The Astrological Ages explained using the "Gaia's Trident" method

david starling said:

Muchaco, with the Ayanamsa you use, and the VEP as the Age-Indicator, has it reached Sidereal Aquarius yet? Most Siderealists using equal Signs have the Aquarius Sign-boundary set so that the VEP won't reach it until around 2400 or even much later, in which case the Sidereal Age of Aquarius, as it's conventionally determined, hasn't even started, and won't begin for several centuries.

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In the book Mundane Astrology by Michael Baigent there's a chapter about the start of the Age of Aquarius where you can find a list of dates which range from the year 1762 all the way thru the year 3000. With Lahiri Ayanamsa it would be around the year 2400, with Raman Ayanamsa around the year 2500 and with Revati Ayanamsa around the the year 2700 according to that book.

The way I see it, this topic of correctly dating the astrological ages is a highly controversial one for two main reasons, one has to do with astrology, the other with historiography:

1) There's no agreement among astrologers on what is the correct starting point of the zodiac and so Ayanamsas may differ up to 4 degrees from each other. There's also no standard rate of precession so far. The actual rate of precession is changing over time. It is not a constant. So the dates I just mentioned are based on an assumed average rate of preseccion of 50.25'' per year. Which means those dates are only ballpark figures at best. And so it's difficult to create a correct timeline of the ages. But it gets even more complicated.

2) In recent years, historians have found reasons to doubt our current chronology, the phenomenon of so-called 'phantom time' and 'duplicates' or 'phantom copies'. What those historians are basically suggesting is that there have been a few hundred years added to our chronology that never actually happened. If that's true, then we cannot fully rely on recorded history for our timeline of the ages.

In short, it's quite a mess.

muchacho said:

In the book Mundane Astrology by Michael Baigent there's a chapter about the start of the Age of Aquarius where you can find a list of dates which range from the year 1762 all the way thru the year 3000. With Lahiri Ayanamsa it would be around the year 2400, with Raman Ayanamsa around the year 2500 and with Revati Ayanamsa around the the year 2700 according to that book.

The way I see it, this topic of correctly dating the astrological ages is a highly controversial one for two main reasons, one has to do with astrology, the other with historiography:

1) There's no agreement among astrologers on what is the correct starting point of the zodiac and so Ayanamsas may differ up to 4 degrees from each other. There's also no standard rate of precession so far. The actual rate of precession is changing over time. It is not a constant. So the dates I just mentioned are based on an assumed average rate of preseccion of 50.25'' per year. Which means those dates are only ballpark figures at best. And so it's difficult to create a correct timeline of the ages. But it gets even more complicated.

2) In recent years, historians have found reasons to doubt our current chronology, the phenomenon of so-called 'phantom time' and 'duplicates' or 'phantom copies'. What those historians are basically suggesting is that there have been a few hundred years added to our chronology that never actually happened. If that's true, then we cannot fully rely on recorded history for our timeline of the ages.

In short, it's quite a mess.

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Every Siderealist has to deal with the one really major factor you mentioned, regardless of Ages--the Ayanamsa, which affects every indicator in a Chart, including the Ascendant, and the House locations as well. I wouldn't know which Ayanamsa to choose, except by the results I could achieve using one setting versus another; and, with the inherent inaccuracies of reported birth-times, even that would be suspect. What annoys me is that the vast majority of those declaring they "Know" when the Sidereal Age of Aquarius begins, don't consult Sidereal Astrologers as to where the default Sidereal Age-Indicator, the VEP, is currently located in an actual Chart.
The rate of Axial Precession is accelerating slightly, which is something to be factored in over about a 10,000 year span, but not a significant source of inaccuracy over the next few centuries leading up to the Sidereal Age of Aquarius.
The "phantom time" conspiracy theory, regarding a clandestine alteration of the Julian Calendar, is the work of only one historian. The problem for its veracity is that recorded eclipses don't support it.

Not sure if I've clarified that the Tropical Ages are timed using the Earth's ORBITAL precession, which causes a Direct transit of the Point of Perihelion (where Earth's orbit is closest to the Sun) through the Seasonally-based TROPICAL Zodiac. AXIAL precession ("Precession of the Equinoxes") is only a Sidereal factor, causing the Retrograde transit of the VEP through the Sidereal Zodiac, and doesn't impact the Tropical Ages I'm delineating. The Direct motion of Gaia's Trident through the Tropical Zodiac, centered on the Point of Perihelion, means that its first-point is completing a transit of Tropical Capricorn prior to entering Tropical Aquarius in 2149 (based on the Mean value of PERIHELION precession). You'll notice that Earth's Perihelion date is currently in early January, when the Sun is nearly halfway through (Tropical) Capricorn. And, 1743 years ago, the Sun was nearly halfway through Tropical Sagittarius when the Earth was at Perihelion. It's a function of the "Anomalistic Year", which is shorter than the Tropical Year, which, in turn, is shorter than the Sidereal Year.

Finding the correct Ayanamsa is a hot topic in vedic astrology. The way you test the accuracy of an Ayanamsa is by working with divisional charts and Dashas which are very Ayanamsa sensitive. If you, for example, switch from Lahiri Ayanamsa to Raman Ayanamsa, predictions can be off by more than a year. That's quite significant. Also, if you dig a little deeper into why Lahiri became the official Ayanamsa, you'll see that this decision is highly questionable and astrologically not really sound. I am currently in the process of comparing different Ayanamsa traditions and how they affect predictions. And so far Lahiri and the Chitra tradition isn't really satisfying. The Revati tradition seems to yield far better results. But I haven't reached any conclusions so far.

About this phantom time theory, there's actually numerous historians who support it. And it goes back more than a hundred years, I think. The first one who started to make huge waves was Illig who was working on medieval history. He discovered that most sources on Charlemagne were actually fake. I think it was him who coined the term 'phantom time' because he discovered that someone added roughly 300 years that never happened. If I remember correctly, his theory states that some ruler (I forgot who that was) couldn't wait to reach the year 1000 AD. So he changed the year count.

The most radical approach took Fomenko, he basically took apart the entire traditional chronology and rearranged dates based on astrological, archaeological and statistical methods. He created his so-called 'New Chronology' which seems to be some kind of new underground movement in historian circles. There's also a lot of questions about Ptolemy.

I'm not a historian and I can't verify if the conclusion of Illig and Fomenko are correct, but what I can tell is that they both make a pretty good case for why we should question the traditional chronology.

Also, since we were talking about the accelerating rate of precession, wouldn't that indicate that we are in an upward movement instead of a downward movement? And wouldn't that be in alignment with what we can witness now, time and events constantly accelerating? That would be a strong case against a shortly approaching Age of Aquarius.

And seen from a Law of Attraction perspective, there's always a time lag between thoughts and those thoughts manifesting. Which means change first happens on the spiritual plane, then on the mental plane, then the emotional plane then eventually it manifests on the physical plane as a physical event. We can see that in how culture changes. First you have the philosophers expanding on certain ideas, usually decades or even centuries before those ideas are picked up by the social sciences and then decades later it usually is picked up by politics and years or decades later again it becomes a normal part of daily life for everyone. So the changes on the physical plane are naturally always trailing behind the changes on the spiritual plane. Maybe that's what this trident approach is trying to explain?

Muchaco, in order to help me understand the one major objection you have to believing in the Aquarian Age, I'll present it like this:

Suppose you've chosen your Ayanamsa to your satisfaction, so you know exactly where the Equal-Sign boundaries are. Also, suppose we're using the VEP to position the 1st Trident point in the direction of motion. We now have that leading Age-indicator somewhere between 20 degrees and 24 degrees in Sidereal Pisces, Retrograde. Now, with the rate of Precession increasing, the Trident will be transiting Pisces at a slightly faster pace than if it were constant, meaning it will reach 0 degrees Aquarius a few years sooner than if the rate of Precession were constant. Once it has reached the first point of Aquarius, the Age of Aquarius will have "officially" begun in the Astrological sense, regardless of what Calendar Year it occurs. My question is, what's your alternative configuration for determining the Ages, and what, in your opinion, is wrong with the one I just presented? One example--you could use the Autumnal Equinoctial Point instead of the VEP, if you think an upcoming Age of Leo makes more sense. How does the acceleration of Axial Precession factor in, except for the next Age arriving sooner?

David, I see nothing wrong with your presentation. It's very clear. However, you not only have to find the correct Ayanamsa in order to mark the beginning of the signs correctly, you will also have to find the point in the zodiac that represents the highest point of cultural development and the point that represents the lowest point of cultural development, i.e. the point where mass consciousness is at its highest and most refined and the point where mass consciousness is at its lowest and most dense.

What Cap and I are suggesting is based on what is written in the book The Holy Science by Sri Yukteswar, the Guru of Paramahansa Yogananda. I have to check with the book again, but from memory I can tell you this: Yukteswar writes about the timeline of the ages being out of sync. So he re-calibrated it and declared the year 499 as the mid point of Kali Yuga, which would be the absolute low point in terms of mass consciousness and cultural development and it would also be the zero Ayanamsa date where tropical and sidereal zodiac coincide. And if you look at the chart Cap posted, you'll see that this absolute low point is at around 0 Libra and the absolute high point at around 0 Aries (when the Sun is closest to its twin star). So the rate of precession would tell us into what direction we are moving.

The way I see it, this approaching Age of Aquarius hype is part of the new age movement which seems to be a phenomenon in the west only. From the vedic astrology classics point of view we are still pretty much in the dark ages where people's minds are too dense to comprehend why astrology works. And so the vedic astrology classics just explain how to use it, basic techniques useful for the Kali Yuga. So from the view point of people like Yukteswar, the new agers have it all upside down, they use the wrong zodiac and they also use the wrong marker.

According to your theory, where would you place the absolute high point and where the absolute low point in terms of mass consciousness and cultural development?

muchacho said:

David, I see nothing wrong with your presentation. It's very clear. However, you not only have to find the correct Ayanamsa in order to mark the beginning of the signs correctly, you will also have to find the point in the zodiac that represents the highest point of cultural development and the point that represents the lowest point of cultural development, i.e. the point where mass consciousness is at its highest and most refined and the point where mass consciousness is at its lowest and most dense.

What Cap and I are suggesting is based on what is written in the book The Holy Science by Sri Yukteswar, the Guru of Paramahansa Yogananda. I have to check with the book again, but from memory I can tell you this: Yukteswar writes about the timeline of the ages being out of sync. So he re-calibrated it and declared the year 499 as the mid point of Kali Yuga, which would be the absolute low point in terms of mass consciousness and cultural development and it would also be the zero Ayanamsa date where tropical and sidereal zodiac coincide. And if you look at the chart Cap posted, you'll see that this absolute low point is at around 0 Libra and the absolute high point at around 0 Aries (when the Sun is closest to its twin star). So the rate of precession would tell us into what direction we are moving.

The way I see it, this approaching Age of Aquarius hype is part of the new age movement which seems to be a phenomenon in the west only. From the vedic astrology classics point of view we are still pretty much in the dark ages where people's minds are too dense to comprehend why astrology works. And so the vedic astrology classics just explain how to use it, basic techniques useful for the Kali Yuga. So from the view point of people like Yukteswar, the new agers have it all upside down, they use the wrong zodiac and they also use the wrong marker.

According to your theory, where would you place the absolute high point and where the absolute low point in terms of mass consciousness and cultural development?

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One point I need to understand first: "So the rate of precession would tell us into what direction we are moving." Sidereal Ages unfold in the Retrograde direction (clockwise) regardless of the rate of precession. The rate affects the lengths of the Ages in years, and therefore the timeline, but the direction remains the same. How does the slight increase in the rate of Axial Precession tell you where we are in the Yuga cycle? Accelerating on the way up, from the lowest point when the Trident was located using the Autumnal Equinoctial Point, at 0 degrees Sidereal Libra?

With 'direction' I didn't mean clockwise or counterclockwise. I meant to say it shows us if we (relatively speaking) are moving towards more refinement or more density. If we knew the exact rate of precession for the last 24,000 years then we could somehow reverse engineer everything and determine where the absolute high and the absolute low point of human development happened and project those values into the future in order to determine where exactly we are heading and what we can expect at what date. That way we could even check the claims of Illig and Fomenko. But we don't know that. We don't even know how long exactly it takes in order to complete one Great Year. Did you watch The Great Year documentary? It's all explained there. I posted the link somewhere on page one of this thread.

muchacho said:

With 'direction' I didn't mean clockwise or counterclockwise. I meant to say it shows us if we (relatively speaking) are moving towards more refinement or more density. If we knew the exact rate of precession for the last 24,000 years then we could somehow reverse engineer everything and determine where the absolute high and the absolute low point of human development happened and project those values into the future in order to determine where exactly we are heading and what we can expect at what date. That way we could even check the claims of Illig and Fomenko. But we don't know that. We don't even know how long exactly it takes in order to complete one Great Year. Did you watch The Great Year documentary? It's all explained there. I posted the link somewhere on page one of this thread.

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The Binary Sun theory is attractive and makes sense to me. It fits perfectly with my separation of the Sidereal Ages and the Tropical. The idea that it's our visible Sun nearing the "other Sun", the companion to "the Sun", that's causing the increasing rate of precession, is accompanied by a very profound concept: That the closer the two Suns are, meaning our visible Sun's PERIHELION to its invisible partner, the more intelligent, enlightened, and gifted we get. In this context, the Sidereal Ages aren't emanating from the Earth, but from the relative positions of the binary stars we're orbiting. But, what's truly amazing, is that the line of intersection of Earth's orbital plane and Earth's equatorial plane, the Equinoctial Line, can be used in the Sidereal Zodiac to tell us where the two Suns are in their binary orbit. The Age of Sidereal Libra--placing the Trident at the AEP (Autumnal Equinoctial Point) instead of the VEP on the other end of the line--correlates to the greatest separation of the two Suns, corresponding to the "Dark Ages"; and when the Trident enters Sidereal Aries, it will signal the "Light Ages". In between, there's a slooow, steady improvement in our situation, here on Earth. The rate of movement of the AEP varies, because the the movement speeds up when the two Suns are closest together at one end of the elliptical orbit of the visible Sun around the invisible Sun. These Sidereal Ages are quite different from the Tropical Ages, which are about how the Earth itself affects us, and is geared to the center-line of Earth's elliptical orbit around the visible Sun (the one that indicates our Sun-signs). As logical as they are, both the Binary Star Age-model, which uses the Sidereal Zodiac, and the Terrestrial Age-model, which uses the Tropical Zodiac, are what are known as "fringe theories", and are unlikely to be accepted by mainstream Astrologers. Since the influence in the case of the Binary Ages is decidedly Solar (with two Suns involved) I'd call it the Solar Trident, instead of Gaia's Trident. Notice that in both cases the Trident's location involves Perihelion--the Solar Trident is at optimal position when one of our Suns is closest to the other, and the center-point of Gaia's Trident is positioned at the Point of Earth's Perihelion to the visible Sun.

david starling said:

How does the slight increase in the rate of Axial Precession tell you where we are in the Yuga cycle?

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If we are indeed in the binary system then according to Kepler's laws increase in the rate of Axial Precession means that we are closing in on other binary star. After the middle point of Satya Yuga, the rate of Precession should start decreasing. Increase in the rate of AP means we are in ascending part of the cycle, decrease would mean we are in descending part of the cycle.

David, readers of this thread would appreciate if you can give practical example of your method that includes astrological chart. So far, it was "dry" theory mostly.

Cap said:

If we are indeed in the binary system then according to Kepler's laws increase in the rate of Axial Precession means that we are closing in on other binary star. After the middle point of Satya Yuga, the rate of Precession should start decreasing. Increase in the rate of AP means we are in ascending part of the cycle, decrease would mean we are in descending part of the cycle.

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Right. I looked at a couple of videos, and it's about Kepler's three laws of planetary motion. In this case the "planet" is our visible Sun, orbiting our invisible Sun in an elliptical orbit. And, as you say, it's not a constant increase. It averages out during the aphelion phase. The current rate of Axial Precession works for a few thousand years in either direction with an increasing +/- factor the farther an historical date is from the current value--nothing too extreme, considering how long an Age lasts. The most profound concept is about the VERY extreme Astrological effect the distance between the two Suns is theorized to have on our collective psyches, as described by the Yuga Cycle.

Cap said:

David, readers of this thread would appreciate
if you can give practical example of your method
that includes astrological chart.
So far, it was "dry" theory mostly.

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Good point

Cap said:

David, readers of this thread would appreciate if you can give practical example of your method that includes astrological chart. So far, it was "dry" theory mostly.

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It's complicated, since there are three points, and the Age Trident is about shared World-view. For starters, with the 1st and 2nd points in Capricorn, Saturn gets an an increase in Mundane Authority (planetary value regarding our material existence) when it comes to individual and societal concerns. With the 3rd point in Sagittarius, Jupiter gets an increase in Mundane Authority regarding the traditions that sustain us, most of which are rooted in the 1st point Age of Sagittarius (c. 1400 B.C. to 400 A.D.).

I think you are making it more complicated than it actually is. I'd stick to the purely spiritual aspects of it. The way I understand our journey as humanity thru the ages is as an indicator of what kind of spiritual truths we are able to grasp as a collective, not as an individual. In that sense it's a very simple concept. How that plays out on an individual level is up to the individual. In the densest of times there have still been those who could grasp the highest of truths and they did pass them on. The highest of truths just weren't common knowledge and it was difficult to live by them, but they weren't out of reach either. In the most evolved of times they were common knowledge and therefore easy to live by. There have always been individuals or even groups that lived ahead of their time or behind of their time. There are groups even today that have no idea of any kind of technology and yet they live in a technological age. And there are groups that had the technology we enjoy today decades ago already. Very different levels of development exist simultaneously. That's why it is so difficult to actually apply the trident method and come up with specific dates and details. It's not practical. Just my 2 cents.

muchacho said:

I think you are making it more complicated than it actually is. I'd stick to the purely spiritual aspects of it. The way I understand our journey as humanity thru the ages is as an indicator of what kind of spiritual truths we are able to grasp as a collective, not as an individual. In that sense it's a very simple concept. How that plays out on an individual level is up to the individual. In the densest of times there have still been those who could grasp the highest of truths and they did pass them on. The highest of truths just weren't common knowledge and it was difficult to live by them, but they weren't out of reach either. In the most evolved of times they were common knowledge and therefore easy to live by. There have always been individuals or even groups that lived ahead of their time or behind of their time. There are groups even today that have no idea of any kind of technology and yet they live in a technological age. And there are groups that had the technology we enjoy today decades ago already. Very different levels of development exist simultaneously. That's why it is so difficult to actually apply the trident method and come up with specific dates and details. It's not practical. Just my 2 cents.

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The "complication" is that each Chart is Aspected to each point of the Trident differently. The Trident Age concept is actually quite simple: Like-minded individuals create social-orders, and the societies they create, establish traditions. Societies outlive individuals, and traditions outlive societies. We each have all three types of orientation, Aspected differently in our own Charts, because the Trident-points are out of orb, 15 degrees apart.
Tropically, we can predict the general timeframe for when individuals with Charts well-Aspected to the first Trident-point are able to take control of their social order and break with Tradition, and either change them to suit themselves, or even start something altogether new and different, corresponding Astrologically to the first-point's Sign location and that Sign's rulership. But, predicting the exact dates and places this will occur isn't possible, because it's the aggregate effect of a myriad number of individual Charts.
Another problem is, that Signs impart qualities not expressions. Sun in Aquarius isn't the same effect as Moon, Planet, Ascendant, or Trident in Aquarius. I've noticed that people look for shared qualities of Sun-sign individuals as they perceive them to be, and then (incorrectly IMO) apply them to what an Age of that Sign will, or would, be exactly like.
Muchaco, Chart indicators alone can't tell us what individuals will do, or exactly when they will do it. Why are you expecting that from ANY Age-indicator? Gaia's Trident in our Tropical Charts is about what our planet is influencing and enabling us to do; it's not about compelling a lockstep reaction.

The first-point Tropical Ages follow a pattern: The Cardinal-sign Ages are highly Traditionalistic at the beginning, and highly Individualistic at the end; whereas the Fixed-sign Ages are highly Individualistic at the very beginning. The result, is back to back Individualistic decants; and at the Cusp, which is where the first-point of Gaia's Trident is now approaching, the first-point Cardinal-sign Age culminates and finishes, and the Fixed-sign Age manifestations begin immediately. The first-point Mutable-sign Ages are most effective in the middle Decant. For the Age of Sagittarius (c.1400 B.C. to 400 A.D.), the middle of the Age included the life and times of some remarkable individuals of great influence--the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Confucius, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Herodotus, Hippocrates, and others.

Excellent point there about the difficulty of predicting exact dates and places. Astrology is based on the principle 'as above so below' which means as macrocosm so microcosm. Which means we can approach this topic of dating historical events in the same way we would approach dating personal events. Predictive astrology is basically the study of cycles and cycles within cycles and how they affect us. And in that sense, we could say that the ages are mega cycles that also have sub cycles, like the great conjunctions. The mega cycle indicator just gives us a rough idea, a basic framework for possible general future events. But it's the sub cycles and especially the sub-sub cycles that point to not only possible but also probable, specific actual events. So we should also work with those numerous cycles. The ancients worked with the great conjunctions, i.e. the Jupiter Saturn cycle. Jupiter Saturn conjunctions occur every 20 years but it takes almost 1,000 years for a full cycle.

In the book Mundane Astrology that I've already mentioned, there are some other conjunctions listed that may be of interest, here are 10 possible pairs:

Neptune-Pluto (492 years)
Uranus-Neptune (172 years)
Uranus-Pluto (127 years)
Saturn-Uranus (45 years)
Saturn-Neptune (36 years)
Saturn-Pluto (33 years)
Jupiter-Saturn (20 years)
Jupiter-Uranus (14 years)
Jupiter-Neptune (13 years)
Jupiter-Pluto (12 years)

So there's a lot to work with.

I'll try seeing how their midpoint Aspecting the Trident correlates to actual events.

Interesting to me that the Kali Yuga date 3100 corresponds to the Tropical Age of Scorpio (c.3100 to 1400 B.C.), a Fixed-sign Age which manifested the 1st Dynasty of Ancient Egypt at the very beginning. The question is, why the aggregate response to that Age took the exact form it did, especially Dynasties 1 through 4, resulting in the Pyramids. Although, given the nature of the 8th House as it relates to Scorpio, the Life After Death theme makes sense; and, the most popular deity, Osirus, god of the Underworld, relates to Pluto, the Greco-Roman version during the 3rd-point Age of Scorpio which was the Traditionalistic "background" Age during the Tropical Age of Sagittarius (c.1400 B.C. to 400 A.D.). Possibly predictive of a huge, worldwide, coordinated project starting at the beginning of the upcoming, Fixed-sign Age of Aquarius (mean Trident position c.2150 to 3900) with an Aquarian theme. Something 11th Housish perhaps?