I’ve been wanting to write this post since last year when I read the astrological predictions for 2021 but have been hesitating. I know a couple of my regular readers are atheists, Christians or mainly believe in scientific evidence. Not that any of these would necessarily stop them from being open to what I am about to share.
I also have a disclaimer: I can’t tell you why astrology works but in my experience - gathered over a long period of time - it just does. My personal observations coupled with my love of Jung and his archetypal patterns are all I have but they have convinced me that somehow, based on some matrix I don’t understand, it works. That’s all I can say.
I’ve been using astrological types – birth signs – for years to help me communicate as effectively as possible with my students. (That and numerology – but that’s another story). I follow an astrologer known as Astrobutterfly which I’m guessing isn’t going to fill the doubters with confidence either. I don’t usually care about what sign the moon is in or what the planets are doing because frankly, it’s all a bit tedious and I don’t want it to rule my life or the decisions I make. But this year - although I was skeptical at first - something big is happening in the skies and there is ‘evidence’.
In 2021 we moved into a new 200 year era. For the last 200 years Saturn – who rules karma and is also characterised by structure, order and the way we do things - has been in Capricorn. Capricorn prefers to build ‘powerful, top-down structures’ which I’d suggest is anathema for anyone who wants to live in a democratic society. This sign represents the zodiac’s patriarch…..’a bit like a soldier: dutiful, hardworking and best when he has a country or family to serve’. I never get on with Capricorn males – personally I find them to be chauvinistic and condescending towards women because they need to be dominant. Maybe it’s just me - I’ve gone head to head with authority figures all my life. But after decades of railing against the Patriarchy I am hopeful for the future – because we have left that era behind.
In 2020/21 Saturn moved into Aquarius, and officially, we are now in the Age of Aquarius. Yes, I know – it was supposed to happen in the 60s, but the stars are telling us that although there was a huge social shift back then and a sign of things to come – this is the real AOA.
Humankind has been dominated by the masculine principle as far back as recorded history (I think I’ve mentioned before that I had to go back as far as Sumeria to find matriarchal dominance and rule). A ‘good’ patriarch can have a very positive influence on our lives and I would suggest, is valued in most if not all cultures. But a bad one….well you don’t have to think too hard to come up with a blue-suited or military-uniformed patriarch that has done a lot of damage to his country and people. There are too many to choose from. In fact it’s probably harder to find a good patriarchal role model than a bad one.
What distinguishes the last 200 years of this patriarchal order is that because Saturn has been in the Earth sign of Capricorn we have been dominated by the ‘material’ aspects of human existence. In 2020, ‘the world’s 2,153 billionaires (had) more wealth than the 4.6 billion people who make up 60 percent of the planet’s population’. You don’t have to be a rampant socialist to know there’s something very wrong with that. Here are some more stats from Oxfam’s 2020 report:
- The 22 richest men in the world have more wealth than all the women in Africa.
- Women and girls put in 12.5 billion hours of unpaid care work each and every day - a contribution to the global economy of at least $10.8 trillion a year, more than three times the size of the global tech industry.
- Getting the richest one percent to pay just 0.5 percent extra tax on their wealth over the next 10 years would equal the investment needed to create 117 million jobs in sectors such as elderly and childcare, education and health.
A belief in the material alone has led to a decline in the number of people who believe in some sort of ‘afterlife’ or ‘reckoning’, an omnipotent entity, ‘God’ or an equivalent ‘non-religious’ spiritual framework. Some of this was necessary of course - we needed to break the hold of religious dogma which, like the patriarchal order, was equally about power. Unfortunately the good stuff like ethics and compassion that went with a belief in something other than the material seems to have declined also. For the past 200 years the accumulation of personal wealth has been a priority driven by earth based values like ‘consumerism, resources, status, hard work, money’. According to astrologers, these values will now change.
Apparently we should be grateful to Capricorn because thanks to his ‘vision, determination and systemic thinking’ we have been able to build useful systems that have made the world a more ordered place, and given us material structures that have benefitted humankind. But just like the Roman Empire when systems get too unwieldy and can’t be controlled from a centralised source, they collapse. The Tower of Babel is falling.
So back to 2021 where we have FINALLY moved from the dominance of the patriarchal earth symbol Capricorn to the airy, innovative and socially and community-minded ‘mental’ sign of ideas in Aquarius. Aquarius stands for freedom, the recognition of individual uniqueness, connection with like-minded people, experiential learning, collaboration, getting in sync with the universe and the greater good over individual interests.
So how does all this manifest? According to Astrobutterfly:
Step 1: People start to become dubious about the centralized power held by just a few corporations and institutions that can dictate pretty much everything and impact our lives without us having any say.
Step 2: People rebel against this unjust balance/distribution of power and take coordinated, bottom-up action (Jupiter and Saturn in Aquarius) to change the rules of the game.
Step 3: New rules that better reflect a fair and balanced distribution of information and resources.
When I mentioned ‘evidence’ earlier I was referring to all that has happened recently, and all that is happening now. I’ve been keeping a tally and it seems that every day, another patriarch loses their position of power, another structure is found to be rotten at the core. Please help me out and mention a few more in the comments but here are some of them: the #metoo movement, the fall of Trump (one of the most destructive patriarchs in recent history), the expose of money laundering in the Crown casino franchise (owned by one of the richest families in Australia), the current rape allegations in Australia’s parliament which threatens to bring down a right-wing dominated, conservative patriarchal government. And last but by no means least – a tiny virus, one of the smallest organisms on the planet – has severely undermined and damaged the Capitalist system that has given the Patriarchs their tremendous power. Perfect.
There’s no doubt in my mind that the demise of the Patriarchy is inversely proportional to the rising up and speaking out of women – who also speak about inequity and for the oppressed. But we have been speaking out for decades and been ignored or shut down. Maybe now women and those who suffer under the Patriarchal order will be heard. I get the feeling there is a momentum out there now which isn’t going to be silenced. It’s going to be a bumpy road, there will be chaos and conflict – the Patriarchy isn’t going to give up without a fight and the collapse of structures and systems will have devastating consequences for many of us.
But let’s welcome the Age of Aquarius – the water bearer, redistributor of power and wealth, and bringer of knowledge to the world.
Image: Author. 'The Tower of Babel'. Hand drawn, digitally collaged and coloured.
