Course Two: Nature 57
As the Earth moves
through this
26,000-year
cycle, each of the
12 constellations of the
Zodiac in turn becomes
the ascendant at the time of
the Vernal Equinox. However,
the progression is backwards.
Whereas in its normal yearly
progression through the Zodiac
the Sun appears to move from Aries into Taurus, and
so on, the equinoxes move in the opposite direction.Figure 3: The yearly apparent movement
of the Sun through the Zodiac, showing the
present position of the Vernal EquinoxBecause it takes 26,000 years for the Earth to
complete one precessional wobble, it follows that the
Sun will rise on the Vernal Equinox in each sign for
30 degrees, or 2,167 years. Each such period consti-
tutes a World Age, or Zodiacal Aeon, named for the
sign ascendant at the time of the Vernal Equinox. Here
are the Signs and time periods since the Ice Age, in-
cluding the next Aeon of Aquarius. I have also indi-
cated the approximately corresponding historical ages:Religious Epochs (500 years)
Another interesting cycle in human history has
moved in approximately 500-year periods, or epochs.
These epochs have witnessed the successive promi-
nence of major religions, usually initiated by vision-
ary Prophets. On the next page is a list of these ep-
ochs and some of their Prophets.Renaissances (60 years)
Just about every sixty years, with remarkable
regularity over the past few centuries at least, there
has occurred a Renaissance (“re-birth”) in Western
civilization. Each of these periods has seen a similar
flowering of the arts, poetry, music, literature, drama,
culture, sciences, spirituality, and “utopian” commu-
nities. Why do these cycles occur every sixty years?
Perhaps that is the average lifetime for a perpetually
recurrent generation of “Cultural Creatives” to live,
change the world, die, and be reborn over and
over...the very meaning of renaissance. Here are the
dates for each of these that I have mapped, with pro-
jections for the next couple:Renaissances
Dates Popular Name
2080s The Diaspora
2020s The Awakening
1960s The Psychedelic Sixties
1900s Fin de Siecle (“End of Cycle”)
1840s Transcendentalist Movement
1780s The American Revolution
1720s The Age of Enlightenment
1660s The Scientific Revolution
1600s The English Renaissance
1540s The Age of Exploration
1480s The Italian RenaissanceThere are many more cycles I haven’t listed here,
such as wars (20 years) and sunspots (11.1 years).
Indeed, dozens of smaller cycles have been noted with
time periods of 18.2 years, 9.6 years, 9.2 years, 8 years,
and 5.91 years. Some cycles are actually speeding up
(or collapsing). For thousands of years the Schumann
Resonance or pulse (“heartbeat”) of the Earth has been
7.83 cycles per second. The military have used this as
a reliable reference since its discovery. However, since
1980 the frequency of this resonance has been slowly
increasing. It is now more than
12 cycles per second!
Much of the time these
various cycles, moving at dif-
ferent frequencies like the
hands on a clock, seem inde-
pendent. But just as the clock
hands and the calendar will all
come together at the stroke of
midnight on New Year’s Eve, sometimes a whole
bunch of different cycles will all match frequencies
at the same time. We call such a time “The Year of the
Jackpot”—a term coined by science fiction writer
Robert Heinlein from the way the rotating symbols
line up in a casino slot machine. In such a “Jackpot”
time, the coincidence of many cycles acts to cause a
high peak “Synchronicity Wave”—like a temporalAeon Sign Years Overlapping Historical Ages
Aquarius (water) 2012-4179 Space Age: galactic diaspora
Pisces (fishes) 155 BCE-2012 CE Roman/Christian Era (Dark Ages 450-1450)
Aries (ram) 2322-155 BCE Iron Age / Age of Heroes (Classical)
Taurus (bull) 4489-2322 Bronze Age / Golden Age (cattle)
Gemini (twins) 6656-4489 Copper Age (city building)
Cancer (crab) 8823-6656 New Stone Age (farming)
Leo (lion) 10,990-8823 Old Stone Age / Ice AgeFigure 2: The
Precession of
the Earth’s Axis- Nature.p65 57 1/14/2004, 3:33 PM