Chapter Four

THE FOCAL DETERMINATORS

I.

DETERMINATORS OF FOCAL EMPHASIS in the horoscope indicate the special gifts of self-expression through which each individual is equipped to meet the issue of any internal inharmony or any external challenge to his well-being. Personality has its weapons, in one way of putting it, or its creative tools in perhaps a happier way of describing the matter, and the task of the present chapter is to identify these and so introduce a further step in effective astrological analysis. The NATURAL DISPOSITION of the NATIVE reveals the fundamental or persisting direction of interest that he must exhibit primarily in the total scheme of things, and the concern of Chapter One has been this particular INDICATION as it is derived most conveniently from a simple and sharp emphasis of QUADRATURE. His characteristic form of self-consistency or PATTERN OF ORIENTATION among his fellows has been outlined in Chapter Two in terms of the seven TEMPERAMENT TYPES by which all NATIVITIES may be classified. Man here is seen as the member of a society that provides a continual encouragement and discipline for the development of his potentials. His LINES OF SELF-DETERMINATION and his MODE OF SELF-INTEGRATION facilitate the mobilization of his powers for the accomplishment of his various ends, or for the realization of himself as a personage, and these PLANETARY emphases have been the consideration of Chapter Three. [193]

The identification and measure of the psychological resources or skills that tend to come sharply to focus in the practical or everyday make-up of the person, as what remains by the way of preliminary approach to the detailed SIXTEEN-POINT survey of a NATIVE'S potentialities, inaugurates a much wider employment of the keywords for SIGNS, HOUSES, PLANETS and ASPECTS. The ones basic to this general technique are tabulated in the appendix, and when used in the text they appear in SMALL CAPITALS.

Determination by T Cross

When one of the PLANETS lies in SQUARE ASPECT with two that are in OPPOSITION with each other, the result is a T CROSS. This probably is the most dynamic or obviously effective of the many possible FOCAL DETERMINATORS, due to the whiplash 'that is inherent in its structure and to which special attention will be given in connection with the TRIGGER in a following section of the chapter. The participation of additional SIGNIFICATORS in the CONFIGURATION gives it greater strength, but does not modify its INDICATION in the chart. What is shown primarily is a simple directness of effort or a persistence of aim and endeavor, and this of course has its manifestation through the special genius of the particular NATIVITY. The life tends to be characterized by a practical if varying unification of energies and ends in view, and the NATIVE is unhappy unless he can carry out whatever projects he undertakes. In consequence this FOCAL DETERMINATOR generally brings the interpretation of the wheel to simple and gratifying coherence. The problems of the individual life may be approached with the realization that they are likely to be interrelated, or to end up as a matter of means and [194] capabilities in a case of somebody very definitely trying to be something or to go somewhere in a process of self-discovery. The NATIVE'S desires usually are quickened and shaped by the goals he envisions, even in the cases where he is not at all inclined to think things out for himself, and his acts and reactions at times gravitate into a rather uncompromising course of self-expression. If possessions are the final incentive they are always a token of achievement, and with him any accomplishment often proves empty the moment it has exhausted its basic potentials.

If the three PLANETS constituting this CONFIGURATION primarily, or making the closest ASPECTS if more SIGNIFICATORS are involved, are found in the QUADRATURE through which the NATURAL DISPOSITION is identified by OPPOSITION, the general character is apt to be marked by an external simplicity or superficial consistency that becomes very obvious in everyday affairs. An example is provided by the horoscope of Fiorello LaGuardia, New York City's picturesque chief executive who attempted to play the personal parent for all his seven or eight million constituents. The increased emphasis of COMMON SIGNS gave his BUCKET TEMPERAMENT all the assiduousness of the mother hen to which he sometimes was likened. Tirelessly zealous for the welfare of people, he carried his fundamental efficiency to a point of fluttering officiousness. The energy with which he tackled every issue rising to confront him often was wasted because he sought to keep everything in his own hands. He spread himself thin, for lack of a more balanced orientation or a better diversification of his potentials, and yet he gave an excellent demonstration of the T CROSS and its characteristic effectiveness. [195]

Another illustration of QUADRATURE emphasis both by T CROSS and a NATURAL DISPOSITION established positively by OPPOSITION is found in the chart of Eleanor Roosevelt. Under the stress of her FIXED SIGNS and with the self-stimulation of the COSMIC CROSS she became the embodiment of basic values sufficiently to gain national and international recognition during her thirteen years as first lady in the White House. She created her column for the press and kept it interesting. It already has been pointed out that as her country's delegate to the United Nations she continued to hold her significant place in the scheme of things. The frustrations of her young womanhood were not so much a difficulty in self-expression as a lack of proper orientation for her capacities. She was thought to be too serious, but even then she was a personage. She was able to further the destiny of Franklin Roosevelt because she was equipped to see him steadily and whole, and thus to sustain him at all points in his own self-fulfillment.

A further illustration of QUADRATURE emphasis both by T CROSS and a NATURAL DISPOSITION established positively by OPPOSITION is provided by the NATIVITY of Swami Vivekenanda, where the CARDINAL SIGNS have this stress. His proselyting achievements, when he came to the fullness of his powers and had an opportunity to bring a vital phase of Eastern philosophy to the West, might be expected with his SEESAW or communicating TEMPERAMENT and his MODE OF SELF-INTEGRATION through FUNCTION and its call to some species of self-dedication. The objective emphasis through his departments of VITALITY and EFFICIENCY equipped him with the practical instincts he needed to make his message clear in a culture different from his own. [196]

The driving force of his COSMIC CROSS was directed into opportunistic channels at all points and in his thinking he saw the world and his part in its outworking destiny as a matter of illimitable pertinence. Even more comprehensively than Jeddu Krishnamurti he presented reality as poised forever in an eternal immediate.

The one PLANET that constitutes the short leg of the T CROSS, by forming the SQUARES with the two lying in OPPOSITION with each other, reveals the particular nature of any accentuated energy or effort toward a particular end. It is said to be in POINT FOCUS, as in distinction from the HIGH FOCUS set up whenever any one of the bodies becomes a HANDLE, CUTTING or REINS PLANET in the overall PATTERNS, and in its own nature and through its place by HOUSE and SIGN it identifies the area and conditions of experience as well as the facets of selfhood that create the potential of more than average achievement in a given NATIVITY. Thus the horoscope of Mayor LaGuardia presents the POINT-FOCUS Uranus, SIGNIFICATOR of his INDEPENDENCE or uncompromising originality of spirit, in (1) the HOUSE of OFFSPRING or a thorough giving of self to suggest the best channeling in CIRCUMSTANCES of his throwing of himself into his self-manifestation, and in (2) the SIGN of ASSIMILATION to indicate that in general FUNCTION his accomplishment stems from his ability to draw the totality of life about him into the very fiber of his own consciousness. Since Uranus also is in HIGH FOCUS as a HANDLE PLANET his experimentative self-projection is a basic factor in establishing the course of his own destiny.

The chart of Eleanor Roosevelt presents Jupiter in POINT FOCUS through the T CROSS. That PLANET'S place in [197] the HOUSE of UNDERSTANDING, or what the medieval astrologers identified as the higher mind, is strong supplementation in this realm of CIRCUMSTANCES for the NATURAL DISPOSITION revealed by the FIXED QUADRATURE. Its position in the SIGN of ASSURANCE is testimony to the deep inner anchorage of the ENTHUSIASM that the COSMIC CROSS brings to primary emphasis. Thus her BOWL horoscope, with its INDICATION of a basic self-containment, reveals an exceptional sharpening of its own general potentials. Neptune has been seen to show her inbuilt authority through its HIGH FOCUS as a CUTTING PLANET.

The NATIVITY of Swami Vivekenanda brings Venus to POINT FOCUS through the T CROSS, and its place in the HOUSE of IDENTITY emphasizes his respect for a true personality and the inner powers of man's spirit that is characteristic of the Vedanta point of view. The fact that the PLANET lies in the SIGN of DISCRIMINATION dramatizes the self-responsibility demanded in the Eastern metaphysics as ultimately a proper alignment of self with the Absolute. Since the chart is SEESAW none of the SIGNIFICATORS are brought to HIGH FOCUS, and as a result there is no difficulty in seeking the self-abnegation demanded by necessity from anyone sent out in the name and under the mantle of India's Ramakrishna. The APPRECIATION made focal by the COSMIC CROSS strengthens the manifestation of character required under the MODE OF SELF-INTEGRATION and its objective emphasis of FUNCTION by MAJOR ASPECTS, and in consequence there was no meditative otherworldliness whatsoever in Vivekenanda's teachings.

When the QUADRATURE emphasized by a T CROSS is different from the one given stress by a NATURAL DISPOSITION [198] through OPPOSITION, as can be the case very commonly with a negative INDICATION of the latter, there is no modification of the over-all slant of the interests but the direction of the energies may have a broader sweep. There is the occasional instance when the PLANETS in the COSMIC CROSS contribute to FOCAL DETERMINATION through PREPONDERANCE, and this supplementary INDICATION will have attention in a following section, but nothing ever changes the general set of the perspective from birth. In the usual case there is the fundamental dependence on an over-all orientation within a definite realm of interest, as shown by the NATURAL DISPOSITION, and then there may be the more immediate self-projection centered similarly in one of the three areas of this general sort without any necessity that it be the same one. There are but few and then only apparent exceptions to the rule that whatever is found in a horoscope by competent observation in one respect will hold true and correct in its own terms, irrespective of what else may be discovered by continuing and competent DELINEATION.

An example of the double emphasis by QUADRATURE is found in the horoscope of Emily Brontë. By NATURAL DISPOSITION she leaned fundamentally to ideas and values, but through her T CROSS in COMMON SIGNS she was led to counter the abysmal bleakness and psychological distortion of the life about her and meet the need for a continual outpouring of her own passionate and frustrated nature by an everyday contact with other and very average people. The fact that this was possible for her inarticulate and shy personality only in vicarious fashion through her writing does not alter the effective nature of her self-projection. [199] Uranus as brought to POINT FOCUS endows her with the necessary INDEPENDENCE of spirit and originality of resource. Its situation in the HOUSE of IDENTITY or everyday selfhood helped her develop her humanistic impulses through the creatures she brought to life within herself, and so in a sense made very real facets of her own selfhood. The place of Uranus in the SIGN of ADMINISTRATION gave her a needed executive gift for directing her great pent-up creative energies to their consummation in the art form that actually suited her immediate purposes and the general set of her character. Like Swami Vivekenanda she was born with no PLANET brought to HIGH FOCUS as any measure of limitation for her outer role in the world, and her SEESAW TYPE gave her every facility for channelling her talents as imaginatively as she wished. Under her MODE OF SELF-INTEGRATION this could be as impersonally as she desired.

Another illustration of emphasis in two QUADRATURES, through a T CROSS and the OPPOSITIONS giving a negative indication of NATURAL DISPOSITION, is provided by the chart of Katherine Mansfield, the perfecter of a form of short story or character sketch that has achieved wide popularity in recent years. There is a CARDINAL stress to show the basic nature of her perspective as a sort of photographic alertness, and she can be seen under her opportunistic slanting as essentially the product of her times and of the general intellectual milieu in which she came to prominence. Unlike Emily Brontë she has a PLANET in HIGH FOCUS, and Neptune indicates an authority of insight not as a philosophical depth but as an acquired skill in getting at the roots of human motives. Her T CROSS is [200] in the FIXED QUADRATURE with Mercury brought to POINT FOCUS, and the place of MIND in the HOUSE of CONFINEMENT and the SIGN of CREATIVITY is clue to the rigorous or even fervent self-discipline that in turn is explanation for the meticulous work on which her reputation rests. Her LOCOMOTIVE pattern shows the great momentum of her self-energizing capacity while the COSMIC CROSS reveals the immediate dynamics of her self-expression.

A further illustration of double emphasis by QUADRATURE, again through a T CROSS and OPPOSITIONS indicating a NATURAL DISPOSITION effective when the NATIVE was twenty-eight years old, is found in the horoscope of Walt Disney. This time the negative emphasis of the FIXED QUADRATURE accompanies a T CROSS in CARDINAL SIGNS with the moon in POINT FOCUS. Aided by the place of this PLANET of FEELING in the HOUSE of IDENTITY, he has been successful in creating altogether unique powers of personality through the warmth and gentle reality of his Alice-in-Wonderland creatures, and with the moon also in the SIGN of EQUIVALENCE he has been helped to achieve his superb blending of fact and fantasy. His SEESAW TEMPERAMENT has endowed him with his talent for real communication, and his COSMIC CROSS has given an opportunistic aliveness to his self-projection. The lack of HIGH FOCUS in the wheel has served to preserve the artistic fluidity he has required, and his MODE OF SELF-INTEGRATION has made him the product of CIRCUMSTANCES and equipped him with his completely personal concern for his own ideas.

The T CROSS is in no wise less effective when any of the ASPECTS are completed ACROSS THE LINE OF THE SIGN, although in such a case there is no emphasis of QUADRATURE. [201] An example of this is provided by the NATIVITY of Admiral Peary, in whose case there also is no indication of NATURAL DISPOSITION and hence no particular stress of COMMON, CARDINAL or FIXED SIGNS at all. Mars in early Libra completes the COSMIC CROSS with Jupiter poised on the edge of Aries and Saturn situated in late Gemini. Since the ORBS are narrow and the ASPECTS strong, there is every evidence of the power of practical self-expression shown in the career. Saturn in POINT FOCUS gives an accentuated SENSITIVENESS that has been brought out in connection with the NATIVE'S exceptional concern over his public relations or the credit that he felt was his due, and with the painstaking care with which he planned his expeditions. The PLANET is placed in the HOUSE of FRIENDSHIP or necessary attention to future potentials and long-range objectives, and in the SIGN of VIVIFICATION or an assiduousness in giving life and morale to things in general. Meanwhile his Mars in HIGH FOCUS endows him with his marked indomitability, and his BUCKET TEMPERAMENT describes the missionary zeal with which he pursued his ends.

Where there is more than one T CROSS in a horoscope there is INDICATION of some exceptional division of labor in the psychological make-up, such as often becomes an ineradicable or deep-seated rift in the harmony of selfhood as a whole. This situation in an astrological wheel calls for an adjustment in the life with a potential end result of a redoubled force of self-projection, and perhaps also an unusual ability to reconcile differences in others if only it does not slip off into some unhappily eccentric distortion of the NATIVE'S own character. An illustration is found in the chart of Mohandas Gandhi. The ELEVATED [202] and all-important moon brought to POINT FOCUS in the FIXED CONFIGURATION lies in the HOUSE of HONOR and the SIGN of ASSURANCE. This shows the FOCAL DETERMINATION of his public self-expression under the LESSER LIGHT, and also indicates the depth of FEELING and conviction that actuated him in every move and that at length strengthened his efforts to the point of success through a building up of idea. In the meanwhile the equally ELEVATED Uranus brings pointing to the dynamic stress of CARDINAL SIGNS by T CROSS and offers a clue to the opportunistic INDEPENDENCE of a policy that he was able to execute in a sort of alter-ego manifestation of himself. The fact that he could switch from one to the other of these methods of immediate self-projection more or less at will, and thus make it impossible for his enemies to box him in his own confusion by any special consistency of measures to thwart him, is the practical value of the two-pronged POINT FOCUS. His INDEPENDENCE is revealed in the HOUSE of UNDERSTANDING and the SIGN of EXPANSION or growth, and in consequence the practical moves that brought the accomplishment of his broadly conceived objective constituted a species of organic opportunism as given form in his dramatization of satyagraha or soul force.

Another illustration is provided by the horoscope ot Leon Trotsky. Here a POINT FOCUS of the FIXED moon demands the self-projection of the FEELING into immediate practicalities, and in Trotsky's case this was the sacrifice of mere personal gratification to the cause in which the self could be superpersonal. The PLANET'S place in the HOUSE of IDENTITY and the SIGN of ASSURANCE suggests the measure of a Great-I-Am spirit almost necessary under [203] such an emphasis. The POINT FOCUS of the COMMON Mercury in the HOUSE of OFFSPRING and the SIGN of ADMINISTRATION brought the MIND to focus in the discipline of the NATIVE'S children that here of course were the untutored masses that he could press into the Bolshevik army as well as into the various collectivist enterprises. The two-pronged potential of the self's practical gifts permitted the marriage of the ideological and actual warfare, and had this inflexible Bolshevist prevailed over Stalin the greater fidelity to the original Marxist concepts might have carried Communism to greater because far more subtle conquests. This is on the principle that in ultimate results the fanatic can be far more dangerous to civilization than the mere human monster.

Determination by X Cross

When two OPPOSITION ASPECTS are created perpendicularly to each other so as to establish SQUARES all around the wheel, the result is the X CROSS or GRAND SQUARE. The principal difference from the T CROSS is a loss of the simple power of self-direction through POINT FOCUS. Instead there is INDICATION of a general diffusion of energy, and this often becomes as great a handicap as the overemphasized MOMENTUM of the TRINE or exaggerated ASSISTANCE of the SEXTILE. There may be other factors to give special significance to one of the four basic prongs in this CONFIGURATION however, as illustrated in Elbert Hubbard's NATIVITY where Mars is found alone in its HEMISPHERE and as a HANDLE PLANET achieves HIGH FOCUS. In such an instance there is a measure of the effectiveness shown by the T CROSS while the diffusion is still to be found. Thus Hubbard very definitely was an intellectual jack-of-all-trades. [204] With the X CROSS the NATIVE usually tends to shift emphasis rather continually from one to another phase of his being, and for the most part in somewhat unpredictable fashion or without any consistent mobilization of the self's capacities. The sage of East Aurora frequently made a missionary effort out of his tentative and at times almost aimless reaching out now to this and now to that whim of the moment, as already has been observed in connection with his BUCKET NATIVITY and his highly opportunistic NATURAL DISPOSITION. His MODE OF SELF-INTEGRATION is determined by the fact that the DEPARTMENTS of VITALITY and MOTIVATION are wholly comprised in the total COSMIC CROSS whereas EFFICIENCY except by a most unwarranted TRANSLATION OF LIGHT is represented there by one PLANET only and SIGNIFICANCE by none. His self-mobilization was through CIRCUMSTANCES and necessarily personal in nature.

Life occasionally may offer its rewards within the framework of a practical nonentity, at least as far as any superficial verdict may be concerned and as one of the ways in which the astrologer may recognize the stamp of the GRAND SQUARE in the astrological wheel. A familiar example with happy end results is found in the horoscope of Prince Albert, the talented and public-spirited consort of England's Queen Victoria. The strong-minded and persistently Germanic queen and empress, as a gentler counterpart of Russia's Catherine the Great in this respect, needed no assistance in holding the prerequisites of her sovereignty very much in her own hands even though seated on the throne of a contractual or limited monarchy. She was almost naïvely consistent in her [205] attempts to keep her ministers as much personally representative of herself as of the parliament to which she with them was equally accountable, and although she accepted her husband as a dominant partner and indeed developed an almost adolescent lean on his counsel during his lifetime he yet was held in subordination to the general situation which she alone controlled.

Prince Albert's natal map is SPLASH by TYPE and four of the PLANETS by close ORBS create the X CROSS that also includes Neptune and Pluto. His NATURAL DISPOSITION is shown by the exceptional emphasis of COMMON SIGNS by these bodies and the sun in addition. It indicates his inclination to wide human relationships and so gives a clue to the almost universal popularity he won for himself through his untiring efforts for British trade and social well-being. With no PLANET brought to either HIGH or POINT FOCUS there is little to suggest that he might have carved out a career more indubitably his own, but as prince consort he contributed significantly to the more symbolical form of a nation's leadership. His MODE OF SELF-INTEGRATION is determined by the same girdle arrangement found in the NATIVITY of Victoria, born just three months before him, but the self-ordering that while like hers is in ACTIVITY is disjunctive in his case and thus in contrast with her conjunctive emphasis. His concern was centered in the immediate and detailed responsibilities of her reign to which he gave faithful attention.

A more tragic illustration of personality caught up in the framework of the over-all innocuousness that the X CROSS may reveal is provided by the chart of the Empress Carlota, the long-insane victim of the short-lived and [206] French-sponsored imperial regime in Mexico. Maximilian, whom she had married when she was barely of age, faced the firing squad under Juarez and came to his soldier's end when she was still in her mid-twenties. Nearly three decades of her life were spent in an institution. The wheel is SEESAW, and in no case can a PLANET be in HIGH or POINT FOCUS to suggest any exceptional employment of her potentials such as might have saved her reason. Seven of the nine bodies that were effective in her lifetime are in COMMON SIGNS, and all seven participate in the GRAND SQUARE if a TRANSLATION OF LIGHT be invoked for two. Thus her NATURAL DISPOSITION is buttressed by the added QUADRATURE emphasis, and she is shown utterly dependent on people. Her MODE OF SELF-INTEGRATION, as determined by department ASPECTS, demands an objective fulfillment in FUNCTION. Unfortunately the only sort of consummation she knew, and which she would assume to be hers by birth and marriage, was cancelled as far as she could see when Napoleon III declined to challenge the military might of a United States still mobilized for the Civil War and free at last to police the Monroe Doctrine. In face of the consequences her mind gave way.

A further and happier example of the wide ramification of selfhood under the GRAND SQUARE is available in the horoscope of Ramsay MacDonald, and the change in the whole complexion of his personality before he came to the end of his days has already been observed in the discussion of his SEESAW TYPE. The X CROSS is not perfectly defined since one of the four basic SQUARES has a twelve-degree ORB and hence is effective only through a TRANSLATION OF LIGHT, but neither of the PLANETS in the wider [207] SQUARE with each other can be dropped from the CONFIGURATION to establish the more dynamic T CROSS since their ASPECTS in the GRAND SQUARE otherwise are particularly strong. The NATIVE'S communicating potentiality had its expression in his public life or political activity, and the six-PLANET CARDINAL emphasis of the COSMIC CROSS reveals the unusual and persistent opportunism by which he made his climb to the highest position in the British government. While no PLANET is brought to HIGH or POINT FOCUS, his MODE OF SELF-INTEGRATION with the conjunctive stress of ACTIVITY demands that he make a distinctively individualistic approach to reality and the fact that he met this demand from the earliest beginnings of his career is largely responsible for his success.

An example of the X CROSS with the ASPECTS formed ACROSS THE LINE OF THE SIGN is found in the NATIVITY of Alexis Carrel. The pattern is BUCKET, so that in TEMPERAMENT he has leaned to the life of service or of missionary effort in behalf of some special cause, and with his NATURAL DISPOSITION shown by the positive emphasis of FIXED SIGNS his concern has been over meanings and values. With Saturn in HIGH FOCUS as a HANDLE PLANET the chart is not deficient in self-pointing, and the PLANET has given him the essential shrewdness required for any true science. The persistent exploration of man's unknown side, and the wide popularization of what little may be known with certainty as already noted in connection with the NATURAL DISPOSITION, is clever utilization of the potentials in a GRAND SQUARE. The tendency to scattering is ordered in very firm purpose to become a disciplined spirit of untrammeled investigation. The MODE OF SELF-INTEGRATION [208] as revealed in ACTIVITY with a conjunctive emphasis shows how the NATIVE has been at his best as he has seen life as a game to be played by the strictest of rules he could put down for it.

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