(I.) HISTORY - Distant Beginnings

The concept of the Great Year also arose early, and is still with us. The basic idea is that at the beginning of the world all the planets started their journeys from 0 degrees in Aries, and will return to that position -- marking either the end of the world or the coming of the Golden Age, according to whether the astrologer is an optimist or a pessimist.

Each age is said to last for something under 26,000 years (there is of course a connection with the Precession of the Equinox); the Taurean Age is supposed to have begun in about 4139 BC, the Arian Age in about 1953 BC, the Piscean Age round about AD 220, and the Aquarian Age will begin in about 2375. These dates are of course extremely rough; no one knows when the Age of Aquarius will begin - it may already have done so, for astrologers argue that the transition from one age to another probably takes a couple of centuries.

It is perhaps interesting that as the Arian Age began, the Ram god Amun was at the height of his power in Egypt; Christianity, represented in its early years by the fish symbol so often found scratched in the Roman catacombs, began to spread throughout the world in the 2nd century AD, when the Piscean Age was beginning; and with the coming of the Aquarian Age organized religions seem to be giving way to a trust in science and world government as the twin saviours of humanity.