Friday By Request

This week’s FBR took some research! Seamhead Gypsy asked “What the heck ever happened to the age of Aquarius? (might be a question for an FBR) I don't know about you, but I sure don't see a whole lot of harmony, understanding, sympathy and trust.”

“Aquarius” is a song that has a special memory attached to it for me. The Fifth Dimension released their rendition of the first song in the musical “Hair” just a few months before I turned three! I remember sitting under the kitchen table, which was a favorite haunt of mine at three, while Mom was cooking or doing dishes or something. That song came on the radio and Mom sang along with it. I recall it remained one of her all time favorites and it was one of the songs I really needed to hear after her death. It was healing for me because of that memory, of Mom singing in the kitchen. Mom had confessed that if she hadn’t gotten married and had children, she probably would have been in San Francisco in 1968!

After some research, I'm ready to tackle this one! My personal belief is that while as a society we can control what influences we introduce to the world, we cannot control the plain fact that for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. The world will always stay in complete balance - and we will always disagree with the opposing influences!

What Happened to The Age of Aquarius?
For Seamhead Gypsy

I like astrology, for the fun of reading my daily horoscope and the fact that so much of it is vague enough to see it in everything, or be able to disprove it in everything. This is neither an endorsement nor a disbelief in it. This is simply the current world as it relates to the accepted knowledge of the Age of Aquarius in accordance with the song from the 1960s.

According to Wikipedia, the age of Aquarius has been reported to have begun as long ago as 1447 AD or it will begin as far into the future as 3621! Astrological opinions vary greatly on that! So, part of why things don’t seem as Age Of Aquariusy as the song lyrics say, could be simply that it hasn’t started yet!

The pop culture connotation of exactly what the Age Of Aquarius is was formed from the New Age beliefs and popular culture of the 1960s and 1970s, gaining its most popular recognition from the lyrics in the song from “Hair.”

In the new age thinking, it is reasoned that the beginning of the Age ushers in its influence over people with the dominance of Uranus, ruling planet of the sign Aquarius, and its conjunction with Pluto, ruler of masses. Thus, the Age Of Aquarius would be a phenomena that would rule over the masses with the influence of the traits of the sun sign Aquarius, friendly, humanitarian, original, independent and intellectual. However, logically, the Age would also bear the influence the sign’s negative traits on the masses as well which include, perverseness, unpredictability and emotional detachment.

Wiki also attributes to the stars in Aquarius a ruling influence over electricity and computers, democracy, freedom, modernization, rebellions, mental disease and nervous disorders.

Take a look at some of those combinations. Computers have certainly enabled people to become more friendly through chat rooms, IMs, even internet dating sites. I express my own originality through this blog, as do many bloggers. But conversely, computers and their enabling power also welcome the perverseness of hate sites and child pornography and the emotional detachment of cyber encounters and friends you never see.

I don’t think I even need to address the unpredictability and even perverseness of democracy and freedom in this day and age or the emotional detachment that corporate globalization has to both workers and consumers. Yet the humanitarian influence of the Age has brought more support groups, activists and lobbyists demanding legal watchdogs to protect, essentially, everyone from everyone else.

The lyrics to the song Aquarius are optimistic about what the future holds. According to the positive traits of the Age of Aquarius, love will be free and there will be harmony, sympathy and understanding. But the song’s lyrics don’t address the emptiness of the detachment that goes with free love or the risk of disease that came about as a byproduct. And there is always the other side where sympathy and trust become an understanding to some that others are easy targets.

I’m afraid, Gypsy and all who have been waiting for the peace and community of the Age of Aquarius, that it’s here. We just weren’t ready for the dark side the song lyrics didn’t address.


Now that we're all in the mood for a flashback, here is that song in my mental petri dish this week, as performed in the movie of the musical, "Hair."