Saturday 20 August 2016

Ayn Rand and the Age of Aquarius

We know that Ayn Rand had no time for anything mystical or metaphysical, so it is unlikely that she ever investigated astrology or studied the history of religions. She would have been dismissive of and shown contempt towards anyone who tried to talk to her about such topics.

This means that she probably didn’t know anything about the predicted Aquarian Age, where the influence of Aquarius is balanced by the opposing sign of Leo.

Despite this, there are some references to elements associated with the Age of Aquarius in her life and works.  Perhaps it is all just a coincidence - a very uncanny one though. Perhaps she unconsciously picked up something of the spirit of the coming new age. Perhaps she was an unwitting avatar for some of the subtle forces and unseen influences that affect mankind.

Ayn Rand was born under the sign of Aquarius; she was very logical and rational, which is a major feature of the sign. Her ideology was like a religion for her; we would expect a new religion for the new age to be idea-based rather than feeling-based as in the Age of Pisces.

By coincidence, one of her great novels is called The Fountainhead; the outpouring of water for mankind in the form of ideas is a very Aquarian image:


Ayn Rand, Leo and her lion cubs
One of the main characters in Ayn’s autobiographical novel We the Living is called Leo; he was based on someone she knew as a girl back in Russia and never forgot.

Ayn worked in the studios of MGM, whose mascot is Leo the Lion.

Lion cubs are associated with the waxing Age of Aquarius/Leo.

By coincidence, Ayn Rand owned two small stuffed lion cubs, given to her by her husband as a wedding present. She called them Oscar and Oswald. She drew a sketch of them crying (pouring water!):


Two of her unpublished stories are signed by “O. O. Lyons”.


Ayn Rand’s Anthem, Invictus and I Am
In The Passion of Ayn Rand, Barbara Branden, who knew her very well, informs us that Ayn was not a great reader apart from research for her writing, at least after she came to live in the USA.

This means that she almost certainly never encountered William Henley’s Invictus poem, which contains the well-known lines:

I am the master of my fate/I am the captain of my soul

Despite her unfamiliarity with the poem, there is a similar spirit and similar elements in some of her works.

In Ayn’s 1937 novella Anthem, two of the characters rename each other: Equality 7-2521 becomes The Unconquered (which is what Invictus means); Liberty 5-3000 becomes The Golden One, thus two very Aquarian names are changed to names with connections to Leo.

The Golden One brings water for The Unconquered who is thirsty but unable to get to the water himself. Aquarius is the water carrier.

Equality 7-2521/The Unconquered discovers the lost art of generating electricity and reinvents the electric light, thus enlightening or illuminating his surroundings. Electricity is Aquarian.

The Aquarius/Leo polarity reflects the ‘We’ versus ‘I’, society or the collective versus the individual, conflict. Anthem is about this conflict. It features ‘I am’ in the following extract:

"I am, I think, I will,"

“The word "We" is as lime poured over men, which sets and hardens to stone, and crushes all beneath it, and that which is white and that which is black are lost equally in the grey of it. It is the word by which the depraved steal the virtue of the good, by which the weak steal the might of the strong, by which the fools steal the wisdom of the sages. ..

But I am done with this creed of corruption.

I am done with the monster of "We," the word of serfdom, of plunder, of misery, falsehood and shame.

And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride.

This god, this one word:

"I.”

This individualistic attitude, mind-set and ethos, this refusal to submit to a higher power, is often called Luciferian. The Invictus poem has been criticised for showing the same attitude.


Ayn Rand and the gender-neutral pronoun
As mentioned above, in Ayn Rand’s Anthem the inhabitants of a collectivist society are not permitted to say ‘I’ or ‘me’; they must always say ‘we’ and ‘us’.

Similarly, instead of ‘he’ and ‘she’, they must say ‘they’.

Ayn Rand was ahead of her time:

Earlier this month, Harvard University made a buzz after allowing students to select gender-neutral options like “ze,” “e,” and “they” on registration forms. In doing so, it joined a wave of other major colleges in acknowledging that gender identity, and the pronouns that go with it, is more fluid than how previous generations understood it.”

http://www.citylab.com/navigator/2015/09/ze-or-they-a-guide-to-using-gender-neutral-pronouns/407167/

It is true that in Anthem, ‘they’ is used more for collective than gender neutral reasons; perhaps it is just a coincidence that this word is now used to promote the androgynous element of the impending Aquarian Age.

In the world of Anthem, ‘I’ is the Unspeakable Word. Saying it is punishable by death; people are burned alive.

Maybe sooner or later we will be forbidden from using the words ‘he’ and ‘’she’!

Much of the material for this article first appeared in a series of posts on the now closed Conservative Conspiracy Forum.