In various articles and books over the years, I've explored the way movies mirror global planetary trends at the time of their release, along with how they reflect the horoscopes of their directors.1 In this article, we will consider the possibility that films can sometimes reflect even broader trends — including those associated with the shifting Great Ages. I'll reprise some selected ideas drawn from my book, Signs of the Times, along with material not included there, to demonstrate how the shift from Pisces to Aquarius may already be expressing itself, in both subtle and obvious ways, within in the imagery of modern films. It should become apparent that examples like these not only help us to better understand the transformation sweeping our world, but also deepen our insight into the underlying astrological principles themselves.

 

The Wizard of Oz

This 1939 film features one of the most enduringly popular tales of modern culture. Yet it also holds an important key for understanding the shift of consciousness we call the Aquarian Age. In L. Frank Baum's story, our four protagonists (Dorothy, the Cowardly Lion, the Tin Man, and the Scarecrow) set out on a great mission: One is looking for courage, another for brains, another for heart, and another simply wants to return home. The four travel together to Oz, to meet the great and powerful wizard who sends them on a journey full of difficult trials, as prerequisites for attaining their dreams. Upon completing their tasks, however, they experience a great disillusionment, for they discover that the “great and powerful” wizard is nothing of the sort: He is simply an ordinary man. They learn that what they really seek lies somewhere much closer to home. “The answer has always been within you,” Glynda the Good Witch tells Dorothy.

 

In this timeless tale, we see a beautiful expression of the seismic shift taking place in the unfolding of our spiritual sensibilities, as we move from a Piscean era when the answers were seen as largely residing outside of ourselves — in the form of gurus, priests, or God-like figures of one sort or another — to an Aquarian era when the Divine is seen within each of us. “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!” the wizard yells out, as our four seekers discover that the God-like figure is nothing but a sham. In a similar way, we are realizing now that the old institutions and God symbols have lost much of their currency. This echoes the German philosopher Nietzsche who, more than a century ago, declared that God is dead. That idea was never intended to address God's objective existence as much as our outworn conceptions of God. Likewise, The Wizard of Oz isn't suggesting that there is no Divinity but merely that we must rethink our approach to this reality. Our spirituality must be rooted in a personal experience that looks within for “salvation,” rather than without. In other words, we are not the servants of God, but co-creators with God — a shift from Piscean dependency to Aquarian autonomy.

 

Did Baum himself intend these more esoteric implications with his seeming child's tale? It's fairly safe to say that he did, since Baum (born with Sun conjunct Uranus) had been a member of the Theosophical Society since 1892 and even wrote publicly about theosophical concepts for a South Dakota newspaper, the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer. Among the central tenets of Theosophy is the belief that Divinity resides inside us, rather than in any external form or intermediary. As Madame Blavatsky herself once phrased it, the essence of spiritual esotericism can be summed up as the concept that “the personal God exists within, nowhere outside, the worshipper.”2

 

The Truman Show

In this ingenious 1998 film, directed by Peter Weir and scripted by Andrew Niccol, the lead character, Truman Burbank, is depicted as the star (or victim?) of a mass media show he doesn't realize he's part of. Every move Truman makes is carefully captured by a constellation of TV cameras and broadcast to a worldwide audience who follows his daily life as though it were a soap opera. Over the course of the film, he gradually awakens to the nature of his predicament and struggles to break out of this media-saturated virtual realm, to forge his own life, free from the domination of the God-like powers manipulating his world.

 

On one level, this story speaks to the potential dangers we all face as our lives become increasingly entwined with surveillance cameras and information-gathering systems of every stripe. This could easily be one of the downsides of the information-oriented Aquarian Age; individual lives are scrutinized by technologies such as these, and personal privacy becomes an increasingly scarce commodity.

 

But Weir and Niccol's story touches on a much deeper level of resonance for any student of the Great Ages. The protagonist's struggle to awaken into freedom involves an effort to break free from a world bounded by water (Pisces) into one of air (Aquarius). Specifically, Truman must overcome his paralyzing fear of water. Each time he attempts to escape his world, he is enticed back by alcohol (Pisces, in its negative aspect). In the movie's closing sequence, he finally overcomes that fear and is shown literally stepping into the sky, ostensibly to begin his new life. (Note that in the original Matrix, Neo's awakening is also depicted as an escape from a water-based existence into an air-based one, when he emerges from the embryonic "pod" which has contained him since birth.)

 

Further underscoring this symbolism is the fact that the God-like “creator” who controlls Truman’s world is named “Christof” — of Christ, as it were— a telling reference to the Piscean-Age religion bearing that figure's name. In short, Truman's efforts to break free of Christof’s grip reflect our own collective struggle to throw off the lingering influence of the Piscean Age and its comparatively dogmatic mind-set, to pursue a more independent lifestyle. (Also note also that in the film's production script, Christof's boss is named Moses, a reference to a key luminary of the previous Great Age, Aries!) In that respect, this film’s message is vaguely similar to that of The Wizard of Oz: Truman must leave behind the external "God" symbols of his world to become a fully authentic person, or true man — an Aquarian revelation of the highest order.

 

Titanic

James Cameron's mega-blockbuster from 1997 centers around the ill-fated maiden voyage of the famed oceanliner as it made its way from Europe to a disastrous collision with an iceberg in the north Atlantic. At the emotional core of the story lies the tale of an ill-fated love affair between two young passengers on this ship, played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.

     

As some commentators have pointed out over the years, the dominant thread in this story is really Rose's journey of awakening and survival. Over the course of her journey, we see a dramatic transformation in her character from the comparatively rigid values associated with her "old world" background, to the more liberated values associated with American society, as represented by Leo DiCaprio's character, Jack. At film's end, we glimpse photographs near Rose's deathbed that reveal she has lived a life inspired by ideals of freedom and self-determination — the very qualities associated with the Aquarian Age in its higher aspects. Further underscoring this theme is the way Leonardo DiCaprio's character is shown to completely bypass the established norms of where passengers are supposed to reside on this ship; while booked in lower-class sleeping quarters, he freely moves between decks, even mingling at one point with wealthy passengers in the first class dining room. In so doing, he expresses the more democratic and comparatively classless ideals of America, and in turn, Aquarian society.

 

Chocolat

Because of the principle of polarity, each Great Age emphasizes not only the sign normally associated with it, but also the sign opposite it. The Piscean Age, for example, emphasized both Pisces and Virgo — a zodiacal axis that (as anyone with these signs amplified in their chart knows) can lean toward a more dutiful and pleasure-denying approach to life. Over the last two millennia, this gave rise to (among other things) a world religion championing the virtues of austerity and sacrifice, as embodied in the grim image of a man hanging on a wooden cross. During this age, people commonly believed that there was something inherently virtuous in suffering itself and that it was somehow unspiritual to experience pleasure. In Islam, too, we see the spirit of abstinence regarding sex and alcohol — but qualified by the promise of great pleasures in the afterlife!

 

In the Aquarius/Leo Age, we can expect a vastly different value system, where the pursuit of personal pleasure is not only acceptable, it could even become an end in itself. That tectonic shift of archetypal values is nicely portrayed in Lasse Hallström's 2000 film, Chocolat. The movie is set in the 1950s, in a conservative Christian town in France, where all forms of personal pleasure and independent thought are strongly discouraged by the local church authorities. That worldview is suddenly challenged when a free-thinking woman comes to town, opens a gourmet chocolate shop, and manages to tempt these long-repressed citizens with her delectable offerings. Adding to the community's anger is this woman’s blithe refusal to join the local church; instead, she opts to live more independently. The situation reaches a climax when she begins to fraternize with a group of long-haired vagabonds, "proto-hippies" of that time, who arrive by barge down a nearby river and whose liberal ways are even more threatening to local sensibilities. When the two worldviews finally clash, tragedy results — though, in the process, the community becomes transformed and awakened to a new world of personal pleasure.

      

The rigidly dogmatic and self-denying values advocated by the local Christian church in this film perfectly embody the negative aspects of the Piscean Age; however, the woman and her bohemian associates reflect the more life-affirming, liberal sensibilities of the Aquarius/Leo Age coming into play, so to speak. The collision of worldviews in this movie reflects a very real clash of values that has been gaining momentum for several centuries now — as spearheaded by such real-world figures as Lord Byron, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and the latter-day hippies, all of whom point the way to a more pleasure-oriented approach to life. This film shows us the more positive side of this trend; for the other side of the coin, let us turn now to our next film.

 

The Sound of Music

Another example of that tension between adjoining Ages can be found in Robert Wise's film version of the Broadway musical, The Sound of Music. The most successful movie of its time, it premiered in 1965—the same year as the first Uranus/Pluto conjunction which shaped that decade. Yet I put off seeing it for years since I mistakenly assumed it was little more than light entertainment with no further value for me as an esotericist. So imagine my surprise when I finally caught up with it and discovered how the film’s core narrative reflected the shift from Pisces to Aquarius in a fairly dramatic way!

 

Consider the film’s central story of a young woman named Maria (played by Julie Andrews) who lives in a Catholic convent and aspires to be a nun. As the plot unfolds, she finds herself attracted to the patriarch of a local musical family she’s been called on to tutor, a Captain Georg von Trapp (played by Christopher Plummer). They eventually fall in love, and after much soul-searching, she decides to leave her life of religious service behind in order to pursue a life of romantic happiness in marriage. [3] Viewed archetypally, that break from the Church reflects the shift from the religious orientation of the Pisces/Virgo era, geared as it was toward self-sacrifice and otherworldly ideals, to that of the Aquarian/Leo era, with its emphasis on secular values and worldly concerns like “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

 

That symbolism is essentially the same as that found in the earlier film, The Jazz Singer. A technical landmark, that was the first feature-length film to feature fully synchronized sound, and was a tipping point in the way movies were  made from that point on. (Its release on October 6, 1927 coincided with the departure of Uranus out of Pisces into 0° Aries — a clear portent of new beginnings.) In a way similar to The Sound of Music, the earlier film depicts a character agonizing over a decision to leave a life of religious service behind in order to pursue a secular calling, as a performer in that most Aquarian of musical forms, jazz.

 

In fact, Maria's story of leaving the Church behind is just one of two interlocking themes in The Sound of Music  which illustrate the tug of war between Piscean and Aquarian paradigms. In the movie, the von Trapp family finds itself increasingly pressured by the encroaching Nazi regime, and desperately struggles to break free from its oppressive influence. Though the Nazi party displayed some elements of the emerging Aquarian mythos, with its embrace of high technology and mass media, at its heart it embodied the more dogmatic, persecutional aspects of the Piscean Age. Remember, not only was the state religion of Nazi culture Christianity, but its chief icon was a twisted cross — a climactic perversion of Piscean ideals and dogmatism. By contrast, the von Trapps represented the urge toward creative freedom—an impulse clearly aligned with the incoming Aquarius/Leo axis. The Nazi's efforts to squelch their freedom symbolized a desperate last gasp by members of the receding paradigm to subvert the potentials of the burgeoning new one. The movie’s happy ending showing the family’s escape from Nazi-controlled territory speaks to an ideal of final release from the suffocating grip of a bankrupt older worldview.

 

2001: A Space Odyssey

As Joseph Campbell pointed out in his classic book, Hero with a Thousand Faces, the timeless story of a hero struggling against great odds to obtain a boon or life-changing transformation is found in virtually every culture through history. While the essential message of these tales is much the same, the surface details can change from culture to culture—and it's within those subtle variations that we stand to gain important insights into the worldviews of these cultures.

 

In earlier times, the obstacle to be overcome may have been a great dragon or supernatural demon, but in Stanley Kubrick's 1968 self-styled “Space Opera,” 2001: A Space Odyssey, our hero must overcome a powerful computer named Hal. (Notice how this name changes when you move each of those letters up a notch in the alphabet—IBM!) “Man versus machine” is a theme that's been echoed by countless science fiction tales through the years, but it's also one of the great problems facing us in the Aquarian Age, as we learn to grapple with the challenges not only of technology but of mechanistic logic — the tendency to perceive the world through a mind-set of pure rationality, devoid of feeling or compassion.

      

Kubrick's story features an Aquarian message on other levels as well — including a look at the expanded human potential. As I've already mentioned, the coming age will see an emphasis upon the entire Aquarius/Leo axis, because each zodiacal sign is inextricably entwined with its opposite. On one level, this portends a time when ordinary humans could well be transformed into “mini-gods” of a sort, as average men and women awaken to their own heroic potential, in creative, political, and spiritual ways. With a subtle nod to Nietzsche's “Superman” concept — underscored by Kubrick's use of Richard Strauss's music for Also Sprach Zarathustra — we see astronaut Bowman traveling through a sort of hyperdimensional stargate, to be eventually reborn, at movie's end, as a mysterious “starchild,” shown floating in space above the Earth. In the age ahead, we too could be “lifted up” to levels of higher potential that will fundamentally change our conception of what it means to be human. Will this be brought about through genetic technology, expanded educational techniques, or (as Kubrick's movie suggests) contact with nonhuman intelligence? Stay tuned!

 

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

The notion of humans being lifted up is a motif that also figures prominently in the myth most associated in the West with the constellation of Aquarius—the Greek tale of Ganymede, the water-bearer. Ganymede was said to have been the most beautiful youth alive. He was watching over his father's sheep one day when he was abducted into the heavens by Zeus, where he became immortalized as a servant to the gods.

      

It is intriguing that, just as we are about to enter an age governed by a tale of heavenly abduction, we are flooded with accounts from around the world of people being abducted into the sky by celestial beings. True, there have been stories of abductions throughout history — for example, the fairy legends of Celtic lore or the Judaic tale of Enoch's ascension. Yet, this phenomenon has undoubtedly accelerated in recent decades, starting with the famed Betty and Barney Hill case of 1961. Although the abduction motif figures prominently in many of our science fiction films, it found an especially conspicuous expression in Steven Spielberg's 1977 blockbuster movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which pivoted around a young boy who was abducted into the sky by nonhuman beings.

      

The question is: Are these abduction tales based on fact? Or are they simply an expression of our collective fantasies, a result of our overactive imaginations? Fortunately, for our purposes, it doesn't really matter: Either way, we can explore the symbolism of these stories for the insights they offer about the shifting Aquarian zeitgeist. But to do this, we need to explore what “abduction” truly means. Archetypally, abduction refers to a process of becoming caught up in a powerful state of consciousness beyond the control of one's conscious ego, as the psyche is overtaken by mysterious impulses and energies. But there is an important difference between abduction upward and abduction downward; for instance, the image of Persephone being abducted into the underworld by Pluto suggests getting sucked down into a more emotional, subterranean level of psychic energy. In a sense, whenever we feel overwhelmed by anger, depression, or fear, we've been "abducted into the Underworld.”

      

However, the myth of Ganymede features a person being abducted upward into the heavenly realms — a very different implication indeed! This suggests a shift in consciousness that is predominantly mental in character. (Some would see the upward direction as having a more spiritual connotation, but spirituality is more properly related to the balance point represented by the horizon, the proverbial “crack between worlds.”) The myth of Ganymede, along with films like Spielberg's Close Encounters, may be an omen that humanity could be swept up in an increasingly cerebral mode of experience during the coming Aquarian millennia. This seems especially likely when we stop to consider the element of air associated with Aquarius and its intellectual connotations. At its very best, this shift to the air element could portend a genuine awakening of humanity's higher mind, but it might also point to a more prosaic possibility, as our lives become increasingly dominated by the influence of our TV sets and computers.

 

Citizen Kane

I mentioned earlier in this book about the extraordinary set of planetary energies accompanying the release of Welles' cinematic tour de force. Besides simply reflecting the energies of that period, though, both the style and content of this film offer a mother lode of clues for any astrologer hoping to find insights into the Age-shift currently affecting our world.

      

In a way similar to The Truman Show, Citizen Kane speaks to the enormous power of the (Aquarian) media to shape our lives and minds. In the movie, Charles Foster Kane is shown acquiring a newspaper called The Enquirer, and shamelessly uses his power to affect lives and manipulate public opinion (shades of Rupert Murdoch!). People will think what I tell them to think!” he barks at one point, and also, “If the headlines are big enough, the news is big enough!” While mass media has expanded our horizons in important ways, by providing a window to the larger world, films like these illustrate some the serious consequences that can come from misusing our telecommunications technologies, too.

      

On that note, Citizen Kane  (again, like The Truman Show) also underscores the issue of personal privacy. Throughout the movie, we're shown scenes in which the most intimate details of individual's lives are paraded before a ravenous public. In a scene foreshadowing later scandals like the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky affair, Kane's private tryst with a younger woman is broadcast to the entire world via front-page headlines. Indeed, the entire movie is structured around an investigative reporter's quest to uncover secrets about Kane's personal life, as he seeks to unravel the meaning of Kane's dying word: “Rosebud.” As we've increasingly seen in recent years, one of the downsides to our Aquarian high-tech world is that we may all be subject to the prying eyes of information-gathering systems of one sort or another. The three letters that precede our internet sites, "www," may stand for "world wide web," but they could just as well recall those words chanted by protestors back in the 1960s: the whole world is watching!

      

There is even something Aquarian about the film's narrative style, with its uniquely decentralized, jigsaw-puzzle approach to Kane's character and life. Rather than portray Kane's life from a single perspective, the movie treats us to a wide range of viewpoints about him— including those of his ex-wife, friends, butler, and business associates. As I mentioned earlier, one of the key metaphoric qualities associated with Aquarius is decentralization. Unlike Leo, which symbolically draws things to a central point (like the ruler of a country, or the heart within the human body), Aquarius distributes energy to many centers and hubs, à la democracy, the Internet, or the body's arterial system. Similarly, Orson Welles's masterpiece decentralizes the classical narrative into multiple perspectives; by so doing, it foreshadows the cinematic styles of later directors like Robert Altman (Nashville) and P. J. Anderson (Magnolia). 2 This decentralized quality is also reflected in this movie's pleasure palace, Xanadu, built in a very postmodern style that juxtaposes motifs from many cultures and eras; in that respect, Xanadu could be a metaphor for modern (or postmodern) culture itself. 3

 

Fantasia

Walt Disney's 1940 film features a series of animated sequences that illustrate famous pieces of classical music, of which the most iconic (and one that has become virtually emblematic of the Disney empire itself) is “The Sorcerer's Apprentice,” set to Paul Dukas's music by the same title. This imaginative episode features several Aquarian resonances worth pondering.

      

To my mind, the most interesting of these involves the startling stylistic synchronicity between this musical piece and another work composed several years later by Gustav Holst: his “Uranus” suite from the musical composition, The Planets. I once heard a musicologist claim there was no clear evidence that Holst ever heard the Dukas piece; but even if he had, it wouldn't explain why Holst chose this particular style to represent the planetary qualities of Uranus. I believe that this synchronicity holds an important symbolic clue to the deeper nature of Uranus itself and its associated Age of Aquarius.

      

In Fantasia's "Sorcerer's Apprentice," we see a character (Mickey Mouse) usurping his teacher's magical powers and tapping into energies far beyond his understanding. In the process, he nearly brings destruction down upon himself (and possibly the entire world). In some sense, this is a fitting description of the role that Uranus has played in modern history, in terms of the energies and technological capacities it's given us access to in centuries. In Disney's version of the story about the young apprentice, this awakening of powers is accomplished by means of a magical cap with stars and planets emblazoned on it —yet another Aquarian touch, hinting at the cosmic/celestial knowledge associated with this archetypal principle.

 

And as with some of our other cinematic examples, we again encounter the familiar “man versus technology” motif: The broom that Mickey Mouse orders to perform his chores runs amok and eventually splits into multiple copies of itself, in a way that almost seems to foreshadow cloning. Notice, too, that while Mickey is being carried away by his fantasies of controlling the world, it is specifically an environmental disaster that he sets into motion. Does any of this sound familiar?

 

But perhaps the most important key to the symbolism of this tale lies in the task being performed by those animated brooms—none other than that of "water-bearer"! In the West, the sign of Aquarius is of course the sign of the water-bearer, symbolizing the pouring of hidden energies into manifestation. That Disney's tale specifically hinges on this core image is a remarkable testament to its importance as a cipher into our emerging future. The fact that Disney himself was born with the Sun conjuncting Uranus speaks to his own attunement to the values of that unfolding paradigm.

 

In the end, Disney offers a depiction of “The Sorcerer's Apprentice” that stands as a cautionary tale for the Aquarian Age, hinting at both the perils and promises of our newly awakened capabilities. While this more obviously applies to such areas as atomic energy and genetics, it may even be relevant to the burgeoning field of “personal empowerment” and the awakening of our psychological potential. Will we use these energies wisely? Or wind up destroying ourselves? One thing Disney's tale makes clear: This isn't a child's game.

 

Star Wars

George Lucas's now classic film was an overnight sensation when it was first released in 1977. The movie treated audiences to sights and sounds unlike anything they had ever seen before. As a friend of mine remarked at the time, it was almost like stepping into an entirely different world — with its own inhabitants, atmosphere, and even its own logic. Part of the reason for this enormous appeal was, of course, the skillful way that Lucas managed to incorporate the timeless themes of myth and religion into his story and reframe them in the context of space-age technology and values. As such, he crafted a truly Aquarian vision that provided us with a glimpse of humanity’s possible future destiny in the stars and the prospect of an interplanetary society.

      

Further clues into the significance of this film may lie within Lucas’s own horoscope and his attunement to futuristic trends. Astrologically, there are several ways to detect a person's degree of alignment with Aquarian themes and symbols; one is the position and quality of Uranus in the horoscope, by sign and aspect. In George Lucas's case, this planet was at 8° Gemini when he was born, on May 14, 1944. This was the same zodiacal point that Uranus inhabited when the Declaration of Independence was signed, on July 4, 1776 (and not far from 24° Gemini, where Uranus was positioned when the planet was discovered several years later, in 1781). In short, George Lucas was born during the United States of America’s second Uranus return — a planetary cycle that occurs about every 84 years.

      

In many respects, America may be seen as the cutting edge of the Aquarian Age itself; its values of freedom, technology, and innovation foreshadow, in microcosm, those of the emerging consciousness. With Lucas’s own Uranus plugged directly into the “home” position it occupied in the U.S. chart (and close to this planet's discovery point), Lucas thus has his finger firmly on the pulse of not only American tastes, but those of the era to come.

      

And from the start, Lucas's work reveals a recurring interest in futuristic themes and technology. His first theatrically released film was titled THX 1138 and offered a bleak look at the challenges of technology and individualism in the coming age. Several years later, Star Wars finally established his reputation as an artistically minded futurist — and a technologically minded businessman. Looking back, it's curious how this movie mirrors the themes and struggles of the Revolutionary War itself, with its group of ragtag, “frontier-style” rebels pitted against a more organized and powerful empire, spearheaded by a great tyrant (in the one case, King George; in the other, Darth Vader). In both cases, the overriding concern is freedom. This similarity could hold an omen for our future; if so, America's destiny might well foreshadow that of the Aquarian Age itself. Both the Revolutionary War and Lucas's film will prove to be precursors of coming trends, with their mutual emphasis on attaining independence from depersonalized or oppressive systems — whether governmental, corporate, or technological.3

 

Free Willy

Yes, I'm serious! The archetypes of change express themselves just as much through "low art" as they do through high art, and this 1993 crowd-pleaser is no exception. You don’t need to have seen this film to remember the key image associated with it: a killer whale sailing through the air over the head of a young boy. The symbol of a whale gaining freedom was a conspicuous expression of the Uranus–Neptune conjunction that same year, illustrating the blending of planets that rule liberation and oceanic concerns. But remember that these planets also rule the two Great Ages we are presently straddling: Uranus rules Aquarius, and Neptune governs Pisces. In that light, the image of a sea creature escaping confinement and becoming airborne, precisely as these planets were merging, presents us with another symbol of the transformation of consciousness from the old era into the new. Incidentally, this symbol was echoed seven years later by the image of airborne whales in Disney's Fantasia 2000 (released on the first day of that landmark year).

      

Of course, the transition between eras is not always quite as smooth as this; the interests of the emerging age sometimes attack those of the older one, rather than tolerating or transforming them. The U. S. government's destruction of the David Koresh compound in Waco, Texas in 1993 illustrates what can happen when the secular interests of Aquarian society run roughshod over the religious values of a Piscean era. Another example is Herman Melville's oceanic novel, Moby Dick. In Melville's story, a man associated with the whaling industry (sometimes called America's first true industry) sets out to kill a great whale, rather than free it. Here, too, we glimpse the passing of the old Piscean order, but in a way that doesn't allow for a creative appropriation of its lessons and blessings.

 

Whale Rider

Finally, I'd like to turn to yet another whale-themed film which illustrates a subtly different point—namely, the possibility of bridging the gap between old and new in a harmonious way: the 2002 film from New Zealand, Whale Rider. The movie’s central character, a young girl from New Zealand’s Maori tribe, is struggling to reconcile her burgeoning independence with the conservative traditions of her community. An iconic sequence in the film which embodies that marriage between old and new involves her learning to ride atop a great whale in the ocean.

 

Needless to say, that image embodies a very different symbolism from that expressed in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick! To my mind, it speaks to the possibility of drawing on the gifts and legacies of a passing era, rather that simply rejecting them wholesale, and reflects her community’s attempt to balance tradition with modernity, and not just a single-minded insistence on one or the other. An emotional high point of the film comes when the young woman delivers a heartfelt speech to her community in which she utters these distinctly Aquarian words, illustrating the intersection of old and new:

 

But we can learn, and if the knowledge is given to everyone, then we have lots of leaders, and then soon every one will be strong, not just the ones that have been chosen.

 

 

 

 

Chart Data and Sources

1. L. Frank Baum, May 15, 1856; time unknown; Chittenango, NY (43°N03', 75°W52'); Source: www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/authors/bauml.html

2. Walt Disney, December 5, 1901; 12:35 a.m. CST; Chicago, IL (41°N52', 87°W39'); A: From memory; Marion March quotes Disney studio.

3. George Lucas, May 14, 1944; 5:40 a.m. PWT; Modesto, CA (37°N39', 121°W00'); AA: Birth certificate in hand from Steinbrecher.

 

 

 

 

References and Notes

1. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Collected Works XIV, Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1985, pp. 54–55.

2. Ten years later, Japanese director Akira Kurosawa extended that stylistic innovation one critical step further with his pioneering film, Rashomon, by featuring three completely different versions of the same story, with no clear indication as to which one was “right."

3. As a different level, Welles’ story of Charles Foster Kane can be read as a metaphor for the United States itself, and its development over time. Consider some of the parallels: A person is born into rustic, wilderness conditions, but as a fortuitous result of rich natural resources, becomes fabulously wealthy; he’s plucked from those modest beginnings and taken over by a bank (!); he becomes a hugely successful force in the media; he compiles a “Declaration of Principles” (echoing America’s Declaration of Independence); and finally winds up having changed from an originally idealistic figure to a bloated and fairly hollow shell of his former self. And just as Kane is shown having had very little real childhood, the U.S., too, had little of the normal evolutionary growth that most other countries around the world have experienced, in terms of evolving slowly from an indigenous culture over centuries and millennia. Rather, the U.S. was essentially a European culture grafted onto North American soil (eradicating much Native American culture in the process) — with the end result being both the best and the worst of what this nation stands for.

      

On the one hand, that lack of real history or normal emotional development has allowed the U.S. to begin with a blank slate on life and see things afresh, less encumbered by outworn social customs and ideals, leading to a spirit of innovation and freedom. On the other hand, that lack of a true national childhood has led to a certain lack of “soul” that — not unlike Charles Foster Kane — has caused too many Americans to try to fill that emotional void through an endless quest for “things” and superficial entertainments. On that level, Welles’ movie is not only a significant work of art but a powerful cautionary tale for the nation that created it — a tale made possible by the rare astrological window in time that birthed it.

 

 

Reprinted from The Mountain Astrologer magazine, April/May 2003.