Point One

THE ROLE TO BE PLAYED

Whatever attitude the NATIVE may take towards the world at large, or however he may deal with his own character and reactions, fundamentally he has a role to play. The substance and vitality with which he endows it will determine the worldly measure of his success or failure. The astrological INDICATION of his capacity for playing this part on the great stage of life, whether with ease or with great agony of spirit, is provided by the sun. The GREATER LIGHT reveals his ever-individual WILL or purpose as a simple and continuing manifestation of his original urge-to-be. No matter how complex his situation may become, it is at this first point that he may be identified both as what he is at root and as what he remains when unencumbered by the superstructure of his conditioning.

There are five steps in the interpretation of each of the ten PLANETS as it in its turn provides one of the points of the sixteen comprising the general detailed analysis. First is a consideration of any special importance it may have, either in its own nature or in distinction from the other nine, in connection with the TEMPERAMENT TYPE and any CONFIGURATION that creates FOCAL DETERMINATION for the particular horoscope. Second is an examination of its INDICATION as a result of its ASPECTS that can be recognized in any special pertinency through the over-all [315] perspective, and in any case as a result of its relationship with any other PLANET when together they provide a departmental LINE OF SELF-DETERMINATION. The third, fourth and fifth steps are the identification in order of its characteristic activation in the given NATIVE'S life of (1) CIRCUMSTANCES as revealed by its HOUSE position, (2) FUNCTION as shown through its place by SIGN, and (3) his passing or recurrent focus of the moment as indicated by the zodiacal degree in which it is found. For the purposes of this and similar techniques the degrees of the zodiac are distinguished from each other through a special symbolization of their particularly individual natures. In some respects such symbolical degrees actually constitute a complete system of horoscope interpretation, which is given a full exposition in the Sabian Symbols in Astrology. It is from that volume that the symbols are taken to illustrate the sixteen-point technique in these pages.

The sun in the horoscope of Prince Charles has very few major ASPECTS. The CONJUNCTION with Mercury is found in approximately half of all charts, and its mere presence has little individual significance. The SQUARE with Saturn shows the NATIVE'S determination intensified, and made too sensitive at times to possible disagreement or hindrance, but this is a detail of minor DELINEATION. Only the square with Pluto is important, since it constitutes the TRIGGER CONFIGURATION. Meanwhile it must be noted that the LESSER LIGHT in contrast with the GREATER is in HIGH FOCUS and has additional and exceptional DIGNITY as EXALTED, ELEVATED and well-ASPECTED. Indeed, it has five major ASPECTS as against the sun's three. The sun has no DIGNITY and the key characteristic of the NATIVITY, [316] when it comes to the sixteen-point analysis, is the complete subordination of the WILL to the FEELING on the one hand and to the service it must give to Pluto on the other. As indicating the SEPARATING function of the TRIGGER, or the practical phase of that relationship, it DELINEATES the response to the whiplash originating at the ASCENDANT in the activities charted by Pluto. The WILL becomes principally an obedient or administrating factor, and as such it distributes the capacities of self as an agent for something larger than self and so only incidentally carries out anything that might be identified in any actuality as private purpose. The role in life under the highly emphasized INDICATION of Pluto becomes of necessity a transcendental one, rather than the convenience of ego realization in the normal case. With the quite extraordinary horoscopic stress here it must be taken as something more than the superficial myth figure actually required by the British crown. Because the APPLYING PLANET in the TRIGGER is so much more significantly DIGNIFIED, the NATIVE is revealed as concerned fundamentally in developing and establishing his special role rather than in gaining his satisfaction from playing it.

The three constant factors used for the DELINEATION of every PLANET, node and PART can be reduced to a species of formula. Thus for a practical or everyday understanding of the role to be played by the prince it is said that his sun is found in the HOUSE of the HOME, the sign of CREATIVITY and a zodiacal degree symbolized by a bunny metamorphosed into a fairy. Possibly the most difficult operation in the sixteen-point interpretive procedure is the translation of this horoscopic formula into a statement [317] that can (1) represent an accurate insight into the character and (2) have direct significance and make simple sense for every person concerned. Necessary of course is a sense of the pertinent reality in which any understanding must be framed. As already stated, all intelligent analysis must be in context. Here the idea of the home is of the private interests in which the purposes of self are cloistered rather than assisted to any execution of their own ends, although the latter proposition would be the expectation in any case of a less ultimately transcendental purposing or a more normal cradling in CIRCUMSTANCES. A WILL given its FUNCTION emphasis here in CREATIVITY is called on rather particularly to produce its self-drive out of its own resources, as in contrast with the usual socially conditioned and encouraged outspilling of itself. The symbol for the degree belongs to a handful of rather elfin concepts in the Sabian series. These all carry an implication of otherworldliness, or of some sort of psychological exemption from the common limitations of mediocrity, such as is the plague of all too many members of the human family, and in the present instance this particular one offers a sharp confirmation of the NATIVE'S highly deviate potentiality. The transition from normal creature to soulless entity is hardly a literal suggestion. What is indicated is a necessary maturation into a person who, in the terms of what already has been brought out, cannot ever live for himself but instead must exist as the special incarnation of some social ideal. He must be the imaginative reality in which others may have their particular self-fulfillment. He obviously will have to nurture the tradition into which he has been born, [318] and astrologically he is required to create an effective myth figure very characteristically revealed in his own person. He must become the epitome of everything representing the new order of human conception under Pluto that the members of the British Commonwealth of Nations may be brought to idealize in common. In sum, he must produce a special magic with which all may become familiar.

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