NEW YEAR, NEW YUGA?

2025 - Goodbye to the Kali Yuga!

Happy New Year! If you like me have always found New Year’s Eve underwhelming - like the dog end of Christmas, I have some exciting news…

As we stand gingerly on the precipice of 2025, we don’t just have a new calendrical year to look forward to, we have a whole brand new epoch, foretold by the ancients, just around the corner!

We’ve already touched upon 2025 being hot stuff in astrological terms because so many outer planets are changing signs and that signals huge global shifts.

But it’s not just about Pluto in Aquarius, Neptune moving into Aries, and Uranus into Gemini – this year we get to say goodbye to the dear old Kali Yuga, a mini-aeon of suffering and violence which we’ve been muddling our way through for nigh on 6000 years.

No wonder we’re knackered, eh? But the good news is: it’s ending on 21^st March, Spring Equinox 2025.

But what is the Kali Yuga? And what even is a Yuga, anyway?

We often talk about synodic cycles in astrology, and when these involve the outer planets they can span hundreds of years. However, the ancients believed that there are much bigger processes at work. There is a cyclical journey of 25,800 years during which life on earth moves from a golden age of harmony and enlightenment in which humans live hundreds of years and there is no suffering, downwards towards a ‘nasty, brutish and short’ type existence where war, poverty, disease, and suffering are the order of the day.

This concept is known as the Yuga cycle and dates back to Sanskrit texts set out by the seven See-ers or ‘Rishis’.

Similar theories can be found globally. The Mayans and other indigenous Americans talked about a ‘Great Cycle’ and the Ancient Greeks had their ‘Great Year’. The idea that time and evolution operates in cycles or spirals, rather than linear fashion, was firmly rooted in ancient cultures of the East and West.

Let’s break it down and look at a diagram!

The Ages are: the Golden Age or ‘Satya’, the Silver age or ‘Treta’, Bronze Age a.k.a. ‘Dwapara’, and Iron Age, or ‘Kali Yuga’.

The Mahabharata describes the Kali Yuga as the period when:

“wealth will be the only source of devotion; passion will be the sole bond of union between the sexes; falsehood will be the only means of success in litigation; and women will be objects merely of sensual gratification. Earth will be venerated, but for its mineral treasures. Dishonesty will be the universal means of subsistence; menace and presumption will be substituted for learning.”

Sounds about right?

Each Yuga lasts around 6000 years in total, split into descending and ascending sections. In the Satya Yuga and Kali Yuga these run consecutively, so we get a double helping of the best and the worst.

Scholars have debated the dates and timings of this cycle for centuries but this recent publication by Bibhu Dev Misra sets it out clearly, sorts out previous misinterpretations, and does the math. He calculates that the Yuga cycle should follow the Earth’s precessional cycle (the backwards journey of the sun through the constellations of the Zodiac at the Vernal Equinox), that the cycles are of equal length, and that we are about to finish up the end of the Kali Yuga in March next year.

But before you get too excited, March 22^nd heralds the start of a 300-year ‘transitional cycle’ before we make it to the Bronze (Dwapara) level. So it seems unlikely that we’ll be waking up to a blissful Nirvana on the morning of 22^nd March – these things take their sweet time!

chart courtesy of Bibhudevmisra.com

Interestingly the periods of greatest transition at the halfway point of this cycle (roughly every 12,000 years) are said to involve catastrophes or geophysical changes to the planet which act as a reset button. The transition between the Satya Yuga and Treta Yuga was referred to as the ‘Kataklysmos’ - purification by water. This aligns perfectly with the end of the last Ice Age and the ‘Younger Dryas Impact’ hypothesis espoused by Allen West, Graham Hancock, and Randall Carlson.

This suggests that there was an advanced civilization spanning the globe, or at least the temperate areas around the mid-Atlantic. We could refer to this as the Satya Yuga or perhaps, Atlantis, (yay!). And this was wiped out by some kind of catastrophic event, e.g. a meteor impact) which caused a great flood (Boo!). Proponents of this theory align this event with the Great Flood of Noah, Gilgamesh, and indeed every other ancient culture’s version of the flood story, that destroyed most life on earth, at around the same time.

Bibhu Dev Misra argues that this transitional cycle we are about to enter aligns with the Greek concept of ‘Ekpyrosis’ which translates as ‘conflagration’. It centres around their belief that the world would be destroyed in a kind of big reset (tryna make it sound nicer) to make way for the New Thing which will be born in a blaze of fire (pyrosis) Oh dear. Is it out of control climate change? Meteors from the Taurid shower blazing a path toward earth? Bibhu argues that it could be a metaphorical fire, spiritual or ideological, delivering us from one level to the next. (*GULP* - I hope you’re right Bibhu!)

“[Ekpyrosis] is when the decadent structures, philosophies and ideologies of the Kali Yuga will be entirely obliterated and a nascent civilization based on elevated spiritual principles shall take root, which will eventually grow into the enlightened civilizations of the ascending Yuga Cycle, culminating in the next Golden Age.

He also cites Alice Bailey, turn of the century Theosophist and mystic, who wrote extensively about 2025 being QUITE THE YEAR!

Alice Bailey, Theosophist, Estotericist, Astrologer, 1880 - 1949.

Bailey wrote about 2025 being the start of a defining era in which the forces of light challenge the forces of darkness. And after the last few years, I think we can all agree that Alice was clearly onto something. She also focused on a ‘new world order’ (hmm) and a world federation - although in Alice’s version it all sounds very agreeable, and does not in any way evoke sinister Bond Villain types insisting we all ‘eat ze bugs’.

Klaus Schwab, World Economic Forum, Apparent fan of bugs.

Bailey’s work, which she claimed was taught to her by Tibetan Master Djwal Kul aligns with the Tibetan Buddhist text the ‘Kalachakra Tantra’, and like many ancient texts: this details the appearance of a Saviour-type avatar arriving from the heavens on a horse. This echoes the Kalki character in ancient Hindu prophecy and the second coming of the Messiah in the Book of Revelation.

Bailey wrote that this extra-planetary Avatar will accomplish his purpose without taking mortal form and is “coming to the earth to further the manifestation of unity, of oneness and inter-relation. He comes, therefore, to wield and apply first ray energy.”

So, what to make of it? All in all, it seems like a thrilling and/or terrifying year ahead depending on how we choose to view it. Reassuringly for the AstroTerica Substack reader, with our eyes keenly trained on the stars, we may get some advance notice.

Rather than worry about what’s to come through, I appreciate the ancients’ view of our lives as tiny microcosmic chapters within massive universal cycles. It takes the pressure off, doesn’t it? We can’t control events in the wider world, we are here to experience them. However, we can each contribute our tiny part of the whole, and in the words of another Theosophist, Ghandi:

We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.

Ghandi never actually said ‘Be the change you want to see’ although that is basically what he meant, so I’m sure he wouldn’t mind us constantly paraphrasing him for Instagram inspirational memes.

So kick back, relax, and set those intentions for this exciting year to come. Take some time to envision the world you want to see, plan a tiny action or step that you can take towards that in 2025, to bring it into being.

Dear reader, you picked an exceptional time to incarnate on this planet. You’re destined for great things, and you clearly love a bit of drama. It looks like 2025 might just be your year!