FROM THE PISCEAN TO THE AQUARIAN AGE

The transition from the Piscean Age to the Aquarian Age is one of the major reasons for the present world unrest.

The ending of the Piscean Age has brought to the point of crystallization (and therefore of death) all those forms through which the Piscean ideals have been molded. They have served their purpose and done a great and needed work. It might be asked here: What are the major Piscean ideals?

(a) The idea of authority. This has led to the imposition of the different forms of paternalism upon the race – political, educational, social and religious paternal- ism. This may be either the kindly paternalism of the privileged classes seeking to ameliorate the condition of their dependents (and there has been much of this); or the paternalism of the churches, the religions of the world, expressing itself as ecclesiastical authority; or the paternalism of an educational process.

(b) The idea of the value of sorrow and pain. In the process of teaching the human race the necessary quality of detachment, in order that its desires and plans shall no longer be oriented to form living, those who guide the destiny of the race have emphasized the idea of the virtues of sorrow and the educational value of pain.

These virtues are real, but the emphasis has been overdone by lesser teachers so that the racial attitude today is one of sorrowful and fearful accep-tance and a feeble hope that some reward (in a desir-able and usually material form, such as the “heaven” of the various world religions) may eventuate after death and thus compensate for all that has been undergone during life. The races today are steeped in misery and an unhappy psychological acquiescence in sorrow and pain. The clear light of love must sweep away all this; joy will be the keynote of the coming new age.