The Way Ahead: Age of Aquarius
Astrology, well the monthly magazine horoscope version, has always been my passion, although recently I have been getting a bit confused as magazines seem to come out the month before the horoscope is referring to.
At the moment, Barnum Effect or not, I am more than content to read my stars written by the popular astrologers such as Shelley von Strunckel and Jonathan Cainer, although I have a feeling I will want to explore this subject further now that I have discovered that my Indian grandfather was an astrologer.
I realised yesterday, as I listened to Shelley talking about what it will mean to be entering the 2,150 year period called The Age of Aquarius, that everything around us is changing fundamentally, irrespective of our individual star signs.
It certainly feels like there a shift in the Air with the melt down of the financial markets, countries going bankrupt, endless floods and earthquakes.
I have decided to take some serious career risk by mixing in alternative thinking with alternative investments and have invited Shelley to be part of a session entitled Shooting for the Stars: Alternative Sources of Performance at my upcoming investment conference in September.
So I went along to The Way Ahead Tour largely to do due diligence on Shelley to hear what she would say. The evening, however, was nothing like I expected. It was all about what it is going to be like to live in The Age of Aquarius and very cleverly linked to business and how making money would be affected.
While there are a number of dates floating around as to when The Age of Aquarius will actually start, I like the idea it starts on my aunt’s 84th birthday on 21 December 2012, said to be the last day of the Mayan Long Count Calendar.
Irrespective of what ever actual day this period starts, the world is already feeling and seeing its effects. “It is more important to recognise that life on this planet is not merely changing, it is being transformed.
What we consider possible for ourselves as human beings – how we live, work, make love and view our capacities – will be completely revolutionised,” Shelley says.
The Age of Aquarius it seems is more than just the hippy New Age movement of the 1960s and 1970s made alive by the 5th Dimension of the same name.
It is a new way to think and live, says Shelley. The world is coming out of the male-dominated Age of Pisces into a more female energy dominated world.
Interestingly, there are three depictions for the Aquarius zodiac sign. Sometimes it is a man pouring Water and sometimes a woman. The Symbol for the 11th house is two wavy lines, which like the number 11, could easily be metaphors for the male energy of the number one multiplied by two to give the feminine energy of the number two.
During The Way Ahead Tour, Shelley talked about the redistribution of power although she pointed out that men were going to be redundant but that during the Age of Aquarius they are going to be freed of the shackles that defined what it was to be male over the last 2,000 years.
The Piscean era was all about someone above you determining your life, what you should think, how you should live and much of it was about doing what you were told.
The Piscean Age was based on the pyramid of power. Authorities of any sort were unchallenged and their word was law and the hierarchy ruled absolutely.
“These ages, which last some 2,000 years, don’t just influence thinking, they dictate what we accept as truth. Central to the Piscean Age has been an ideal, a perfection that could not be achieved by the individual, but only through the agency of another – someone higher up,” says Shelley.
The new era is all about meritocracy, where the individual counts. It is a flat structure, says Shelley. The change will take time and be gradual but when it happens in certain areas the old way of doing things will collapse fast.
Shelley used the removal of the heredity peerage from House of Lords as an example of fast change. The Labour Party committed to remove the hereditary peerage from the House of Lords in 1997, and the House of Lords Act came into force just two years later in 1999, so that after nearly 1,000 years, places are no longer inherited by the males but earned by both men and women.
But even before then, there was Aquarian energy in the air with Margaret Haig Thomas, Viscountess Rhondda’s actions that led to the Life Peerages Act of 1958 that allowed women into the House of Lords.
Shelley pointed out that Uranus, which is the planet of change, is in again at the moment, just as it was in 1912, which generally seen as the beginning of the woman’s suffrage movement.
This eight year period was a time of transformation where the role of women changed relatively quickly with the advent of the flapper bob hair cut, the advent of shorter skirts and make up, and the exit of the corset, as well as birth control and the vote.
This new Aquarian cycle is about discovering what “you” can do for humanity with the “you” being genderless. “Until now, men could not show their feminine side, they wore armour, then later emotional armour and it was expected that they carry the family,” says Shelley.
The metro sexual is the man for the Age of Aquarius. “This man can care, eat quiche, cry, feel and be creative,” she says. “In the Aquarian Age, the family is changing, too.
The male is no longer necessarily the breadwinner and decision-maker. Children are brought up in an environment in which anything is possible, whatever their gender and it will be all about each member pulling his or her weight equally,” adds Shelley.
The world is moving from a place of “This is the way you do it” to “Let’s find a way to do it,” says Shelley. “We have entered the era of the entrepreneur,” she adds. With it has come the era of collaboration and cooperation, not aggressive competition, but shared resources.
New tools will evolve in the Aquarian Age. The internet, weblogs and twitter are all examples of such tools that allow individuals to find their own power. The film Julie & Julia is the perfect example of a private blog that went on to become the first ever motion picture from a blog.
To highlight the new ways of doing business, Shelley described The People’s Supermarket, which has set up in a highly competitive environment where four chains own some 80% of the supermarket business.
But the food is 25% cheaper and the staff bills are cut as people work a few shifts a week for free in return for the cheaper food, says Shelley. The People’s Supermarket has won the SMART Future Minds Award inFrankfurt.
What ever one’s beliefs, change is in the air. The way the world exists at the moment is unsustainable. Shelley believes that with this new way of thinking people are going to become nicer and more open to different ways of being, including towards those that today are labelled as “problem” children.
“Every individual will be respected for who they are and what they bring to the table,” says Shelley. Whether or not this happens in my life time it is certainly a refreshing and positive way to look at the world.
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