Chapter Two

THE TEMPERAMENT TYPE

I.

The advantage of NATURAL DISPOSITION is that it offers a valuable preliminary and simple classification of people through PLANETARY CONFIGURATIONS that are easy to locate in a first glance at a horoscope. In consequence it is of great help to the astrologer in establishing the over-all perspective that has been seen to be very necessary for any intelligent analysis of the NATIVE'S character and affairs. The disadvantage is that the INDICATION is not present in all natal charts, and for that reason it was not included in the author's smaller manual, The Guide to Horoscope Interpretation that provides a beginner's introduction to the horoscopic methods given their more thorough exposition in the present text.

Of perhaps much greater service in establishing an overall view of the horoscope is the classification in terms of the seven fundamental TEMPERAMENT TYPES. In this technique there is no astrological chart that cannot be placed in one of these groupings, even if considerable skill may be required in determining the TYPE in borderline cases. There is again the factor of simplicity characterizing NATURAL DISPOSITION, in that it is the position of the PLANETS rather than the specific identity or nature of any one among them that establishes the particular pattern and its basic significance in the given NATIVE'S case. Once more the astrologer is able to contribute to his initial and overall [28] orientation by noting simple combinations of PLANETARY position, such as most of the time may be recognized quickly as well as seen in perspective with almost immediate accuracy.

The basis of classification according to TEMPERAMENT TYPE is the manner in which the total number of PLANETS, or ten heavenly bodies with physical mass in gravitational balance with each other and the earth, reveal the phases of general equilibrium to which astrological significance may be given. Thus a distribution among them so that they lie in two groups facing each other across the zodiacal circle provides the hour-glass arrangement that is identified as the SEESAW TYPE. The special case where one planet only lies across from all the others is known as the BUCKET TYPE, and if all the PLANETS are grouped on one side of the zodiac as if in balance in a sense with none and the occupied segment is (1) the space of a TRINE or less, the identification is as a BUNDLE TYPE, or is (2) more than the TRINE but half or less of the circle, the pattern is known as a BOWL, or is (3) approximately two thirds of the total zodiacal span with the empty space set off by an actual defining TRINE in a reverse of the BUNDLE arrangement, it is identified as a LOCOMOTIVE TYPE. A tendency towards a marked threefold radial arrangement establishes the SPLAY TYPE, and an approximation to a complete wheellike distribution of balances is termed the SPLASH TYPE.

Actually the TYPES do not appear too often in their ideal form or even in any very close approximation to it, nor do they always present a ready dramatization of the OPPOSITION or TRINE equilibriums from which they are determined in fundamental theory and on the basis of which [29] their general potentiality is explained. The SPLASH, BUNDLE and BOWL patterns were employed by earlier generations of astrologers, and the present contribution has been an organization of the techniques and a proper recognition of the functions of the ASPECTS in creating and emphasizing the patterns. The order of consideration of the TYPES in these pages is dictated by a logical convenience in an effort to make the exposition as clear as possible. While the NATURAL DISPOSITION shows the inherent lean of the character and thus creates a psychological key to the inner quality of the NATIVE'S interest, the TEMPERAMENT TYPE provides a clue to his psychological totality. It reveals the outer and more superficial manner in which he is inclined to associate himself with his fellows or to adjust to the events and take advantage of the passing opportunities provided by the situations in which he finds himself.

The Splash Type

The SPLASH TYPE of horoscope is found when the PLANETS tend to lie as equally spaced as possible around the zodiacal circle. Not only are the specific astrological INDICATIONS of the individual PLANETS ignored in determining this or any of the patterns but no attention is given to the CUSPS of HOUSES, the positions of the SIGNS, the place of nodes or PARTS, or anything other than the general arrangement of the ten PLANETARY bodies. A perfect example of this one of the seven TYPES is seldom approximated to any dramatic extent. Mercury and Venus can get but a short distance away from the sun, and at least two of the zodiac's mansions always must be vacant. Moreover the slow movement of Pluto, Neptune and Uranus in particular, and of Saturn and even Jupiter in connection [30] with them at times, limits the possible occurrence of this and indeed most of the patterns to certain spans of years out of each century and thus endows each age group with common proclivities. These may be said, parenthetically, to be a matter of very great importance in MUNDANE astrology. Indeed, if a NATIVE always will be visualized in the frame of this broader group sort of heritage it may be possible to have a much greater appreciation of his potentials in the more immediate context.

The ideal SPLASH chart would show five OPPOSITIONS resting two each in two of the QUADRATURES and one in a third, and so there would be no INDICATION of NATURAL DISPOSITION. Instead of the narrowing of interest characteristic of the average person there would be the extreme of catholicity suggested as the PLANETS around the wheel would tend to hold each other in absolute balance or equilibrium, and it is the approach to the universality in make-up in any individual case that gives significance to this one of the TYPES.

The NATIVE often demonstrates the broadest spread of general competency among the horoscopic TEMPERAMENTS, and he is capable of exceptional achievement in all situations where a great many factors or considerations are involved. By the same token he may waste his talents or substance through unnecessarily scattered effort, or essentially disorganized conceptions of his own potentials. In all instances he tends to a very practical awareness of the world about him in its unending and various manifestations, and also to curiously naïve assumptions of his own fitness for dealing with every immediate phase of it. He remains the prototype of the universal citizen, no matter [31] how little success he may have in making a place for himself among his fellows, and so he usually is able to stand aside from petty involvement and from any confused state of things at hand. In doing so he often gains an enlarged or even transcendental orientation for his labor and his understanding. Of the possible TYPES this is the least inclined to limit itself to any one direction of self-justification, or to establish any single pattern or balance in self-realization. Here may be the dilettante, but at his best he brings high dignity to the untrammeled diversity of his nature.

A convenient illustration of the SPLASH TEMPERAMENT is provided by President Theodore Roosevelt, and his NATIVITY when taken in historical perspective approaches the ideal rather closely in the fact that there are OPPOSITIONS in all three QUADRATURES and that in consequence there is no INDICATION of NATURAL DISPOSITION. Ultimately there has been no limitation to the wide slanting of his interest, such as would tend to thwart a universality of orientation bequeathed by him to the nation during his presidency and established most effectively in the marked lines of his own enduring contribution. The inherent versatility of the redoubtable Teddy had its broad and at times almost boisterous demonstration in the variety of his political activities, his war record, his competency as an author, his enthusiastic championship of wild life in terms both of natural conservation and the exposure of nature faking, his economic sensitiveness, the statesmanship by which he sought to meet the issues of his day in a world-wide fashion, and his gift for a strenuous fullness of living together with a simple ease in familiar contact with others. Above [32] all he gave real impetus to the task of fitting the United States to meet the new challenge to its existence in what, for all the near surrender to the characteristic imperialism of the Western powers of his day, has proved an actual case of first steps in accepting a genuinely democratic and international responsibility for the American people. He lived to within a decade of Pluto's discovery, and much in his life and accomplishment would seem to anticipate that PLANET'S INDICATION.

Modern astrologers often are asked if the discovery of new PLANETS does not demonstrate that horoscopic science was a truncated one without them, and hence by inference a still defective mode of analysis in view of the possible location of another new one or so. Unquestionably the most dramatic development in today's astrology has been the striking parallel in the emergence of highly distinctive and enlarged dimensions of human experience with the identification of Uranus in 1781, Neptune in 1846 and Pluto in 1930. It is the custom to show the places of these bodies in all NATIVITIES, but to consider them significant only in connection with events subsequent to their discovery. This is on the principle that their coming into general awareness is a uniform proposition embracing their identification in the heavens on the one hand and the realization by man of the unique developments in human history they have come to signify in individual day-by-day living on the other.

Meanwhile it is inconsequential whether Pluto is a true solar satellite, or a moon of Neptune, as long as its movements fall conveniently enough in the former pattern. There are more than a thousand asteroids, now located [33] since Ceres or the first of them was discovered in 1801, and if some of them were to acquire sufficient astronomical importance to precipitate the calculation of detailed ephemerides the event in all likelihood would have correspondence to added elements of man's effort and awareness and thus acquire astrological meaning and require a place in the horoscope. Any discovery of another major PLANET can be expected to add to the scope of horoscopy in the same fashion, and without the slightest disruption of present techniques no matter in what direction they might be expanded.

There of course would be adjustment in psychological judgment as this follows of necessity from the expansion or redirection of prevailing attitudes and general climate of opinion in any age and among any cultural group. Each single generation deals with perhaps slight but nonetheless continual change in language, and in the current significance of everyday living in every possible area of experience. The great value of astrology is that it does not measure life out of the transient ideals or momentarily established ways of looking at things, but is a unique psychological tool in the fact of its immediate fluidity or its independence of both the superficial crystallizations of the given period and the set structure of a horoscopy organized on the basis of the present number of PLANETS. The seven TEMPERAMENT TYPES hold for the earlier stellar analysis and for any modification of appreciable sort to come, although any such development would mean a difference in the distribution of any one TYPE in the terms of its percentage of the total number of cases. Thus there is more opportunity for the SPLASH pattern [34] with ten PLANETS than with seven and correspondingly less chance for the appearance of the BUNDLE.

What must be avoided in all stellar analysis is any failure to remain sensitive to the equilibriums through which astrological significance arises. There is a common fallacy in connection with the number of factors in judgment, such as is by no means restricted to astrological thinking. An unintelligent adding in of extra considerations in order to give an account of an event, or to describe a characteristic, is likely to precipitate more problems than it solves. When a great number of elements are accepted as pertinent to understanding in the one case there is the necessity that they be found in a spread of consistent pertinency over all similar cases, or seen to fit other like events and characteristics in equal degree and with equivalent exactness. Horoscopic accuracy rests rather on simple skill in finding (1) the horoscopic INDICATION and (2) the corresponding fact in a NATIVE'S life and character that remains of an undeviatingly equal importance. This correspondence, as found in a few outstanding instances, is far more revealing and helpful in advisement than a plethora of petty and often inconsequential insights. Chart and person must remain in logical balance with each other in every respect of consideration if judgment is to be sound, since only when this is true is it possible to gain real light on the absence of equilibrium that lies at the root of any given problem.

The horoscope of Theodore Roosevelt some four or more decades after his death is seen in historical retrospect almost of necessity. There is no escaping an interpretation in the terms of his surviving influence, since [35] even if the attempt is to examine the man and his career in the strictly personal terms of his own day the perspective still remains an afterview, thanks to the fact that the examining mind is functioning in a today. There is no intelligence, no matter how brilliant, that is able to insulate itself more than very tentatively from its present conditioning. Astrologically, however, it is possible to realize that in his own lifetime the formidable T. R. was characterized by a negative FIXED NATURAL DISPOSITION, since Pluto provides the third QUADRATURE emphasis, and this is revealing in connection with his own struggle for self-fulfillment as the private person. Thus he was activated by a concern over ideas and values primarily, or disturbed by the parallel ambivalences in respect to people and their intimacies on the one hand and the swirling crises around him on the other. It is quite probable that the psychological turmoil created continuously in the general spread of himself was highly effective in its stimulus to his ultimate contribution as the public figure. What he gave to his country while chief executive has a persisting significance in the pattern of which Pluto is a part, but in his own years he could have had no conscious sense of the import of it all to guide or encourage him.

Two other examples of the SPLASH TYPE in the lives of individuals with marked universality of self-expression are like the horoscope of Theodore Roosevelt in falling short of the perfect case by presenting two PLANETS in each of two SIGNS and showing four empty zodiacal mansions. Roger Babson, the American statistician and economic soothsayer, has a positive emphasis of COMMON QUADRATURE by NATURAL DISPOSITION and has revealed a definite [36] slanting of interest towards people rather than towards abstract considerations or the momentary if immediate crises. He has applied his interest in financial cycles to the basic theories of universal gravitation as affecting the everyday life of everyone, and the very mundane business fluctuations with which he has dealt professionally have always proved of fundamentally humanistic significance to him. The NATIVITY of Claude Bragdon, the architect and occultist, had no INDICATION of NATURAL DISPOSITION at birth but it acquired an OPPOSITION in FIXED SIGNS with the discovery of Pluto. The extraordinary spread of his interests came to a climax in his life with this new stress of the universal theory and pure idea towards which he had been moving throughout his career under the earlier untrammeled INDICATION. He had long seen the mastery and manipulation of form as the answer to every fundamental problem of mankind.

In both these instances the vital element in any general perspective is the recognition of a consistent and prodigal spread of the self in its consciousness of itself and of its general milieu. And again the preliminary distinctions such as these must be seen as primarily a factor of orientation in the astrologer's judgment. There are many people whose spreading of themselves in wide areas of experience may be as marked as in the three SPLASH NATIVES just considered, but with whom the nascent universality is not the ingrained genius that becomes an unusual asset in the form of the TEMPERAMENT TYPE of character. An exceptional versatility may be counterfeited in a mere lack of self-organization, exactly as a genuine capacity for the universal distribution of the personal [37] potentials may go unused and unappreciated. The purpose of horoscopy fundamentally is not to bring out what is obvious to simple observation or what is common knowledge concerning a given life or career, but instead is to reveal the most effective and profitable ways in which an individual may meet the particular challenge to his characteristic make-up in the course of his everyday living.

A further example of the SPLASH NATIVITY, where there is a more ideal spread of the PLANETS in nine SIGNS with the two closest of them almost sixteen degrees apart, is provided by Harry K. Thaw, the wealthy Pittsburgh playboy who gained wide notoriety as the slayer of Stanford White. This universality was evident destructively in his self-indulgence, and perhaps most spectacularly in the dramatic instinct that called out and encouraged the exaggerated interest of the press. The NATURAL DISPOSITION through a positive emphasis of the CARDINAL QUADRATURE, until the turn to a humanistic slanting with the advent of Pluto in his late fifties, held him firmly in his craving for excitement. Evelyn Nesbitt brought this still youthful wastrel not only the charms she embodied as the actress and glamorous personality, but also the chance to play Don Quixote in the sensationalistic fashion that had special appeal to him. His life was tragic not because his horoscope called for anything of the sort, but because its potentialities never were enlisted in any context of scope sufficient for a happier fulfillment.

The Bundle Type

The BUNDLE TYPE of horoscope is found when the PLANETS tend to congregate in one single and narrow segment of the zodiacal circle, and this is an approach to an [38] extreme precisely the reverse of the ramifying PLANETARY positions indicating the SPLASH TEMPERAMENT. The perfect case of the BUNDLE would be a multiple CONJUNCTION, but nothing of the sort is possible in the current centuries for which astrological tables are available. In practice the classification is accepted if all ten PLANETS lie within the span of a TRINE ASPECT, but greater strength of the pattern is shown as they come closer to inclusion within a SQUARE. While the BUNDLE TEMPERAMENT identifies the most concentrated rather than the broadest spread of self-realization, this does not imply that the NATIVE is at all provincial or incapable of a well-rounded development. What is revealed instead is a tendency to self-fulfillment in an unusually selective ordering of his own affairs. As in contrast with the universal citizen, who reaches out to establish himself in wider and wider areas of experience, this individual always or at least potentially is the creator or proponent of an exclusive and well-integrated world within which his own immediate competence or superiority may have a constant manifestation of its powers. When such an exceptionally personal world is created by a person of real stature, it may have an enduring impact on the whole course of history.

Differing from the other TYPES the BUNDLE chart cannot contain any OPPOSITIONS and in consequence there is no indication of NATURAL DISPOSITION. This absence of any lean towards a certain sort of general interest as a basis for the underlying equilibrium of the being operates to intensify the essential independence of the TEMPERAMENT, and hence to heighten its unconditioned self-sufficiency at root. By other horoscopic INDICATION there may be a [39] marked emphasis of QUADRATURE, but as a BUNDLE TYPE the NATIVE does not seek to anchor himself exteriorily in the fashion that so often is a necessity for individuals of the six other groups. Peculiar to this TYPE is a gyroscopic quality such as is indicated by every horoscope lacking OPPOSITIONS. The characteristic self-stabilization, through what in practice becomes a sort of free and wholly adequate rotation of the self on its own axis, is the basis of a genuine creative power.

An excellent illustration of the BUNDLE TYPE, with the PLANETS situated close to within a functioning SQUARE in the NATIVE'S lifetime and in less than nine degrees of a TRINE if Pluto is taken into account for the INDICATION of his surviving influence, is provided by Czar Alexander III. This strong-minded and almost completely self-sufficient Romanov was the next to the last of his line, and when he succeeded his father in 1881 he proceeded at once to inaugurate the almost fanatically nationalistic trend that not only has dominated all Russian policy down into present-day Soviet affairs but that has become a widespread historical drift whether or not encouraged by his contribution to it. Primarily he was seeking to strengthen the integrity of his land and its people, and he was obsessed with the notion that this could be achieved through a three-point stress of (1) nationalism, (2) the Eastern Orthodox Church and (3) an uncompromising autocracy. All language and customs were to be unified throughout the empire. The great and sluggish bear of the nations was to gather strength, and prepare to consummate and defend a Slavic destiny, by the strictest attention to home interests. This meant avoiding war on [40] the one hand, and eschewing all foreign impact as far as this was possible on the other. The German influence that had dominated the court during the preceding reign went into the discard, and the substituted friendship with France and a degree of Asiatic cooperation with Britain were only superficial instrumentations of the new point of view.

Barely more than a score of years after Alexander the Bolsheviks came to power, and gave a lip service to a universal and Communistic idealism, but they were thoroughly Russianized within a generation. They changed the original Marxist vision of things with (1) the creation of an iron curtain to facilitate the gestation of an even stronger national solidarity, with (2) their promulgation of the Communistic faith in substitution for Muscovite Catholicism and with (3) a Stalin to give an all-time demonstration of what autocratic authority can become in its contribution to sheer horror even in a world of today. Here indeed is evidence of the gyroscopic power of a BUNDLE impact on history, and of the INDICATION of Alexander's surviving influence as especially shown by his ELEVATED Pluto.

Benito Mussolini provides a very similar and perhaps equally dramatic illustration of the historical impact of a BUNDLE TEMPERAMENT in the case of an individual possessed of stature for better or worse. The horoscope of the Italian dictator has the ten PLANETS in the even span of a TRINE whether or not Pluto is taken into account. Like the Russian emperor he was a principal instrument in the development of a marked and spreading pattern in history into which Russia was to be drawn as tragically as most of the world. Actually few men had as direct a [41] part in changing the whole course of human events, since it is his unenviable distinction to have paved the way for Adolf Hitler in Germany and Francisco Franco in Spain. His unabashed self-esteem, made possible by his lack of OPPOSITIONS, proved to be extraordinary weakness when it came to any development or ordinary refinement of moral character. It also proved to be very real strength in the gyroscopic power of self-perpetuation through the one-man dictatorial rule he helped to shape and to show how it could be sustained by propaganda and mob appeal working hand in hand with the tyrannical repressions and exploitations known to man since the night of time.

The special and exceptionally self-obsessed capacity of the BUNDLE TEMPERAMENT to make its enduring impact in human circumstances is evident in every area of life, and not at all necessarily a phenomenon of socioeconomic or political development. Thus an example can be taken in the coming to effective self-reliance of a definite American literature. The NATIVITY of James Russell Lowell has its PLANETS other than Pluto in the space of less than a SQUARE by five degrees, and with the most recently discovered PLANET in a span only a degree and a half over that at ASPECT. In Lowell's day the literary talent of the New World had long been tied to the creative apron strings of the mother country. With a friend and when not quite twenty-four he launched the Pioneer, in which he helped gain an early recognition for such writers as Emerson, Hawthorne, Poe, Whittier and others, and when the Atlantic Monthly was founded he became its first editor and achieved his firm place as a prime spirit [42] in the flowering of New England's creative talent. His diplomatic accomplishments gave him wide recognition abroad, and so added testimony to his fundamental stature, but his most important contribution was the development of a competent and indigenous criticism. His influence continues with the ever-increasing contribution to world ideas and ideals through this seminal American thinking to which he gave an important and initial impetus.

Another illustration of the BUNDLE TYPE in the arts is provided by the horoscope of Rockwell Kent, the contemporary artist. A restless soul who practiced architecture before turning to his painting, he has traveled far and worked particularly on and near the sea from virtually the north to the south pole in order to get his great variety of impressions and to cultivate his rather stark realism. His characteristic individualism is revealed with great charm in his book Salamina, in which he tells of his sojourn among the Greenland natives. His view of all creative expression as the result ultimately of direct experience is a recognition of the gyroscopic self-sufficiency of his own nature, and the quality of his illustrations as for Candide and Moby Dick reveals his genuinely seminal independence of spirit.

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