*
FOUR LEVELS OF INTERPRETING HUMAN EXPERIENCE & ASTROLOGICAL DATA
Signs and symbols are produced in order to answer human needs. But there are various kinds of needs. The psychologist Abraham Maslow spoke of a hierarchy of needs, some very basic and a manifestation of what in my book, The Faith That Gives Meaning to Victory (1942), I called "man's common humanity", others less vital or crucial. In my recent book, Beyond Individualism: The Psychology of Transformation (1), I speak of a hierarchy of functions rather than of needs, for the basic fact is that human beings can operate at several levels of activity and in terms of a consciousness whose scope and power of mental association and abstraction increases at each successive level.
Four Levels of Human Functioning
1. All human beings operate at the biological level as physical organisms, as bodies. They act and react in order to satisfy a few basic organic functions such as oxygenation through breathing, blood circulation, metabolic food-assimilation, adaptation to changing temperatures and existential situations, self-protection through a complex system of nerve impacts and transmission, and self-reproduction through sex. Each of these fundamental functions has what we might call psychic overtones manifesting as drives, emotions, and an overall sense of being a particular organism whose singular characteristics differentiate it from other human organisms.
Synthesizing, as it were, all basic biological needs is the need for security, not only as a particular person, but more deeply still as a member of the human species; for, at the biological level, the preservation and expansion of the species as a whole is actually of greater concern unconscious though it may be than the safety of any particular body belonging to that species. As in all animal species, the single organism (the specimen) is always expendable; what really counts is what might happen to the species. This is the real basis of our concern with what happens to babies, or even embryos, and the very deep unconscious foundation of mother-love for the child symbolizes the perpetuation and future of the human species. Even in our period of complex and intellectual civilization, people go to great lengths to try to preserve the remaining specimens of an endangered species; and this concern is a faint reflection of what remains in the modern mind of the purely biological state of consciousness a sense of biospheric guilt.
2. When, on the basis of the need for security, human beings find in themselves the urge to come together and unite their strength against inimical forces or animals not merely according to biological descent (the family grouping), but beyond or outside of the deep organic and psychic bondage to such strictly biological types of relationships the sociocultural level of functioning is reached. At that level, the human being is more than a biological organism a "body" he or she becomes a "person". No human being should be called a person unless he or she has become a functional participant in a social collectivity. Social participation at the level of physical activity produces psychic overtones, which, being common to all the participants, are gradually and inevitably organized, into a particular "culture", or to use a modern American term, a "way of life" But a culture is really far more than a manner of living. Culture establishes itself within the collective psyche of a community as a power that controls the basic emotional responses to everyday living and the collective mentality (primitive and instinctual or more formally developed as it may be) of all the human beings born within the social organism and subjected throughout their growth to the religious beliefs, taboos, and mental assumptions of the community or tribe.
3. Most human beings today are still primarily controlled by biological drives modified and particularized by sociocultural forces. These forces are related to a specific racial temperament and the environment in which ancestors gradually formed a culture and thus a collective character transmitted from generation to generation. Nevertheless, for at least two-and-a-half or three millennia, a powerful and relentless trend toward "individualization" has developed, especially in the Western world since the Crusades, the beginning of Humanism and the European Renaissance. This trend has been given power by the development of the analytical and rational mind since the 6th century B.C. in India with the Buddha, as well as in classical Greece and the new, little understood yet deeply felt belief that every person has within himself the power to act, feel, and think as a unique individual. This individual, being symbolically considered in Christianity as a "son of God" and. in Greek philosophy as a "rational" being, was thought therefore to be superior to all biological and social compulsions. The individual was indeed superior to, and essentially independent from, the whole earthly stage on which he came to play some kind of rather incomprehensible part. This playing of a part was often given the meaning of learning a series of lessons which apparently require being, as it were, thrown into "human nature" a nature essentially alien to Man's immortal Soul.
The present result perhaps an end result of such a trend toward an even more accentuated type of individualization has been our individualistic American society in which the individual is officially glorified and theoretically given an absolute value as well as "inalienable rights" and very few duties, usually perfunctorily performed and in conditions which today often make their performance quite meaningless.
When a human being, having become a sociocultural person, is actually able to operate, (or at least consciously and emotionally claims to be able to operate as a truly autonomous individual regardless of sex, color, race, class, or religion), new needs take form in this individual's consciousness; and they have to be met. These needs are particular to each individual; yet, they take specific kinds of forms for various groups or classes of individuals. While all these individuals are trying in some manner to assert their individuality within the particular culture in which they were born and educated, they have also very often to against the rules, taboos, and mental assumptions of that culture. Their needs thus create for them more or less acute problems which the social, cultural, and religious organizations based on the paradigms and taken-for-granted beliefs of the collective past may not be able to solve, just because these problems have an inherently antisocial and anticultural character.
Within these individuals (or individuals-in-the-making, rather), primordial biological drives and "programmed" sociocultural attitudes are still operative, usually as a deep, partially unconscious, and unrecognized type of bondage to the all-human biological and the more specialized sociocultural or religious levels of existence. Conflicts thus arise, which are often highly destructive or at least confusing if not bewildering. To meet these conflicts in a state of greater awareness and understanding, and to provide valid answers to the problems inherent in the process of individualization, can be the task that a particular kind of astrology can perform. But such an astrology must be geared to the demands of individuals as they have to deal with the generic and collective factors within themselves as well as with the uncertainties of their relationships to other individuals. Such relationships always have a more or less insecure, uncertain, and ambiguous character because they are no longer founded upon the solid basis of commonly accepted sociocultural responses, as they were at the sociocultural level. At the individual or individualizing level, they are instead subject to the vagaries of egocentric reactions and personal feelings.
The individualistic level of consciousness and activity is thus the third basic level at which human beings can operate. This level has also its own specific needs, the fulfillment of which requires the use of a new type of symbols or a new type of interpretation of old biological imagery and cultural-religious myths.
4. On the foundation represented by the individual level, a fourth level is possible: the transpersonal level. And the word transpersonal, as I use it, does not merely refer to what is beyond the personal. It implies a "descent" of power that meets, as it were, the aspirations or "ascent" of the human person who, having concentrated a long series of efforts toward the goal of actually becoming a free and autonomous individual, eager to stress his or her uniqueness and originality, has found these efforts leading to serious crises of belief and identity. During such crises, many confusing experiences and perhaps unclear revelations may take place new feelings the individual could not account for, new visions and yearnings to merge with some mysterious subliminal reality, a new sense of "belonging", but not knowing really to what, and quite often hearing some strange internal voices.
All these largely unexplainable inner occurrences most likely matching and often superseding outer shocks or psychosomatic illness are expectable once the trend toward individualization and autonomy reaches an acute and perhaps dangerous state. As this happens, the experiencer may react emotionally and violently by rushing in the opposite direction, for instance longing for communal living and/or religious security whether along the lines of ancestral patterns, or following some glamorous, exotic personage or tradition. Whatever the case, conflicts and uncertainties are hardly avoidable. Guidance is sought. The need for new symbols, for a new mythos may become insistent.
Astrology can provide an answer to this need, just as it has proven able to meet the needs developing at the level of individualization. But in order to answer effectively and convincingly the needs of the new level of consciousness, a different type of approach to astrology is again necessary. A new light has to be thrown upon the old symbols derived from visible discs or dots of light in the sky. New ones have to take form to meet the demands of as yet unfamiliar crisis-situations and modern astronomy has provided us with potentially usable and most significant foundations for the birth of a new astrological mythos. On these foundations, a transpersonal kind of astrology may be built, not actually to "solve" personal problems, but to transcend them by illumining the process that produces them, and what is still more important, by suggesting how they can used in terms of a new kind of purpose.
A Multilevel Astrology
Having thus briefly outlined the character of four basic levels at which human beings can operate, I shall now try to explain how astrology can take a different form and quality at each of these levels, and how astrologers operating at each of these levels should deal with the main data provided by the cyclic interplay of celestial motions.
The evolution of human consciousness and activity through these levels, when seen from the point of view of the historical process of civilization, is a slow process. This evolution is actually synchronous with the progressive development of the means of observation used by astronomers in order to build an increasingly broad and inclusive picture of the universe. The more encompassing this picture becomes, the easier it is for human beings to ascend to higher levels of consciousness. Nevertheless, today, just as at any historical period, only a minority of people operate consciously at the higher levels. There are human beings whose consciousness is centered at each one of the four levels I have defined.
In the majority of cases, that level is, I repeat, the biological level modified by strongly differentiated cultural patterns; yet because of the revolutionary state of crisis in which humanity as a whole is now living, a great many human beings find themselves attempting to move from one level of consciousness, and often activity, to the next. A dynamic, yet highly confusing situation thus exists and it is one of the main causes of the growing popularity of astrology. To many people, astrology now appears as a significant and inspiring means of interpreting what is happening to them and predicting what can be expected to happen personally and/or collectively. Astrology is also welcome because it can foster a sense of ordered and purposeful change, as well as meaningful process.
When I speak of consciousness being "centered" at one level or another, however, I do not mean that a particular person acts or reacts only in terms of the values and purposes characterizing that one level. A human being does not remain a monolithic entity once he or she is able to think, feel, and behave at the more-than-biological and instinctual level. For example, a person may be utterly devoted to a religious cause or national community which, under certain circumstances so little values biological existence that it demands of its followers or citizens that in wartime they die to uphold the collective ideal; yet this same person may pass much of his or her time worrying about food, sexual and health problems, etc. The most independent, rugged individual not only still has to satisfy at least the most basic of his biological needs, he also uses the language of his culture in order to formulate his own opinions and life-goals; and whether in a negative or positive, destructive or constructive sense, he can hardly avoid acting and reacting in terms of the values of his family or natal social environment.
Yet, while a person's consciousness and activities may, and usually do (especially today), operate at more than one level, we can still speak of one particular level at which his or her "identity" is mainly established. Whether steadily and in terms of a true "center" of consciousness or not, a person functions mainly according to the values and rhythms of one level or another. Consciously or unconsciously, he or she also expects to be met at that level.
If a person asks for knowledge or guidance, the asking is thus conditioned, or at least colored, by the level at which he or she mainly operates, or by a conscious or subconscious attempt to move to the next level by gaining a new perspective. To gain a new perspective means to look at life in general and at oneself specifically from a new "place", in terms of a different frame of reference thus from a new level of consciousness and understanding. During the transition from one level to another, since the consciousness is not yet firmly established at the new "place" or level, the person tends to expect to be met at the level at which he or she has functioned in the past or in some cases to receive a "spiritual push" that will facilitate the change in level by giving him or her a "feel," an experience perhaps, of what the new level is.
Confronted by a client asking for guidance as well as increased self-knowledge, the astrologer should first of all try to intuitively "sense" the level at which the client is centered, or the level to which he or she is attempting at the time to direct his or her attention and as a result is experiencing inner conflicts or crises in interpersonal relationships. I say "intuitively sense" because it is not possible to ascertain from the birth-chart alone the level at which a particular client is operating, especially at a particular time in his or her life. Any horoscope is susceptible of interpretation at all possible levels. It may be the chart of a cat or a horse, the incorporation of a business firm, or a horary inquiry. And a particular person, while born into a family or social situation conditioning his or her operating at a particular level, may pass through a more or less prolonged and/or successful process of transition leading from that level to a succeeding one (or ones). Often the kind and quality of problems or inner conflicts that bring the client to an astrologer for a consultation present to the astrologer extremely strong "hints" from which he or she can deduce the level of the client's operation or the nature of the transition from level to level he or she is in the process of making.
Much depends upon, first, the astrologer's understanding of the archetypal pattern of levels in human development and of the transition-process leading from one level to the next then, upon his or her ability to apply this more or less abstract understanding to particular circumstances and cases. Three types of study and mental training may facilitate this ability: (1) Studying the concept of levels in terms of, both, the psychological development of individuals and the historical evolution of human societies [I have outlined this in my book. Beyond Individualism: The Psychology of Transformation, and I will develop the concepts further with a specifically astrological focus in the present volume]; (2) studying the historical social, religious, and cultural patterns of collective human development underlying and conditioning the kind of life-patterns and problems human beings encounter today; and, (3) studying the detailed, year-by-year biographies of well-known people along with their birth-charts and astrological progressions and transits (subjects we will study in Chapter 8).
The first point I mention is, of course, basic. In connection with all three points, however, I should say that study and the capacity for application are two different things. The second point I mention is also crucial, for many counselors today (including psychologists) fail sufficiently to appreciate the interrelatedness between cultural and personal development, between individual life-situations and problems and the overall socio-religious and historical context in which they, both, become possible and seek resolution. Only a thorough understanding of overall human development, both individual and collective, can enable a counselor to put into a truly holistic frame of reference and therefore into a workable perspective, a particular situation in a client's life.
The third point I mention has the possibility of integrating for practice the preceding two, yet to my knowledge it is an approach to astrological study followed by only a very few students and teachers. In many of my other works I have presented examples of points I was making, yet I have only rarely encountered a student who followed up by investigating the life of the person in order to truly understand what I was saying. Especially in my book, Person-Centered Astrology, in the chapter, "Interpreting the Birth-Chart as a Whole," I presented an entire case-study of a young man's life along with an outline of the kind of approach I took to a consultation with him. Here again, hardly any readers or students with whom I have discussed the matter of chart-interpretation noticed what I had said or thought deeply about the matter to follow-up what I had written.
It would be impractical and not in accord with the purpose of this book to present detailed case-study examples here. Giving examples would not only unfeasibly increase the size of this book, but would perhaps lead to imitative, rigid and rule-following interpretations. This book is not a "text book" with rules to memorize. It is rather an attempt to open up a new, multilevel dimension in the practice of astrology. If it leaves much to the intuition and imagination of the astrologer, it does so because these are the faculties which must be awakened and developed in astrologers if they are to practice effectively and safely the kind of multidimensional and especially, as we see later on, transpersonal approach I am presenting.
Astrology can offer significant answers to situations at each of the four levels I have outlined, or during the transition between these levels. But this does not mean that every astrologer no more than every psychotherapist can handle equally well the situation a particular client presents. An understanding of all I have mentioned above should at least be of great assistance in realizing the nature and implications of a situation and adapting the interpretation of astrological data in the client's birth-chart to his or her level of consciousness.
The Biological Level of Interpretation
The need for air to breathe, food, some kind of physical exercise or "play", relative security from destruction by predators or natural forces (extreme cold or heat, storms, floods), and for the satisfaction of the sexual instinct guaranteeing the preservation of the species imperatively require satisfaction. Primitive men and Women pass most of every day trying to satisfy their hunger and insure at least a degree of security and comfort for themselves and their immediate family. Directly or indirectly, even modern men and women are often mainly, and in many instances almost exclusively, occupied with the satisfaction of these essential needs, albeit in quite a different way from their primitive ancestors. The rhythms and demands of biology are the foundations of human existence, activity and consciousness; yet in order for human beings to operate at "higher" levels, these needs have to be brought under control or temporarily curtailed. When attempts to control them are made and even more, when their satisfaction is opposed for "higher" purposes called spiritual (at whatever level of consciousness this ambiguous qualificative is interpreted) tensions, perhaps illness, and collective as well as personal problems are produced. Solutions to such types of problems have often to be found at a strictly biological level. Medical care, diet, a different occupation or way of life, physical exercise, and/or other strictly biological changes even if they require changes also at the family, social, or business levels may be imperative.
In human beings living in a modern, individualistic society, however, biological problems are very often (perhaps in most cases) by-products of tensions, frustrations, and ineffective activity at super-biological levels. An exclusively and strictly biological situation is rarely found. But in ancient types of tribal societies, astrology was never called upon to solve the problems of human beings as individuals. Even when larger kingdoms were formed and a horoscope was cast for the king, what was considered was the beginning of the king's reign - his accession to the throne, a matter affecting the whole kingdom rather than the birth-chart of the king as a person. Even if the king's character and what might be seen in his "destiny" were studied, if was only to the extent that these factors affected his reign and the nature of his rule.
I have discussed elsewhere(2) in some detail the implications of the fact that the astrology of tribal societies was locality-centered. Astrology then dealt with the visible motions of Sun, Moon, stars, and planets from east to west in a sky strictly contained within the circle of the local horizon. The Earth was considered flat and the sky an immense and mysterious dome over the horizon-bounded soil in which the tribe was almost ineradicably rooted. The three basic repetitive sky-experiences of human beings were the alternation of days and nights, the cycle of seasonal changes, and the puzzling monthly changes in the shape of the Moon. The Sun was the Light of the Day; the Moon, the Light of the Night. These two "Lights" (only much later were the Sun and Moon spoken of as "planets" by astrologers) were the foundation of a strictly biological type of astrology.
2)The Astrological Houses: The Spectrum of Individual Experience (New York: Doubleday, 1972).
The motions of the Lights could not only be related to experienced changes on the Earth's surface daily, monthly, and seasonal they could also be defined and eventually plotted out and measured by the way they seemed to affect the rising and setting of the most brilliant stars primarily what was called their "heliacal rising", and also their visible culmination at the zenith at "midnight".
In other words, seasonal changes were seen to be related to the relationship between the disappearance after sunset and reappearance before sunrise of certain brilliant stars, owing to their conjunctions with the Sun. This most likely led to the idea of a solar zodiac, while the passage of the Moon during the night through distinctive patterns of stars defined a lunar zodiac. It is probable that the lunar zodiac came first, at a time or in regions where matriarchy was the prevailing basis for tribal organization. The solar zodiac eventually became the dominant factor, together with the patriarchal type of society. Patriarchy presumably imposed itself as a system of organization when agriculture had to become individualized and regulated, and the growth of neighboring tribes made a struggle for more "living space" and warfare an apparent necessity of human life.
At the biological level of astrological interpretation, the Sun and the Moon respectively symbolize the principles of Fatherhood and Motherhood. In ancient astrology, the Sun-Moon and day-night polarities represented in the realm of the sky what the male-female polarity was on earth in all animal life. This was the age of "vitalistic" religions, fertility-cults, and worship of the male and female sexual organs (phallus and yoni) as symbols of the dualistic power of life. Even in the traditional European astrology, the Sun in a birth-chart was also supposed to represent the father, while the Moon referred to the mother.
The polarity principle which took the form of the dynamic and balanced interaction of Yin and Yang in Chinese culture was also applied to the planets, literally the "wandering stars". Unlike the so-called "fixed stars" which remained in the same positions in relation to one another, the planets' motions were, at first sight, quite mysterious considering their peculiar forward and backward character. Yet these motions were sooner or later analyzed and shown to have a regular, cyclic character.
The planets were also paired: Mars and Venus, Jupiter and Saturn. The first pair was closely related to the Sun-Moon polarity, in the sense that Mars and Venus were believed to represent the more material or organic aspect of the universal life-process symbolized by the two Lights. Mars, the red planet, was related to the energetic, piercing activity of the male principle the impregnator, the peasant breaking the resistance of the soil with his plough so that seeds could be sown in the dark humus. Venus was considered the celestial agent active in all seed in man, the testicles, and in woman the ovaries. The Martian male, once a father, became the Sun; the Venusian female, once a mother, the Moon. The female rhythm of menstruation had long before been related to the cycle of the waxing and waning Light of the night.
The pairing of Jupiter and Saturn interpreted at the biological level is also quite obvious, astrologically speaking. Whatever lives has to expand and contract alternately. On the one hand, food has to be assimilated in order to produce growth and to maintain the basic rhythm of metabolism ingestion, assimilation, and evacuation of waste-products. On the other hand, any living organism has to have a specific (i.e., belonging to its species) shape and structure giving stability to its internal operations. What Jupiter expands, Saturn stabilizes. The two principles are inseparable, just as inseparable as the Sun and Moon or the Yin and Yang principles though these pairs of symbols operate within different frames of reference.
The planet Mercury swiftly moving back and forth (three times a year) and never far from the Sun is, at the biological level, the capacity inherent in all living organisms to coordinate their various organic processes. It therefore symbolizes the three nervous systems of the human body: parasympathetic, sympathetic, and cerebrospinal.
Ancient astrology dealt with the two Lights as a strictly bipolar unit a twofoldness of vital power and five planets. The entire system was seen operating within the zodiacal whole, which represented that aspect of infinite Space (the whole Sky) having a definite and observable impact upon life on Earth. To have such an impact, however, zodiacal space had to be dynamized by the Lights and the planets. This is the basis of the now little-understood concept of "planetary rulership" according to which each planet "ruled" two zodiacal signs the two Lights, I repeat, being considered two aspects of one reality.
It probably took many centuries before the system was definitely built, but its meaning is very clear, and the principle of it was presumably established in the days of Chaldean astrology. What the system means is that there are six basic sub-levels in the operations of life in the human body; and Hindu philosopher-seers defined six differentiations of one cosmic power.(3) The planets are listed in what later astronomers proved to be the correct order of distance from the Sun.
3) Cf. my book, Culture, Crisis and Creativity (Wheaton, Illinois: Quest Books, 1977).
This system of rulership is self-contained and its symbolism perfectly consistent. It clearly shows that the solar system, when interpreted at the level of biology and also of culture, as we will soon see, ends with the orbit of Saturn which now seems to have been proved to be the limit of the power of solar emanation (the "solar wind"). At the biological and strictly cultural levels, the trans-Saturnian planets Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto are not only not visible, but not even considered or postulated.
Nevertheless, while life in the Earth's biosphere operates according to relatively stable rhythms, thus in a state of "homeostasis", it is also subject to sudden shocks and, from the biosphere's point of view, unexpectable changes. Thus, any consistent and seemingly "closed" system of interpretation of life-cycles cannot account for all that occurs. One must assume the existence of metabiological forces and influences. This means that the power of zodiacal space can also be dynamized by factors other than Sun, Moon, and planets.
In the past, two kinds of factors were considered to transcend the regularity of planetary patterns. One type was represented by comets, eclipses, and all celestial phenomena which did not fit into the scheme of planetary motion and rulership. The other type referred to the assumed possibility of the larger stars themselves having an individualized influence if the Sun, Moon, and to a lesser extent the planets were in exact conjunction with them. It is probable, however, that this kind of "fixed stars influence" should only be thought of at the sociocultural level of interpretation.
The Sociocultural Level and the "Person"
An organized culture develops on the foundation of biological facts and experiences. No culture ever ignores, or even basically challenges, the validity of biological drives or instinctual urges, for cultural values are overtones of biological rhythms. But in various circumstances and for various reasons, some of these overtones can become greatly emphasized. Just as the quality or timbre of an orchestral instrument depends on the relative intensities of the fundamental and the overtones that its tones contain, so cultures differ from each other according to the way in which they deal with biological factors and various modes of collective activity, and accentuate some at the expense of others. These cultural differences can be considered the results of genetic (racial) and environmental (climatic and magnetic) differences, but other factors transcending the physical and biological levels may also be at work.
Actually, when human beings come together and no longer act exclusively because they are in close and compulsive biological relationship with one another, but because they consciously participate in a set of activities recognized to be of value to all participants, and such activities establish a lasting bond among all participants, the beginning of culture has occurred. Any culture is based on a similarity of interests and feelings, and on the willingness to associate in the performance of a series of activities whose character becomes more and more clearly defined.
This process of association generates a sense of community, which develops as what I call a collective psychism. The terms psychism and psychic have unfortunately been used in a variety of ways. When I speak in this book of "psychism", I am referring to a form of "bonding" (or a principle of integration) operating at a level transcending, even if rooted in, biology. What we define as life-force (or prana) at the biological level becomes "collective psychism" at the sociocultural level a very definite, concrete and powerful force in the experience of the men and women who participate in the day-by-day, year-by-year development of a well-established community.
This psychic force binds the participants through common reverence for what essentially are images, symbols, and myths to which rituals and festivals give a concrete and actional character. The basic factor in producing and maintaining such a communal psychism is religion, which literally "binds back" human beings who might have developed separative tendencies that would break the strictly biological power of common parentage and genetic roots. Human beings eventually develop such separative tendencies and experience the process of individualization, but such a process can be constructive in an evolutionary sense only if the human being has first evolved an objective consciousness a structured mind. The development of mind at first requires not only a well-built language, but also a definite set of religious-cultural images and symbols. The sociocultural condition of consciousness is the necessary embryonic stage through which human beings have to pass in order to reach the mental level at which autonomous and conscious individuals operate. Culture is the womb of individuality.
Thus, the collective psychism that acts as a subtle, non-physical "cement" in building and maintaining any particular culture (or what can better be called a culture-whole),(4) is to be regarded as the matrix out of which an independent power of thinking still a rare thing today! emerges after a long process of gestation. A culture-whole is a psychic entity having a definite existence. It is at the level of psychism that a society, large community or nation is at the level of the physical activities of a number of people associated in interrelated, common activities.
4) Cf. T. Subba Row, "The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac" (in A Collection of Esoteric Writings of Subba Row; Bombay: 1917).
At the sociocultural level, a human being becomes a person. He or she is no longer merely a biological organism. He or she is, at least to some extent, consciously participating in a process of interpersonal relationship adding a powerful new dimension to the consciousness. Sociocultural taboos are superimposed over biological instincts. New patterns of behavior and new forms of restraint take a binding character. Culture always seeks to control biology and this is the well-known leitmotiv Freudian psychology has endlessly developed. Control develops conflict, and conflicts often lead to neurosis.
What we call "character" can be regarded from this point of view as a stabilized form of neurosis; but it may be a very positive and forceful kind of stabilization to which psychologists give the name "ego". We should understand, however, that the term "ego" refers to a functional type of activity rather than to a definite psychological entity. The ego, at least at this sociocultural level, is a function. It is an answer to a definite and urgent need of the whole organism. It changes its character as the need changes.
The Planets' Meanings at the Sociocultural Level
In an astrology which deals with the needs and problems of a "person" belonging to and participating in a particular culture-whole, the ego is represented by Saturn and the Moon. Saturn symbolizes, in general, all forms of sociocultural restraint, taboos, and socio-political or ethical rules. All of these are archetypally represented by the Father-figure, the symbol of social authority.
It is true that at the biological level of interpretation, the Sun in a birth-chart represents the father, but only in the sense that the father's sperm is involved in the production of the physical organism. At the level of the personal development of a child, the father as a dominant figure in the home is represented by Saturn. At both levels, the mother is symbolized by the Moon. At the biological level, the Moon's function of adaptation to the needs of everyday living is at first almost entirely performed by the physical mother (or mother-surrogate) taking care of the needs of the child's body and of its developing nervous system and mind. The mother is also, at least in an archetypal sense, the intercessor between paternal authority (or the imperatives of society) and the biological instincts and desires of the child whose organism seeks to develop its various faculties without regard for what it finds in its immediate or social environment.
At the sociocultural level, the ego has two basic functions. The first is to provide some kind of security in the confusing, strange, and at times seemingly inimical world in which the child is living: this is the Saturnian aspect of the ego. The second and related function is to develop mechanisms of adjustment or adaptation able to increase comfort, produce a sense of well-being and happiness gradually assuming an increasingly psychological character (lunar function). Behind the ego, however, another factor is at work to which I shall refer in the next chapter when discussing the meaning of the ambiguous little word "self". This factor has at first a strictly organismic character. It refers to that mysterious power of life that makes a vast collection of cells and organs, a body an organized, living whole, not only with a definite structure, but with a center to which sensations, feelings, thoughts, and all experiences are eventually referred.
At the strictly biological level, there is presumably no actual center to the consciousness. Animal and vegetable consciousness is diffused through the whole species and its myriad of specimens. It is not "self-consciousness" because it does not have a truly objective character. The strictly biological type of human consciousness is also totally involved in the activity of the body. But as human beings begin to develop at a sociocultural level, through the use of a language giving an objective character to their actions and reactions, and as the motives and purposes for their interpersonal relationships assume stable forms endowed with collective and mentally formulated values, the diffuse instinctual sense of organismic unity acquires the character of a focalized feeling of personal identity.
This identity is most definitely and almost ineradicably associated with the name the child was given by the parents. That name not only identifies the person at a social level; it becomes the nucleus around which a psychic sense of "being I", myself crystallizes. This feeling of "being I" is a psychic factor in the sense in which I have defined the word psychism because it is defined by the name in terms of the collective being of the tribe or community, its religion and culture; but it is also rooted in the primordial biological sense of organismic wholeness. Thus, it is both biological and sociocultural. The sociocultural aspect of this type of identity becomes further defined when the human being acquires a social profession and being a housewife and/or mother is a social profession. This profession gives a still more precise character to what then becomes the person's social status. This social identity may then crystallize into what Carl Jung called the "persona".
At the sociocultural level of astrological interpretation, the biopsychic centralizing factor in the human being is represented by the Sun, which can thus be given a two-fold meaning: it still represents the vital principle that animates and sustains the biological organism and its drives (what is usually called the "vitality" of the person), but it also refers to a central factor which, in whatever capacity the person operates in his or her community, gives a basic though rather undefinable character to his or her capacity to operate in interpersonal and social, situations. This is what is meant by "personality", or charisma, when highly developed.
As the process of individualization begins, this power of personality undergoes a gradual transmutation. On the basis of an increasingly developed and differentiated mental function, what was at first merely social identity - a characteristic way of being oneself in terms of social activity becomes an increasingly separate and autonomous individual "I". In our present individualistic society, a gradual transmutation of "personality" into "individuality" may start very early in a child's life, but what most people today call individuality is nothing but a personality based on an ego developed in response to, and therefore conditioned by, the pressures and impacts of a sociocultural environment. Personality always remains bound to the collective assumptions, traditions, and models of a culture. We can truly speak of individuality only when a person deliberately severs the myriads of psychic threads attaching him or her to a particular collectivity and culture, and emerges as an at least relatively independent, individual self.
Because in our society individuality has been given such an absolute value and prestige as a "goal" which everyone should attempt to reach, the power which the culture-whole constantly exerts over the would-be individual is often not recognized. The psychic center in the person has been glorified by repeating that "every man is a king"; but few truly realize that even the most ideal king the most absolute monarch is a product of the sociocultural level of existence. The king may, in principle, have absolute power over his subjects; he may theoretically "own" the land and the people of his kingdom. But the master is bound to his slaves, without whom he would not be a master.
In classical astrology the Sun was said to symbolize the king, the supreme authority. But the Sun's meaning in a chart is considered to be determined by the zodiacal sign in which it is located, and the zodiac is a collective factor. It symbolizes human nature. Seen at the sociocultural level, a birth-chart gives us a picture of a particular way in which human nature operates in a specific instance within a particular culture-whole. The zodiac is the foundation of the chart; it represents twelve fundamental and characteristic ways in which the potential of activity and consciousness inherent in a human being living within a society can or is most likely to be actualized. The actualizing power is said to reside in the planets. Each planet refers to a particular function of human nature; and the genius of astrology is that its claims that every functional activity in a human being can be referred to ten basic planetary categories can be shown to have substantial validity. Most astrologers, however, are not aware of how significant such an implicit claim really is.
At this level, the Sun and the Moon are considered to be "planets", no longer the two "Lights" as they were at the biological level of interpretation. They nevertheless represent the most basic functions in human nature, because, in their original polarity, they symbolize the operation of the life-force, without which there could be no social and cultural activity, no consciousness, and no personality. The Sun represents the life-force as a unitary power, and the Moon distributes that power wherever the organism needs it.
In terms of the development of personality, the Sun symbolizes the desire to be an important and powerful unit in the community or nation the will to achieve whatever is possible according to the life-circumstances and the culture. But at the social level, this solar will is still so conditioned by the images and ideals the particular culture has produced that one should not speak of an individualized will, if one uses language and ideas precisely. The individual factor is still mainly, if not totally, subservient to the collective way of life and its standardized goals for instance, in the U.S. the goals of being liked by one's peers, of fitting in to a "team", of being successful, wealthy, etc. The Moon at this level also has to be interpreted as the feelings produced by special types of interpersonal relationships, whether at home, in school or in the world of business or the arts. These feelings, in our present-day American society (in a collective sense), are very different from those possible for persons that lived in old Europe, in China, or in a primitive African tribe. But today we are all so eager to be individuals and feel our own feelings or think our "own" thoughts, that we forget how dependent we still are upon collective ideals or even fashions and there are fashions in feeling and thinking (even among Ph.D.'s and supposedly objective top scientists), as well as in clothing and entertainment.
The planets closest to the Earth Venus and Mars refer essentially to what is usually called the personal or emotional life. As I have so often pointed out, Venus does not refer only or even primarily to love and the arts. It refers to the sense of value. On the basis of our organismic temperament, our religious, ethical, and cultural training since birth and our previous experiences once we have them stored in our memory the Venusian function passes judgment on whatever changes take place in the field of our consciousness. Whether at the biological or the psychic levels, Venus gives a positive or negative value to what is confronting us or occurring within us: it is good for us or bad, beautiful or ugly, with pleasurable or painful implications. On the basis of this Venusian evaluation, Mars mobilizes biological, psychic-emotional, or even mental energy and releases this energy either to meet the new situation or to run away from it. The way this mobilization occurs is determined not only by the biological temperament of the organism, but by the character of the ego that is, of the security-factor (Saturn) and the capacity for adaptation to everyday change (the Moon).
Jupiter performs a particularly significant role at the sociocultural level because it is essentially the symbol of "social" activity. For an activity to be "social", it must be based on the realization that in cooperation there is strength, and that only through interpersonal communication and communion of feelings and ideals can a human being actualize what is potential in human nature. Thus, Jupiter stands for good fellowship, and for all achievements that require collaboration on an organized scale and on the basis of the existence of a well-established sociocultural system a culture-whole. The existence and maintenance of this culture-whole depends also on Venus, for it is the Venusian function that provides the great images, myths, and personal examples that are the "soul" the magnetic power and binding psychism of the culture. Thus at the sociocultural level, Jupiter and Venus are considered the most "benefic" planets. They are benefic simply because they are responsible for what we consider most valuable and important at the level at which most people are still operating and for no other reason.
The social function would lack a stable character and might run amok in an orgy of expansion if it were not balanced by a Saturnian sense of order and form. I have already spoken of Saturn as the drive for security, but there can be no personal security except where stable forms of order and organizational structures control the development of interpersonal, social or business relationships. A society needs laws and at least some kind of police force or collectively accepted authority, just as a human being needs a skeleton and plants need cellulose cell walls. Because there is, in most human beings, a centrifugal urge for self-assertion and often a deep restless feeling that change is essential for growth (a typically human characteristic which we will see associated with the symbol of Uranus) the Saturnian function is most often given a somber and binding character. Venus also, in a sense, binds; but its binding is in terms of values and apparently subjective psychological images which seem easily modifiable though this is often an illusion. Saturn's binding has a very concrete, unyielding, often harsh character. So the planet is deemed to be "malefic", though without its capacity to form stable and defendable boundaries, there could be no personality and, at least on this Earth, no realization of identity and selfhood: there can only be center where there is circumference. Problems develop when the organism-as-a-whole at the biological level, and the person at the sociocultural level find themselves in an environment which is so inimical and dangerous that the security drive dominates most aspects of living or when an internal situation, e.g., an ill body or a weak person torn by inner conflicts, requires a rigid type of control of self-discipline.
Mercury, close to the Sun, refers on the one hand (biological level) to the most basic operations of the solar vital energy that is, to the capacity of the organismic power of integration to manifest through currents of electrical nerve-energy and on the other hand to the mental processes which are generated and, to a large extent, controlled by the Jupiterian organizational and administrative processes giving form, direction, and purpose to the functional (and in some cases, dysfunctional or criminal), operations of the members of the society as they relate to one another (sociocultural level). Saturnian factors also act upon the Mercury-mind, compelling it to follow definite, "logical" and legalistic procedures or at times to cleverly circumvent them, which is another way of being conditioned by them.
Nodes, Eclipses and the Trans-Saturnian Planets
An added factor in the traditional and classical type of astrological interpretation at the sociocultural level are the Moon's Nodes. They are produced by the intersection of the planes of the Earth's and Moon's orbits. When two such planes intersect, a line of intersection is produced. In the case of the Earth and Moon, this line cuts the Earth's orbit (the ecliptic, which is also the tropical zodiac) at two points, the north and south nodes. Eclipses of the Sun and Moon can only occur when their mutual conjunctions occur close to the nodes in longitude.
Eclipses were once thought to be the portent of unexpectable, and thus more or less catastrophic (or at least upsetting) events. One of the Lights was being "swallowed up" by a cosmic dragon hence the north and south nodes have also been called the dragon's head and tail. When the two Lights are in exact alignment which can only occur at a New or Full Moon near the nodes a total eclipse takes place. If this happens at New Moon (soli-lunar conjunction), the Sun is eclipsed; at Full Moon (soli-lunar opposition), it is the Moon.
It would seem logical to say that when the Sun is totally eclipsed the Moon absorbs, as it were, all the solar power. What the Earth receives is only lunar power, and this condition is likely to influence whatever may develop during at least the fortnight between the New and Full Moon and perhaps, it is often claimed, a much longer period. The Moon symbol in such a case is, as it were, glorified at the expense of what the Sun represents, and the Moon always basically refers to the past. Even though the Moon represents the capacity for adaptation, this capacity operates on the basis of the tradition or knowledge acquired in the past. A total solar eclipse may thus be considered a glorification of the past. A typical example is that of Mussolini, who proclaimed a new "Roman Empire" in 1936 around the time a solar eclipse occurred near the position of the Sun in his birth-chart. An old image was revivified, but it nevertheless collapsed within a relatively few years.
On the other hand, at the time of a total lunar eclipse, the traditional perspective born of past experiences of adjusting to life and society is blotted out by an eagerness to meet experience in a new, original manner. When a solar eclipse occurs on a degree of the zodiac occupied by the Sun, Moon, a planet or angle in a person's birth-chart, or when such a degree and its opposite are involved in a lunar eclipse, whatever is on these degrees is likely to feel some effect. But the effects can be varied and often not clearly marked.
It is particularly important to stress that when dealing with the nodes both of them should always be considered, and not only the north node as is often done. We are dealing here with a line, not with mere points. Similarly, an astrologer should never consider the Ascendant of a birth-chart alone. The position of the Ascendant necessarily implies that of the Descendant on the opposite degree of the zodiac, because Ascendant and Descendant refer to the line of the horizon (in two-dimensional projection). The Midheaven and Nadir are also created by the meridian axis and should always be studied and evaluated together.
The other planets of the solar system also have nodes which establish relationships between their orbits and the orbit of the Earth. As I stated long ago in an article on "orbital astrology" and in a chapter of my more recent book, Person-Centered Astrology,(5) such relationships between orbits have a non-personal, almost cosmic or "fate-ful" meaning for they deal with space and not with the planet as a material mass.
5) "The Space Era and Orbital Astrology," Horoscope Magazine, July, 1961. Person-Centered Astrology, Chapter 5. "Planetary and Lunary Nodes" (Santa Fe: Aurora Press, 1976).
In the case of the Moon's nodes, we are dealing with what might be called the karmic way in which the Moon's function operates in a human being. But the word karma should not be used only in the sense of "bad" karma. Karma simply refers to the fact that any new cycle of existence is always in some manner related to or is a sequence of a previous cycle. The new cycle inherits from the old some unfinished business which needs to be dealt with, but it also inherits the results of some achievements. More specifically, the Moon's north node symbolizes new possibilities of growth on the basis of what has been accomplished "in the past" let us say, in "past incarnations", although the concept of reincarnation is most ambiguous, or at least far more complex than popularly interpreted. On the other hand, the Moon's south node indicates in symbolic terms the pitfalls that the inertia of the past (or subconscious memory of past failures), places in the way of personal fulfillment. We should not forget that a person is first of all operating in a biosphere with a long evolutionary past and in a society and culture conditioned equally by ancient, collective failures as well as great achievements. Thus karma is never to be considered solely a personal matter; for it is also produced by a collective situation inherited from a long series of past generations.
The Moon's nodes have a retrograde motion in the zodiac, and the nodal axis completes one cycle of the ecliptic in about 18 and 2/3 years. The nodes of the planets are also moving, apparently in direct motion, at various but much slower speeds, most of them less than one degree of the zodiac per year.
Unfortunately, what I consider a basic misconception regarding planetary nodes has recently been introduced into astrological interpretation. At least some astrologers treat them as if they were observable entities like planets. Yet, I repeat, the nodes refer solely to the intersection of orbital planes, and such intersections are neither directly observable nor entities. They are truly metaphysical factors factors to be calculated by the mind which deal with space, orbital space.(6) There is obviously some difference between the calculation of lunar and planetary nodes, because the Moon revolves around the Earth, while the planets revolve around the Sun. The basic frame of reference in relation to nodes, however, is neither the Earth nor the Sun, but the Earth's orbit. The only thing that should be considered is where the orbit of any other celestial object intersects the Earth's orbit. This would be the case if we dealt with the intersection of the galactic plane or any other plane of cyclic motion and the Earth's orbit.
6) Nodes are "exact points" only in an abstract sense. At such points there is actually nothing. They exist only by isolating on paper two orbits and calculating where they intersect. In fact both orbits are parts of much larger orbits, and as every celestial body moves at terrific speed one cannot speak of nodes as actual entities. This is why the mean position of any periodically moving factor is more valid an element in the language of astrology than a so-called "actual position." All planetary longitudes used in astrology refer to the centers of celestial bodies, thus to the motions of abstract points.
In the great majority of cases, planetary nodes are of no real meaning in the lives of human beings. They acquire at least potential meaning when a person, as a participant in a sociocultural whole, can be considered a mouthpiece or channel for the operation of collective forces. If the person has reached the stage of individual development at which he or she is actually conscious of what happens through his or her being, then the transpersonal level has been reached; but if there is no consciousness of being an agent of some supersocial and supercultural Power, but only a kind of unconscious mediumship the person still operates at the sociocultural level.
At that level, the trans-Saturnian planets Uranus, Neptune and Pluto also act mainly in an indirect and collective manner; that is to say, they operate through changes occurring in the society or culture as a whole for instance, as changes in life-style, fashion, and education, or changes in the political and economic structure of a nation. To the great majority of people living in more or less normal and relatively stable periods of cultural and political evolution, such changes cause a minimum of personal problems; people readily adjust to them. Yet, since the process of individualization has reached a stage at which it has become a public issue, and the attainment of a state of conscious, free and autonomous individuality is presented in one form or another all over the globe as the ideal goal of human evolution, the trans-Saturnian planets play a critical role even at the sociocultural level of astrological interpretation.
When in a birth-chart either Uranus, Neptune or Pluto is conjunct, opposed or even square a planet, or is found at the horizon or meridian, whatever function or mode of personal expression is involved, tends to take a non-traditional or unusual form. This function often becomes a source of irritation or dissatisfaction, but in some instances, the person, through an exaggeration or extraordinary development of the function, may gain fame or notoriety.
In the following chapter we shall see how each of these three planets tends to operate during the process of individualization. However, the astrologer should realize that most people today believe they are already at a far advanced stage of this process. This may not be the case, and it is better in principle not to assume that any client has to be treated as an individual whose problems have a character transcending the sociocultural level. Yet, because our entire society is in a crisis of transformation, facing the critical necessity and potential of taking a radical step in its evolution, most of the people who are "progressive" enough or sufficiently disturbed, restless, and confused to seek astrological guidance can be considered to be at a stage of psychological development (and of relative alienation from the norm of the collective psychism of their sociocultural environment) which allows for the direct and cathartic impact of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.
Such persons also may have failed to adapt to some basic transformation, either in their biological environment or diet, or else in the ancestral way of life they had so long been taught to accept unquestioningly as the one and only good and valid type of existence. In all such instances, Uranus deals with upheavals that challenge the worth and meaning of the great images of the sociocultural tradition; Neptune tends to dissolve encrusted prejudices, sap the strength of all that the Saturnian drive to security has built and the Jupiterian ideals had presented as desirable achievements. Pluto adds a note of extremism or fanaticism to any crisis or religious, political, or artistic "conversion". It tends to make any transformation irrevocable and to destroy any safe means of retreat. Pluto atomizes all that has solid substance, reducing every concept or feeling-experience to its barest essentials and such a process of "reduction" can lead the mind to a state in which everything appears to be inherently absurd and utterly hollow. Nevertheless, it is a state of chaos out of which a new world may be born.
This "new world" need not be really or radically new. It may be built out of fear of the unknown and constitute only a resurgence of ghosts acquiring at least a temporary substantiality. Neptunian crises may lead to a psychological "return to the Mother" a largely unconscious sinking into the collective psychism of a revived allegiance to some old or exotic but traditional way of life. Plutonian crises, on the other hand, often lead to totalitarianism or gangsterism a resurgence of dependence upon a father-image or ruthless authority with a strictly personal or ideological character.
It is in this sense that the three trans-Saturnian planets, which are the most usual symbols of transformation, can operate in the lives of people who are still basically acting, feeling, and thinking at the sociocultural level. Yet the "spirit of the time" is relentlessly pushing toward a truly new state of human existence, a state in which society and all collective factors are meant to be only instruments making it possible for human beings to take as their most fundamental and valuable goal fulfillment as individuals.
The Astrology of Transformation
