Are you reading a blog with the title “The End of the World” because you’re scared or curious or expecting satire?

I’ve been thinking that as an astrology blogger I ought to address the idea that because some Mayan calendar is completing a cycle that we are at “the end” of the world.

My neighbors were robbed yesterday and the police told them that because of this worry and fear about the “end” of the Mayan calendar, people were doing crazy things such as breaking into homes more frequently.

I’ll have to admit, I’ve never understood the fear of the world ending. Like a robot who’s receiving illogical commands and responds, “Does not compute,” then starts internally combusting, I can’t even comprehend the idea of the “end” of the world.

For starters, what is “the world?” The earth? The incomprehensibly large universe?

How does the universe “end?”

I had an “aha” moment recently during meditation while connecting some ideas the teacher presented regarding ego with a comment by the late philosopher and writer Ayn Rand.

In the movie “Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life,” we see an interviewer ask Rand if she fears death. Her response was in paraphrase of some unknown philosopher who said, ““I will not die, it’s the world that will end.” (She says it in the last interview of this compilation of interviews on religion.)

Of course! When we die the world does end, for ME.

Our fear of the “end” of the world, I’m suspecting, is the ego’s fear of its own demise.

Astrology

Years ago I bought a new chair. My aggressive, anxious and semi-feral cat walked in fear, scurrying across the room.

When a cat is afraid of a chair, you hear that it’s instinct and animals are just like that, etc. Yet I see this very same behavior in human nature. It may not appear as simple as the cat and the chair (is there a children’s book subject here?), but I see humans resisting change for the same reason animals appear to – loss of control, protection of territory and desire for constancy.

My view is that our horoscope represents our conscious sense of self. Like animals, we have our habits and comforts and threats to those habits and comforts produce fear and anxiety.

As we are all different in personality, what triggers our anxieties will vary. A person focused on material wealth fears the loss of job and banks failing. A person focused on relationships fears loss of a partner and may become anxious (also called “jealousy”) when the partner is with others.

How does this tie to the end of the world?

In simplest terms, I think fear of the “end” of the world is a fear of death. While most maintain faith and religious belief, there is still some underlying visceral fear of “the world ending.” The chair hasn’t been moved – the entire world has been moved.

While there is always change occurring, currently there is cataclysmic change occurring represented astrologically by Pluto in Capricorn square Uranus in Aries. Lots of other planets have been involved in this square in the last year or so (Saturn and Mars, for example). If you’re not interested in astrology you might notice it as the collapse economic markets from housing to banking. There was also a lot of relationship collapse when Saturn was in Libra creating a nice T-square with Pluto and Uranus.

I don’t know anything about the Mayan calendar to know how it relates to Western astrology. I believe there’s an end to a specific long count, but I don’t believe (but am not sure) this is seen as the “end” of the world in Mayan belief.

I keep using the earthquake image. While I didn’t grow up in an earthquake zone, I lived in an area with earthquakes for a couple years. What’s scary about earthquakes as opposed to tornadoes or hurricanes is that earthquakes are beneath – there is no where to run.

We are experiencing an earthquake of “the world,” what the world will look like and how it will work, as represented by Capricorn. Aries represents the ego self, shattered then enlightened through its time with Uranus.

Astrology has taught me about cycles. Calendars may “end” but cycles keep revolving and rotating in time and space just as the planets rotate and also revolve around the sun, the sun which spins in the galaxy and the galaxy that moves around the universe.

It’s big out there.

The cycles continue but “me” will end. I am bothered mostly by “end of the world” talk because we’re just promoting then feeding off the fear of others which changes nothing and helps no one.