Planet Waves: Cosmic Equinox, or the Antisixties?

by Eric Francis Coppolino, March 29, 2010

We’re about to experience a spring season like no other. In the Northern Hemisphere, spring begins when the Sun’s rays square the equator, just past noon in the Eastern US zone on March 20. This is also the time when the Sun enters the sign Aries and the new astronomical year begins. Aries is a cardinal sign, which means it begins a season and arrives with strength, determination, and initiative.

Think of all the energy rising out of the ground: seeds bursting into bloom, trees creating tens of thousands of new leaves to harvest the newly available rays of the Sun, animals birthing, and even people taking a moment to feel alive. Yet in addition to the usual fire surge of spring, this particular season contains a planetary event that takes this energy to a cosmic scale. On June 8 there is a second equinox, where two of the largest and also most influential planets align exactly in the first degree of Aries. Think of that degree as a kind of amplifier that makes an astrological event impossible to miss, called the Aries Point.

The planets involved are Jupiter (wisdom, expansion, culture, pleasure, exotic) and Uranus (spontaneous, disruptive, revolution, ingenious, forward-thinking). They meet up every 14 years, in a different sign (the last time was Aquarius, in February 1997).

Though any moment of astrology is unique in the world, it’s possible to make some comparisons to past events. If you’re old enough to remember 1969, you’ve felt something like this. The conjunction happened that year, in very early Libra—precisely opposite of where it happens in the spring of 2010.

While 250,000 people marched on Washington to protest the Vietnam War, another 100,000 demonstrated simultaneously in San Francisco. We witnessed the Moon landing in July—the first time that humans touched the surface of another planet. By some miracle, this was followed weeks later by the Woodstock festival in August, which was like life on Earth turning into life on another planet.

The year was not all jubilance. Nixon became president. The Manson murders happened that summer. The Beatles broke up. Yet every event had a quality of being personally significant, affecting many people. These were not abstract news items; they were palpable experiences that we cared about, and that came crashing into our living rooms. They have all left many visual impressions in our minds. It was a mythic time in history, larger than life, yet also in the flow of life.