In addition to individual birth charts, astrology may also illuminate the transpersonal texture of time. Like the hands of a cosmic clock, each planet represents an energetic cycle, from hundreds of years down to the moment of the day. This chart illustrates a moment at which there may be a unique opportunity to initiate sudden spiritual change - a moment of opportunity marked by a mandala pattern which is itself so clear that everyone may recognize its symbolic symmetry, without necessarily knowing the details of astrology.
Our world seems imperiled today. Many see the earth itself at risk. Some speak of human overpopulation as a cancer on the earth, as cancer seems the only example of such growth in nature. Yet there is one other model of rapid biological growth - fetal development. What if we are Gaia growing a nervous system? What if we, collectively, are the organ of this planet's new self-reflexive consciousness about to be born?
We know from transpersonal psychology that as the individual approaches birth, or spiritual rebirth, it looks to them like death. Perhaps this is also the case as we approach collective planetary birth. Thus many prophesies simultaneously speak of both apocalypse and transcendence. The key insight for the planet, as for the individual, may be to experience death psychically rather than acting it out. This may explain why the media, seen as the planet's fetal nervous system, is so exclusively fascinated with the 3rd perinatal birth matrix issues of violence, sex and death right now.
Transpersonal experiences from shamanism to synchronicity suggest that the connection between matter and consciousness may be a two-way street. What we hope, fear and believe may have a causal effect on matter. Individually the effect seems subtle. But what transpires may be, at least in part, the outcome of our collective consensual hallucination.
Therefore, I would like to suggest that on January 23rd, 1997 groups of people all over the planet simultaneously go into non-ordinary states together, with the specific intention, not of healing ourselves individually, but of collectively catalyzing the emergence of planetary consciousness. I suspect that this may represent a particularly effective opportunity to set in motion a collective intentional transformation of human consciousness prior to the change of the millennium.
Just as with a massive pendulum, the aspects of the planets occilate. If one steps in front of such a pendulum, to oppose it in full swing, it will bowl you over. But at the moment it pauses at the extreme of its swing, the slightest touch may change the trajectory of history. This alignment may represent a nodal point in a year which promises to be to the 90's what 1968-69 was to the 60's. While the 60's were characterized by a Dionysian revolution, the 90's have already been marked by revolution by dissolution, and are pregnant with the potential for sudden spiritual transformation in 1997.
May we all have a hand in bringing this into being together - perhaps by envisioning how everything, including that which seems most evil and wrong to us, might be part of a necessary process of oscillation, leading to the birth of collective planetary awareness.
May we envision GaiaMind, in unison, in time.
Jim Fournier