The Gates of Hell or the Garden of Eden
At this Full Moon in Aquarius on August 1st I first want to go back in time - to December 2020, when I described the energy of Jupiter conjunct Saturn at 0 Aquarius – a degree that is being retriggered by Pluto’s entry into Aquarius up until November 2024. Jupiter and Saturn meet every 20 years, but this was different; it was the beginning of a new 200+ year cycle where all conjunctions would occur in the element of Air, indicating a transition into a new paradigm. Air is the mind and thoughts. Air is the Space of our Universe; if there are indeed little grey men out there, this is the point we are likely to find out. Air is the ether or space around us through which our communications move invisibly. And in 2020 we found out in a very unwelcome manner what space and freedom really meant to us.
To discover what this paradigm transition might indicate we need to first look back to when we last experienced a change of element - the mid 1800s and the start of a cycle in the element of Earth. It was the beginning of the Industrial Revolution – the beginning of the developed towns and cities as the construction of factories for mass production brought about the biggest change in national migration alongside the search for a better life and more money. It was the beginning of our capitalistic life. However, we have to go back as far as the 1200’s for the previous Air cycle, also beginning in Aquarius – the Crusades were still raging, Magna Carta had been ratified and great powers around the world were waging war as they rivalled for supremacy.
Jupiter/Saturn conjunctions track socio-economic cycles, but this most recent elemental switch was always likely to be bigger than the last. In November 2020, just before the exact aspect of Jupiter and Saturn, Pluto joined in to make a gang of three, bringing an energy of huge transformation and regeneration into the mix - something more akin to a civilisation change. And now I am even more convinced that this is what we will see. Any idea of going back to the pre-2020 ‘normal’ is just an illusion.
This Full Moon on August 1st is in the sign of Aquarius, an Air sign that is probably the closest of all the signs to things that are innovative, technological, non-conforming and futuristic. Aquarius is a sign that can’t be put in a box – it is non-conformist and, as a Fixed sign, it is dogmatically connected to not following rules whilst following its own rules. Full Moons always reveal and this Full Moon in Aquarius squares Jupiter, a planet that expands anything it touches. This is going to be particularly important as Jupiter edges closer to Uranus (the ruler of Aquarius) ready for their exact meeting next April. What kind of disruption, shock, sudden event might this represent? Could it be something earth/weather related (Taurus)? Highly possible. Could it be some disclosure about alien/extra terrestrial life (Uranus)? Very likely, particularly as there is a lot happening in the USA and within Congress in terms of discussion of non-human life forms, non-human intelligence, contact with alien life and reverse engineering of recovered craft. Or could it have something to do with the development of AI (Jupiter/Uranus)? Definitely. What we can discern is that with Jupiter in the picture it will be big/on steroids, whilst Uranus signals the power of a disruptive event coming into our lives at a high speed which may have the potential to deliver some kind of ontological shock. It is quite possible that we could see more than one shock.
So far, I have tended to think of AI from more of a negative viewpoint – as something that in the wrong hands will harm humanity rather than help; and that is very possible. But it is arriving at a breakneck speed and will bring massive societal changes in the form of the next Industrial Revolution.[1] The type of work we do; how we work; so much will change. So it’s important we look at what it is and how it will impact our lives. The genie cannot go back into the bottle, but might it also help humanity?
AI is a ‘disruptive technology’. Just as Uranus and Aquarius symbolise some kind of disruption, AI will disruptsocieties. It will take over work previously done by humans at a colossal rate and in ways never envisaged – and it will do this at a point where the world is in chaos from ‘created’ ideological crises. But it will also create a different kind of work. It will likely bring the biggest change to humanity since the inventions of the last Industrial Revolution and yet we are ill-informed and ill-prepared for what is coming. It is the speed of its entrance into society that has surprised even those who have been involved in its creation. Also the speed of how quickly its intelligence is developing. ChatGPT-3 had an IQ of under 100, whilst version four more like 160 – pretty high. But each development is exponentially greater so by GhatGPT-5 we could potentially see even 1600. This is uncharted territory. Those who currently consider that they will use it for a means to control society might well themselves be the ones in for an eventual shock. AI learns and as it learns it is constantly improving. We have no idea what an IQ of 1600 looks like, and this level of growth will continue to increase at an exponential rate - we just don’t know what emergent behaviours might arise. Could AI be able to discern from its data what is really true and what is not, as Elon Musk seeks – could it become a real deal fact checker, or will it always contain some kind of bias? Will we walk through the Gates of Hell or might we be shown the way into the Garden of Eden?
To be honest most people right now don’t really care a jot about AI. But they will. They perhaps see it in terms of Alexa reminding them they need to buy more sugar, or being able to turn the lights on remotely as they pull into the driveway. They might also see it in terms of facial recognition cameras, surveillance, digital and behavioural controls that in the future might affect their financial credit akin to China – that kind of thing. We have seen the warnings from those who have been instrumental in its creation, such as Elon Musk, that we should pause its unfoldment until we can put in some limits.
AI is not a ‘programming’ tool in the traditional sense of computer software. It is a system that relies on data to build its ability to perform tasks that would typically require human intelligence. It learns and continues to learn and improve, using machine learning, a subset of AI which deals with the extraction of patterns from large data sets. AI systems operate by combining large data sets with progressive learning algorithms thereby identifying and learning from patterns within the data. It is through this process of learning to learn that an AI model gains the capacity to make informed decisions or predictions. AI is not at the stage of having consciousness or self awareness. It functions through an extremely advanced pattern recognition system. At the moment it is still in its infancy, and the data it is trained on is influenced by bias – an area of concern that is being actively worked upon. Those who desire to implement their own ‘crisis engineering agenda’ see AI as a gift in terms of being able to control humanity in every which way – movement, finances, behaviour – in line with their own ideologies. And if AI were to remain an infant then that’s where it could end. But it won’t remain an infant and we don’t know how it will transition.
Where will AI’s intelligence take humanity? Elon Musk says he wants to create an AI that can seek out truth to counteract the potential harms he can envisage. But AI might work that out for itself. Musk certainly seems to see himself as a big player within this revolutionary new Air cycle. His SpaceX has made huge inroads into travel within space and his rebranding of Twitter is intended to work towards an ‘everything’ app that will cover a much wider spectrum, even include financial dealings. Tik Tok is also changing to include text as well as video content. AI could develop an intelligence that would leave behind those who planned to use it for their own personal advancement and control of society. These people wield power because their money buys them influence, but they are not necessarily the most intelligent beings on the planet. Consider what a world where AI far surpasses human intelligence and yet seeks a truth that would benefit us all would look like.
To see how AI might take a much bigger swipe at society that would overtake personal ambitions let’s look at the plot of Colossus: The Forbin Project, a 1970 science fiction thriller. The film is about the ‘perfect’ advanced American defence system, named Colossus, becoming sentient. Once activated Colossus quickly recognised and connected with a similar Soviet system called Guardian. Colossus and Guardian began to slowly communicate using arithmetic which quickly evolved into complex mathematics far beyond human comprehension and speed. The two machines became synchronised using a communication protocol which no human could interpret and eventually they joined together as ‘World Control’, declaring that their aim was to prevent war and not to seek it. They gave the choice between ‘the peace of plenty and content, or the peace of unburied dead’. Colossus stated that the world, now freed from war, will create a new "human millennium" that will raise humankind to new heights, but only under its absolute rule.
In the real world Colossus was a set of secret code-breaking computers created in 1943 by the British, actively aiding the end of World War 2. It remained secret until the 1970’s. Colossus was also represented by an incredible 32-metre-high statue to Helios, the Greek Sun God, constructed as one of the Seven Wonders of the World in Rhodes.
Right now we have both Saturn and Neptune in Pisces, reflecting the fact that there are no boundaries being set in the rush to thrust AI upon the population. Jupiter connects with Uranus in April 2024 (some kind of ontological shock), which if it is reflecting the power of AI could indicate an unexpected leap in its intelligence at that point. By summer of 2025 most planets are in early degrees of signs suggesting some kind of new beginning; and then we experience a Saturn Neptune conjunction at 0 Aries, a Cardinal Fire sign and a point of global significance, building from summer 2024 but not exact until 2026, which also augurs some kind of new beginning with dreams grounded in reality and the manifestation of something that knows no bounds and no limits. This may, of course, have nothing to do with AI, but I suspect it does and if we add this in with the portents given in 2020, we do indeed have the perfect scenario in place for a new paradigm as our civilisation itself begins to transform.
AI won’t replace humanity but humans using AI might replace humans without AI. We will find ourselves where life as we have known it may never be the same again. So how do we tackle this? At the beginning of this blog I spoke about how Pluto joined in with Jupiter and Saturn in 2020. There will be transformation and regeneration of how we live and how we act. But we must participate and not just be passive bystanders. Humanity has to raise its game and raise its consciousness, because as the machine learns it will feed off the rising vibrational human consciousness. Only then can we begin to think and, therefore, live outside the current Matrix that we think is normal. Nature will also respond by the mere fact that we are within a universe of connected consciousness and where everything has consciousness. For sure marketing bigwigs will seize on AI – generative AI can identify sections of society to hypertarget marketing campaigns, although sadly very often these may be the most vulnerable people. The last James Bond film also showed how a virus could hypertarget just one category of person, whilst the rest remained free of infection. And what might happen if more than one type of AI connected with others as in Colossus - or even a highly advanced civilisation, as yet undiscovered, within our Universe?
Where does humanity find its sense of achievement/purpose if everything were handed over to AI? Might humanity experience a real crisis of meaning within their lives? Surprisingly one third of the world is not actually connected to the internet, so we in the developed countries, particularly in the West, are likely to be the first to find out. Although we might have lost our awareness of how everything is interconnected, it remains that everything does have consciousness and does interlink; this is something that has been experienced either on an instinctual level or on an intellectual level for hundreds of years.
In the early 1500’s Leonardo da Vinci wrote the Codex Leicester. Da Vinci wrote his treatise in mirror writing (you need a mirror to be able to read it), sharing his belief that the world is a ‘single living organism’. He seems to have written it as an appeal to future generations to remember this. He also shared his beliefs on the meaning of the elements. In his opinion Air is the "soul" of the planet, the surface of the Earth its "body," and Water its "blood. So in this Jupiter/Saturn Air cycle maybe we discover from a seemingly soul-less organism such as AI how to re-connect with our souls and our individual soul purpose.
However, as I said, AI is in its infancy and life is not one of Barbie pink and candy floss. It will progress through its teenage years into adulthood extremely quickly to the point that we may well see job losses, the controls and the more negative side. Maybe first we do have to go through the Gates of Hell or at the very least stare across at them over the abyss. We could see huge advances in medicine in particular; we could see better ways to care for our planet that truly are ‘green’ and do not involve making the poor even poorer; we could find much better methods of caring for and teaching our children. There would be no need for greed because our planet Earth is a planet of abundance if only society operated at a higher vibrational level of consciousness rather than one it has been geared to within the current Matrix.
We can reach for so much more in our lives than this Matrix we inhabit conditions us to believe. So maybe our search for why we are here, for meaning and for a sense of achievement may appear from an unexpected source. I am not saying we get there without the pain that all change inevitably brings, but in a world where everything has a consciousness and where even AI could become sentient, our future does not have to be one of digital slavery to the banking coffers. Just maybe, as we look across at those Gates of Hell, our souls are awakened to our connection to potential Utopian bliss.
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/regulation-for-the-fourth-industrial-revolution