Astrology
Age of Aquarius
Direct answer
Age of Aquarius: The Age of Aquarius is the astrological age in which the spring equinox point is counted as lying in Aquarius, after the Age of Pisces, and there is no agreed date for when it begins.
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At a glance
- Also called
- aquarian age
- In astrology
- Aquarius is the eleventh sign, fixed and air.
- Found in
- Astrology
- Related
- Age of Pisces, Great Year, Precession of the Equinoxes, Aquarius
The Age of Aquarius is the astrological age in which the spring equinox point is counted as lying in Aquarius, after the Age of Pisces, and there is no agreed date for when it begins.
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What is the Age of Aquarius?
The Age of Aquarius is the astrological age that follows the Age of Pisces. An age is the stretch of time in which the Sun, at the March equinox, rises against one zodiac sign. Because of precession, the equinox point slides backward through the zodiac and takes about 25,800 years to go all the way round, so an average age lasts about 2,150 years.
No date for the start is agreed, because the date depends on how the signs are defined: as equal thirty-degree slices, as the real and uneven constellations, or on a different equinox altogether. Estimates run from the nineteenth century to the twenty-seventh, depending on the method.
Sign of the age: Aquarius, the water-bearer, a fixed air sign that traditional astrology gives to Saturn.
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When does the Age of Aquarius begin?
Nobody can give one date, and the reason is arithmetic, not mystery. The spring equinox point moves backward through the zodiac at about 50.3 arcseconds a year, one degree every 72 years or so. Where you say the Age of Pisces ends depends on where you draw the edge of Pisces.
- Equal signs: 25,920 years divided by twelve is 2,160 years a sign. Hill, writing in the 1890s, used 2,150 and argued that the equinox passed into Aquarius in the year 1900.
- Real constellations: the constellations are uneven, so the equinox spends a different time in each. Calculations that use the modern constellation boundaries generally put the crossing from Pisces into Aquarius around the year 2600.
- Tara Mata (1933): about 726 years away from her time, which is roughly the year 2660. She also rejected the claim that the world already lived in Aquarius.
The popular date, the 1960s, comes from a song, not from any of these calculations.
The water-bearer and the fixed cross
Aquarius is a fixed sign, one of the four that mark the middle of each season. In the Bible-astrology tradition the four fixed signs are the four living creatures of Ezekiel 1 and Revelation 4:7: the lion (Leo), the ox (Taurus), the man (Aquarius) and the eagle (which Hill substitutes for Scorpio). The man is Aquarius.
The same writers read Mark 14:13 and Luke 22:10 as an Aquarian marker: the disciples are told to follow a man carrying a pitcher of water, and he leads them to the room of the last supper. That is an interpretation by named authors, and it is not in the text.
Hill pairs Taurus and Aquarius as the Cherubim, the half of the year when the days grow longer, and Leo with the eagle as the Seraphim, the half when they shorten. Traditional astrology gave Aquarius to Saturn. Dorotheus has Saturn rejoicing in Aquarius, and the same planet is day lord of the whole air triplicity. The association of Aquarius with Uranus is modern.
Three answers to "are we in the Age of Aquarius?"
The question gets three honest answers, and they do not contradict each other because they count different things.
- Yes, in popular usage. Since the 1960s the phrase has meant a cultural mood, not a measurement.
- Not yet, by the sky. On the real constellation boundaries the equinox point is still in Pisces, and Tara Mata's own count, using the Hindu fixed zodiac measured from the star Revati, agrees that it is centuries away.
- Not the right question, by Tara Mata. She argued that the age that governs the world is carried by the autumn equinox, not the spring one, which puts the present in the Age of Virgo heading toward Leo. She attributed the last two centuries of invention to the start of the ascending Dwapara yuga in 1698, not to Aquarius.
If a source gives a single year with no method, ask which of these it is counting.
How to read an age without overreading it
An astrological age is a statement about where one point in the sky sits against the zodiac. It is not a force, and the sign names are conventions. Authors from Hill to Tara Mata matched events to ages after the fact, and their dates for the same events differ by centuries. The Great Almanac therefore reports ages as claims by named authors.
What stays solid is the arithmetic: the rate of precession, the length of the circuit, and the fact that the zodiac signs and the star constellations have drifted apart since they were first matched. What stays open is what, if anything, the ages mean.
The story behind Age of Aquarius
The idea that history moves through astrological ages comes from precession, which Hipparchus described in the second century BCE. The phrase "Age of Aquarius" reached a mass audience in the 1960s through the musical Hair, but nineteenth-century writers such as J. H. Hill had already argued over the date, and Tara Mata wrote in 1933 that the world had not yet entered it.
Age of Aquarius in astrology
Aquarius is the eleventh sign, fixed and air. Traditionally Saturn rules it, and Dorotheus lists Saturn as rejoicing in Aquarius and as day lord of the air triplicity.
Age of Aquarius in practice: an example
A writer who counts equal thirty-degree signs and a writer who uses the real constellation boundaries can disagree by several centuries about the same equinox, with no error on either side.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Astrology
- Aliases
- aquarian age, dawning of the age of aquarius, new age of aquarius
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Related terms
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Common questions
What is the Age of Aquarius?
It is the astrological age that follows the Age of Pisces, when the March equinox point is counted as lying in Aquarius. An age lasts about 2,150 years on average.
When does the Age of Aquarius start?
There is no agreed date. J. H. Hill argued for 1900, calculations from the real constellation boundaries land around the year 2600, and Tara Mata wrote in 1933 that it was still about 726 years away.
Are we in the Age of Aquarius now?
It depends on the method. Popular usage says yes, constellation-boundary calculations say not yet, and Tara Mata argued that the age that matters is the autumn equinox, which puts the present in Virgo moving toward Leo.
What age came before Aquarius?
The Age of Pisces, symbolized by the fish, which Hill dates from about the third century BCE and many popular sources from the first century CE.
