“A calendar is a mental instrument for holding the programmed patterns of thought and behavior of a given culture, people, or civilization,” Jose Arguelles writes in Time and the Technosphere. “A people can rise no higher than the program their culture imposes on them as second nature. A program of time determines the nature of consciousness.”
I believe that the study of astrology provides at least a partial way out of the maze; that is, it can help us return to natural time, more closely synchronized with nature.
For one thing, the cycles of astrology are natural. They exist objectively, unlike a minute or a second. Yet there are three other factors that suggest how astrology might point us out of the maze.
First, there are many kinds of cycles to connect with. For short measures we can use the ascendant or the Moon. For medium measures we can use the cycles of Mars, Jupiter, or Saturn. For long-range measures we can use Pluto or Eris, and if necessary, the precession of the equinoxes. These cycles are elliptical rather than linear. In other words, instead of being organized like walking on a tightrope, they are organized in overlapping spirals.
The second factor is that the planets provide a symbolic frame of reference. They have names, energies, and stories. We learn things about them as time passes, giving them inherent meaning within time. This provides contact with the energetic tone to events. There is nothing “fourish” about four o’clock; but there is something Full Moonish about every Full Moon. Part of the problem with our time-bound frame of reference is that it lacks human meaning.
Last, marking the passage of time with astrology allows for the observation of synchronicity. Our linear time measurement patterns attempt to do this, when we keep seeing the same patterns on our digital clocks; but it’s difficult to say what they mean. At the least, it would seem that a higher order of time is trying to find its way into our own, which we observe through the patterns in the numbers.
The planets have been here longer than we have. We are directly connected to these rhythms and cycles. Either human DNA originated within our solar system, or it evolved here over many millions of years. While it was evolving, it was subject to the constant influences of the planets and their conditioning forces. Each generation has experienced the movements of all the planets, and in our genetic memory we hold the influences of events that occurred more than one generation ago. Indeed, the genetic memory of many cycles is contained within each of us, along with the knowledge that the planets never align the same way twice.
Using astrology, we can expand this to a much wider palette of experience, and notice patterns. Many cycles overlap; there is plenty to observe. Yet the leap beyond time may come in the process of observation of the subtleties, in the shift from being a passive victim of time to being a conscious navigator of a much wider dimension of experience.
Eric Francis Coppolino writes daily at PlanetWaves.net.
