Introducing the Aquarian Age

[Following are passages from the introduction to Signs of the Times, Hampton Roads, 2002.]

Carl Jung said that as dreams are to the individ­ual, so myths are to society. The stories we tell ourselves as a culture reveal insights into the deeper workings of our psyches with their myriad desires, fears, and dreams. By studying a society's mythologies, one can also gain a valuable glimpse into the archetypal dynamics that underlie history in its course from one era to the next.

But where shall we look for those mythic "clues" when the primary source of our stories—namely, religion—has been displaced by a more secular and sci­entific society?

Rather than peruse scriptural sources, one option is to turn our attention to more popular forms like cinema, television, and litera­ture—or what Joseph Campbell collectively termed our culture's “creative mythology.” Not only do these sources offer us a glimpse into the values and attitudes of our own time, but hint at those which promise to shape civiliza­tion in the years to come. Ezra Pound once remarked that artists are the antennae of a society, so by studying those recurring themes already surfacing throughout popular culture, we can discern the broad outline of tectonic trends form­ing deep in the collective unconscious, and that will continue to take shape in the millennia to come. Make no mistake: Our stories are already beginning to change. By studying these shifting details, we can better grasp the great transformation that is currently sweeping our world, affecting all of us.

So what is it we stand to learn specifically about the coming era, the so-called “Age of Aquarius”?

For one, each Great Age possesses certain unique qualities and themes that distinguish it, and if current clues are any indication, the Aquarian Age will be characterized by its intensely mental quality. We’re entering a time when information is becoming the driving force of society, and the primary challenges and opportunities facing us will be those of the mind. Constructively, this could mean we will experience major advances in our collective intellectual development—or it could simply mean we're becoming a society that devotes its energies to cerebral pastimes like TV or virtual reality games. Or, it could mean both.

Another key quality associated with the coming age will be decentralization. Just as democracy decentralizes power from a single ruling monarch to mul­tiple voters, society will likely find itself decentralizing in a wide range of ways. A modern-day example would be a technology like the Internet, which has no singular address or central hub but rather multiple "centers" and hubs across the Earth. In society, similarly, no one culture or ethnicity will likely dominate, so much as a mosaic of cultural parties and influences. In the arts, we’re already seeing that decentralizing trend in the sty­listic innovations of modern cinema, as filmmakers reinvent the traditional storyline by giving us multiple narratives and interweaving plot lines, exemplified by directors like Robert Altman (Nashville), Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction), Steven Soderbergh (Traffic), and of course Orson Welles (Citizen Kane).

A third quality associated with the coming age might be described as electrification—both literal and metaphorical. Society will no doubt continue its heavy reliance on electric­ity in practical respects, but in more symbolic ways global culture will likely become even more kinetic, fast-paced, and “electrified” in its lifestyle and ways of thinking. Imagine having a time machine and transporting someone from 1000 years ago into modern-day Tokyo or New York City; aside from being shocked by the sheer scale of the buildings and bridges, I suspect they’d find the volume of sounds and the brightness of lights to be nearly overwhelming—even without being taken to a modern rock concert! The external intensity they’d encounter in turn really mirrors the inner life of modern citizens, so very different from what they were familiar with back in their own time.

I’d suggest that qualities and characteristics like these foreshadow those of the broader era ahead of us.

What I’ll try to show in the pages that follow is that the Aquarian Age cannot be thought in the simplistic terms or cliches familiar to many these days through popular media. Notions of a “utopian brotherhood,” or conversely of an oppressive Orwellian society, must be set aside if we hope to obtain a more nuanced picture that incorporates the many ambiguities or even paradoxes of the era ahead. Indeed, the Aquarian Age might well prove to be an age of paradoxes, if current trends are any indication.

For instance, will the Aquarian Age be a time when the individual reigns supreme, or when the larger collective becomes the dominant factor? In fact, it could be both, and we’ll consider examples that sug­gest a growing trend toward personal empowerment side-by-side with a trend toward greater collectivism. By analogy, think of the paradoxi­cal way our communication technologies are allowing us to become more connected to the world while simultaneously causing us to become more isolated from one another in flesh-and-blood ways. Thanks to a gridwork of wires, antennas, satellite relays, and fiber-optic cables, we are becoming closer to fel­low Earthlings around the planet while simultaneously moving farther apart from some of those closest to us.

Anyone hoping to grasp the meaning of the Aquarian Age is forced to grapple with complexities like these. There are archetypal roots underlying the changes in our world, but as with all archetypal principles there are nuances that can only be understood from a multileveled and multi-perspectival view. Over the course of these pages we will attempt to sort out many of these subtleties with help from such diverse fields as psychology, the Hindu philosophy of the chakras, contemporary cinema, political theory, quantum physics, and esoteric philosophy, and still others.

As the ancient Chinese historians knew, the events of history are neither random nor disconnected, but elements of an integral whole, no more sep­arate from their era than single waves are from the entire ocean. Weaving together insights from these sources and approaches, I believe we can begin to dis­cern the overarching trends and "constellating archetypes" of the emerging global zeitgeist. We are all participants in an archetypal drama that spans thousands of years and influences our world in ways far beyond ordinary comprehension, but that can be glimpsed through the timeless language of symbolism.

In The Magic Mountain, German novelist Thomas Mann wrote that a "man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and his contemporaries." Whether we realize it or not, our inner life is inextricably bound up with the spirit of our age-our values, tastes, religions, even our fears and desires are all, to a cer­tain extent, products of our culture. The question is, how is that greater drama affecting us? How do the trends and currents of modern times shape our own values or perceptions? To this extent, understanding the drama of our times is the struggle to understand each of our own stories. The tale of the emerging Aquarian Age is therefore the story of every man and every woman in the millennia ahead.

Ray Grasse is a writer and photographer living in the Chicagoland area. His websites are www.raygrasse.com and www.raygrassephotography.com.