The Nature of Time, Post-2012

A moment in the life of my driveway, after the rain. Photo by DK.

As I’ve mentioned on a couple occasions, we are experiencing time differently in the post-2012 era. A key catalyst behind my choice to stop writing and recording monthly horoscopes was the realization that most people would continue to read them as prophetic or oracular.

In an interview in The Mountain Astrologer, Laurence Hillman (astrologer, son of James) noted that the ancient Greeks had two different words for time: kronos (Saturnian time or what we might now call ‘clock time’) and kairos, which is the experience of the quality of the moment. Astrology, Hillman said, is a way of tuning into the quality of the moment that allows us to discern which archetypes want our attention now.

As our experience of time becomes more kairotic and less kronological, we are beginning to realize that everything can change at any moment, to the extent we are able to truly believe that to be the case. When we read a horoscope to find out what is going to happen in the future, we’re operating (perhaps unconsciously) from a kronos mindset. If we then give our internal agreement to any limitations (another good Saturn word) expressed in the horoscope, we are essentially limiting what can happen. Continue reading →