Pisces or Aquarius, Tropical or Sidereal, Age or World…

For one that spent their childhood in the 1970’s, a very vivid sound will resonate in the mind. The sound of a song titled The Age of Aquarius. The song has a bizarre sound, or message if you will. But, one might ask – just what is the Age of Aquarius?

The Age of Aquarius refers to a new cycle or age. A new age happens every 2,150 years. The age is determined by the precession of the equinoxes. This phenomenon needs to be examined more closely.

Attempting to put it in a nutshell, every 2150 years, the sunrise on the morning of the vernal equinox would occur in a different zodiac sign. This makes reference to the constellation.

To get a better understanding of how this works, one needs to be familiar with the ecliptic. The Earth will orbit around the Sun at an angle of about 23°26′. Herein lies the significance of  The Tropic of Capricorn and The Tropic of Cancer.

The intersection line of the two planes results in two diametrically opposite intersection points, known as the equinoxes. The equinox that the Sun passes from south to north is known as the vernal equinox.

The zodiac as we commonly call it refers to the 12 constellations. (But there’s 13 not 12, folks.) These constellations or signs, are straddling the ecliptic. To say the month is one of these signs, means that constellation is in the Sun. When we are talking about an age, we mean that the constellation is in the Sun during the vernal equinox.

Nevertheless, there is confusion about the age that we are living in and what the zodiac signs’ positions really are. This is because there are different calculations for length. To further confuse the matter, the astrological signs follow an opposite pattern. The Age of Aquarius follows the Age of Pisces.

Astrological ages exist as a result of precession of the equinoxes. It is just not clear as to what age we are really in. Some experts claim Pisces, while others claim Aquarius. And that is precisely what the song Age of Aquarius is pointing at, the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.

So there are 13 constellations and not 12. The actual age is not quite certain. Also, there are two different methods of calculating the zodiac! They are called the Tropical and the Siderial.

Modern astronomy still uses tropical coordinates for predicting the positions the Sun, Moon, and planets, except longitude in the ecliptic coordinate system is numbered from 0° to 360°, not 0° to 30° within each sign. Nonetheless, boundaries of the constellations are not therefore in any meaningful sense an equivalent to the zodiac signs.

It appears that the oddball constellation called Ophiuchus  just got squeezed in with the original 12.

So believe whatever you will, just try not to take the zodiac thing too serious, if it is to be taken serious at all. After all this is not science, although many would lead you to believe otherwise. It is more popular culture than anything else.

The cultural associations are quite prominent, which include the song, the age, and the philosophical movement. After all, this is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, Aquarius…