Astrology is all about direction and meaning. What do we make of this transit? That progression? This ingress? That return? While we debate the significance of these various moving cycles, sometimes it is easy to lose sight of one of the largest: the changing of ages.

It is a well-worn maxim that the slowest moving cycles provide the thematic backdrop upon within which all the faster cycles manifest. Theoretically, their manifestation is minor in that it ultimately serves the purpose of the bigger picture. Of course, at these levels that picture can be almost impossible to grasp…or accept. Because buried beneath the crushing demands of the present it can be challenging to maintain a focus on the infinitesimally small creep towards a future that will be unrecognizable from today. In fact, being too closely aligned to this energy becomes the chains to the pragmatic everyday reality/structure so omnipresent that it is difficult to distinguish from general consciousness.

Our challenge of incarnating into this time in history is to balance avoiding a failure of imagination or vision with the weight of not having that vision realized fast enough.

While there is always a robust debate on the exact timing of this eventual transition, it is becoming less debatable that we have been feeling this awhile. Is this what it feels like for a new age to be in orb? It is impossible to overstate the tension of this uncertainty of necessity. Emotionally and intellectually, existence within this vacuum feels as if we’re being stretched across a rack.

Change can always carry inherent levels of concern and fear for in many areas of life there are scenarios where the evidence to justify is overwhelming, yet there remains those who will die protecting the existing way of life. In this way, change is as much an art that must be felt. Hopefully, this intuition aligns accurately with these largest zodiacal cycles because it takes courage to confront the potentials of a grand evolution in the history of humanity compared to the risk and sacrifice it may entail for the current state.

So it behooves all of us (and especially astrologers) to maintain that vision of what a transition in age means. What did we change through the course of the last one? What changes are forthcoming? What parts of our civilization (psychologically, socially, politically, spiritually, nationally, etc) rest upon the foundation of the current age? And because astrology provides the perspective and line of sight of this baseline evolutionary cycle, it should also empower us with direction and courage to entertain and explore radically different ways of existing…as well as identifying barriers and resistance that are rooted in adherence to the past.

As some of the most powerful nations in the history of the world decline and implode, my thoughts turn towards these largest cycles. When people are grappling with the meaning of large Pluto transits, we often advise them to be prepared to let go of anything that has outlived its purpose, become dysfunctional or needs to be destroyed in order to be rebuilt. How cavalier we can be with such a ruthless perspective! Yet, I think it is needed now…at the most macro of levels. And beyond that, expanded outwards to the trajectory that defines the archetypal mode of existence…for the next 2000 years.