Introductory

THE NATURE OF ASTROLOGY

Probably every school child is familiar with the story of King Midas, who was offered the granting of any wish as his reward for a service to the god Dionysus and who by asking that everything he touched might turn to gold found himself on the verge of starving to death. All unexpectedly Midas met the basic dilemma of life.

Every individual is caught between the necessity that some things stay put and that other things be manipulated or given useful employment of some kind. He finds he is able to apply effort in one way because there is effective resistance to this same effort in another. He learns that there must be the ground on which to stand as well as the fruit of the tree he must eat in order to live. Gold for ages has been the greatest of all symbols of the fixed or stabilized face of reality, and the act of touching a piece of bread or lifting a cup of wine to the lips is an equally eternal symbol of reality's dynamic and no less important face. There is that to be used, and the necessity to use it.

Whether his problems arise in connection with the trivialities in which he is involved, or with desperate issues of life and death, man forever finds himself in the middle as far as these two faces of reality are concerned. Indeed, it can be said that every crisis with which he has to deal will prove to be a matter of this middleness in some respect, and in consequence it should be obvious that any [4] analysis of human nature or of the various situations in which various individuals are found must be within the frame of reference that reality provides conveniently and consistently in the twin-faceted manifestation of itself. The literal middleness at any given point of man's being is not a place or a moment or a characteristic of any kind, but rather it is the personal balance or equilibrium or state of poise that constitutes his immediate actuality or identity. It is with this personal identity as ever linking substance and necessity, and with the ramification of its constitution and involvement, that the astrological horoscope is concerned.

Of the many twin faces of reality in manifestation the most all-encompassing pair are existence and experience. Here are the completely complementary phases of eternality and universality, or the most unconditioned forms of staying put on the one hand and of doing and knowing on the other. In general the static extreme of this complementation is represented by the material universe in its ultimate unity, and the dynamic extreme is encountered in the illimitability and unimpeachable coherence of conscious phenomena. In this somewhat abstruse way of looking at the matter it can be said that astrological analysis deals primarily with those factors of balance in its makeup through which any living organism (1) maintains its physical existence in an everyday world of time and space and (2) continues its experience of its own individuality in the more intangible world of consciousness it shares with other experiencing organisms.

In any case it will help the student or investigator of astrology if he will remember that a universal and eternal [5] move towards equilibrium characterizes reality wherever it is found and under whatever conditions it makes itself manifest. And with perhaps greater simplicity it can be explained that what may seem to be the baffling intricacies of horoscopic procedure are in every instance a way of measuring the efforts of some particular human individual (1) to come to rest or to achieve stability in now one and now another phase of his continuing existence and (2) to gain various forms of self-fulfillment or personal enrichment of his experience in the shifting areas of his self-expression. If the astrological testimonies are taken one at a time, and considered each in its own direct and immediate implication, the process of interpretation need never be at all complicated even if much patient and step-by-step identification is required in order to trace out the many threads woven into the total fabric of character.

In point of fact the astrological chart through the details of its interpretation reveals nothing more than the nature and consequences of human action and reaction. What must be realized is that whatever may be brought out is always and of necessity in the light of (1) the unique compulsions or incentives that differentiate the given person and activate his underlying determination to survive and of (2) those basic potentials of general human experience such as in varying combinations constitute the effective actuality both of himself and of mankind as a whole. Here is the phenomenon of character that identifies each individual in his distinction from his fellows, and that also and even more importantly defines the ultimate orderliness and illimitability of human characteristics through which people are linked as well as separated. [6]

On practical levels the horoscope is essentially a means for the interpretation of the experiencing entity in terms of a pattern established by (1) the conditions of its emergence into the world of time and space and (2) the consequent process of its self-realization as it continues to do things and to know things, and as the doing and knowing establish the particular life span. From an astrologer's point of view the emergence is not only a single and original event that can be made the basis of a horoscope, but also is an endless proposition of making and changing the multitudinous phases of balance and equilibrium through which the individual functions. Hence an astrological birth map has a constant pertinency, but it does not identify any unchanging complex of time-and-space limitations. Rather it is forever fluid in its revelation and ordering of human potentialities, exactly as life itself is not only wholly liquid at its best but at its worst is still susceptible of endless self-development and self-fulfillment.

From these purely pragmatic premises it may be asserted that horoscopic analysis deals with the individual at ever-adjusting and almost infinitely varying and multiple points of poise or middleness between (1) his own continuing self-integrity or character and (2) the exterior world with the illimitable pertinencies it presents or threatens to withhold. As each person contemplates the two faces of reality, in the immeasurable variety in which they tend to be manifest in his own particular sphere, he always will find any problem at focus in what can be explained as the middleness of himself between them. The astrologer in consequence identifies some established and recognizable equilibrium in a given life as a clue to that [7] life's essentially fixed orientation in one over-all face of things, and proceeds to point out the practical value of act and attitude in the areas of self-realization that come to pertinency as a manifestation of the other or balancing face. This is, in epitome, the method to be presented.

For the sake of the newcomer in astrology, or the investigator who may remain quite uninterested in the minutiae of details in horoscopy, the use of words in a technical sense that might not be anticipated or realized is indicated by placing them in SMALL CAPITALS.

When it comes to representation in a horoscope the outer manifestations of reality or the general pertinences of the time-and-space world are identified as CIRCUMSTANCES, and they are charted in the astrological wheel through the HOUSES. The inner or personal being is recognized as character, and this is seen to be revealed through any or every FUNCTION of a self moving in its own interest whether (1) more or less automatically as the basic organism or (2) more consciously as an expression of desire and understanding. Character has its horoscopic INDICATION through the SIGNS of the zodiac. The PLANETS provide a charting of (1) the individual's potential response to any given eventuality and (2) the probable consequences of any action he may initiate whether on relatively pure impulse or under special and recognizable compulsions.

Character analysis is the phase of horoscopy to which the greatest attention has been given in the century or more of its recent and wide revival, and to this the present text is devoted exclusively. The dividing of astrology into various quite distinctive techniques in this fashion is merely a convenience in exposition and study, and [8] should in no way encourage the idea that human life ever submits to such a neat boxing off of its affairs in everyday experience or indeed that any individual holds to any special form of self-orientation in parallel to broad and rigid classifications except as it may be convenient for the moment and in the situation.

Commonly distinguished from character analysis in horoscopic counselling, and to be given but the barest mention in the present text, is the determination (1) of advantageous or disadvantageous times for particular act and decision and (2) the estimation of the value or significance of events on the basis of the moment and situation of their occurrence. Here is a technique based on the obvious fact that man not only exists but that he also experiences, and that his experience most fundamentally is the modification of his existence in terms of growth, conscious awareness and various forms of self-expression with consequences. As he acts and reacts in the manifestation of his make-up in shifting situations in a temporal progression he finds himself now the master and now the victim of each present moment. Whether he is the one or the other depends on the continual adjustment through which the actualities of his life come into equilibrium with his potentialities and thereupon produce the phenomena that can be measured astrologically. Measurement may be from the standpoint of character, and the stabilities or self-fulfillment it establishes for itself, or from the perspective of the equilibrial balances that are strictly of the moment in the world at large. When the horoscopic approach is of the latter sort the procedure is an employment of DIRECTIONS, PROGRESSIONS, TRANSITS and the like, [9] and these are considered by the author in his companion volume, The Scope of Astrological Prediction.

Actually it is from the observed correspondences between PLANETARY cycles and human events that the art of the horoscope probably had its origin, and a full exposition of its common elements in the light of such a hypothesis is presented in the foundation book of this series, the author's Astrology, How and Why It Works. It seems quite apparent that the recurrent events of individual histories reaching well back before written record have established the generalities on which all current stellar analysis is built. The astrologer today bases every conclusion on the almost self-evident proposition that what people have done under certain circumstances, and in accordance with the personal capacity of each one of them, must remain the sole ground for any anticipation of what they may do as well as of what events they are likely to precipitate consciously or unconsciously in similar instances at other times and places.

Astrology's fundamental method requires no departure from the basic procedures of general psychology, and certainly it is not necessary to affirm that there is any magical penetration to hidden plans or purposes of a cosmic nature or of a divine intelligence of some sort. The practice of astrology may be made a religion, as can any or every form of interpretive or healing art, but the modus operandi of the horoscope is still a well-established procedure that has had its principal validation and most consistent refinement through the commonly accepted scientific realizations of the present day. The skilled analysts no less than the fortunetellers may buttress their [10] judgment with intuitive insight, and this is hardly objectionable as long as no misrepresentation or gratuitous occult claims are involved, but any abandonment of common sense can be as dangerous here as in any other area of human reasoning.

Psychological measurement is possible because the world of experience in which man exists is fundamentally social or made up most importantly of the relatively self-competent individuals who in any total perspective are pretty much like each other. The variations and differences because of which no two people ever can be precisely alike are framed in the familiar similarities that permit the recognition and description of each deviating or particular individuality. Obviously men can be known only as they may be compared with each other, and astrology for its purposes instruments this procedure of comparison by creating an archetypal or idealized personality in the zodiac. Thus Aries rules the head, which is a common possession, and there is the NATIVE whose horoscope has a strong emphasis of this SIGN and of whom it can be said that he has heady elements in his make-up. Here is the simple manipulation of universal symbols, or the form of judgment of which astrological DELINEATION is a practical refinement.

What the few have in greater proportion becomes a vital symbol since the many possess it to lesser extent or perhaps not appreciably at all, and their lack of it can become a problem. The cosmic equilibrium or total orderliness of all things actually continues because those who make a plus manifest in one direction must give stress to a balancing minus in another, with the result [11] that a given plussage is averaged out in the over-all totality, but in the meanwhile each individual must continue in his own individuality as a consistency of characteristic plusses and minuses in his own special sphere. There he must struggle with the cosmic imbalance of the moment and situation, no less than his own. Perhaps the best way to make all this clear is to turn now to the detailed exposition of horoscopy, and to the illustration of the many forms of man's effort toward equilibrium in actual cases.

The reader should know that the twelve SIGNS of the zodiac are thirty-degree divisions of the ecliptic created in the heavens by the annual course of the earth around the sun, and that they are identified by name in counterclockwise order from Aries at the vernal equinox through Pisces. He should know that the twelve HOUSES of the horoscope are similar thirty-degree divisions of the celestial equator created by the earth's turning on its axis, and that they are identified by number counterclockwise from FIRST through TWELFTH beginning at the eastern horizon at the place and moment for which the astrological wheel is calculated. He should know that the ten PLANETS used in horoscopy include the eight commonly recognized solar satellites other than the earth for which geocentric tables of position are available, or Mercury through Pluto in the order of their orbits outward from the sun, together with the sun as in geocentric perspective it takes on the earth's motion to become a ninth one and the moon as the earth's own satellite to become a tenth. A simple introduction to these and other more fundamental elements of the horoscope is provided by the author's manual for beginners, How to Learn Astrology.

<< Previous | Table of Contents | Continue >>