The Tenth House

*

THE TENTH HOUSE

Dane Rudhyar

In the fourth house having acquired an at least instinctive realization of what life and his ancestry have made available for him to use — second house — as well as a knowledge of what his environment allows and gives him opportunities to do — third house — the individual learns to stabilize and organize his energies in terms of what he experiences to be basic factors in his personality. He finds out where he belongs in the narrow field of his family, an what stand, instinctively or consciously, he has to take as a person. His character takes on definite form; out of the depth of his being and as a result of the interplay of all his organic functions, he experiences power, or — if he has been conditioned by weaknesses or frightening or chaotic environment — powerlessness.

In the tenth house the individual meets experiences which result from the fact he has succeeded, or failed, in gaining a social position — that is, a place in the complex ritual of social, public, or professional activities. He is integrated, or fails to become integrated, into the greater whole in which he has learned, or failed to learn, to participate cooperatively. He has a place, a definite function, a public status in his community. Because of this status he has some degree of social power, which in our society primarily implies money but in other societies might mean other factors also related to social or communal power and prestige. In the broadest sense the term office implies a function or role which an individual performs together with other individuals. He is an "officiant" in a vast collective ritual. It is this "office" which defines his stand in the community as well as what he has been able to achieve as an individual.

The tenth house is the house of achievement. A series of gradual developments, in which seventh house relationships are particularly important, comes to a head ("head" is in Latin caput, from which the word, achievement, is derived). These developments were potentialities within the original impulse, or logos — "word" — which the Ascendant symbolizes. First house potential theoretically becomes actualized fully in the tenth house, if all has gone well during the process of actualization which is full of pitfalls, obstacles, and possibilities of losing one's way.

The individual and the social position he comes to fill are, in a sense, polar opposites, as are the fourth and tenth houses. They should complement each other, as all opposites are meant to do. The combination of the right person with the office most meaningful to him constitutes the consummation of human existence, at all levels of activity. Such a consummation is rather rarely attained in our present-day anarchic society, which may explain the often visible contrast between the qualitative value of the person and the character of the office he fills. A man may find what he calls his "vocation" — a tenth house realization — but this does not guarantee that he will have passed satisfactorily through the testing process which allows him, and others involved in the process, to see whether or not he is actually ready for an effectual discharge of the duties of the office to which such a vocation points. In the tenth house an individual is judged by the only test that is existentially significant: the proof of works.

Can the individual, who believes he has a vocation, perform? To per-form is to act through and in terms of a definite form. A pianist performs a composition according to what the musical score demands, not only in terms of muscular virtuosity but of psychological maturity and understanding — ninth house characteristics. Is the would-be officiant truly able to fill significantly the office to which his vocation has drawn him? Can he be trusted with the power inherent in the office?

Any social office — any job or professional activity which has an organic and integral function in a community — provides the officiant with social power. The tragedy inherent in our individualistic and supposedly democratic social system is that the performance of a social function releases its power largely, and often exclusively, in the form of money, and money is an abstract form of social power which can be hidden, manipulated, used for any purpose, and thus inorganically used. Sexual and emotional power which builds up in the fourth house may also be used inorganically and for abstract and unrealistic ego purposes, but this egocentric and nerve-stimulating or glamorous use usually leads to satiety and boredom, or illness. The use of money has practically no limits, because it comes to mean the use of power — most of all power over people. And the thirst for power can very rarely be slaked. This is the curse of money and the meaning it has acquired in capitalist society.

A man in charge of a social office, especially if this office is indispensable to the welfare of the community, may be confronted with crucial experiences. Especially if he assumed this function without having been truly tested, not only for his intellectual and technical skill, but for the quality of his psychological responses to the type of decision he will have to make, the individual may lack the love and cooperative will — seventh house — the sense of responsibility — eighth house — and the understanding — ninth house — necessary to the performance of his tasks. The results of such a situation are often tragically demonstrated by the behavior of policemen and Army men as well as of many Congressmen, senators, and presidents.

In a truly "organic" democracy, the misuse of the power given to a person by virtue of his office should be considered more criminal than the misuse of purely personal energies, especially under emotional stress or physical deprivation, for instance, hunger. Thus if a policeman lacking self-control brutalizes people in a public demonstration, or takes advantage of his position — and of the fact his testimony will hardly be challenged in a law court — to blackmail someone whose favors he desires, or to extract money for "protection," such a behavior should lead, not to mere dismissal, but to criminal prosecution. This is a social crime, and as such it is more destructive of communal health and harmony than a personal crime such as stealing, or injuring some other person for purely personal reasons. In the same way, a general who sends his troops off to a useless death or who shows a clear incapacity for handling a military situation should not only be demoted, but criminally prosecuted. There can be no excuse for repeated inefficiency and emotional or stupid inefficiency in the performance of a public function, even if in many cases it is the whole social system and its procedures for promotion which are largely to be blamed.

No social position should ever be held permanently by any individual, regardless of his character, or the value and efficiency of his performance; the security this involves, the protection from dismissal or even prosecution for irresponsible use of power or authority, is what causes bureaucracies to become cancerous growths in the body politic. Any public performer would very soon lose his or her popularity if his or her performance suddenly revealed deterioration, save possibly in the case of an aging public idol who has become a kind of historical figure that people long to see before he or she disappears. Yet a bad artistic performance does not necessarily hurt the community; the conduct of a war or the over-forceful police reaction to a peaceful public protest does.

The glorification of the individual as an independent and unique fact of existence obviously has a valid purpose, especially during certain historical periods. But no person actually stands alone or can achieve the full actualization of his powers without the cooperation of society. Individual success is a myth. What succeeds is the society — and ultimately mankind — through an individual who has developed powers of mind or skills which are actually the result of the endeavors and struggles of countless preceding generations. In many instances, of course) a man reaches power and success only by crushing or despoiling many other human beings.

An individual who has reached a certain degree of efficiency in his social or official performance very often may experience frustration and enmity because the system — the Establishment — refuses to be transformed in spite of glaring inefficiencies and obsolescence. Social structures and institutions have a tremendous amount of inertia, that is, of resistance to change, and conflicts inevitably arise between them and individuals who have come to feel, love, think, and understand in terms of a new and more adequate level of relationship. These conflicts then lead to eleventh house type of experiences.

When in the above paragraphs I have spoken of a society and social values, I was not referring to any particular social system, institution, or cultural standards. It is not "the system" in itself or any particular kind of performance which was discussed, but the relationship between an individual or a small group and society as a whole. The particular kind of social system in which a man lives may be dehumanizing or archaic, or a perversion of a beautiful original ideal; then the individual person may seek with valid reasons to transform or overthrow it. No individual, however, can significantly improve, reform, or transform what he is not personally and effectively involved in. In the tenth house field of activities he becomes involved, and he experiences the results of his involvement. And he has to be involved, whether or not he consciously accepts the reality of it. Even the yogi meditating in a mountain cave is involved, often very consciously and powerfully, but sometimes in a negative way. Northern Buddhism scorned the Pratyeka Buddhas who sought to reach Nirvana alone, with no concern whatever for the fate of the rest of mankind. What can be reached in this way is only an illusory Nirvana; in a new cycle the deserter will be forced to meet the karma of his "spiritual selfishness." There can be no realistic achievement that is not achievement within humanity, and essentially in terms of human evolution as a whole.

The cusps of the tenth house — the Mid-heaven — is one of the four angles of the birth chart. As we saw in Part One of this book, Mid-heaven of the usual astrological chart is not the real Zenith; that is a point in the Sky just above the head of a man standing erect on the surface of our globe. It is rather the point at which the meridian — a great circle which passes through the actual Zenith and Nadir — cuts the ecliptic, that is, the plane of the apparent annual motion of the Sun in the Sky from one vernal equinox to the next. The Mid-heaven is therefore a "solar" factor. It refers to vitalistic processes. It represents the consummation of organic and communal functions. It is significant mostly where a society operates in terms of biological values and of strictly natural rhythms, typically an agricultural society.

When a man reaches a state of true individualization and is able to operate as an autonomous and authentic self, his consciousness should be able not only to function or participate in a life-oriented community and in biospheric activities, but to contact a transcendent field of experience and a superphysical type of energies. According to the new level of astrological symbolism, this field is that of the stars — that is, of galactic space. As a man stands erect, his spinal column becomes a section of a line which through him links the center of the Earth and one particular star exactly above his head. This star is potentially a great symbol; it represents that man's spiritual identity, his "place" in the vast galaxy.

Today in astronomical practice it is not possible to identify such a star, and perhaps it is best that this should be the case, considering man's present stage of evolution. Moreover, should we be able to determine this star we would not know what symbolic meaning or character to give to it. Yet potentially the star exists. If we see the galaxy as "the Womb of Souls," as the ancients did, then there is in this vast cosmic matrix one star that represents our unrealized and unembodied "Soul." Its "ray" passes through us when we stand in the tallness of our innermost selfhood. It is the symbol of our cosmic office, and that of the Mastery which each individual someday may come to realize and to allow to incarnate in his transformed total person.

The Mastery seeks the one who will embody its qualities and its power in consciousness and in transpersonal deeds. The great office seeks the officiant who would both fulfill his natal potentialities in the required performance, and at the same time become a totally self-consecrated agent and servant of its purpose. Two movements are present in the true consummation of an individualized person: the man aspires to, works toward, dedicates himself consciously and irrevocably to the purpose of a social — and eventually a planetary and cosmic — function. At the same time a complementary and synchronous "descent" of the archetype — or divine Idea — which this function expresses takes place to meet the individual person's "ascent." The Mastery meets the Master-to-be, and in this meeting Heaven unites with Earth, God with a man who thereby becomes an immortal aspect of Man.

This is the Transfiguration process, on the Mount where the Son of God and the Son of Man become one. The star above blends its rays with the tone of the self within the human heart.

The Astrological Houses