CHAPTER SEVEN
At the Gates of the New Age - 5

The Three 72-Year Periods: 1846 to 2062
In order to analyze more closely the character of historical events during the "seed period" of the Piscean Age we can divide it into three sub-periods of 72 years duration. In 72 years (approximately) the equinoxes move back one degree of longitude in relation to the "fixed stars" and their mythical constellations. As the constellation, Pisces, is supposed to extend along 30 degrees of the sidereal zodiac, this means that in 1846 the vernal equinox was at the third degree of the constellation Pisces. The equinox reached the second degree 72 years later in 1918, and it will reach the first degree in 1990. These dates are obviously significant, for 1918 was the year World War I ended, one year after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, led by Lenin; and in 1990 there will be a gathering of many planets in the sign Capricorn. On February 19, 1990, the Moon, Venus, Mars, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune will be in Capricorn, with Mercury just out of the sign. Jupiter will be moving through Cancer and Pluto through Scorpio. Six planets will indeed be found in Capricorn at various times during 1989 and 1990, and there will be a solar eclipse at Capricorn 25º in mid-January, 1991 close to Saturn.

1846 to 1918:
This is the age of nationalism, of industry, of colonialisation and of scientific materialism, the Victorian Age and its prolongation — ending in the great catastrophe of World War I, which proved that the fears engendered in the minds of far-seeing men witnessing the first results of the Industrial Revolution in the Forties were indeed legitimate. But polar to this general trend we witness also the development of new religious, occult and humanitarian movements.

1918 to 1990:
The "war to end all wars," the "crusade for democracy" against German militarism turned out to be a futile tragedy, killing directly and indirectly many millions of young men. The Peace of Versailles and the repudiation by a handful of American Senators of the Wilsonian dream, the League of Nations, led directly to the rise of Nazism and Fascism — and the senseless adoption of Prohibition produced in America both a nearly universal disregard of legality, and the growth of organized crime syndicates of unprecedented power. Above all, this period in which we are living is characterized by what really should be understood as "the Civil War of Man" — the religious war, cold or hot, between Communism and Capitalism. This is an all-pervasive civil war, which recently has become somewhat altered, taking several aspects, mainly the struggle between the under-developed countries (the "Third World") full of nearly starving people and the richer nations which include not only the United States and Western Europe, but Russia and her more or less obedient "satellites." The struggle between the new generations and the Establishment, in practically all countries, reveals another aspect of our present schizophrenic, dichotomized mankind. This condition was symbolized accurately in the chart of the twentieth century (for January 1, 1900) — when the new vibration of 19 superseded that of 18) and in the chart of the solar eclipse of December 2, 1899. This last New Moon of the nineteenth century saw seven "planets" in Sagittarius opposed to the still close conjunction of Neptune and Pluto in Gemini. I discussed these charts many years ago in the magazine American Astrology, and they have been remarkably accurate in pointing to the great crises mankind has experienced since 1900. The strenuous aspects of Uranus and Pluto in Virgo opposing Saturn in Pisces (1965-1966) squared the basic opposition of the 1900 chart between Gemini and Sagittarius. And we have had Vietnam, the Kennedy assasinations, the rise of Black America, the revolt of the young, the monetary world-crisis, etc.
      All this is leading inescapably to the third sub-period of this epoch of transition between the Piscean and the Aquarian Ages. The great question is: what is just ahead now, before 1990? Will the entrance of Pluto in Scorpio in 1983-84 strike the gong for a planet-wide catastrophe — just as Pluto's entrance in Cancer indicated the start of World War I (with its prelude, the Balkan wars), and its entrance in Leo marked the beginning of Hitler's conquest? When Pluto entered Virgo in 1957 the Russian Sputnik began the race to outer space and the Moon. Did this herald an as yet unclear series of future crises?
      In 1971 Pluto will reach Libra in sextile to a conjunction of Jupiter, Mars and Neptune in Sagittarius, and in trine to Saturn in Gemini. Will this mean a deeper sense of cooperation — of will the opposition of Jupiter and Neptune to Saturn during the summer-fall 1971 mark another kind of dichotomy, perhaps related to the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction of 1961 which stamped the Kennedy Administration with a potentiality for tragedy?