Point Ten

EFFECTIVE INITIATIVE

Man and his world exist in constant and exceedingly multiple interactions with each other, and these include impersonal details of ACTIVITY that are in no way less important than the personal. There are indeed the occasions when an everyday complexity of quite inconsequential living will engross a given life to the point of crowding out nearly every possible phase of any higher or actually self-conscious realization. Hence it is just as necessary for a NATIVE to organize his relatively superficial affairs, or to develop the department of EFFICIENCY properly in his scheme of existence, as it is to further his own more private and ultimate self-discovery and self-refinement. He not only must take continual account of his relations with other people in the LINE OF MOTIVATION but he must accept responsibility for the conditions in the material realms through which everything of more intimate sort is rehearsed and sustained. These practical concerns may remain very distinct from the experience of psychological outreaching and response, and the development of social ties and moral restraints that go into the creation and expansion of an individual consciousness and give a sense of enduring selfhood, but every person has what very well may be identified as the chores of his human estate. He is expected obviously enough to subordinate them to more significant achievement, but he [374] may defeat himself in every enduring dimension by neglecting the relatively trifling obligations of his basic identity.

Mars is the PLANET that reveals the manner in which the NATIVE is able to start things and to keep them going, and thus in actuality it DELINEATES the everyday or commonplace terms on which his efforts towards any given accomplishment may lead to success or failure. This practical as against psychological projection of self, or the determination-to-be-effective as in contrast with the determination-to-be-individual, is usually identified as the INITIATIVE by which he acts or reacts (1) in accordance with pertinent inner stirrings or private ideals and (2) in necessary response to any outer encouragement or compulsion stemming from matters at issue in his affairs. What is shown may be definite and even considerable violence when the life is snarled through major frustrations, and the real self has succeeded in breaking through its inhibitions by some exceptional self-mobilization, but usually it is no more than the gift for simple beginning with which every human entity is equipped from birth. It was an old proverb in Plato's time that the beginning is half the business. The inability to reach out in self-interest, no matter in how blind a fashion, is a deficiency that brings more lives to futility and disintegration than any other one factor in man's make-up. Hence the most completely undirected or unpointed efforts of somebody who is frightened or confused are merely an inadequate employment of energies that can be used to better advantage. The PLANET had a bad name in medieval horoscopy, but it is more the friend than enemy in much INDICATION. [375]

The importance of Mars in the horoscope of Prince Charles is that, as ruler of the FIFTH HOUSE in the FIFTH, it gives added testimony to the fact that he acts fundamentally out of his own hard core of selfhood and hence ultimately holds himself answerable to nobody but himself. His INITIATIVE and ENTHUSIASM through the PLANETARY CONJUNCTION are seen joined in emphasizing this self-centeredness, and as pointed out in connection with the FIFTH HOUSE the INTERCEPTION of the TWO PLANETS reveals how essentially subjective or inwardly controlled his self-expression tends to be, but Mars has no other INDICATION of primary significance. Its SEXTILE with Venus gives the LINE OF EFFICIENCY its dynamic linking with MOTIVATION to reveal the MODE OF SELF-INTEGRATION, but it is overshadowed by Jupiter in what otherwise might have been the important OPPOSITION with Uranus. The SEXTILE with Neptune confirms the shaping of all act-of-self to the unfoldment of a general destiny since OBLIGATION, by APPLYING in an ASPECT OF ASSISTANCE, provides a strengthening of the INITIATIVE.

For a practical or everyday understanding of the effective INITIATIVE in its own basic ACTIVITY in the case of the prince, it may be noted that Mars lies in the HOUSE of OFFSPRING, the SIGN of ADMINISTRATION and a degree symbolized by a child and a dog with borrowed eyeglasses. In the reduction of this horoscopic formula to a statement that is both accurate insight and simple explanation, in the framework of the over-all perspective, the astrologer may observe that (1) in CIRCUMSTANCES the first stirrings to superficial act or reaction are a manifestation of the unusually inwardly-controlled self-projection, (2) in FUNCTION [376] they never are mere impulsiveness or restlessness but instead are a beginning of specific execution of possible accomplishment or a movement towards definite ends well in mind, and (3) in every passing or recurrent focus of the moment the initiating of anything is always accompanied by a deliberately enhanced or favorably colored view of the immediate potentials. All this can be summarized by saying that Prince Charles has the very valuable instinct to make sure that whatever he starts is something he wants to do.

The THIRD HOUSE reveals the everyday encouragement for the simple chores of normal living through whatever relatively trivial facilities of the immediate ENVIRONMENT enable a NATIVE to assert himself among his fellows, and thus administer to his own practical needs with the least unnecessary compulsion and the most direct satisfaction. Tools and transportation, furniture and the useful objects at hand, the total of the people and things he may take for granted in a purely individual fashion, all assist him to get into motion in the ordinary business of life or to pick up the threads of his experience as this is necessary in the continual shifting of CIRCUMSTANCES. Here is pure convenience as the most widespread of all sanctions for action or reaction. In the NATIVITY of the prince the HOUSE contains no PLANETS, and hence the area of its rulership is not likely to produce any important crises. Something of this sort might well be expected with birth into a self-sustaining situation of well-defined opportunities and responsibilities. The LORD of the THIRD is in the FOURTH, and hence its facilitation of the host of petty operations in a human society must serve the basic [377] cradling of the over-all potentiality. The CUSP of this HOUSE lies in the SIGN of ASSIMILATION, and in a degree symbolized by a family tree, to suggest that all close-at-hand furthering of the self-expression is indeed a matter of definite inheritance to be turned to good account. Hence there is simple statement and insight in saying that Prince Charles will hardly be likely to forget his everyday prerogatives, or to hesitate to claim them.

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