The Astrology of 2012 and Beyond

By Cal Garrison and Drunvalo Melchizedek

In October 2007, a new phenomenon appeared in the sky, was named the Comet Holmes, and is being claimed and acclaimed by the Hopi Nation as the Blue Star of their prophecy. The Blue Star is the harbinger. Between now and somewhere in 2013-2014, when the Red Star appears, great shifts in human consciousness will continue. With the fulfillment of the Mayan Long Count calendar in 2012 and the appearance of the Red Star, many are predicting that human consciousness will rise to the next level. Although there may be catastrophic events associated with this period, and life as we know it will surely change, if we do the work, this will not be the Apocalypse. In The Astrology of 2012 and Beyond, Garrison explores the changing sky, starting with the movement of Pluto into Capricorn, a region it hasn’t inhabited since 1733. It’s revolutionary times coming for individuals, governments, and the planet. Garrison draws on traditional astrology and her understanding of the Hopi prophecies and their relationship to the Mayan 2012 predictions, as well as the ending of the 13,000 year masculine kundalini cycle, to offer practical advice and information that will help us evolve through the next four years, including what to expect during the nearly inevitable polar shift.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Red Wheel Weiser
• Release date: Jul 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9781609250805

Cal Garrison

Cal Garrison is a professional astrologer and the editor of Spirit of Maat online magazine. She is a trained Flower of Life coordinator and longtime student of Drunvalo Melchizedek. She is the author of several books, including The Astrology of 2012 and Beyond. A native of Massachusetts, Garrison now lives in Sedona, Arizona.

Book preview

Introduction

I fell in love with astrology when I was sixteen years old—and it wasn't too long after that before I became preoccupied with the End Times. If you study astrology from an astronomical perspective you soon find out that all of the smaller solar and planetary cycles are part of what is known as the Grand Cycle, or the movement of the entire solar system through time and space. If the perfection of this universal mechanism impressed me at sixteen, what impressed me even more was the fact that the world happened to be at the tail end of a 26,000 year process that was due to reach its climax during my lifetime.

This realization pretty much leveled the playing field as far as I was concerned. The way I saw it, if we were barreling toward the End of Time I wasn't going to waste mine focusing on outer things—and before I was old enough to think about having a life, I was thinking more about what I needed to do to prepare myself for the next one and wondering what the Great Shift of the Ages might involve.

This obsession kept my thoughts focused on finding answers to things that weren't taught in school and that nobody in Sixties suburbia was talking about. With no other means to call upon, my curiosity drove me to read—and what I read led me deeper into the mystery. Over time, the volume of material written on both astrology and the End Times filled me with ideas that were so far over the top that for years I played the role of the resident nutcase and/or the witchy astrologer who lived upstairs.

Many times I've wondered if I should have listened to my mother, who could never figure out what I was up to, and whose well-meant advice always ran along the lines of, Why don't you drop all this nonsense and go get a job at the post office? But even her words weren't enough to convince me that getting to the bottom of things was a waste of time. I kept it up—and I am glad I did—because if I'd listened to Mom, I wouldn't be talking to you now.

Like so many other things in my life, this book came out of nowhere—and it seems to be the end result of a desire that never knew it had a purpose. When I was asked to write it, I wasn't sure if Weiser had picked the right gal. But if everything happens for a reason, I figured that there had to be a reason why I wound up being in the right place at the right time once again, and why I felt compelled to say Yes to the proposal, instead of No.

I knew enough about astrology to feel confident about the project, and I knew enough about the End Times to know that I could talk about them as intelligently as the next person. The one thing that I wasn't too sure about was how the Indigenous prophesies—the Original Teachings of Indigenous Peoples—meshed with what I already knew. My exposure to that body of wisdom was not only relatively recent, it was shrouded in Spiritual traditions that were totally unfamiliar to me.

As I began to explore the prophesies, I discovered that most of the people who claim to be experts on the subject have never had access to the Original Teachings or any of the oral traditions that are kept by the Elders. This piece of news helped me to see that being well-informed about these prophesies doesn't necessarily mean that what you know has any truth to it. If I had gone into this book thinking that I knew anything about the how the Indigenous teachings filtered in to the astrology of the End Times, it would have limited my ability to examine the connections objectively. Aside from that, it would have been both presumptuous and premature, because what the Indigenous People have to teach us has yet to be fully revealed.

You are about to read the chronicle of a discovery process that unfolded one aspect at a time. Even though I've spent over four decades studying the map, when I got into the territory everything changed. Any preconceived notions fell by the wayside as I went along. Between the planets and the Prophesies what came together left me with a clearer sense of what we are about to go through—and my hope is that what gave me more clarity will do the same for you.

Most of the astrological references in this book include the asteroids. Blown away by Martha Lang-Wescott's research, I began using asteroids in all of my horoscopes back in 1995. The devil is in the details, and it's safe to say that the asteroids cover them better than the planets do. The generalizations you can make by looking at the big planetary configurations can be made more specific if you take the asteroids into consideration. I have come to rely upon them heavily in the last fourteen years, because they reveal details and give more insight into side issues that have so much to do with how events play out.

Speaking of how things play out, as you read this book keep in mind that everything that's written here is my opinion, or my interpretation, of what the stars have to say about the next few years. Any other astrologer could do the same work and see it differently—so take what you can from an earnest effort and keep in mind that it's just one way to look at a state of affairs that concerns all of us.

If you take anything from these words I hope that they serve to remind you of what a privilege it is to be alive at this time. May the light in your heart awaken you to your purpose for being here, and may all of us lift our eyes to the vision of a new and better world.

Cal Garrison

Sedona, Arizona

October 15, 2008

CHAPTER 1

Wheels within Wheels

We all look out on the world through our own private windows of experience. Under the illusion that this is all there is, we live out our lives consumed by the events that unfold and the laws of karma that bind us to a particular set of circumstances. If we pay attention, over time it becomes clear that we are locked into patterns that we don't fully understand. As we age, those patterns recur in cycles. Because we all learn through repetition, these recurrences teach us, not just about the pattern, but about the idea that our fulfillment depends upon evolving out of it.

Caught up in our personal matrix, rarely do we think about anything beyond our selves. Life becomes so routine that our trials and tribulations supersede any thought of outgrowing them. Only in moments of great joy or great sorrow are we prompted to wonder if there is a point to it all. When we go far enough into the question, we wake up to the idea that what we do has an impact on the greater whole and that there must be a purpose to the time we spend here on Earth.

Once it becomes clear that we are connected to something greater than ourselves, we begin to see that the microcosm and the macrocosm are identical—that, like us, the entire universe is evolving toward the fulfillment of some larger purpose. We can only assume that it has a greater intelligence and some awareness of the master plan - but whether it does or it doesn't, the universe is governed by the same laws that keep all of its smaller components operational. It, too, is locked into rhythmic patterns and predictable, recurring cycles.

As this immense mechanism turns on its axis, it appears as if we etch the same pattern over and over again. But the idea that we are repeating ourselves is an illusion, because the universe is in constant motion, spiraling toward a central point at the heart of creation. Stretched through time all this circling forms a helix, a gigantic Slinky of sorts—and while each new cycle seems to replicate the ones that preceded it, we evolve as we go, making quantum leaps with every turn.

Because time and space are spherical rather than linear, approximately every 26,000 years, the big cosmic Slinky meets up with its tail end and forms an enormous, energetic donut. Within this huge magnetic field, so too do myriads of successively smaller cycles come full circle at exactly the same time. This simultaneous return to Zero Point manifests as a giant step forward in the evolution of consciousness.

Commonly referred to as the Apocalypse, Armageddon, 2012, The End of Time, Doomsday, Judgment Day, and other portentous nicknames, this part of the Grand Cycle is formally known as The Great Shift of the Ages. From an Earthly perspective it marks the dawn of a new era, or the pivot point where darkness becomes light, separation becomes oneness, and everything in Creation returns to Unity Consciousness—and as most of you know, we are at that point now.

Coming Full Circle

When people talk about the Great Shift, rarely do they reference anything but its apocalyptic aspect. Isolating one point in a cycle and trying to understand its significance without relating it to the bigger picture is like looking at one frame of a very long film and using that to decide how the movie will end. The truth is, we don't know what will happen—but our uncertainty would be less so if we stopped focusing on the Doomsday element and tried to see this as just one part of a much larger evolutionary process that has been going on since the beginning of time.

What most of us don't know is that the Great Shift of the Ages has happened many times before—and since it's quite obvious that we are still whirling through space, one wonders how we managed to ride it out on every previous occasion. Popular wisdom suggests that, on December 21, 2012, life on this planet will be over and done with. But given what's happened in the past, that fear may not be justified. To fully understand what is required of us now, we need to place the Great Shift within the context of the Grand Cycle as a whole and be open to the idea that the Apocalypse may have less to do with the end of the world than it does with birthing a new one.

By nature, anything cyclical is polarized. For that matter, everything has a dark and a light, or a positive and negative side to it—at least from our perspective. The Grand Cycle is not immune to this law. During one half of it, we are bathed in light; during the other half, we circle around in total darkness, or what many refer to as the Galactic Night. This process of moving in and out of the light has been going on forever.

About 13,000 years ago, we entered the dark part of the Grand Cycle. Gradually spinning farther and farther away from the great Central Sun, as the light diminished, we lost our connection to Spirit and fell into separation. Over time the fundamental truths about the nature of reality got replaced with new thought forms—thought forms that evolved gradually into core beliefs that were too far removed from the light to contain any truth. These distortions were transmitted down through the generations and implanted themselves in the collective mind, forming our reference point for everything.

At the time of the Fall, as the Galactic Night swept over the planet, the Original Truths were handed down to those who were chosen to preserve them. That information had to be protected; without it, we would have no way of knowing how to return to the light when the time came for us to leave the dark part of the Grand Cycle. Too important to commit to paper, that knowledge was entrusted to the Indigenous Wisdom Keepers, who guarded it faithfully, passing it along through their ceremonial practices and their oral traditions for thirteen millennia.

The Three Outer Planets

In the latter days of the dark half of the Cycle, the Universal Intelligence knew it was time for us to wake up. Faced with the task of rousing humanity from its sleep and clear that a full awakening would take time, it sounded the initial alarm by turning on the switch that lit up the three outer planets.

The astrological take on the discovery of any new planet suggests that a planet is discovered when the forces that it rules are ready to be seeded in the collective unconscious. Prior to the late 18th century, Saturn was the outermost planet. As the archetype of restriction, male dominance, and death, Saturn held the solar system and our consciousness within its rings—but Saturn was impeached when Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto made their debut. History shows us how much has changed in the last 200-odd years, and it doesn't take much to see that the three outer planets opened doors of perception that were locked prior to their discovery.

First sighted in 1781, Uranus ignited the revolutionary impulse that inspires the soul to break away from everything that restricts it. Its discovery gave us the power to alter our core beliefs, bust through every thought form that keeps us asleep, and awaken to a greater vision of the truth. The great revolutions and the events that restored power to the people coincided with the triggering of the Uranian impulse. The higher mind woke up at that point, too. As the higher octave of Mercury, Uranus awakened portions of the brain that were inaccessible to us under Saturn's rulership.

When Neptune appeared sixty-five years later, it opened the portal to the Spiritual realms. Neptune released us from the belief that we exist apart from all that is, and installed the chip that made it possible for us to see that everything coexists in an ocean of unity and unconditional love. After eons of separation and restriction, this breath of fresh air expanded our concept of divinity to include all of life in the equation.

If you want to verify this, take a quick peek at the social movements that began to flower in the mid 1800s. All of them were predicated on principles of oneness and compassion. Seances and table-tapping became popular diversions during this period as well. Intrigued by the idea that the invisible realms were now as accessible as our physical reality, the Spiritualists pierced the veil and in the process dissolved belief patterns that separated one world from another.

In 1930, one Uranus cycle after Neptune's first sighting, Pluto was discovered. Not coincidentally, it showed up arm in arm with Adolph Hitler, Sigmund Freud, The Great Depression, and the atom bomb. Ruling over the forces of life, death, and the secret corners of the mind, Pluto brought us to the gates of hell and unleashed our dark side in the process. Hard lessons in the use and abuse of power showed us what happens when that aspect of our consciousness is left to run wild, unenlightened by any reverence for Spirit. Pluto almost killed us—but what he gave us in return was a deeper understanding of the life force.

In addition to the arousal of these new planetary impulses, the Universal Intelligence used other, more direct measures to support our awakening. Back in the 19th century, the world was blessed with a wave of souls whose purpose for incarnating involved reinstating our connection to Spirit. The Transcendentalists, Madame Blavatsky, the Rosicrucians, Alan Kardec, MacGregor Mathers, A. E. Waite, Rudolf Steiner, Annie Besant, Krishna Murti, Georges Gurdjieff, and even Aleister Crowley are just a few of those who came to pry open the collective mind and resurrect the memories that were buried so long ago.

As the 20th century unfolded, many more great lights showed up to help us shift out of the darkness. If we have even a cursory awareness of the changes we are about to go through, we owe it to the plethora of metaphysical systems that flourished in the 1800s, and to the teachers who later carried that wisdom forward. Our New Age tenets wouldn't have a leg to stand on were it not for those who laid the groundwork for them, long before our time.

Speaking of the New Age Movement, we can't ignore the fact that its emergence coincided with the discovery of Chiron. Another one of those planets that showed up precisely when the energies it governs were ready to take root in the collective mind, it's no wonder that the zodiacal hippie, also known as the Wounded Healer, appeared in 1977. Chiron legitimized the maverick archetype and gave us the ability to go up against the system and burst through almost 13,000 years of programming. Its frequencies gave us the power to change what wasn't working—and because it has so much to do with transcending our primary wounds, Chiron also reminded us that nothing will change out there until we rise above them.

In a way, Chiron put the capstone on the work that was done by Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. While they were the ones who broke down the old paradigm, Chiron gave us the power to dream up a new one. Fond of new, 100 percent natural approaches to everything, Chiron spearheaded the environmental movement, the holistic healing movement, the free energy movement, and all of the self-help systems that emerged in the late Seventies. Chiron even dared to suggest that the church was all wrong about God. According to him, the power we attribute to God is alive and well, inside each one of us.

Opening our minds to the thought that we are our own

Reviews for The Astrology of 2012 and Beyond

[biunicorn_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Astrology of 2012 and Beyondby Cal GarrisonThis 213 page doozy was a real mind bender that stretched me a whole bunch of ways, all of them good. I learned about how astrology explains the shifts and turns of our New Age and I must say it was done in such an honest and caring fashion that it was not over my head. And when it comes to astrology some times me being over my head is easy to accomplish. I just felt spoken to on my own level.I loved the simple flow that the author brought to the table, and I also loved the way she gave each one of the planets personalities so it was more like listening to a story about a family. It helped to sew up a lot of lose ends for me when it came to 2012 and I am not so caught up in the fear or panic anymore. My favorite section was called "The Return of the Ancestors", and I enjoyed how the Hopi prophesies prevalent throughout the book were brought in once again to teach me about the responsibilities of the Guardianship. I would recommend this amazing humdinger to anyone wanting to know more about this magnificent time in our lives. Thanks Cal, for taking the time to help us along.Love & Light,Riki Frahmann