c. 1997 RELIGION NEWS SERVICE

SAN FRANCISCO _ Three decades after a hippie musical heralded the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, a pair of Californians, using the Internet as a bulletin board, staged a global event Thursday (Jan. 23) to mark the dawning of the real Age of Aquarius.

Under the banner of the”GaiaMind Project,”Jim Fournier, 35, and Juliana Balistreri, 31, spread the word of a remarkable astrological configuration of planets _ which on Thursday formed a hexagon on astrological charts in the shape of the Star of David.

Because the”star”would be anchored by three planets in the house of Aquarius _ the constellation that is the 11th sign of the zodiac in astrology _ Fournier and Balistreri used the occasion to call for a day of prayer and meditation.”The whole point of the project is to use the astrology to pick a moment in time for people from all different traditions to choose to do something together,”Fournier said.

And come together they did, downloading materials from the GaiaMind web site and e-mailing friends and organizations all over the world.

People gathered in groups as large as the 500 who met in a hotel in Prague, and as small as the living-room channeling meeting in Auckland, New Zealand, sponsored by Lani Calkin.

In San Francisco, where Fournier and Balistreri live, 300 people gathered in the somewhat ironic locale of an Episcopal church to meditate, chant and work up a sweat to the throb of techno-music in the ecstatic convergence of dance and worship known as”rave.””It’s the end of time as we know it,”said Kim Black, a 39-year-old man who recently moved to San Francisco to join the movement of the rave and New Age communities here.”It’s the whole Christ-consciousness coming together.” Although it had less advance publicity than the Harmonic Convergence of 1987, the GaiaMind observance may well be remembered as among the most globally dispersed and ecumenical religious observance ever, with groups from a mind-boggling array of traditional religions and New Age faiths observing some form of meditation and prayer.

A group in Porto Alegre, Brazil, that practices flower-essence therapy conducted a meditation session, as did a man in Ciudad Colon, Costa Rica, who surrounded himself with his favorite crystals. Chapters of the Aetherius Society _ a group founded by a Sir George King, a man who claims he channels extraterrestrials and has spoken with Jesus _ held”Power Circle”meditations all over the world.

Almost 500 people meditated and sang songs at the Hotel Svronost in Prague at an event sponsored by the International Association of Reiki, whose devotees seek enlightenment through physical readjustments known as”body work.”Other GaiaMind celebrants reportedly made expeditions to the Great Pyramids in Egypt, gathered in a Mayan temple at Palenque, Mexico, and trekked up Mount Shasta in Northern California for a Hopi Indian ceremony.

Devout Christians also partook. In Charlestowne, Mass., the Rev. Jean Wright _ an American Baptist minister with a family therapy practice _ gathered four people in her office to pray for each of the states in New England.”We have a spirituality that transcends our religious tradition,”she said of her Baptist faith. While New Agers might talk about”energy”or”light,”Christians have been talking about”spirit”for millennia. That language”comes out of my belief in trying to embody the realm of God _ now, at this moment. We have a part in co-creating that.” Devout Jews also partook. In Tel Aviv and Yehuda, Israel, groups of Jews sandwiched GaiaMind observances into traditional observances of Tu bi’Shevat, which fell on Thursday. Tu bi’Shevat, a Jewish arbor day of sorts, marks the new year for trees and the genesis of nature.

Perhaps 300 people turned out for the Bay Area’s anchor event _ sponsored by the GaiaMind Project and the Evolution Collective _ at St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church in San Francisco’s Mission District.

Entering the church grounds, participants were smudged with sage and then passed through a tie-dye curtain covering the door to the church nave. The room was pungent with incense. Pews were nowhere to be seen.

At the right of the nave, the old pipe organ lay mute. Instead, music was provided by a 50-year-old American named Karma Moffett, who evoked sounds from an array of Tibetan bells, singing bowls, and conch shells. Above the altar stage where Moffett sat, loomed a stained-glass image of Jesus _ surrounded by a band of doting angels, looking somehow misplaced.

On the wall at the left of the altar was hung a yellow and black banner emblazoned with the Hunab-Ku _ a glyph from the Mayan calendar that symbolizes the source of universal energy.

Floor-seated worshipers formed concentric circles around a hexagonal mandala that was taped to the center of the wooden floor _ an image representing the astrological configuration that prompted this celebration.

The participants _ mostly in their 20s and 30s and garbed in the united colors of the New Age _ took up lotus positions and began quiet meditations.

Kids in vintage yellow suede bell-bottoms, chiffon skirts, tie-dye t-shirts and dreadlocks mixed with a smattering of demurely draped New Age hausfraus and graybeards.

At 9:35 p.m. (12:35 p.m. EST), the room fell silent as the invocation reached its global synchrony _ a worldwide minute of light energy visualization. Then, a techno-DJ named Dante got to work and the room erupted in screams and dancing.

The astrology behind the event is complicated. According to Fournier, an astrologer, Uranus, Jupiter and Neptune come into a close orbital alignment, an event last seen in 1475. Anchored in the House of Aquarius, they connect with the remaining planets and the moon to form a hexagonal shape that on an astrological chart resembles the Star of David, tipped on its side.

Other coincidences surround the star. When astrologers in Jerusalem ran their own chart of the planetary configuration, they discovered that _ because the astrological”ascendant”point falls almost 90 degrees away from the ascendant point in North America _ the hexagonal figure was standing upright on their chart, rather than tipped on its side, as it would in the Western hemisphere.”The one on its side in New York is sort of the secular form of the hexagon and the one in Jerusalem is the upright Star of David,”Fournier said.”The odds against this (configuration) have to be about a billion to one. It’s really unreal.” With all those coincidences, Fournier _ who ran a design business before entering doctoral studies in cosmology _ felt he had to get the word out. But he never anticipated the response would be so large. He received 3,000 e-mails from his GaiaMind web posting.”It’s going to be interesting _ probably for the rest of our lives _ to learn the repercussions of it.”

MJP END AQUINO