AQUARIUS AGE 2000
001 / Starlife / Revolutions

AQUARIUS AGE 2000: 001 / Starlife / Revolutions forms Part 3 of the essay "Will the Age of Aquarius Begin in the Year 2000"; Part 2 "New Age Values: Space and Equality", early 1991; Part 1 "Precession of the Equinoxes", 1980.

The Aquarius / Aquarian Age should and will begin in the year 2000 as starmaps like these give scientific reason to popular need. A slight change of the Aquarius-Pisces boundary places the vernal equinox ecliptic intersect at the constellation Aquarius in year 2000 - an advance of about 600 years over constellation maps now sanctioned by the International Astronomical Union.

This small Aquarius-Pisces shift, <0.0005 celestial sphere, could be adapted, of course, to all zodiac constellations, for possible astronomy-astrology resolution, and to all 88 celestial constellations, for the mathematical sciences.

001

The Aquarius / New Age 1st year, derived from 2001 and '001, indeed may be noted as 001 -- a very good, cool thing to do - and even 1AA. Strikingly new, 001 startles new consciousness; paradigm shifted, awake, begin - new year, new decade, new century, new millenium, new age, new beginning, new everything … 001 is the signal code, in the know of the New Age, person to person instant recognition. 001 begins calendar renewal, revision and resolve.

STARLIFE

The relation of Life on Earth and Life off Earth is the central equation at millennium's change, and its understanding and working will determine the nature of the rising Age. A useful way to engage this dynamic is with the 1990s concept "starlife" - the word that may best characterize Aquarius in spirit and substance.

Starlife came to be, for me, in a way quite logical and simple. The ankh, ancient Egypt symbol for life, was one of my favorites which I sometimes wore in the late 1960s, early 1970s. Now in the '90s, the common 5 point flag-type star is a favorite. Ankh and Star on my dresser shelf January 1996 easily suggest StarLife. So what? Then what?

There is some precedent for this cautious linguistic discovery, starlife. Carl Sagan's "starstuff" similarly implies universal reincar-nation of matter / energy and ultimate organic cosmos oneness. We are all starstuff - what goes around, …. Hans Starlife, the chosen name of a progressive space educator prominently active in Sweden and internationally by the early 1980s, is another pioneering example.

Most common to current useful application of our Aquarius concept, starlife has long been the term used by astronomers for the lifespan or age of a star when studying star formation and star evolution. What is new for astronomy - the first of four main useful starlife applications including extraterrestrial, metaphysics and human -- is Astrobiology, the scientific term for the colloquial "starlife", launched as an independent NASA discipline in August 1996.

Astronomy revolutions brought by the Hubble Space Telescope are infused with the terminology of starlife / astrobiology: Star birth, star nurseries, star zoo, star egg, star embryo, starseed, star death; and, parent star, baby star, young star, daughter star, old star, dying star; and, star child, star mother, star brother, star offspring, star family, star father; starkind; starlove?; etc, etc.

Extraterrestrial application of the starlife concept refers to all such life - assumed, but not yet confirmed by this observer - originating beyond Earth. Aliens, ETs UFOs, science fiction's wildest creations and dimensions, Star Trek voyaging search, SETI, Deep Space… "Starlife" most respectfully and inclusively characterizes these phenomena.

Terrestrial reference of starlife includes all life on Earth, microorganism to human. Humans, then, as starlife -- as are dolphins, elephants, monkeys, dogs, cats, birds, bees, ants, etc. All Gaia life, everywhere ... now transcending at millennium’s change, evolving as the new age dawns, to new species.

Metaphysics starlife consideration returns to Sagan's "starstuff" model of Big Bang explosion seeding the cosmos with life generating matter, energy; recombining, human impulse evolves and seeks its stellar origins, galaxies and beyond, fulfilling highest destinies in a relativistic mass-energy transcendence of spirit, force (Apologies - basic physics is easier).

Revolutions
Freedom, Equality, Space, Stars, Moon

The most certain thing that can be said about the next 1,000 years, when less than half the Aquarius Age will yet have passed, is that humans will travel among the stars. It soon will be 40 years since JF Kennedy inspired new generations "to go to the moon and explore the stars", and the great transcendence is just beginning.

What values do we as humans embrace and carry forward as we travel astronomical distances at light-approaching speeds in the coming hundreds and thousands of years? To begin, Americans will live, use, extend and expand Equality, Life, Liberty and Happiness first principles -- Declaration of Independence timeless heritage, USA national birth certificate.

Libertarian and Egalitarian values born of the Apollo 1960s/70s era are prevailing at millennium's change, with Republican-Democrat 19th century organizations falling away. The emerging Egalitarian-Libertarian dynamic provides 21st century vehicles for expansion of freedom and equality, liberty and justice to space, the moon, planets, stars, and beyond…

New incarnations of these truths self-evident are arising throughout America, Asia, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, indeed, the world around. Even China, "Zhong Guo" or "Middle Country" to its habitants for millennia, and with good reason, will renew dramatically through coming Democracy Revolutions, both within China's communist party, and without.

Freedom has both political and economic dimensions. Freedoms of speech, assembly, petition and religion, traditionally respected, affirm personal and individual rights on all fundamental issues, such as conscription and war, reproduction and birth, for men and for women. The state lacks absolutely all authority and legitimacy to claim any individual's body in such life and death choices. The military draft everywhere will be abolished. Prisons will come down.

Freedom economically champions and respects individual, private property rights. "A relative equality of landed property is the whole basis of national freedom" -- Noah Webster, compiler of dictionaries and American revolutionary. Freedom, also, to work, eat, gain shelter and healthcare are basic human rights of this New Age, through guaranteed annual income and other liberations to raise and level up.

Equality, that first of truths said to be self-evident, has like freedom, many dimensions: political, economic, social, international, as well as spiritual and interstellar. Conscious-ness and behavior which recognizes the majestic truth of human equality - the essential equality of all individuals before heaven - is a precondition and starting point for the Age of Aquarius, for the advancement of the species. All stars or none.

Liberty and equality together interact and are strongest naturally and commonly on the American frontier -- in Kansas, for instance. Mid-way USA, breadbasket and heartland, the Ad Astra state someday indeed may host shining cities of fabled rubies and emeralds, from fruitful plains to stars above.

The US imperium of the late 1990s, reconstructed along pre-Vietnam era fault lines, maintains a quarter million soldiers occupying dozens of countries thousands and tens' of thousands of miles away. The billions and trillions $ enormous cost to Americans and nations so occupied leaves the people of Earth at millennium's change without a foothold on the Moon, Mars, the Jupiter system, or beyond. What a long way down from Apollo.

America will never be "back and standing tall", despite false claims of a Clinton or a Reagan, a Carter or a Nixon, until Americans, and others, are back and standing on the Moon - and beyond. The rightful and inevitable return of its soldiers, ray-guns and all, from their miscast role as global enforcer - most particularly in Asia, west and east - will invigorate and enrich the USA and all the world.

Our neighbor the Moon, the first of countless new worlds humans will visit and inhabit, and destination for one of humanity's greatest achievements, is strikingly near - 3 days by spacecraft, 1 light-second. Development and mastery of the Earth-Moon, cislunar system will confer technological capacities and direct experience necessary for humanity's expansion throughout the solar system, and for interstellar voyaging. "If God had wanted man to be a spacefaring species," a Von Braun team member declared, "He would have given man a Moon."

It is on Luna, as much as on vulnerable and limited space stations or relatively distant Mars, that humans free and equal will work out and evolve the extraterrestrial future of the species -- will "begin the world over again". It is also on the Moon where first contact and cooperation may be most gracefully, clearly and constructively accomplished.

Human cremains will arrive on the Moon for the first time, perhaps to help grow a flower or a tree, after completion of the Lunar Prospector mission in July 1999. The Encounter 2001 American space enterprise is readying "humanity's first interstellar spacecraft" to carry messages, photos and human DNA, in hair form, toward the stars. Some of this writer's ashes, before Prospector's news, were manifested for the Moon through legal will, and my preference is that some serve as fuel to help power a human piloted starship to its destination.

Planet Earth and its six billion human passengers have ample resources for the multi-trillion $ down payment on state-of-the-art starships. I pursue interstellar r&d; as New Age career goal -- for goodness and happiness, for health and wealth, for love and aloha.

--- Steve Durst, Palo Alto, California, USA 1999

AQUARIAN AGE

WILL THE AGE OF AQUARIUS BEGIN IN THE YEAR 2000?

Part Two – NEW AGE VALUES: SPACE AND EQUALITY

Pursuing the New Age quest through a third decade, I have explored important New Age values, Space and Equality, since the first part of this essay was written almost eleven years ago.

SPACE IS THE PLACE

Any who has known my interests this past quarter-century knows of my life-directing understanding that 'space is the place for the new human race'. The completely new beginnings presaged by the Apollo Moon landings have pointed to countless new worlds for human exploration, unlimited expansion for human freedom, spiritual growth and opportunity, and ultimately, to the dominant activity of the coming millenia: the species-transforming, generational voyages through the energy-transfused common-medium Space … to the Stars.

Like the magnitude of evolution of our genetic ancestors from sea to land, but unlike its pace, the human transformation from Earthbound to Spacefaring species is happening before our own eyes, a conscious evolution, in one lifetime. From Sputnik satellites in space, to men on the Moon, spacecraft past Jupiter, on to the Stars, and infinity beyond. Our common, immediate individual futures, our greatest opportunities for expanding liberty and happiness in the coming age will most abound in this new domain, this new ocean called 'space' and on its countless new worlds.

WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS …

How we gain the new freedom that is Space is paramount. The dominance in Western thought of the dual secular principles of freedom and justice is significant. Working to understand and resolve the liberty / equality equation for 25 years has consistently and constantly led this write to most effectively affirm individual sovereignty and basic human rights by aiding and abetting non-cooperation with the military draft / U.S. Selective Service System.

Absolutely and unconditionally, in any nation, at any time, for any reason, the sacred and inalienable individual right to refuse compulsory military service remains and promises the surest and fastest path to the emergence of a peaceful, plentiful planet. To say no to war, fascism, and the draft can bring forth most severe and unusual state reaction. The U.S. government, for instance, can impose fines up to $250,000 and/or 5 years in prison on anyone refusing to register or cooperate with the Selective Service System, and on any one who aids or abets individuals in such non- cooperation – as is done here now, openly, willingly, and most cheerfully.

Iran and Iraq, of course, have the draft, as do Israel and South Africa, Russia and Germany, amongst the vast majority of nations. America's claim as the land of the free and home of the brave, the beacon of light upon the hill, the uniquely special and different land will never ring true until the nation and its leaders, and most crucially, until its young men and its young women are free to choose, to effectively say no to the continued existence of war, fascism, and the Selective Service System.

The libertarian and egalitarian movements born in the past quarter-century are the vehicles carrying democracy into the Space Age. Resistance to universal military service is one crossroads where freedom and equality meet, and so may be commitment to universally guaranteed income or "fair share". "One person one vote in the common will" stands strong as the egalitarian imperative of political democracy; "one person one share in the common wealth" must transcend as moral principle for the foundation of democracy in the economy

A relative equality of wealth, a rising up rather than leveling down defines emerging economies of the New Age, Space Age. The billionaire and the beggar, the PhD and the drop-out are each and all afforded equality in political democracy; so a universal standard of affluence may become a fundamental human right for each and all on grounds of one's existence as a human being, per se. Transcending the law of the jungle in relations economic as well as physical points to an age where space explorers and astro-navigators are more valuable and highly-regarded than millionaires and billionaires. (The trouble with the rat-race, as each generation of Americans in the 20th century has discovered, is that even if you win, you're still a rat).

Pursuit of egalitarian, libertarian economies and values is likely to lead to the greatest upward mobility for the individual and for nations – the best chance for Love worldwide – during these final 10 revolutions before the new millenium / bi-millenium. As we prepare for the great interstellar voyages of the New Age, it is hoped that solar power / thermonuclear fusion energy from the Sun will be massively used in and from Space, on Earth and around the solar system; and that global progress toward metric use in weights and measures is accelerated by America's pioneering the metrics of time.

In the late 1960s, America underwent a massive cultural revolution. Even today the causes of the renaissance in thought and behavior are not entirely clear. One undeniable stimulus was the impact of a resolute and a dynamic China (named by its inhabitants the "Middle Country") with the historic centuries-long expansion of Western and American civilizations. Another, more subtly felt, catalyst to the upheaval was humankind's first visit to, truly, another world in July 1969, which presented long-range possibilities of limitless amounts of new energy, resources and 'territories' from and in space. Whatever the reasons, the temporary rejection of almost all conventionally held certainties and customs led to a search by a great number of younger Americans for alternative directions towards a new individual and a new society. This writer, in the quiet of exile out of the U.S., also was involved in the movement towards a more just and peaceful society and a freer, brighter future. One day, I was struck by the words of a song which proclaimed that "this is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius": they seemed so precisely to characterize the spirit of the times. With considerable surprise, more than a decade of work and study has convinced me that the claim that this is the beginning of an 'age' called Aquarius has substantial astronomical and historical validity.

PRECESSION OF THE EQUINOXES

The Earth is involved in a variety of astronomical revolutions. It revolves 'daily' around its axis. The Earth makes a 'yearly' revolution about the Sun. Along with the Solar System, it revolves around its galactic center. Less well known, the Earth's polar axis wobbles – because of the bulge of mass at the equator, much like a spinning top – and carves out a circle in the 'celestial sphere'. This conical motion of the polar axis is called precession and takes about 25,800 years to complete. To an Earthbound observer, the axis' north pole appears to shift slowly against the background of stars and constellations. Its counterclockwise movement around the 'ecliptic' (the plane on which the solar system and zodiacal constellations lie) results in an average stay of about 2,150 years in each of those 12 constellations.

Since the Earth's axis pole shifts in relation to the constellations, so must any given point on the Earth's surface. Because of the counterclockwise movement, the Earth's 'seasons' (caused by the inclination of the Earth's axis to the ecliptic) migrate slowly backward relative to the constellations, and the two equinox points (the intersections of the Earth's equator and the ecliptic) occur earlier and earlier with each passing year. The spring (or vernal) equinox now occurs where the Sun stands on March 21 and traditionally has marked the beginning of the year for many cultures. For the ancient Mesopotamians and Egyptians, the spring-beginning year-beginning equinox occurred with then Sun was in Taurus, and Taurus was regarded as the 'first' of the constellations. For the Greeks and Romans, the spring equinox occurred when the Sun entered Aries, and the point at which the Sun stood was called 'the First Point of Aries'. It is still called that even though it has moved back through Pisces and is almost at Aquarius.

All advanced cultures in their times have sought to define the individual's relationship to the cosmos, humanity's place in time and space. Early astronomers, scholars and philosophers looked to the Moon and Sun, the stars and constellations as a way to measure and record the evolution of human civilization through history. It is fascinating and more than coincidental that the constellations of the zodiac – the band of stars 8 degrees above and below the ecliptic which artificially have been constructed to form 12 of the 88 universally-recognized symbolic constellations – continually appear on star charts in all ages and in all lands of the world. Developed in Babylonia some five to six thousand years ago, the zodiac has been used as a 'great clock in the sky' by Egyptians and Hindus, by Jews, Christians and Moslems, by Chinese, Aztecs and Mayans. As the spring equinox precessed backwards through one constellation every 2,000+ years, respective astronomer (or astrologer)-sages, naturally enough, characterized each era with its appropriate zodiac symbol. More than four thousand years ago in the 'Age of Taurus', Egyptians and Hindus singled out the bull, or cow, as sacred. In the two thousand years that followed, the Hebrews (perhaps the most progressive culture in the Age of Aries) shunned the 'golden calf' and heralded the new year with the sacrifice of the ram. The predominance of the fish in early Christian rituals and symbolism reflected the awareness of the precessional change into the Age of Pisces. Now, as the spring equinox date approaches the boundary of the constellation of Aquarius, a human figure, the new Age dawning is characterized by preoccupation with human rights and technological revolutions. In Asia and Africa, in Europe and the Middle East, and most especially in South and North America, an aspiring Aquarian consciousness and a nascent Aquarian community are emerging while one two-thousand-year period comes to an end, and another begins.

Bio Note:   Steve Durst — teacher, revolutionary, aspiring journalist — has been editor and publisher at Space Age Publishing Company since its founding in 1976. He moved to California in 1961 from New York (b. 1943) to attend university, and earned degrees in European and American history. Each of his children, thanks to their mother, has a name related to the stars or the moon.