Today, an astronomy professor at the Minneapolis Community and Technical College, the wonderfully named Parke Kunkle, told a (nameless, far as I can tell) reporter at NBC News something that astrologers have known for hundreds of years.

Here’s the intro to that “news” story:

 

If you’ve ever read your horoscope, you may be interested in what at least one astronomer has to say about it. Turns out your sign may not really be your sign.

“This is not something that happened today. This has gone on for thousands of years,” said astronomer Parke Kunkle.

The star doctors say Earth is currently in a different spot in relation to the Sun, and its equatorial alignment has changed from 3,000 years ago when the study of astrology began — back when 12 zodiac signs were assigned to 12 different periods of the year.

Those signs you were born into are different now because the Earth’s wobble on its axis has created a one-month bump in the alignment of the stars, according to Kunkle.

“Because of this change of tilt, the Earth is really over here in effect and Sun is in a different constellation than it was 3,000 years ago.”

 

First of all, no fucking shit.  The entire concept of the Age of Aquarius is predicated on said wobble of the Earth (see below), so it’s safe to assume that any astrologer worth his or her horoscopical salt will know that the constellations are different now than they were thousands of years ago.

Second, astronomers are not astrologers. They are celestial trainspotters. They voted to demote Pluto from planet to “dwarf planet,” which no astrologer would do (we know what a whallop that outer planet can pack). Asking an astronomer about astrology is like asking a stage-light manufacturer about Method acting.

Third, most astrologers use the tropical, not the sidereal, method of calculating Sun signs. In this method, the sky is divided into twelve equal sections; the constellations are irrelevant. I’ll let Robert Hand, the world’s greatest astrologer, explain, in a terrific essay called “The Age and Constellation of Pisces,” published back in 1982:

 

Constellations have not played much of a role in modern astrology. Fixed stars taken individually have been investigated from time to time, but not usually as parts of constellations….

The ancients made a distinction between two kinds of zodiacal sign, the zodia neota, which roughly translates as the “knowable zodiac,” and the morphomata, “that which has form.” The zodia noeta consist of…twelve 30-degree sidereal signs. The morphomata…are the unequal constellations forming pictures of forms in the heavens….

But while the constellations (morphomata) have retained their form fairly consistently from somewhat before Ptolemy to the present, it is quite apparent they were different before that time.

 

Fourth, and most importantly, even if the morphomata were used, all of modern astrology—and thus, every last word you read about the secretive Scorpio, the stubborn Capricorn, the sensitive Pisces, and so on—begins with Ptolemy’s book Tetrabiblos. Since the sky looks more or less the same today than it did when he was writing, it doesn’t matter one iota, practically speaking, where Aries was in ancient Babylonia.  We are what we are; where the stars are located is beside the point.

(Hand, incidentally, and many other astrologers, talk about the “thirteenth sign,” Ophiuchus. Ophiuschus is like the zodiac’s Pete Best.)

As the learned astrolomer observes, this has gone on for thousands of years. The only mystery is why it is news.

 

So what is the Age of Aquarius, anyway?

 

The Earth moves in three different ways. Two of these motions you know already, because rotation and revolution are how our basic units of time—day and year—are derived. The seasons, another unit of time, are caused by the interplay between rotation and revolution.

But there is a third motion to the planet, one that takes far longer than the other two: the wobble. Ever spun a top and observed how its top wobbles as the body spins? The Earth does the same thing—slowly, very slowly, but ineluctably.

It takes one day for the Earth to rotate on its axis, one year to revolve around the Sun, and a whopping 25,868 years (give or take) to wobble around completely. One 360-degree wobble is called a Great Sidereal Year—or, more frequently, a Platonic Year (PY).

Now, imagine that you’re up in space, staring down at the North Pole. Also imagine that some celestial cinematographer recorded the Earth making a full wobble in time-lapse photography. What you would see is a point moving in a circle—like the tip of the second hand on a clock, except wicked slow.

Let’s give this circle of completed wobble a name. Let’s call it Dave.

There are 360 degrees to Dave. We mark these degrees in units of twelve—just like we do on a clock. But instead of numbers, we use the zodiac—a series of “fixed” stars near the equator, visible from both hemispheres, by which we track the motion of the Earth.

Continuing our clock analogy, if Dave lives on a second hand, then 1 is Aries, 2 is Taurus, 3 is Gemini, and so on, to 12, which is Pisces. Each of these twelve divisions of the Platonic Year—a Platonic Month, if you will—is called an Astrological Age.

With me so far?

One more thing: the Earth wobbles backwards through the zodiac. So Dave is moving in reverse. Instead of going from Aries to Taurus, Dave travels from Aries to Pisces, and from Pisces to—ta da—Aquarius.

Right now, we are in the Age of Pisces. It has been the Age of Pisces for a really long time. We’re waiting for Dave to break the plane of the 11—and for Earth to enter the Age of Aquarius.

(Sidenote: the term “New Age” is thus derived: the Age of Aquarius is the New Age).

A Platonic Year lasts, as discussed, 25,868 Earth years. A Platonic month—that is, an Astrological Age—lasts about 2160 Earth years. The Earth wobbles about one degree every 72 years. These are just estimates, of course, but they are close.

As if all this Dave business isn’t confusing enough, there’s one more curveball. There are two different zodiacs. The tropical zodiac divides the heavens into twelve equal pie-slices, just like a clock, based on the vernal and autumnal equinoxes.

The sidereal zodiac is based upon the stars themselves, rather than arbitrary points in the sky. Because some constellations are bigger than others, according to apologists of the sidereal zodiac, some Ages last longer than others. And Pisces is one of the big ones. If a regular Age is a two-hour movie, Pisces is Gone With the Wind. It’s a double videotape of a constellation.

Summing up, we know an Astrological Age is roughly 2160 years, give or take a decade or three. We’re pretty sure that we’re still in the Age of Pisces. But we’re not sure when the Piscean Age ends, because we’re not sure when it begins—or, for that matter, how long it’s supposed to last.

 

When is this dawning-of-the-Age-of-Aquarius business going to start?

 

Astrologers disagree about when the Age of Pisces began. Here are some hypotheses, in chronological order:

 

608 BCE Madame Blavatsky

317 BCE David Davison

255 BCE Gerald Massey

125 BCE Thierens

111 BCE Robert Hand

100 BCE Dane Rudhyar

1 CE Paul Council

25 CE Charles A. Jayne

213 CE Cyril Fagan

496 CE Gavin Arthur

 

Add 2160 years to the start dates, and here’s when the experts suggest the Age of Aquarius might begin. (Note: all but Robert Hand have been dead for at least a quarter century).

 

1552 CE Madame Blavatsky

1843 CE David Davison

1905 CE Gerald Massey

2035 CE Thierens

2049 CE Robert Hand

2060 CE Dane Rudhyar

2161 CE Paul Council

2185 CE Charles A. Jayne

2370 CE Cyril Fagan

2656 CE Gavin Arthur

 

Given that living astrologers concur that we are still in the Age of Pisces, we can safety discard Blavatsky, Davison, and Massey. The two astrologers I find the most illuminating are Hand and Rudhyar, so it is telling that they are in virtual agreement.

In short, the New Age is coming. But not until the middle of the century. Unless Parke Kunkle tells a reporter at NBC News otherwise, that is.

 

 

Driving down 19th Avenue on my way to work, windows rolled down, “Wonderwall” by Oasis blasting from the cassette player in my silver Mitsubishi Galant, the light turned red.

“Maybe you’re going to be the one who saves me?” I sang out loud with no shame.

It was 1996.

I was one year out of college, living with my friend’s older gay brother on Church and 15th in the Mission, right down the street from Muddy Waters, 3000 miles away from my parents’ failing marriage.

I thought creating a physical boundary would give me the emotional distance I needed. It gave me no such thing.

I was working for two documentary filmmakers in Sausalito who rarely paid me on time. I didn’t have any friends. And I ate way too many burritos.

I was poor, lonely and getting fat fast.

“Maybe you’re going to be the one who saves me?” I sang again, pushing down the break and looking up.

“What the fuck?!”

It was Jonah.

Again.

It didn’t matter what time of day it was, whether I was on my way to or from work, whenever the light turned red, whenever I stopped, it was always at Jonah Street.

I was convinced it was a sign.

Maybe I was a Jonah in a past life? Maybe my unborn son’s name was Jonah? And maybe, just maybe, Jonah would be the one to save me.

As I continued across the Golden Gate Bridge, fantasizing about Jonah, I hit rewind and listened to “Wonderwall” again.

Four months, one hundred burritos and fifteen pounds later, I decided to move back to New York.

I was tired of Oasis. I was tired of listening to my roommate have sex in the other room while I shoved chicken and guacamole down my throat. I was tired of feeling so alone.

Back in New York, I got a temp job booking crews for Worldwide Television News (now APTN). My parents filed for divorce and my mother moved into my building.

So much for boundaries.

Being able to walk to and from work helped me lose my burrito weight and I started to feel better about myself and my life.

Then I got the call.

“Hi, my name is Jonah, I’m calling from DC and I need to book a crew in Japan.”

“Excuse me?” I said.

It was the fall of 1997, a little over a year since I had left San Fransisco, and I had forgotten all about Jonah.

“A crew. I need a crew in Japan,” he repeated.

“Jonah… I once fell in love with a street sign named Jonah.”

“Uh, okay,” he said and paused. “Are you the one I should speak to about a crew.”

“Yeah, that’s me. Sorry.”

I had to be careful. I didn’t want to scare him away.

“Would you mind handwriting your request and sending it to me by fax?” I asked.

I was really into handwriting analysis at the time and thought it would be a great way to determine if he was, in fact, my Jonah. I had never met a Jonah before.

On my lunch break, I raced to Barnes & Noble on Broadway and 66th Street and found the biggest and best handwriting analysis book I could find. The downward loop of his J meant he was strong and passionate.

I had found my future husband. Only he didn’t know it yet.

I called him later that afternoon, trying not to squeal. We talked requirements. Dates. I made some calls. We were back and forth for a few weeks. Faxes. Confirmation numbers. Names. Contact information.

Then he popped the question.

“Listen, I’m going to be home for Thanksgiving. Wanna grab a drink?”

I tried to act cool, but my voice shot up a couple of octaves, “I would really, really, really like that.”

The night we planned to meet, my mother lent me her favorite pink cashmere sweater, telling me that all women look pretty in pink.

When I asked Jonah how I’d recognize him, he said he’d be the one “with the pink carnation” in his lapel.

Whoa, I thought. We’ll both be in pink, it doesn’t get more soul mate than that.

As I walked down the street, butterflies in my stomach, I sang out loud, “Maybe you’re going to be the one who saves me.”

I stepped into the bar, surveyed the room and spotted a pink rose next to a bottle of beer.

My eyes flew up.

There was a man staring at me, but it wasn’t Jonah. It couldn’t be. He was nothing like the Jonah in my head.

Jonah mouthed, “Kimberlee?”

I wanted to say, “No, I’m Jennifer,” but it was too late. I walked over and shook his hand.

“I thought you’d be a hippie,” he said and took a swig of beer.

We had one drink, went for a walk around the block and said goodnight.

Worst. Date. Ever.

“I’m sorry I was a disappointment,” he said, dropping me off at my building. “I know I represented myself differently over the phone. I was bolder, more outgoing. But seeing you in person. I don’t know. I find you intimidating. I can’t look you in the eye.”

How could I possibly be intimidating in my mother’s pink cashmere sweater?

I crawled into bed that night and cried myself to sleep.

A few weeks later, I got a job at Fox News Channel.

Trying to figure out the difference between KU band and C band satellite space kept my mind off Jonah and that damn street sign that got me into trouble in the first place.

I was there not even two months when I looked up at one of the TV monitors hanging from the wall and saw him.

Jonah.

On CNN.

“It’s no secret there’s no love lost between my mom and the President,” he said.

“What the fuck?!”

Turned out, Jonah was no ordinary Jonah. He was Jonah Goldberg, son of Lucianne Goldberg, the woman who convinced Linda Tripp to tape her conversations with Monica Lewinsky.

For the next several weeks, I saw Jonah’s face everywhere.

He was his mother’s official spokesman. It was weird. Why wasn’t she speaking for herself? I was convinced the Universe was fucking with me.

Then one day, my coworker tapped me on the shoulder. “Look, over there. Lucianne.”

She had apparently decided to break her silence and had come in for an interview.

I wasn’t sure what compelled me, but I ran over to her as she was leaving the newsroom. “Hi, my name is Kimberlee,”” I said, sticking out my hand to shake hers. “I went on blind date with your son. It didn’t work out, but still, I wanted to introduce myself.”

“Yeah, blind dates are hard. Jonah is my best friend. I love him. Did you see him on CNN this morning? Wasn’t he great? I think he’s so good. He has such a great presence.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I nodded and smiled.

As she walked away, it occurred to me that no one really knows anything. What I thought was going to be a story about finding my soul mate turned into a three-degrees-from-blowing-the-President story, and what America thought was a right wing conspiracy to bring down the President was really just one woman’s scheme to launch her son’s on-air career.

xo,
Kimmi

P.S. I went back to San Fransisco a few years ago and retraced my commute from Church Street to the Golden Gate Bridge, down 19th Avenue, and guess what? There is no Jonah Street. It’s Judah Street. Fucking Judah. Talk about misreading signs!