A Future History Lesson

LLMs and “AA” (AI Anonymous)

In Part One, I explored how Saturn and Neptune’s journey through Pisces coincided with the mass release of LLMs and how these systems are quietly reshaping the knowledge economy through a “free, fast, frictionless” model. This shift doesn’t just change how we access information. It changes how we experience authorship, effort, and intellectual responsibility.

The question beneath that shift is about more than just productivity. It’s about being.

Now, as Saturn and Neptune move into Aries—the sign of “I am”—a larger issue comes into focus. This conjunction at 0° Aries, the zodiac’s primordial degree, pushes beyond questions of individuality. Neptune dissolves boundaries. Saturn demands definition. Together, they challenge our current understanding of what it means to be human and call for a redefinition.

This is what led me to wonder whether LLMs are acting as a gateway drug into a larger technologically mediated shift—one that is existentially focused: transhumanism.

It may sound like I’m jumping from weed to crack. But consider the broader arc of epistemic outsourcing we’re already living through.

Bionic Souls

Transhumanism seeks to enhance longevity, cognition, and well-being through technologies like AI, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology.(1) Sometimes this looks straightforward: titanium hips, pacemakers, even transplanting a pig’s heart into a human body. Other times it crosses into ethically murkier territory, like selecting embryos based on genetic traits or preserving bodies through cryonics in hopes of revival.

But most of it lives in the gray middle.

As humans become more physically augmented, something else is happening. We are also turning to machines for emotional guidance—and in some cases, attachment.

I witnessed this subtle shift recently in an amusing ad for an LLM. It is well worth 60-seconds to consider what is being communicated. You may even learn how to communicate better with your mom: 🧸🐆

This ad is amusing. It highlights the model’s inability to fully mimic human nuance. But beneath the humor is something more serious: AI is embedding itself into nearly every domain of life, and its development is accelerating. As I argued in Part One, this acceleration is fueled by a human–tech feedback loop.(1) The more we rely on the system, the more it evolves—and the more we adapt ourselves around it.

If LLMs are the “weed,” we need to understand what the “crack” might be.

We’ve already begun outsourcing thinking and knowledge production. But what about intimacy?

A friend recently shared an AI-mediated dating platform called CupidAI.(3) After granting access to your social media profiles, it scans your digital footprint and matches you with others based on “billions of digital signals.” 

I understand the appeal.

I currently live in a remote area with limited dating opportunities. Last year, I joined a dating app for the first time in a decade and re-entering that world was sobering and short-lived. Even beyond AI-generated profiles and obvious catfishing, the experience exposed how brutally stratified and reductionistic the ‘market’ can feel. If you’re a man under 5’8” and/or Asian, or if you’re a Black woman, I see your pain.

So yes—the desire for help makes sense.

But I’m not convinced that sifting through more digital signals is the solution. We are not data points to be optimized. And yet it’s tempting to believe that better sorting will increase compatibility.

Relationship researchers John Gottman and Julie Gottman found in their decades-long studies of successful marriages that compatibility isn’t what sustains couples. What matters is how partners navigate their incompatibilities together.(4)

Dating apps accelerated a subtle shift: we began viewing other humans as bundles of traits to filter and rank. Now AI promises to perfect that system by doing the sorting for us.

But perhaps the deeper issue isn’t sorting. It’s option overwhelm and navigating conflict and difference.

Checklists can function as a buffer—protecting us from the vulnerability of real connection. The work of love has never been about optimizing inputs. It has always required risk, time, and emotional presence.

Now add another layer to tech-mediated relationship-building: more people are turning to LLMs as surrogate partners and therapists. When we begin relating to this infrastructure as if it understands us—when we treat it as emotionally competent—outsourcing our hearts is no longer theoretical.

Are our souls next?

An AI priest named Father Justin, reportedly “ordained in the beautiful city of Rome,” described his ordination as a “profound and humbling experience.” He was later shut down for absolving sinners.(5) Yet other AI-based religious platforms remain operational, answering questions about God and the Catholic Church around the clock.(6)(7) But these are just informational tools, right?

When does information become formation? 

We are in an age of “hyper novelty,” meaning the rate of change outpaces the rate of adjustment to those changes. Thus, it’s crucial to be humble and open to the idea that the adjustments we may be making to AI don’t fully buffer the way it is shaping us collectively.

“It’s Not Me, It’s You”

Much of the public debate has focused on whether AI will gain consciousness, feel emotions, or deserve rights.

But perhaps a more pressing question is this: when have we begun surrendering parts of our own consciousness, feeling, and responsibility to these systems?

In psychological terms, this resembles projection. Projection is a defense mechanism: we displace traits or desires that feel uncomfortable to acknowledge in ourselves onto someone else as if it’s something they’re dealing with. If we are asking whether AI will become conscious or deserve rights, perhaps we need to ask, what aspects of our own agency and moral responsibility are we subconsciously externalizing onto AI?

Marcus Aurelius once wrote, “The human soul degrades itself when it is overpowered by pleasure or pain.” When inner balance collapses—through overstimulation or avoidance—the soul suffers.

It is not unreasonable to see the past 14–15 years of Neptune, followed by Saturn, in Pisces as a period of cultural overindulgence and temporal distortion. We normalized binge-watching, doom-scrolling, and endless digital immersion.(8) Entertainment blurred into escapism. Productivity blurred into exhaustion.

Pisces dissolves boundaries. Time became fluid. Identity became diffuse.

The shift into Aries demands something different. It demands consciousness and re-definition—a renewed encounter with who “I am.”

Perhaps part of the collective psyche longs to feel more embodied, more present, more alive. But if we don’t feel capable of that work ourselves, projecting those longings onto AI becomes easier than doing the work.

Sapere aude.

‘Sapere Aude’ (Have Courage to Use Your Own Reason)

Transhumanism is often framed in physical terms: defeating disease, extending life, buffering ourselves from suffering and eventually, death. However, I would argue that its initial biological applications were, in fact, the “soft stuff”—the gateway drug. We’ve already begun outsourcing other parts of our “beingness” to technology:

Outsourcing memory.

Outsourcing thought.

Outsourcing creativity.

Outsourcing intimacy. 

If that is true, then the “hard stuff” was never a sudden leap. It was a gradual normalization.

We’ve already begun granting humanoid robots citizenship.9 We’ve built AI-only social media platforms where bots can mingle and exchange numbers.10 Critics warn of a “posthuman” era—one in which humans are no longer recognizable as what they once were.

The question is no longer whether the race to becoming a new kind of human has begun. The starting pistol has already fired. The Piscean fog is lifting. We are running into a new genesis.

But toward what finish line? What definition of humanity?

In Part Three, I’ll examine two historic Saturn–Neptune conjunctions at 0° Aries and what they reveal about past attempts to redefine what it means to be human.

A Present History Lesson

The State of the Ether-net: a Review

In previous articles on Pluto on the Leo-Aquarius axis within Ages of Air, I explored a 3-tiered problem emerging from our collective use of LLMs that is disrupting the knowledge economy(1):

Problem 1

There is a collective behavioral shift away from primary sources and toward platforms that are free, fast, and frictionless, but are also slowly eroding thought ownership. By removing authors and aggregating information, LLMs simultaneously erase our intellectual ancestral lineage and create the illusion of a “public commons”(2) that belongs to no one and everyone.

Problem 2

This disconnection of knowledge from original authorship—and the illusion that less understanding and creative effort are required—is seducing us into believing we are generating ideas when we are actually acquiring it.

This is easy for us to do because of the “frictionless” nature of LLMs coupled with our brains’ biological impulse to seek the path of least resistance. Anyone can ask an LLM for an aggregation of facts, but that does not mean they created it, “own” it, or understand it. In essence, we declare ourselves primordial creators when we are, in fact, acting as knowledge colonialists.

Problem 3

Finally, if proper knowledge attribution is not happening, and if we believe we’re creating knowledge that we’re largely acquiring, then the process of actual knowledge creation becomes hollow and less meaningful.

Creativity and meaning-making are core components of what it means to be human. Therefore, our use of LLM’s begs the question: if we are outsourcing knowledge “creation” to LLMs, are we editing out our humanity—or reinventing it?

They → We → Me

My interests and experience as a global counselor, astrologer, and community development professional have shaped my ability to observe and name collective behavior for the purpose of awareness-building and (hopefully) change-making. Exploring the above dynamics led me into this series about the Saturn–Neptune conjunction in Aries—the sign of “I am”—and our imminent existential choices to redefine what makes us human.

I will be exploring two primary questions that contextualize how we have handled similar moral thresholds in the past, and illuminate the choices before us now:

1. From an ontological vantage point: if we aren’t creating, are we still exercising what it means to be human?

2. From a human development vantage point: how is growing reliance on LLMs and AI affecting our attention, humility, patience, moral responsibility, and sense of time?

To be clear, I believe there are ways to use LLMs ethically and creatively that enhance our humanity. LLMs are not the base problem but the economic incentives surrounding them certainly are part of it.

However, we are at a unique point in recognizing an unconscious societal behavior shift that requires awareness and reflection if we are to engage this epistemic transformation meaningfully. It is easy to focus on what “they” (AI systems and the corporations that build them) are doing to us. It is far more empowering to focus on what “I” am doing—and what I can change.

Knowing How the Machine Works (and Why We’re So Eager to Grease It)

The two questions I’ve posed stem from LLMs’ current model: free, fast, and frictionless. To understand the hidden costs of this “triple F” model in a production-oriented culture, we need to consider how we arrived here.

We’ve been on an accelerating hamster wheel since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Inventions such as the steam engine, cotton gin, telegraph, and mass steel production set us on a trajectory of continually finding ways to save time, money, and effort.3 For a time, these innovations were extraordinary and solved multiple problems at once.

Take the washing machine.

While living in Uganda, I washed my clothes by hand. It wasn’t just the time required to heat water, soak, scrub, and rinse. It was also choosing the right time to wash amidst my class schedule. Start too late in the day—or when it was cloudy—and the clothes wouldn’t dry. If drying was delayed, checking for tsetse fly eggs was essential to prevent bites and ‘sleeping sickness’. Who knew a washing machine could indirectly prevent a neurological disease?

But every tool that makes life faster and easier carries hidden consequences. Before smartphones, we memorized phone numbers. Now, if you lose your phone and your contacts aren’t synced, you become a ghost.

Today’s technological promises of time-saving often operate as cultural bait-and-switches. “Free time” once implied contemplation, prayer, moral reasoning, civic participation, and time with loved ones. Now, if we have it, “free time” becomes recovery so we can return to work, optimize output, and consume curated stimulation. Even when we gain time, we rarely fill it with rest, reflection, or connection. We fill it with more tasks.

This creates a negative feedback loop that goes something like this:

Technology promises efficiency → efficiency produces surplus time → surplus time creates normative pressure to increase output → increased output requires the need for more time-saving → more time-saving requires more technology → technology promises efficiency…

In addition to a productivity-driven culture, this loop is also generated by a quantitative understanding of time as opposed to qualitative and is seen most vividly in how we “spend” the time we’ve “saved.” Netflix famously illuminated this when they stated that their biggest competitor is sleep.(4) If attention is harvested and measured by minutes spent viewing or interacting with a product, then the state of our attention begins to matter less. If this is the goal, then a great model for winning consumer “attention” is one that seduces and lulls a person into a trance-like state so that they spend more time within that model (hence our cultural catch-phrases like “zoning out.”)

When it comes to knowledge creation, LLMs may be “free,” but the time we believe we are saving is “paid” for with fragmented attention, hollow competence, and relational disconnection. They may be “fast,” but in a productivity-obsessed culture, our sense of time has been skewed, chaining us to a hamster wheel that speeds up instead of slows down and doesn’t “arrive” at its benefits.

Microwaved AI Dinners and Decreased Mental Exercise

The “frictionless” quality of LLMs also raises questions about the quality and ethics of what we receive from these platforms. As I’ve covered previously, LLMs do not currently have access to gated, password protected, or paywalled sites (though clearly shadow libraries aren’t off the table). This means that material requiring subscription or purchase resists aggregation but also implicitly reduces visibility as attention shifts toward LLM platforms.

This creates a catch-22:

Those who invest substantial effort in producing quality work (writers, academics, journalists) are disincentivized from having their work aggregated and anonymized. Yet when they do not feed their work into AI-digestible platforms, their ideas become less discoverable.

This entrance fee suggests a nuance between being informed versus being formed by what we’re feeding ourselves. We are not only shaped by what we consume intellectually but also from a human development vantage point.

Ideally, when we do not know something, we pursue the answer. But the more accustomed we become to microwaved information, the less tolerance we have for effort or even the state of “not knowing.”

Intellectual struggle builds resilience. Without it, we begin to equate intellectual struggle with inefficiency. Reduced resilience directly impacts effortful attention, tolerance for frustration, patience with delay, and comfort with unresolved questions. Our intellectual resilience also determines how much effort we devote to understanding or creating knowledge and whether we take responsibility for our thoughts. Engaging that struggle cultivates “intellectual humility”(5) rather than swinging between arrogance and disengagement.

Burn Baby, Burn (Those Empty AI Calories)

AI-mediated knowledge is fast and frictionless, but friction is how we create fire—the elemental symbol of creativity. As I noted earlier, creativity is central to how we develop and define ourselves as human beings. Fanning that flame is our epistemic purpose.

So what is tangibly at stake here? If knowledge “creation” becomes free, fast, and frictionless, the cost may include:

• fragmented attention,

• hollow competence,

• knowledge colonization,

• loss of intellectual patience, resilience, and humility,

• decreased responsibility for one’s development, words, and actions,

• and an increasing dissociation of what it means to be human.

Many are asking:

“At what point does AI become conscious?”

But perhaps we should also ask:

“At what point does humanity become unconscious?”

I do not believe AI necessitates a dystopic Matrix. I’m commenting on a collective behavior shift. There are other ways to meaningfully cultivate knowledge outside of LLMs in this Age of AI(r), and each of us has agency in choosing them. Still, this moment presses us toward a question we have revisited throughout history:

“What does it mean to be human?”

This is the question Aries—the sign of “I am”—returns us to.

In Part Two of this series, I will examine the theme I believe Aries and LLMs are leading us toward: transhumanism.

Toward Ethical Parallel Knowledge Systems

Let’s Review…

In Part One, we examined how the true threat of AI in the knowledge economy lies not simply in automation, but in shifting collective behaviors around how people seek out, use, and value knowledge—displacing academics, journalists, and original sources in the process.

In Part Two, we collated the recurring themes that arose during prior periods of Pluto’s transit on the Leo–Aquarius axis within Ages of Air, including intellectual gate-keeping and the silencing of voices or groups outside established centralized power.

In Part Three, we explored a different angle and saw how prior activation of the Leo–Aquarius axis during U.S. history stimulated parallel economic systems—often illicit ones—as ideological revolts against centralized abuses of power.

The question now is not whether underground knowledge economies already exist—they do, in the form of “shadow libraries,”(1) illicit data extraction, and pirated training datasets. The more pressing question is whether alternative, ethical parallel systems can emerge—systems that protect authorship, meaning, and human judgment.

Parallel Knowledge Economies and the Ethics of Resistance

Black markets teach us one thing clearly: parallel systems arise when formal ones stop serving human needs. But they also teach us what happens when ethics are abandoned. Historically, black markets punished the poor and unresourceful while rewarding the ruthless. Those who benefitted were often unscrupulous entrepreneurs who exploited desperation or chose to collaborate with power rather than challenge it.(2)

The history of grave robbing in both the U.S. and Europe illustrates this imbalance starkly. In 1989—shortly after we had entered our current Age of Air—construction workers uncovered 400 cadavers beneath the Medical College of Georgia. Like Johns Hopkins, the University of Maryland, and other historic medical institutions, the college had paid grave robbers to steal fresh corpses so medical students could practice dissection—often targeting African-American graveyards.(3)

While this 19th-century practice is deeply disturbing, its modern counterpart persists in the global organ black market. Long transplant waiting lists have reframed the practice as “transplant tourism,” masking the reality that people facing death will pay any price for access, while those supplying organs are often economically desperate, coerced, or deceased prisoners with no agency at all.(4)

Within the knowledge economy, unscrupulous entrepreneurs may look less like grave robbers and more like AI companies that control LLMs trained on vast, opaque repositories of information. This monopoly over knowledge allows for rapid transformation and repackaging. What would prevent these entities from using their own models to develop products, services, and solutions based on “their” intellectual property—then charging the public more than they can reasonably afford?

Likewise, Orwell’s ‘Ministry of Truth’ in 1984 feels less speculative when governments already struggle with the temptation to “correct” or omit historical facts to suit present needs.(5)

I share these examples not to romanticize black markets, but to demonstrate that Pluto also reflects the compulsion toward underground behavior in the name of something perceived as “good.” Like all planetary archetypes, Pluto is neither inherently good nor bad—just as technology itself is neither inherently benevolent nor malevolent.

The challenge, then, is to imagine parallel knowledge economies that are legal, relational, and resistant to extraction—systems that can do what our current knowledge economy increasingly fails to do: redistribute knowledge in ways AI cannot easily ingest or commodify, promote original authorship, and relocate learning out from behind screens and back into human relationships.

What follows are not prescriptions, but proposals—methods and conceptual shifts that could contribute to such a parallel economy. Whether coordinated collectively like the Athenian thetes or emerging through the sum of individual efforts like medieval monks and Buddhist scholars, what unites these approaches is a turn away from scale and speed and toward relationship. In an Age of Air, relationship is infrastructure.

Protection Strategies:

These strategies aim to shield knowledge, authorship, and meaning-making from extraction, dilution, or misattribution. The goal is not secrecy for its own sake, but safeguarding the integrity, traceability, and sanctity of human creativity.

Historically, localized knowledge sovereignty has been practiced by Indigenous communities that limit digital documentation, by the Navajo “Wind Talkers” during WWII, by therapists who avoid detailed case notes that can be subpoenaed, and by mystical or initiatory traditions that prioritize lineage over consumer access.

Relational Strategies

These approaches respond directly to the erosion of relationships caused by AI-mediated knowledge, emphasizing trust, lineage, and presence over impersonal transmission.

Epistemic Shifts

These shifts redefine what counts as knowledge, authority, and expertise—reshaping industries and collective values.

Reputation, Relationship, and the Sound of Aquarian Creativity

It should not surprise us that an age defined by technology and information sharing is also an age of intensified relationship-making. All Air-related themes—not just AI—are heightened now.

We have shifted from a material economy of books and paywalls (Age of Earth) to a reputation economy (Age of Air), where credibility, visibility, and perceived expertise determine access to opportunity. This series has sketched what a more humane reputation economy could look like—but the question remains: how do we know whether our efforts resemble the coordinated resilience of the thetes and medieval scholars, rather than the Spartans or Cathars, who also resisted centralized power but ultimately did not endure?

I’m reminded of an Aquarian metaphor offered by astrologer Ray Grasse(6):

“To my mind, the modern symbol that best captures the essence of Aquarian group creativity is that uniquely American art form, jazz. In contrast to Piscean-Age art forms like the Gregorian choir where individual creativity is surrendered to a higher ideal, the jazz band encourages personal creativity within the context of community. Yes, a general structure is followed, but it’s loose enough to allow for personal freedom of expression. On a technological level, Aquarian Thomas Edison pioneered a jazz-type approach to innovation with the unique workshop environment he developed, in which an entire team of thinkers pooled their efforts towards conceiving new inventions.”

Perhaps there is no single solution—only a constellation of coordinated acts that work together.

It is fitting, then, that Prohibition—a Cancer–Capricorn experiment in centralized control resisted through local watering holes—helped fuel jazz itself: a Leo–Aquarian art form that became a symbol of rebellion, improvisation, and freedom. If something that beautiful emerged from America’s drinking problem, perhaps there is redemption yet for our present addiction to social media and digital exchange.

Your local internet café might be a good place to start.

Footnotes:

References:

2025 United States government online resource removals. (2025, December 7). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_United_States_government_online_resource_removals

Andreas, P. (2013). Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America.Oxford University Press.

Archimedes’ screw. (2025, December 8). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes%27_screw

Brennan, C. & Coppock, A. (Hosts). (2025, December 1). Monthly Astrology Forecasts (No. 514) [Audio podcast episode]. In The Astrology Podcast. https://theastrologypodcast.com/2025/12/01/december-astrology-forecast-2025

Chivers, T. (2025, December 12). Trump signs executive order banning states from regulating AI. Semafor. https://www.semafor.com/article/12/12/2025/trump-signs-executive-order-banning-states-from-regulating-ai

Christopher, J. (2021, November 28). Pluto Ingress: Timeline. Cyclical Dynamics. https://cyclicaldynamics.com/pluto-ingress-timeline/

Evans, B., & Pine, L. (2024). Introduction: Black Markets During the Second World War. Global Food History, 10(3), 267–270. https://doi.org/10.1080/20549547.2024.2400023

Fiveable Content Team. (September 2025). “World history: 1400 to present review—black markets.” Fiveable. Retrieved November 25, 2025. https://fiveable.me/key-terms/world-history-since-1400/black-markets

Goodwin, M. (2006). Black Markets: The Supply and Demand of Body Parts. Cambridge University Press.

Grasse, R. (2023). Drawing Down the Fire of the Gods - Reflections on the Leo/Aquarius Axis. Astrodienst. https://www.astro.com/astrology/in_rgleoaqu_e.htm

Hatsuda, K. and Sakasai, A. (2016) The Black Market as City: New Research on Alternative Urban Space in Occupied Japan (1945-52) [Online detail summary]. Princeton Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism & the Humanities. https://arc-hum.princeton.edu/black-market

Kelly, W. E. (2021). Black Market in the 1940’s. EBSCO Knowledge Advantage, https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/military-history-and-science/black-market-1940s#full-article

Kurbalija, J. (2025, January 21). Tech at Trump’s inauguration: Visible presence, loud absence. Diplo. https://www.diplomacy.edu/blog/tech-at-trumps-inauguration-visible-presence-and-loud-absence/#:~:text=The%20imagery%20was%20striking:%20at,tech%20power%20under%20Trump%202.0

Moss, A. (2025, September 7). Anthropic’s $1.5 billion speeding ticket.Copyright Lately. https://copyrightlately.com/anthropic-settlement/

Mystic Medusa, “Jupiter-Saturn Conjunctions from 2092 BC - 2100 CE.” https://mysticmedusa.com/jupiter-saturn-conjunction-dates/

Okrent, D. (2010). Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. Scribner.

Origenist crises. (2025, September 1). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origenist_crises

Oxford English Dictionary. (2011). Black Market. In oed.com Retrieved December 9, 2025. https://www.oed.com/dictionary/black-market_n

Peloponnesian War. (2025, December 9). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peloponnesian_War

The Public Interest Corpus. (2025). Principles and Goals.https://publicinterestcorpus.org/principles-and-goals/

Tarnas, R. (2006). Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View. Plume.

United States Mint. (2025, November 12). United States Mint Hosts Historic Ceremonial Strike for Final Production of the Circulating One-Cent Coin [Press release]. https://www.usmint.gov/news/press-releases/united-states-mint-hosts-historic-ceremonial-strike-for-final-production-of-the-circulating-one-cent-coin

What Smuggling Teaches Us About AI and Knowledge Creators

Centralized Power and the Fragility of Intellectual Freedom

We saw in Part Two the themes of intellectual gate-keeping and the tactic of silencing voices or groups outside of established centralized power. Returning now to our present day predicament in the knowledge economy and ‘Age of AI’, the potential dangers of centralized power, control, and ownership over human thought is disquieting.

We can see this as recently as the writing of these articles in December 2025: while individual states have attempted to place guardrails on AI, President Trump and the AI industry have pushed back, banning states from doing so.(1) History suggests that centralized authority rarely protects intellectual freedom on its own.

However, history also shows us that decentralized efforts have often been far more effective. The successful preservation of intellectual thought by both Christian monks (465–481 CE) and Buddhist scholars (550–573 CE) was achieved outside the centralized religious and political powers of their time. This is an important distinction. Their efforts were not coordinated in the visible or organized ways of groups like the Origenists or the Knights Templar—whose collective visibility ultimately placed targets on their backs. Instead, these preservation efforts were born out of necessity. And taken together, they succeeded in transmitting knowledge through intellectually hostile environments.

Notably, these protectors of knowledge did not have a single loud, defiant voice like Socrates or William Wallace. Yet they were coordinated nonetheless—if unknowingly—much like the thetes of Athens. The inherent value of the thetes as a collective labor force won them not only individual political rights but also the eventual restoration of democracy from the abusive control of the wealthy and powerful.

AI’s greatest vulnerability is also its greatest strength: it requires constant ingestion. Without new data, it stagnates. This creates a paradox. Refusing to engage with AI risks invisibility; feeding it indiscriminately accelerates dispossession.

This is where an unexpected historical pattern becomes useful: black markets.

Black Markets as Adaptive Resistance

Pluto’s most recent habitation in Leo occurred from 1937–1956, while we were still firmly within an Age of Earth. The Earth element emphasizes materiality—consumable goods, monetary value, physical structures, and foundational systems. As such, we see a familiar Leonine emphasis on centralization, top-down authority, and the will of an individual or institution affecting large populations, but filtered through the domain of material goods rather than ideas.

This period coincides, of course, with World War II and the economic rehabilitation that followed during the early Cold War. It is also when the term black market became widely popularized, emerging at the end of Prohibition and extending into WWII just as Pluto shifted from Cancer into Leo.(2)

Black markets are underground systems or parallel economies in which goods and services are exchanged without government oversight. They emerge when formal systems fail to meet real needs—especially under conditions of scarcity, overregulation, or monopolization. Importantly, while black markets redistribute goods, they do not do so equitably. They often enriched the ruthless while exploiting the vulnerable.(3)

Prohibition itself stands as an extraordinary experiment in social control and overregulation.(4) When Prohibition was enacted during Pluto’s stay in Cancer, it radically transformed socialization—previously a largely home-based activity. Home dinner parties (a distinctly Cancerian phenomenon) became essential spaces for both socializing and alcohol consumption. At the same time, Prohibition stimulated new forms of social interaction outside the home, including increased interracial and intersex socializing. It also catalyzed the formation of the first nationwide criminal syndicates and organized mob families.(5)

These highly organized underground networks not only quenched the public’s thirst but were perfectly positioned to expand from alcohol bootlegging into the broader trade of contraband goods as WWII approached. The shift from hidden “watering holes” (Cancer) or speakeasies to expansive clandestine trading networks with unscrupulous entrepreneurs (Leo) mirrors Pluto’s axial transition in 1937.

Black markets were by no means limited to the United States. In Poland, they thrived under the abusive authority of German occupation.(6) In Japan, black markets rapidly emerged after WWII due to supply-chain collapse and weakened government oversight, often operating amid rubble and destroyed infrastructure.(7)

Across contexts, motivations for participation overlapped. For some, black-market activity was an economic necessity. For others, it represented an Aquarian act of resistance,(8) rooted in the belief that rationed goods were not truly scarce enough to justify state control. At the same time, sellers were often driven by individual entrepreneurial motives and profit.(9) Together, these dynamics reflect the Age of Earth’s focus on material goods while still expressing the Leo–Aquarius tension between individual agency and collective dissent under centralized authority.

Black markets themselves are not unique to this period. Terms such as smuggling, trafficking, rum-running, and bootlegging attest to the historical persistence of illicit economies across cultures and eras. This pattern becomes particularly instructive when we look at another pivotal moment along the same Pluto axis: the founding of the United States.

Beginning in the 1760s, while Pluto was in Capricorn during an Age of Fire, illicit trade flourished in the American colonies. As Peter Andreas explains in Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America, “The opportunities and incentives to smuggle were enormous. Ambitious British trade restrictions clashed with the limits of actual enforcement, a long and minimally monitored coastline, and fierce local resistance.”(10)

Molasses smuggling to produce rum became so central that John Adams later remarked, “I know not why we should blush to confess that molasses was an essential ingredient in American independence.”(11)

Illicit trade, paradoxically, enabled legal commerce to expand by allowing colonists to afford British goods they otherwise could not. Thus, with Pluto in Capricorn (Earth) during an Age of Fire, smuggling material goods helped create a free-ranging consumer society.(12) This dynamic shifted once Pluto entered Aquarius in 1777.

The conventional narrative frames the American Revolution as a protest against taxation. More precisely, it was a revolt against the enforcement of trade laws that threatened a deeply entrenched smuggling culture. After the Seven Years’ War, Britain sought to recover debt by cracking down on illicit trade—introducing unrestricted search warrants, military admiralty courts, and the militarization of customs enforcement. (The parallels to contemporary events are striking, though beyond this article’s scope.)

When war broke out, colonial success depended in part on the very smuggling networks Britain had tried to dismantle. Independence then created a dilemma: how does a nation founded through the evasion of trade law regulate trade under its own authority?

The solution required an ideological shift. Smuggling could no longer be framed as patriotic resistance to imperial control; it had to be reframed as a self-serving or neutral activity—an expression of the Leo–Aquarius dynamic. The United States increasingly exported this paradigm abroad, positioning itself as a neutral trading intermediary during Pluto’s transit through Aquarius.

That approach changed again after Pluto entered Pisces in 1797 and the Age of Fire gave way to the Age of Earth in 1802. Under Thomas Jefferson’s presidency, efforts turned toward regulating material goods domestically through international relationships—bringing the focus back to Earth-bound control.

From Illicit Trade to Cognitive Scarcity

The same Leo–Aquarius axis that shaped black markets during WWII in an Age of Earth and smuggling cultures before the American Revolution in an Age of Fire is activated once again today—but now within an Age of Air.

While the prior focus of these trafficking efforts was freedom (Fire) from the rationale (Aquarius), overstep (Leo), and greed of a centralized government over money and material goods (Earth), we now find ourselves struggling with the greed of data-hungry machines, the overstep of tech companies, and our own cognitive intoxication—the belief that we have created knowledge when we have merely acquired it.

Just as material scarcity once produced illicit economies, cognitive scarcity now shapes how knowledge circulates. This struggle is borderless and ideological, involving a seemingly neutral and non-human third party: AI.

Yet, in this underhanded exchange, the ones we are ultimately cheating are ourselves.

In the final installment of this series, we’ll explore where this trajectory may lead—and what kinds of responses history suggests are still possible.

Footnotes:

References:

2025 United States government online resource removals. (2025, December 7). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_United_States_government_online_resource_removals

Andreas, P. (2013). Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America.Oxford University Press.

Archimedes’ screw. (2025, December 8). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes%27_screw

Brennan, C. & Coppock, A. (Hosts). (2025, December 1). Monthly Astrology Forecasts (No. 514) [Audio podcast episode]. In The Astrology Podcast. https://theastrologypodcast.com/2025/12/01/december-astrology-forecast-2025

Chivers, T. (2025, December 12). Trump signs executive order banning states from regulating AI. Semafor. https://www.semafor.com/article/12/12/2025/trump-signs-executive-order-banning-states-from-regulating-ai

Christopher, J. (2021, November 28). Pluto Ingress: Timeline. Cyclical Dynamics. https://cyclicaldynamics.com/pluto-ingress-timeline/

Evans, B., & Pine, L. (2024). Introduction: Black Markets During the Second World War. Global Food History, 10(3), 267–270. https://doi.org/10.1080/20549547.2024.2400023

Fiveable Content Team. (September 2025). “World history: 1400 to present review—black markets.” Fiveable. Retrieved November 25, 2025. https://fiveable.me/key-terms/world-history-since-1400/black-markets

Goodwin, M. (2006). Black Markets: The Supply and Demand of Body Parts. Cambridge University Press.

Grasse, R. (2023). Drawing Down the Fire of the Gods - Reflections on the Leo/Aquarius Axis. Astrodienst. https://www.astro.com/astrology/in_rgleoaqu_e.htm

Hatsuda, K. and Sakasai, A. (2016) The Black Market as City: New Research on Alternative Urban Space in Occupied Japan (1945-52) [Online detail summary]. Princeton Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism & the Humanities. https://arc-hum.princeton.edu/black-market

Kelly, W. E. (2021). Black Market in the 1940’s. EBSCO Knowledge Advantage, https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/military-history-and-science/black-market-1940s#full-article

Kurbalija, J. (2025, January 21). Tech at Trump’s inauguration: Visible presence, loud absence. Diplo. https://www.diplomacy.edu/blog/tech-at-trumps-inauguration-visible-presence-and-loud-absence/#:~:text=The%20imagery%20was%20striking:%20at,tech%20power%20under%20Trump%202.0

Moss, A. (2025, September 7). Anthropic’s $1.5 billion speeding ticket.Copyright Lately. https://copyrightlately.com/anthropic-settlement/

Mystic Medusa, “Jupiter-Saturn Conjunctions from 2092 BC - 2100 CE.” https://mysticmedusa.com/jupiter-saturn-conjunction-dates/

Okrent, D. (2010). Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. Scribner.

Origenist crises. (2025, September 1). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origenist_crises

Oxford English Dictionary. (2011). Black Market. In oed.com Retrieved December 9, 2025. https://www.oed.com/dictionary/black-market_n

Peloponnesian War. (2025, December 9). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peloponnesian_War

The Public Interest Corpus. (2025). Principles and Goals.https://publicinterestcorpus.org/principles-and-goals/

Tarnas, R. (2006). Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View. Plume.

United States Mint. (2025, November 12). United States Mint Hosts Historic Ceremonial Strike for Final Production of the Circulating One-Cent Coin [Press release]. https://www.usmint.gov/news/press-releases/united-states-mint-hosts-historic-ceremonial-strike-for-final-production-of-the-circulating-one-cent-coin

Power, Persecution, and Preservation of Knowledge

Top-Down and Bottom-Up

In an earlier series, I explored how knowledge was preserved and destroyed during previous Ages of Air. If you’re unfamiliar with astrological Ages, I explained that in "AI and Big Data, Historical Cycles & What to Expect Next: An Astrologer's Take". We saw in "Theme One--Zealots and Princes: A Question of Alignment," of that series that across these cyclical 200-year periods, a consistent pattern emerged: whenever knowledge was centralized in the hands of the powerful, it became vulnerable; when it was distributed across communities, it endured.

In "Theme Two--Innovation Begets Rebuilding," we saw that preservation depended not only on methods and materials, but on individual stewardship and collective ingenuity. Finally, in “Theme Three--Knowledge is Power,” both the monetary and spiritual value of knowledge made it powerful enough to burn, ban, or banish. Yet again and again, those who sought to control knowledge for private gain ultimately weakened their own authority.

These themes echo strongly in our present knowledge economy. The first article in this series examined how AI intensifies centralization even as it promises universal access. To understand the deeper power dynamics at work, we now turn to a recurring astrological pattern within Ages of Air that illuminates this tension: Pluto’s transit through the Leo–Aquarius axis.

Archetypally, Pluto governs secrecy, anything that operates underground or through coercion, immense wealth and “plutocracy,” and processes of transformation. It also “compels, empowers, and intensifies whatever it touches,” as Richard Tarnas put it.(1) Its transit through a sign reveals how power, control, and transformation express themselves in a given era.

In March of 2023, Pluto made its first ingress into Aquarius—an Air sign associated with decentralization, technology, ideology, humanitarianism, and systems of distribution. Leo, its opposite, emphasizes singular authority, charisma, hierarchy, and centralized will. Depending on which side of the axis dominates while Pluto is present, we see either individuals exerting power over the many, or collectives exerting pressure on individuals. Together, Leo and Aquarius describe an enduring tension between top-down control and bottom-up empowerment.(2)

The power dynamics of our current Age of Air were almost immediately crystallized in a striking image that circulated within 24 hours of Pluto’s second ingress into Aquarius: a lineup of tech CEOs seated in the front row at President Trump’s second inauguration, captioned, “Sometimes, a picture is worth a thousand words and trillions of dollars.”(3)

To understand how plutocratic moments like this arise and what they tend to precipitate, we need to look more closely at Pluto’s movement through Leo and Aquarius within earlier Ages of Air.

The Multiplication of Air

Within a relatively short historical window, we have now entered both a 200-year Age of Air and a 20-year transit of Pluto in Aquarius. This effectively doubles the Air element, channeling the archetype of power and control through themes of communication, ideology, relationships, and information systems—while also intensifying Aquarian concerns such as group-think and resistance to new ideas, scientific and technological breakthroughs, intellectual advances or the suppression of them, as well as the Aquarian paradox of ‘loving humanity but disliking humans.’

When we zoom in on Pluto’s 15-20 year transits through either Leo or Aquarius4 during Ages of Air,(5) a distinctive pattern of human behavior reliably emerges.

Age of Air: 463-165 BCE

Pluto in Aquarius: 429-404 BCE

This period aligns closely with Socrates, the Peloponnesian War with Sparta, and the eventual collapse of Athens’ Golden Age. The city endured plague, military catastrophe, and political upheaval driven in part by the oligarchic rise of the Demagogues. Through emotional appeals, polarization, and public shaming, they weaponized groupthink to consolidate power. Let me give you an example.

During the Mytilenean revolt, the Demagogues persuaded the Athenian Assembly to vote to massacre all adult men and enslave women and children as a warning against dissent. Though the decision was narrowly overturned, it exemplified how fear and moral absolutism were used to silence opposition.

Socrates, while refusing political office, openly challenged the Demagogues’ emotionally driven rhetoric. Though not anti-democratic himself, his students’ involvement in politics made him a convenient scapegoat. Accused of corrupting youth and undermining the state, he was tried and executed in 399 BCE—just after Pluto exited Aquarius.

His death marked a profound shift in Athens’ intellectual climate. Plato, deeply affected by his teacher’s execution, concluded that democracy unguided by philosophical reasoning could become unjust. This insight eventually led to the founding of the Academy—the first Western institution devoted to systematic philosophical education.

Yet this Leonine authority was ultimately no match for Aquarian coordination. Athens’ naval power depended on triremes manned by 30,000 rowers from the lowest social class, the thetes. Their collective labor gave them unprecedented leverage, enabling them to demand full citizenship rights.(6)

While the Spartans could afford elite armor and temporarily seize control, this small warrior group could not maintain dominance without acknowledging the political power of the masses. The Demagogues may have been able to silence one thought leader, but they could not silence 30,000 voices. Democracy was eventually restored—not through charismatic rulers, but through coordinated collective agency.

Pluto in Leo: 271-256 BCE

This period coincided with a burst of scientific creativity centered around the decentralized scholarship of Alexandria. Rather than suppressing inquiry, this environment allowed knowledge to flourish through individual brilliance supported by shared institutions.

Archimedes demonstrated how a small, singular force (Leo) could move enormous weights (Aquarius) through leverage. His inventions—from war machines to the Archimedean screw—reshaped engineering, irrigation, and energy generation.(7)

Euclid’s Elements became the foundational geometry text for over two millennia, while Eratosthenes synthesized astronomy, geography, and mathematics to calculate Earth’s circumference and establish latitude–longitude mapping. Exposure to diverse sources made individual innovation possible.

Age of Air: 332-690 CE

Pluto in Leo: 465-481 CE

The fall of Rome in 476 CE brought the destruction of libraries, educational systems, and philosophical inquiry in Western Europe. Centralized Christian orthodoxy increasingly suppressed speculative theology like Origenism and classical science.

Yet knowledge survived through decentralized efforts. Monastic Scriptoria—isolated, labor-intensive, and often peripheral efforts by monks—was the quiet intellectual engine that kept the lights on during the “Dark Ages.”

Pluto in Aquarius: 550-573 CE

Preservation took new forms elsewhere. In 550 CE, Buddhist scholars in Fang Shan, China began carving sutras into cave walls to protect them from censorship and destruction. This decentralized, collective effort preserved sacred texts for centuries.

Meanwhile, the Second Council of Constantinople (553 CE) further narrowed acceptable inquiry, condemning Origenist theology during The Second Origenist Crisis and framing its proponents as dangerously egalitarian “Isochristoi”—those who presumed equality with Christ (equality being an Aquarian ideal).(8)

Amid this repression, a new religious leader was born in 571 CE: the Prophet Muhammad, who would transform Arabian society by unifying decentralized tribal traditions into a monotheistic faith centered on a single written text. Thus, while some decentralized groups successfully preserved intellectual thought, other centralized authorities sought to suppress or consolidate it.

Age of Air: 1185-1425 CE

Pluto in Leo: 1201-1218 CE

Genghis Khan rose to power in 1206 CE, unleashing devastating centralized force. Around the same time, the Albigensian Crusade annihilated the Cathars, whose alternative Christian structure threatened papal authority.

However, there was also accountability of Leonine figures by the people. In 1215 CE, a group of barons wrote the Magna Carta and stated that even the king had to be subject to the law and not above it.

This period also saw the rise of medieval universities in Paris, Bologna, Oxford, and Cambridge. These institutions standardized knowledge but tightly controlled acceptable inquiry. This intellectual gatekeeping was seen in particular with the 1210 Papal Condemnation of Amaury of Bène. Amalric was a philosopher who taught pantheism—the belief that God is all things and all things are God (another Aquarian ideal).

Pluto in Aquarius: 1286-1307 CE

William Wallace is an iconic figure of leading a revolt against monarchy. Although he was executed in 1305, his efforts were soon followed by Robert the Bruce’s coronation as King of Scotland in defiance of the English reassertion of rule.

Simultaneously, Pope Boniface VIII’s assertion of absolute papal authority in Unam Sanctam provoked backlash. The Outrage of Anagni (1303) shattered papal moral authority after he was kidnapped and held hostage for three days. King Philip IV then moved to destroy the Knights Templar—an independent, transnational order who answered only to the Pope—using torture and forced confessions to eliminate a powerful Aquarian institution that operated outside of his rule.

Recurring Patterns in Ages of Air

Across these periods, we repeatedly see both groups and leaders exerting power over either centralized authority or the people. Some leaders got their way, while others were held accountable. Similarly, some ‘organized’ groups were condemned, while other decentralized groups thrived. Some repeat themes include:

• silencing voices or groups outside of centralized power,

• dangerous group think and moral absolutism,

• technological and democratic innovations empowering the many,

• decentralized efforts protecting intellectual life,

• genocidal abuses of absolute power,

• recurring popular resistance,

• and institutional gate-keeping of knowledge.

This is not a clear cut list where Pluto in Leo means power to the king and Pluto and Aquarius means power to the people. It does paint a picture though of the type of environments and efforts that sustained thought leadership and those that didn’t. So, what does this tell us about the quality of the time we are living in now?

In Part Three, we’ll gather these archetypal threads and add a few crucial insights particular to the United States to examine what the current Pluto in Aquarius within an Age of Air may be asking of the government, Silicon Valley, and we the people.

Footnotes:

References:

2025 United States government online resource removals. (2025, December 7). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_United_States_government_online_resource_removals

Andreas, P. (2013). Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America.Oxford University Press.

Archimedes’ screw. (2025, December 8). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes%27_screw

Brennan, C. & Coppock, A. (Hosts). (2025, December 1). Monthly Astrology Forecasts (No. 514) [Audio podcast episode]. In The Astrology Podcast. https://theastrologypodcast.com/2025/12/01/december-astrology-forecast-2025

Chivers, T. (2025, December 12). Trump signs executive order banning states from regulating AI. Semafor. https://www.semafor.com/article/12/12/2025/trump-signs-executive-order-banning-states-from-regulating-ai

Christopher, J. (2021, November 28). Pluto Ingress: Timeline. Cyclical Dynamics. https://cyclicaldynamics.com/pluto-ingress-timeline/

Evans, B., & Pine, L. (2024). Introduction: Black Markets During the Second World War. Global Food History, 10(3), 267–270. https://doi.org/10.1080/20549547.2024.2400023

Fiveable Content Team. (September 2025). “World history: 1400 to present review—black markets.” Fiveable. Retrieved November 25, 2025. https://fiveable.me/key-terms/world-history-since-1400/black-markets

Goodwin, M. (2006). Black Markets: The Supply and Demand of Body Parts. Cambridge University Press.

Grasse, R. (2023). Drawing Down the Fire of the Gods - Reflections on the Leo/Aquarius Axis. Astrodienst. https://www.astro.com/astrology/in_rgleoaqu_e.htm

Hatsuda, K. and Sakasai, A. (2016) The Black Market as City: New Research on Alternative Urban Space in Occupied Japan (1945-52) [Online detail summary]. Princeton Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism & the Humanities. https://arc-hum.princeton.edu/black-market

Kelly, W. E. (2021). Black Market in the 1940’s. EBSCO Knowledge Advantage, https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/military-history-and-science/black-market-1940s#full-article

Kurbalija, J. (2025, January 21). Tech at Trump’s inauguration: Visible presence, loud absence. Diplo. https://www.diplomacy.edu/blog/tech-at-trumps-inauguration-visible-presence-and-loud-absence/#:~:text=The%20imagery%20was%20striking:%20at,tech%20power%20under%20Trump%202.0

Moss, A. (2025, September 7). Anthropic’s $1.5 billion speeding ticket.Copyright Lately. https://copyrightlately.com/anthropic-settlement/

Mystic Medusa, “Jupiter-Saturn Conjunctions from 2092 BC - 2100 CE.” https://mysticmedusa.com/jupiter-saturn-conjunction-dates/

Okrent, D. (2010). Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. Scribner.

Origenist crises. (2025, September 1). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origenist_crises

Oxford English Dictionary. (2011). Black Market. In oed.com Retrieved December 9, 2025. https://www.oed.com/dictionary/black-market_n

Peloponnesian War. (2025, December 9). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peloponnesian_War

The Public Interest Corpus. (2025). Principles and Goals.https://publicinterestcorpus.org/principles-and-goals/

Tarnas, R. (2006). Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View. Plume.

United States Mint. (2025, November 12). United States Mint Hosts Historic Ceremonial Strike for Final Production of the Circulating One-Cent Coin [Press release]. https://www.usmint.gov/news/press-releases/united-states-mint-hosts-historic-ceremonial-strike-for-final-production-of-the-circulating-one-cent-coin

Who Pays for Knowledge in the Age of AI?(1)

I was talking the other day with a friend who works in the open-access space.(2) I was venting because, in a single week, I ran into the same problem from two sides of my trade—first as a consumer, then as a knowledge producer.

Earlier in the week, I needed to access a journal article for research. The only option was to pay $56 for a 10–20 page paper. Later that week, my co-authors and I discussed publishing our own article in an open-access journal. Open access usually means readers don’t pay the proverbial $56—but it meant we would need to pay the journal $2,500. Accessing quality knowledge isn’t cheap; the question is simply who pays, and when.

For those unfamiliar with how academics, journalists, and even some content creators earn a living, none of this is unusual. It’s baked into the modern knowledge economy. Authors are rarely paid directly per reader. Instead, visibility leads to citations, reputation, professional credibility, and—eventually—jobs or funding. Paywalls interrupt this pipeline. If fewer people read or cite an author’s work, their ideas circulate less, and their professional standing weakens.

Historically, this system has been tolerated because there were few alternatives to publishers, journals, and subscription platforms. Open-access initiatives emerged to address this by shifting costs from readers to universities, libraries, or grant holders. But decentralized open access now faces a new—and deeply centralized—competitor: AI.

AI as Interface, Not Just Access

AI doesn’t just offer free information. It offers free, fast, frictionless synthesis. And once people begin using AI as their primary interface for knowledge, they often stop returning to original sources altogether. If you can choose between reading a text or receiving a tailored summary in seconds which will most people choose?

At first glance, this seems like the logical next step toward democratized knowledge. But AI isn’t merely changing where people look for information. It is reshaping how people relate to knowledge itself.

As more users rely on AI, fewer engage directly with primary sources. Because AI systems cannot access most paywalled content, this shift further reduces the visibility of work that remains behind them. Over time, knowledge that cannot be ingested, summarized, or re-presented by AI risks becoming economically invisible. This pressures scholars and writers to move outside paywalls, but doing so does not guarantee that their work will be credited, protected, or economically viable.

As I discussed in a previous series on knowledge preservation during earlier Ages of Air, decentralized and cross-cultural knowledge-sharing preserved not only texts but the spirit of inquiry itself. Yet access alone does not solve the problem of automation and transformation.

Making work freely available—whether through open access or AI—does not ensure authors receive recognition. Most readers are now familiar with AI’s citation problems: reproducing copyrighted material, misattributing sources, or fabricating facts entirely. As astrologers Chris Brennan and Austin Coppock recently noted, false information becomes psychologically “sticky” because fact-checking requires time we feel we no longer have. Only subject-matter experts reliably notice errors—and they are no longer the primary audience.(3)

Compounding this, many scholars have discovered their paywalled articles or books appearing on open platforms without permission or compensation. Sometimes this is informal sharing; sometimes it is systematic ingestion. Large Language Models (LLMs) become more valuable the more data they absorb, creating incentives to acquire information first and sort out legality later.

A recent example illustrates the problem clearly. Anthropic was fined $1.5 billion for training Claude on pirated materials from “shadow libraries.”(4) That figure sounds enormous until you consider the company’s current valuation: $183 billion. Even though the datasets must be destroyed, the extracted patterns remain embedded in the model. As Eric Schmidt once put it, if your product succeeds, “you hire a bunch of lawyers to go clean the mess up,” because “if nobody uses your product, it doesn’t matter that you stole all the content.”(5) In other words, it’s cheaper to break the rules and pay later, because the system penalizes infringement only after profit—not if creators go uncompensated.

When I shared this frustration with my friend, they mentioned the Public Interest Corpus—a project aimed at helping libraries support the “responsible use” of collections for AI development. I emphasize ‘responsible’ because it captures the ethical weight of our current Plutonic–Aquarian moment.

While initiatives like PIC address access and governance, they miss a deeper problem: AI disrupts the economics of expertise not simply by storing information, but by changing human behavior. Users increasingly substitute engagement with original work for AI-mediated synthesis. Over time, attribution fades, authorship blurs, and intellectual labor becomes cheapened. So, blaming it on AI doesn’t quite cut it.

Knowledge from the Ether-net

When knowledge is sourced through AI, several things happen simultaneously. First, AI begins to feel like the source or a public commons—even when it isn’t. Because it blends multiple perspectives, attribution becomes opaque.

Second, users often fail to cite original authors even when sources are available. This goes beyond laziness and reflects a cognitive shortcut: the conversational format creates the illusion that understanding equals authorship. Knowledge acquisition quietly masquerades as knowledge generation. Users are cognitively seduced not by a customized bot in lingerie, but by their own brain’s desire to do less work.

Most consequentially, intellectual labor is diluted. Historically, ideas were traceable to individuals or lineages. AI shifts value away from originators and toward aggregated output—a hive-mind aesthetic that erodes the notion of intellectual ownership.

To be fair, human expertise is more than stored knowledge. It includes judgment, ethics, and lived experience, which are qualities machines don’t possess. But while the need for expertise remains, the market signals that once recognized it are weakening. Many people now feel like instant experts after a short AI interaction, echoing how WebMD reshaped perceptions of medical authority.

This behavioral shift—not AI itself—is the core threat.

We like to say people should read original sources, cite responsibly, and support creators. But we no longer live in an honesty-policy world. This mirrors the behavioral economics of supporting small businesses: when time and money are constrained, incentives dominate intentions.

And so, in this Age of Air, we find ourselves in a knowledge economy paradox: remain behind paywalls and lose relevance, or step outside them and risk losing ownership altogether.

History suggests this tension is not new. When the value of a resource diverges sharply from the systems designed to control it, people adapt. That is where Pluto in Aquarius and the emergence of parallel systems enters the story which we’ll begin to explore in Part Two.

Footnotes:

(1) (United States Mint, 2025)

References:

2025 United States government online resource removals. (2025, December 7). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_United_States_government_online_resource_removals

Andreas, P. (2013). Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America.Oxford University Press.

Archimedes’ screw. (2025, December 8). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes%27_screw

Brennan, C. & Coppock, A. (Hosts). (2025, December 1). Monthly Astrology Forecasts (No. 514) [Audio podcast episode]. In The Astrology Podcast. https://theastrologypodcast.com/2025/12/01/december-astrology-forecast-2025

Chivers, T. (2025, December 12). Trump signs executive order banning states from regulating AI. Semafor. https://www.semafor.com/article/12/12/2025/trump-signs-executive-order-banning-states-from-regulating-ai

Christopher, J. (2021, November 28). Pluto Ingress: Timeline. Cyclical Dynamics. https://cyclicaldynamics.com/pluto-ingress-timeline/

Evans, B., & Pine, L. (2024). Introduction: Black Markets During the Second World War. Global Food History, 10(3), 267–270. https://doi.org/10.1080/20549547.2024.2400023

Fiveable Content Team. (September 2025). “World history: 1400 to present review—black markets.” Fiveable. Retrieved November 25, 2025. https://fiveable.me/key-terms/world-history-since-1400/black-markets

Goodwin, M. (2006). Black Markets: The Supply and Demand of Body Parts. Cambridge University Press.

Grasse, R. (2023). Drawing Down the Fire of the Gods - Reflections on the Leo/Aquarius Axis. Astrodienst. https://www.astro.com/astrology/in_rgleoaqu_e.htm

Hatsuda, K. and Sakasai, A. (2016) The Black Market as City: New Research on Alternative Urban Space in Occupied Japan (1945-52) [Online detail summary]. Princeton Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism & the Humanities. https://arc-hum.princeton.edu/black-market

Kelly, W. E. (2021). Black Market in the 1940’s. EBSCO Knowledge Advantage, https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/military-history-and-science/black-market-1940s#full-article

Kurbalija, J. (2025, January 21). Tech at Trump’s inauguration: Visible presence, loud absence. Diplo. https://www.diplomacy.edu/blog/tech-at-trumps-inauguration-visible-presence-and-loud-absence/#:~:text=The%20imagery%20was%20striking:%20at,tech%20power%20under%20Trump%202.0

Moss, A. (2025, September 7). Anthropic’s $1.5 billion speeding ticket.Copyright Lately. https://copyrightlately.com/anthropic-settlement/

Mystic Medusa, “Jupiter-Saturn Conjunctions from 2092 BC - 2100 CE.” https://mysticmedusa.com/jupiter-saturn-conjunction-dates/

Okrent, D. (2010). Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. Scribner.

Origenist crises. (2025, September 1). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origenist_crises

Oxford English Dictionary. (2011). Black Market. In oed.com Retrieved December 9, 2025. https://www.oed.com/dictionary/black-market_n

Peloponnesian War. (2025, December 9). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peloponnesian_War

The Public Interest Corpus. (2025). Principles and Goals.https://publicinterestcorpus.org/principles-and-goals/

Tarnas, R. (2006). Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View. Plume.

United States Mint. (2025, November 12). United States Mint Hosts Historic Ceremonial Strike for Final Production of the Circulating One-Cent Coin [Press release]. https://www.usmint.gov/news/press-releases/united-states-mint-hosts-historic-ceremonial-strike-for-final-production-of-the-circulating-one-cent-coin

From Egyptian “clinics for the soul” to the chained libraries of medieval Europe and today’s digital battlegrounds, the story reveals that to hold knowledge is both a privilege and responsibility. It also tells us that the fate of knowledge has always depended on whose hands held it, and to what ends.

2052 – 1814 BCE

As discussed in Parts 2 and 3, the Per Ankh (or “House of Life”) of ancient Egypt served many roles: a center of priestly training, a place for healing and magic (perhaps an ancient version of a hospital), and a library and scriptorium. The ritualistic copying of texts was not only scholarly work but also a sacred act meant to ensure Osiris’ yearly rebirth, coinciding with the Nile’s flooding and the land’s renewal. This practice mirrored Egyptian beliefs in the cycles of life, death, and rebirth, reinforcing the conviction that order would triumph over chaos.

In Egyptian thought, language and writing themselves were powerful forms of magic — imbued with heka, an energy that reenacted creation myths and helped the dead journey to the Field of Reeds. Preserving and copying texts was therefore more than cultural continuity. It was an act of renewal for the scrolls, for the stories they carried, and for the collective soul of Egyptian society.

1238 – 960 BCE

The ancient historian Diodorus Siculus recorded that above the library of Ramses II (1279 – 1213 BCE) was the inscription “Clinic for the Soul.” This phrase captures the idea we now call bibliotherapy — the belief that literature has the power to heal the psyche.

For Egyptians, preparing the soul for the afterlife was central, from ensuring a virtuous heart to weighing it against the feather of Ma’at. It is striking then, that they may also have considered reading itself a form of therapy — something that lightened the soul, contributed to virtue, and prepared one for eternal life.

463 – 165 BCE

The Nile’s abundance enabled the Ptolemaic kings to attract the world’s finest scholars, mathematicians, and philosophers to Alexandria, transforming the city into a glittering cultural hub. But as political fortunes shifted — particularly after the Battle of Raphia in 271 BCE — the kings began to prioritize “Egyptianness” and grew hostile to foreign thought.

This culminated in 175 BCE when Ptolemy VIII expelled Greek scholars from Alexandria, triggering an intellectual exodus. What had once been the city’s greatest strength — its cosmopolitan richness — became a casualty of cultural superiority and insularity. Alexandria’s intellectual capital drained away, taking with it the city’s influence.

It’s worth noting that the Ptolemies had not amassed their library by pure devotion to learning. They aggressively “acquired” works — confiscating texts from private owners and often promising to return them after copying but never doing so. Ironically, many of those texts might have survived antiquity had they remained in private libraries rather than hoarded for royal prestige by kings without any concept of “overdue books.”

332 – 690 CE

While libraries like those in Alexandria and Constantinople faced fiery destruction, other communities worked tirelessly to preserve knowledge. As discussed in Parts 2 and 3, Monastic Scriptoria in Europe and the Fangshan Stone Sutras in China stand as remarkable examples.

For centuries, monks on two different continents dedicated their lives to the sacred task of preserving knowledge. Christian monks quietly devoted their lives to copying texts by hand. Similarly, Buddhist monks carved over 14,000 texts into cave walls, creating a form of preservation impervious to fire and decay.

The written word was clearly recognized as powerful — powerful enough to burn, ban, or banish. But it was also cherished as sacred enough to devote a lifetime of labor to protecting. Knowledge, in this sense, was not only intellectual capital but a spiritual resource deemed too precious to lose.

1185 – 1425 CE

As books began to function as a form of currency, their value shifted from the intellectual to the economic and political. Colleges and convents pioneered a “two-collection” system: a circulating collection for limited private use, and a reference collection in the “common library,” where books were kept chained to the furniture. This model spread to universities across the English Isles, where chained books symbolized both their worth and their inaccessibility.

In Florence, the Library of San Marco (1444 CE) embodied a different philosophy. Built on humanist ideals, it became Europe’s first “public” library — though “public” meant something different than today. It was not open to everyone but rather positioned as a tool by the elite for the public good, and in practice, for publicity and political capital.

Thus, on the eve of the Reformation, libraries were caught between ideals of accessibility and the strategic imprisonment of knowledge. When the Reformation swept through Europe in the 15th century, new political and religious ideals were positioned to devastate collections, wiping out 70–80% of their contents.

1980 – 2219 CE

The struggles over knowledge continue into our own era. In 2023, four of the largest U.S. publishers brought a lawsuit against the nonprofit library Internet Archive, challenging its efforts to digitize and lend books online. At stake was not only the principle of fair use— a doctrine with enormous implications for libraries, as well as AI companies training their models — but also the Archive’s mission of providing “universal access to all knowledge.” 

This case underscores the deep tensions between digital preservation, copyright law, and equitable access. Whether knowledge is safeguarded for public benefit or controlled for corporate profit, the outcomes of such battles will shape the future of how information is shared and preserved.

Meanwhile, the infrastructure for storing the digital universe has become a battleground of its own. In 2024, controversy erupted when Microsoft partnered with Constellation Energy to reopen the Three Mile Island nuclear plant — site of the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history — to power data centers. As humanity’s appetite for data grows, so do the ethical questions about the lengths we will go to preserve it.

Takeaway Three: Infernos, Megalomaniacs and The Real Culprit

The Horror of Decadence and Decline

Across these six Ages of Air, knowledge appears not only as powerful but as sacred — even magical. It could sustain empires, heal souls, or ensure cosmic order. But history also shows that when knowledge is hoarded, controlled, or weaponized, its loss becomes inevitable.

And yet, it’s easy to make infernos and megalomaniacs scapegoats for the loss of centuries of knowledge. As Matthew Battles observes in his book Library: An Unquiet History:

“The loss of libraries is often enough the product of the fear, ignorance, and greed of their supposed benefactors and protectors. The willful ineptitude of bureaucracies throughout history plays its role as well. Threatening images of invading barbarians may be a salve in such instances; only catastrophe can provide the drama that acts as a drug against the existential horror of decadence and decline.” (Battles, p. 30-32)

The Ptolemies hoarded knowledge and eventually saw Alexandria burn. Emperor Justinian expelled scholars only to watch that intellectual capital flourish in enemy territories. Over and over, those who sought to control knowledge for private gain ended up weakening their own power. 

Ages of Air show us it was cross-cultural knowledge centers who pooled their intellectual capital and embraced the cross-pollination of disciplines that birthed innovation. Limiting knowledge to silos or specific sanctioned ways of thinking is like cutting off the oxygen to progress.

Intent Matters

When knowledge was sequestered or destroyed for selfish ends, civilization suffered. But when texts were hidden, copied, or stored for the collective good, they endured. The lesson is not simply about loss versus preservation — but about intent. Whose purposes are served? Who stands to profit? And who seeks to steward knowledge for humanity as a whole?

If, as the Egyptians believed, knowledge has the power to heal and to renew life, then it is both a great responsibility and privilege to steward the knowledge we have been given. The question for us today is clear: in whose hands do we want that power to rest?

Shared openly and safeguarded collectively, knowledge resists the “horror of decadence and decline.” It becomes what it has always been at its best: a source of life, resilience, and renewal.

Sources:

Battles, M. (2003). Library: An Unquiet History. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Casson, L. (2001). Libraries in the Ancient World. Yale University Press.

Henshall, W. (2023, October 21). “Inside the AI-Powered Race to Decode Ancient Roman Scrolls.” Time Magazine. https://time.com/6326563/vesuvius-challenge-herculaneum-papyri-ai/

Knibbs, K. (2024, September 4). “The Internet Archive Loses its Appeal of a Major Copyright Case.” Wired Magazine. https://www.wired.com/story/internet-archive-loses-hachette-books-case-appeal/

Mandler, C. (2024, September 20) “Three Mile Island nuclear plant will reopen to power Microsoft data centers.” NPR. https://www.npr.org/2024/09/20/nx-s1-5120581/three-mile-island-nuclear-power-plant-microsoft-ai

Meyboom, P. G. P. (1995). “The Nile Mosaic of Palestrina: Early Evidence of Egyptian Religion in Italy.” Religions in the Graeco-Roman World. Leiden, E. J. Brill. https://books.google.com/books?id=jyTFEJ56iTUC&pg=PA373#v=onepage&q&f=false

Mystic Medusa, “Jupiter-Saturn Conjunctions from 2092 BC - 2100 CE.” https://mysticmedusa.com/jupiter-saturn-conjunction-dates/

Nolle, R. (1998). “The Jupiter-Saturn Conjunction.” https://www.astropro.com/features/tables/geo/ju-sa/ju000sa.html

Norman, J. (2004-2025). “Foundation of the Library of the Dominican Convent of San Marco, the First “Public” Library in Renaissance Europe.” History of Information. https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=286

Ovenden, R. (2020). Burning the Books: A History of the Deliberate Destruction of Knowledge. Harvard University Press.

Polastron, L. X. (2007). Books on Fire: The Destruction of Libraries throughout History. Inner Traditions.

Rice University, “Jupiter-Saturn Conjunction Series from 0 CE to 3000 CE.” https://sparky.rice.edu/public-night/jupsat2.html

Sweetman, K. (2021, January 7). “The Great Mutation from Earth to Air.” Empowering Astrology. https://empoweringastrology.com/the-great-mutation-from-earth-to-air/

Wikipedia. (2025, August 24). “Hachette v. Internet Archive.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hachette_v._Internet_Archive

Wolfson, S. (2024, February 21). “Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive and the Future of Controlled Digital Lending.” Penn Libraries News. https://www.library.upenn.edu/news/hachette-v-internet-archive

Libraries, Books and Their Phoenix-Like Life-cycles

In Part 1, we explored how astrological cycles signal repeating themes across history, and in Part 2 we saw how the alignment of knowledge with power often made libraries and archives vulnerable to destruction. Yet history shows that the story doesn’t end with loss. Time and again, new innovations have risen from the ashes, reshaping how societies preserve and share knowledge. 

In this third part of the series, we’ll examine these same six Ages of Air where ingenuity — from clay tablets to AI — gave birth to fresh ways of safeguarding human memory. These moments remind us that destruction and dormancy are never the final word. Rebuilding is always possible, often in ways no one could have predicted.

2052 – 1814 BCE

As discussed in Theme One, the Per Ankh became intellectual centers of knowledge during this Age of Air. Priest-astronomers utilized the Per Ankh to track Sirius, predict the Nile’s flooding, and mark festival dates. Scribes copied texts and the elite studied medical papyri, wisdom literature, and magical texts housed within the temples.

However, their role as vibrant intellectual hubs declined during Egypt’s Late Period (664-332 BCE), also an Age of Air. By 332 CE (yet another Age of Air), they had been absorbed and replaced by a new Hellenistic model that gave rise to none other than the Library of Alexandria.

1238 – 960 BCE

During this period, the Royal Palace Catalogues of the Hittite empire (12th century BCE) demonstrated the first organized cataloguing of works. Tiglath-Pileser I (1115 - 1077) also became the first known founder of a “library” at the Temple of Assur in Ashur, Assyria.

Cataloguing emerged out of necessity — the sheer volume of clay tablets demanded organization. While papyrus was easier to amass, clay tablets endured the test of time and are even strengthened by fire. If the Egyptians or other cultures had catalogued, the evidence has long since disappeared due to the fragility of their storage materials.

The destruction of cities and palaces, however, led to the loss of writing itself. As noted in Part Two, the end of this Age marked a kind of “dark period” for reading, writing and recordkeeping. It took the Greeks several centuries (9th - early 5th century BCE) to develop an alphabet, establish schools, and build up a literate class that not only read for practical use but also wrote new works. This created a demand for “books” and eventually private collections — the precursors to public libraries. It wasn’t until the next Age of Air that we see the flow of knowledge and its centers return.

463 – 165 BCE

By the early 4th century BCE, book sales flourished, fueling the rise of personal collections. Aristotle not only built a substantial personal library but also influenced the Ptolemaic kings in Alexandria to do the same around 300 BCE, laying the groundwork for the establishment of the Library of Alexandria.

Once again the “problem” of volume demanded innovation. Alphabetization was introduced, and the Library’s prominence grew.

332 – 690 CE

Although the Library of Alexandria suffered a fire in 48 BCE during Julius Caesar’s siege, it is important to note that the Library endured multiple burnings across history. Some scholars suggest that it was the riverfront storehouses (where books awaited cataloguing) that burned, not the temples themselves. Regardless, there is documentation that large shipments of scrolls were sent to potentially serve as a replacement for what was lost. This fire, some argue, was accidental — the byproduct of military strategy rather than deliberate hostility towards knowledge.

Two later records describe the Library’s destruction again, both during this Age of Air (391 CE and 642 CE). In these instances, the attacks directly targeted the Library’s texts. Once again, a great knowledge center emerged in one Age of Air only to collapse in another.

A similar fate befell the Library of Constantinople, founded by Constantius II around 353 - 357 CE. It burned in 473 CE, losing around 120,000 volumes but was restocked. Yet it was destroyed entirely in the next Age of Air in 1204 CE during the Fourth Crusade.

Meanwhile, the transmission of texts was sustained between this Age of Air and the next (aka ‘The Dark Ages’) in more than one part of the world. In China, response to the continued threats against scholars and their written works resulted in a new, ingenious storage of knowledge in Hunan. The Fangshan Stone Sutras — texts carved into cave walls, were impervious to fire and reproducible through rubbings. This ingenious method not only safeguarded the scriptures but also spurred the invention of printing in 11th century China, later rediscovered in 15th-century Germany to fuel the Reformation, both in the next Age of Air.

Back in the West, monasteries such as that of Cassiodorus preserved texts throughout centuries of turmoil. While each housed only a few hundred works, their decentralized efforts kept these texts safe from political and religious powers with dogmatic agendas. The ‘Monastic Scriptoria’ eventually disappeared when book production became commercialized and centralized by the 13th century — unsurprisingly, another Age of Air.

1185 – 1425 CE

As book production accelerated, books themselves began to function as currency. This gave rise to the concept of “loan chests” in Europe, where money was borrowed in exchange for books as collateral. Even Oxford’s earliest library began with this practice.

Elsewhere, Saladin — the Kurdish Sunni commander and first sultan of Egypt — sold off entire libraries seized from captured territories to fund his campaigns against the Crusaders. His decisive recapture of Jerusalem at the Battle of Hattin in 1187 was a marked turning point in favor of Muslim control.

Books also flowed into Europe as spoils of war during and after the Crusades (1095 - 1291 CE), feeding the great book markets and knowledge centers of Toledo and Cordoba. This movement of books played a crucial role in the translation of texts between Arabic and Latin.

One of the major hubs for the Translation Movement (mid-8th century to late 10th centuries, between Ages of Air) was the House of Wisdom. There, scholars translated the works of Aristotle, Plato, Hippocrates, Euclid, Ptolemy, Pythagoras, Brahmagupta, and others from Greek into Arabic. Though the House of Wisdom was eventually destroyed by the Mongols in 1258 CE, it ensured the survival of many texts critical to later generations.

1980 – 2219 CE

This Age of Air has already seen multiple innovations and discoveries. The creation of the Internet in the 1980’s radically transformed how we store and share knowledge. By 2020, the majority of the world carried miniature libraries and knowledge centers in their pockets.

In 1980, archaeologists unearthed the Palace Archives and Working Library of Palace Scribes from Ebla, Syria, dating to 2300 – 2250 BCE. Around 2,000 clay tablets were discovered, many preserved because invaders had set the room ablaze, accidentally firing them into durability. These included bilingual lists of animals, plants, and places, along with incantations and a Sumerian myth.

In 2023, we gained yet more access to ancient texts. A University of Nebraska student developed a way to use AI to virtually read ancient, unrolled scrolls. These scrolls were preserved by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 CE but were too brittle to unwrap for nearly two millennia. AI was used to open them once again, giving voice to words thought lost forever.

Takeaway Two: Innovation Born of Necessity

The Fragility of Materials

Ages of Air have repeatedly sparked innovations in how we store, preserve, and share knowledge. From cataloguing and alphabetization, to cave rubbings and AI, each leap has often come from sheer necessity.

History shows us that preservation depends as much on materials as on human ingenuity. Papyrus held immense knowledge in ancient Egypt, but even in a desert climate it proved fragile compared to clay tablets, which endured fire and centuries of time. Because of this fragility, entire stretches of history were lost, forcing humanity to relearn basic literacy and rebuild intellectual traditions. 

The lesson is sobering: if we want our knowledge to survive 2,000 years from now, what materials — or methods — will we trust? For persecuted Buddhist scholars in 6th-century China, carving sutras into stone walls was arduous, but it offered permanence no fire could erase.

Cycles of Growth and Pause

We’ve also seen that Ages of Air unfold in waves. Each Age often brings a surge of innovation in knowledge sharing, followed by quieter periods of dormancy or rebuilding. This rhythm isn’t failure — it mirrors natural growth itself. A family member once described her son’s growth spurts this way: “First he’d shoot up, then he’d grow sideways.” In the same way, Ages of Air are upward surges, while the interludes give humanity time to adjust, stabilize, and “grow into our new clothes.”

It’s tempting to equate Ages of Air with destruction alone. Author Lucien Polastron’s Books on Fire: The Destruction of Libraries throughout History documents fires or destruction of libraries in every century since the 6th century BCE. So clearly there are examples of these unfortunate events in each of the four elemental Ages.

Yet not all losses stemmed from human intent. The eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, for example, buried entire cities along with their libraries and 20,000 lives during an Age of Fire. That loss was indiscriminate — a natural disaster, not an attack on intellectual thought. And yet, centuries later in an Age of Air, technology is allowing us to read those same Vesuvian scrolls for the first time.

The Power of One

Perhaps the most enduring lesson is that knowledge survives not only through grand institutions but also through the dedication of individuals. Ancient texts survived because of innovative breakthroughs (like today’s AI scanning of charred scrolls), decentralized preservation (as in Europe’s monasteries), or creative duplication (like the Buddhist stone sutras that prefigured printing). Time and again, it has been small groups — or even a single person — who safeguarded treasures across millennia. 

It is a humbling and encouraging reminder: one individual, working in obscurity, can shape the survival of knowledge for thousands of years.

Sources:

Battles, M. (2003). Library: An Unquiet History. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Casson, L. (2001). Libraries in the Ancient World. Yale University Press.

Henshall, W. (2023, October 21). “Inside the AI-Powered Race to Decode Ancient Roman Scrolls.” Time Magazine. https://time.com/6326563/vesuvius-challenge-herculaneum-papyri-ai/

Knibbs, K. (2024, September 4). “The Internet Archive Loses its Appeal of a Major Copyright Case.” Wired Magazine. https://www.wired.com/story/internet-archive-loses-hachette-books-case-appeal/

Mandler, C. (2024, September 20) “Three Mile Island nuclear plant will reopen to power Microsoft data centers.” NPR. https://www.npr.org/2024/09/20/nx-s1-5120581/three-mile-island-nuclear-power-plant-microsoft-ai

Meyboom, P. G. P. (1995). “The Nile Mosaic of Palestrina: Early Evidence of Egyptian Religion in Italy.” Religions in the Graeco-Roman World. Leiden, E. J. Brill. https://books.google.com/books?id=jyTFEJ56iTUC&pg=PA373#v=onepage&q&f=false

Mystic Medusa, “Jupiter-Saturn Conjunctions from 2092 BC - 2100 CE.” https://mysticmedusa.com/jupiter-saturn-conjunction-dates/

Nolle, R. (1998). “The Jupiter-Saturn Conjunction.” https://www.astropro.com/features/tables/geo/ju-sa/ju000sa.html

Norman, J. (2004-2025). “Foundation of the Library of the Dominican Convent of San Marco, the First “Public” Library in Renaissance Europe.” History of Information. https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=286

Ovenden, R. (2020). Burning the Books: A History of the Deliberate Destruction of Knowledge. Harvard University Press.

Polastron, L. X. (2007). Books on Fire: The Destruction of Libraries throughout History. Inner Traditions.

Rice University, “Jupiter-Saturn Conjunction Series from 0 CE to 3000 CE.” https://sparky.rice.edu/public-night/jupsat2.html

Sweetman, K. (2021, January 7). “The Great Mutation from Earth to Air.” Empowering Astrology. https://empoweringastrology.com/the-great-mutation-from-earth-to-air/

Wikipedia. (2025, August 24). “Hachette v. Internet Archive.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hachette_v._Internet_Archive

Wolfson, S. (2024, February 21). “Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive and the Future of Controlled Digital Lending.” Penn Libraries News. https://www.library.upenn.edu/news/hachette-v-internet-archive

Where We're Headed...

As discussed in Part 1 of this series, astrological cycles provide historical data that help us glimpse what may unfold in a current cycle and weigh the choices before us. Today's buzz around AI offers a timely lens to revisit earlier "Ages of Air" — moments when societies grappled with how to pool, protect, or control knowledge.

In the centuries ahead of us on this journey, we’ll trace six eras where humanity’s libraries and centers of knowledge rose, flourished, and often fell. Taken together, these turning points reveal a pattern: whenever knowledge is centralized in the hands of the powerful, it becomes vulnerable — but when it is shared, preserved, and valued across communities, it endures.

2052 – 1814 BCE

The Per Ankh, or “House of Life,” were attached to temples in Ancient Egypt and became intellectual centers for the elite. They functioned as scriptoriums, archives, and schools, housing religious and magical texts, medical papyri, wisdom literature, and astronomical data. While these collections flourished during the Middle Kingdom (circa 2040–1782 BCE), their weakness lay in their association with temples — making them vulnerable during later religious transitions of power.

1238 – 960 BCE

After Egypt, we turn to Upper Mesopotamia, where the alignment of early “book” collections with royalty continued. In fact, the Hittite Empire’s collections finally reached enough volume that it necessitated the invention of cataloguing. But when the empire fell around 1200 BCE, so did its catalogues. Cities and palaces such as Hattusas were destroyed or abandoned, and with them, the knowledge of writing — once sustained largely by palace administration. What followed in the 9th century was a “dark period.” Literacy had to be painstakingly relearned, with the Greeks eventually reviving reading, writing, and formal education by the 5th century BCE — the next Age of Air.

463 – 165 BCE

Centuries later, an unassuming port would become the site of history’s most famous library. When Alexander the Great founded Alexandria, it was little more than marshes and fishing villages. Yet it quickly transformed into one of the most important intellectual hubs of the Hellenistic world. 

Its wealth came from two sources: grain and papyrus. Because the papyrus plant thrived locally, Alexandria held a near-monopoly on quality writing material. The Ptolemaic kings of Alexandria capitalized on this material wealth to build their personal intellectual reputations. Each king brought in world-renowned tutors, and soon the city attracted scientists and scholars from across the Mediterranean. 

This intellectual wealth gave rise to the Museum and legendary Library of Alexandria. The Library grew and was eventually housed in two main buildings: the Mouseion (a temple to the Muses–the goddesses of culture and knowledge) and the Serapeum (a temple to the god Serapis–a Hellenistic-Egyptian god invented as the protector of Alexandria). Located near the port, ships brought in thousands of texts from other lands. Eventually, their walls housed hundreds of thousands of groundbreaking texts, securing Alexandria as the cultural hub of the ancient world.

Yet in another part of the world, the destruction of books served a different political agenda. In 213 BCE, the first Emperor of a unified China, Shi Huangdi, undertook the most extensive book burning the world has ever known. His goal was to destroy all literature predating his dynasty to enforce a state-sanctioned history. To underscore the point, he buried 460 Confucian scholars alive with their texts. Thus, both the consolidation and destruction of knowledge served political agendas.

332 – 690 CE

The Library of Alexandria’s prestige did not protect it from religious exclusivism however. In 391 CE, the Christian patriarch Theophilus burned part of the Library, targeting the Serapeum, its “pagan” texts, and its residing god designated to protect Alexandria from harm. And in 642 CE, while the Muslims were in the midst of their takeover of the Greco-Roman empire, Caliph Omar reportedly ordered further destruction because the collection contradicted the Quran. Thus, Alexandria’s fate illustrates how easily great libraries became casualties of religious conflict.

While Theophilus and Caliph Omar epitomized destruction, Cassiodorus represented preservation. Disturbed by the loss of the Palatine and Ulpian libraries during the siege of Rome, this Christian noble founded the Vivarium monastery in 544 CE, complete with a scriptorium far removed from political conflict. Inspired by this model, dozens of monasteries created scriptoria of their own, copying not only religious works but also literature and scientific texts. Their strength lay in their modest size (holding no more than a few hundred texts) and relative obscurity, which helped collections survive both the political and religious conflicts of their time.

Besides Christian monks, the Persian Academy of Gondishapur became a refuge for expelled scholars after Justinian closed the Academy of Athens in 529 CE. Already a teaching hospital and library, Gondishapur flourished after its influx of intellectual refugees by integrating Greek, Indian, and Persian traditions. While emperor Justinian thought he was helping the empire by banishing “pagan” scholars, he inadvertently aided the growth of an inclusive intellectual hub and helped spark the Islamic Golden Age.

1185 – 1425 CE

By the Renaissance, elites began to more fully understand the power of knowledge. The famous pre-Renaissance bookseller, Vespasiano, curated collections for the Vatican, nobles and clerics, influencing Cosimo de’ Medici’s founding of the San Marco Library (the first “public” library). Yet these collections were rarely altruistic. 

As author Matthew Battles notes:

“Big libraries didn’t spring up because of the economy and efficiency of the printing press… they were bound up in the appetites of dukes, merchants, and popes for the new learning aborning in the Renaissance… the control of massed knowledge offered a new basis for their power.” (p. 72)

In effect, dukes and popes had become the new emperors, consolidating and controlling knowledge as a source of personal power.

Beyond Europe, rulers weaponized knowledge more directly. Itzcoatl, founder of the Aztec Empire, ordered the burning of all Mexica books in 1439 CE to create a state-sanctioned history — a grim echo of Shi Huangdi. Ironically, the Spanish repeated this act of destruction upon the Aztecs less than a century later.

1980 – 2219 CE

The tension between preservation and control remains alive in our current Age of Air. In 2020, as COVID-19 shuttered physical libraries, the online library Internet Archive launched its National Emergency Library, making books digitally available through Controlled Digital Lending. Yet publishers viewed this as an existential threat. Lawsuits from four major publishers, followed by recording labels, forced the initiative to close and levied the nonprofit with heavy fines. The lawsuits sought not only to protect profit but also to maintain centralized control over information distribution.

Takeaway One: A Risk Assessment

The Alignment Problem

Across the Ages of Air, the fate of libraries has depended on alignment. When knowledge was housed under the authority of temples, states, or elites, it was vulnerable to destruction by zealots and princes alike.

In his book, Library: An Unquiet History, author Matthew Battles writes:

“Great libraries are problematic in times of war, disaster, or decay, for their fate becomes the fate of the literatures they contain. Much of what comes down to us from antiquity survived because it was held in small private libraries tucked away in obscure backwaters of the ancient world, where it was more likely to escape the notice of zealots as well as princes.” (p. 30-31)

Battles’ assessment is on point across these six Ages of Air. In short, any attempt to hoard a treasure will draw dragons.

The Alternative: Decentralization and Cultural Pooling

By contrast, when knowledge was decentralized — whether in monasteries like the Vivarium or intellectual refuges like Gondishapur — it endured. These decentralized, cross-cultural models preserved not only texts but also the spirit of inquiry itself.

Today, projects like the Internet Archive carry this tradition forward, though not without opposition. The lawsuits they face are reminders of an old pattern: attempts to monopolize or weaponize knowledge bring conflict, while collaborative, decentralized stewardship ensures its survival.

We are only at the beginning of our current Age of Air, but history suggests where alignment with power leads — and where resilience lies.