Point Eight

PERSONAL SPONTANEITY

Immanuel Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason, said that the two things that filled his mind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe were the starry heavens above him and the moral law within him. The inherent sensitivity to right and wrong, or the latter of the two great mysteries to the German metaphysician, has been recognized most commonly as an expression of soul. It is character or personality as the phenomenon of conscious rather than mere biological self-continuance. The nature of this real man or true person is his fidelity to something of an inner or enduring sort, such as stands separate at all times from both physical needs and required group conformities. Here is MOTIVATION, as distinct from the VITALITY to which in the main the first seven points of the analytical system are devoted. The projection of the self-consciousness, as in contrast with mere material continuance, is not into the matrix of a physical world where body and mind are conditioned by the general culture and where the operation of living form is limited by organic structure. Instead it projects itself into a struggle with the values and transcendental implications of its self-elected and self-perpetuated acts and attitudes. The psychological compulsions and inhibitions on this level of awareness, with pyramiding senseless and self-discouraging repetitions of experience to mark them on the more [363] destructive side, are usually identified in the East as karma and in the West as frustrations.

Jupiter in any horoscope indicates the positive manifestation of man's never-ending effort to reconcile the requirements of society at large with his personal inclinations. The equilibrium an individual is able to establish between these extraphysical factors in now one instance and now another is evident most simply in his ENTHUSIASM, and this may be the sole mark of the moral personality as in distinction from the basic organic VITALITY that holds him to act and reaction at the dictates of habit and custom in most details of everyday experience. The spontaneity revealed by Jupiter is a measure of the conscious entity's ability to make use of external compulsions and limitations, instead of yielding to them without protest when they tend to thwart his self-expression. The urge-to-be is here encountered astrologically in the determination-to-be-individual, or to become reasonably self-established as a psychological as well as a physical organism. The NATIVE on this level presents himself as someone who can be loved or disliked, who offers facets of intimacy in contacts of an altogether private rather than essentially common nature and who comes to represent an eternal as in contrast with a transitory existence.

The importance of the prince's Jupiter, as equivalent to that of the elevated moon in HIGH FOCUS and of the rising Pluto with its TRIGGER, has been pointed out in connection with the over-all perspective. The department of MOTIVATION has a dynamic role in the life since with EFFICIENCY it provides the MODE OF SELF-INTEGRATION, and the CONJUNCTION of the two positive PLANETS of these [364] departments is special emphasis of the spontaneousness of the nature in rising to an issue or reaching out to its own fulfillment. The TRINE of the SIGNIFICATORS of MOTIVATION stresses the NATIVE'S gift for easy association with others on every level of experience, and it is interesting to note that he shares this with his granduncle, the Duke of Windsor. Thus he may well achieve an equal popularity and at the same time and with the unusual potential of this NATIVITY he may avoid the tragic frustrations of the older man. Adding to what already has been brought out, it can be noted now that the APPLYING QUINTILE of Venus and SEPTILE of Mercury to Jupiter endow the projective personality with (1) a TALENT for recognizing pertinency or worthiness in everything that can be drawn into experience and (2) a FATALITY or inescapability in the sense of the rightness and justification characterizing every turn the self-expression may take. Thus there is an amorality that in the ultimate and broader point of view is the greatest morality of all. While the self at root may feel it owes nothing to others, it yet has niot the slightest inclination to exploit them or to take undue advantage of their resources or privileges. The OPPOSITION of Uranus and Jupiter, that has a vocational significance to which attention will be given, intensifies the AWARENESS of a total independence or of a rather complete exemption from the restraints with which an average person has to deal. The problem of the life is not the execution of its impulses but rather their formulation and refinement.

For a practical or everyday understanding of the personal spontaneity in the case of Prince Charles it may [365] be observed that Jupiter lies in the HOUSE OF OFFSPRING, the SIGN of ADMINISTRATION and a degree symbolized by the Pope. 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 realize that (1) in CIRCUMSTANCES the self-conscious projection of the self is primarily a perpetuation of itself through a continual giving of new birth to phases of itself when others act or react in its image or after its example, (2) in FUNCTION the execution of this role of the myth figure is through what in probable actuality will have to be a very subtle and largely subconscious self-apotheosis, and (3) in every passing or recurrent focus of the moment the instinctive move to accomplish such an end will be to assert himself with almost pontifical authority. All this can be summarized by saying that the prince possesses a dramatic ability to enlist and hold support for whatever he may undertake.

The FIFTH HOUSE provides the INDICATION in CIRCUMSTANCES of the distribution, through the personality's relatively uninhibited or essentially naïve acts and reactions, of whatever elements of experience have converged for its convenience under the general pattern of its self-conscious existence revealed at the FIRST or in connection with the personal horizon. In the NATIVITY of Prince Charles the mansion contains Jupiter and Mars, and since both of these are INTERCEPTED the ENTHUSIASM and INITIATIVE of self-expression are distributed subjectively. Thus these phases of his conscious manifestation of himself are shown as characteristically individual in confirmation of the fact that his life has little if any shaping under the compulsion [366] of external events. The HOUSE contains its own LORD and hence the situation here, as at the FOURTH but nowhere else, is one of primary nondependence on direction or control from others or through transient eventualities. The evidence piles up to show that the perpetuation of a rather unexampled uniqueness of character, emphasized as dramatically here as in the basic cradling of itself at the FOURTH, is entirely in its own hands.

The CUSP of the FIFTH HOUSE lies in the sign of CREATIVITY and a degree symbolized by crowds coming down the mountain to listen to one man, and the horoscopic formula in stressing (1) the personal necessity that the NATIVE gestate his own ultimate projection of himself into enduring reality and (2) the general necessity that his self-expression comprise something of universal significance to which all people will be receptive in a very practical fashion, can be reduced to a simple statement with accurate insight to the effect that the prince always will manage to make his individual acts and opinions of real interest and value to everybody around him.

<< Previous | Table of Contents | Continue >>