*
THE TWELVE TRIBES OF INDIVIDUALITY
Vicki Baum gives a modern twist to Heraclitus when, in her And Life Goes On, she remarks, "To be a Jew is a destiny." The twelve basic composites of character, in astrological charting, have a certain correspondence to the traditional even dozen tribes of the early Hebrews, although they do not provide a case of physical demarcation, such as can be inherited or identified apart from racial and family lines. The astrologer merely knows that all people are stiff-necked, in the Biblical phrase, and that the stubbornness which was responsible for the blessings and afflictions of the chosen people, in equal degree, is revealed no less dramatically by the astrological tribes than the lazy Issachar and treacherous Dan of long ago. It is the strength, primarily, rather than the particular nature of any characteristic, that is responsible for its value. This was the fact which had its emphasis in the original account of Jacob's commission, leading to the establishment of the biological lines through his twelve sons.
The zodiacal signs, when taken separately, chart special distinctions in self- persistence which in a sense parallel the colorful uniqueness developed by the progeny of the ancient patriarch. This younger of Isaac's twins, after depriving Esau of his birth-right, fled to Laban, his uncle at Haran, where he spent fourteen years in an attempt to master the world by cleverness alone. Ultimately he had to confront his brother, who had by then become the most powerful potentate in that comer of the world. Jacob was thoroughly scared. During the night, alone at Peniel, he wrestled with God in person. However, he clung to his mysterious opponent with an unwavering stubbornness, refusing to let go although crippled by the magic touch upon a tendon of his leg, until vouchsafed the blessing he craved. This audaciousness re-christened him, and as Israel he became the symbolical prototype for those tribes of individuality upon which astrology builds in its analysis of character.
The ultimate foundation of delineation in horoscopy is a competent identification of the twelve psychological species, together with a realization of the practical advantages and disadvantages they face in everyday living. A newcomer makes his best beginning in an actual application of astrology to life by singling out men from their fellows - identifying them astrologically as essentially or predominately representative of one rather than any other of the twelve signs through the sun positions of known individuals according to the following table:
TABLE V
Approximate Dates When the Sun Enters the Zodiacal Signs
March 21st: ARIES September 23d: LIBRA
April 20th: TAURUS October 23d: SCORPIO
May 21st: GEMINI November 22d: SAGITTARIUS
June 21st: CANCER December 22d: CAPRICORN
July 23d: LEO January 20th: AQUARIUS
August 23d: VIRGO February 19th: PISCES
This can be a very effective introduction to the types, although some individuals correspond to the indications more closely than others. The dates given in the table will vary within narrow limits from year to year, and in case to case, because there is not only an intercalary day each fourth February, but also because the luminary seldom enters a new zodiacal mansion exactly at midnight. Moreover, the sun sign may be overshadowed completely by the ascendant in a particular instance, or by the moon and other planets, especially in the lives of those more than normally involved in the complexities and psychological confusions of modern living. However, the birthday signatures of the zodiac can usually be recognized by the most amateur observer.
THE TRIBES OF COMBUSTION
ARIES
God, give me hills to climb,
And strength for climbing!
ARTHUR GUTTERMAN, Hills
Aries is the cardinal sign in the fire group, and this means that it reveals, in every horoscope, the characteristic way in which the native meets various crises as essentially a challenge to express himself more positively. The keyword for this mode of action is ASPIRATION. Every person seeks in some way, continually and consistently, to experience a simple fullness of well-being. This is not a matter of option as in the case of the equatorial houses, in the consideration of circumstances where a man mayor may not have money, and can work or decline to do so - but is a basic identity as such. There may be illuminating differences in man's aspiring spirit, as in the degree of its strength and the social level of its effectiveness, but all conscious creatures are characterized by a definite sense that they are going somewhere or are frustrated in their efforts to get under way. The lowest of living forms exhibits a marked excitement in the face of danger. The barnyard fowl, which will run with its head amputated, has become a common symbol for the self's primary recourse to movement in an emergency. Here is the symbolical outreach of personality as the very basis for its existence.
Thus Aries indicates the fundamental psychological drive by which a man remains what he is, both initially and ultimately. It is the unconditioned ambition of his being in every respect, or his simple self-stubbornness as evident without doubt of any sort. It is the place in the horoscope where he remains absolutely and utterly confident within himself. The sign shows how any native will recover or maintain his self-assurance, therefore, even after he is shaken to the depths of himself by some crisis in his affairs. It charts the general pattern of his functioning in a rejection of those situations which are without creative interest to him. Here is the necessarily deep indomitability of all selfhood at root, or individuality as most absolutely itself, and so beyond temporizing. It is the point in the zodiac where the least of superficial definition is possible. Aspiration is the protecting shield of human character, and the cover for its complexity, as well as an identification of its primary stirrings in its own and unsupported behalf.
The Aries Type
The Aries individual - in the case where this sign is rising or contains the sun, moon or an unusual concentration of planets - is the personal epitome of the fire and cardinal characteristics. He stands as personality exalted in its representation of one out of the twelve divine tribes of individuality, in sharp contrast of varying degree with other natives who reveal, in similar fashion, differing dramatizations of functional emphasis to which the signs as a whole give a measure. This highly interesting personage never forgets the fact that it is his privilege to lead the procession, whether or not he chooses to do so. At his worst he is primarily cocksure. At his best he is exceptionally able to inspire confidence in others, and so at times privileged to offer very competent guidance to his fellows. It never occurs to him that anything contrary to his own notion has any validity, or is it in any way pertinent, and he can be wrong in spectacular fashion because he is always too apt to see a particular emergency in isolation from all the contributory factors. It seldom enters his head to approach things in any manner other than realistically, and impersonally, and so he may involve himself or his associates without compunction. He is inclined to use any convenient means to solve a problem, and will proceed along immature lines whenever he is unable to recognize and employ the means which might seem more legitimate to people generally. His answer to any issue is action, so that sometimes he stumbles over his own toes.
Empty intellection, idle speculation and ideal considerations are all tiresome to him unless in some way the exploitation of ideas will offer an identification or clarification of some wholly immediate issue, whereupon he may show flashes of great brilliance. This type is not drawn to philosophical synthesis, broad-scale planning, research in the form of prolonged trial and error, and so on. People to him are no different from things, and in consequence they are nothing apart from the context in which they are encountered. Hence he may seem quite heartless to anyone who does not understand his particular psychology. The combination of characteristics here reveals the absolute extreme of freedom from social conditioning of the superficial sort. Hence the Aries tribe produces pioneers, leaders and individualists of high order. They provide a supreme example of the process by which a man will become less and less a person, with the more common human attributes, to be more and more a personage, that is, an incarnation of some special group destiny.
SAGITTARIUS
No one knows what he can do till he tries.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS, Sententiae
Sagittarius is the common sign in the fire group, and this means that it reveals, in every horoscope, the characteristic way in which the native is challenged to some essential development of himself by the people around him. The keyword for this mode of action is ADMINISTRATION. It is here that the race as a whole has an effective pointing through the particular personality, and that the individual makes his most immediate contact with his cultural pattern, whether of the ethnic stock, the nation or the family. Sagittarius shows the basic identity of self in its utter obliviousness to the abstract rights of anything other than itself, but in its most direct acceptance of all human expression in real equality. Here is where the native grasps his opportunities for relationships which will amplify and reproduce the traits and potentialities of particular significance in his own economy. It is the extreme point of the me-too spirit in an astrological chart, showing the potential degree of both a naive companionability and a lack of real discrimination.
Thus Sagittarius reveals the expression, in the most personal manner possible, of whatever facets of reality have come to identify the various species of human kind to each other. It charts the capacity for simple movement per se, and the ability to give this meaning. Man, in his relations with anybody else, articulates them through his use of gestures, mannerisms, words and the vast complex of cultural and racial characteristics which have acquired particular implication in revealing the individual intent and background, and this sign indicates his competency in employing them. It rules the native's skill in sports, games and every sort of casual contact with others. It gives an insight into his social pliability, which is usually an unrestrained friendliness, but which can be a complete tactlessness. Here is no departure from the manifestation of pure identity because, in all these relationships, the self is only projecting itself in and through its associates. This fundamentally is the point in the horoscope which indicates how a given nature ramifies most simply but infinitely from its own center, expanding through its self-discovery and holding itself unalloyed or unimpeded through all the external functions of normal social intercourse.
The Sagittarius Type
The Sagittarius individual - in the case where this sign is rising or contains the sun, moon or an unusual concentration of planets - is the personal epitome of the fire and common characteristics. This means that, from one point of view, he is almost completely the reverse of the Aries type. "Rather than the lonely leader, or pioneer individualist, he is the coach, the promoter and wholly conventional administrator. He is affability personified, possessing an exceptional ease in social contact and a fine sense of sportsmanship or superficial fair play. However, he has no sustained or deeper interest in the people with whom he deals, but reacts to them as fellow participants in the various situations in which he is active, or the organizational activities in which he is concerned, i.e., convenient contributors to common effort in a manifestation of life and its functions. He is perhaps the easiest of all the types with which to have casual touch. but most disappointing to those more interested in enduring ties. He simply dismisses the existence of anyone who will not co-operate in the special manifestations of his own identity - the operation of the fire alchemy on the personal level of temperament - but in consequence he harbors no ill-will and is in no wise revengeful. When others are co-operative his manner is smooth, friendly and even affectionate, and he can be the most completely at ease or naturally and directly human of all twelve types, and so often the most popular.
He is not at all particular, unfortunately, and as a born democrat he may seem to lack ordinary good judgments in personal relations. He is in no wise an intellectual, but he has a capacity for highly intelligent act or decision, always able to recognize the potential usefulness to him of the various factors he encounters in human experience. His realism may take unpleasant form, in a philandering abuse of human confidence, but at his worst he is unmoral rather than degenerate. His sense of obligation simply does not go beyond his own convenience. He has a long and accurate memory for things of vital concern to him, a weak and short one otherwise. Hence he may have extreme difficulty recalling anything of detached reference, while responding with immediate joyousness to some old tie upon any renewal of contact, even though the person in question may have been forgotten for years. He is intensely interested whenever he can have a personal part in events, but otherwise he does not bestir himself to any extent.
LEO
Ay, every inch a king.
SHAKESPEARE, King Lear
Leo is the fixed sign in the fire group, and this means that it reveals, in every horoscope, the characteristic way in which the native reacts to ideas, values and generalizations of relationship as essentially a challenge to the competence of his own identity. It also shows his capacity to determine the worthiness of the projects in which he interests himself. The keyword for this mode of action is ASSURANCE. Here is where the bringing of facts into a simple conformity to the ideals held for them is a necessity of personal existence. Life is ordered on the basis of a broad realization in which self must remain unimpeachably central. Whatever refuses to help the native enthrone himself in his total situation, in the sense of contributing to his conception of its justification and ends, must be brought under conscious control, or else eliminated, with a regal ruthlessness. Here is the emphasis of personal purpose in the zodiac. Most primitively it is the cry-baby point in the chart, showing how an individual will make any direct complaint about his role in some particular situation.
Thus Leo is the place of extreme sensitiveness to any threat against self-dignity, and it delineates the extreme 'possibility of concern over the interests of pure selfhood. This at its worst is utter selfishness, but at its best a complete exaltation of individuality. The discovery or recovery of self through a realization of values develops the capacity of everyone for simple rationalization, and so both self-pity and self-justification are indicated by this sign. Here is no intellection, no creative or true mental process, but rather the almost cut-and-dried employment of ideas or norms as channels through which the identity may expand and enjoy itself. As the fundamental function by which the being is certified within itself, Leo's rationalizing establishes the roots for a supreme and immutable faith, and this sometimes degenerates into a sheer personal stubbornness. Man's ability to conform to his own conscious ideas about himself is his means for definite operation on any high plane of self-realization, and so this sign becomes the point of pride in the chart. It also discloses the selfs underlying timidity, or its realization that it needs a further self-establishment in a definite personal identity.
The Leo Type
The Leo individual-in the case where this sign is rising, or contains the sun, moon, or an unusual concentration of planets-is the personal epitome of the fire and fixed characteristics. He is the ruler or supreme magistrate in general temperament because he insists upon becoming, in his own person, the essence of all values held by people around him. Under happy circumstances he may become a genuine blessing to his fellows, and to the age in which he lives. Because he tends to exclude others from his own reality, in any terms of their separate existence, he is content to dwell apart from everyone else, psychologically at least, and this facilitates an appreciation of the values he has chosen to exemplify. He thrives on adulation, and at his best seeks earnestly, to justify it by giving a stability to human character per se. On lesser levels he becomes exceedingly petty, even spoiled in a childish fashion, and so inclined to great displays of temperament. Because he is consciously dependent upon a constant realization of his own worth, he will, if necessary to this end, distort any ideas about himself. Hence he may be the most creatively imaginative of individuals, and also the most successful prevaricator of the zodiac. Devoid of any deep human sympathy - as unable to accept as to give it because he is spiritually alone among men-he may be driven by his hunger for praise to very noble efforts.
He has an extraordinary dramatic sense because his special gift is a capacity for bringing ideas to life. Rather than express himself, he attempts to give manifestation to these, becoming perhaps the least personally articulate of the twelve types. He seems self-complacent when his concept of things is not accepted by others, since he is inclined then to withdraw altogether from the immediate activity, or to remain quietly aloof. When he talks, he must hold the floor, and when he acts he must be watched and applauded. He is ever superb in the proper situation, but lacking in all capacity for social adjustment. Essentially the conservative, he dignifies a world without making any contribution to its content of dignity. His influence, therefore, is destructive in too small a compass, or in too outworn a set of relations. The Leo type must have a real place in a dynamic scheme of living, where he can be an example to all on his own idea-level, if he is not to be completely disruptive in his efforts to compel recognition from others.
THE TRIBES OF SATURATION
CANCER
God made thee perfect, not immutable.
MILTON, Paradise Lost
Cancer is the cardinal sign in the water group" and this means that it reveals, in every horoscope, the characteristic way in which the native meets various crises as essentially a challenge to re-establish his world of reality. The keyword for this mode of action is EXPANSION. The degree of anyone's self-awakening to the simple wholeness of things is indicated here. The sign shows the normal pattern of growth in life. It gives a principal clue to any individual's capacity for learning or teaching, as well as a measure of the extent to which he will be able to maintain his center of aplomb without any adjustment to the broadening context in which he is functioning. When Cancer is emphasized in a chart the native may be so filled .with a sense of his own completeness, or naive adequacy, that he will instinctively embrace everything in sight within his own consciousness. It is a characteristic obstinacy associated with the summer solstice from the most ancient of times. This point in the zodiac dramatizes man's power in clutching, collecting or clinging to whatever happens to interest him at any given moment.
Thus Cancer indicates an individual's maximum capacity for bringing problems or issues to immediate consideration or solution. He may accomplish this directly by an expanding consciousness, a psychological self-mobilization with its heavy impact upon others, or else by reaching out beyond the given milieu in which the issue has arisen, and thereby creating a matrix of greater relations in which selfhood can be central in a more effective fashion, as in the appeal to authority in religion or science. Here is where the inherent abilities of the self are revealed in their entirely latent potentials, constituting simple educability. To the degree a person is unable to bring out the whole actuality of a given situation, he will usually have recourse to a pseudo-reality, a tendency to fantasy or an unhealthy solipsism, which is also indicated at this point of the zodiac. The distinction between actual and phantasmal remains academic, however. since the dreamer of dreams often makes very solid reality out of the substance of his imagining. The sign merely reveals the ultimate and often quite subjective or intangible world in which the native continually completes himself.
The Cancer Type
The Cancer individual - in the case where this sign is rising or contains the sun, moon or an unusual concentration of planets - is the personal epitome of the water and cardinal characteristics. He is like the Aries type in that he is exceedingly sure of himself, but his sense of possession, in every situation where he may find himself, completely overshadows the fundamental and untrammeled individuality which these two signs share rather exclusively between themselves. The Cancer person is willful in his way, but almost wholly unpredictable in the particular stubbornness he may adopt, or or the length of time he may hold to it. He is always limited by his sense of the wholeness in which any reality must rest, and by his need to find or confirm his dynamic place at its exact center. He is neither hurried nor changed by the normal passing of events. Since he speaks out of a complete orientation within his own feelings, whether instinctive or rational, he continually offers the world an explanation, however imaginative it may have to be, of the unresolved elements in human progress. This may include a full-blown plan for the future, also. Hence he is the ideal teacher, and he may become a true prophet. He has the surface placidity of ordinary water but, like any lake or sea, he can rise to turbulence and gather an immense force against opposition. He frequently resorts to tantrums in facing any exceptional difficulty. He often becomes a protector of the weak, and exceptionally sentimental.
Abstract matters are of little interest to him. He echoes the Nazarene's "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," making this the philosophy of his life. He presents an all-inclusive simplicity in everything he does, and is extraordinarily adaptable in outer superficialities. However, he is totally the reverse of this within his own conscious experience, or in connection with whatever may take on any special significance in his mind. He is emotional rather than intellectual, undisciplined rather than conditioned, practical rather than politically minded. Usually a conservative, he may become the driving wedge of some new urge in the racial unfoldment, but even then he is clannish. He is the most essentially religious of the types, and often an effective agitator or stimulating malcontent because of his exceptional power for establishing the imaginative as the real, or for engineering change without surrendering his notions of completeness.
PISCES
One good turn deserves another.
PETRONIUS, Satyricon
Pisces is the common sign in the water group, and this means that it reveals, in every horoscope, the characteristic way in which the native seeks to enlarge or unify his rapport with everyone who has any place in his own immediate world. The keyword for this mode of action is SYMPATHY. Here is the point of maximum personal touch with humanity in general, or with people in the mass. It is where human rapport becomes a necessity of conscious selfhood, and where all feeling or emotion gains its greatest emphasis as a part of everyday experience. This is the mansion of the zodiac which shows how far a man is inclined to depend upon others rather than himself, or is led to exalt social relations and to do everything possible to encourage the ordinary graces of life, both his own and those he can call forth in people around him. The sign rules poetic sensitivity and spiritual understanding, and indicates the degree to which anyone can enter into the consciousness of others in a truly creative way, hence developing their confidence and an inner and often unsuspected faith in him and his works. The universal potentials of human relationship, uncovered here, are the basis of fellowship in its most spontaneous form, making it possible to unite the most diverse of individuals in a joint experience.
Thus Pisces presents life at its most impressionable and least self-seeking point, where the being is not only divorced from all real apprehension but where it is able to assimilate itself to almost any eventuality. The self remains exceedingly firm in its own inner convictions, under any particular emphasis of this sign, because it holds no connection in experience unless it proves to be reciprocal in some way. It meets the world in the terms of an immediate convenience, and works towards a unification of group or community" effort by seeing, both sides of every possible difference of opinion, quite impartially. Here is the discursive reasoning by which men explain their neighbors, usually making excuses for them, and in consequence it is the point of extreme tolerance in the horoscope, charting- the basic willingness of the self to accommodate itself to every phase of reality. Pisces shows the capacity of the native to accept any unusual or highly divergent human expression, and to make it very definitely his own.
The Pisces Type
The Pisces individual - in the case where this sign is rising or contains the sun, moon or an unusual concentration of planets - is the personal epitome of the water and common characteristics. The Pisces native is utterly sure of himself, ultimately, because of his great power of adjustment to others in superficial things, together with his ability to enter into the actual feeling of those about him. However, he has purposes of his own in any move he makes, and his very proprietary fondness for his fellows depends upon the degree they are willing to accept the general wholeness in which he has oriented his own life. They must be content with the subordinate place he may assign to them in his own scheme of reality. He is seldom interested in particular individuals, only in what they mean to him in the terms of a very practical co-operation, but he yet attempts to enfold everyone in his circle of special friends. When encountered in this extremely opportunistic expression of the wholeness in which he lives, he may seem selfish, but he will share everything he has with those who become a part of his private universe. He is exceedingly responsive to suggestion, often revealing a complete acquiescence and non-resistance, but only in the consummation of something he has made real within himself through some process of his highly creative imagination.
He is inclined to develop a mystical temperament because of his extraordinary sense of affinity for the deeper strains of character he uncovers in his fellows, whether this be something of which they are aware or not. Hence he may become the poet, that is, one who articulates the general race experience for those less articulate or imaginative than himself. The Pisces individual is always one by whom all men can be brought to the greatest possible degree of common understanding, since he gives so little importance to family, class and other such distinctions among them. His voice as an artist, whether a leader in his community or just an ordinary person, is universal in its scope. It is always seated in his instinctive recognition of some ultimate wholeness in existence, and yet he may appear to be concerned in some definitely personal interest or project, often awakening a suspicion of his motives by his quiet methods. He is the most essentially intimate of people, because so completely uninhibited by any sense of anything alien in his own nature, but for that very reason it is very difficult for those closest to him to be themselves in the association.
SCORPIO
Skill and confidence are an unconquered army.
GEORGE HERBERT, Jacula Prudentum
Scorpio is the fixed sign in the water group, and this means that it reveals, in every horoscope, the characteristic way in which the native reacts to ideas, values and generalizations of relationship, as essentially a challenge to the competence of life in general and of himself as responsible for maintaining it. The keyword for this mode of action is CREATIVITY. This one of the zodiacal divisions shows the greatest potentials for actual good or evil in experience. It brings psychological intensification to its maximum, hence any exceptional emphasis of the mansion was long dreaded by astrologers. The earlier literature of horoscopy - reflecting ages in which the flesh as such was regarded as vile, inherently, and moral doubt or inquiry was thought to be inspired by the devil - actually identified it as the accursed sign, thus hopelessly concealing its vital indication for any normal living. Creative ability is no more and no less than the individual's power (1) to establish a basic whole idea of his own choosing as the frame of reference in which to carry on his business of being himself, and (2) to refrain from operating within any context which he merely inherits or permits to be forced upon him. The ultimate capacity of anyone to shape his own life according to his own private values, whether for better or worse, is here disclosed at root.
Thus Scorpio indicates the moral dynamic, or the directive conceptions developed by any native to meet various necessities arising in his life, and this is the background of all possible finesse in living. Since any distinction between actual and phantasmal disappears in the realm of ideas and values, creativity is always single-minded, or practical in an inner or psychological way, and this mansion is therefore the zodiacal point where the greatest concentration of self in its own interest is to be identified. Here is naive self-conservation, but also, and much more importantly, the transcendence of physical limitation through a self-discipline in imagination. Scorpio must also be seen as the point of maximum self-consistency in existence, which subjectively is the broadest possible freedom from extraneous ideas, and objectively is the least possible bondage to inadequate relations in the workaday world. It shows the degree of moral courage, or the willingness of the individual to take the consequences of persisting in his own ideas. It also charts the creative rationalization in any flight from reality, or any repudiation of responsibility.
The Scorpio Type
The Scorpio individual - in the case where this sign is rising or contains the sun, moon or an unusual concentration of planets-is the personal epitome of the water and fixed characteristics. He is always the author of his own destiny, or at least he strives to be, and so he plays a self-schooled part in life, even down to the most minute of everyday details. He has a reason for everything, but is himself inscrutable, or impossible to understand, if any effort is made to uncover or analyze his inner processes of self-orientation in an abstract way, that is, as generalized and divorced from his own special personality. Without perhaps visualizing it that way in his thinking, he is always subjecting life to some one or another test of his own devising, constantly putting experience under the microscope in a lesser if not greater degree. He delights in bringing things to a conclusion, or in picking up the strands of relation left loose by others, in order to weave them into a fabric of his own, and he will often tear things down in order to reconstruct them more efficiently. If he is taken on his own terms, or according to the consistency he establishes by his really creative talents, he is the most simple or obvious of all types. However, he is elusive if he is asked to be something in particular, no matter what it is. He is wholly beyond comprehension if interrupted seriously in his favorite game of making it his business to be busy, or conversely, seeing how far he can refrain from all activity except in connection with some entirely private enterprise.
Here is, without exception, the most self-intent of the twelve types. He always possesses inner, idealistic and wholly unlimited resources of motivation and judgment. Anything coming from the exterior and narrowed world of less-introspective people seems thin, transitory and inadequate to him. He is wholly generous and co-operative when others meet him on his own basis, but he can be rigorously unswerving in his course, or downright cruel, when thwarted or forced to act in any way that leaves him divided in his own mind. He is possessive in an utter disregard for everything but himself, since his inner sense of completeness makes it impossible for him to realize that anyone else might be emotionally dependent or psychologically helpless. He is strangely adult from infancy, and assumes all his fellows to be equally able and willing to look after themselves. He has a curious capacity for fighting without enmity, and expects others to understand it. He is exceptionally fair-dealing in a sense of strict equity, but he sets his own standards and will not have them questioned.
THE TRIBES OF INGENUOUSNESS
LIBRA
There is a melancholy which accompanies all enthusiasm.
LORD SHAFTESBURY, Characteristics
Libra is the cardinal sign in the air group, and this means that it reveals, in every horoscope, the characteristic way in which the native anticipates various crises in his efforts to establish himself more definitely in everyday affairs. The keyword for this mode of action is EQUIVALENCE. Here is where man struggles continually, and often with a psychological desperation, to resolve his doubts of himself, or to achieve and maintain a balance in normal experience. His very uncertainty sustains his existence, since it makes effort necessary, and creates needs which can be recognized in consciousness. The general potentiality charted here tends to separate reality from the self, and to encourage everyone to seek his own true destiny as the sort of self-fulfillment society at large will certify. Any appreciable emphasis of the autumnal equinox shows a surging sweep of moodiness which can take the native, now high and now low in spirit, to the scene of every passing excitement. This is the point where man develops his greatest inner turmoil. The balancing capacity symbolizes the process whereby he gains validation for himself as a link between things, or as a reconciler among them. In these coupling efforts he betrays the extent to which he seeks recognition, or desires to be noticed, consulted and otherwise helped to feel important.
Thus Libra is the point of simple or unconditioned quickening to experience, not only as a capacity for stirring to definite action or interest, but also as a proneness to interior upset, whether this be exaltation or black depression. Here is the focus of primitive spirituality, since man's transcendental realization is ultimately his ability to maintain a special state of consciousness in more than the usual degree. By the same token, therefore, this area of the horoscope is the seat of love or affection in its functional sense, that is, the excess and especial concentration of feeling in some one given reference. It shows the real mobilization of self-discovery, as reflected in outer experience, and is the indicator of whatever there may be of charm and chivalry in the being, or of the power to establish an immortal aliveness in personality. Any pettiness in a life of lesser achievement is disclosed as fundamentally a sense of falling short, with a desire for compensation in more trivial excitation.
The Libra Type
The Libra individual - in the case where this sign is rising or contains the sun, moon or an unusual concentration of planets-is the personal epitome of the air and cardinal characteristics. Above everything else, the member of this psychological tribe is an enthusiast, seeking with every ounce of his strength to ingratiate himself with all concerned in any momentary situation. Thus he is the ideal politician or statesman, and is always inclined to agree with the person nearest at hand. He is a successful manager because of his capacity to make pleasant contacts with everyone in any given grouping, but a bad planner or ultimate executive because of his weather-vane temperament. He may be as down inspirits as up, and with equal energy, hence of all twelve types the Libra individual is blackest and most anarchistic in disattunement. Ruthless beyond all measure at his worst, he is indefatigable in a mobilization of constructive energy at his best. He is utterly opportunistic, or non-dependable, because he is always obsessed with what confronts him in the immediate milieu. He will hold to the consequences of his moment's allegiance with an indomitability which can be as magnificent as it is, more often, rather wasteful and even tragic.
He is highly partisan rather than loyal, since his attachments are apt to be superficial. He never responds to people or ideas according to their intrinsic worth, but only on the basis of their significance to the issue in which he seeks to establish a balance. He has no patience with things out of context, or in remote reference. In consequence he may be faithless as a friend, although quite delightful as a companion. He is often inconsistent in his thinking, his mind darting from one association to another, but he is usually stimulating in mental contact. He appreciates beauty, splendor and all the high qualities of esthetic values, so that any fellowship with him is warm and rewarding, but he has little respect for the effort going into the establishment of these things, and so seldom accepts and responsibility for their maintenance. When he is viewed from any long or real perspective, he is very shallow, although he is immeasurably deep in every immediate relation. His chameleon-like capacity for change enables him to participate broadly, widely and effectively in the total of possible experience - normally to a greater extent than most of the other eleven types - but he ends up with little more than the persisting necessity for making new ties and finding new equilibriums in reality.
GEMINI
Life is a loom, weaving illusion.
VACHEL LINDSAY, The Chinese Nightingale
Gemini is the common sign in the air group, and this means that it reveals, in every horoscope, the characteristic way in which the native insinuates his way into the personal reality of every interesting situation. This is where he divides up his interest on any provocation, and carries the channelship or canalizing function which, with Libra, is a matter of linking the elements in everyday circumstances, on forward to a more enduring species of relationship among people and things. The keyword for this mode of action is VIVIFICATION. Man feels himself most successfully the social creature, or gains the greatest immediate satisfaction in the exercise of his own personality, as he is able to see himself emulated, imitated or otherwise reduplicated in a twin-like reflection of his own being. The emphasis at this point of the zodiac is upon his efforts to achieve the greatest intimacy of participation in events by (1) consistent attempts to enlist others in behalf of his own interests and projects, and (2) an instinctive and wholehearted throwing of himself into everything around him. There is as much enthusiasm in Gemini as in Libra, and as great a power of anticipation, but a complete absence of the deeper moods, together with a far greater capacity for sustained co-operation with various associates. The me-too spirit of the opposite and complementary Sagittarius is found in a more ulterior form, but with a more admirable desire to pay in full as well as share completely. These two opposing signs give the points of maximal personal interest in the zodiac, but Gemini is characteristically friendly in a vicarious and highly self-exalting satisfaction, not in the direct or simple self-indulgences symbolized by the centaur.
Thus Gemini indicates the fundamental usefulness or facility of the native in the social world around him, and reveals his ability to meet the conditions of everyday living without distress of mind. It shows whatever capacity may exist for political adjustment — that is, being on good or bad behavior as a matter of deliberate policy — and this can end up either as unselfish devotion or high superficiality. The self is charted here in its gift for (1) doing more than one thing at once, (2) revivifying its attack upon any ramification of loose ends in tasks to be accomplished, and (3) giving a highly personal attention to the daily activities which otherwise would be dull and difficult. This is simple practicality in the sense of an ease in doing whatever normal and usual things are to be brought to the service of other things more important than themselves.
The Gemini Type
The Gemini individual — in the case where this sign is rising or contains the sun, moon or an unusual concentration of planets — is the personal epitome of the air and common characteristics. He is the happy-go-lucky person who will do anything for which he finds an authoritative permission, and is essentially the outstanding man-of-affairs whose nose is out of joint only when he is ignored by the people around him. At his worst he is the busybody, the playboy and the dilettante, and at his best the friend-in-need, or the tireless soul who loves to engineer a rescue. He sets the pace for business in general, and in the most conventional dress is the merchant or trader, the executive or promoter. He works in first-hand contact with his fellows, and wins them by personal appeal and intimate advertising, especially in lines where he can achieve success by making their desires more real to them. He has a flair for practical techniques in every walk of life, and is almost a professional comforter. Socially, he will always sing for his supper. On higher levels of effort he is an artist or mechanical genius, able to catch some facet of reality and make it his own through a portrait, a gadget or some sort of clever adaptation.
He insists upon knowing everyone by name, and upon having their telephone numbers. He is inclined to be casual, however, and to see no more in an acquaintance than what he can call to life within himself, or for himself, through the given relationship. He is not so much faithless as ingratiating, since he has to find himself included very definitely in the activities of other people — in a sort of twin relation where the externally real is inwardly assuring — and so he seeks, continually, to strengthen whatever normal ties he is able to establish with those around him. He is a great dues-payer. He encourages clubs, fraternities and such organizations as an easy way to get a finger in current and popular activities. He is not particularly concerned with the transmission or movement of things, but rather with their significance as representing people and their problems. He strives to enlarge the potentials of general experience by persuading as many as possible of his intimates to do as many given things as they can, and he applauds every achievement to which he can lend any aid or encouragement. Like a Libra native, his main objectives in life often seem to center in a determination to keep everything active, and to avoid every threat of inertia or insignificance in any part of his own private world.
AQUARIUS
The ideal should never touch the real.
SCHILLER, To Goethe
Aquarius is the fixed sign in the air group, and this means that it reveals, in every horoscope, the characteristic way in which the native makes use of his vicarious experience to give himself an inner or psychological steadiness, and to sharpen his basic urge to live. The keyword for this mode of action is LOYALTY. Here is where any individual leans the most heavily upon the ideals he has found established in life about him, or upon the standards he has had the chance to test or refine for himself. It is at this point that man seeks to insinuate himself into some form of immortality, although he may never have any sense of the philosophical implications involved. What with Libra is a coupling function, and with Gemini a more personal channeling of the self in human relations, with Aquarius becomes the effort to live or actualize ideas and inner conceptions. The sign shows the native's determination to achieve a permanent self-establishment, thereby balancing his conventionality, on the one hand, against his capacity for Utopian idealization and a complete flowing of self into new and novel enterprises, on the other. What here may often seem an idle quest for knowledge is really a persistent effort to stabilize the values in living by an adequate realization of life's meaning. This is where inner perspective anchors itself in the outer milieu, ultimately becoming an eager anticipation, or an enthusiasm which frequently takes the form of an exaggerated curiosity.
Thus Aquarius measures man's greatest possible adherence to his ideals and theories, together with his wildest roaming about in his effort to find new ones if ever the old come to fail him. The mansion always shows his practical obsession with immediate ends in personal fulfillment, or what statically is his everyday aplomb, and dynamically his unleashed desire. Here is his capacity for self-sacrifice at the call of an ideal, and so for a real austerity of character. Going too far, however, the individual may lose himself in some remote or purely theoretical consideration, and so betray his ultimate interests through an everyday vacillation. This is the part of the zodiac which charts the false concepts, the erroneous perspectives and the outwardly perverse notions by which the being is led astray. It also shows how anyone can master the inadequacy or disillusion of his own experience by a quickened ideal interest.
The Aquarius Type
The Aquarius individual — in the case where this sign is rising or contains the sun, moon, or an unusual concentration of planets — is the personal epitome of the air and fixed characteristics. In the extreme case this one of the twelve types may be a person of great vision, possessing the most exalted insight and calling humanity to a cosmic destiny. More often, and at the other extreme, he is a dreamer of dreams, a seeker of Utopian satisfaction upon the lazy pastures of his own imagination. Normally he is a conventionalist, and rather gregarious. He likes to play the altruist, and does so when he can. Beneath whatever surface veneer he acquires in life, he is a seeker after guiding principles for himself. These he shares with others who will listen to him, thereby gaining a psychological encouragement. When his highest potentiality is achieved, he is carried along by the wonder of the exaltation he experiences. Then he is delightfully naive, and at the disposal of all the less inspired souls around him. He is apt to be a person of high passions when compelled to function on any low level of self-fulfillment. Hence he is interested in ideals only to the degree that his own identity may have a safe refuge in them. When devoid of effective emotional anchorage, he is blindly jealous and unreasonable. He will give great loyalty to every sort of cause in which he can find any promise for his inner hopes, and so is very prone to indulge his wishful thinking, and to embrace some purely rationalizing philosophy.
He is of a disposition to make the best of whatever lies at hand, idealizing things as they are when potentialities become too elusive. Hence he is practical in fact, even when running wild in the realms of his thinking. He never gives up what he has until whatever he expects is delivered. He is a realist in the minor affairs of every day, simply because these do not interest him. As a result he is often lackadaisical, following along on the easiest lines in anything not definitely a matter of broader issue. At his best he makes a contribution to everyone around him, largely because his exceptionally active allegiance to whatever inspires him is genuinely infectious. He may accomplish much by his sensitiveness to the more remote implications of experience, as in research and real intellectual analysis. He is inclined to focus his interest on the significance of what happens, rather than in the passing event as such, and so he may prove very quiet and unobtrusive most of the time.
THE TRIBES OF DILIGENCE
CAPRICORN
The Athenians do not mind a man being clever, so long as he does not impart his cleverness to others.
PLATO, Euthyphro
Capricorn is the cardinal sign in the earth group, and this means that it reveals, in every horoscope, the characteristic way in which the native anticipates various crises, in his efforts to justify his being through the everyday world in which he finds himself. The keyword for this mode of action is DISCRIMINATION. The sign is the most practical of all the twelve, in the simple sense of that word, and it is the point in the chart where the greatest possible resourcefulness of an individual is to be found. Among those of little social background it may be no more than cunning, and in those with any refinement of character it will reflect a deeply rooted perseverance. Whenever the immediate situation gets out of hand, however, and an individual is made to feel inadequate, the mansion shows the unreasoning suspicion of which he is capable. Here is where man gives attention to all passing responsibilities, and develops his real facility in restoring order, repairing objects and mechanisms, straightening out the emotional or mental involvements of individuals or groups, and in general gaining a sense of the world's reality through mastering the sphere of his own experience. The general competence can become an extraordinary flair for concern over the business of other people, and for making public and group affairs almost a private problem, but never in a mere busybody sense. This is where the native shows his ability as the architect, the builder and the statesman.
Thus Capricorn reveals the ultimate critical genius of a given person, and especially indicates his power of analysis in questions of morality and ethics, i.e., his moral sensitiveness, or its lack. Under unfavorable development, this is a dog-in-the-manger attitude which may hold others back, Here an individual is shown as he is most clever in uncovering the trends of a situation, and in recognizing its component elements in their reaction upon each other. He may develop the almost intuitive keenness, together with exceptional alertness to immediate eventualities, which constitutes the highest possible form of practical judgment under the sign. This does not strengthen any truly mystical or genuinely religious experience or capacity, but rather leads to a demand for a complete conformity to normal expectation in life and conduct, both by the self and others.
The Capricorn Type
The Capricorn individual — in the case where this sign is rising or contains the sun, moon, or an unusual concentration of planets — is the personal epitome of the earth and cardinal characteristics. He is the most persevering and untiring of all the types, and is usually found to be either (1) a rather useful person at the given moment, when his special competence is needed, or else (2) a quite unpleasant creature, at the times when his proclivity for taking charge of a current situation is something to be resented. He is distinguished by his utter practicality, a realism that becomes almost inhuman whenever something to be done offers him a special chance to tinker with his own fascinating universe of reality. The most paradoxical or truly cardinal part of his nature is his unreasoning insistence that he be consulted if changes are to be made anywhere, but that he be left severely alone otherwise, free to choose for himself the problems to which he applies his talents. He is at once completely conventional, in liking things according to expectation, and yet even fanatical — violent to he point of paroxysm — in his insistence that everything be adjusted according to the lines he adopts and the arrangements he makes. He is a Libra inside out, enthusiastic after rather than before the fact, with equally little interest in remote considerations. He may struggle valiantly to maintain some commonplace ideal, and be devastatingly critical of the ends envisioned. He has no use at all for any notion which is no more than a hope for the future.
He asks of life, primarily, a continuing opportunity to exercise his skills, and he is apt to be quite dispassionate when it comes to any relations with particular people or groups. He becomes the glutton easily, and is the most insatiable of men when he finds any form of self-release a stimulus to his manipulative gifts. In dissipation he is more the lone wolf than ever. He wears out the average person in short order, but he does not interfere with others if they keep their place. He is ungrudgingly splendid when asked for advice or help in the normal course of life. His philosophy is usually one of expedience, feeling that anything necessary has full justification by that fact alone. When undisciplined, he enjoys gaining and exercising any advantage over his fellows, but even then he is generous if he is allowed to express himself. He has great assurance when he feels himself in direct touch with all pertinent factors in the given situation, although he is curiously servile when events are out of hand as far as he is concerned.
VIRGO
A place for everything and everything in its place.
SAMUEL SMILES, Thrift
Virgo is the common sign in the earth group, and this means that it reveals, in every horoscope, the characteristic way in which the native attempts to further his own ends by building upon the efforts of other people, and by maneuvering various individuals into relationships according to his own convenience. The keyword for this mode of action is ASSIMILATION. Everyone establishes the totality of himself through a process of psychological aggregation, or a division of labor by means of which he specializes his energies in some directions, helping his fellows and accepting their help in turn. Virgo is the point in the zodiac where the mutual usefulness of men and women to each other is disclosed, both as (1) organized to the extent where, normally, no supervision is required, and as (2) necessitating reorganization to a greater or lesser degree. The sign shows the capacity, in any person's case, for initiating and maintaining the sort of living relations which can be made reciprocally utilitarian in this fashion. Hence it also indicates any individual's potential success in mobilizing himself efficiently enough so that society at large will endorse the broader functions in which he finds his wholeness of experience, and in that way will permit those around him to participate in them to his own advantage.
Thus Virgo indicates the possibility of a genuine preciseness in personal activity, or of a simple and immediate efficiency in productive enterprise. This means any ability to build everyday experience into the very fiber of self, as well as any gift for projecting the self into new and different facets of reality as these are dramatized in the lives of other people, particularly the leaders of the race or the giants of human potentiality. Here is an individual's response to personal relations in general, or to the unalloyed interest of all men per se. This mansion shows an individual's willingness to accept anyone else in a common reality, quite apart from special obligation or particular preparation, and charts his tendency towards a superficial manipulation of people in his effort to further a maximum conformity to their joint expectation. The organism seeks at this point to stabilize its own rhythm, and to develop its practical capacity for putting all the elements of ordinary living into mutually contributory relationships. The individually critical functions of Capricorn are broadened here into a more essentially social statesmanship.
The Virgo Type
The Virgo individual — in the case where this sign is rising or contains the sun, moon, or an unusual concentration of planets — is the personal epitome of the earth and common characteristics. He is the most happily and fussily particular of all people, never as delighted as when about his self-appointed tasks. At his worst he is over-fastidious, destructively critical and definitely officious, and his relations with others are apt to become an attempt to take complete charge of their personal affairs. Even when he acts in loving kindness, he will tell them what to do, how to place everything, and so on down to the most minute detail. At his best, however, he is the most considerate of all types, insisting that experience be as rewarding to the other fellow as himself. Pliable to an extraordinary extent when it comes to most details of living, he is never disturbed by any need to wait upon his friends, nor is he impatient when it comes to being served by them in turn. He is a born commoner, not interested in the hierarchic orders which men establish but seeing, instead, the role of the community in bringing everyone into one unified world. At heart he is the great leveler.
He is an excellent disciplinarian because, in common with the Piscean type across the zodiac, he makes so little distinction among persons. He is capable of a self-abnegation which would be extraordinary self-sacrifice in someone else, all because he lives so largely in other people. He does this vicariously always, and often literally. He is one with whom association may be exceedingly easy in consequence. When he develops his best potentialities, he is fascinatingly understanding. However, he assiduously avoids too definite a tie with anyone who might dominate their mutual relationship. He feels he must be free to manipulate the factors of reality in his own world, and to seek the unity of experience which he may never gain but which he can anticipate in a commonness of function with the people around him. When uncertain in his own mind, as far as some particular relationship is concerned, he becomes detached and cold. He can be very vindictive if crowded too hard. Even at his meanest, however, he has real capacity for every sort of human fellowship. He will often have high intuitive gifts, through his instinctive human sympathy, and at no moment is he ever apt to be at a loss for simple, direct and intimate relationships.
TAURUS
Let us make hay while the sun shines.
CERVANTES, Don Quixote
Taurus is the fixed sign in the earth group, and this means that it reveals, in every horoscope, the characteristic way in which the native makes use of his vicarious experience, to give himself a practical, everyday and external steadiness in living. The keyword for this mode of action is INTEGRATION. Here is the most definitely physical point of all in the chart, showing the pattern of energy-release in the individual case, and also measuring the particular indomitability or simple root constancy of which an individual is capable. The indication is of relations behind the scenes, or the undercurrents of the given life, with an occasional extraordinary sensitiveness to these, and a continual reaction to what they are supposed to be. The sign gives a clue to whatever feeling a person may have of exclusion from any immediate reality — or of being left behind by a growing and expanding world — and so it shows an eagerness to act, and to react, which may seem too primitive or immature to be pleasing to others. Sometimes Taurus may chart a hopeless constriction, which denies all real chance for self-expression and so demands an explosive unbottling of self, that is, a resort to crude and second-best efforts to achieve the coveted wholeness in self-realization. This is the point of unalloyed articulation in the zodiac, disclosing a conscious self-appreciation as this arises from the stresses and strains in every underlying impulse of appetite and need.
Thus Taurus shows the requirements of the self its own functional continuance, not only in a native's release of energy but in his determination to put the whole of reality to use. Here is his development of a conscious self-validity. What discloses a selfish or willful and undisciplined self-seeking on the lowest level can become a gift for sentiment and a talent for a continual and creative contribution to real human ideals. The native is charted at this point in his true breadth of consciousness. This is the place in any horoscope where he refines his fundamental metaphysics. It shows the nature and strength of his hidden allegiances, or as he is oriented to the ideals he glimpses behind the superficial press of events. Here is where he develops his willingness to do and die, or to integrate all experience for himself and his fellows at no matter what cost.
The Taurus Type
The Taurus individual — in the case where this sign is rising or contains the sun, moon or an unusual concentration of planets — is the personal epitome of the earth and fixed characteristics. He is the type which at its worst is least able to gain the co-operation of others. He will seek, in his moments of defeatism, to eliminate himself from every context. He may refuse to play, almost pugnaciously, or else may retreat with hurt feelings to some lesser reality he can recognize on his own account. The literal extremes of proud self-sacrifice and pure martyrdom in maladjustment are found here. The motivation in the Taurus person is so little obvious to his fellows, normally, that he may seem on superficial observation to be the most self-centered and touchy of all. He is somewhat prone to live an interior life, especially when thwarted, although this is usually against his interest. In such a case he contributes to his own elimination from the more objective forms of experience, and so brings about a very real loss of self in a psychological regression to infinity.
This native is usually stimulated to an exceptional extent by the interplay of ideas about him, attempting in consequence to make them his own. The result is that he appears to be overly energetic, with little apparent capacity for relaxation or rest. At times he is tempted to force himself, and to enjoy situations in which he is compelled to resort to artificial sustainment, driving himself to exhaustion at the end. When life has a proper channelship for his efforts, he is the most invaluable of people, but if he goes unappreciated or lacks real affection he may dissipate his resources in idle fretting, pouring his energy into highly trivial issues. When there is nothing at stake in his own external world of reality, or when he cannot feel himself necessary in a very real way, he is the least alive among these astrological tribes. Under such circumstances he will appear quite unapproachable in any ordinary sense. Then he has no special context of being in which he can at once lose and so find himself. Pre-eminently the person who must prove the cosmic wholeness within himself, his extreme sensitiveness, his desire to follow through in pursuit of worthwhile consummations, his faithfulness to ideals of ultimate and practical substantiation, all make him magnificent in his own roots, and give him the simple dignity he is never able to lose.
Astrology,
How and Why it Works