CHAPTER EIGHT
The Aquarius-Leo Age - 5

The Aquarian Fecundation
The first thousand years of the New Age should constitute the predominantly Aquarius phase of that Age, while the second thousand-year period will be under the "influence" of Leo. This second period will be the response of mankind to the descent of the Aquarius fecundation and revelation. The descent of new power will be "Aquarian," the consciousness and the future culture of mankind will have a Leo character.
      This is very important because when we speak of the new Aquarian type of person, we are actually referring to human beings through whom will be released in some more or less focused and characteristic manner the energies, the faith, the downflowing enthusiasm and revelations of the new Age. These are dynamic features, and they refer to a large extent to unconscious or semi-conscious processes which occur through the individual persons rather than from them. These true "Aquarians" can be placed in the category of "apostolic" men and women. They are mouthpieces for the new spirit, and many of them may almost be called born "mediums" for the release of that spirit at the beginning of the new cycle. In this they differ rather fundamentally from men who, as "seed men," constitute the harvest of the Piscean Age during the very last stages of that now ending cycle.
      Apostolic men are animated basically by an intense fervor and act as power-stations or radiating centers - and these were the characteristics of early Christians, and today already of most of the Bahais and of people "fascinated" by some new prenatally Aquarian movements. They constitute collectively the "germ" of the barely emerging plant — some can be identified as parts of the symbolic rootlet that anchors the new emergence into the humus of the past. Their focus of expression is not the mind. They are indeed ruled by emotions of a certain type, and apostolic faith and self-consecration is of course an intense emotion, irrational or supra-rational in nature. They are people aglow with a radiation of "love" — often not intelligent and not controlled — which can destroy as well as transfigure. They radiate a vision, a total conviction, a fire of the almost totally polarized psyche — polarized by an irrevocable dedication which may lead to martyrdom. They are totally future-oriented.
      On the other hand, seed-men are essentially synthesizing minds, but minds that are filled with the vital essence of a whole cycle, minds that operate in terms of what elsewhere I have called "eonic consciousness," that is, in terms of a consciousness that can survey a whole cycle of existence and human history, that is basically structural in its approach to life and all life-events, and in which the alpha joins the omega in a process of creative synthesis. They too are future-oriented, but not in the same way as apostolic men. Their minds are filled with a Vision, but if they are truly seed-men this vision does not express itself in outer action as much as in the formation of symbols — and words, pictures, rituals, music are symbols. They deal only secondarily with personalities, for they are primarily intent upon a basic representation, reordering and transformation (metamorphosis) of the structures of consciousness. Apostolic men, coming after the New Age has begun (at least at a higher level of reality) disseminate the vision of the seedmen, or spread the creative words of the Avatar or Avatars.
      Seed-men, whenever they appear today, constitute the ultimate expression of the Piscean Age, yet they hold within them collectively as a sacred essence the life-flame or the vibrant tone which, when released fully, will power the start of the Aquarian Age. They are not culture-oriented, and certainly not Establishment-respecting men. They herald the future culture; but only in so far as some of the basic structural and mental characteristics of this culture are concerned. It is in this sense that, for instance, Aristotle, Plato, and the Hebrew prophets can be considered quasi-"genetic" factors which operated as conditioning agencies in the building of the Christian-European mind.
      We can have really no idea of what the predominantly Leo culture of a thousand years ahead of us will be. It will be determined by the manner in which mankind will respond, after next century, to the downpour of "Aquarian waters." As I already suggested, this response could operate in two very different ways according to whether our present technological society and its technocratic rulers (the real ones, not those pasted on the facades of our institutions) will collapse very soon under either internal and external pressures, man-made or telluric — or else it will maintain itself for a relatively long time by the use of military and police power (served by physicists, chemists, biologists, psychologists, etc.) as the old Roman Empire did.
      If the first alternative is at least basically correct, then a much less congested humanity having experienced a crucial catharsis on an earth-surface definitely altered, will have to recover from the "shock treatment" along various lines. A great world-religion will probably have emerged, having absorbed materials and ideas from old disciplines and ideologies. It would be attuned to the need of the masses. It would serve as the indispensable structuring and cementing force needed to gradually reorganize mankind-as-a-whole on a global scale. There would emerge also a number of "Gnostic" communities in many places which would be dedicated to the multi-faceted transformation of human beings, and which would radiate the higher expression of the Aquarian spirit. It is among such communities that the genesis of the future Leo type of individuals, and of the great myths and culture of the Leo hemicycle of the New Age is most likely to take place.