Great Age

The term "Great Age" is a direct English translation of concepts found in various ancient traditions. In Sanskrit, the related concept is Mahayuga (great epoch), a cycle of 4,320,000 years, or Manvantara (age of Manu), which is 71 Mahayugas. The Greek Megalos aion or Magnus Annus (Great Year) refers to the Platonic Year, the 25,868-year cycle of the precession of the equinoxes.

There were several "^eat ages'' mentioned by the ancients. In India it embraced the whole Maha-manvantara, the "age of Brahma", each "Day" of which represents the life cycle of a chain — i.e. it embraces a period of seven Rounds. (See Esotiric Buct dhism, by A. P. Sinnett.) Thus while a "Day" and a "Night" represent, as Manvantara and Pralaya, 8,640,000,000 years, an "age" lasts through a period of 311,040,000^000,000 years; after which the Pralaya. or dissolution of the universe, becomes universal. With the Egyptiann and Greeks the "great age" referred only to the tropical or sidereal year, the duration of which is 25,868 solar years. Of the complete age — that of tlie gods — they say nothing, as it was a matter to be discussed and divulged only in the ^lysteries, during the initiating ceremonies. The "great age" of the C'haldees was tlie same in figures as that of the Hindus.

The concept of a "Great Age," as explored by Blavatsky and echoed across ancient cosmologies, offers a profound recalibration of human temporal perception. It stands in stark contrast to our modern, linear, and often frantic measurement of time, which tends to focus on the immediate and the individual. Instead, the Great Age invites us to contemplate existence on a scale that dwarfs human lifespans and even the rise and fall of civilizations. Mircea Eliade, in his seminal work The Myth of the Eternal Return, discusses how cyclical time, embodied in concepts like the Great Age, provided ancient societies with a framework for understanding renewal and continuity, allowing them to periodically "restart" existence by ritually re-enacting primordial events.

This vast temporal sweep is not merely an abstract astronomical observation; it carries deep psychological and spiritual implications. The recognition of a Great Age can foster a sense of humility, reminding us of our smallness within the cosmic order, while simultaneously imbuing our present actions with a sense of historical weight, as part of a recurring pattern. The Hindu yugas, for instance, describe a gradual decline in spiritual and moral qualities over immense periods, a cosmic ebb and flow that mirrors the Jungian concept of archetypal cycles and the collective unconscious's own rhythm of emergence and submergence. The Great Age encourages a perspective where individual lives and even epochs are transient phenomena within a universe that is perpetually in motion, undergoing grand cycles of manifestation and withdrawal. It is a reminder that what appears solid and permanent is, in fact, part of an ongoing, cosmic respiration.