COSMIC CYCLES...
WHAT ARE THEY TELLING US?

Edgar Cayce's prediction is right on schedule. There are many great awakenings gradually taking place today, and it is part of the enormous change we are witnessing in our everyday lives.

Today, the Great Cycle of the sun described by Cayce is coming into Aquarius and its cosmic energy is affecting each and every one of us. 

Over the years we have come to think of the universe as being alive because of its constant motion. In spite of its largeness, the ancient astrologers were familiar with the cosmic cycles that not only governed the seeming chaos of our heavens, but also gave it explicit order and meaning. They also knew this ordering principle was Divine in origin and its influence would be felt by all. 

In order to appreciate the dawning Age of Aquarius and how it fits into the cosmic scheme of things, you need to understand some of the movements of planet Earth that the ancient astronomers were quite familiar with.

Planet Earth has many motions. It spins on its axis once every 24 hours. It orbits the sun every 365 days. And our whole solar system, the sun included, is slowly revolving around a massive object located at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, once every 250 million years. 

However, it was a more subtle celestial movement that captured the attention of the ancient ones who knew the stars. Think of our magnificent planet as a spinning top. As a top begins to slow down, it goes from a smooth, upright motion to one that wobbles, especially at both of its ends. See image below:

Precession of the Equinoxes

Our planet's rate of spin is just slow enough to cause a slight wobble. A complete turn of the circle in the above animation takes 25,920 years. It was this planetary wobble that deeply intrigued the ancient astronomers. They knew it had a direct effect upon the timing of the astrological ages. And they called this cycle the "Great Age" or "Great Year." 

Imagine yourself standing on top of the North Pole. If you look straight up into the sky, you would find that the Pole is pointing to the star Polaris, the north star of the Big Dipper. If you have the patience, imagine lying down on the North Pole for the next 25,920 years while looking straight up. What would you see every night?

Like a very slow motion movie you would see that Polaris would no longer be above you. Perhaps another star was in its place. It would take 25,920 years for Polaris to be directly overhead before another one of these great cycles would repeat itself again. This slow, circular, wobbling movement of the North Pole and planet Earth is called precession, and it directly affects how many years we spend in each of the twelve houses of the zodiac.  

Before you run for some Dramamine, here is an easy way to visualize all of this dizzying celestial motion. Pretend it is 11,000-12,000 years ago and you are sitting on the nose of the Sphinx and looking in the same direction as this magnificent man-lion, which is due east. Pretend further that it is the first day of spring, the vernal equinox, and that the sun will rise in the east in an hour or so.  What you would see in the starry skies, just above the eastern horizon is the constellation, Leo, one of the twelve signs of the zodiac.

2,160 years later, the next sign to gradually rise above that same horizon and appear after Leo would be Cancer. Then, one by one, every 2160 years, Gemini, Taurus, Aries, Pisces and Aquarius would rise and pass over you in the heavens as if by magic.

If it was the first day of spring 2009, and you were sitting on the nose of the Sphinx gazing at the eastern horizon just before dawn, you would see the extreme end of Pisces the Fishes rising overhead. If we fast-forward this same scene for several hundreds of years, we would be well into the Age of Aquarius. Or another way to say this is that, during that same period of time, Aquarius will be the rising sign for all of humanity.
 

Today, we are right in the thick of an astrological, no-man's land. It lies directly between the fading Piscean age and the new Aquarian age being born. We are also at the extreme end of the 25,920 Great Year, which promises even greater changes.

The slate of Pisces will be swept clean by many changes all over this planet. The ancients knew very well that the twilight zone between the ages was always fraught with upheaval and turmoil. They also were aware that each new age brought another messenger from God to point the way for us. The last was Jesus who ushered in the beginning of Pisces.

Why did all the ancient astronomers have a constant need to know where they where in relation to the Great Year? They considered it extremely important because this information was related to even larger cosmic cycles, and the events that went with them. Did their very existence depend upon it? Recent findings suggest that is exactly the reason why. 

The ancients appear to have left messages behind for us...messages about great Earth changes that occurred 12-13000 years ago when the last Ice Age ended, and the Great Flood occurred. Interestingly, that time period marked the halfway point of the Great Year. Of even greater significance, shifting from Pisces to Aquarius, as we are now doing, completes the 25,920-year cycle, a major, major event in cosmic-cycle time.

The Maya divided the Great Year into five smaller cycles of 5,125 years each. Each sub-cycle ended with a different kind of cleansing process for planet Earth and its inhabitants. Why a cleansing? It seems that previous civilizations of mankind over-identified with the material ways of life, and paid little attention to spiritual development. The material ways lead to excessive pleasure, self-gratification, comforts, greed, destruction of the environment, wars, injustices, and so on, not unlike what we have today, but on a much larger scale.