The Age of Aquarius
Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2021 10:39 pm
Friday 2nd July 2021
"The Age of Aquarius"
Robbie Tulip
at MacKillop House, 50 Archibald St, Lyneham, ACT (and by Zoom)
http://www.canberrajungsociety.org.au/
The Age of Aquarius is the 2000-year long period starting about now, known as a Zodiac Age, when the position of the sun at the March equinox is in the constellation of Aquarius the Water Bearer.
Zodiac Ages are the slow cosmic clock of history. My interest is to integrate scientific understanding of the Zodiac Age concept with its influence on culture and religion, to see how the resulting cosmology of the New Age can help to place human identity in a systematic framework.
Zodiac Ages are caused by the slow backward movement of the seasons against the stars, due to a wobble of the earth’s axis known as precession of the equinox. The resulting shift of the celestial sphere was measured by ancient astronomers, but its place in culture is strongly disputed.
My hypothesis is that observation of precession was central to Christian origins, structuring the formation of core Christian ideas by grounding the story of how God orders the cosmos. This claim offers a way to transform and renew Christian faith, putting faith onto purely scientific foundations of knowledge rather than belief, and pointing toward new paradigms in science, religion and politics.
Key implications include:
1. Ancient knowledge of precession provided a religious framework for the orderly structure of time.
2. The New Testament used this objective framework of cosmic order and direction as the skeleton upon which the story of Jesus Christ was imagined and fleshed out.
3. The story of Jesus of Nazareth emerged from the much older religious observation of precession as the defining cosmic structure of history.
4. Jesus was imagined from long before his alleged incarnation, personifying the Sun as the founder or avatar of the Zodiac Age of Pisces, the period now coming to an end.
5. Equally important in the Bible story is the idea that the authors imagined the Second Coming of Jesus Christ as the dawn of the Age of Aquarius, as a time of world transformation.
This talk will examine how and why this astronomy is so important for the origins of Christian faith, and why it is so important to understand the Age of Aquarius today as a factor with major potential influence on world religion and politics.
Robert Tulip manages the chaplaincy at the Australian National University. He has BA Honours and MA Honours degrees in philosophy from Macquarie University, with the masters thesis on The Place of Ethics in Heidegger's Ontology. He worked for the Australian Agency for International Development and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for nearly thirty years, and is now working on his intellectual interests including philosophy, theology and climate change, writing at www.rtulip.net.
Cost:
* At MacKillop House:
Jung Soc Members: Free
Guests $15, Seniors/Concession $10
Pay by cash at the door or bank transfer or by credit card via TryBooking.
* On-line, via Zoom:
Jung Soc Members: Free
Guests: $10 via TryBooking.
Preliminary dinner with the Speaker et al is at 6:15pm at Lyneham.
RSVP Trish on (0432) 599 826 for location and details.
We meet from 7:30 pm for tea and coffee and snacks, music, discussion and library.
The Guest Speaker's presentation is at 8 pm for an hour or so,
then we resume for questions and discussion, finishing at 10pm.
"The Age of Aquarius"
Robbie Tulip
at MacKillop House, 50 Archibald St, Lyneham, ACT (and by Zoom)
http://www.canberrajungsociety.org.au/
The Age of Aquarius is the 2000-year long period starting about now, known as a Zodiac Age, when the position of the sun at the March equinox is in the constellation of Aquarius the Water Bearer.
Zodiac Ages are the slow cosmic clock of history. My interest is to integrate scientific understanding of the Zodiac Age concept with its influence on culture and religion, to see how the resulting cosmology of the New Age can help to place human identity in a systematic framework.
Zodiac Ages are caused by the slow backward movement of the seasons against the stars, due to a wobble of the earth’s axis known as precession of the equinox. The resulting shift of the celestial sphere was measured by ancient astronomers, but its place in culture is strongly disputed.
My hypothesis is that observation of precession was central to Christian origins, structuring the formation of core Christian ideas by grounding the story of how God orders the cosmos. This claim offers a way to transform and renew Christian faith, putting faith onto purely scientific foundations of knowledge rather than belief, and pointing toward new paradigms in science, religion and politics.
Key implications include:
1. Ancient knowledge of precession provided a religious framework for the orderly structure of time.
2. The New Testament used this objective framework of cosmic order and direction as the skeleton upon which the story of Jesus Christ was imagined and fleshed out.
3. The story of Jesus of Nazareth emerged from the much older religious observation of precession as the defining cosmic structure of history.
4. Jesus was imagined from long before his alleged incarnation, personifying the Sun as the founder or avatar of the Zodiac Age of Pisces, the period now coming to an end.
5. Equally important in the Bible story is the idea that the authors imagined the Second Coming of Jesus Christ as the dawn of the Age of Aquarius, as a time of world transformation.
This talk will examine how and why this astronomy is so important for the origins of Christian faith, and why it is so important to understand the Age of Aquarius today as a factor with major potential influence on world religion and politics.
Robert Tulip manages the chaplaincy at the Australian National University. He has BA Honours and MA Honours degrees in philosophy from Macquarie University, with the masters thesis on The Place of Ethics in Heidegger's Ontology. He worked for the Australian Agency for International Development and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for nearly thirty years, and is now working on his intellectual interests including philosophy, theology and climate change, writing at www.rtulip.net.
Cost:
* At MacKillop House:
Jung Soc Members: Free
Guests $15, Seniors/Concession $10
Pay by cash at the door or bank transfer or by credit card via TryBooking.
* On-line, via Zoom:
Jung Soc Members: Free
Guests: $10 via TryBooking.
Preliminary dinner with the Speaker et al is at 6:15pm at Lyneham.
RSVP Trish on (0432) 599 826 for location and details.
We meet from 7:30 pm for tea and coffee and snacks, music, discussion and library.
The Guest Speaker's presentation is at 8 pm for an hour or so,
then we resume for questions and discussion, finishing at 10pm.