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INTERPRETING THE BIRTHCHART AT THE TRANSPERSONAL LEVEL
While transpersonal astrology deals primarily with a dynamic process of transformation, the birth-chart, I repeat, is the starting point of that process. It is like a seed which will develop into a full-grown tree, but in the case of a human being, this "tree" has within itself the potentiality of becoming such a transparent structure that through it the glowing form of a deva (nature-spirit or dryad) may be able to reveal itself and, by so doing, affect and "spiritualize" the surrounding "forest" of mankind. A deva is a personification of a particular current of life-energy, which in its primary nature is a differentiated aspect of solar energy. A human being is a particular aspect of Humanity-as-a-whole which, spiritually considered, is the planetary Being that encompasses all that exists within the field of activity and consciousness of Earth, Gaya.
Transpersonal astrology is essentially concerned with the possibility, inherent in every human newborn, of achieving a state of symbolic "transparency" enabling the spiritual power that archetypal Man represents to radiate through him or her, and to do so consciously and as an individual form of selfhood. This possibility can be said to be inherent in the human seed (the fecundated ovum), yet its actualization depends entirely on the fact of being born as a baby within a collective society with a particular culture. Left alone on a desert island, the newborn would die, or if — as apparently has happened — a baby were to be adopted by an animal able and willing to provide milk and protection, the child would grow as an animal in whom no self-conscious mind could develop. Without such a mind, there is no actual and effective humanhood.
This is why the moment of birth (the first breath) is used in the practice of astrology rather than the difficult-to-ascertain moment of conception. An embryo is not "human" in the strict sense of the term. One might say it is "alive", just as a seed is alive — but a human being is not merely a living being. It is, in the broadest sense of the term, mind in the process of development — a process which may lead to individualization, and on the basis of individual selfhood, to a transindividual state of consciousness and activity.
This process of mental development is complex and at first totally conditioned by culture. The first phase of the process produces a personal psyche which results, on the one hand, from the passive acceptance of family and sociocultural values and goals and, on the other hand, from a self-assertive and rebellious drive for independence which is the central factor in the formation of an ego, as I have defined the term. At the individual level, the drive for independence becomes the center of the field of consciousness, the "I". But in the process of individualization, a polarization occurs; symbolically speaking, two "areas" are formed in the total field of the personality — the field of consciousness centered in the "I", and the soul.(1) The soul retains strong links with the "lower collectivity" — the culture-whole and its collective assumptions and traditions — but it can also become a quiet lake upon which the presence of "higher collectivity" will be able to reflect itself, generating in the whole personality exalting or disturbing feeling-intuitions through significant dreams or so-called "peak-experiences".
1) Cf. my use of this term in Chapter 5.
Whatever form the processes of personal growth and individualization take, they have a starting point and, as we have just seen, the birth-chart represents this "first point" of human existence. The birth-chart, the positions of the planets and their complex geometrical relationships (astrological "aspects") within the framework defined by the natal horizon and meridian, have to be studied. This study deals with the static aspect of astrology, whereas progressions and transits refer to its dynamic and transformative aspect. But even the apparently static features of a birth-chart can also be understood as a mere snapshot freezing an unceasing process of cosmic change within which planets, stars, and galaxies pursue their cyclic courses. No absolute beginning or end can be attributed to this process, yet human beings instinctively think of an at least relative beginning, the act of divine creation, as they project their experience of birth and death upon the universe.
The birth of a human being is the "relative" beginning of a process which, from the transpersonal point of view, can have an illumined and translucent end. This end is conditioned, but not determined, by the birth-chart as a whole. In order to help an individual to work consciously toward such an end, the astrologer using a transpersonal approach should be able to see the planetary components of the birth-chart in a new light.
A Transpersonal Interpretation of Sun, Moon and Planets
At the biological level of interpretation, we saw that the Sun symbolizes the principle of Fatherhood or the positive and fecundant aspect of the life-force. At the sociocultural level, the Sun represents the drive to social recognition, power, and prestige. It refers to the ambition to become a center of influence around which other persons will gravitate and revolve and thus (symbolically), a "king" with more or less absolute power — that is, the unchecked ability to use the power and psychism engendered by the cooperation and psychomental integration of a more or less large number of other human beings, and that ability is colored by the specific character of a particular culture. When we reach the individual level, the symbol of kingship becomes introverted. The principle of individual selfhood operates at the center of the mandala of personality — where the natal horizon and meridian intersect — but the actual operation of that principle is to be related to the Sun. I have spoken of it as the individualized will; it is also the manifested purpose of the I-center seeking the fulfillment of the innate potentialities latent in the human being whose biopsychic energies it brings to a conscious focus.
At the transpersonal level, the Sun has an ambiguous meaning, because in actual astronomical fact the Sun is not only the source of the power that rules the solar system up to the orbit of Saturn and whose influence to some extent radiates beyond Saturn through the "aura" of the system; it is also one of the billions of stars constituting our galaxy, the Milky Way.(2) The Sun in the chart of an individual on his or her way to a transindividual state should therefore symbolize a factor which links the individual to the transindividual level. Religious philosophers and moralists have spoken of the "God within", Christ Immanuel — and in India, of the jivatma, the incarnated manifestation of the transcendent reality atman. Transpersonally interpreted, the position of the Sun in a birth-chart thus represents the individual quality of the will-to-be-related-to and participate in the activity and consciousness of a greater Whole. Theoretically this greater Whole is the planetary being of Humanity; but when the mind of the individual is as yet unable to deal with the implications of such a vast and global organism, it has to limit its image of the reality of a greater whole to the community or nation in which the individual operates, either by birthright or by individual choice.
2) Cf. my previously mentioned book. The Sun is Also a Star: The Galactic Dimension of Astrology.
This solar will to be related to a greater whole finds inspiration and sustainment in the Moon. I have already referred to the Moon as the "soul",(3) and said that this soul represents, at least symbolically, an "area" of the total human being which has developed in polar opposition to the will to emerge from the sociocultural collectivity and become an autonomous individual — a will symbolized by the Sun during the process of individualization. This soul-area has — I repeat — remained related to the collective psychism of the culture-whole; it had to do so in order to develop its potential and future function as a complement or balance to the individual character of the increasingly authoritarian and powerful I-center. But while the soul is rooted in the culture (lower collectivity), it also develops the ability to respond to the downflow of energy and inspiration from the higher collectivity — the encompassing field of activity and consciousness of the greater Whole. The soul links the sociocultural collective to the transcendent reality of Humanity-as-a-whole which, in religious terms, is represented by the Mystical Body of Christ.
If we use the old Chinese terms, the soul is Yin, the individualized I-center, Yang. The soul is the "Eternal Feminine that draws men upwards," as Goethe states at the close of Faust. But if the soul fails in its function, "she" takes the form of the "femme fatale" who draws the individualized "I" down and back to the lower collective, usually by re-energizing the biological drives of the masculine "I", or by compelling him for her sake (and perhaps for the sake of children born of their relationship) to re-become a slave to the power of the culture, the institutionalized religious organization and/or the traditional patterns of society — thus a "normal person" with the average citizen's standardized interests.
There are cases in which the spiritually ambitious, yet emotionally unready individual craving to "storm the gates of heaven" needs to be made aware of how unready he or she really is. Then the "feminine" soul may be compelled by karma to act as the Temptress (Kundry in Wagner's Parsifal). In this case, she is used by higher powers within the greater Whole to serve as a tester of the men she unwillingly attracts.
All processes of transition from a lower to a higher level generate what Carl Jung called the Shadow — a fact that Medieval theologians and Occultists expressed by saying that Satan is God inverted. Satan symbolizes an inversion of the transpersonal process — an inversion in most cases engendered by the pride of being able to develop an apparently totally independent, self-motivated individuality. Such a pride-intoxicated I-center eventually destroys the soul-area, and by so doing cuts itself loose from both the lower and the higher collectivity. It eventually becomes a center without a circumference, a mere abstract point, individuality pushed to the extreme in a quasi-absolute repudiation of the desire for relationship. This is the end of the inverted transpersonal process — the end in store for the "black magician". The "white magician", on the other hand, is produced by the "divine Marriage" of the objectively conscious and centered "I" with the soul. This is the higher kind of alchemical Marriage which, as we already saw, must occur in the "presence of God", that is, in a conscious relationship with the greater Whole, Humanity as a spiritual pleroma of beings.
The natal relationship of the Moon to the Sun in a person's chart has thus a profound transpersonal meaning, because it should tell us a great deal concerning the character which the possible union of "I" and soul is likely to have, and its purpose — if it occurs at all, in even a partial manner. The aspect between the natal Sun and Moon, and the positions they occupy in the zodiacal signs and natal houses should evoke in the astrologer's mind the karmic foundation of this Sun-Moon (Yang-Yin) relationship. But at the same time, they should point to the best way — the way of destiny — in which the individual can use the solar and lunar functions. Though they have been developed in the ancestral and spiritual-reincarnational past, they can and should be used as incentives and tools when the individual begins to search for, and eventually to walk upon the transpersonal path.
The planet Mercury, in its highest aspect, is what Indian philosophers have called budhi — its supreme manifestation being the Buddha-mind. It is the mind of wisdom, the mind of the Sage who has transcended the conflicts and the dualism inherent in the intellect. In an objective and occult sense, one can see in such a mind a reflection of the consciousness of the greater Whole; and esoteric tradition states that Gautama the Buddha was the first human being whose consciousness was able freely to soar beyond the boundaries of the solar system into galactic space.
In a transpersonally interpreted natal chart Mercury represents the best manner in which the sociocultural mind inherited at birth by a human being can be reoriented, repolarized, and eventually transmuted into a "calm lake" able to reflect the most distant "stars". The atmosphere above the "lake" should be pure, unpolluted and frosty-clear — the "frost" referring here to a mentality that has transcended the "warmth" of human emotions and glamorous devotional feelings, a mentality able to operate in terms of the cool, superpersonal quality of cosmic principles and relationships.
The planet Venus should be understood to refer essentially to the capacity to pass judgments on the worth of whatever one encounters. At the biological level, value is appreciated in organismic terms: what is met will either foster the development of, and bring well-being to, the body and its functional activies, or it will hinder and impair them. At the sociocultural level, the members of a collectivity pass value-judgments according to shared moral standards. Love and hate, embrace or flight, cultural and esthetical enjoyment, or critical and emotional repudiation all have a collective foundation which is but partially modified or superficially colored by personal idiosyncrasies.
At the level of a dynamic type of individualization, Venus acquires an individualized power of creativity. But at this level, creativity mostly means a projection of the individual's I-center and its autonomous characteristics onto materials made available by the culture from which the "I" has to some extent been able to emerge. The "I" uses the cultural materials for its own purpose — the ideal of self-fulfillment and often merely of self-glorification.
At the transpersonal level, Venus can be interpreted as the capacity to give individual forms to spiritual ideals which have, as it were, seeped into the field of consciousness, either through the calmed and assuaged mind, or through the soul acting as a channel for the descent of "galactic" forces. Nevertheless, the early value system impressed upon the growing personality through childhood and adolescence undoubtedly has in most instances valuable features which should be retained. Similarly, the psychic and mental harvest of one's ancestral culture can be used on the transpersonal path to suggest valid lines of approach to the problems of developing discrimination — a crucially needed quality when an individual is faced by options from which he or she has to choose.
Venus, in another sense, is the archetypal form of the individuality. It may seem that this form has to be transcended on the transpersonal way, but what has to be transcended is actually not the individual form itself; rather, it is the personal attachment to its perpetuation as an isolated and supposedly self-sufficient entity. In other words, the essential character (or archetypal form) of the "I" is not negated or destroyed. What happens is that the "galactic We" — the pleroma state of consciousness — is allowed by the individual to focus itself in a particular way through his or her "I" in order to fulfill a particular human or planetary need. But within the "We", the "I" remains what it archetypally is. It remains, however, in a transfigured condition; the "form" is retained, but the "contents" of the form are transsubstantiated.
The planet Mars is always to be understood as the capacity to mobilize energy, either in the pursuit of a goal which the Venus function has proclaimed desirable, or as a spontaneous release of an excess of energy having reached a nearly explosive state. Biologically, Mars is the muscle power and glandular stimulation needed to hunt and overcome physical obstacles, perform the sexual function or defeat enemies. In a sociocultural sense, Mars retains much the same character to which is added the ability to work for the fulfillment of a social or cultural ambition.
As the process of individualization pursues its course, Mars takes on a more differentiated character of self-assertion. It can become the power to achieve a successful but egocentric rebellion against the sociocultural norm and the religious-moral tradition, or it can transform itself into an intense devotion for an ideal cause or to a guru.
In its transpersonal aspect, Mars is the introverted power that steels the ascetic will of the individual trying to rush along the path, but who is perhaps only headed toward a precipice or an encounter with foes that can hardly be overcome. At all levels, Mars should always work with Venus, but especially so on the transpersonal path when Venus takes the form of discrimination. If surrounded by the typically transformative planets (Uranus, Neptune and Pluto), the "red planet" may become a hostage to forces over which the individual has little control, but through such experiences it may also become the servant of transindividual forces emanating from the greater Whole, Humanity.
Jupiter and Saturn are characteristically the "social" planets in the sense that they refer respectively to personal expansion derived from human togetherness and cooperation, and to the security gained from participating in and being protected by an organized community. Expansion and security have first biological, then social aspects. At the individual level, Jupiter often represents the inner pride of the individual who feels superior to the mass of non-individualized persons in bondage to collective values and institutions — thus the feeling of belonging to an elite. In some "esoteric" groups, this may be the often patronizing feeling of being an "old soul" in the midst of as yet "young" souls. Saturn may well crystallize this sense of superiority by establishing group-patterns that rigidly define a hierarchical structure affecting all interpersonal relationships.
Thus, these two planets can act in a more or less subtly negative manner when the ideal of a transpersonal path begins to permeate the collective consciousness of the most progressive members of a culture-whole. To tread this transpersonal path without a deep sense of humility and compassion (to which Neptune often refers) and without a mind free from dogmatism and reliance upon narrow principles of structural organization (a freedom that Pluto may provide) can indeed be very dangerous. Uncontrolled Mars-represented energy, polluted by the fashions of a chaotic society and a degenerating culture, can also add more fire to pride and dogmatism; and the Mercury mind, turned into a rationalizing mechanism to give support to a massive and intractable I-center, can also play a very negative role.
The basic issue is whether the individual "I", having become aware of the existence of a level of collective being transcending the sociocultural level, can only think of reaching that higher state by still using his or her newly individualized powers according to the collective concepts and patterns of activity of his or her culture-whole — or if he or she realizes that one can only contact the higher collectivity by repudiating what essentially belongs to the lower collective (the culture and the social way of life). Repudiation does not mean total isolation, although a temporary period of isolation, or inward withdrawal and denudation, often seems to be necessary.
Whatever is necessary — and this may mean a crucial crisis or total upheaval in the personal life or in the society in which one is active — can be attributed to Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto acting as "agents" for the galaxy. These transformative planets may operate in a great variety of ways. They often operate through a particular type of individual who (whether they want to or not, and often against their conscious intentions) relate to men and women who are at least partially ready to embark on the transpersonal voyage across storm-ridden seas and act as arousing or even deeply disturbing factors.
As I have stated elsewhere,(4) each of the trans-Saturnian planets acting as an agent (or "ambassador") of the galactic greater Whole (which, I repeat, symbolizes Humanity as a planetary Being), is particularly meant to disturb and transform one of the other planets. Uranus seeks to break through the fortified walls Saturn has built to give maximum security to the reign of the kingly "I", and to bring a new perspective and a breath of "fresh air". Neptune is especially adept at dissolving Jupiterian pride and pomposity. And Pluto can act most effectively as a purifier of Martian emotional drives. As a cathartic agent, Pluto seeks to remove from the personality (which has become individualized through often devious means generating heavy karmic "toxins"), whatever does not strictly belong to the archetypal character of the emergent individuality — and Pluto's action can be drastic and relentless. But Pluto in its cosmic aspect can also reveal to the purified, but probably rudely shaken individual the true archetypal form of his or her individual selfhood and/or destiny.
At the transpersonal level, Uranus, the iconoclast, deals with the image of the "enthroned I" and its "courtiers" bowing to its every desire. It tries to show the mind how actually ineffective, ridiculous, or empty of meaning this image really is. During the seven years of its passage through a zodiacal sign, Uranus tends to either discredit, deeply disturb, or challenge the traditional character or meaning of the mode of activity represented by that sign — at times in a direct manner, at others by forcing repeated experiences of this mode of activity and its by-products upon the consciousness, until the "king-l" is satiated or disgusted.
The natal house in which Uranus is located in most cases points to the type or field of experience where the iconoclastic and revolutionary impact of the planet is most effective or most likely to operate. For instance, in terms of the transpersonal process, Uranus in the 12th house evokes the possibility that the individual's ability to act as a transforming agent will be in some manner closely related to a public crisis or to the process of transformation of society or some aspect of its culture. On the other hand, Uranus in the 6th house suggests a more personal kind of transformative upheaval and the need for a special type of service, perhaps of total surrender to a cause or guru.
In any house, a planet can be transpersonally interpreted as a message conveyed through the soul to the I-center open to the reception of such communication from "above" — or released by the mind having realized that it can reflect a transcendent kind of consciousness — a message suggesting how the field of experience symbolized by the house should be reoriented.
Neptune, the universal Solvent, in many but obviously not all cases, tends to lower the effectiveness of the biological energies operating in the part of the body related to the zodiacal sign in which it is located. It throws doubt upon the validity of what the individual's community or nation considers valuable in the field of socio-cultural activity and everyday living associated with the sign. According to the house in which it is located, it often brings deep confusion and a sense of futility that no rational explanation can quite dissipate. Yet Neptune can inspire compassion and the desire to participate in large and impersonal organizations. It universalizes and perhaps unfocuses the type of experiences related to the natal house through which it slowly moves after birth. This is particularly the case when found at one of the four Angles.
Pluto, the cathartic agent clearing from any field of activity the unnecessary or decaying material that has accumulated in it, can be seen at work in mankind as a whole as it passes slowly from one zodiacal sign to the next. While in Gemini (1834 to 1912-13), it revealed how superficial and incomplete were the intellectual pictures physical and psychological scientists had drawn during the century of triumphant materialism. As it became a publicly known fact of existence while transiting the sign Cancer (1913-1938), it produced an intense upheaval in the ideal of the family, and it gnawed at the roots of the concept of the classical, monolithic, and morally responsible individual personality through depth-psychology and the popularization of technological gadgets expected to solve personal problems at least in routine matters of everyday living — which inevitably leads to a subtle kind of automatism. In the name of the need for law and order, it produced — as an answer to the fear of the unknown — the negative and obsolete concepts of Fascism in politics and neo-classicism in the arts. To the new craving for the abundant life, it answered with the great Depression, and to a mechanical approach to world-organization and the hegemony of the victorious powers of World War I, it answered with the Nazi armored-divisions and Hitler's biological paranoia and political pride.
The character which Pluto's entrance into Leo took had been conditioned by the way mankind had responded to the planet's passage through Cancer. What had been issues basically concerning new and larger schemes of organization and the release of forces uprooting the collective past became issues more specifically aimed at the way individuals were made to experience and give value to their lives. These lives were now increasingly controlled by technology and technocrats (from medical doctors and psychologists to politicians and business specialists), by the media and by the result of a new general acquaintance (through movies, radio, air travel, and later TV) with all the countries and cultures of the world.
At first this was revolutionizing and often intoxicating — in different ways, depending on whether one belonged to a victorious or vanquished country, to the Communist or "Free" World. But as Pluto entered Virgo in 1957 and later (1965-66) was joined by Uranus, the sense of global crisis began to pervade the new generations; they rose in protest, intoxicated by rather naive hopes and Utopian dreams. Virgo is a sign of transformation based on the criticism of what one has come to feel subjected to, whether be it as a result of one's previous actions or of what the preceding generations have built.
We have not yet seen the full effect of the passage of Pluto through Libra (1971 to 1984), nor can we estimate what challenges it may bring to individuals who will have to face in childhood or adolescence the possibility of crucial world-events as Pluto passes through Scorpio and comes closer to the Sun than Neptune, while making a 90-year long sextile aspect to this planet (1943-2038).
This penetration of Neptune's orbit by Pluto — I have spoken of it as a cosmic fecundation or impregnation occurs approximately every 248 years. It occurred during the 18th century and what has become known as "the Enlightenment" period which saw the rise of modern science and industry, the American War of Independence and the French Revolution. It led, in Europe, to the Napoleonic concept of a totally centralized bureaucracy and to a violent political reaction after the Emperor's downfall. An era of popular revolution and the spread of Romanticism followed, and modern individualism arose on the foundation of the power of bourgeoisie and of Business — a foundation based on greed and productivity at any cost.
Mankind, of course, has to deal with all the direct and indirect results of these 19th century developments. It has to deal with them collectively at both the sociocultural and (through pollution and impaired health) the biological levels. This, under present circumstances, inevitably means some kind of world-crisis. If I have repeatedly mentioned this fact, it is because I must stress that the possibility and the character of radical individual transformation is largely conditioned by the crises through which our society and today mankind as a whole are passing. Individual transformation does not occur in a vacuum.
If, in this year 1978, I am writing a book on an astrological approach to the problems arising from the process of transformation of individuals or would-be individuals, it is because Pluto in Libra, Neptune in Sagittarius, and Uranus in Scorpio (more or less at the midpoint of the long Pluto-Neptune sextile, exact on the day I started this chapter), represent the possibility for my consciousness to tune up in a particular way to the downflow of new creative impulses that seek to renew, individually and collectively, the still prevailing patterns and ideals of human living. Many individuals evidently do now respond, and have responded, to such a release of transformative energy; each responds in his or her own individual way. But all these transformative concepts and formulations are individual interpretations of the reflections cast upon the minds of the transforming agents by the descent of spiritual forces emanating from the greater Whole, Humanity — astrologically symbolized by the galaxy — in answer to the developing needs of nations, communities, and individual persons. Their need "rises to heaven," as it were, as an unconscious (or in some cases conscious) prayer; the answer "descends" from one aspect or another of the planetary Mind — the pleroma Mind — in order to evoke the possibility of a radical change of consciousness and of our everyday approach to personal living and interpersonal relationship.
4)Cf. The Sun is Also a Star: The Galactic Dimension of Astrology.
Planetary Interactions: Aspects and Gestalt
Whether one thinks of a birth-chart as the blueprint of a "building" or as a mandala symbolizing the complex interplay of energies within an I-centered personality, it is a geometrical figure. It is conveniently as well as significantly divided into four sections by the cross of horizon and meridian. The planets — and any other celestial factors used in astrology — are located in these four sections, and if their positions are interrelated by lines, a geometric pattern (or gestalt) becomes visible.
In order really to understand the implications of a birth-chart, it has to be perceived and interpreted as a whole. This is as true at the transpersonal level as at the person-centered level of interpretation. The only difference is the end-purpose of the interpretation. In my book, Person-Centered Astrology,(5) I have dealt at some length with what I called the "planetary gestalt" of the chart, that is, with the specific way planets are grouped, especially with regard to the horizon and meridian axes. I shall not repeat here what I have written in other books, but will only add that these planetary patterns, when they are quite clear-cut (which is not always the case), provide the astrologer with a basic frame of reference within which he or she can evaluate repeating patterns of activities and of events.
5) Cf. the chapter entitled "First Steps In the Study of Birth-Charts."
To illustrate what I mean by the difference between a person-centered and transpersonal interpretation of overall planetary pattern (gestalt), let us take for example a pattern in which a grouping of planets in one hemisphere of the chart (or one of the four main quadrants) broadly opposes one planet, or two or three in close proximity. From the person-centered point of view, what is shown by such a type of formation is the need for establishing a stable balance between the two sets of planets — or if possible the integration of presumably conflicting tendencies into a "fulfilled" personality. From the transpersonal point of view, such a dualistic pattern is not something to overcome, but rather something to be consciously used. What is to be used for the process of transformation is the tension between the two groups of planets.
There may be tensions of another kind when an empty hemisphere (180°) contrasts with one containing all the planets; these may also be condensed within a smaller space. In such cases, the section where the planets are congregated symbolizes an "area" of the total personality to which, in this particular life, much attention (literally, "tension toward") should be directed. Life itself will presumably force the person's attention to that area, but the real issue is whether this "attention" will be compulsive — as in the case of serious illness or of a repetitive pattern of frustrating or tragic interpersonal relationships — and leave the person as unaware as before of the inherent transformative purpose of the events, or whether the individual will be able to meet these happenings as tools for the cutting and grinding of the coarse and dull stone of personality into a clear and translucent jewel.
This is why the often repeated statement that we must live in the "now" is only partially right and may blind its advocates to the higher possibilities of human existence. The now — the present moment — is only a transition between past and future. Most people live their lives in such away that the present is always, not only conditioned, but often entirely determined by the past — and this is unfortunate and rather meaningless. An individual on the transpersonal path should realize in what way a present occurrence is an effect of the past, and at the same time, understand the purpose of the event in generating power to move ahead in the process of transformation. This does not mean that one should make definite pictures of the future in one's mind — far from it. It means that a future-oriented energy should be released from any present happening (whatever it be, "good" or "bad", pleasurable or disturbing).
This of course runs counter to the modern gospel of enjoyment or "instant satisfaction" in terms of strictly personal feelings and moods and regardless of possible future consequences or by-products. But our modern age is mostly hedonistic, and the search for pleasure within a strictly personal and egocentric frame of reference negates the possibility of any real advance on the transpersonal way. This, however, is not to be considered a glorification of asceticism, for ascetic practices are often undertaken for a personal or strictly individual purpose disguised as "spirituality". What counts is not what is done or not done, but the spirit in which the action or refusal to act is performed.
I shall repeat here what during the last 50 years I have so often stated in articles, lectures, and books: there is no "good" or "bad" birth-chart — no chart is "better" than any other — no aspect between planets, and no planetary position in any zodiacal sign or natal house is in itself "fortunate" or "unfortunate" according to a common standard of value applicable to all human beings. Some charts apparently display a number of aspects which would indicate a relatively smooth, harmonious kind of relationship between the planets involved. These may actually represent obstacles to the process of transformation, because they may suggest an inertial kind of satisfaction with what is.
On the other hand, other charts may seem to portend what we would consider lasting difficulties, frustrations, and misfortunes from a biological or social point of view. But from the point of view of what the person was meant to accomplish — his or her dharma — these difficulties, tensions, and even apparent tragedies may be, and ought to be interpreted as, indispensable phases of the life-process. What takes the form of "discordant" relationships between planets has the potentiality of generating power; and if this power can be controlled, or even objectively understood and accepted for what it is, it can increase the momentum of the process of transformation. In transpersonal living, an individual should not be concerned with "success" and especially with what from the sociocultural point of view would be called a constructive achievement. It may be that as far as all appearances reveal, a person does not end his or her life in an at least relative state of serenity or "holiness," or as an agent for transindividual and "divine" purposes; nevertheless he or she may have neutralized a prolonged karma of failure — and thus a "dark" spot on the total planetary being, Humanity. For karma is not, I repeat, merely an individual matter: every individual failure — and also every individual victory over the inertia of the past — affects the whole of mankind. And the life of an individual on the transpersonal way is totally involved in the evolution of humanity.
I might add here that when an individual decides to start a course of action, which according to his or her nature cannot be easy and pleasurable because the person is bound to face strong opposition (either within the body and psyche, or in the social collectivity in whose midst the actions are performed), the process should best be started under interplanetary aspects which suggest a strong release of power — for instance under a square or a conjunction involving dynamic planets. Power is released out of a state of tension: a loosely stretched violin string does not produce a resonant tone! But it is also obvious that if the string is too taut it could break.
The series of astrological aspects which refer particularly to the release of power through tension are the squares and semi-squares, and the conjunctions in which at least one dynamic and potentially transformative planet is involved. Mars at the biological and emotional levels, and Uranus at the transpersonal level, are the most change-producing planets.
An opposition between two planets evokes the existence of a basic need for objectively seeing the meaning of the relationship between the biopsychic functions these planets symbolize; and this involves a clear and conscious differentiation between the purposes of these functions in the total personality. For example, at Full Moon the Sun and Moon are in opposition. This enables us to see the relation between these two "Lights" - the Light of Day (activity directed by the conscious mind and the ego or the I-center's will) and the Light of Night (activity which, in a natural state of life, refers to interpersonal relationships in the home or at public places, procreation perhaps, and the dream state in which the feelings and experiences of the day may be given either chaotic or symbolic forms).
An opposition aspect is the apex of a cycle defined by the successive conjunctions of two planets. In the case of the 30-day lunation cycle, the cycle begins at New Moon, reaches its apex at Full Moon, and ends as the waning Crescent (or rather "decrescent") disappears from the sky. This lunation cycle is the prototype of all cycles of relationship between two planets moving at different speeds, and I have dealt with it at great length in my book The Lunation Cycle.(6)
6) The Lunation Cycle was first published by the McKay firm (1946) under the erroneous title "The Moon: The Parts and Fortunes of Life" when Marc Jones was the editor in charge of astrological and occult publications. After this department was unexpectedly closed, the book, considerably expanded, was published by Servire Publications in Holland (1967), and is now in paperback by Aurora Press. The Part of Fortune and its complements are also studied in this book.
There is also a large chapter concerning aspects in my already-mentioned book, Person-Centered Astrology, "Form in Astrological Time and Space" (Santa Fe: Aurora Press).
The Part of Fortune is the moving index of this cyclically evolving soli-lunar relationship. It is quite important in a transpersonal interpretation because at that level the location of the Part of Fortune in relation to the Angles of the birth-chart (its house position) symbolizes the concrete form which the relationship between the I-center and the soul may take, as the individual enters the path of transformation. For example, the Part of Fortune's conjunction with Saturn in the natal chart evokes karmic delays and psychic or social difficulties on the transpersonal way, difficulties often colored by the character of the zodiacal sign in which it is located. Such delays or difficulties, while they may retard the transpersonal process in time, can nevertheless bring greater depth to the relationship between the I-center and the soul. On the other hand, the Part of Fortune's conjunction with Jupiter in the birth-chart may facilitate the process of transformation through contacts with an authoritative personage. But Jupiter's social character can also unfocus the transpersonal search by bringing it back to the level of social success and wealth-seeking.
Every geometrically measured angular aspect between two moving planets is actually a phase — frozen and out of context, as it were — of a cyclic process extending from one conjunction of two planets to the next. Therefore, the interpretation of the aspect should in many cases take into consideration the sign and degree of the zodiac and the natal house in which the conjunction of the two planets occurred in the past. Moreover, I have insisted for many years upon the fact that an aspect occurring between the conjunction and opposition of a cycle of relationship between two planets has a meaning basically different from the one it would have found between the opposition and the next conjunction. In other words, a First Quarter of the cycle of soli-lunar relationships means in principle something very different from a Last Quarter phase. This can be seen concretely in the sky, because the two Quarter Moons, though having the same shape, face opposite directions; and the same phenomenon can be seen through a telescope With regard to the phases of Venus and other planets. Geometrically and in a static sense, the two square aspects within one cycle are identical, but dynamically they have opposite polarities.
In many instances, this difference in polarity can be given a valuable transpersonal meaning, for a truly transpersonal interpretation is concerned with dynamic processes rather than with static, abstract forms; and by considering the polarity of a planetary aspect, the astrologer may have a significant clue as to the level at which the energy generated by the relationship can most usefully operate. A "waxing" aspect deals more specifically with physical, emotional and personal activity, while a "waning" aspect refers particularly to mental and sociocultural processes — and I use the terms waxing and waning symbolically, in the way they apply to the phases of the Moon which, I repeat, are actually phases in the relationship between the Moon and the Sun.
Such an interpretation is particularly significant when one is considering the relationship between two planets which can be considered a bipolar pair — thus Sun and Moon, Mars and Venus, Jupiter and Mercury, Jupiter and Saturn, Sun and Saturn, Moon and Saturn, Saturn and Uranus, Jupiter and Neptune, Mars and Pluto, Uranus and Pluto — and, in terms of the development of culture-wholes and nations, Neptune and Pluto. In the last-mentioned case, a waxing sextile — such as the one we are presently experiencing — is profoundly different from a waning sextile (the one near the end of the last Neptune-Pluto cycle having occurred about 1841-43). The present waxing sextile of Neptune and Pluto remains effective ("in orb") for nearly 90 years, while the last waning sextile lasted only a couple of years.(7)
7) Cf. my books Astrological Timing: The Transition to the New Age, Chapter 3, "Cycles of Relationship," and The Sun is Also a Star: The Galactic Dimension of Astrology, Chapter 6, "The Interpenetrating Cycles of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto."
Angles: Root-factors in Personality and their Transformation
At whatever level one may study and apply it, astrology is based, not only on relationships, but on cycles of relationships. At one time for convenience sake I differentiated between cycles of position and cycles of relationship.(8) The former, I said, refers to the cycle defined by the return of a planet (or of any regularly moving factor) to a fixed point in the sky — for instance, the lunar cycle of 27 and 1/3 days defined by the return of the Moon to a conjunction with a fixed star. But because of the "precession of the equinoxes", stars are not "fixed". Everything in the universe is moving — and moving with reference to everything else. The transpersonal approach, not only to astrology, but to every mode of interpreting the human experience of unceasing change, is essentially a dynamic approach.
8) Cf. The Lunation Cycle, Chapter 1.
Yet human beings also experience stability and permanence, and the most precious feeling of permanence for most people is the feeling of being I, myself — a feeling so precious that the sense of identity it produces has to be considered immortal and even in some metaphysics, absolutely indestructible. For many, if not most astrologers, this "I" — as a "spiritual entity" — is thought to be outside of the birth-chart, separate from and (theoretically) able to rule it. Yet, as I have stated, the "I" of which a person is often so proud and wanting to immortalize is largely the product of biological and sociocultural conditions of life. It is the center of the mandala of personality, but that center could not actually exist without an existential framework that gives it not only power but, even more fundamentally, concreteness. Such a framework is represented in person-centered astrology by the four Angles of the birth-chart.
I have spoken of the Angles as the "roots of the individualized consciousness," as the four characteristic types of activity which participate in the building and development of a conscious and stable center within the whole human being. I have also characterized the Ascendant as the symbolic point of sunrise at which the "I" can most effectively discover its purpose and at which "illumination" may be received.
The meanings I have already given to the four Angles are essentially retained in a transpersonal interpretation, because as long as the consciousness can be radically influenced by biological and chemical needs or pressures, the power of the "roots" has effectively to sustain the process of transformation — until the possibility of existence at a transphysical level is definitely actualized, in which case astrology is no longer applicable. Astrology interprets physically based events and developments, even if they are called psychological, mental, or occult.
Astrology is of value at the transpersonal level because it can reveal the meaning of the sequence of events and crises during the process of transformation and thus assist the traveler on the Path to understand where he or she stands, and why certain problems and resistances have to be met. It is no longer of any value once the process is completed and the physical plane is left behind, unless perhaps the now-transphysical being centered in the "star" returns in some manner to the ordinary world of merely human beings to pursue in a subliminal and presumably hidden way the line that had been his or her dharma as an individual person.
Wherever and whenever this dharma remains a motivating force, the four Angles which were the "roots" that brought substantiality and earthly power to the "I" retain their original character. But as the transpersonal process unfolds, what was the "closed-center" mandala of personality should become an "open-center" mandala. The central area of the mandala had previously been filled by the "palace" of the I-centered consciousness and will. But what had once been the solid and majestic throne on which the power of individualized selfhood was glorified as the absolute reality of human existence becomes an area of mysterious emptiness, while the larger space of the mandala is filled with the progeny of the "marriage" of soul and mind.
In such a mandala, the circumference ceases to have the character we attribute to Saturn, lord of personal boundaries and of precise and rationalistic formulations which bind while they define. At this level Saturn is to be seen in its mythological aspect as "ruler of the Golden Age", the age of truth and innocence during which every human being is purely and solely what he or she is meant to be — the true exemplar of his or her dharma. The Saturnian mind is a crystal lens through which the universal focuses itself into the personal. When the open-center mandala is flooded with the light and power of the greater Whole, the boundaries of this smaller whole become translucent and, I might say, transpowered. Power passes through them and radiates beyond them, inspiring and blessing all the beings the illumined individual touches — and touching them ever so little transforms them.
This, however, can only gradually occur. It occurs when the four fundamental faculties displayed by the I-centered consciousness — sensation, feeling, thinking, intuition(9) — and the fifth principle emanating from the I-center, the will, have become repolarized and transmuted. This is at least one aspect of the alchemical Great Work — another aspect being the transubstantiation of matter, once it is freed from the constraints and often the perversions brought to its basic substance and modes of operation by sociocultural and personal- individual factors.
9) Cf. Chapter 4, p. 81.
On the transpersonal way, what is represented by the four angles of the birth-chart that has become an open-center mandala becomes subservient to the light that flows through the open core. This light is symbolically the light that circulates throughout the galaxy and is actually the spiritual essence of the planetary Being whose multi-faceted and multilevel manifestation in the Earth's biosphere we speak of as mankind. But this galactic light — which a Christian mystic might think of and adore as the ineffable love of Christ — has also a focalizing center giving it a particular rhythm, tone, and intensity. This center is a particular star. It is the star at the zenith of the birthplace at the time of the first inhalation of air, because this zenith point is the symbol of the link between an individualized form of consciousness and the cosmic, all-embracing consciousness of the galactic Being.
In a sense, this link may be called the "Higher Self." It is rather SELF — the metacosmic principle of Unity, ONE — operating as and through a "star." It operates when this star succeeds in arousing the closed-center mandala of personality and its individualized and autistic I-center to the realization that its mandala-space constitutes but a single drop in the vast ocean of galactic space. This space, however, should be thought of as an "ocean" of light. Within it the illumined individual can become a gem of translucent and sparkling beauty — and ancient esoteric traditions in Buddhist lands have spoken of the Diamond Soul.
The precisely structured and polished substance of this Diamond Soul is the product of the indissoluble union of the soul and the mind. It can be symbolized astrologically by a chart in which the fourfold pattern created by the cross of horizon and meridian is essentially replaced by an hexagonal division. This sixfold structure makes it possible for the light of the "star" to radiate through the darkness of the biological level. The number 6 symbolizes the union of spirit and matter. In astrology, each of the six powers that are differentiated aspects of the galactic light that pours through the open center of the chart-mandala is considered a bipolar unit — masculine and feminine.(10) Thus the birth-chart has twelve houses, two successive houses constituting one unit. Seen at the lower levels, such a chart is only the biological reflection of the spiritual Form, the Diamond Soul. This spiritual Form becomes filled with light and love when what was at first only a body, then a person, and later on an individual, reaches the transindividual state. The human "I" then becomes the agent of a star — the "Son" of a divine Being.
10) ln my book, An Astrological Mandala: The Cycle of Transformation and its 360 Symbolic Phases (New York: Random House, 1973), Part III, pages 304-311, I relate the six basic powers of the Diamond Soul — or in a cosmic sense, of the Anima Mundi (the World Soul) — to the six pairs (masculine and feminine) of zodiacal signs. One evidently can consider the twelve zodiacal signs as the Houses — or traditionally the "mansions" — of the Sun. The solar system as a whole becomes a cosmic mandala, for at that level the astrologer should be able to understand that the Sun is not merely a mass of matter in the plasma state, but more truly a "window" through which the power that whirls through galactic space constantly pours out upon the contents of the heliocosm. Occultists claim that we do not see the real Sun, but only what pours through it.
Such an approach, however, has (astrologically speaking) valid and workable meaning only in terms of a truly galactic kind of astrology: and we do not have as yet sufficient knowledge of the whole Milky Way to attribute a realistic significance to its component stars or groups of stars.
Until such a culmination and completion of the transpersonal process is actually reached, the framework of the houses based upon the fourfold division defined by the cross of horizon and meridian — each of the four sectors being subdivided into three areas of experience — retains its fundamental meaning as the pattern of operation for karma at the human stage of evolution, at least once the mind — the essential human factor — begins to develop concretely and, in the course of time, independently of biological compulsions and cultural assumptions. But on the transpersonal path, karma is being transmuted into dharma; therefore the character of the twelve basic areas of human experience represented by the natal houses is gradually raised to a higher level, or rather to the level of what I will call transobjectivity.
Transobjectivity is not subjectivity. It refers to objective and concrete experiences which are no longer taken to be what they would appear to be to most people — i.e., as mere physical events — but are instead understood as symbols of archetypal phases of universal processes. In other words, transpersonal individuals live their lives-in-transformation not in terms of particular circumstances given a strictly personal or perhaps aleatory interpretation, but in terms of universal principles and archetypal, non-personal meanings and purposes. They see through what others would call personal problems or interpersonal forces. Such a way of life is therefore quite radically different from what is advocated today in terms of purely "personal growth" and the instant satisfaction of every desire, sexual and otherwise — just as it differs from the way of life of people who pass their lives determined by the assumptions and traditions of their society and culture.
The practice of transpersonal astrology is extremely difficult, because one has to see through what is considered the usual meaning of every factor being studied — and this includes both astrological factors in the client's birth-chart, transits and progressions, and existential factors in the client's life. One has to sense or intuitively perceive what is possible through what is. One has to sense the pull of the future in the hesitations that confuse the present state of consciousness. And if the astrologer is sure of the exact moment of the first breath of his or her client, if thus the exact zodiacal degree of the Ascendant of the birth-chart can be surely ascertained, the symbol of that degree(11) can be of profound significance as a clue to the character of the client's dharma, and therefore to the spirit in which he or she is able to proceed along the transpersonal way. But the interpretation of symbols is not easy; many extremely intelligent individuals bring to the task a socioculturally-molded mind; they allow themselves to be impressed by the external implications of a pictorial scene instead of trying to discover the deeper workings of basic principles through appearances. The transpersonal way is indeed always a way through what it is. It is the evocation of the possible, even through the impossible.(12)
11) For a study of the Sabian Symbols for each degree of the zodiac, I refer the reader to my book An Astrological Mandala: The Cycle of Transformations and its 360 Symbolic Phases, (New York: Random House, 1973).
12) In the spirit of the latter portion of this chapter, I also refer the reader to my book An Astrological Triptych, specifically Part II, The Way "Through" (Santa Fe: Aurora Press, 1978).
The Astrology of Transformation
