Introduction.

When I first started out trying to conceive of astrology as a fact of life I was very materialistic about it. Something must influence something else, and everything must have a reason. It was not until I came to understand some of the views of theosophy that I adopted esotheric thinking in my own perception of astrological “truths”. Modern materialistic thinking cannot I believe understand astrology for it has no clue as to the magnitude of the spiritual world. Yet all astrological symbols refer to this world. So if you believe in astrology and all you see are the planets and the signs you are probably off track. You only believe what you see. You don’t have to believe what you see, because you already know what you see. Rather believe what you don’t see and try and get to know just that.
Now before reading any further note this. I cannot know for shure to be true what I write here. I believe these things because I investigated horoscopes and discovered facts that support this belief.
Yet I have never in person met a clearvoyant to confirm any of it. I’ve read many of their statements but they can be as unreliable as a rooster claiming to practice birth control. So what I’m writing about is the path that I went in search for the miraculeous. You cannot find the truth here, you must find it yourself, maybe following a similar path. We will come to speak of the “I” that does the “finding” and maybe gain some insight, enough to discover Maya.

The circle and the center.

Many authors on esotheric thinking seem to revolve around the same dogmas.

1. First of all, all life and death is part of some evolutionary process.
2. The drama of life and death is part of a plan,
3. Man is the centre of this plan.
4. Man is destined to ascend to a higher being.
5. This higher being has increasingly less to do with the world as we perceive
   it now, since the larger part of ourselves we cannot see or begin to imagine.
6. In controlled imagining what we are we may become clearvoyant,
7. Only clairvoyants can perceive the true self of a human being and the cosmic “memory” as is known as akasha.

The primordial elements.

According to clairvoyants like Rudolf Steiner man is a four-centred being. Every being has an evolution of its own whereas its goal seems to be to become a vehicle for the next being. The “I” which man may now call “himself” is at present the last to have been implanted in him, for without it he would be still animal. As animals have had their astral body’s implanted to develop above the plants, with desires, sympathy or antipathy. Successively, as the plants have ether body’s, to be alive, and to distinguish them from the minerals. For those that pay attention to “the four bodies” theory it relates to that of “the four ancient elements”. The four elements are basic to astrology and they are known as Earth, Fire, Water and Air. Now air is all that develops out of once gaseous substances, Water is all that develops out of once liquid substances, Fire is all that develops out of once “warmth” Our body’s, as is the body of the earth and all other bodies are permeated by gas, water and warmth. So in the elements, so to speak we join the rest of the cosmos. Even more so the elements themselves are interrelated since they evolve in a certain order and are permeated by one another. This you can imagine by heating something to the point where it becomes gaseous, and heating it more it becomes fire. Earth becomes body, Water becomes our fluidsystem, Air becomes our nerveous system and fire will become the “I”.

The forces that are allways with us.

Now something strange happens as we try to imagine what or who does the heating or the cooling. In this process we must admit to ourselves that all we are and perceive is only an image of that process. What we call reality thus becomes part an illusion, for the process itself, its goal and its origin, are not visible nor comprehensible. Realising that makes up for many religious experiences. Now lets look at the zodiac. Al objects that circle around between us and those faraway starsystems are also images of the process of becoming. In fact the zodiac is the process of becoming animals in their earliest forms. Will it be hard to imagine that the plant-forms developed under a “plantiac”. Will it be comprehensible that man in a later stage will be formed under a “mantiac”? The thing to consider here is the development of man in accordance with some cosmic law that shapes him into his present form, out of all the old forms.

In considering the planets one can imagine the same morphological and development ideas. The present planets are considered to be remnants of long eras of this development. In fact Steiner speaks of the “old” moon, the “old” sun and the “old” Saturn as being an area unto where the “old” earth stretched out leaving mineral remnants of its development there. The sun, moon and even mars are said to be pushed out of this area, leaving traces of there original substances or nature. It left the earth with substances that later became iron (mars), gold (sun) and silver (moon). Look at it as an inversion of what now becomes the “I”, the fire solidified to metals. In looking at the cycles of planetary movement one may find patterns in nature that are actually survivors of former connections. These patterns are thought to be phenomena like the tides of the sea, or the female menstrual cycle. The thing to consider here is that a variety of attributes in man are related to the same attributes in the cosmos, where they are beings. Our planet shares these attributes with its origin, and man being born on this planet shares these attributes in the rhythm of his being.
For those interested, our earth forms the 4th incarnation and there are three more to come.
The planets Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are considered to be the outer planets, venus, moon and mercury the inner planets. Uranus and Neptune, according to Steiner are not originally from our system, but guests from another. The sun regulates between outer and inner planets. Now having established a possible relation between man on earth and man in the cosmos there still remains to be discussed first the forces that make this possible, the beings, second the last body of man, his ego, that tries to make this comprehensible. As I pointed out that man is supposed to be ascending to somewhere through his ego. It is thought he is ascending toward comprehending his origin and uniting with the trinity that sets in motion the twelve zodiacal signs and the seven original planets or stages of development.

They are thought to be the forces of

1. Will
2. Intelligence
3. Love.

You will find these three in every occult school, in cabbala, in masonry. These three are the forces with which man becomes the man of the heavens, through 12 forms and 7 spheres and 4 elements. So the forces that make everything possible are threefold. G.I. Gurdjieff calls them the forces of “affirmation, denial and reconciliation. He realised as Steiner did that these three also form mans prominent patterns of existence. In psychological terms you’ll find “willing”, “thinking” and “feeling”. In body formation you’ll find “The head, the middle and the lower part, or the Brain (sensory system), the Rythmic system and the Movement system. In theology they will be the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Astrology has always known them as 4 Main signs, 4 Solid signs and as 4 Movable signs, with each of the four element present in them. Each of them forming a cross, representing the “descending” into matter, the suffering being matter and the resurrection or ascending from matter. Ascending and descending means to follow the path of the planets where all opposing forces arise, good and evil, and all that our personal “I” must face, to become initiated or “aware”.

Main	Aries	Libra	Cancer	Capricorn
Solid	Taurus	Scorpio	Leo	Aquarius
Movable	Gemini	Sagittarius	Virgo	Pisces

Table 1, Three forces in astrology.

 

Transformation

These forces man beholds through the seven steps in his being that are roughly depicted by the planets. They are thought of as seven modes of consciousness or initiation, or seven seals. As the planets transform life as we know it, so do our glands transform impressions and images. The other planets, Uranus, Neptune etc., since they appear to belong to other systems, will be discussed later. These original seven transform consiousness from the unfathomable “En Soph” or “the great nothing”, (the one that is above three) through the father, the son and the holy spirit. They are found in the colors, musical tones, our chakra’s, in short in all of us and the world around us. They create our senses (of which we have twelve; thought, word, taste, smell, touch, warmth, sight, hearing, balance, movement, life and self, Steiner july 22, 1921, Dornach), our vital organs, our glandular system and the brain reappear in our consciousness through hormones and other substances, through light, sound and reactions of the I, or the Self (soul). The system is more complicated but for our present purpose it will do. Lastly, in these seven good and bad, or sympathy and antipathy are introduced. Astrology has always used the notion of good and evil in its appraisal of the nature of the planets, their angular relationships or their placement in favorable or non favorable signs.

We discussed the four centred being. Of course in the distant future this probably will be a 7-centered being. Through Saturn, Moon, Sun, Earth, followed by Venus, Jupiter and Mercury we evolve. Sofar we have looked at processes and influences and came upon man’s final specialty, his “self” Now in astrology it is believed, be it not by every astrologer, that man can, through his conscious self be free from the Zodiac and the planets, free from evolution, or good and evil. He would have to rise above the seven and the twelve and become one with the trinity. Now here is the tricky thought. Man assumes he is what his surrounding tells him he is. We mimic behaviour we witness, we identify with role models Yet part of him realises his surrounding is mere illusion and temporary anyway. In his mind he can wonder off. In death he can be free. So mans self lives in different realities. The one that can be objectified and the one that is subjective. So only the subjective mind can reach for the gods. Science can never acknowledge this subjectiveness, for it is unique. What it however must acknowledge is that from this so called “subjective” part of the self stem the arts, the ethics, aestetics, in fact all our moral behavior comes from the subjective mind and its ideals. Now the force that raises subjectiveness, to say “I” is a soul force, which is thought of to be sleeping in most of us. Now when we speak of self-knowledge, we therefore not only mean the objective self, which can be scientifically studied in behavioural science, we really mean our subjective self. This subjective self is free from the Zodiac as it acknowledges its truth, but as I said, it is predominantly asleep in most of us. The type of astrology that reveals such information is called esoteric astrology. Most astrologers however are fixed on the behavioural and factual readings. Psychologically speaking man has to overcome his egoism. Since merely all he does is based on egoism this will be the hardest of all endeavours.

Now there is of course a reason the self is asleep. Knowing ones subjective self would reveal not only beauty but also the ugliness and the evil, that stems mainly from ones own egoism. In cabbala we find that receiving the light without giving anything back we will eventually feel shame. So shame becomes our savior, but who wants to be ashamed ?. He who stands in the light and not passess it on will create a shadow. Knowingly or unknowingly casting shadows creates karma and binds the soul to the cycle of reincarnation. In short, astrology opens the eyes to ones good and bad dispositions points us to the light to receive and to give.

Good and Evil within and without.

Steiner describes to us a very ingenious mechanism of passion and delusion. He calls them Lucifer and Ahriman. Luciferic forces are our passions, Ahrimanic forces are our illusions. Lucifer influences our outlook on life from within, with our passions, Ahrimanic forces influence the same from outside, leads us into illusions. The two working together make us believe we are doing the right thing when our passions leads us and the appearances of results or surroundings fool us. There is no escape except through constraint of passions and contemplating spiritual facts. In anthroposophy the present materialistic outlook on life is considered to be Ahrimanic for it deludes us into thinking that all there is to know comes from natural sciences. Astrology has dealt with good and evil by appointing certain planets as malefics or benefics. The goal of any astrological reading should be to derive from the planets and the signs the varying forces of passion and illusion. One trapped in passion must learn to constrain, one trapped in illusion must learn to see through. In a way this is called “initiation” and every step in initiation,of which there are seven, there is a master and a disciple.

Now life will grant us opportunities to overcome the evil, which as mentioned mostly stems from egoism. Astrology offers a view on the possibilities of being initiated throughout life through its directional systems. It reveals facts and dates with certain outcomes that are in the past and future. One has to know however the spiritual significance of each angle that is formed between two or more planets. Merely stating that a certain fact will arise then and then will not be enough. One has to look for its spiritual meaning and what there is to learn.

How do we learn from our horoscoop ?

To be continued…………………

This page was last updated october 10th 2007,