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zodiac2 (7K)
A New Relationship Paradigm

Relationships as well as family are in the process of changing dramatically. Single parent families and same sex parent families are revolutionizing the familial landscape. Relationships are far more casual than those of past generations. Serial relationships instead of committed life-long relationships are becoming a norm. Dating is as much a sexual marketplace as it is a process of finding a life partner.

An integral part of this shift includes our definitions of gender roles and our respective places within society. As we approach the Age of Aquarius, the traditional structure of relationships will change to meet an increasingly Aquarian paradigm. In fact, this process has already begun.

Aquarius rules non-conformity with tradition, open relationships, friendships, and revolutionary new ways of looking at and doing things. This often means instability leading to the breakdown of relationships. The shifting patterns of relationships that have affected society over the last 200 years marks the breakdown of traditional families and relationships, and the creation of something new and different. As this has taken place, our definitions of our gender roles in the West have shifted.

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We can mark the shift in relationships and gender roles by looking at the history of astrological ages*. When the masculine patriarchy came to power around the world at the beginning of the Age of Aries at 2160 BCE, relationships were set up to allow men the right to play the field while women were bound to the marriage in loyal support of their men. Rape became an integral part of mythology and conquest, warrior heroes like Hercules often stealing and raping women, interpretations of gender roles and relationship that still affect us today. Aries is a masculine sign that rules independence.

In the Age of Pisces, 0 BCE to 2160, relationships became a Pisces like prison for women, and perhaps men as well. Women became the enemy, satanic slaves of sensuality in the new religious paradigm of virginity and chastity. Women who refused marriage were either persecuted as witches or were forced into monasteries.

We are now closing fast on the Age of Aquarius, and everything is changing. The new relationship paradigm, in line with Aquarius qualities, will be one of open equality. Both men and women will remain open to Aquarius friendships with members of the opposite sex, even as they remain married to their primary love. The traditional reasons for relationship are already dissolving leaving something far more revolutionary in its wake. In this process, relationships have become quite messy, destructive, and confusing.

From this new Aquarius perspective, same sex relationships, and marriages, have as much archetypal validity as do heterosexual relationships. The archetypal interplay of masculine and feminine energies as they express themselves within a single human body, are emerging in revolutionary new ways of intimate interaction between two people, in relationships that promise new ways of looking at ourselves and our universe.

We have a choice. We can recoil in horror at the revolutionary and often destructive directions that current relationships are going, or we can look at the astrological and archetypal roots of gender roles, and redefine them for ourselves in order to give us direction in this confusing environment. Aquarius rules astrology, and by discovering the astrological roots of gender, by relating on a higher order Aquarius quality, we can bypass the instability of Aquarius, and gain a new level of stability that fills the new Aquarian paradigm.

* To learn more about astrological ages visit Signs of the Times.

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