish the background atmosphere of civilizations. The sub-ages generate the events. For example, the current dominant sub-age influence is Scorpio. The Scorpio sub-age ran from 1791 to 1970, and its overflow extends well into the following Libra sub-age and does not conclude until 2149.

The great themes of the modern era—revolution including communism, power struggles, Nuclear age, tyrants, secrecy, public debt, espionage, the Sexual Revolution, space exploration, quantum physics, transformation, insecurity and destruction—are all strongly associated with Scorpio symbolism. These themes are far easier to identify historically than the much broader symbolism of an entire age. The pattern becomes even clearer when we descend another level. All ages and their twelve-fold subdivisions also have their respective decans.

The Forgotten Key: The Twelvefold Division

The twelvefold structure described above is based on an ancient technique known in India as the dwadasamsa and in Hellenistic astrology as the dodocatamoria. The principle is simple, every zodiac sign can be divided into twelve smaller signs with the first sub-sign the same as the parent sign. For example, the 12 sub-signs of Aquarius are (in order): Aquarius, Pisces, Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius and Capricorn. Ancient astrologers applied this twelvefold structure to zodiac signs. Before the development of the horoscope with an ascendant and houses, these dodocatamoria were assigned to the position of the sun and are believed to substitute for the later ascendant.

The same geometric principle of twelvefold division can also be applied to the astrological ages. In the recent past, at least, this is where some recent age theories of the astrological ages went wrong when they employed sub-periods with the ages. Some researchers assumed that every age begins with an Aries sub-age, and dutifully passes through each zodiac sign in natural order.

The geometric evidence indicates otherwise. The Age of Aquarius begins with the Capricorn sub-age and ends with the Aquarius sub-age. In other words, the sub-ages unfold in reverse order, just as the ages themselves move backward through the zodiac. When the world moved from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius, it moved from the beginning of the sign Pisces to the end of the sign Aquarius, at the 330-degree point of the zodiacal circle. This is why this approach is called ‘geometric’. This reverse structure produces a remarkable result. Each age grows stronger as it progresses. Its final sub-age carries the same zodiacal signature as the age itself. Therefore, each age reaches its greatest intensity near its end, not at its beginning. This same principle applies at every level of the hierarchy in a virtual fractal pattern.

Ages, sub-ages, micro-ages and nano-ages all operate according to the same repeating geometry. And once that geometry is understood, historical correlations look very different. In contrast, if an astrologer only employs the whole astrological age for their historical analysis, they are mimicking sun-sign astrologers who focus only on the sun-sign and ignore the myriad other astrological elements.

A Practical Example: Why Sub-Ages Matter More Than Ages

The greatest challenge in researching the astrological ages is that the ages themselves are so vast. An age lasts more than two millennia, and its influence extends well beyond its official boundary through the overflow effect. The result is a zodiacal influence that can remain active for over four thousand years. Any archetypal pattern operating over such a long period will necessarily be broad and difficult to isolate, but quite obvious.

The sub-ages tell a different story. At approximately 178 years each, they are short enough to produce identifiable historical themes, yet long enough to shape entire civilizations. More importantly, they demonstrate the overflow effect in action. The closing centuries of the Pisces Age provide an excellent example.

The Last Hurrah of Aries

The last two sub-ages of the Pisces age ending in 1433 AD are the Aries sub-age (1072 to 1253), followed by the Pisces sub-age (1253 to 1433). The Aries sub-age is associated with warfare, conquest, weapons, initiative and youthful vigor. The historical record is remarkably consistent with these themes. China’s military use of gunpowder accelerated during this period. The Mongol conquests under Genghis Khan created the largest contiguous land empire in history. Across Eurasia, military expansion became one of the defining characteristics of the age.

Yet the story becomes even more interesting when we remember that this Aries sub-age occurred during the overflow of the much older and larger Aries Age and overflow (2862 BC – 715 BC– 1433 AD). In effect, Aries was receiving reinforcement from two directions simultaneously. The old Aries Age was reaching the end of its influence, while the Aries sub-age appeared within the Pisces Age. The result was a final surge of martial activity that resembled a civilization-wide farewell performance from the sign of Aries. I call this the sting-in-the-tail, which occurs with all ages, and sub-periods based on the standard twelve-fold division provided by the zodiac.

The pattern continued into the Aries sub-age overflow from 1253 to 1433 CE. The Hundred Years’ War dominated Europe. Joan of Arc emerged as one of history’s most famous warrior figures.

Pisces Refuses to Leave the Stage

At exactly the same time, another process was unfolding. The Pisces sub-age occupied the same historical window from 1253 to 1433 CE as the Aries sub-age overflow, and so an alternate term for this Pisces sub-age is the Aries-Pisces sub-age.

Pisces is associated with oceans, religion, mysticism, calamities and collective belief systems. The fourteenth century delivered one of the greatest catastrophes in European history: the Black Death, which must have felt like the end of the world had arrived. The Great Schism divided Christianity between rival Popes, perhaps taking its cue from the two fish that symbolically represent Pisces. Religious conflict intensified across Europe and India. Meanwhile, maritime exploration expanded dramatically through the voyages of Zheng He and the navigational initiatives that would eventually open the oceans to European exploration.

Then came the overflow. The Pisces sub-age overflowed from (1433 to 1612 CE) at the beginning of the Age of Aquarius (1433 – 3581), coinciding with some of the greatest maritime achievements in history. Columbus reached the Americas, Vasco da Gama arrived in India, and Magellan’s expedition circumnavigated the globe. The world literally became connected by oceans and became globalized for the first time.

At the same time, the Protestant Reformation fractured Western Christianity while mystical movements flourished. The era produced Shakespeare, Cervantes, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo—figures whose artistic and imaginative achievements reflected another expression of Pisces. If astrological periods behaved like bricks in a wall, these Piscean themes should have ended in 1433. Instead, some of the strongest Piscean manifestations occurred after the Pisces sub-age and Pisces age had officially concluded.

Aquarius Arrives, But Pisces Dominates

This is perhaps the most important lesson. The Aquarius Age officially commenced in 1433 AD, yet its first sub-age was Capricorn (1433 -1612). During the same period, the Pisces sub-age overflow remained fully active. As a result, the early Aquarius Age displays a mixture of influences that many astrologers mistakenly interpret as evidence that humanity is standing at the cusp of two ages. In reality, every age begins this way.

The sixteenth century simultaneously witnessed the rise of modern science through Copernicus and Leonardo da Vinci, while Europe remained immersed in religious conflict, mysticism, witch trials and ecclesiastical authority. Aquarius had arrived, but Pisces still dominated. The overlap was not an anomaly. It was the expected result of the age-wave structure.

The Modern Example

The same phenomenon can be observed today. The world is currently operating within the Scorpio sub-age and overflow (1791 - 1970 - 2149), with the overflow commencing in 1970 and extending into the twenty-second century. Scorpio is associated with sexuality, genetic engineering, pollution, recycling, terrorism, debt, leverage, espionage, crime, nuclear energy and bombs, insecurity and transformation. Since the 1970s, the world has witnessed the Sexual Revolution, the rise of environmental movements, the spread of terrorism, the growth of debt-driven economies, genetic engineering and increasing concern with pollution and sustainability. Scorpio is the sign of vulnerability. The current debt level of the USA is approaching 40 trillion dollars, and structurally commenced in 1971 when President Nixon removed the backing of the dollar by gold, just one year after the peak of Scorpio commencing in 1970. This is why our money is losing value, as Scorpio opposes Taurus money.

Whether one agrees with every historical correlation or not, the point remains the same. The themes associated with the sub-age are often easier to identify than the themes associated with the parent age itself. This suggests that the true engine of historical change is not the ages, but the nested sub-periods operating within them. In simplistic terms, the ages provide the background atmosphere while the sub-ages provide the weather.

Why We Are Not Living in a Pure Age of Aquarius, and Never Will.

Although the world entered the Age of Aquarius centuries ago, humanity is still heavily influenced by the previous Age of Pisces. As a result, it is more accurate to describe the Age of Aquarius as the Pisces–Aquarius Age. All astrological ages are actually age-pairs. The previous age associated with Ancient Rome and salvation religions was the Aries-Pisces age.

Currently in the world, Aquarius is certainly present, and we experience this with modern technology, democracy, science, global communication networks and increasing individual freedom, all of which carry strong Aquarian themes. Yet the world remains deeply Piscean. (Pisces) religious belief continues to shape politics and culture. Corporations (fake bodies) function as vast collective institutions. Ideologies often command loyalty resembling faith. Emotional narratives frequently triumph over objective evidence.

The modern world is therefore a strange hybrid: Aquarian technology and elementary democracy operating within a largely Piscean psychological framework closer to medievalism. This helps explain why so many astrologers conclude that humanity is currently standing at the cusp of Pisces and Aquarius. The peak time for Aquarius in the world will be in the following Aquarius-Capricorn age (c.3580 – 5730 AD).

Humanity is technically always on the cusp because every age overlaps with the next age, almost like half a cusp. After all, the following age is never influential before it arrives, but extends itself after it technically ends. The overlap is not an exception to the system; it is the system.

The Ages Are Much Larger Than Most People Realize

Another common misconception is that astrological ages are the primary drivers of history. They are not. An age lasts approximately 2,150 years. Because its influence continues through the following age, the effective lifespan of an age influence is 4,300 years at a minimum. That is an extraordinarily long period. Any archetype operating over four millennia must necessarily be broad and difficult to identify. The common thread exists, but it is often thin. This is why researchers frequently struggle to identify clear age symbolism in historical events. The more useful level of analysis lies below the ages themselves.

The reason why the astrological community has been denied the true insights that the astrological ages can provide is that the astrological ages have drawn little attention from astrologers over the last few thousand years until the last few centuries. Countless horoscopes have been completed over the last 2,000 years, but the astrological ages have probably received a minute fraction of one per cent of this focus. Furthermore, because the common rectification of the astrological ages is wrong, few exact insights are perceived, so astrologers prefer to follow cycles such as the Jupiter-Saturn cycle that seem to provide the average astrologer greater clarity. There is a reason why astrologers don’t normally apply the astrological ages in their work, as it is all too fuzzy!

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“About March 21st this year the cycle of Aquarius will start. Aquarius is the house of the woman.”

August Vandekerkhove was a Belgian writer, art painter and inventor. He wrote under the pseudonym S.U.Zanne. He started a movement he called Cosmosofie, which he claimed was the antithesis of Theosophy. Vandekerkhove was knowledgeable about some aspects of astrology, but he wasn’t an astrologer. This may explain his association of women with Aquarius, a connection not recognized by traditional astrology. August Vandekerkhove is better described as an occultist, esoteric philosopher, and mystical reformer rather than as a professional astrologer in the modern sense. He was associated with late-19th-century European occult and utopian movements and used astrological ages, especially the transition into Aquarius, within a broader mystical worldview.

August Vandekerkhove (1838 - 1923)

However, his expression “Age of Aquarius” was not originally in English. In English-language usage, the expression appears to have become identifiable in occult, Theosophical, and astrological literature in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, within which Vandekerkhove was active. Nicholas Campion notes that the modern concept of the Age of Aquarius emerged gradually through late-19th-century occultism and New Age thought. One especially early English reference noted by later commentators appears in an 1887 work discussed in relation to Carl Jung studies, where “the first reference to the Age of Aquarius” is claimed to occur in an English-language discussion of esoteric Christianity.

The phrase remained publicly obscure until the 1967 musical Hair and especially the 1969 hit song “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” by The 5th Dimension popularized:

“This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.”

That moment brought the expression permanently into mainstream English-speaking culture, though it was relatively well known in astrology circles for decades before this. Whatever the exact details for the formulation of the Age of Aquarius and astrological ages in general, after being ignored for two millennia, suddenly the Age of Aquarius appeared like a magician pulling a rabbit from the hat, and subsequently, astrological ages became part of astrological lore as a fait accompli. The crucial issue here is a lack of due diligence, substantiation and proof. At best, the process was extremely sloppy and lacked any integrity.

The first person to clearly and publicly popularize the expression “Age of Aquarius” in something close to its modern sense was Paul Le Cour in the early 20th Century. Around 1937, Le Cour explicitly described humanity entering the Aquarian Age and connected previous historical periods with Pisces and earlier zodiacal eras.

The video (above) is not available here, it is only available in French at: https://www.baglis.tv/esprit/astrologie/34-l-ere-du-verseau-et-l-heritage-de-paul-le-cour-1-2.html

Paul Le Cour (1871–1954) was a French esoteric writer and mystic known for founding the Société d’études atlantéennes and the influential journal Atlantis. His work linked classical philosophy, Christianity, and occultism, shaping twentieth-century French and Anglo-Saxon esoteric thought. Le Cour worked for the French Ministry of Public Works before devoting himself to spiritual and psychic research. He participated in séances and published reports in Annales des Sciences Psychiques. A self-taught intellectual, he moved within Parisian occult circles and collaborated with the Institut Métapsychique International. In 1926 Le Cour co-founded the Société d’études atlantéennes at the Sorbonne with Roger Dévigne, exploring legends of Atlantis as bearers of a “primordial tradition.” The following year he launched the journal Atlantis, which became a leading French forum for esoteric and metaphysical topics and remained active through the postwar period. His book L’Ère du Verseau (1937) (translated: “The Age of Aquarius”) introduced the concept of the Aquarian Age and is often cited as a precursor to the New Age movement.

No widely recognized English translation of L’Ère du Verseau appears to exist. The work remains primarily available in French, including modern reprints and ebooks. The original 1937 title was L’Ère du Verseau, ou le retour de Ganymède (“The Age of Aquarius, or the Return of Ganymede”). Modern French editions are still in circulation. Some English-language discussions summarized his theories, particularly the Age of Pisces beginning with Christ, the Age of Aquarius beginning around 2160, and the linkage between precession and civilizational cycles.

From 1937 onward, modern astrologers increasingly systematized the sequence of Taurus to ancient agricultural religions, Aries to warrior civilizations, Pisces promoting Christianity and faith, and Aquarius with science, technology, collectivism, and global consciousness. Paul Le Cour was among the first to formulate the modern Age of Aquarius system in a recognizably contemporary form.

The astrological tradition of commencing the Age of Pisces with the birth of Jesus commenced with Le Cour who, to my knowledge, provided no astrological justification for this major pronouncement. Based on the metrics of astrological ages being calibrated by the Vernal Point, the Pisces age could not commence as early as the birth of Jesus. Based on the difference in alignment of the tropical and sidereal zodiacs or even the zodiacal constellations, this can only occur around the late 3^rd century AD. This timeframe is widely noted, as some Western and Vedic astrologers have noted that the Vernal Point regressed into Pisces in the 3^rd century AD and therefore supposedly commencing the Pisces age, and not with the birth of Jesus. From hereon in, I will refer to this fictitious Pisces age used by astrologers as the pseudo-Pisces age.

Le Cour was primarily an esotericist with strong religious influence. There is some evidence that Paul Le Cour had at least a working involvement with conventional astrology, but the evidence suggests that his main focus was not natal or predictive astrology in the normal horoscopic sense. Many contemporary and later sources explicitly describe Le Cour as an “astrologer,” though usually in connection with his theory of the astrological ages rather than with horoscopes. There is comparatively little evidence that he practiced horoscope delineation, natal chart interpretation, or predictive astrology in the style of traditional astrologers like Charles Carter or Cyril Fagan. One particularly revealing French discussion explicitly states:

“Paul Lecour n’est pas un astrologue...” (Paul Le Cour is not an astrologer...)

The statement appears in a round-table discussion involving Jacques Halbronn and Jacques Grimault concerning Le Cour’s role in developing the idea of the Age of Aquarius. A little further on, the discussion continues with an even stronger formulation:

“les astrologues ne se sont pas intéressés aux travaux de Paul Lecour. Non, parce qu’il n’est pas astrologue.”

Translation:

“Astrologers were not interested in Paul Le Cour’s work — because he was not an astrologer.”[1]

The context is important: they are not claiming Le Cour knew nothing about astrology. Rather, they argue he was fundamentally an esoteric researcher of Atlantis, precessional cycles and civilization rather than a practitioner of technical horoscope astrology and argues that his precessional age theory was later absorbed into mainstream astrology, even though he himself came more from an esoteric and symbolic background than from practical astrology.

That same source describes him more as a seeker, mystic, esoteric researcher, and synthesizer of symbolic traditions, rather than a technical horoscope astrologer. However, there are several indicators that he was at least conversant with ordinary astrology. He published in occult and astrological periodicals, and some 1930s esoteric magazines associated him with astrology publications and occult circles. He used astrological frameworks beyond precession. His writings discuss zodiacal symbolism, sidereal vs tropical concepts, and civilizational correspondences in ways suggesting substantial familiarity with astrological doctrine. Later bibliographies classify him as an astrologer. In modern terms, he resembles an esoteric historian of cosmic cycles more than a practicing natal astrologer.

Paul Le Cour appears to be a very interesting person for his time; if anything, he was ahead of his time. He obviously had some astrological knowledge, and most likely understood the 12 zodiacal signs and advanced techniques such as precession of the equinoxes and so on. However, he is the third and final smoking gun.

Paul Le Cour decided, one way or another, that the Age of Aquarius should begin with the birth of Jesus Christ, despite the well-known knowledge that the pseudo-Pisces age based on the Vernal Point does not leave Aries and enter Pisces until the late 3^rd century. We have no insight into how he determined this major development in the evolution of our understanding of the astrological ages. His royal announcement that the Age of Pisces began with the birth of Jesus has become an axiom in the astrological community and has spread somewhat into the wider general public despite a lack of supporting evidence.

It seems that placing the birth or life of Jesus Christ at the beginning of the Age of Pisces does not require proof due to the magnitude or importance of his life in Western culture. Jesus is the prime avatar for Western society, and so his position at the start of the Age of Pisces is obviously true. It is therefore axiomatic that Jesus commenced the Age of Pisces, and axioms are statements or principles that are accepted as true without needing proof and are used as a starting point for reasoning.

Any examination of Le Cour’s approach is that he must have arbitrarily decided it was much tidier to have Jesus start the Pisces age instead of the Pisces age commencing a few centuries later in the late 3^rd century. On an archetypal level, he obviously saw that Jesus should be associated with Pisces instead of Aries, and therefore shifted the goal posts to fit. He was correct in associating Jesus with Pisces rather than Aries, but he did not have the skill or wherewithal to understand that the Pisces age had commenced in the 8^th century BC, seven centuries before the birth of Jesus.

Jesus was born at a momentous astrological time – he was born at the first age-decan cusp of the Pisces age – the Scorpio-Cancer age-decan cusp with Scorpio the more powerful sign.

“The Scorpio motif is also explicitly associated with Christianity. Most astrologers relate only Pisces to Christianity, supported by the fish symbol used by Christians from a very early time. Some early Christians even called themselves “little fishes.”[2] However, I contend that the Scorpio connection to Christianity is greater than that of Pisces. Scorpio is the sign of death and rebirth, so the concept of the resurrection as a central tenet of Christianity is perfectly aligned with Scorpio. Christianity is also bound to the resurrection of the dead at the end of the world. Christians also believe that Jesus, some apostles, and saints resurrected several dead people.[3] Christianity at this juncture was not alone in this new fixation on the Scorpio archetype of “life after death.” Other Near Eastern cults spread to the West, including the Egyptian Isis, the Persian Mithras, and the Phrygian Cybele. These new cults, along with the Christian cult, generally involved (Scorpio) secret initiations, and they all had the hallmarks of secret societies. Though not a religion, astrology also spread in parallel to the new cults at this time as Scorpio is one of the signs that promote astrology.”[4]

The shenanigans of Le Cour et al obviously appealed to 20th-century astrologers, who embraced his proclamation that the pseudo-Pisces age commenced with the birth of Christ. The humor here is that if the pseudo-Pisces age commenced with Jesus, 2150 years later, it should enter Aquarius, and around 2600 if the constellation of Pisces is substituted for sidereal Pisces. The influx of so many Aquarius archetypes, especially in the 20 th century, has confused the astrological community, so they invented something that does not receive acknowledgement elsewhere in astrology – they pulled cusps out of the hat.

Cusps are the point of intersection of two adjoining zodiacal signs. There is a common myth, usually by novice astrologers, that at the border of two adjoining zodiacal signs their influences blur—most reputable astrologers disagree. A phenomenon that acts like half a cusp does occur – the Overflow Effect, which….

“behaves like half a (commonly applied but unproven) cusp inasmuch as the momentum of any period encountered will carry over into the following period, but the effects of a new period will not occur in advance. As a consequence, any astrological age is weaker at its start and stronger at its end. At the end of any age or subperiod, its momentum peaks and washes over the next period. Therefore, in the current Aquarian age, the influence from the previous Pisces age peaked at 1433 AD, and this influence washes over the Aquarian age while Aquarius is building up its own momentum. The Overflow Effect is particularly strong in the first half of the following period, with its quasi-period providing a demarcation.”[5]

One positive element in the evolution of our understanding of the astrological ages is that Le Cour was the first to develop the concept of an astrological age and put a date to it, even if he was out by over one thousand years. The bigger error was the naïve acceptance by the astrological community, which made the birth of Jesus the start of the pseudo-Pisces age axiomatically true without due diligence, evidence or substantiation. The final chapter of the comedy of errors of the astrological ages was put in place. Furthermore, Jesus was not born in 1AD, most historians have categorically placed his birth between 4 BC and 6 BC. Nothing that Paul Le Cour accomplished proved or substantiated that Jesus started the Pisces age.

In conclusion, there are three key players in the creation of the astrological ages, none of whom have been described or verified as being astrologers as we would understand. They were all exposed to astrology, but Hipparchus was known for his astronomy, and Vandekerkhove and Le Cour were known primarily for their esoteric interest such as Atlantis. Hipparchus invented a way to measure precession of the equinoxes, but he did not delve into ages or any astrological connection to his Vernal Point. What he successfully contributed was the understanding of precession of the equinoxes that create the astrological ages, and he accidentally supplied a method that, with a little tweaking, could calibrate the astrological ages. He did create the mechanism for the creation of the tropical zodiac.

In the late 19th century, Vandekerkhove introduced the concept of the astrological ages and was the first known person to state as such. In the early 20th century, Le Cour took it to the next step and assigned an actual date for the start of the Age of Aquarius, which, even though incorrect by over 700 years, was the first person to make such an attempt. Following this, astrologers took at face value what Le Cour had created and have continued to spread the falsity that the Age of Pisces arrived with the birth of Christ. No proof or substantiation by Le Cour has ever confirmed his isolated decision.

There was no tradition of the astrological ages, such as the Age of Pisces, in the Western astrological community for around two millennia, and suddenly, when some esotericists created the astrological ages about 150 years ago, their insights were absorbed by the astrological community and taken as true. Despite each of the three participants providing misleading clues to the astrological ages, they did extend the frontier of the ages. The astrological ages are a work-in-progress for the astrological community. How long will it take for the astrological community to grasp the truth?

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Hipparchus (c.190 BC – c.120 BC) was not known for his astrological knowledge, but for his astronomy and unfortunately, no complete original works by Hipparchus survive. What we know of him comes almost entirely through later authors, especially Ptolemy in the Almagest, plus scattered references from writers such as Strabo, Pliny, and Theon of Alexandria. As far as surviving evidence indicates, Hipparchus’ reputation in antiquity was overwhelmingly astronomical and mathematical. Early Hellenistic astrologers do appear to have inherited technical astronomical material ultimately derived from Hipparchus, but there is very little evidence that they attributed specifically astrological doctrines to him.

His influence upon astrology was therefore mostly indirect through astronomy. Hipparchus lived just before the development of Hellenistic astrology, which produced the first horoscopes. Hipparchus contributed crucial technical astronomical foundations, including improved star catalogues, the founding of trigonometry, eclipse prediction, astronomical coordinate systems, and, most importantly for our purposes, the precession of the equinoxes. Hipparchus is not known for his astrological knowledge. For example, later Hellenistic astrologers such as Vettius Valens, Dorotheus of Sidon, Manilius and later Claudius Ptolemy rarely discussed Hipparchus directly in explicitly astrological contexts.

Ptolemy does not cite Hipparchus for zodiacal archetypes, planetary meanings, houses, aspects, temperament theory, mundane astrology, or historical cycles. Nor does Ptolemy associate Hipparchus with precessional ages, world ages, or any theory resembling later astrological-age doctrine. This silence is very revealing. If Hipparchus had developed Age of Aries/Pisces theories, historical astrology based on precession, or large cosmological-age doctrines, the Tetrabiblos would probably be one of the places we would expect traces of it to survive, but it is not in that book.

It is important to note that Hipparchus discovered precession of the equinoxes due to the high quality of his astronomical observations and previous observations over a century earlier. As the discoverer of precession of the equinoxes, even though he discovered the slow retrograde movement of the heavens in relation to Earth over a 26,000-year cycle, he contributed nothing directly to the discovery of the astrological ages. Precession creates the astrological ages, but the discovery of precession of the equinoxes does not automatically lead to the revelations of the astrological ages.

Both Hipparchus and Ptolemy treated precession primarily as an astronomical correction, not as a historical or spiritual doctrine. No one mentioned an age, and this disconnectedness of historical ages and precession of the equinoxes carried forward until quite recently in the late 19^th Century AD. During this two-thousand-year period, no astrological ages based on precession existed in Western astrology. No astrologer knew about the Aries age, Pisces age or Aquarius age because their existence was totally unknown in the 2,000 years between Hipparchus and the late 18^th Century. There were astrological exercises associated with the 36,000 Great Year and other cycles, such as the Jupiter-Saturn cycle. These may have contributed towards the acceptance of large time frames being associated with astrological cycles in general in modern times.

What this means is that there is no historical tradition associated with the astrological ages as we know them, which sits in contrast to Western and Vedic astrology, which have up to 2,000 years of intensive application and scrutiny by astrologers on a day-to-day level. The modern “Age of Aquarius” framework is a modern construction, and largely developed recently between the 19th and 20th Centuries.

Numerous tangential developments occurred in these 2,000 years that prepared the way for the discovery of the astrological ages in the 19^th century. (For paid subscribers, further details will be found in the second part of this post.) The Roman religion of Mithraism is possibly an astronomical religion, as its main symbol is the Tauroctony that depicts a warrior slaying a bull. It is possible that this can be taken as symbolic of Aries replacing Taurus without specifically referencing ages, as it could just be a depiction of the Vernal Point shifting from Taurus to Aries. This scene is surrounded by four animals, supposedly representing four key constellations around the constellation of Orion, the warrior god. This also suggests that the Tauroctony is symbolic of Orion, along with some key surrounding constellations. Nevertheless, it does show that 2,000 years ago, people took astronomy to religious levels.

The animals surrounding the bull in the Tauroctony represent a cosmological framework that integrates astrology, mythology, and spiritual symbolism. They possibly illustrate the journey of the soul, the power of the divine, and the interconnectedness of life and the cosmos. This imagery serves to reinforce the teachings and beliefs of Mithraism, emphasizing themes of rebirth, divine intervention, and the aspirational ascent of the soul toward enlightenment and union with the divine.

In recent times, esoteric-minded individuals took Hipparchus’ astronomical technique for measuring precession of the equinoxes and assumed, without verification, that this technique was automatically taken as the calibrator of the astrological ages. No one had ever expressed this previously, and no one has demonstrated its validity.

The problem with adopting Hipparchus’ precession measuring technique is that it was a “new” technique due to the development of advanced mathematics by the Ancient Greeks. Mathematical astronomy was making heavy inroads, but the zodiacal constellations have an earlier pedigree when mathematics was not so entrenched – early astronomy was visually orientated, and especially focused upon astronomic phenomena on the Eastern and Western horizons known as the heliacal rising and setting of the stars and constellations.

For example, around the 21^st March each year at the Vernal Equinox, the sun is positioned at zero degrees tropical Aries – the fiducial point for the tropical zodiac, but this cannot be seen as whenever the sun is visible, no stars or constellations are visible. The conjunction of the sun with any point is therefore limited to mathematical calculations. But close to an hour before dawn, the last stars can be seen rising over the eastern horizon. One hour represents approximately 15 degrees in the movement of the Earth. What this means is that at the Vernal Equinox each year, the Sun is located at zero degrees tropical Aries, and is currently placed in the constellation of Pisces. However, one hour earlier, when the last stars could still be seen in the early dawn skies, the constellation of Aquarius is the last zodiacal constellation to be visually observed rising up on the Eastern horizon. This has been the case for centuries.

Before the Hellenistic Greeks, archeo-astronomers state that the older heliacal method was the primary method of ancient astronomers. The zodiacal constellations were originally read from their heliacal modes, not mathematical modes. Based on the ancient heliacal technique, the zodiacal constellations have been indicating that the world has been in the Age of Aquarius for centuries. The difference between the two modes is approximately 15 degrees, and it takes 72 years for the world to shift one degree in its orientation to the Vernal Equinox. 15 degrees therefore represents (15 x 72) approximately 1,100 years. The faulty Vernal Point method applied to the astrological ages delays the arrival of each age by over a thousand years compared to the heliacal method.

Based on the mathematical way of calibrating the astrological ages due to the Vernal Point entering sidereal Aquarius, symbolically represented by the constellation of Aquarius, this is focused around the year 2600. If we deduct 1100 years from 2600 to correct the mathematical approach by the heliacal approach, the result is 1500 AD. The actual year is 1433.

While I am focusing mainly on what went wrong with the evolution of the astrological ages, some aspects of the development of the astrological ages were correct. For example, instead of Hipparchus employing the Vernal Equinox (at zero degrees tropical Aries) that calibrates the astrological ages, he could have used the Autumnal Equinox (at zero degrees Libra), or either of the two solstice points, calibrating zero degrees Cancer and Capricorn. Hipparchus used the correct point for calibrating the zodiacal constellations.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, while Hipparchus’ Vernal Point approach incorrectly calibrates the astrological ages, his approach does promote quasi-ages. The midpoint of each astrological age represents the moment when dominance shifts from the first age-pair to the second. Employing age-pairs, the Pisces age is really the Aries-Pisces age, and the Aquarian age is the Pisces-Aquarius age with the first sign of an age pair the more powerful.

Using the age-pairs of Taurus–Aries (2862 BC – 715 BC) and Aries–Pisces (715 BC – 1433 AD) ages as examples, at the exact midpoint of the Taurus–Aries (2862 BC – 715 BC) age, Aries achieved overall primacy from 1824 BC to 352 AD because it dominated both the second half of the Taurus–Aries age and the first half of the Aries–Pisces age. This extended period of dominance is a “quasi-age.” A quasi-age appears superficially like a complete astrological age because one sign is culturally dominant throughout, but it lacks the full structural integrity of a true age.

The Hipparchus mathematical approach accidentally calibrates quasi-ages and quasi-ages indicate the strongest single sign at any time. For example, in the current Pisces-Aquarius age (1433 – 3581), Pisces is stronger than Aquarius for the first half until 2507, as we are currently in the Age of Aquarius and the Pisces quasi-age. This informs us that for the first half of the Age of Aquarius, Pisces is stronger than Aquarius, but Aquarius is making an impact (i.e., democracy, electricity, technology, etc). The Aquarius quasi-age does not arrive until 3581.

Based on the quasi-age approach, the following table displays the quasi-ages since the beginning of the Holocene Epoch (early BC dates have been rounded:

Table 1 - Quasi-ages (earliest dates rounded)

Viewed from our perspective in the early twenty-first century, we are in the Pisces quasi-age (coinciding with the Vernal Point’s location in the sidereal sign of Pisces, aligned roughly with the constellation of Pisces. The pseudo ages employed by astrologers align with the quasi-ages. The timing of the quasi-ages is Hipparchus’ accidental gift to astrologers.

Table 2 - The Pisces periods interfacing with Aquarius periods

Table 2 displays all three modes of the Pisces age. The bottom row displays the ages, with the more powerful overflow period in the middle row. The top row displays the interface of the Pisces and Aquarius quasi-ages. Currently, the world is in the Age of Aquarius, Pisces age overflow and Pisces quasi-age. Each of these three modes has meanings attached. For us living in the early 21st century, the new kid on the block is Aquarius, while the entrenched sign is Pisces, and the stronger of the two signs is also Pisces. A relatively comprehensive analysis of recent and current quasi-ages is available in chapter 8 of my book, The Dawning – Shedding New Light on the Astrological Ages.

Available at Amazon etc.

In conclusion, two smoking guns were created in pre-modern times (i.e., before the arrival of the Age of Aquarius in 1433 AD). Firstly, the technique most contemporary astrologers employ to calibrate the astrological ages was created by Hipparchus in the late 2^nd century BC, and this technique had nothing to do with astrological ages or astrology. It was purely an astronomical technique to correct the position of the stars and constellations due to the Earth spinning and wobbling like a top. While this approach is invalid for determining the astrological ages, it did accidentally define quasi-ages. Quasi-ages are 50% out of phase with the astrological ages, the same variation that applies between heliacal and direct position of the Vernal Point.

The second smoking gun was that following the discovery of precession of the equinoxes in the 2^nd century BC, which allows for the creation of astrological ages, no astrological ages based on precession were created by astrologers, nor was any astrological technique employed with relation to any type of age derived from calibrating precession. This means that, unlike most aspects of horoscopic astrology, there was no established tradition supported by ongoing trial and error work by astrologers over this 2,000-year period.

It must be noted that despite the early appearance of zodiacal archetypes by the Hellenistic astrologers, it took centuries for these archetypes to be established and confirmed through the ongoing work of astrologers who had to work with the embryonic signs. Astrology requires practice to be accurate, and this did not occur with the astrological ages. No one even knew they existed until around 135 years ago.

Many contemporary astrologers treat ages as if they are an add-on to horoscopic and other established forms of astrology and therefore ‘trust’ the tradition. For horoscopic astrology, an established tradition exists, but there is no tradition for the astrological ages.

In Part 2, I will reveal the third smoking gun, which is more like a smoking canon. The approach astrologers have taken with the astrological ages is a comedy of errors.

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Many astrologers, esoteric historians, and cyclical theorists over the last century have contributed to the exercise. One of the closest intellectual parallels is found in the work of Dane Rudhyar, one of the most influential astrologers of the twentieth century. Rudhyar repeatedly described world history as unfolding through vast collective cycles associated with the astrological ages. In works such as The Astrology of America’s Destiny and Astrological Timing: The Transition to the New Age, he linked the rise and decline of civilizations to shifts in collective consciousness associated with the zodiac. He viewed the Roman world and the rise of Christianity as expressions of the Piscean era and saw the United States as central to the emerging Aquarian world. Although Rudhyar did not use the term “age-empire,” he effectively treated civilizations as carriers of the dominant archetypal energies of an age.

A similar approach appeared in the writings of Alice Bailey, whose esoteric teachings strongly associated Egypt with Taurus, Christianity with Pisces, and the future global civilization with Aquarius. Bailey interpreted civilizations less as political powers and more as manifestations of evolving spiritual consciousness, yet the parallels remain clear. In her framework, Taurus represented material consolidation and sacred form, which naturally aligned with Ancient Egypt and its monumental architecture. Pisces represented religion, sacrifice, belief systems, and mass emotional identification, while Aquarius symbolizes networks, collective organization, science, and global consciousness. These themes resonate strongly with the modern United States as a civilization driven simultaneously by narrative, ideology, media, and technological systems.

The psychologist Carl Jung also contributed indirectly to this tradition. Jung did not construct a formal theory of civilizations linked to astrological ages, but he repeatedly referred to the transition from Pisces to Aquarius as a major transformation in collective human psychology. He regarded Christianity as fundamentally Piscean in nature and believed that modernity was moving toward a more Aquarian form of consciousness. Jung’s emphasis on archetypes and collective psychology influenced many later astrologers, including Rudhyar. The idea that nations themselves can embody psychological dualities and collective myths owes much to the Jungian tradition.

More recently, Ray Grasse explored similar ideas in his work Signs of the Times. Grasse associated Taurus with the monumental and agricultural civilizations of Egypt, Aries with militarism and imperial conquest, Pisces with religion and ideological systems, and Aquarius with technology, science, and global networks. His historical correspondences align remarkably closely with the sequence of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Rome, and modern America as representatives of successive astrological eras, even though he did not formalize the concept into a continuous sequence of dominant “age-empires.”

Another figure frequently connected to cyclical historical models is Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925 AD). Steiner developed a broad theory of historical epochs tied to evolving states of consciousness and cosmic influences. He viewed Egypt-Chaldea as one major civilizational epoch, followed by the Greco-Roman world, and then the modern period emerging toward a more collective and intellectually driven civilization. Steiner’s approach was spiritual and evolutionary rather than geopolitical, yet it shares the assumption that civilizations embody the dominant archetypal energies of long historical cycles.

To understand Rudolph Steiner’s approach to history and the astrological ages it is necessary to understand the Overflow Effect. Cusps, as promoted mainly by novice astrologers, do not exist. A body is in either one sign or the other, but for conceptual purposes only, assume a cusp is actually true. The Overflow Effect behaves like half a non-existent cusp since the momentum of any period encountered will carry over into the following period, but the effects of a new period will not occur in advance.

Any astrological age is weaker at its start and stronger at its end due to how ages and their sub-periods are structured in a retrograde format. The power of any age or subperiod builds its momentum over the course of its period to its maximum strength at its end, and then washes over the next period. Therefore, in the current Aquarian age, the influence from the previous Pisces age peaked at its end in 1433 CE, and this influence now washes over the Aquarian age while Aquarius is building up its own momentum. The Overflow Effect is particularly strong in the first half of the following period. In our part of the Age of Aquarius, Pisces is the most influential sign.

Rudolph Steiner, the founder of anthroposophy, produced in one respect the closest rectification of the ages to the method I employ.[1] The alignment between Steiner’s epochs and my analysis of the ages are remarkably similar, as Table 1 indicates.

Steiner’s Dates

Table 1—Steiner’s epochs compared to the astrological ages

Table 1 clearly indicates that Steiner’s epochs are fairly closely synchronized in time to my analysis of the ages when the full dual sign for each age is employed. For example, he assigns the constellation of Pisces to his fifth Epoch from 1413 to 3573 CE, while I have the Pisces-Aquarian age from 1433 to 3581 AD[2] with the understanding the first sign of an age-pair is the strongest. It appears that Steiner acknowledged the most powerful sign for each age (in bold in the above table), which technically is the overflow from the previous age. Taking this into account, Steiner’s ages are very close to mine, both in time and essence.

I do not know how Steiner determined his dates and signs for his epochs. He may have based his rectification on the birth of Rome and then worked backward and forward from this date, assigning 2,160 years to each epoch. Rudolph Steiner is the only person I am aware of to date who has somehow grasped the relatively correct placement of the astrological ages in time[3] even though he was unaware of the Overflow Effect, which he unwittingly employed. I may be the sole person in the world to date to fully understand the unbelievable feat he accomplished, as I was never able to determine the start of any astrological age based solely on the ages. Hats off to Steiner.

The opening statement by the cultural historian and astrologer, Professor Richard Tarnas, in his book Cosmos and Psyche, is that the “modern self” appeared slightly more than 500 years ago. In both Cosmos and Psyche and The Passion of the Western Mind, Richard Tarnas consistently treats the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as the decisive beginning of modernity. He portrays the Renaissance, Reformation, Scientific Revolution, and early European expansion as a profound civilizational rupture marking the collapse of the medieval worldview and the emergence of modern consciousness. Tarnas also states that within a generation, mankind moved from their medieval predecessors and assumed superhuman status with the likes of da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Columbus, Luther, and Copernicus. He elevates the achievement of Copernicus as representative of a “fundamental intellectual turning point”—as a highpoint of human reasoning, introducing the modern age to the world.

Although Tarnas generally avoids explicitly framing this transition in terms of astrological ages or the “Age of Aquarius,” his chronology closely parallels astrological interpretations that place the beginning of the modern Pisces–Aquarius era in the fifteenth century. For Tarnas, modernity emerged not simply through technological advances, but through a fundamental transformation in human consciousness, individualism, rationalism, and humanity’s relationship to the cosmos.

There are also earlier occult and esoteric writers who associated the Renaissance with a new age. August Vandekerkhove (1838 – 1923) was among the earliest figures to popularize the term “Age of Aquarius” in a French magazine, La Fronde in late February 1890, connecting modern social transformation, feminism, and new forms of consciousness with the dawning of a new age. Before the late 19^th century, no astrologer or anyone had ever heard of an astrological age, including the Age of Aquarius. There is no established tradition for the astrological ages. The topic was only picked up by astrologers about 150 years ago, whereas horoscopic astrologers follow a tradition older than 2,000 years! What astrologers picked up 150 years ago had a major error, but no astrologer of the time had the skill to discern this major error, and later astrologers have just followed the same error as if it were tradition when none existed.

Interestingly, an historian of sorts, who is not even an astrologer, seems to have grasped the concept of ages applied to history with a relatively accurate rectification. John Landon, who expresses an almost violent anti-astrological fervor whenever the topic arises, and makes some startling observations about historical epochs in his World History and the Eonic Effect—Civilization, Darwinism, and Theories of Evolution. Landon claims that, from 1500 to 1800 CE, various sudden changes emerged that brought the modern world into existence. Landon indicates, in a reference to the work of Louis Snyder, that historical developments after about 1500 AD are only sub-events of modernity,[4] and the subsequent development of the modern world is really the beginning of a New Age.[5] The rise of modernity, particularly commencing around 1500 AD, provides a major historical rupture around the 15th–16th centuries, and this rupture resulted in the rise of modernity as a “New Age”.

In essence, Landon could see the effects of the arrival of the Age of Aquarius and earlier ages without understanding astrology. He was strongly critical of both astrology generally and especially the popular “Age of Aquarius/New Age” framework. In fact, he repeatedly argued that most astrologers and New Age thinkers were misreading genuine historical patterns while incorrectly attributing them to astrological ages. Landon is referring to the concept of many astrologers that the Age of Aquarius arrived in the 1960s and 70s. He considered this absolute nonsense from a historical perspective, and the same for Jesus starting the (Pisces) age. Jesus was born into an age that had actually commenced many centuries before his time. Landon knows his history in general, but only astrology based on the precession of the equinoxes can provide accurate timing. Landon proposes ages that are 2,400 years each.

The eminent British historian Arnold Toynbee (1889–1975 AD) in Mankind and Mother Earth states that between c.1400–1550 AD, the traditional picture of social habitats around the world was totally transformed, as knowledge of different cultures became widely available. Toynbee states this change was sudden and brought immediate changes of fortunes to many people, some for the better and many for the worse.

British historian Arnold Toynbee on the cover of Time magazine

In Civilisation, the British historian Kenneth Clark, he states that Florence is where the individual was discovered in the early fifteenth century. He presents the fifteenth century and the Renaissance as a dramatic rebirth of Western civilization after the stagnation and fragmentation of the medieval world. Clark describes the Renaissance not simply as an artistic revival, but as the awakening of a new confidence in humanity, intellect, exploration, and individual achievement. Italy, particularly Florence, becomes the symbolic birthplace of this new civilization, where classical learning, realism in art, scientific curiosity, and worldly ambition combined to produce what Clark viewed as the first recognizably modern culture. Throughout Civilisation, Clark repeatedly emphasizes the sense of renewed energy and emergence associated with the Renaissance, portraying it as the moment when Europe “woke up again” and rediscovered both the ancient world and belief in human potential. His interpretation strongly aligns with broader historical and even astrological perspectives that see the fifteenth century as the beginning of the modern age and the transition away from the medieval worldview.

A surprisingly large number of historians, cultural theorists, and civilizational scholars have treated the fifteenth century and Renaissance period as the beginning of a fundamentally new historical age, often using language very close to “rebirth,” “new world,” or “new civilization.” The most influential figure is probably Jacob Burckhardt, whose landmark work The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy effectively created the modern idea of the Renaissance as the birth of modernity. Burckhardt argued that Renaissance Italy witnessed the “awakening of the individual” and the emergence of the “modern spirit” after the communal and religious consciousness of the Middle Ages. He viewed the Renaissance as a decisive break between medieval civilization and the modern world.

The French historian Jules Michelet went even further, literally popularizing the word “Renaissance” as a historical “rebirth.” Michelet described the period from the late fifteenth century onward as Europe’s reawakening from the “Dark Ages,” linking it to science, exploration, and the rediscovery of classical civilization. Johan Huizinga, although more nuanced, still treated the fifteenth century as a major transitional epoch. In The Autumn of the Middle Ages he portrayed the late medieval world as the final flowering of one civilization before the emergence of another. Huizinga’s metaphor of “autumn” implied that Europe was simultaneously witnessing the decline of medieval culture and the gestation of modernity.

More recently, historians such as Fernand Braudel and world-systems theorists associated with early modern studies have emphasized the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as the beginning of the modern global economic system. Braudel viewed the rise of Atlantic trade, capitalism, banking, and long-distance commerce during the Renaissance as the beginning of a new world-system centered initially in Italy and later in northwestern Europe. Art historian Erwin Panofsky argued that the Renaissance represented the moment Europe became consciously modern by recognizing its separation from antiquity and deliberately reconstructing classical civilization in a new form. Panofsky believed the Renaissance could only occur once Europe became self-aware historically, which made it fundamentally different from earlier medieval “revivals.”

Contemporary historians continue to debate the precise meaning of the Renaissance, but many still describe the fifteenth century as a civilizational turning point. Recent macro historical works such as The World at First Light explicitly argue that the Renaissance was not merely a prelude to modernity but “modernity itself,” with the scientific revolution, global exploration, capitalism, and new concepts of individuality all emerging directly from this period.

Even when historians disagree about the exact dates or mechanisms, a recurring pattern appears across modern historiography: the fifteenth century is repeatedly treated as a threshold period marking the end of the medieval world and the birth of a new civilizational age characterized by exploration, individualism, capitalism, science, technological expansion, and global integration. This interpretation strongly parallels astrological frameworks that associate the fifteenth century with the beginning of a new age or major civilizational transition.

An interesting correlation I discovered some years ago in my research is that the phrase “last 500 years” is very common in the titles of published books, but not “last 400 years” or “last 600 years”. The phrase “last 500 years” appears substantially more common in macro historical, civilizational, and academic discourse than “last 400 years.” Based on Google Ngram-style[6] usage patterns and broader publishing trends, “last 500 years” functions almost as a natural historical unit because it roughly corresponds to the Renaissance, the rise of maritime Europe, capitalism, colonial expansion, scientific modernity, and the emergence of the modern world-system. Historians, sociologists, environmental researchers, and civilizational theorists frequently use the 500-year framework because it conveniently captures the transition from the late medieval world into modernity.

By comparison, “last 400 years” appears less culturally entrenched and tends to occur more often in narrower national, colonial, demographic, or scientific contexts rather than grand civilizational narratives. The 400-year framework lacks the symbolic and historiographical weight carried by the Renaissance-to-present period. In practical terms, Google Ngram trends suggest that “last 500 years” has significantly greater visibility and recurrence in published literature than “last 400 years,” particularly after the mid-20th century, when long-duration global history became more popular.

This difference is intellectually interesting because it suggests that modern historical consciousness may naturally gravitate toward approximately 500 years as the perceived duration of the “modern era.” In effect, the Renaissance and early modern transition appear deeply embedded in how historians and writers unconsciously periodize history.

Recently, in a discussion in an astrology group, I was labelled an “outlier” for my presentation of the astrological ages because I heretically commence the Age of Aquarius in the 15^th century. The interesting thing is that the knowledgeable people in the world know that a major historical change occurred a little over 500 years ago, with many calling it a new age, or just the arrival of modernity, which in comparison to the preceding Dark Age, was a new age. The heretics of the astrological ages are the misguided astrologers (the vast majority) who fall for the delusion that the main avatar of Western society started the Pisces age, when all Jesus did was start a new religion, and even that was down to his followers.

If any avatar is associated with the start of the Pisces age, it would be Buddha, who manifested shortly after the arrival of the Pisces age in 715 BC. The two other main avatars appeared at the following age-decan cusps – Jesus appropriately at the Scorpio decan cusp in 1 AD, explaining the cross as a symbol of (Scorpio) death, being the main symbol for Christianity, and Muhammad near the Cancer age-decan cusp 717 AD. Cancer archetypes are strongly represented in Islam.

In conclusion, something very special occurred in the 15^th century. The reason why humans were able to send people into space and to the moon in the 1960s and 1970s was because of the scientific momentum that started with Leonardo da Vinci, and followed by Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler, Sir Isaac Newton and so on. To suggest that the Age of Aquarius arrived in the 20^th century is based on ignorance of history and lack of understanding of the real astrology associated with the astrological ages.

One of the curious aspects of research astrologers’ pursuit of the Holy Grail of the astrological ages – when did the Age of Aquarius begin – is that they have not realized that, at a minimum, in any period of 2150 years, which is the length of an astrological age, one century must have the start of an age. Provided the arrival of an astrological age is noticeable, which century stands out? If we subtract 2,150 years from 2026, we arrive at 125 BC. Therefore, between 125 BC and 2026 AD, one of those centuries marks the beginning of an age. AI is excellent at perceiving historical cycles and cyclical history, and so I gave it the task of delineating which of the centuries between 125 BC and 2026 AD was the most critical century.

This is what AI stated:

Over the last 2,150 years, many centuries have been dramatic, destructive, innovative, or transformative, but if the question is which century permanently altered the structure of the world in ways that still define modern civilization, then the fifteenth century stands apart from all the others. The fifteenth century was not merely another historical period—it was the foundational century of modernity itself. Earlier centuries certainly produced major empires, wars, religions, and philosophical systems, but the fifteenth century effectively rewired the operating system of civilization.

The arrival of the printing press around 1450 fundamentally altered the velocity and scale of information. For the first time in history, knowledge could be replicated mechanically and distributed widely, weakening centralized authority and accelerating literacy, intellectual exchange, and eventually scientific inquiry. This alone marked one of the greatest cognitive revolutions in human history. Only three years later, in 1453, Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks, bringing the long history of the Eastern Roman Empire to an end almost exactly on the Pisces–Aquarius age cusp. The fall of Constantinople redirected trade routes, intensified Europe’s search for maritime alternatives, and accelerated the Age of Exploration.

At the same time, the Renaissance consolidated across Italy and northwestern Europe. Medieval metaphysics and collective religious identity increasingly gave way to humanism, individual inquiry, artistic realism, and intellectual self-confidence. Europe effectively rediscovered both the ancient world and itself. By 1492, the Atlantic world had been permanently opened, initiating the first true phase of globalization. Trade networks expanded across oceans, precious metals flooded Europe from the Americas, demographic systems were transformed, disease patterns shifted globally, and capitalism began evolving into a world system.

The fifteenth century therefore stands apart because it did not simply intensify existing structures—it created new ones. It initiated global trade networks, transformed monetary systems, accelerated information exchange, began European global dominance, and established the foundations for modern science, finance, and technological acceleration. Other centuries, such as the seventeenth, nineteenth, or twentieth, certainly reshaped the world, but they largely built upon structures already established during the Renaissance transition. The fifteenth century was not merely a surge in activity; it was a hinge-point in civilization itself.

Note: Based on the above, I then asked AI about the 8^th century BC, because if the Age of Aquarius arrived in the 15^th century, the Age of Pisces occurred in the 8^th century BC:

The 8th century BCE stands out in a remarkably similar way, though on a different level. Historians often place it within the opening phase of the Axial Age, roughly 800–200 BC, a period identified by Karl Jaspers as one of the great turning points in human consciousness. What makes the 8th century BCE extraordinary is the synchronised emergence of major civilizational transformations across multiple unrelated cultures at almost the same time.

In Greece, the Dark Age ended, alphabetic literacy spread, the Homeric tradition emerged, and the polis or city-state system began consolidating. These developments laid the foundations for philosophy, democracy, and rational inquiry. In Israel, the prophetic tradition deepened and ethical monotheism became increasingly central, shifting identity away from tribe and toward moral and covenantal consciousness. In Mesopotamia, the Neo-Assyrian Empire developed increasingly sophisticated systems of imperial administration and large-scale governance. In China, the intellectual foundations that would later produce Confucianism and Daoism were beginning to emerge, with increasing focus upon ethics, cosmic order, and social harmony.

What makes the 8th century BC so pivotal is that it marks a transition from inherited mythological consciousness toward reflective and ethical consciousness. Humanity increasingly began asking abstract and universal questions concerning justice, truth, morality, governance, and the individual’s role within society. This was not simply a political or technological transition—it was a cognitive restructuring of civilization itself.

From a long-cycle historical perspective, both the 8th century BCE and the fifteenth century CE function as ignition points. The former ignited philosophical and ethical consciousness across Eurasia, while the latter ignited modernity, globalization, capitalism, technological acceleration, and the modern world-system. Very few centuries in history display this degree of synchronized civilizational transformation.

[1] Chambers Biographical Dictionary, p. 1392

[2] “Cultural Epochs and Astronomy.” Retrieved 17 April 2010, http://www.expreso.co.cr/centaurs/steiner/epochs.html

[3] I have only obtained secondary sources for Steiner’s approach to the astrological ages, and include this material in good faith due to the presumed close alignment of Steiner’s research to my own

[4] Great Turning Points in History

[5] John Landon, extract from “World History And The Eonic Effect Civilization, Darwinism, and Theories of Evolution,” http://eonix.8m.com/chapone6.htm, Retrieved c.2006

[6] A “Google Ngram-style” chart or analysis tracks how frequently specific words, phrases, or names appear in a massive database of written text over a set period of time.

It replicates the function of the official Google Books Ngram Viewer, which scans millions of digitized books to show cultural and linguistic trends through history.

Many astrologers and even AI complain about the terminology I employ with the astrological ages. Terms like micro-age decans, overflow, and quasi-age are deemed complicated or unusual. The feedback I get is that there is a demand for dumbed-down or even pop-astrology applied to the astrological ages. It seems that readers and viewers like astrological ages, but not anything deeper. It is not necessary to grasp the intricate terminology and nuances of the ages and associated periods in reading my posts, and if these astrological periods are too complicated for you, skip over the details.

One reason why astrologers have an aversion to the technical details associated with the astrological ages may be that they have never had to deal with them. Up until recently, there were just ages. People could relate to an Age of Aquarius, or Age of Pisces, but not a Pisces nano-age decan overflow. This preference away from technical detail is not tolerated in horoscopic astrology. Anyone engaging in standard astrology is expected to know all the technical aspects and associated terminology, and there are far more details associated with horoscopic astrology compared to the astrological ages.

I do have a post called The Age of Aquarius for Dummies, which works through the mechanics behind the astrological ages. This will be updated soon. If you want to gain mastery of the astrological ages, you need to learn the mechanics that apply to them. It requires a few major elements. Firstly, think of an onion with different layers. One layer is the ages (2,150 years), the next is sub-ages (178 years), the micro-ages (15 years), and finally nano-ages (15 months). There actually are pica-ages of 5 weeks each, but these are fragile and nebulous, and rarely referred to in my posts and videos.

Secondly, each of these periods has decans. For example, we are in the Age of Aquarius (1433 – 3581), but we are also in the first decan of the Age of Aquarius, the Libra age-decan (1433 – 2149). Thirdly, every period from an age over 2,000 years in length to a tiny 5-week pica-age flows over onto the following period, in what I call the ‘overflow’. For example, the world is currently in the Age of Aquarius, but the same period of time is also the Pisces age overflow. This applies to all periods associated with the astrological ages. Overflows are more powerful. This means that despite currently being in the Age of Aquarius, the influence of the Pisces age overflow is almost twice as strong. If you want to indulge in Aquarius at the top of the totem pole, you will have to get reincarnated in the Age of Capricorn, starting around 3581, when the Aquarius age overflow will be the most powerful influence.

No traditional astrologer is going to limit themselves to only the sun sign when examining a person or event – they want the full horoscope. The same applies to the astrological ages. If you don’t want to delve deeper than the astrological age, you are missing 90% of the story. An astrologer expert in horoscopic astrology must return to kindergarten if they want to start investigating the astrological ages in earnest. This is troubling to many astrologers. I know, because I have done it twice. Firstly, when I started learning Vedic astrology, I had to return to kindergarten, which is galling if you already have proficiency in Western astrology. Secondly, when I started studying the astrological ages, I again had to start at the beginning, but there were no texts to guide me. All the existing books with details on the Age of Aquarius that I had access to were basically just the blind leading the blind. This remains the dominant paradigm in this genre of astrology.

Note

This post forms part of The Astrology of the USA Series. The purpose of this post is to commence exploring the astrological elements that constitute the astrological signature of the USA. In The Immaculate Astrological Conception of the USA, I identified three major components of the USA’s astrological signature: Pisces, Aquarius and Capricorn. This post is entirely focused on analyzing the Pisces element in the USA’s astrological signature.

The concept for this post was derived from an earlier version I completed in November 2011. It is available at Pisces America.

Introduction

The astrology of the United States suggests that Pisces is the major sign associated with the USA and insinuates that the USA, behaves more like two countries rolled into one due to the two fish symbology applied to Pisces. It is a nation with built-in dualities greater than most countries experience, which is why it has already had a civil war and regularly attacks itself, such as with the Prohibition and, recently, the War on Drugs. Ice rounding up ‘illegals’ is just another attack on itself. Another intrinsic duality is based on race due to the post-slavery reality that descended upon the USA after the American Civil War, and again, slavery is ruled by Pisces. It can be argued that the race divide has been extended to Latinos in the USA, whether legal or not. This is not criticism, it’s a description. Unless the intrinsic bipolar nature of the USA is recognized and understood, the USA will remain a mystery to much of the rest of the world and to itself. Pisces is the most mysterious of the twelve signs.

The Empire of the Pisces-Aquarius Age

For the last five to seven thousand years, the world has had an age-empire associated with each astrological age. Each of these age-empires reflected the dominant astrological archetypes of its time. Under the influence of the Gemini age, Mesopotamia gave us writing and the cities between the two rivers’. The influence of the Taurus age gave us the massive pyramids, temples and structures of Ancient Egypt (and megaliths elsewhere). Ancient Rome rode the coattails of the Aries age and produced the mightiest pre-modern military organization including shock and awe tactics.

According to historians, the modern era began in the 15^th century, which coincided with the arrival of the Pisces-Aquarius age in 1433 AD – though commonly called the Age of Aquarius. Historians are better at detecting ages than astrologers. Upon the arrival of the new age, leadership in global trade and maritime power shifted from the long-dominant Italian city-states to the Iberian empires of Spain and Portugal, followed by the Dutch Republic as the leading commercial and financial power of the 17th century. Britain then emerged as the first truly global industrial and naval hegemon, with leadership gradually passing to the United States in the 20th century.

Similar to the destiny of previous global powers since the arrival of the Age of Aquarius, many commentators predict that the USA will also fade away soon, similar to the UK, Spain, and all that went before it. Many expect China to be the new leading superpower in the world. The astrology of the astrological ages does not agree. This is because the USA is not just any nation, all the evidence indicates it is the age-empire of our times.

As an age-empire, the USA is here to stay for many centuries at a minimum, and possibly even two millennia in total, but not without much disarray and turmoil. Previous age-empires lasted a long time, but also experienced great turmoil at times. Despite the massive turmoil regularly associated with Ancient Rome as the Empire of the Aries-Pisces age (715 BC – 1433 AD), it maintained its role for close to a thousand years, and this can be extended to two millennia if the Eastern Roman Empire, with its capital at Constantinople, is taken into account. The village that evolved into Ancient Rome was formed within decades of the beginning of the Aries-Pisces age in 715 BC, and the final collapse occurred 20 years after the end of this same age with the fall of Constantinople, as the capital of the old Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine). One way or another, age-empires keep their foot in the door for close to 2,150 years of each astrological age.

The USA is not really the empire of the Pisces age, it’s the empire of the Pisces-Aquarius age, as no astrological age is insular. Pisces provides the USA its inspiration via the American Dream, capitalism, Hollywood, religion, glitzy image and illusions, while Aquarius provides technology, networks, and innovation. If Rome built roads and armies, America builds platforms and stories. Streaming media shapes global imagination. Technology platforms structure daily life. (Pisces) corporations, intangible yet powerful, act like living entities. The USA is both engineered and imagined. That combination is not accidental. It is structural and aligned to the partnership of Pisces and Aquarius, with Pisces the senior partner.

Pisces is symbolized by two fish swimming in opposite directions. This duality is not subtle, it is foundational for the USA. The USA speaks the Aquarian language of freedom, democracy, and human rights, and it genuinely believes in those ideals. At the same time, its foreign policy, like that of every great power, democratic or not, operates through strategic interest, influence, and intervention. These are not contradictions in practice. They are coexisting realities. The same nation that promotes democratic values can also support autocratic regimes, military or economic interventions, or outcomes that serve its interests. This is not uniquely American, it is historical, but America’s scale makes it more visible.

The modern information environment has amplified another tension. The USA champions freedom of speech and open discourse, yet at the same time, information is filtered, curated, amplified, or suppressed through complex systems—governmental, corporate, and algorithmic. For example, the mainstream media’s depiction of the Iran Conflict is just plain misleading and behaves like the propaganda arm of the US government. We now live in a world where information is abundant, truth is contested and narratives are managed. This is Pisces in its modern (Aquarius) form, not just propaganda, but digitally reinforced perception.

Ask immigrants, creatives, or entrepreneurs, and many will still describe the United States as a place of extraordinary opportunity. And they are not wrong. But that opportunity exists alongside widening inequality, uneven access to (Virgo) healthcare and education and stark differences in lived experience. The promise is real, but so are the limits.

No country has driven (Aquarius) technological change in the past century quite like the United States. Artificial intelligence, digital networks, space exploration, biotech—these are transformative forces, and America has led the way. But transformation is never neutral. Innovation creates opportunity and wealth but also instability, displacement, and fragmentation. The same systems that connect people can divide them. The same tools that empower can also control.

The United States presents itself rightly as a champion of (Aquarius) freedom. Yet internally, it contains deep cultural divisions, competing moral frameworks and unresolved tensions between tradition and change. These are not signs of failure, they are signs of a system under strain, trying to reconcile competing visions of itself. Much like late Republican Rome in the previous age, the system is not collapsing, it is reconfiguring itself while under strain.

Perhaps the most important and least acknowledged feature of the modern age is that people believe in their own narratives, and Pisces is the ruler of belief systems. MAGA supporters are not duplicitous, they genuinely believe their perspective is correct. Beliefs tend to have a life of their own. Collective belief systems provide adherents with a sense of authority due to their perceived collective righteousness. This can make a person feel invincible. On a simplistic level, the current Pisces-Aquarius age is a battlefield between Pisces beliefs and Aquarius intellect.

Another side effect of belief systems is that if a nation, or segment of a nation, believes it is acting correctly, then opposition is seen not just as disagreement, but as error—or even threat. Opponents can be labelled as traitors. This is not unique to the United States, but the United States operates at a scale where its belief system shapes global reality. Belief systems, unfortunately, are arbitrary and virtually limitless, and there is no guarantee that beliefs have integrity or lasting value – they can be based on prejudice and baseless claims depending upon the fickle mood of the populace.

The two fish of Pisces are not just external, they are also internal, cultural, and psychological. The United States is not hypocritical in the simple sense. It is dual, combining idealism and strategy, both an open and controlled society, creative and disruptive, generous and self-interested. To accept only one side is to misunderstand it. To reject one side is to fall into illusion. What people may find difficult is that to accept America, you also need to accept a (Pisces) drama queen who is bipolar.

The fault lines in the psyche of the USA have again been placed under stress with the MAGA movement and the election of Donald Trump as president twice. The Industrial North has been the major partner in the USA since the American Civil War until Trump arrived, but now, in a variation of a return to a divided USA of Civil War times, the Industrial North has to play second fiddle to the MAGA movement based on very different values. The current situation is in many ways a rehash of the American Civil War without the armies.

Coincidentally, in 2026, the current astrology of the Age of Aquarius is much the same as that in place during the American Civil War. The American Civil War (1861 – 1865) occurred in a Libra micro-age decan overflow (1861 – 1866), Cancer micro-age overflow (1851 – 1866), while the world is currently in the Libra micro-age decan overflow (2024 – 2029) and Cancer micro-age overflow (2014 – 2029). This is the first time that such an astrological repeat has occurred for the USA since the American Civil War. In essence, the USA is currently in a type of civil war, supported by the expression of many MAGA followers that they essentially want to destroy the USA by draining the swamp. The humor here is that when you drain the (Pisces) swamp, there would be next to nothing left, as the swamp is an integral part of the USA.

The United States remains the strongest expression in the world of our current Pisces-Aquarius age (1433 – 3581), which is a direct result of its status as an age-empire. The USA is an empire of innovation and narrative with a system of freedom and contradiction, and a culture where reality and perception constantly clash and interact. The two fish are not a flaw, they are the mechanism. Until both are recognized, any analysis of America will always be incomplete. For the USA, the question is not whether the glass is half full or half empty, the question is whether we are willing to acknowledge both halves at the same time.

The USA behaves as if it were two countries trapped in the same land, each with its own ideals and ethics, supposedly trying to reconcile their opposing ideals and desires, but often resorting to extreme political conflict instead. It’s an issue that remains unresolved, and the astrology suggests that the USA will come close to tearing itself apart over the coming centuries, but ultimately remain the age-empire of our times. This aligns with the plight of the two previous age-empires, Ancient Rome and Ancient Egypt. A significant resolution for bipolar USA is probably not due until around the year 2500, when the Pisces quasi-age (359 AD – 2507 AD) concludes which means that the influence of Pisces will reduce, and Aquarius will increase.

In 2507, the Pisces quasi-age comes to an end, and the Aquarius quasi-age (2507 – 4600) begins. This change occurs at the exact midpoint of the current Pisces-Aquarius age (1433 – 3581) and indicates a major shift in the relationship between Pisces and Aquarius. Until 2507, Pisces is the dominant and more powerful entrenched partner, but in compensation, Aquarius is the strongest emergent sign in the world. After 2507, a balance is established between Pisces and Aquarius, so the currently overwhelming medieval belief-driven and religious Pisces influence in the world will be further curtailed by intellectual Aquarius, with the future focus more on liberty and democratic freedoms compared to our confused world of today.

The developing angst and distrust held by both fish in Pisces USA will ultimately deteriorate as this century proceeds, as the world approaches the Libra-Gemini age-decan cusp in 2088. Age-empires are historically vulnerable to age-decan cusps, and it should be expected that some major development, such as a coup, war, or even a massive natural disaster, will materialize later this century, creating a temporary interruption to the momentum of the USA, before it is rectified for better or worse. In the case of Ancient Rome, when it encountered its first age-decan cusp, the multi-century Roman Republic fell, to be replaced by the Roman Empire with a Caesar at its head. Historians remain undecided over the benefits or loss to Ancient Rome associated with this change.

Other Evidence of Pisces America

The Divided States of America

According to Diana Stirling in her book, “The Divided States of America” [1]

“Americans increasingly see the country as more divided than at any time since the Civil War. Pew Research Center polling reveals a sharp rise in partisan hostility: in 2022, 72% of Republicans and 63% of Democrats viewed the opposing party as more immoral than other Americans—up dramatically from 47% and 35% in 2016.”

This highlights one of the most persistent features of the United States - its tendency to divide into opposing internal blocs that behave less like competing political factions and more like rival conceptions of reality. While all nations experience disagreement, the American pattern appears unusually binary, expansive, and recurrent. The division changes form over time, but the underlying structure remains remarkably consistent. The two fish of Pisces always make their appearance in the USA.

At different points in its history, the fault line has appeared, yet the precise nature of the split is never fixed. The content changes—from slavery to culture, from economics to identity—but the bipolar tendency persists. The key divisions to date are:

· Federalists vs Anti-Federalists (1790s)
Early conflict over whether the new republic should be centrally governed or locally controlled.

· North vs South (1820s–1865)
The most extreme rupture, culminating in the American Civil War over slavery, federal authority, and competing economic systems. This remains the clearest example of the country functioning as “two nations” within one state.

· Industrial vs Agrarian America (late 19th century)
Conflicts between financial-industrial centers and rural populist movements during the Gilded Age, itself regarded as one of the most polarized periods in US history.

· Isolationists vs Internationalists (1930s–1940s)
Division over America’s role in the world before World War II.

· Segregationists vs Civil Rights movement (1950s–1960s)
A moral and constitutional split over race, citizenship, and federal enforcement.

· Counterculture vs Traditional America (1960s–1970s)
Vietnam, religion, sexuality, drugs, and authority created what later became known as the “culture wars.”

· Red States vs Blue States (1990s–present)
Perhaps the clearest modern manifestation with urban versus rural, secular versus religious, globalist versus nationalist, college-educated versus non-college and East and west coasts versus interior America

The 2000 election strongly crystallized this imagery. What distinguishes the American case is the scale at which these divisions reorganize social life. Geography, religion, media consumption, education, economics, and even perceptions of reality increasingly align into competing systems of interpretation. The country repeatedly forms into dual structures that coexist uneasily within the same political framework, each viewing the other not simply as mistaken, but as alien.

More recently, the division has deepened beyond politics into culture, geography, media consumption, identity, and even perceptions of reality itself. Researchers note that Americans increasingly sort themselves into politically homogeneous communities, marriages, media ecosystems, and social networks. Some analysts argue the divide is now stronger than at any point since the Civil War. The United States thus appears less as a unified civilization with periodic disagreements, and more as a society that continually reorganises itself into opposing currents whose boundaries shift, but never entirely disappear. In this sense, the duality is not incidental to the American system; it may be one of its defining characteristics.

Corporations & Capitalism

The development of modern capitalism in the United States reveals another dimension of its underlying Pisces structure. The corporation is treated as a legal entity, distinct from the individuals who compose it, and has become the primary vehicle of economic activity. A corporation is a fake body, and this is where it gets its Pisces credentials. Obviously, when a Pisces age-empire comes across something like Pisces-ruled corporations arranged to provide a capitalist economy, it’s going to be enamored. Americans treat capitalism as if it is a gift from God.

Over time, the American economic model has expanded beyond national boundaries, shaping global markets and embedding itself within nearly every aspect of modern life. Value is increasingly generated not through tangible production alone, but through financial systems, intellectual property, and expectation—forms that are less material and more abstract – something strongly preferred by Pisces.

The expansion of capitalism has been accompanied by recurring attempts to regulate and stabilize the system. Financial crises, market volatility, and growing inequality have prompted periodic interventions, but these do not fundamentally alter the underlying dynamics. Instead, they tend to introduce new layers of oversight while leaving the core structure intact. American capitalism does not settle into a fixed form, such as would be expected if Taurus were the key sign in force. It evolves through cycles of growth, disruption, and partial correction, with each phase generating new complexities. The system expands into increasingly abstract domains, while efforts to contain it remain reactive and incomplete. As elsewhere, the pattern persists: what grows beyond clear definition is repeatedly brought under constraint, without ever fully resolving the tension between expansion and control. America prefers to let its business people engage in semi-illegal, if not illegal, financial activity and make as much money as possible, rather than adequately regulate. For example, during the Iran conflict of early 2026, just before many major announcements by President Trump on the progress of the war, strategic trades in oil are regularly made, grossing hundreds of millions of dollars in profit for the inside traders. This is noted, but rarely acted upon. Pisces is attracted to murkiness, such as a swamp.

Oil

The American relationship with (Pisces) oil is not merely structural—it is episodic, conflict-driven, and historically specific. The modern US oil era effectively begins with the 1901 Spindletop gusher in Texas, which transformed the United States into the world’s leading oil producer. This was located not only in a Pisces micro-age (1895 – 1910), but also the Pisces sub-age decan overflow (1851 – 1910), resonating with the massive Pisces age-decan overflow (1433 – 2149) and even more massive Pisces age overflow (1433 – 3581). This time was destined to start the Oil Age.

By the early 20th century, oil had become central to industrial expansion, military power, and the emerging global economy. This dominance began to shift after World War II. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, US domestic production had peaked, and dependence on foreign oil increased. The turning point came with the 1973–74 oil crisis, in a Virgo micro-age (1970 – 1985), when an Arab oil embargo led to shortages, price shocks, and a sudden recognition of vulnerability. This was followed by the 1979 Iranian Revolution, located in the same Virgo micro-age, and which triggered another supply shock, and reinforced the strategic importance of Middle Eastern oil. From this point onward, US foreign policy became deeply entangled with energy security—visible in the 1991 Gulf War, the long-term military presence in the Persian Gulf, and the broader geopolitics of the region. 1991 was also under the influence of anti-oil Virgo, specifically the Virgo micro-age overflow (1985 – 2000)

A second major shift occurred in the early 21st century. Beginning around 2008–2010, advances in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling triggered the “shale revolution,” commonly known as fracking, which dramatically increased domestic production. This coincided with a Pisces micro-age decan overflow (2005 – 2010). By 2018–2019, the USA had once again become the world’s largest oil producer. Yet this apparent return to energy independence did not eliminate instability. Price collapses (2014–2016), the demand shock during COVID-19 in 2020, and renewed volatility following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine all demonstrated that the USA remains embedded in a global system it cannot fully control.

Within the astrological framework, oil can be read as a deeply Piscean substance—fluid, hidden, and drawn from below the surface, yet capable of transforming entire systems. It enables movement, expansion, and the construction of modern life, but it also fosters dependency, opacity, and systemic vulnerability. The American system has repeatedly sought to capture, regulate, and stabilize this fluid force—through strategic reserves (established in 1975), market mechanisms, military projection, and technological innovation.

Oil, a fluid, expansive force, is repeatedly subjected to systems of control that seek to define and contain it. The result is a cycle in which the very effort to impose order contributes to distortion, dependency, and periodic crisis. Oil thus becomes not only a foundation of American power, but also a source of recurring tension—an energy that can be harnessed, but never fully stabilized.

For paid subscribers, the additional topics examined include:

• Petrodollar

• Religion

• End Times or the Rapture

• Crime

• Prisons

• Healthcare & Paharmaceuticals

• Opioid Crisis

• Intoxication vs Prohibition

• The War on Drugs

• Hollywood

• Music

• Dancing

• Plastics

• Suburbs

• Reinvention vs Reality

• Lack of Definition in the USA

• The Pisces Wrecking Ball

• Did the Indigenous American Indians Align with Pisces?

Read more

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The USA’s international reputation is currently at a low ebb, and to try and make sense of the situation, I am commencing a series of articles on the astrology of the USA from the perspective of the astrological ages. Through identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the USA, and other countries currently in the spotlight, it may shed some light on the situation.

When the first British settlers came ashore in 1607 in what is now Virginia, USA, little did they know the consequences of their action – the birth of the Empire of the Pisces-Aquarius age. They did not know that a major astrological development occurred in 1433 when the multi-thousand-year Pisces age (Aries-Pisces age) came to an end, and the Aquarian age (Pisces-Aquarius age) commenced. This change introduced modernity to the world as a major shift from the Dark Ages. This surge in Pisces was also appropriately aligned with the start of major oceanic voyages of discovery, global trade and colonization, the start of the modern slave trade, and the search for spices. Europe, oceans, slavery and species are all ruled by Pisces – as is the USA.

The following is the astrological table showing the relevant astrological periods in 1607, near the beginning of the Age of Aquarius (Pisces-Aquarius age) in 1433. (To understand the mechanics of the astrological ages, such as the Age of Aquarius, see Age of Aquarius for Dummies)

Table 1 – the astrological signature of the conception of the USA in 1607

The first point of interest in the above table is the number of cells assigned to “Capricorn”. This is because the first sub-age in the Age of Aquarius is the Capricorn sub-age (1433 – 1612). Dividing this sub-age into three sub-age decans places Jamestown in the Capricorn sub-age decan (1552 – 1612). In addition to decans, each sub-age can be divided into twelve micro-ages of almost 15 years each, and Jamestown was settled within the Capricorn micro-age (1597 – 1612). This Capricorn micro-age also has three decans, and the relevant one for Jamestown is either the Capricorn micro-age decan (1607 – 1612) or the Taurus micro-age decan (1602 - 1607). This uncertainty is not critical, as further examination will clarify the situation.

What the Actual column of the table indicates is that at the formation of the modern USA, Capricorn was very strong. The Aquarius element was established at the base, and Libra has a stake, and this is symbolically represented in the USA with the Statue of Liberty.

However, the real power sits with the Overflow column. Due to the retrograde nature of the astrological ages, each age (and sub-period) is at its peak power at its end (as the end of each age coincides with a decan, sub-age, sub-age decan, micro-age and micro-age decan of the same sign, empowering each other). This heightened energy doesn’t just disappear like a puff of smoke, it behaves like a tsunami over the following period. This applies to all ages and every sub-period. Ages are not blocks in a wall but behave like waves – very similar to a sine wave.

The settlement of Jamestown coincided with the Pisces age-overflow, Pisces age-decan overflow, and Pisces sub-age overflow. Thus, Pisces was also very strong at the settlement of Jamestown. The balance of sub-periods has Taurus twice, plus an Aquarius micro-age. The adjudicator between periods and the stronger overflow periods are quasi-periods. When any period plus its overflow is combined and produces a wave structure similar to a sine wave, the middle and upper 50% of this wave is the quasi-period, showing the period of greatest impact of the wave. Currently, the world is in the Pisces quasi-age (359 – 2507 AD), which, despite the massive strides of the Age of Aquarius as the emergent sign since 1433, the power remains with Pisces. For the USA, the quasi-periods have two positions held by Pisces, three by Capricorn and one by Taurus.

Table 1 provides all the information we require about the USA’s astrological signature. The most plentiful sign is Capricorn (7), followed by Pisces (5), Taurus (3), Aquarius (2) and Libra (1). This numerical addition of each sign does not entirely capture the comprehensive analysis of the USA’s astrological signature, but provides an excellent initial insight. Basically, the USA is jointly ruled by Pisces and Aquarius, with Pisces the dominant partner. Capricorn provides a very strong input, and is possibly the second strongest element in the USA’s astrological signature, with a smaller focus applied to Taurus and Libra. Effectively, Pisces and Capricorn have the strength with Aquarius tagging along.

The settlement of Jamestown did not occur at a random time, it was a virtual immaculate conception for the USA because it captured the maximum key energies of most components of its astrological signature. Every age and sub-period has an astrological backbone. In the Pisces age and overflow (715 BC – 1433 AD – 3581 AD), every Pisces micro-age (15 years) and micro-age decan (5 years), plus the occasional Pisces sub-age (178 years) and sub-age decan (60 years), combined with their respective overflow periods, create the Pisces backbone. 1607 was in the Pisces age overflow (1433 – 3581), and the whole of the Pisces sub-age overflow (1433 – 1612) is one “joint” of the multi-thousand-year Pisces backbone. Pisces does not casually appear in the USA’s astrological signature, it is fully empowered due to the resonance between the Pisces age overflow (1433 – 3581), Pisces age-decan overflow (1433 – 2149), Pisces sub-age overflow (1433 – 1612). The larger periods empower the smaller periods of the same sign.

1607 was also in the Aquarius backbone of the Age of Aquarius. Jamestown was settled in the Aquarius micro-age overflow (1597 – 1612). This 15-year Aquarius micro-age overflow resonated with the full strength of the incoming Age of Aquarius (1433 – 3581). Therefore, the USA was settled when both Pisces and Aquarius were elevated.

Furthermore, 1607 was also in the backbone of the Capricorn sub-age (1433 – 1612) with both the Capricorn micro-age (1597 – 1612) and Capricorn micro-age decan (1607 – 1612) in force. So all three key signs of Pisces, Aquarius and Capricorn were in their respective backbones. Even the Taurus micro-age decan overflow (1607 – 1612) sits within the backbone of the Taurus sub-age decan and overflow (1493 – 1552 – 1612). Having nearly all these components of the USA’s astrological signature in their respective backbones puts them at their maximum power and is akin to pulling the handle of the poker machine and getting all aces! The one dissident is Libra – it is the only unempowered constituent of America’s astrological signature.

In summary, of the five key zodiacal signs (Pisces, Capricorn, Taurus, Aquarius and Libra) that comprise the USA’s astrological signature, all but Libra are in their respective backbones, and the astrological backbones are the most influential parts within their respective parental period. For example, most of the key developments and evolution of the current Age of Aquarius are not distributed evenly, but congregate around its backbone.

Understanding backbones explains how each astrological age behaves. Every five months, a new nano-age decan appears, and every 15 months, a new nano-age appears. The zodiacal sign associated with both periods will not only promote the archetypes of the zodiacal sign, but its strength is predicated on resonance with larger and more powerful signs. For example, as I write, the world is passing through a Libra micro-age decan overflow (Nov 2024 – Nov 2029) resonating with the Libra age-decan (1433 – 2149). This places the world in a mini-era of the greatest conflict (opposition) that most people will experience in their lives. It is also within a Virgo nano-age overflow (Feb – Jul 2026) with Virgo opposed to the Pisces astrological signature of the USA. Libra promotes upper-level conflicts in the world, and Virgo has Pisces USA in the 7^th house mode of conflict and opposition. The astrology gods have pulled Iran out of the hat to fulfil this role.

There is something else that is a little eccentric about the USA’s astrological signature, related to the three signs of Pisces, Aquarius and Capricorn, which form the core of the USA’s astrological signature, but are contiguous signs along the zodiac with no gaps in between. This means that in most 178-year sub-ages, these three micro-ages will appear together. If the Pisces, Capricorn and Aquarian micro-ages are theoretically so influential in the history of the USA, this will substantiate their value.

The relevant micro-ages since the initial European settlement of the USA are:

Table 2 – the chronological appearance of the three key signs of the USA with allowance of a final overflow period

In the 1731 to 1791 bracket, the USA fought the Revolutionary War against Great Britain and won. This occurred with the first combination of the same signs compared to the USA’s conception in 1607. This was the biggest development since the initial settlement of Jamestown.

The following time bracket (1895 – 1955) covers the Spanish-American War (U.S. imperial expansion), two world wars, Prohibition, and the development of the Cold War against communism, with the greatest achievement being the elevation of the USA to superpower status. There is no doubt that modern America has responded very favorably to date to this combination of signs for their benefit.

The three zodiacal signs that are bracketed together in the astrological signature for the USA are:

• Pisces → Ideology / dissolution / delusion / Hollywood / drugs / prisons

• Aquarius → Revolution / innovation / democracy / eccentricity / disruption

• Capricorn → Institution / consolidation / conservatism

Each appearance of the combination of three signs has a different emphasis. The initial period (1567 – 1612) was deeply under the influence of Pisces due to the Pisces age overflow, Pisces age-decan overflow, and Pisces sub-age overflow. The second period (1731 to 1791) has the three signs of equal value. The (1895 to 1955) bracket is again a testament to Pisces, as this contained the peak in 1910 of the Pisces sub-age decan and overflow (1851 – 1910 – 1970) resonating with the Pisces age decan overflow (1433 – 2149) and Pisces age overflow (1433 – 3581). This arguably is the second strongest manifestation of Pisces over the 26,000-cycle of the astrological ages. This aligned with the elevation of the USA to a global status. World politics always conforms to the power of the astrological ages and their sub-periods.

The next bracket will be the same combination of Pisces, Aquarius and Capricorn affecting the years 2059 – 2103. In contrast to the early 20^th century bracket aligning with the might of Pisces, the coming bracket will align with the incoming Aquarian age (1433 – 3581), which will focus on the younger brother to Pisces and highlight the intrinsic tension of always having the secondary sign of every age-empire, sitting in the 12^th house position. This was experienced by Ancient Rome as the Aries-Pisces age empire, when it started focused on its Aries’ fighting ability, but in the second half of the age succumbed to (Pisces) Christianity and its political collapse, leading to the formation of modern (Pisces) Europe. Age empires have a love-hate relationship with their two governing signs, as one always sits in the 12th house to the main sign.

The 2059 – 2103 bracket of three key signs for the USA includes an age-decan cusp in 2149 with the cusp of the Pisces-Libra age decan (1433 – 2149) and the Libra-Gemini age-decan (2149 – 2865). Age empires and long-term civilisations have a track record of crashing around age-decan cusps, before they reform. This can be expected with the USA, and as recent political developments under President Trump have demonstrated, it’s easy to see how the political integrity of the USA could be further compromised. The primary Pisces rulership of the USA of two fish swimming in opposite directions has created a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde political nature for the USA, as if two different civilisations, that hate each other, exist in the one country.

Age-decan cusps can temporarily undermine the momentum of age empires and long-term civilisations. The world should expect the temporary collapse of the USA around the Libra-Gemini age decan cusp of 2149, possibly as early as 2088, followed by its reformation, for better or worse, similar to the fall of the Roman Republic and rise of the Roman Empire near the first age-decan cusp of the previous age. In an even earlier age, the age-decan cusps provided the demarcation of the three kingdoms associated with Ancient Egypt, with political dissolution and collapse the order of the day around the age-decan cusps.

Age-Empires

Finally, a note on age-empires. When any place, such as the USA, becomes an age-empire, there is no suggestion or reason to expect that an age-empire behaves outside of the milieu of expectations and problems of the era of its existence. For example, Ancient Rome was definitely empowered by the Aries-Pisces age (715 BC – 1433 AD), but there is nothing whatsoever to suggest that Rome was superior in any way, other than its ability to produce a mighty military machine. While Ancient Rome was definitely empowered, both politically and militarily, and culturally flourished, it did not lead the way in morality, awareness or consciousness. It promoted many disgusting practices, including murder as a spectator sport.

Having identified the USA as the age-empire of our age does not insinuate that the USA has any superiority other than its power, which can do good or bad. The USA correlates to the Pisces-Aquarius age, and its main focus will be on Pisces religion, corporations, bureaucracy, and Hollywood-style entertainment, but will give lip service to Aquarius democracy, provided it doesn’t get in the way. The world has to wait until the next age for the Aquarius empire that will seriously push the democracy envelope.

Over recent centuries, the USA definitely led the world in promoting the modern liberal-democratic state, but its strongest nature remains Pisces, represented by two fish swimming in opposite directions. What we have recently experienced is a flip from one forward swimming fish to the other backward swimming fish, which is a semi-regular occurrence in the USA. This is all in accord with America’s primary Pisces nature – or how the indigenous American Indians stated “white man speaks with a forked tongue”, capturing a key plank of the American psyche, and especially its politics.

Another key Pisces element associated with the USA is the “serve or suffer” archetype of Pisces. We can see how the USA fought a civil war to eradicate slavery, and how it came to the assistance of the world in defeating stupidity in Europe in the First World War, and defeated fascism in the Second World War. It even successfully withstood communism. In contrast, the USA has a disastrous track record when it promotes its own causes or benefits and, in essence, becomes the aggressor. This is the case with the Vietnam War, Afghanistan, and numerous democratic governments around the world that were overthrown, such as Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Chile in 1973, Haiti in 2004, plus involvement or collusion after the fact in the Congo in 1960, Brazil in 1964, Argentina in 1976, Ghana in 1966, and the Indonesian mass killings of 1965. The USA has a history of undermining democracies that do not do the USA’s bidding.

There is a long history of major (Pisces) blunders by the US government. These include the War of 1812, when the USA entered the war expecting an easy victory and possible annexation of Canada, but resulted appropriately in Washington D.C. being burned to the ground by British forces and with no territorial gains. Another example is the Trail of Tears (1830s), with the forced removal of Native Americans under Andrew Jackson, resulting in massive human suffering and death and long-term moral and reputational damage.

The Philippine-American War of 1899, when the USA annexed the Philippines after the Spanish-American War, resulted in a brutal insurgency war and undermined the USA’s supposed anti-colonial image. This was a contradiction between ideals and imperial behavior. The Vietnam War involved a gradual escalation based on flawed assumptions (domino theory). This resulted in over 58,000 American deaths and promoted deep domestic division, ending with eventual withdrawal and communist victory. This is widely regarded as the largest Cold War-era strategic blunder.

The 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion fiasco was an attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro using Cuban exiles, but it resulted in rapid failure. It strengthened Castro as Cuba’s leader and embarrassed the USA. It was a poorly planned covert operation with global repercussions. The Iraq War, also referred to as the Second Gulf War, was a protracted armed conflict in Iraq from 2003 to 2011. The invasion was justified by unfounded claims of weapons of mass destruction that were never found. This resulted in a long insurgency, creating regional instability and most profoundly promoting the rise of extremist groups such as ISIS. This is commonly called the biggest American foreign policy blunder of the 21st century.

Following the 9/11 attack on the USA, the USA instigated the Afghanistan War (2001 – 2021), which had some initial success followed by a prolonged nation-building effort that resulted in 20 years of fighting and the withdrawal of the USA, with the Taliban regaining power. This conflict was a strategic overreach with unclear long-term objectives.

At least the 2008 Financial Crisis was not an American-engineered war, but rather an American-engineered financial crisis triggered by deregulation, risky lending, and financial engineering. This resulted in a global recession with a massive loss of wealth and trust. It is classified as a policy and regulatory failure with worldwide consequences.

There is a pattern behind the above calamities, with several recurring themes: overestimation of power, ideology over reality, and failure to understand local conditions. There was a belief that outcomes would be quicker/easier than they were in reality. We are again seeing this with the recent American and Israeli attacks on Iran. Often, the USA is driven by (Pisces) belief systems rather than grounded intelligence and (Virgo) details. There is also an underestimation of cultural, political, and historical complexity, not to mention the gap between stated ideals and actual actions. The USA is highly susceptible to mission creep, with limited objectives expanding into unwinnable commitments. Since 1945, the American blunders tend to be global in scale, highly visible and politically polarizing.

The biggest American blunders are not random—they tend to occur when confidence, ideology, and global ambition outpace realistic understanding of complexity. This pattern repeats from 1812 to Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and currently in Iran. Most, but not all, of this behavior by the USA can be associated with Pisces – the sign of ‘self-made problems’. One of the key self-made problems is the inability of the USA to self-examine without resorting to (Pisces) jingoism. Pisces is opposite the realistic sign of Virgo, and so Pisces America has the problem of attempting to see reality without believing in its own propaganda and myths.

What is missing in this analysis are all the benefits and progress the USA has brought to itself and the world. Despite the abject cruelty and callousness of Ancient Rome, it still brought Pax Romana – relative peace to much of Europe and the Middle East for many centuries. There is no doubt that American technology and advances have led the modern world in recent times. However, like Ancient Rome, all age-empires are flawed, and must be experienced as a package deal – we cannot get the beneficial aspects without the negative aspects. We cannot get the positive archetypes of Pisces without also the negative archetypes. This is the way of the world, and there is no evidence it has been anything other than this mixture of good and bad since the dawn of history. Any objective analysis of the modern world would place it far above the condition of the world in Medieval and ancient times. We currently live in a world that is a universe away from the Dark Age at the end of the last age. This has been accomplished while Aquarius is still in its weakest phase!

Further Research

In this new series on the astrology of the USA, several areas will be explored, following this basic introduction, which only briefly identifies the issues. Having identified the key zodiacal signs in the USA’s astrological signature, I intend to explore each sign individually to confirm their relevance and demonstrate how they have manifested to date in the evolution of the USA.