Providence? Or Age of Aquarius?

Few contemporary paradoxes are more poignant than that of a generation that regards itself as most sophisticated in other areas and yet involves itself to the tune of millions of dollars in the occult. The proliferation of mystic systems in an era of electronic circuitry, and the fascination astrology holds for the avant-garde, causes one to look for deeper reasons for this curious contradiction in modern life.

Since the announcement that the cast of the rock musical Hair included an astrologer, it seems to have become a status symbol for rock troupes to have an astrologer-psychic in their retinue. More significant, Hair features a song hailing the advent of the Aquarian Age. It seems that this craze may supplant Scientology in its fascination for the psychic community. Certainly it reflects emerging frames of mind.

Let no one think that to its cult the motif of the Aquarian Age is merely whimsical or eccentric. There is solid evidence that many among the architects of our pop culture take with extreme seriousness the division of history into segments ruled over by zodiacal signs. The philosophy of history projected here is about as follows: The 2,000-year period ending with the opening of the Christian era was the Age of Aries, symbolized by a ram, thought to suggest God the Creator. The following 2,000 years, symbolized by the fish and called the Age of Pisces, are considered a sorrowful age, represented by the death of Christ and marked by dissolution, water (tears) being its solvent.

Now, so the theory goes, we are at the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, which has been variously estimated to have begun in 1904 or 1933 or more recently. The Aquarian Age has air as its symbol, and is held to be a sort of new spiritual beginning, marked by promise of universal brotherhood, wide learning, and the shedding of hurtful inhibitions.

The forces behind this revolutionary life style of the mind are varied and complex. Some of them are without doubt psychological, others cultural; but there are evidences of deeper and more basic spiritual causes. It is to these that the Christian Church needs to give attention, to see whether there are indicated areas of spiritual or theological lack.

It seems clear that some significant part of the current “cultic occultism” stems from a growing distrust of the rational in our time. Thus, we are seeing here a part of a larger revolt against reason that surfaces also in the rigid and unstructured demands of “far out” groups upon various units of the Establishment.

Perhaps also the resort to astrology is a rationalization of a revolt against the inflexibilities of a mechanistic age, as objectivized by the computer and other depersonalized forms in technology. Someone may respond here that little is to be gained by exchanging one determinism for another. But it must be remembered that today’s astrology is not regarded as a rigid form of celestial determinism.

A comparison of today’s horoscopes with those of, say, the medieval period reveals that the contemporary form of astrology is in general genial and bland. Gone are the warnings and strictures imposed by the medieval star-gazers upon those who failed to respond to their signs. Today’s predicted Age of Aquarius is hopeful. The older restrictions and galling rigidities of the Age of Pisces, being at length the victims of the inexorable process of dissolving-dissolved emotion, are now lost in cultural-historical chaos. This leaves the field wide open for a promised golden era, in which newer integrative forces will lead to cooperation, brotherhood, and pushed-out horizons.

It is this mentality that also rationalizes the revolt of the avant-garde against such stabilities as marriage, structured societies, and cultural norms. Certainly if man is held in the grip of newly operative celestial powers, he cannot be blamed if he responds to the impulses of a new era. And certainly the proffered hope of a new age of enlarged dimensions for the human spirit, and a new freedom for man to be human, appeals to those of humanistic orientation.

Whatever the motivation for the newer astrological interest, it is evident that the movement is already the victim of exploiters who have moved in for the financial kill. No one can know with accuracy how many persons derive their livelihood from the arts of the occult. Time for March 21, 1969, estimates that there are some 10,000 full-time astrologers in the United States, and 175,000 practicing the art part-time. Over 1,200 of the nation’s daily papers carry horoscopes. Rock music groups grind out albums dealing with astrology, while paperback writers seek to capitalize upon the public interest in the subject.

More revealing still, courses in astrology and witchcraft are offered, not only in offbeat Mid-Peninsula Free University and Heliotrope Free University, both in California, but also in sedate state universities. Such studies can, it may realistically be feared, “reach dangerously into the mind,” and may even produce public psychosis. While some may enroll in such courses for reasons of social pressure or status seeking, many others of those deeply involved in these psychic forms are operating with deep seriousness. This is especially true of those who avoid the redundant forms of popular horoscopes and move into the area of computerized “readings” based upon the hour (or even the minute) of the client’s birth.

To return to the question raised at the beginning of this article: For what Christian understanding is the newer occultism a substitute, or to what biblical insight is it a surrogate? It occurs at once that astrology, and particularly the newer cultic form with its Aquarian Age, is seeking for a philosophy of history. May it not be that whenever one rejects a rational and structured frame for history, he inevitably turns to a non-reflective one?

Again, may it be that when the mind turns its back upon the prophetic understanding of history, in which God is Lord of history, of life, and of death, then it is shut up to philosophies of history that proceed from the creature? And if scientific interpretations of history (such as that of Marx) fail man, may he not turn to the irrational and the cultic? And is it not but a step from the cyclical view of history to that of the astrologer?

We venture that the loss of the providential view of history, which in its biblical sense is linear and eschatological, lies at the root of modern man’s confusion, a confusion that seems to border on the absurd in the new cult of the Aquarian Age. Perhaps the Church needs to be challenged by this bizarre form to a renewal of its stress upon the role of the Living God in the affairs of men.

HAROLD B. KUHN

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