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CHAOS AND ORDER IN PARTNERSHIP
"Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit," observes Henry Adams in The Education of Henry Adams, thereby reducing the most fundamental of all metaphysical difficulties to an epigram. The average individual goes undisturbed by the fact that some things are inevitable in a relative sense, while others are not. This possibility, which he takes for granted, has greatly disturbed his intellectual superiors. The problem is simple enough in its formulation, but completely beyond resolution by anyone who tries to compact the universe into some special theory, such as can then be compressed in turn into a human mind. To treat the matter on the principle of boxes nesting in a series would merely make the cosmos the most contained or least of the three factors.
It is possible to do things. At the same time, things happen. How can these two processes, which really ought to interfere with each other, manage to get along together as remarkably as they do in everyday life? The answer is that they are cooperative rather than competitive facets of existence, as is well demonstrated by modern discoveries in the mathematical analysis of probability. The contribution of statistics to astrology can be presented, most conveniently, through what is known as the normal or bell-shaped curve.
What is shown here, in diagrammatic form, is the commonplace fact that things which are the most usual in their make-up i.e., are closest to norm occur the most frequently in experience. Resorting to some oversimplification, the graph above tells the story of eggs produced for the market. These obviously tend to a certain size, which becomes the norm and is represented by the central vertical line, or B-A. Charting the total production on a given poultry farm, during a particular period of time, the eggs which conform exactly to the standard are represented as stacked in cases against the center line. The larger ones are arranged on a scale of increasing size to the right, or towards C, and the smaller ones to the left, or towards C'. The greater the deviation in size, the less the number of deviate instances, of course, so that there may be, finally, a single huge or freak egg lying by itself at the extreme right, and an exceptionally tiny one equally far away at the left. The dotted line, constituting the statistical curve, shows at a glance how many eggs there are, proportionately, both at norm and in the directions of uniqueness. The scaling up and down is the number of units, and to right or left the degree of departure from the norm.
The point to all this is that the largest number of instances, of anything that can be charted by this one out of many forms of statistical graph, will conform predominantly to expectation, or near enough to it, to establish an order in phenomena, and so make existence predictable in its major lineaments. The factual constitution of everyday reality is such, however, that there is also a continuing possibility of an unlimited degree of deviation, or of novel development away from whatever may be a normal expectation. In other words, there is a freedom which is in no wise ever cancelled out by the more impressive-looking orderliness of the average. It is to be noted, in the bell-shaped figure, that the curve at no point reaches the base line, or negates the possible instance of greater deviation, even if projected to infinity. The exceptional is never frequent enough, in the cosmic economy, to upset the probability of the norm. Neither disorder, nor favoritism, nor miracle, nor anything else, is a necessary condition of high individuality or creative uniqueness, irrespective of the form this may take. Absolute un-order, or chaos, is actually order's partner and prophet.
The normal curve was discovered first in astronomy, where the deviation in expected performance by stellar bodies can hardly be unrelated to the orderly pattern of stresses and strains in a closed and simple system of energy. The same odd marriage of choice and compulsion was found, subsequently, in a scientific estimation of much less integrated factors from the point of view of the physicist, at least in everyday human affairs. The all-embracing orderliness of a universe in its totality does not imply the tight rigidity of a machine, or suggest anything mechanical and exact in nature, but instead reveals the operation of pure convenience, gravitation or the statistical sorting together of like things, as already explained. The reason for a greater degree of exact predictability in the field of the natural sciences mathematics, physics and chemistry is the relatively infinite number of discrete units involved in any given measurement. Atoms and molecules, when it comes to inorganic matter, are beyond any possibility of consideration except in the mass. Individual deviations are averaged out, completely, and so do not enter the picture. Hence chemical mixtures can be controlled absolutely, and metallic parts can be manufactured within any desired standard of preciseness.
Human life presents probability at the other extreme of consideration that is, where differences are of a primary rather than infinitesimal importance but this does not mean that the nature of cosmic orderliness has shifted in reference to those deviations, nor that probability itself need be approached in any variant fashion. Chaos and order are still linked together because it is the co-operation of each with the other that makes both possible. The essential change in analysis is understood when it is realized that the deviations from type, in human experience as against atomic phenomena, so to speak, are never lost in the dull averages or norms of huge numbers, but are, instead, the very basis and end of judgment, Astrology might almost be defined as scientific probability turned inside out, or brought to the task of forecasting the exceptional and the possible rather than the usual and the certain. It is here that the statistician is most apt to lose interest, and to dismiss horoscopy as a species of intuitive or psychic analysis, or to assume it to be something which is not scientific at all in the narrower meaning of that term. Indeed, many astrologers themselves have taken this point of view.
The ancient and medieval science of the stars was a real tribute to the synthesizing power of the human mind. Its method was to accept a whole host of indications in the consciousness, one by one, and then to allow the rational processes to bring out the single judgment in their own time, and in their own way. This sort of thinking unscientific because it cannot be controlled at will has been used by man since the origin of human society. Beginning as a child, each individual would learn to mark the signs of this and that about him, and to listen for Elijah's still, small voice, to wit: the verdict of the mysterious mental synthesis. It is what psychologists can now identify as a sort of statistical syncopation, such as reveals itself more commonly in ordinary skilled muscular or sensory co-ordinations. The oldsters of the clan, because their awareness had become conditioned thoroughly to all the possible eventualities of simple or tribal life every one of which must have arisen, or been paralleled, in the half century or so of their own adult experience would alone be equipped for handling any major issue, or for giving an intelligent decision in the unusual case. Astrologers of a prior generation, equally dependent on this intuitive or introspective method, had to spend most of their lives in preparation for their real work. It is not surprising to find the competent ones rather few in the early days of the stellar art.
The really wonderful things accomplished at times by yesterday's prognosticators because the clue to the true potentials of the horoscope under a modern or rigorously scientific investigation of astrology. Life itself, obviously, had held the illimitable potentialities in which any traditional wisdom of the elders could be conditioned, and here, in planetary divination, was a mechanism which actually reproduced these infinite possibilities of human experience as they presented themselves in the familiar three dimensions of time and space existence through a two-dimensional charting on a piece of paper. It was a mode of measurement which could be subjected to intelligent organization, and to an extent which would make it an actual instead of a pseudo science. Because its synthesis was centered in experience rather than in the mind, whether or not the astrologers themselves appreciated the fact, its judgment could be kept under a conscious direction at every step. Business and home, in other words, could be approached in a dichotomized distinction from each other. The examination of man's affairs could be focused at any convenient point of pertinency. What Linnaeus did for living forms in the field of biology by his inauguration of a dynamic or predictive as against a merely descriptive classification, astrology began to do for the reborn psychology which developed with the nineteenth century. It is high drama in man's recent intellectual history that the new science of the soul, under its academic auspices, first chose the way of introspection instead that is, intuition or the purely mental and ultimately uncontrolled synthesis under the all-dominant influence of Wilhelm Wundt and his American as well as European disciples.
The preceding chapters have shown how any astrological inquiry, by a process of dichotomizing, screens out the given unique instance in experience, and then gives it a place in the correspondingly pertinent ordering supplied by the heavenly cycles. The factor of personal difference, and not the cosmic averaging in which it is cancelled out or lost to itself, is the basis of judgment, as has been stated. However, order rather than chaos must be the foundation of the measurement, and there must be a single or fundamental scale by which the ordering is made available for this purpose. Horizons and hemispheres cannot be set up in pure chaos, no matter how universal or unified they may be in metaphysical theory.
Life itself provides man with infinite frames of reference, in each of which there is the compulsion of a norm to be met by the various illimitable potentialities of the self in terms of chance or risk, choice or action. Hence astrology must be accepted, not as the measure of the native's necessary conformity to destiny or fate or to some outside limitation taken in a metaphysically absolute and false sense but rather as the estimation of what he may do, because of the fact that he is put together in the particular pattern characterizing him, in choosing from among the many possible ways in which he may constitute his own experience. His freedom persists because he selects the particular order which sustains him. He is the actual creator of his own universe, therefore, in quite a literal fashion.
His manner of doing this is revealed, in the horoscope, by his construction and continuous reconstruction of the various domains or mansions of his own activity, ordered always in respect to the uniqueness of some particular horizon. First to be delimited are the four great worlds of experience, with their interlacing relations diagrammed and made comprehensible, in symbolic fashion, through the cosmos at large. Universal orderliness is charted by this means, and at the same time is individualized also. All things are measured, in other words, as they have existence of necessity, but as they are related in addition to the special experience which some particular choice or act has dictated. There is, in consequence, throughout the horoscopic patterning, a continual distinction between the relatively necessary and the relatively free. What enters experience in the guise of necessity is put to use in the realization of whatever may be projected from self, into this same experience, as the ramification of act or reaction in a free self-discovery.
Thus man establishes himself more or less as he pleases in the four fundamental domains of (1) self and (2) self relationships, and of (3) social concern and (4) social reward. The activities of this self-establishment in the individualized reality are charted by the triangulation which creates the houses. While busy with all this, man also is utilizing a world of external and parallel reality which, willy-nilly, brings the element of necessity into his experience. Here is no restriction, however no factor that threatens his free will since the added component in his existence is merely dependability or constancy. Should he select an apple and a glass of milk for his refreshment, and were there no atomic necessities in the case of the substances involved requiring the fruit to remain a palatable pulp, and the milk to refrain from dissolving into vapor his action would be meaningless. When an individual starts a business, the enterprise has similar necessities in its make-up, including a reasonable tendency to survival, a pattern of contractual obligations, and so on through the factors making it possible to begin. Astrology charts the potentials both of freedom to act and of expectation upon which to depend, without any superficial distinction between them. Chaos and order in horoscopy are not only partners but bedfellows or perhaps even a species of Siamese twins and so altogether indistinguishable in any ultimate view.
Free will or choice represents the dynamic orientation of existence, whereas order identifies its relatively static constitution. The establishment of the equatorial mansions, through the four triads, is the approach to the universe in a self-orientation, primarily. It is this relationship of a geometrical sort which reveals, fundamentally, the principal potentials of an unconditioned act and a deviate self-discovery. What is consequent upon the fact that the twelve equatorial mansions are established in this fashionand the similar zodiacal divisions likewise, in their turn is that these mansions are placed in an order of sequence around a celestial circle, and that they have an additional and different sort of relationship because they follow each other in next positions. The circular succession of celestial segments becomes the principal indication of necessity in man's affairs, paralleling and charting the immediate probabilities of direct consequence in everyday experience. Analysis here moves on from the triads to the quarters.
A certain amount of summarization is possible at this point. The astrological patterning represents two extremes in its general relationships, namely, those things which are immediately derived from the native's situation or character, on the one hand, and those which are, by comparison, more anchored in the situation and character of all men. Mother Nature offers her normal lineaments to the observation because all deviations and exceptional factors, for the major part, are averaged out of view. The myriad of individual atoms, particles, special aggregates or organic structures which come to attention are but exceptionally identified in the terms of individual difference. Astrology as a whole, or when taken as the composite of the untold millions of horoscopes which are reflected in each particular one, presents an identical phenomenon. The native is progressively lost in his uniqueness as his nativity is interpreted or given meaning through averaged or stabilized indications, that is, through the elements dependable in all charts. All delineation is a statistical approximation.
The horizon and meridian axes first, and then the initial geometrical relations by which the particular case is given its setting in a twelve-fold pattern, comprise the greatest possible extreme of free-will representation. Once any person makes his orientation in life, his relatively unconditioned choice is promptly determined in its consequences, as far as the given chain of relations is concerned. Thus the factor of order in horoscopy shows progressively greater and greater elements of compulsion as the original horizon of pure individuality ramifies in relation through the more detailed implications of the chart. Sequence of connection, which enhances every full and free opportunity before choice is made, immediately thereupon becomes limitation or special conditioning.
Order at the Ascendant
The first, second and third houses together map the development of whatever necessity arises as a consequence of the self's assumption of its selfhood. This quarter fundamentally charts the directness of human action and realization in its original or most simple and everyday phase.
In the analysis of the houses by these quarters as in contrast with .the triads of the preceding chapter the angular one in every case represents the CONTACT potential in the given distribution of experience. The following or succedent mansion reveals the corresponding ACCEPTANCE potential. The third or cadent one of the three, corning next in order, presents the ORGANIZATION potential. These portmanteau designations correspond to the transmuting, resulting and exciting ideas in the perspective from freedom. Potentiality here represents orderliness as manifest in dependability.
THE FIRST HOUSE or ascendant of the horoscope shows the individual's immediate, wholly natural and unconditioned contact with experience, at the point of maximum self-being and minimum social involvement, hence it is personality per se. Identity is revealed as the manifestation of self in simple action without inhibition, and with no need for any intermediary agency. Analysis begins with the constant and absolute focus of self and its reactions in the here and now.
THE SECOND HOUSE reveals the self's acceptance of simple experience in terms of the tangible things it can put to use or make its own, without external guidance at the hands of others, and again without the need of intermediary agencies. This becomes possession or possessions in the most natural and common meaning of the word, i.e., it is identity as deposited or invested in the objects and relations which become the dependable symbols of itself, and of its capacity to experience its own existence in its own terms. Hence this mansion, most fundamentally, rules the purely personal and individually necessary resources of identity.
THE THIRD HOUSE charts the organizing of self and its affairs in direct personal relationship with everything immediate, other than those special resources or possessions which symbolize its existence to itself. This is general is the ordinary environment, or the totality of the commonly available conveniences through which the identity achieves its unconditioned perspective upon its own existence. Thus the third mansion comprises everything in everyday life that provides a setting for the simple act of being, and which in consequence has the particular quality of at-hand-ness. Here are revealed the relations and functions of living which must be taken for granted, placing the uninhibited reality of selfhood in a necessary context of practical experience.
Order at the Nadir
The fourth, fifth and sixth houses together map the development of whatever necessity arises as a consequence of the self's conscious effort to collect and enjoy the rewards of its effort. This quarter fundamentally, charts the directness of human action and realization in its terminal and ultimate rather than original or largely solipsistic phase.
In any sequential development of the dimensions in existence generally as well as in any single or particular experience subjected to astrological analysis the step forward is a reaction from the preceding stage of things, no less than an actual expansion of the prior condition. In other words, since simple directness is the hallmark of the first quarter, this next group of houses, in their common function, must both add to the original immediacy revealed as the ascendant sequence and react from it. There must be the manifestation of something which is an accentuated immediateness, and also the rejection of a prior adequacy.
The nature of the more in anything is always a reiteration or repetition of some sort, although not necessarily an increase of objects in space or of events in time. Reaction, of course, is an emphasis or increase in difference. Most strikingly, therefore, when existence remains positive or simple, the expansion and reaction may become joined in that intensification of being which in everyday and familiar experience is soul, or heightened awareness in self-appreciation. This is not so much identity per se as quality in identity, that is, a depth and breadth rather than a mere pointing in personality, a turning away from simple self-centeredness as such. The ascendant presents body as pure self-collection, while the nadir, contrariwise, reveals the embodiment of the self in enduring values, or in a subjective rather than objective identity, and thereby defines the spiritual being and its particular manifestations.
THE FOURTH HOUSE, therefore, shows the basic point in the self's actual realization of itself in and through an ultimate potentiality. This is the personality's simple and direct refinement of its own existence, a fresh dimension of being represented by the home as contact with a relatively unchanging rather than transient reality. Identity at the ascendant is merely a continuum, while various permanent or enduring elements of experience are here identified as they substantiate man's inner creativeness, providing him with that on which he may rely through all eternity. This primitively is the familiar place or accustomed situation, the home and the community as the passive certainty to which retreat is always possible. By extension the stability takes a more enduring form in monuments or memorials, and so parks and estates, or property when it presents established rather than fluid or negotiable value. The nadir indicates the father in his special responsibility for creating and preserving the family name or reputation.
THE FIFTH HOUSE reveals the acceptance of direct experience on the level of self-evaluation. This most primitively is self-expression, or the necessity that identity attempt various forms of self-outlet without inhibition of any sort, extending or expanding itself in relatively permanent form through offspring. On the unhappier side of life this can be ordinary dissipation, ramifying to include the equally permanent wastage or rejection and elimination of the substance and possessions of self in speculation or gambling. More constructively it is artistic, rhythmic and creative effort of the type identified by men as putting soul into whatever they may be doing, and evident in commonplace or simple sports and pleasures. The activity remains solipsistic, in the sense that the presence or co-operation of others is incidental as far as any particular person is concerned, but it is not the mere self-centeredness of a self continuing to be itself. Thus in organized amusement such as dramatics, when a special role or part is assumed for the moment, or in sports, where the spectator is able to lose himself and thereby gain respite for his soul in a quite artificial reality, the intensification of existence is feeling, or self-evaluation in process. Exactly as the second house indicates whatever inanimate things man makes his own, or constitutes as possessions, the fifth shows what animate or esthetic elements in experience he makes his own likewise, in this special intangible fashion.
THE SIXTH HOUSE charts the organizing of values and rewards in the individual's self-projection, and this becomes the point of transition from the necessities arising in self on the solipsistic side to those consequent upon a direct and consciously personal relationship with others. When analysis is based on the dichotomies which reveal individual free will, and the potentials of unconditioned choice as in the prior chapters the distinctions among the axes of the houses are rooted in the horizon as the ground of self-existence, and in the meridian as the conscious squaring of self to its experience. When necessity becomes the consideration, charting the consequence of relationships in sequence, the perspective is no longer geometrical in the former sense. The symbolism makes use, instead, of a single dichotomy, or the one effected by the horizon as not only the indicator of identity but as also the origin of existence in this particular point of view. The six houses so far considered are all beneath the horizontal line. They have been found fundamentally subjective, or wholly self-centered in nature, that is, concerned at all times with the personality in and through its own self-realization. This is in high contrast with the objective side of life, where the self finds a fellow reality in things other than itself.
Hence the sixth house indicates the detailed relations and involvements concerned in this transition from a subjective to an objective realm of experience, or where objects per se have a practical reality, and where in consequence the ends in life reach out beyond any naive selfishness or mere self-sensitiveness. The processes revealed at this point are basically the operation of duty, or of the nascent ties of identity to something other than itself, under conditions where more than caprice, or momentary act and reaction, is required to produce any change. The mansion normally shows the relations of superiors and inferiors, whether as a servant or as served in the given case, and always in a relatively impersonal association insofar as the particular identity of the other person is concerned. The area of experience here comprises all work not particularly enjoyed in its own terms, everything definitely inconvenient or distasteful to do, together with whatever has any tendency to lose its impetus or get out of course the more simple or objective reality of a world which by external circumstances such as dirt farming, participation in the armed services, and the like, whether self-assumed or under direction is included, as is all physiological and psychological upset or organic disturbance. The small or ordinary domestic animals are identified at this point through their simple usefulness in service, and the reciprocal care they must have. In all details the rulership of this mansion is really a matter of adjustment, either man's entering into responsibility, or else dropping it in cases where he has no accompanying capacity or opportunity for initiating or controlling the course of events.
Order at the Descendant
The seventh, eighth and ninth houses together map the development of whatever necessity arises as a consequence of the self's outreaching through its relations with other-than-self factors in the true or conscious world of higher creatures. This quarter fundamentally charts the first or simple and direct form of man's personal touch with others, or of his ability to see himself in them and so to project himself into something greater than himself.
THE SEVENTH HOUSE shows simple and direct response to other personality in terms of a real equality with self, whether friendly or unfriendly, and so is forthright contact with people individually. Most commonly, it indicates partnerships. This means not only regular contractural relations in marriage, and with business associates, but also lawyers, physicians or various specialists as these are consulted in some particular issue. It comprises the possibility as well as the fact of this broad but definite and simple linking of self into the broad relations which, in general, constitute human affairs, and so it is the outcome of any energies directed towards this linking. Thus it becomes the place of opportunity, showing all especial self-mobilization towards public activity as in the fine arts.
THE EIGHTH HOUSE reveals the acceptance phase in the individual's simple and direct move toward these larger realities of human society, and therefore rules the ultimate consummation of all life-values in terms of death, or the necessity to accept a public verdict on any self-achievement. This from the astrological view is the psychological surrender actually constituting any phenomenon of self-termination. It means regeneration or rebirth, and so all turning in interest to new and challenging cycles of relationship within the social milieu. The mansion, in consequence, always charts the degree to which a native must conform to the standards or notions of others, depend upon or utilize their possessions.
THE NINTH HOUSE charts the organizing of any self-awareness of others, or the necessary self-assimilation to the more simple or objective reality of a world which holds self and others in equal regard. This primarily is memory, knowledge and imagination. Here is the native's capacity to give a measure of enduring reality to the projection of personality in something more than the physical body. Man at this point is able to set up relationships with those who are remote in time and space. Consciousness per se becomes the ultimate degree of freedom from any momentary or separative situation of the individual identity, and this is reflected in travel or long journeys, on the one hand, and in conscience or the body of religious concepts, on the other, both extending the potentials of partnership towards the infinite ideal. The ninth mansion, in consequence, outlines the higher mind, or the abilities which carry knowledge onward from science, developed at the practical level of life, into prophecy, dreams and every intuitive or mental self-objectification.
Order at the Midheaven
The tenth, eleventh and twelfth houses together map the development of whatever necessity arises as a consequence of the self's concern over the general materials of social experience, or of realities centered primarily in the group as a whole. This quarter fundamentally charts the more complex activity of the individual in his relations with people in the mass, or society at large, i.e., again the transition involving a more, mixed with a difference. Here is where his interest is security rather than reward, and therefore the place where he seeks to dominate others rather than have particular relations with them, whether this be for the better or the worse.
THE TENTH HOUSE shows the general contact of self with life in its total complexity, indicating the individual's social realization or sensitiveness to the group stirrings. It is the focus of honor or reputation as an expression of position in life, showing authority as administered over inferiors or accepted from superiors, and revealing profession or any special body of skills as the basis of community pre-eminence. It is the place of the mother, because she is the principal parent in establishing her child's personal consciousness in the general matrix of human society.
THE ELEVENTH HOUSE reveals the point of acceptance in this group experience, or universalized necessity. On the psychological side it shows the pattern of expectation or optimism, hopes and wishes, together with every aspect of vision whereby the potentialities of the social whole are strengthened. This, tangibly, becomes legislation. The mansion rules advice and counsel, even if directed to a single individual, and hence indicates friends and friendly action. Most importantly, it reveals the general momentum in events, or the native's socialized power of achievement as contrasted with the fifth mansion's solipsistic strength in resistance.
THE TWELFTH HOUSE charts that organizing of all relationships in man's social responsibility which, most basically, becomes the institutionalization of experience, or the ultimate employment of pure necessity. When he cannot make an adequate adjustment in the everyday world about him, the inadequacy gains its psychological ordering in or through the agency of the envy, malice, treachery and other things by which his own private reality is reduced to the degree of inevitable social isolation. When it comes to the extreme instance, he goes to a hospital, a prison and so on, and thus is compelled to retreat to his own bare identity for a fresh start. In the reverse case, however, the process is revealed in that unexpected or broad help from every source which is no less an ordering of his world in response to his own individual development of a genuine social responsibility. The house fundamentally shows the subjective sustainment of tangible achievement which, in due course, permits the transition from objective experience above the horizon, back below for a further self-realization or refinement in the chain of sequence.
Thus the horoscope maps the processes by which the various phases of experience, when once set in motion, are consequent upon each other. It is only as the equatorial mansions establish their relations in a complete circularity of logic or reality that the developments of man's experience are revealed in their distribution of those necessities by which he orders himself, or substantiates his continual self- establishment. There are further possibilities of relation around the circle, showing other sequences of consequence, and an additional chapter will be devoted to these. Now the two fundamental methods by which the astrological significance of the houses is refined the geometrical and sequential, as summarized diagrammatically in the following figures:
must be seen to have their ultimate practical or most important synthesis not in mathematical or theoretical considerations, but in day-by-day living. This is illustrated by the common house meanings emphasized in both methods of approach (and so repeated often through these pages). Thus possession (second house) is the present importance of the future potentials developed through a native's social place (tenth) and also the necessary consequence of his act in maintaining his own identity (first). Environment (third) is similarly the immediate contribution of prior direct relations with others of equal rank in pursuance of a given opportunity (seventh) and also the necessity by which whatever the native can take for granted in his immediate living is consequent on the manner in which he utilizes his personal resources (second).
Astrology, How and Why it Works