CHAPTER FIVE
From Christ to Buddha - 2

Two basic possibilities come at once to the mind. We may be facing an accelerated evolution which will lead to a more technological and more computerized and automated global society. This would take place probably under some kind of centralized control made necessary by the fantastic complexity of the problem of organizing group-relationships and economic-social management all over a globe swarming with billions of human beings with enormously varied cultural backgrounds, languages and dogmatic beliefs. On the other hand, it may be that we are at the threshold of a worldwide revolution, the first aim of which is to make our present-day institutions and ways of life so un-operative that a state of global chaos is produced, in the hope that out of that chaos a totally new and better civilization will emerge. There are perhaps today no other alternatives, even if these two possibilities may well take forms very different from those which are most commonly imagined.
      From this it should be clear that if astrological cycles have any validity at all at the level of mankind as a whole, they certainly should show that we are NOW in a period of crucial transition. Astrologers speak of the New Age, the Aquarian Age. Obviously if we are at, or close to the beginning of this new Age, our present world-wide crisis should coincide more or less accurately with the beginning of this Age. If there is no such coincidence, this means either (1) that our present world-crisis is not as important as we think (no more than, say, the revolutionary period before and after 1789), or (2) that it will become more critical during perhaps the next two or three centuries — or else (3) that the precessional Ages do not refer to such critical changes in human society and in human consciousness. (This could mean that other astrological cycles are the ones which are the true indicators of world-wide human upheavals).
      The hypothesis numbered (1) does not seem valid, insofar as, to man's knowledge, never has the whole of mankind been involved in a radical struggle which could mean a nearly total extinction of the human race — and never has the change in the most fundamental approach to society, religion, man, God, the universe been as all-encompassing and as deliberate, as bound to transform the lives of all human beings. Hypothesis No. 2 may be correct, but if so, the prospect it reveals is quite forbidding, and the hopes of many groups of people for a far more constructive and spiritual New Age beginning at some fairly close date are indeed tragically meaningless. The third hypothesis may also be a valid one, and it could be that other cosmic cycles than the Great Sidereal Year are now beginning, precipitating as it were ahead of time the crucial events normally expectable at the beginning of a precessional Age, thus making the transition between two basic phases of human evolution a long drawn-out one.
      In this connection, I should refer to the 500-year long cycle of Neptune-Pluto conjunctions discussed in the preceding chapter, and to the 10,000 year cycle mentioned in the chapter before the last. There may be still larger cycles related to changes in the shape of the earth's orbit, or to certain phases within the (presumably) 200 million years long cycle of the Sun's revolution around the galaxy which might tend to accelerate evolutionary processes in all that lives or thinks within our entire solar system — or any such solar system.
      However, as already stated, each precessional Age (i. e. each "month" in the Great Sidereal Year of some 25,868 years) can be said to last roughly 2160 years. That is to say, the stars advance about 50 minutes of celestial longitude every year, or (in round numbers) 1 degree in 72 years. Now, if we can show that every 2160 years a very important crisis of transformation occurs, affecting at least the 'Vanguard of human evolution, then this would give much validity to the concept that the succession of the Ages is indeed a significant indicator clocking, as it were, the processes of history, at least at a specific level of change. If we can show that the internal pattern of these Ages (definable in astrological terms) corresponds significantly to the structural unfoldment of the particular phase in human evolution that began at, or very near, the starting point of the Ages, this correspondence would tend to prove the worth of using such cosmic clock to pinpoint fairly accurately the position of mankind today. If we know where we are at in terms of a long-term human evolution in consciousness and in the capacity to establish steady forms of social-cultural organization, we have reached a point of vantage from which we can evaluate objectively — and no longer in terms of our personal or collective fears or hopes — the meaning of our present world-crisis. The purpose of this book is, I repeat again, to gain such an objective perspective on our world-situation. It certainly is not born of the desire to collate old astrological material and to provide some more data for the student of astrology to memorize and to repeat for the edification of friends or pupils.