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SELF-ASSERTION AND REALITY
Man most commonly preserves his integrity by his will to be unhurried in his major activities. This procrastination may have destructive results at times, but it also has been responsible for striking accomplishment. Ennius (as quoted by Cicero in De Senectute) says that the Fabian policy initiated by Quintus Fabius Maximus in the face of Hannibal's successes was such that "by delay he restored the state." Jesus, when advised that Lazarus was dead (John, 11:6), waited two days before proceeding to Bethany to perform the miracle. Here is no dignifying of an uncertainty of mind, or of a dilatoriness in facing the actualities of experience, but a realization that the self must be self-activated in every possible combination of circumstances and function. Any manifestation of the individual pattern of activity is impossible without a choice in the direction and nature of impact, an actual squaring off in time and space. Man's self-assertion is a manipulation of potentialities by using or rejecting them, to the end that duration serves rather than enslaves him, and that spatial relations sustain rather than deny his self-fulfillment.
The universe is not made up of indeterminate factors which blend together in becoming actualities, but of elements rigorously persistent in a process of continuing to be what they are. They co-operate with each other constantly in circumstantial and functional relationship, but no one of them can sacrifice its own nature and remain in existence. Everything encountered in experience is completely obsessed with its own business, and goes about its own affairs through every moment of time, no matter what its significance may be otherwise. When A becomes part of the reality in which B functions, A in that respect is a transient construct in B's complex of reality. It is true that this is made possible by the nature of A on his own account, but in no instance can B, acting in the periphery of A's self-assertion, maneuver any change in A, or depreciate A's integrity. Here is a further definition for a potentiality, i.e., a dependable changelessness in things as far as their own existence is concerned.
The Measure of Regularity
To do nothing is in every man's power.
Samuel Johnson, The Rambler
A cycle is a negative phenomenon. It is essentially a momentum, or something which of necessity expends itself and slows to a stop. Hence most individuals discover, sooner or later, that when they avoid self-assertion they often diminish rather than nurse their capacities. Sometimes they lose all point to this discovery by blaming on a lack of inspiration what after all is only the slow decay of ennui. Momentums are necessary, and highly desirable when they support the continuance of anything valued or enjoyed by man, but they are not self-sufficient. Moreover, in their mere continuance, they do not constitute any part of actual experience. No one knows, as personal fact, that the earth has two primary motions, or that the cells of his body engage in constant and highly vital enterprises of a cyclic nature. The procession of the seasons is hardly experienced, simply the individual impact of summer, or some other of them, in a special connection.
A momentum becomes critical, entering experience in a genuine sense, when it begins to lose dependability in the given situation, or when another one becomes necessary. Cycles, as a consequence, are only important in astrological analysis through their inception and cessation. The planets measure the terminal points when self-assertion is needed, not any mere continuance, that is, any interim devoid of significant act. The power of man to do nothing is his capacity to take advantage of whatever momentums sustain his own special contexts of reality, thus handling these negative factors in a positive fashion. He must face the falling away of much on which he counts, with the passage of time, and he must always be prepared to re-inaugurate activities by which he integrates his existence, establishes his identity and gains his satisfactions. However, he can avoid purely side issues, together with ail worry over trifles or concern with what is in no way a direct responsibility, by the simple orientation of his personal activity in its general content.
The sun, moon and other bodies become the PLANETS of horoscopy through their ultimately regular cycles of geocentric motion, and these cycles in their turn provide a statistical correspondence to the everyday momentums of normal existence. The original astrological correlation between the planetary movements and human events has an entirely empirical foundation, with the earliest roots of the horoscope lying in the simple relations observed in a time concordance between the heavenly positions and many regular fluctuations of human experience. The cyclic factors provided by the sun, in daily and seasonal distinctions, and by the moon, through periods in natural function which duplicate or multiply its phases, have been obvious to man from the dawn of his conscious existence. The phenomenon of morning and evening stars certainly caught his attention at the beginning of his myth-building, and unquestionably led to his various attempts to equate the planetary circling with the more subtle tides in his existence. The relatively free passage of Jupiter, Mars and Saturn through the night, lacking that limiting tie with the sun which makes Venus the particular lord of the dawn or twilight, merely helped expand a primitive astrolatry.
What the planets measure must of necessity be recognized in experience itself. There is a rhythm to inorganic reality, long before a perspective arises with the equally rhythmic self-assertion of conscious life. Thus the seasons and other natural phenomena of a cyclic sort exist before man employs them, although he creates the convenience which they instrument. Momentums always evolve out of other ones, giving origin in turn to more of their kind. Regularity as such is not significant, as has been pointed out; only the transition from one phase to another. Any integration of circumstances, indicated in horoscopy by the planets through their cycles, charts the relation of self to the potentialities which sustain it, and this is the basis for any astrological overview of the individual's further potentials in their everyday significance.
Experience is always a matter of conscious action or reaction, never the case of a completely passive receptivity. Self-assertion is the outreach of self in an inauguration or adoption of fresh momentums, therefore, never a mere coasting along upon the basis of repetitions dismissed to automaticity. No cycles are knowable of themselves, as already indicated. Any self-act is evident in a quickening of some potentiality, with a resulting re-grasp of reality. Astrology charts a doing, even if this be no more than the willful maintenance of a changelessness. The planets are acting, even in their extreme of regularity or non-deviation.
The Measure of Deviation
Dare to be wise: begin! He who postpones the hour of living rightly is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses, yet on it glides and will glide on forever.
Horace, Epistles
Success gravitates to those individuals with the ability to press forward, or to make new starts and act creatively in all possible situations. This does not mean that the irresponsible souls are the ones on whom fortune will look with the greatest favor, but rather that those who know how to assert themselves properly will achieve ultimate mastery in the life that swirls about them. They preserve a dynamic foundation for their own reality by their continual employment of the patterns of activity established in their own special make-up. By their constructive procrastination they escape every limiting momentum. They demonstrate an irrepressibility, not an incompetency. They are resourceful rather than happy-go-lucky. They put limitation to use, rather than suffering it, simply because they have order under contract to their self-assertion.
Patience and law-abiding conformity to the rules of society have their place in life, obviously, yet the supineness of a populace serves the purposes of tyranny as nothing else. This is illustrated often enough. Thus a long line of automobiles waits at a railroad crossing. A collegiate chassis with a party of adolescents comes rattling and coughing down the wrong side of the narrow two-lane road, arrives at the gates just as they start to lift, and cuts over to the right out of the way of the counter traffic at just the exact moment to weave ahead of the whole properly regimented and more respectable chain of cars. No great spiritual injustice is revealed. There is always a place for the extremely individualistic factor in a statistically ordered universe, provided only that the self-assertion be creatively real. A person cannot become blindly anarchistic with any degree of social reward, but he may well learn that the cosmic orderliness exists, primarily and in every true sense, for those things which he dismisses to automaticity in natural course. These may, indeed, prove to be the vast bulk of acts and reactions through which he remains himself, but only in the background of the major processes through which he asserts his own continuance. Eccentricity or difference is a root necessity of personal existence or identity in any definable form. Anything that is without distinction is devoid of self-capacity, since it then melts into the indeterminate mass of an unknown and unknowable indefiniteness.
The principle here has had an apt and dramatic illustration in the field of astronomy, through the discovery of Neptune is the result of a purely theoretical analysis of deviations in the conduct of Uranus. The latter planet, found a half century earlier, showed the unmistakable gravitational influence of some more distant solar satellite. The momentum of the nearer body was not sufficiently non-deviate to be dismissed as the mere ground of its existence. The reality was critical or alive in the sense that the cycle was irregular, showing the co-operation of a potentiality as yet undiscovered, that is, not yet reduced to the status of a static fact.
The irregularities in planetary movements actually appear to increase in a progressive series with the addition of orbits to the sun's system — while at the same time diminishing in observable effect, on to infinity — and the same phenomenon is common in organic existence. Thus the appearance of some limitation, as a distractive factor producing an irregularity in the cycles of experience, identifies an unrealized or unutilized potentiality which must be turned to account. Thereupon the deviation becomes a moral dynamic, a new possible momentum of personal value, whether its urge is to an actual cyclic transition or to an adjustment in existing patterns.
The planets in horoscopy represent the basic potentials of activity because, as they move around the entire heavenly vault with differing positions and patterns in the zodiac and celestial equator, they can be used to dramatize the ramification of individual deviation in every possible pattern of self- assertiveness. The solar system must be viewed, not only as the physical instrumentation of cosmic order, but as an accurate reflection of the universal statistically coherent eccentricities of existence on the terrestrial globe. Thus these ten bodies are of the greatest value in their most marked deviation from ideal or mathematical norm. Their exceptionality provides the correlation to human events.
They are employed, astrologically, as seen by the eye or telescope, since the earth is central in the frame of reference. The increased distinctiveness of planetary conduct, arising largely from this geocentric rather than heliocentric point of view, is the most important source of their astrological meaning. Thus the sun moves with an approximate real regularity, as it takes on the orbital revolution of the earth. Next in orderly cycle is the moon, a true satellite which must revolve around the globe with only minor deviation. All the other bodies swing around the sun counterclockwise through the ecliptic, each of course moving in its own orbit. Those which are closest to the sun, still the center of the energy system, have the fastest zodiacal motion as a necessity of celestial dynamics. Since all are viewed from the earth, their movement becomes highly irregular, leading to recurrent periods of retrograde motion. The situation in such a case is not unlike that of trains operating at different speeds on adjacent tracks. A local may move forward, yet seem to be backing up when observed from an express which overhauls it. RETROGRADATION is highly important in skilled horoscopic judgment, not in changing the particular implication of the planet so moving, but in charting a subjective condition, due to the special excess of control, in a sense, by the earth itself.
The sun and moon are termed planets in astrology, a convenient if somewhat loose extension of meaning for that word, and they are treated precisely the same as the other bodies. The earth itself, in becoming the basis for the geocentric scheme, disappears from active consideration. The fixed stars provide the general background in charting the planetary positions, since any movements or changes among them are too slight for any but the most technical and hypothetical measurement. Meteors, and all irregular bodies, encountered at closer range in their approach to the terrestrial atmosphere, lack sufficient regularity or predictability to be of much practical use, although a few of them, as Halley's comet, have had suggestive possibilities. Planetary fragments, such as the asteroids, are for the major part too small to be employed effectively, and there are no adequate tabulations of their positions. The satellites of the other planets, as the prominent moons of many among them, have no measurable distinction in geocentric reference. The rule may be put down, however, that anything changing place in the sky against the relative motionlessness of the starry field can be given astrological validity. Hence planets are used as they are discovered, although horoscopy is not bound to its heavenly bodies in any specific sense. Each particular one of them is valuable, but not essential, so that no difficulty results from the lack of an integrated solar satellite between Mars and Jupiter.
Astrological practicality has been able to accomplish much in the other direction, by utilizing wholly intangible elements of celestial relationship. Phenomena which under other circumstances might be the result of a planet's presence in the operation of the closed system of energy can be accepted as the basis for a theoretical planet, and have horoscopic validity, as in the case of the suggested but probably non-existent intra-mercurial Vulcan. The fact that Neptune is an exception to the orderly arrangement of the other solar satellites including Pluto, according to Bode's law, does not militate against its value in the stellar art. Arabian astrology has made quite effective use of these oddities, including the functional stresses identified by the intersection of orbits and the like. The Moslem astrologers endowed the horoscope with multitudinous nodes and parts, taking subordinate relations between various points of the chart, whether symbolical or actual, and giving a ramification of significant focuses which, with proper skill, may have as high value in horoscopic indication as the actual physical bodies. Indeed, these mental constructs may be treated in exactly the same way as planets. The mid-points of relation are an extreme example of this procedure, and the employment of planetary positions in a projection or extension of time relations — the background of all work with progressions or directions — is another instance of it.
DRAMA IN THE SKIES
There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon,
and another glory of the stars;
for one star differeth from another star in glory.
I Corinthians, 15:41
The planets are very real masses of matter, administering the kaleidoscopic stresses of the self-contained energy-system in which man has no less a part, at least in proportion to his gravitational bulk. Their practical relation to him is that of the general to the specific, so that they may be said to represent his potentialities as these are founded upon the common cycles of momentum in one or another direction of his experience. The planets are players in his drama of the skies, identifying symbolical limb buds in his zodiacal organism and charting processes by which it is conditioned and refined. Each has its own character, with a statistical correlation to some one of the basic ways of acting by which he continues to be what he is. All together, they reveal the pattern of his individuality. As focuses of cosmic activity in the larger scheme, they become the dynamic indicators of his momentums and capacities in the smaller. They are actors in the comedy or tragedy of himself as this is portrayed on the heavenly screen, and each has the implication it gains from its complete attention to its own business as an active body in the field of energy.
THE SUN is obviously the most important of astrology's planets, and it takes its position as a moving body in the geocentric scheme by replacing the earth. Its apparent motion is in its satellite's orbit, at the exact opposite point in the zodiac from the globe's actual position. This fact expresses, rather accurately in astrology's naive symbolism, the most direct possible terrestrial outlook in terms of zodiacal perspective. Hence it represents, in horoscopy, the prime focus in the total situation which the earth, through the horizon established on its surface, makes manifest in man's existence. By the logic of suggestive parallels between planetary and human experience, the sun indicates the central or fundamental factor in any given reality because (1) it provides the most regular of all zodiacal movements, and also (2) determines the ordering or designation of time per se, both diurnally and annually. In taking the earth's place, it occupies the fourth position among the ten planets in the sequence through which much of their nature is determined, and this means that it was actually central or focal in the original Chaldean system of seven. Although no one ever refers to this body by name, but rather designates it descriptively as the sun, it is properly known as Sol. There is far less relationship with Greco-Roman mythology than in the case of the true solar satellites, and no attempt has been made to associate the astrological sun with Apollo, into whom the earlier but minor worship of Sol or Helios was assimilated. Its symbol is the circle, suggesting infinite and undesignated potentiality, with the point or symbolization of manifestation placed at the center to indicate its fundamentally focalizing activity. Here is self-assertion at simple root.
THE MOON takes the place of the sun as the starting point in astrological sequence among the planets. Its name is Luna, but like the sun it is identified in common practice by the descriptive term. It has horoscopic primacy because of its exceptional swiftness of motion, and its intimate relation with the earth as a true satellite. Its greater speed enables it to distribute the implication of the other planets through the minutiae of everyday circumstances. As the general execution of the dynamic relations in the native's pattern of activity, it shows his degree of conscious self-participation in events, and becomes the indicator of emotion or of personal experience in its broadest possible potentiality. Moons in general are not regarded by occultists as the evolutionary offspring of a parent body — the common astronomical theory — but instead as the residual elements of original source material which the larger mass has failed to build into the substance of its being, hence aggregates of star-stuff from which it derives a sort of inverse, queer and psychic nutriment or support. This hypothesis, popularized by medieval thinkers, runs through the whole structure of lunar superstition. The light of the moon has been regarded as baneful throughout man's history, and the observable correspondence between its phases and meteorological phenomena, tidal cycles, parturition, and the like have led men to respect and fear it. Mythology early expanded man's instinctive sense of an organic link with this queen of the night, an idea taken over into astrological symbolism far more definitely than any relation with Artemis, Diana or the Roman goddess known as Luna. Its close functional association with the earth has made the moon the astrological indicator of life process per se in quite a literal fashion. Its symbol is the circle of infinite potentiality as this is bent in half and folded back upon itself to become the crescent, suggesting the reflexive self-awareness or fundamentally organic self-assertion which it dramatizes.
While the EARTH is not used as a planet in a geocentric astrology, its symbol is employed for the Part of Fortune in the Arabian system.(1) The ideogram consists of the cross of matter — or the double dichotomy of the equatorial house-axes, representing experience in general — set in the circle of infinite potentiality. With the cross, the three essential components in the graphic symbolism of the original seven Chaldean indicators have been introduced, comprising a special notation for the drama in the skies. The CIRCLE, in its most simple significance, becomes the ideogram for spirit, or for infinity per se. It suggests a constancy of approximation to the ideal, which can have no specific existence, and offers the most basic generali zation possible in the form of any figure. It can be visualized as a regular polygon with an infinite number of sides, repre senting spirit as the constancy of experience through the illimitability of its own potentials. The CRESCENT, or the half- circle which is used in the composite ideograms rather than the original or conventionalized pictograph of the increasing moon, is a character for soul in its simple form, i.e., that which by nature is part spirit and part spiritually incomplete, hence under necessity to fulfill itself. The CROSS, apart from the particular theological meaning it has acquired, suggests the basic idea of a self-assertion operating vertically from spiritual resources and horizontally from a focalized self-consciousness or personality, and so establishing a self-identity in experience or everyday self-discovery. Hence it comes to represent MATTER as the allegorical crucifixion of spirit.
(1)The Part of Fortune is used widely, as a favorable indicator, together with the moon's north and south nodes, or dragon's head, and tail, as significators of special protection and self-undoing, respectively.
MERCURY is first of the actual planets in the solar system, considering their orbits heliocentrically or outward from their common center. It becomes second in the astrological or symbolical order, following the moon. The name comes from Greco-Roman mythology, where Mercury is the Latin equivalent of Hermes, and the designation probably arose from the association of communication or messenger capacities with both the planet's activity and the wing-footed Olympian god. Its symbol expresses its directness of relation to the solar source, on the one hand, and to the necessary singleness of self-assertion as a ramification out from this center, on the other. This is because the ideogram of spirit, placed upon and dominating the one for matter, is surmounted by the pictograph for soul with its points upward, calling for a universal self-fulfillment out of a purely personal experience.
VENUS is the planet next in order of solar orbit from Mercury, hence it holds third position in the ancient sequence. The name is that of the Latin goddess corresponding to Aphrodite, and the astrological implication links esthetic and other summations with the concept of love typified by the romantic lady of Olympus. These correlations between planets and mythological figures are quite superficial on the whole, remaining little more than a convenience of nomenclature. The immortal hierarchies of popular Greco-Roman religion originated through a rather casual stringing together of various dramatizations of natural law and superstition, during an age when graphic suggestion seemed much more important than logical consistency. The myths offer high symbolism for the planets, but they give no effective description of the planetary activities in actual human affairs. Aphrodite's cults were many in number, often divergent from each other in their main features, and with practices which certainly would give a wrong notion of the astrological implication in modern times. The symbol of Venus is the ideogram for spirit poised on that for matter. This indicates a self-assertion which subordinates physical realities to the conscious act-of-self, and which seeks to resolve all experience in some sort of personal satisfaction.
MARS is the first planet beyond the earth in the solar system, and it holds fifth position in the ancient order, ranking next after the sun in fourth. Its name is from the Latin deity identified with the Greek god Ares, and the symbolism arises from the fact that the warrior, among human occupations, was once the figure of chivalry and creative initiative. Because the disgraceful antics of the immortals in the familiar Olympian stories have completely unseated the ideals originally deified, a notion of bestiality has attached itself to the planet, along with every possible destructiveness of war and pestilence. The symbolization of Mars exactly reverses that of Venus, but the pictograph has been conventionalized with the cross of matter becoming a scorpion's sting. Since the ideograms of these two planets are employed commonly in biological notation to represent male and female distinctions, special care is needed to keep the one from indicating a primarily feminine expression, and the other a specific masculine emphasis. The original form of the Martial symbol has been employed at different times, with or without modification, to identify the earth, Uranus and Pluto, which fact must be remembered in examining various astrological materials. The symbolism dramatizes a self-assertion of the sort which demands that spirit be subordinated to matter, or that a practical employment be given to spiritual potentials.
JUPITER is the next planet out from the sun in the position of its orbit, occupying sixth place in the ancient order and representing the first of two ideas in the earlier astrology's effort to measure a transcendence of merely physical relationships. It is named after the Latin ruler of Olympus, in correspondence to Zeus, a selection which probably symbolized man's conscious and effective manipulation of circumstances according to his own desires and needs. The astrological designation took over none of the god's lecherous significance, but instead presented the unalloyed good fortune and the full favor of nature which Jupiter was supposed to command. The ideogram of soul is placed upon the cross of matter, but the arrangement is conventionalized with the former facing east from the horizontal or rising point of the house axis, thus emphasizing a type of self-assertion which is particularly eager to enter upon experience, or to give whole-souledly of itself in the act of being.
SATURN is the seventh and final planet in the original group. Its name comes from the Latin god corresponding to Cronus, one of the Titans and so a superior deity to Zeus in the hierarchical arrangement. Through what was apparently a confusion of his name with chronos, the Greek word for time, he became known as a god of cycles, and this notion has crept into astrology to give the planet a rulership over all time succession, an idea supported to some extent by the fact that its period in years is close to that of the moon in days. Saturn's symbol originally was the exact reverse of Jupiter's, but it has become much more highly conventionalized. It dramatizes self-assertion as a willingness to undergo experience in a subjective rather than objective fashion, suggesting a sensitiveness quickened by the compulsion of material necessity, i.e., the ideogram of soul placed at the nadir of the material cross.
URANUS, also known as Herschel for a considerable period after its discovery by Sir William Herschel in 1781, is the first of three new planets located in modern times, and it occupies the eighth position in Chaldean order as extended by the necessity for including the newcomers in astrological techniques.(2) Its name is taken from the Greek personification of the heavens, head of a mythological dynasty superior to the Titans in the same way that they held priority over the Olympians. Here is a symbolization of a self-assertion directed towards the illimitable, or of human life as newly manifest in some enlarged dimension of self-act. The pictograph of Uranus, expressing powers beyond normal activity and capacity, is fundamentally phallic, although it came into being quite fortuitously or in much the same manner as the best of human symbolism. Superficially it is the initial letter of Herschel with a planet suspended from the crossbar, but it can be described more fundamentally as the ideogram for male potency combined with a limiting or conditioning fence or ladder, thus representing the necessity for personal re-orientation in a greater reality.
(2)Chaldean order was originally the sequence of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, sun, Venus, Mercury and moon, which creates the planetary hour and day rulerships.
NEPTUNE, second of the new planets and ninth in position by the modernized Chaldean order, was discovered in 1846, and soon was named from the Latin diety who in his correspondence to Poseidon was lord of the seas, and who suggested the source of all experience in the eternal roots or springs of being. This dramatized the form of self-assertion by which an individual distributes his total obligation to society, or is compelled to do so, whether or no. The symbol superficially is the god's trident. More basically it is also phallic, suggesting the operation of a deeper reference in human capability, or illimitable personal capacity, through a modified pictograph of the female power in nature. As in the case of the Mars and Venus symbolization, the Uranus and Neptune ideograms do not involve masculine or feminine distinctions.
PLUTO, third of the new planets and tenth in position by the modernized Chaldean order, was discovered in 1930, and named after the god of the nether regions more usually called Hades by the Greeks and Dis by the Romans. The lower world symbolizes the farthest or most ultimate possibility of extension in consciousness, and as such typifies the actual function of the planet in horoscopic procedure. The symbolization again is fortuitous, but the pictograph has not yet gained a universal acceptance in astrological practice, and so has a number of forms. The astronomers generally have settled upon a monogram made up of the first two letters, and this is employed by many astrologers. As above, and in this and most recent American texts, the universalized upreach of soul embraces the circle of spirit, while resting on the cross of matter. This shows self-assertion through the creation of an illimitable potential for the orientation of self, rather than the mere communicating or messenger activity represented by Mercury, the other planet closest in nature to Pluto.
Additional Note on the Planetary Symbols
The symbol of Mercury is also identified as the caducous of Hermes, or his head and a winged cap. The pictograph of Venus is variantly taken as the goddess' looking glass, which euphemistically covers the phallic indication whenever it becomes a simple ideogram for female in biological literature. The representation of the earth is sometimes explained as showing the four quarters of the globe. The pictograph for Mars is occasionally described as the head, helmet and nodding plume of a warrior, or as his shield and spear, and this again is a cover for the indication of male functioning in the biologist's shorthand. The symbol of Jupiter is identified at times as the conventionalized delineation of an eagle, or as the letter Z of Zeus with a line through it to indicate an abbreviation. The ideogram of Saturn may be recognized as a primitive scythe or sickle, taken as an emblem of time.
TABLE X
The Ten Astrological Planets and Their Symbols
THE SUN (Sol) - Infinite potentiality in manifestation
THE MOON (Luna) - Infinite potentiality in awareness
MERCURY - Soul lifting spirit out of matter
VENUS - Spirit supreme over matter
MARS - Matter supreme over spirit
JUPITER - Soul on the ascendant of matter
SATURN - Soul at the nadir of matter
URANUS (Herschel) H - Self-potency entirely uninhibited
NEPTUNE - Self-potency entirely circumscribed
PLUTO - Soul creating spirit out of matter
Astrology, How and Why it Works
