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FIRST PHASE: REORIENTATION - THE MOON STATION
The first thing to do is to leave: this is the basic fact in all adventures. The next thing is to find our direction. It must lead us away from what we are, from our customary all-too-familiar occupations.
We have therefore to re-orient ourselves. The symbol of this initial step in our new adventure is the Moon. We have to reach the "hidden face of the Moon", as a platform from which we can survey the whole solar system. Then we can observe this system from a point of view no longer geocentric (Earth-centered), but heliocentric (Sun-centered); this, because the Moon, our satellite, marks the ultimate boundaries of the Earth as a planetary whole.
In ancient cosmologies the space between the Earth-atmosphere and the Moon was called the sub-lunar sphere - or the astral realm: and the Moon was related to Saturn, the planet whose revolutions were said to mark the boundaries of the solar system as a well-defined cosmic field. The Moon represents thus, in the deeper type of astrological symbolism, the primordial awareness - i.e. the "feeling" - of being a person facing a complex environment and reacting to this environment in a characteristic, spontaneous and organic manner. It is the original basis of the ego sense; but the ego itself is developed as a real psychological structure only in relation to the family and social pressures of the the environment, and Saturn - the ringed planet - symbolizes this ego as a structural pattern of responses to life's everyday contacts and challenges.
It is at this lunar level of basic awareness of oneself-as-a-person that an individual must start his pilgrimage to the stars. This awareness as to be questioned. Its mode of operation have to be critically examined. The crystallized forms it has acquired under Saturn's influence (Le. as a result of the pressures of a particular environment, culture, language, religion, etc.) must be challenged. This does not mean that the ego-sense will then vanish - far from it. It simply implies a consideration of its origin and of the manner in which it has become set into a rigid and controlling frame of reference.
"Con-sideration" etymologically means "with the stars" (cum-sidera), a most revealing etymology indeed! To consider a fact is to try to discover the place and meaning it has in relation to the universe-as-a-whole. It is not to look at it as an isolated entity, but to integrate it into a vaster Whole in which it operates significantly. The change from an Earth-centered to a Sun-centered picture of the universe was the result of "considering" the Earth - and thus of seeing it as an integral part of the solar system. A further change - a reconsideration of the meaning of human existence of this Earth - comes when the solar system as a whole is seen as a small unit in a vast Galaxy, the Milky Way.
The first step on what I call here the Illumined Road is to reorient one's consciousness and one's ego-sense; it is to recognize and irrevocably to accept one's position within the solar system. This means symbolically that the tie between the Moon and Saturn - to which we shall return when dealing with Saturn - has to be transformed. It has to be superseded, at least partially and ideally, by a deep, flaming realization of the essential relationship between the Moon and the Sun - the Moon becoming, as a result, a Sun-oriented gateway to the solar system as a whole.
In primitive man close to Nature the Moon and the Sun are seen as two polarities of life; but his awareness of the bi-polar character of life exists almost entirely at the unconscious level of animal (or at least "tribal") existence. The Sun and the Moon are the two "Lights" related to the basic rhythms of day and night. Man responds passively to these rhythms as a component part of the Earth's biosphere. He worships the Sun; but is not aware of the solar system as a cosmic field of activity. He is totally and compulsively life-centered as well as Earth-centered. Later on, as his ego becomes more set and his sense of being a separate individual person increases under the symbolical influence of Saturn, man remains Earth-centered, but "ego-centricity" largely supersedes in him his earlier "biocentricity."
At this preliminary Moon-stage of the Illumined Road the individual person, now relatively free from Saturn's egocentric stranglehold and consciously turned toward the sun, is ready to start on his long, arduous and dangerous journey starward. He is beginning to "feel" - very dimly and insecurely at this state - that there is an Illumined Road, and to sense the relation it has to the earlier primordial movements of life, i.e. the centrifugal and centripetal motions of energy of which I have already spoken. He realizes that there is a third movement which reaches from the "Heart of the Sun"* to the very center of the Galaxy. This is the Illumined Road, of which mystic philosophers often have spoken as the Path of Return.
*This term "the Heart of the Sun" is, of course, purely symbolical. It refers to the Unknown Reality hidden, as it were, behind or within the intense atomic activity of the outer layers of the Sun, the photosphere. It refers to the Sun as a star among stars, rather than the Sun as a sun, i.e. as the center and origin of a system of planets. This distinction between the two ways of considering the Sun - as an individual star in the galaxy, and as the "father-mother" of a family of planets - is very important in terms of the type of symbolism used in this work.
[Rudhyar has devoted to it an entire volume: The Sun is also a Star. 1975 (Dutton, New York)— Editor's Note}
If we look from the heliocentric point of view at the two great movements of life-energy we see in the first instance life radiating as formative activity from the solar center to the Saturnian boundaries of the solar system, the trans-Saturnian planets not strictly belonging to that system,* then this outward formative tide of energy bounces back, as it were as reflective consciousness. The life-energy, in a transformed condition, resonates back to the Sun, building structures of "mind" and group-relatedness. This two-directional oscillatory and circulatory rhythm goes on and on, outward activity and inward consciousness acting upon each other, until the life-force exhausts its innate potential and the cycle of organic existence ends. This is the "Wheel of life and death" of Buddhistic philosophy, Samsara.
*Cf. The Practice Of Astrology as an Integral Approach to Human Understanding, by Dane Rudhyar (1967) now published by Shambhala Publications, Boulder, Colo. and The Sun is also a Star (1975).
However, the possibility of a third movement exists in Man; and individuals here and there respond to such a possibility. They "break through" the circulatory rhythm of normal human existence at the symbolical Moon level; and, reorienting their "feeling-nature", they see the Saturnian power of egocentricity slowly wane as the Solar power of heliocentricity waxes in strength. They begin to feel, think, and act as if the center of their being were established in the Heart of the Sun. And from this Heart of the Sun, which is "light" responsive to the vaster rhythms of the galactic "greater Whole", they become identified in an increasingly and irrevocable manner with the "solar Ray" reaching out, far beyond Saturn, to the galactic center. It is, I repeat, this center which, for our humanity whose consciousness is able to scale immense fields of space measured by "light years", represents in concrete expression that cosmic Power hidden by the word, God - our God.
The Illumined Road is the path of the solar Ray - the Ray that links the single star-sun to the center of its Galaxy - but no one can tread this Road who has not reoriented his basic feeling of self away from the Saturnian patterns of the ego and toward the Sun - which then (and only then) can truly stand for the individual Soul of the self-dedicated person. This path is of the substance of light; but on it any obstacle and any unredeemed ghost from the geocentric and egocentric past cast a crucially dark shadow. The fate of the traveler on the Illumined Road rests essentially upon his faith, his courage and his ability to withstand, without deviating from the guiding solar Ray, the torturing power of fear and seeming isolation.
Indeed on the road every Soul travels alone, even though the sense of isolation is the great illusion. Every Sun must feel alone, until the Saturnian gate is crossed by the solar Ray. Every individual person must find for himself and by himself his path to that star which symbolizes his place and function in the galactic Whole, his spiritual-cosmic Identity.
The presence of this Star can only be seen as the individual faces the clear, cold sky of the hidden side of the Full Moon with a consciousness reoriented and renewed. On one side is the Sun, on the other the Star. Yet no one can reach directly this Star except in a state of identification with the solar Ray, which is light and "love" - a love transfigured by the light that streams from the Heart of the Sun.
Thus the individual facing the dark star-studded lunar sky is confronted by a basic paradox; for him, the path that will lead to the Star takes him at first in the opposite direction. He must forget the Star and seek the solar Ray, the only Guide he can trust. He can reach the Star only if he is one with a solar Ray. The Star-self can only be reached in self-forgetfulness and self-surrender to the solar Ray - that is, to the radiant power of the Sun-Soul.
All along the Illumined Road man's mind is confronted by paradoxes. As the solar Ray speeds starward from the Heart of the Sun it passes through the same stages which the life-energy experienced during the form-building and consciousness-reflecting movements - stages that are identifiable as the planets of the solar system. But now these planets stand for a basically different aspect of reality. They are stations on the Illumined Road.
Seen with the heavily egocentric sight of ordinary men these stations may well appear as "Stations of the Cross", with Golgotha as an inevitable conclusion; and the Illumined Road takes on the aspect of a Via Dolorosa. To him whose feelings and faith have been totally reoriented, and who himself, has become in inner Soul-fact the Illumined Road, the path upon which he moves is indeed Via Ardens - a path of fire radiating light (a mysterious troubling light) upon all he touches, while his eyes are riveted to the Star.
