You’ve heard the phrase: “This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.” But why is this line, from a song in the 1960’s, relevant to a leader now?
As an archetypal astrologer and coach, I study patterns and structures that underlie our collective and individual behavior. For decades I have noticed a collective shift in how humans are re-organizing themselves. This has profound consequences for leadership. We are shifting from a pyramid model to a three-dimensional network. But let me explain how I help leaders.
Humanity is moving into a new age, the Age of Aquarius after about 2000 years of Pisces.[1] We can think of the Ages as a universal landscape, shared by all humanity on an archetypal level. As we slowly journey out of the Age of Pisces, the landscape around all of us changes.
We can liken the divide between the Ages to a river that separates the old from the new, the traditional from the futuristic. As with all change, there is great resistance to this transition. A mixture of anger, disbelief and grief is at the root of many people’s refusal to cross this divide. Yet, the march of time is relentless and each one of us has to decide when and how we join those who have already crossed. We can recognize these renegades by how they have deconstructed traditional ideas, embraced eccentric technologies, and see others as human beings first and before all other sub-classifications. In archetypal astrology, embracing your Renegade is called stepping into your inner Uranus, your disruptor.
From a leadership perspective – and reflecting on the Age of Pisces overall – the single most pervasive metaphor of the past is that of a pyramid. The pyramid represents hierarchy, top-down power and control. For thousands of years, humans have been accustomed to countless pyramidal systems with a single powerful leader at the top. Whether a CEO, a religious leader, a royal, or even a traditional “head of household,” this is a command-and-control model that is inextricably interwoven with our thinking about how to run things and organize people.
However, in the Age of Aquarius the pyramid model for organizing ourselves is increasingly archaic.
Rather, humans are now re-organizing in three-dimensional matrices, networks made up of countless nodes. Each one of us is a node in this model. We express our uniqueness as we share our commonness. This is the Aquarian landscape that celebrates diversity as we also recognize that we are crowded together on a small planet. Intuition, eccentricity, and disruptive technologies belong to Aquarius. Expect the unexpected.
What does this mean for leaders? If you have been wondering about the state of leadership in today’s world, imagine the challenge of leading a matrix when your mindset is pyramidal.
Leaders become more effective once they understand the foundational shifts of the Ages and the transformational consequences this has for their leadership. I help leaders develop skills to lead effectively in the Age of Aquarius by engaging with their inner multiplicity in novel ways. What would it look like if you led from your inner Renegade?
To discuss leadership coaching with Dr. Hillman, visit www.laurencehillman.com or call +1-314-997-7744
[1] As the earth rotates on its axis it also wobbles like an extremely slow gyroscope. This wobble causes the north pole to continuously point at a different place in the sky, as though drawing a large circle that takes 26,000 years to complete. This wobble also means that the Sun’s position on the ecliptic on the first day of spring moves through the signs of the zodiac backwards, one sign every 2000 years in what is known as the Great Year. See also https://youtu.be/qlVgEoZDjok
Leave a Reply