The Bigger Picture: Global stability in the 20th and 21st centuries
Astrologers have found that global stability and instability can be mapped using planetary cycles, to help us understand our history, and to create new futures. By mapping these cycles we can understand why the world as a whole seems full of tension at some points more than at others.
Sometimes in the past, if we haven't handled these periods of instability very well, war has broken out. But studying these cycles shows that sometimes wars end by grasping the opportunities afforded by 'instability'. Instability is just reorientation. Because we sometimes resist closure and letting go these reorientations can feel chaotic, unsettling, and depressing. We prefer the 'up' periods, when we collectively feel optimistic, in control, and able to be more creative with our lives.
The diagrams that follow are not predictive or indicators of fate or of conclusions - they are merely depictions of thematic cycles in collective consciousness, the same as everything else in astrology. We can make our themes into whatever we want.
The first diagram below shows the basic periods of stability and instability during the 20th century. The peaks show heightened instability, and if the blue solid areas are wide as well as high, then the instability lasts for a period of years. Years with little or no blue areas are relatively stable on a global level. NB Individual nations or regions can be unstable during these times, just as they can be stable in times of global instability - remember that this is a fully global picture so we have to really step outside our usual daily concepts, habitual perceptions and everyday experiences to grasp this level of reality.
Straight away we can see that the years around World War I and II are heavily marked by blue solid areas. Also the peak Cold War years are clearly shown, and the massive social upheavals of the 1950s and 1960s.
The next diagram shows how the 21st century looks from this viewpoint. The year 2020 leaps out from the page, being higher than any other year in the 200 years covered by these diagrams. The next period of major reorientation is due from 2005 to 2012.
We can take this information and make it slightly more detailed, producing a further diagram to shed more light on these global cycles. The diagram below is the astrological 'Cyclic Index' for each year from 2000 to 2025. It shows that at the moment we are in a period of growth, stability, development, and optimism, but from 2005 we are due to move into a period of reorientation, letting go, and readjustment.
We may experience this period as an increase in decay and disintegration, chaos and instability, or we may experience it as a time when we can let go of what's no longer needed, change what's outmoded, adjust our paradigms and mental models to match new reality, and work with one another to solve conflicts in a non-violent manner. It all depends on how we approach the issues raised, how we use the experience, and what we bring to it.
Astrology is not about predicting the future; it's about humans co-creating their future. Therefore it's not astrology's job to describe set-in-stone fate, but to point out windows in time: opportunities, resonances, points of critical mass, thematic stories. What we do with our lives is up to us.
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