Happy 20th Birthday To The Aquarius Papers, The First Daily Astrological Blog

by Robert Wilkinson

Yes, it was 20 years ago today that I launched the original Aquarius Papers as a Salon blog. I quickly realized I was the first and only astrology blog in the world, a website where I interacted with people from all over the world. A little backstory and reflection....

First, a brief word from our sponsor….

It was twenty years ago
Admiral Robert began the show
And launched this pioneering starship
So the net world could take a very nice trip
Around a universe of infinite stars and things
And metaphysics and culture and Saturn’s rings
With all kinds of music lighting the way
A thousand talents began to play
We’ve gone where no starship went before
So welcome this gateway to explore
Many worlds mysteriously unseen and seen
Because life is but a dream sweetheart, sh-boom, sh-boom, sh-boom!!

Hello, and welcome to the 20th anniversary of this transglobal Starship! This is the second of three milestones which are happening between April and June of 2024. The first milestone was posting the 10,000th article on the site 2 weeks ago. If you want to know how I was able to do it, along with a brief tour around the topics in our astrological and spiritual library in the archives, it’s all in the three articles from April 12, 13, and 14 which are linked at the bottom of this one below the chart. This is the second milestone, and the third one will be sometime in June when we top 16,000,000 page visits.

Right up front, for the astrologers who come here, I launched this project at 12:10 pm, April 28, 2004, at Westwood (UCLA), California. I chose this time to begin publication of the first article, since it's a very strong chart. Also, it proves that Mercury retrograde projects really do have staying power if they are activities that mirror Mercury retrograde energies (like publishing)!

The chart has 7 Leo rising, 29 Aries on the MC, and the Moon is 22 Leo in an exact Grand Fire Trine with Mercury retrograde at 22 Aries and Pluto at 22 Sagittarius. The Sun is in the 10th house at 9 Taurus conjunct the North Node at 12 Taurus in a very close trine to Jupiter at 9 Virgo in the 2nd house. The chart is posted at the bottom of the article for your perusal.

The chart for the launch of the Starship Aquariuspapers is an example of how the branch of the craft known as "Electional Astrology" works. It's related to Horary Astrology, except that Electional seeks the right timing to set events into motion (marriage, launching a business, filing legal papers, asking for a favor, making first contact with someone, etc.) while Horary marks the time of an event to find the answer to that event (Where did I lose the watch? How to respond to what I just heard? Is this person trustworthy?) Horary “begins with a time to find an answer.” Electional “begins with an answer to find a time.”

Both of these branches of Astrology have somewhat different rules about how to read the charts. That's why many astrologers have no business telling a client when to marry or start a business, since a birth chart is read in much different ways than an electional chart. (Sometimes a chart is not a chart in the usual sense...)

There is almost never a time when all indicators are favorable with no afflictions in the chart, just as there is never a time when all indicators are unfavorable with no strengthening aspects to mitigate the potential damages. Not all things are meant to succeed as we assume they should or will, and in the charts of failed ventures we learn a lot about what’s right for us and what’s wrong for us, and for how long.

And now for the story!

I am the first astrological blogger. There were none before me who published daily astrological content and interacted with commenters from around the world. When I began posting astrology articles on the web, the internet was still extremely disorganized, with no blogware, no interactivity, and nothing but primitive commercial astrology sites selling astrology services.

I had done the usual static website approach to publishing my articles in 1997-2003, but because web everything was in its infancy, my webmaster was a) constantly tinkering with the code, so that b) articles never got posted in a timely way, and c) the website design and paths kept changing and I never could figure out how to navigate it to any degree of satisfaction. So I was cranking out great material back then, but by the time it was posted it had expired since it was past its shelf life.

It just seemed a very counterintuitive way to offer what I write, with no opportunities to interact with my readers and a cumbersome way to post with no way to get more material up soon after. So while I polished my writing skills during those years, it was still frustrating to write great material only to see it become irrelevant soon thereafter with few if any reading it.

And then I met THE BLOG. It was in the Autumn of 2001 when I lived in Northern California that I met a young man who had an unfocused political and vaguely philosophical blog on Salon, which was really the only game in town back then. Through his encouragement I started to "feel my way around" the blogosphere, checking out various blogs on all kinds of subjects.

I didn't have my own blog yet, so he encouraged me to post political, metaphysical, and astrological stuff on his blog, as well as comments on other blogs. I learned how to jump in, comment, take heat, get into and out of political and occasional metaphysical firefights, and became confident that I could find a voice in the blogosphere, despite the general unfriendliness and nasty arrogance of the political arena to newbies. During those months I found the political blogosphere totally hostile to astrology and spirituality.

While this was going on my friend pestered me for months to start my own astrological and metaphysical blog, and I resisted, not knowing exactly how I could tend to such a thing on a regular basis. But eventually he convinced me to set one up just to see what would happen, and if I really could attract readers to a site devoted to astrology and metaphysics.

I moved back to West Los Angeles in the Summer of 2003 while still writing and reporting for our 2nd tier national political group blog and trying to get something up regularly on the website. Finally, after months of reflection and a dress rehearsal in late March 2004, I set up the launch for this day 20 years ago. I wasn't sure how it would be received, and so made it both astrological and spiritual with a sidebar called "The Outer Edge" for political and social commentary. I felt the two might have some overlap, as per Gandhi, Thoreau, King, and other political-social wise men, since I don't believe we can or should divorce politics from ethics and its impact on society, which immediately introduces a philosophical element into any political dialog.

Well, that went over like a lead balloon! I found (back then) that most spiritually or astrologically minded people were bored or indifferent when it came to politics, and political junkies loathed anything related to astrology or spirituality. The former has changed over the years, but the latter still mock and deride most spiritual suggestions and all astrological offerings, except for a few social media sites.

I’ve also found over the years that quite a few who are into astrology would prefer me NOT to post my political views, especially modern neo-conservatives, would-be Libertarians, and random trolls. Oh well. That doesn't work for me. All my spiritual views infuse my political views, and those who don’t like my politics but do like my astrological or metaphysical thinking have an internal split they need to examine and heal.

Anyway, back to ancient days. So in 2004 my friend and I agreed to keep his site a collective "political" blog featuring social commentary, political humor, and busting miscreants in business, industry, and politics as we had been doing, while the Aquarius Papers would be mine personally, and focus mainly on astrology and spirituality. Between 2003-2005 our political blog (one of the first true group blogs!) skyrocketed, becoming a second tier national political blog, with my friend doing the humor and visuals and me doing the investigative reporting and commentary while busting national political and corporate malfeasance.

As noted earlier, after doing a rehearsal a few weeks earlier to see how it would look, I officially became Captain of the Starship Aquariuspapers, Version 1.0, on April 28, 2004. Because I had written so much up to that time, I was confident I could post at least one article a day which no one else in the world was doing in those days. I succeeded to the degree that the current tally is 10,040 posts these past 20 years, so I’ve averaged about 500 posts per year!

The blogware we were forced to use in 2001-2005 to post on Salon was miserable and cumbersome, and looked dreadful. Anyone who ever was a forced subscriber to "Radio Userland" will absolutely attest to this! So after some research, we found several more blogware platforms which went on line in 2003-2005, and then migrated this site in Summer 2005 to Typepad which is the platform I have used since then.

For those who want to see the living evolution of this blog, please go to this page, as it has quite a few of the original articles posted on the blogs.salon.com site. Back when the Salon archives were still available, you could see I was describing the Grand Irrationality from day one, though I didn't invent that specific term until a bit later. In a historical note, my first post on the Aquariuspapers using that term was October 26, 2004, even though I had first written about it on the website in 1997 and spoke about it in my talks as early as 1995.

In the original archives, the articles began on June 2, 2004 rather than April 28. That was because my computer crashed (thanks to Norton - a miserable virus protection software if ever there was one - scrambling my operating system) and it took me a couple of days to resurrect the site/software/blog articles posted up to then. So though the first article actually was posted on April 28, it was as though the whole thing had to begin again on June 2. (Yes, that is a Mercury retrograde phenomenon!)

Anyway, that's how this site got started 20 years ago. It's certainly become more than I could ever have imagined at that time, and thanks to the evolution of blogware, search engine technology, and the times we live in, it's now one of the biggest sites of its kind in the world! With over 10,040 posts and over 30,000 comments, it’s a pretty good community work.

I gave up tracking and posting hard numbers about site visitors some time ago. This time in 2014 we were about 4.6 million unique visits and 10.7 million page views since February 2005 when I began tracking the numbers, with people coming in from over 130 countries around the world. (Yes, I once tracked which countries visitors came from for about a year.)

Current site analytics indicate I’m still averaging around 360,000 page views a year, approaching 16,000,000 total, and that doesn’t count the various server attacks on Typepad and the numerous times that Sitemeter was down. (Sitemeter became an adware scam – don’t use them!) So even with disruptions we’re still at cruising altitude.

Welcome to the beginning of the 21st year! I gather that Typepad blogware has evolved in many ways, and I as usual, some maintenance is overdue. Also, from time to time there are DoS attacks on Typepad servers from vindictive hackers, so the site does go down occasionally. When it does, the community finds out about it on Facebook, so our wired world helps us all stay in touch.

At this point, I’ve begun to host zoominars and am still doing internet radio interviews which are available through those sites’ archives. My foundation’s 5th Ray publishing operation is alive and well, so the community can now find my books via your favorite bookstore or amazon. If you’re interested, here are two! Saturn: Spiritual Master, Spiritual Friend will help you take charge of your destiny and power to fulfill your purpose for being alive, and The Magic of Venus: Friendships, Soul Mates, and Twin Flames will help you understand why you like what you like and why you attract what you attract. It is literally the most comprehensive work on Venus ever published, so please consider getting your copy today.

I have several more books in development, including the various cycles of life which exist apart from planetary cycles, which I hope to have out this year. And after going missing many years ago, I found my almost complete manuscript on Cat Psychology, which I’m going to take a new look at after the cycles book is done. I also have a couple of potential movie scripts…..

At some point I have to transfer hundreds of hours of my 1975-2015 talks from tape to digital files, so stay tuned! If you want to know how you can help the work, please email me through the link under my picture. And as always, if you are interested in acquiring gems, altar stones, and mineral specimens, check out the left hand links on this site to view some of what I have, with more not shown.

This Cosmic Cantina has always been about me offering insights to the community and a forum where we can find other gentle truth seeking Souls. And with each passing year, I affirm that the future will help us all build and strengthen our global community and network of Light workers to assist the birthing of the new era while staying as safe as possible in the midst of the accelerated changes. The changes are happening, but we'll always have the Wisdom, the Way, and the Community as the "refuges" to help us overcome suffering, whether our own or what we find in the world.

So I'm glad you're here, glad to know those of you who have chosen to be part of this gentle and strong Aquarius Papers community, and glad to be able to offer this sanctuary in the midst of the uncertainty, dread, and confusion as humanity has been moving through the "Grand Irrationality" into the 20 year future Aquarian pulse launched at the Great Mutation of 2020. Moving out of 200 years of Earth materialism into 200 years of Air ideas and ideals, we’re on our journey from the unreal to the real, darkness to light, and death to immortality. Aum Namah Shivaya! Aum Mani Padme Hum! And Aum Namah the Age of Aquarius!

Happy birthday, all!