What do you think about the Hindu yugas or cycles Len? I read once that it's believed we go through a greater galactic cycle and depending on the area our galaxy is we tune to different energies. Perhaps it could be a system meant for humans to experience all the different facets of physical life through the reincarnational progress. I haven't dwelled deeply in the subject but it seems an interesting hypothesis.
There are cycles within cycles within cycles within cycles. You are asking about cosmological cycles, but there are many others which play important factors in our lives. But even cosmological cycles by themselves are multilayered. The smallest usually recognized is the 24 hour, day/night cycle. Then there is the lunar cycle (From which months originated). Then there are various solar cycles, the most commonly discussed being the yearly cycle, but there is also the rotation of the sun itself. Converging within and among these are various planetary and interstellar body cycles, each having their own frequency resonance effect on us here. Then there is the great galactic cycle of the rotation of our solar system around the center of the galaxy. Beyond this, but less well understood and known, are intergalactic and super-galactic cycles, in which other galaxies’ frequencies play upon our own. And then, there is the universal cycle sometimes alluded to as the Breath of God.
All of these cycles playing upon one another ultimately amounts to an infinite variation of conditions and events, which can be more or less read, predicted, and analyzed. This study is called astrology, of which modern culture, even in the East, is woefully ignorant. Indian culture has preserved and maintained astrological knowledge better than any other on earth, but even modern Indians have forgotten and misinterpreted much of what they have preserved. (Certain cultures, now dead, have produced even more advanced systems of astrology than the Indians.)
To fully comprehend the scope and mechanics of astrology, one must have a developed education within the fields of astronomy, mathematics, history, physics, and metaphysics.
In modern times, and outside the Indian system, there are still a handful of people, very few people, who have maintained an advanced and developed knowledge of the science of astrology. I am not among them. It is not my particular specialty.
One of the modern masters able to comprehend it, capable of expounding upon the grander galactic cycles, or ‘yugas’, was Sri Yukteswar Giri, best known as the guru of Paramahansa Yogananda, in his book, “The Holy Science”. This book would be a good place for a modern student to begin, although the mechanics and terminology are often complicated and difficult to comprehend for a beginner. Nevertheless, a serious student will make it his business to work at clarifying all of these terms and concepts with both deep contemplation and outside references. After this, older text may be recommended, and after a certain proficiency is reached, others living with a certain degree of knowledge may be found.
While all of this is deep and important knowledge, it is ultimately secondary. As ‘Children of God’ or ‘made in the image of God’, deterministic factors of creation can, and ultimately must, be transcended in full awareness with advanced free will as a Master of Life.