The Great Turning into the Aquarian Age

Since the 1960s a new consciousness has been emerging on planet Earth as we transition into the astrological age of Aquarius, a rapid spiritual awakening is occurring – a shift happening for many people which science, organized religions, media, governments, academia are not at all tuned into or aware of. I awoke to the consciousness shift as I experienced it happening within myself in the mid 1990s. At the time I had a sense that the 2020s would see the fulfilment of this global awakening, and that I, born in the 1960s and ‘waking up’ to multidimensional reality in the 90s, was in some here to be a bridge between the 60s hippies and the cosmic kids to come in the 2020s.

To put it simply, I would descrive the nature of this shift as being about coming to see, feel and understand that life is an interconnected Oneness, arising in consciousness – not consciousness arising in life as materialist science sees it – that we are part of a unified whole, never separate, never not existing. We have within us both an individual self, but we are also part of a collective Self. What we do to one we do to all, what we do to others we do to ourselves. This realisation changes everything.

Great Aquarian Conjunction February 4-5, 1962

In early February 1962, the Sun, Moon and all five visible planets—Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn—aligned in the sign of Aquarius, creating a rare celestial event that captured global attention. For some, fears of doomsday were stoked – they were “stocking up bomb shelters in the United States, and holding nonstop prayer vigils attended by millions in Bombay, India. One group of believers moved en masse to the town of Cleator, Arizona, which the group thought was one of only 12 spots in the world safe from the imminent disaster. Others claimed that the alignment was responsible for the assassination the following year of U.S. President John F. Kennedy.” Benchmarks: February 4, 1962: Five planets align – but no end of the world

For others this was the kickstart of a new age for humanity – an age of spiritual enlightenment, equality, humanitarianism – the new astrological Age of Aquarius. Many astrologers view the 1962 alignment as the sign in the heavens that the Aquarian game was underway. And indeed, the 60s brought the spread of alternative spiritualities and counter-culture experimentation with clothes, music and psychedelics, the Summer of Love. All very Aquarian. 1962 was also the year of the Cuban missile crisis, bringing global fear of nuclear war, there was a lot of excitement about the space programme and the Beatles arrived on the world stage. A global consciousness was being born.

Astrologer Daniel Giamario, founder of the Turning Point Mystery School regards the February 1962 Great Aquarian Conjunction as the start of a period lasting until 2034 which he calls ‘The Great Turning.’ Founders Corner – Turning of the Ages Mystery School

This 72 year period 1962-2034 contains several major astrological events that can be interpreted as each nudging humanity further along the transitional path through the time of turning from Piscean collective dream-mind to Aquarian ‘cosmic consciousness’. In these years the causes of racial and sexual equality, of gay rights, of humanitarian aid, and the spread of spiritual practices and teachings – this thanks to the very Aquarian manifestation of the Internet enabling astrologers, healers, spiritual teachers to reach audiences they could not previously – have grown alongside a transforming human understanding, an expanding human appreciation that we are all connected.

The Harmonic Convergence (August 16–17, 1987)

Widely considered a major turning point, this event involved a rare, synchronized global meditation, with many gathering at sacred ‘power spots’ around the planet, timed to coincide with a grand fire trine in the sky involving the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars all in Leo, Jupiter in Aries, Saturn and Uranus in Sagittarius. The alignment was considered to be a potentially powerful energetic gateway, bringing spiritual activation, evolutionary acceleration and a collective desire for harmony. The intention was to create a wave of harmonic resonance across the Earth, anchoring higher vibrational frequencies into the planetary grid.

Some believed this point to mark the end of “hell cycles” and a shift in Earth’s collective karma, ushering in a new age of peace. The fall of communism did follow soon after and a new era of global peace did seem possible, for a while.

Culturally, the late 1980s brought house music which would go on to conquer the world! It wasn’t long before ravers across the globe were experiencing loved-up states of consciousness that many considered their weekly dose of holy communion.

“This is my church
This is where I heal my hurts

It’s a natural grace
Of watching young life shape
It’s in minor keys
Solutions and remedies
Enemies becoming friends
When bitterness ends…” Faithless, God is A DJ.

American New Age writer José Argüelles connected the Harmonic Convergence to the Tzolkin, the sacred Mayan calendar, claiming that it marked the beginning of the final 25-year countdown to December 21, 2012, a key date much associated with the end of a cycle and the emergence of a new consciousness paradigm.

“The Harmonic Convergence of 1987 was a pivotal moment in the modern spiritual movement, symbolizing a shift in consciousness, planetary awakening, and the call for humanity to align with higher vibrational states.

“Whether viewed as a mass meditation event, an astrological gateway, or a step toward planetary evolution, it remains an important milestone in the collective journey toward a more harmonious, awakened, and interconnected world.” Harmonic Convergence: A Global Awakening Event – AWAKEN Center for Human Evolution

Uranus in Aquarius 1995 – 2003

Uranus, considered the ruling planet of Aquarius, was in his home sign during these years of millennial fervour. This was the period when the World Wide Web came into general use, birthing a communications revolution and ever deepening sense of global interconnection. In the UK a new Labour government brought optimism and change, which included equal rights for gay people at long last. Successful treatments brought an end to the devastation of the AIDS epidemic. These points are crucial – a little discussed aspect of the Aquarian energy is its queerness – Aquarius is the sign of gay love (personified in myth as the the love between Zeus and Ganymede) and Aquarius is at the same time the most androgynous sign of the zodiac – hence we can also regard increasing numbers of visible trans people as part of the new age birthing. (Ultimately we are all a Self that is beyond gender, and we are all a mix of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ traits, both physically and psychologically. Look at anyone’s astrological chart and we can see how so called male and female energies are present and activating within them. Aquarius gets this, and wonders why some others don’t.)

Aquarius is a sign of paradox – another example is that of being the sign of maximum individuation (Aquarian energy insists we be our unique selves) at the same time as the sign of the group, of collective consciousness. Get your head round it – we can’t have one without the other. The Aquarian glyph can be seen as symbolizing the dichotomies of the sign – two parallel horizontal lines indicating the two levels of mind, individual and collective. Aquarius unites them, and the Aquarian age will teach us how to evolve into the fullness and experience of both.

Winter Solstice 2012

The big moment heralded by many as a turning point into a new form of human consciousness. Those who expected it to happen overnight were disappointed.

I made an in-depth study of the Mayan calendar, exploring the work of Carl Johan Calleman, a Swedish biochemist.

Having had my own revelations of the cyclical and directional qualities of consciousness in the Spring of 1995 while preparing myself for predicted death from AIDS, I felt complete resonance with Calleman’s interpretation of the calendar as a chart of the evolution of consciousness on our planet, consisting of 9 creation cycles which run alongside each other, each one shorter and more rapid than the previous. All 9 reach the end of their cycles at the same point, with many scholars considering date in western terms for this point was December 21st, 2012.

Each creation cycle of the calendar is 20 times shorter than the previous, and the pace of evolution – the rate of change happening on earth (ie in life as a whole, in the overall consciousness that we are part of) – moves 20 times faster at each level. We feel this acceleration and it causes many people to feel ‘time is speeding up’, but it is the rate of change, the accumulation of new experiences that is accelerating. In economics, politics, culture – and in our families and social lives – in recent decades things have been developing and changing at a pace like never before. Calleman, and others, believed the last stages of the calendar would bring interaction with other planets, the birth of a galactic consciousness. My own journey with spirit led me to see things differently – during my underworld journey (three years living as PWA, person with AIDS) I experienced an opening to the inner realms, which revealed much to me about the multi-dimensional nature of consciousness. I regarded the end of the Mayan calendar as signifying that all levels of spirit/consciousness/light are now fully in place on the planet, all accessible – including all the ‘lower’ levels of unconscious projection and behaviour – but the higher levels are here to be experienced within oneself and developed through shared high vibrational experience with others. It is literally in humanity’s hands now – we each have to make the choice to evolve our minds into the next levels that are available to us. The multiverse of light-love-bliss is here but we have to choose to engage it.

At the 2012 Winter Solstice Queer Spirit Circle (a meet-up I have run in London since 2005) we made ritual to symbolise the transition from the old world paradigm of division and discord into a new paradigm of love, consciousness and unity. We didn’t expect immediate results, but we understood that that evolution is a step, a choice, the whole world needs to make, and after the first step come others.

The Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn December 21, 2020 at 0 degrees of Aquarius.

This event was highly significant because it began a new 200-year cycle of Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions in air signs (rather than earth signs), with the first in the series falling in Aquarius, signalling a shift toward community, innovation, and technological advances. During the 200 years of Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions in earth signs humanity’s material knowledge, wealth, standards of living have massively increased. So has our ability to destroy life on earth. We badly need wisdom to match our material strength but we’ve been so materially focussed as a species that we can not yet even imagine the many revolutions in the realm of air – the realm of the human mind – that are to come.

Saturn in Aquarius (2020–2023)

Saturn’s transit through Aquarius brought a three-year period of intense focus on collective responsibility, the regulation of technology, and the restructuring of social institutions, reinforcing the shift away from the Piscean, top-down structures. Before departing Capricorn, Saturn made a conjunction with the lord of the Underworld, Pluto, on Jan 12^th 2020 – and shortly after the Covid 19 pandemic hit hard. When Saturn, the planet of restrictions and lessons, entered Aquarius, the sign of the collective, we were hit by by global lockdowns. Freedom of movement and association gone, but Saturn does things for a reason, he’s teaching us all the time. Life changed, people changed. A much longer trajectory was playing out.

Pluto’s Entry into Aquarius (2023–2024)

Pluto entered Aquarius for a short stint in 2023 and began its long-term, 20-year transit through the sign in late 2024. This is regarded as a massive, long-term structural transformation toward digital advancement, the dismantling of old systems, and societal reordering. Pluto mirrors the deepest parts of our collective consciousness, while in Capricorn he has been shaking the institutions that underpin society, structurally, politically, economically. In Aquarius his energy will rock, shake and rebirth our understanding of who we are, individually and collectively, a 20 year process now underway.

Aquarius New Moon Solar Eclipse February 17^th, 2026

Coming alongside the epoch-making shift of Saturn and Neptune into Aries and conjunction on February 20^th at 0 degrees of the zodiac, this new moon, which opened the year of the Fire Horse in the Chinese calendar, and was the powerful night of Shivaratri in the Hindu world, was a signal, for those that can see it, that a new stage of the Turning is here. Once Uranus shifts from Taurus to Gemini in April, all the outer planets will have completed their transition from water/earth energies to fire/air energy. The background energy of our collective consciousness, from so many perspectives, is shifting into very different frequency fields from where it has been for almost two decades. Humanity will follow, kicking, screaming or celebrating and rejoicing?

In April 2026 we will experience the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn, Neptune and (for 2 days – 15 to 17th) also the Moon, all in the first sign of the zodiac, fire sign Aries, at once. This is unprecedented and affirms that the shift away from the material to the spiritual paradigm is happening apace – and will be felt personally: It’s not just happening in the astrological background. Each step into the energies of the Aquarian Age is a step towards embodiment – because although Aquarius is an air sign, a mentally attuned energy – it is through manifestation, through creativity, through tangible joy shared with others, through living fully as we we really are, that the mind finds its fulfilment.

The Great Turning, as described by Daniel Giamario, has another eight years to run.

The 1960s brought the dawning

but now it’s almost morning

of the Age of Awakened Humanity:

Wake Up the Sleepy Heads

From the dream of the Living Dead,

time to rise and be the Cosmic Conscious Human, instead.