Divided We Fall?

The Story of The Split

Have you noticed there’s something strange happening? Perhaps it’s been a long time coming? Perhaps you started to notice it in 2020?  Perhaps it was on November 6^th this year?

Your neighbours seem different, family members changed, co-workers insufferable. Do you find yourself scratching your head and wondering whether you missed a meeting? Or not got the memo? Have we, or they, mislaid some marbles?

Don’t worry, you are not alone. We are collectively going through A Split.

This conscious or unconscious uncoupling is sorting out the GMO wheat from the ancient grains. A yawning chasm is opening up between us. “It’s not them, it’s us”.  (Or maybe it is them, come to think of it!)

People everywhere are pootling about in their everyday lives, yet existing in alternate realities.

Blue pill or Red? Vaxxed or non-Vaxxed? Left-wing or right-wing? Mainstream or alternative? Propaganda or Conspiracy Theories? Woke or Awake? Take your pick!

Perhaps you fit neatly into one distinct half of these zeitgeisty parallels? Maybe you like to keep a foot in both camps? Or perhaps you started out with one point of view, and have done an about face?

This messy cultural divorce seemed to have jumped the shark a couple of weeks ago in the aftermath of the US election results. Elections, like football games, customarily leave one side jubilant and the other crying into their beer. But this felt different and even more marked than in 2020. There is something in the air, polarising our collective community and driving a huge wedge between sections of society, friends, neighbours, and families.

Some of the post-election stories of people disowning those who voted differently proves that the cultural temperature has reached a fever pitch.

As an observer from across the pond, it struck me that the divisive rhetoric and sheer disbelief following the result, meant that the transformation into Two Tribes was all but complete. And in many cases, those on one side simply cannot entertain, nor understand the other.

It’s not a new phenomenon, UK readers, some of whom may have voted to remain in the EU back in 2016 might remember waking up the morning after the Brexit referendum completely shocked.  As if the world, or a world had ended. I distinctly remember doing the school run that morning, and observing people crying and hugging at the school gates.

Writer Naomi Klein covered this in her recent book, ‘Doppelganger’ in which she explored the parallel existence of her ‘big-haired’ twin Naomi Wolf. Both were left-wing liberal Jewish American writers, occupying a similar milieu, constantly mistaken for one another but who started to drift further and further apart, post-2020.

Wolf had voiced scepticism about the official line on Covid 19, the vaccine, lockdowns, and digital ID’s. What seemed to be a sensible, cautious strategy rooted in science to one Naomi was to the other an overblown overreaction, rooted in ruthless opportunism and government overreach. Where one saw safety, the other saw tyranny, where one saw intervention, the other control, and so on. As Klein saw it, Wolf had drifted to ‘the right’. Or was it that ‘the left’ had drifted away from Wolf? And how did this end up a right / left issue in the first place? (Those are my questions, not Naomi K’s.)

Unlike many of the hand-wringing and unutterably patronising think pieces proliferating during this period Klein does attempt to engage with the phenomenon in relatively good faith and approaches the mirror world with curiosity rather than condescension. She did invite Wolf to contribute to the book and it’s a shame, in my opinion, that she didn’t. That might have been a moment.

Perhaps she’s writing a book of her own? I would personally like to see them jointly host a podcast; “Ask Naomi(s)?” in which listeners submit their problems to be dissected by these two antagonistic Agony Aunts. (If anyone knows either Naomi, ping me their contact deets and I’ll open negotiations.)

But back to the issue of the day. Why have some of us journeyed Through the Looking Glass and left the rest of us peering after them? Is the media to blame, perhaps? Social media must have made an impact?

Since the growth of Twitter, (now X) and Facebook in the past 15 years, many get their news from a carefully self-selected bubble of like-minded sources. When you can curate the opinions you’re exposed to, is it any wonder that we’re becoming perfect strangers?

While we might throw some blame at the likes of new media titans like Elon or Zuckerberg, (as if either of them give a shit) is this the main driver?

OR is there something more metaphysical, profound, and predestined happening?

Are we devolving or evolving? Descending or ascending? Are we *gulp* fulfilling our flipping destiny?! (Well this is the AstroTerica Substack, so quite possibly, YES!)

Talk of ‘The Split’ has certainly been all the rage in online New Age circles for a while, or at least as long as I’ve been paying attention.

2020 saw a huge rise in the ‘ascension’ theory: the belief that society is dividing into two groups, one which remains rooted in the three-dimensional materialist realm, the other is becoming more aligned with higher frequencies and ‘ascending’ into higher dimensions. Ascension content was very popular on YouTube back in the heady days of the Pandemic, much of it messily entangled with the QAnon phenomenon. This together with the unparalleled apocalyptic atmosphere of the times lent the movement the quality of a fun Doomsday cult, with crystals and oracle cards.

But where does the ‘Split’ concept originate, and does it have any astrological underpinnings?

Let’s investigate.

The first main source of ‘Split’ theory seems to be Delores Cannon; a fascinating teacher and New Age theorist who regressed hundreds of patients as a hypnotherapist and recorded their past life stories and other ‘channeled’ testimonies coming from entities in other dimensions.

We will return to Delores’ work again as it’s a rich seam of much current neo-Aquarian thought, and her influence spreads deep roots into millennial esoteric and popular culture. The projected reality she describes in the video above seems to have inspired the writers of Marvel Avengers Thanos storyline, and yet Cannon was talking about this way back in the 1990’s and 2000’s.   

If you followed the saga of the Mayan 2012 prophecies which promised the end of the world, a world, or at least a calendar, you’ll know that there was a lot of debate about whether the dates were calculated incorrectly by modern interpreters and perhaps they were talking about 2020. Nothing in the material talks about a split as such but suggested a new epoch or chapter in our evolution, for those who were ready, at least.

2012 also saw the discovery of the Higgs Boson (God Particle) at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland. Which seems to have inspired their attempts to tear a rip (just a little one!) in the fabric of spacetime. Or summink. You can read the ‘official’ story on their website, some waffle about particles (yeah right, CERN!)

But check out the Shiva statue in their front yard and resign yourself to the fact that the buggers have managed to create at least one parallel universe, probably more. It would explain a lot, wouldn’t it?

So, the LHC, CERN, physicists, is this why everything’s gone a bit bonkers. Thanks Science!

What about the Astrology?

It could be that this a natural development of the Pluto / Neptune Synodic cycle in Gemini (the twins, of course!) throughout which the culture seems to be in a constant process of bifurcation, constantly dividing first into two, then into multiples, at pace.

This is World Astrology Report’s Dan Waites hypothesis, and it does seem to add up nicely. The first occurrence (in recent history) of this regular planetary date between Pluto (Power) and Neptune (Collective) in Gemini (The Twins) happened in 1398, initiating a 1-3000 year cycle during which they conjoin in Gemini (roughly every 500 years).

Waites makes a good case for this long-form pattern with key astrological Pluto / Neptune dates coinciding with paradigm-shifting events like The Western Schism, Protestant Reformation, the Age of Exploration in which Europeans ‘discovered’ new worlds, the American / French Revolutions, the Industrial Revolution – all of which created all manner of ‘us and them’ societal dichotomies. Whether it was two Popes, two religions, it consistently divides the prevailing orthodoxy into two worlds each of which then continue to fragment. He even points out later Pluto / Neptune in Gemini aspects coinciding with the birth of UFOlogy. Us and them, indeed!

So is this less an Age of Aquarius and more an Age of Gemini?

We can probably expect more divisions when Uranus moves into Gemini next year. Its previous sojourn (1941-49) saw the post-war East/ West division of Europe, the partition of India and Pakistan, the migration of the Chinese aristocracy to Taiwan, and the partition of Palestine.

We can also look at the eclipses (with our specs on, of course!) In 2017 we had the first ‘Great American Eclipse’ which carved a path across the United States. There was a theory that this event would coincide with the appearance of 9^th planet Nibiru (a mythical super-earth planet in the Orion constellation) and trigger the explosion of the volcano in Yellowstone National Park which would rip the US in two. This was poo-pooed at the time and thankfully didn’t come to pass, at least not on this timeline. Although there is a ‘hypothetical’ planet (hypothesised a year earlier) in the Orion system. Astrophysicists have called it ‘Planet 9’ or ‘X’ both of which are spoilsport for ‘Nibiru’.

(SIDE NOTE: For those of you wondering whether Nibiru is the setting of one of the Star Trek movies, it is the home planet of the Annunaki civilisation, Gods of Ancient Mesopotamia and this being a New Age astro-blog we will be hearing all about them in good time.)

In April, 2024 there was a follow-up ‘Great American Eclipse’. The path of totality went in the opposite direction to the lunar eclipse six months earlier, and hewed a giant X marks the spot across the Republic, its epicentre hovering dramatically over Texas. This led many to speculate that ahead of the forthcoming Election / Civil War it would be the Lone Star state, beset with problems at its border, to secede and kick things off.

And for those of you who think this giant crack thing is all a bit far-fetched, there HAS been a massive, actual continental fissure opening up, since 2018…

just not in the US!

Check out this large crack in Kenya, along the 3,700 mile East African Drift where tectonic plates shift and shimmy.

Oh and Antarctica is cracking up too.

Then there’s the Pole Shift. Or Pole Reversal to be precise. The earth’s magnetic poles are constantly shifting. Any idea where the North Pole is these days? It’s not at the North Pole, it’s somewhere in Siberia! And Lord knows where the South Pole’s got to, somebody should probably check up on it.

But we are actually due a complete reversal of poles. Yikes! And it has happened before, so we’re expecting one any day, apparently. It could be in a couple of hundred years, could be next Wednesday. And THIS is why I no longer sweat the small stuff! No one has a clue what this will mean should it actually happen, but there is plenty of speculation, which makes for a fun read

I first learned about this during, yes, you guessed it, 2020. And thankfully although it hasn’t happened what I noticed was the world started to turn on its head anyway. Old ideas, previously accepted truths became inverted. Prior beliefs and worldviews started to spin around like a confused compass navigating the Bermuda Triangle.

Is it us that’s changed? Or is it everyone else? (Um … what? Ed.) When the ground is literally shifting beneath our feet, is it any wonder we’ve got all turned around.

While we tie ourselves in knots fretting about ideologies and whether we’re Team X or Team Blue Sky,  the REALLY crazy stuff is happening beneath our feet.

As a student of Chinese medicine and the Daoist philosophy that underpins it, I am fascinated by the concept of humans as a microcosm of the macrocosm. Similar to Western thought before scientific rationalism barged in and pooped in the pool, we in the West followed Hermetic law: as above, so below.  To this day East Asian medicine follows the principle that your external environment influences your internal environment (and vice versa). This leaves me pondering whether our society is exhibiting the cultural symptoms of something bigger that’s happening in the structure of our planet? Or even our Universe. Or is our own divisiveness impacting the planet itself.

When studying the Taiji (principles of Yin and Yang) we learn that the One separates into two polarities – this is the essence of creation. Yin and Yang separate from the whole, then inevitably move back towards reunion. Everything that happens is just part of the cyclical journey between these eternal dance partners. We take comfort from the fact that these bifurctions are simply part of the constant process of creation, destruction, life, death, the universe, and everything.

The moral of this story appears to be, let’s step back from the brink, zoom right out, and get some perspective.

Despite how much our neighbours’ ‘Election 2024’ yard sign might vex us, we might just need them when a giant crack opens up in the neighbourhood!

Do we stand and hurl insults at each other across the great divide or start to build a bridge?

Answers on a postcard, or in the comments section.

It is in situations like this, that I like to ask myself: What would Jean-Claude Van Damme do?

OWWWW! Do let me know what you make of it all.

Until next time…