I am not a big fan of Edison, I am a Tesla fan......
Nor am I any fan of Edison the person at all (he was actually quite an egotistical, self-promoting
jerk [Brit. "wanker"?] with limited brilliance). I have far more admiration for Tesla's incredible genius (and he was much weirder and socially dysfunctional as any true genius should be!
)
However, when talking about the
symbology of an Age - and assuming that the Age of Aquarius did indeed begin in the 19th Century as per
Burgoyne - Edison - from the 19th Century until the recent "rediscovery" of Tesla - has uncontrovertibly been
the world's icon of the Age of Electricity (Aquarius) -
not because he originated the practical use of electricity or even came close to perfecting the way to make widespread use of it (that was entirely Tesla's doing - DC to AC - with Westinghouse's financial backing), but simply because
Thomas Alva Edison was the MAN who got the ball rolling to popularize the use of electricity with his great aptitude for dramatic publicity and his egregious overshadowing of those who actually made major contributions to the use of electricity. (Reminds me of some very important politicians of our present time.) And the great significance here is that this undeniable iconic
symbol of the Age of Electricity (flawed though he was in reality) was
Aquarius.
Both Darwin and Lincoln - both Aquarius - were also deeply flawed as individuals, and their "great works" were ultimately devastating - what Tennyson aptly summarized from Darwin's work as "nature, red in tooth and claw" spread like a dark cloud over civilization and may even have led to the unprecedented savagery of the great world wars - "survival of the fittest" was a perfect slogan, a powerful motivation for Nazism. But Darwin became the
very symbol of a NEW SCIENCE - devoid of any spiritual influence that even Newton had upheld.
And many historians have ascertained that Lincoln freed the slaves, not so much for racial equality, but rather to incapacitate the economy of the Southern States, thus assuring the triumph of the TECHNOLOGICAL culture of the Northern States. His racial stance was always "free but separate" - Lincoln never espoused integration, despite the great public misconception of the Emancipation Proclamation.
But these three humans (cf. the Tetramorph - bull, ram, fish, and
human) became POWERFUL symbols (i.e., icons detached from their human realities) in the world consciousness in the 19th Century. A real bull was not any different or more "sacred" in the Age of Taurus from what it is now -
but the Bull as a symbol was. Likewise a real ram vs the symbol of the Ram during the Age of Aries, and the fish during the Age of Pisces.
As for the argument that the Age of Pisces could not have involved such monstrous cruelty and warfare as the Inquisition, the Albigensian "Crusade" or the entire Crusades themselves, the Spanish and later American massacres of the indigenous civilizations, the constant series of dreadful wars in Europe, etc., etc. - such horrific violence has always been the nature of the human species,
regardless of the Age. I highly recommend that one read at least the third and last section of Arthur Koestler's
Ghost in the Machine (the first two sections are heavy reading and mostly unnecessary "preparation" for Part Three, where the point of the book is finally "driven home")
. At that point, Koestler jolts us with the fact that homo sapiens, rats, and ants are the ONLY species known to have no instinctive inhibition of all-out murderous warfare against
their own species - all it takes is belonging to a different group (not a different species) and all that inhibits the urge to annihilate one's own kind is fear. He also points out that hunting and killing for food is a very different phenomenon, and that all predatory species (except man, rats, and ants) kill without any anger or hatred - simply with hunger. Even the "dueling" involved in the male territoriality of other species is usually rather "ceremonious" and is settled with the retreat of the weaker individual without death, rarely with serious injury, and no persistent rage or pursuant violence. Quite "unhumanlike".
What is important is the salient features of each Age that made it different from the others. The Age of Taurus was an age of massive, monumental construction and incredible material treasures, with long enduring empires that changed very little over the centuries. The Age of Aries was an age of rapid changes and upsets, unprecedented new ways of social organization (e.g. the Greek city-states), of exploration of innovative new concepts that were not brought to their ultimate development (so Aries), and finally of the most successful aggressive warfare and domination the world had ever known (the Roman Empire).
And the Age of Pisces was the first time in history that love, gentleness, selflessness, and anti-materialism had ever been embraced and exalted to such a remarkable degree - but this new and original benevolence was ultimately too weak to withstand the ever-present evil of human corruption that distorted it beyond recognition. How Pisces can you get?