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FOREWARD
Nothing is permanent but change.
Character is destiny..
- Heraclitus of EphesusThis book has been in the process of writing throughout the more than thirty years during which judicial astrology has been a matter of deep interest. At first a mountain labored, and brought forth a mouse, the experimental pamphlet. Evolutional Astrology, rather handsomely illustrated by George Winslow Plummer and published in 1916 by the author as a gift to the Societas Rosicruciana in America. A detailed outline of ideas for a volume tentatively titled Key Principles of Astrology, and scheduled to follow Key Truths of Occult Philosophy (which appeared in 1925), was presented as classwork to a group of California students early in 1924, and this material subsequently became Temple Astrology in the mimeographed series. Meanwhile, beginning in 1922, the demonstrated value of a preliminary organization and presentation of subject matter, first orally before various critical groups, and then in the tentative mimeographed form, led to what ultimately became the Sabian project, under which the scheduled total of three thousand lessons or reports will have been completed during the current year.
A new outline for a fundamental text, based on what had been learned from a teaching perspective in many hundreds of class sessions through some fourteen years, was expanded into the mimeographed Sabian Astrology lessons, the initial series on the subject issued from December 3, 1928, to June 10, 1929, and these comprise the materials gradually reworked into the contents of the present volume. Dane Rudhyar, the first professional contributor to the popular astrological literature in America, took an interest in the mimeographed expositions from the time they were issued, and an acknowledgement of his part in awakening a more general appreciation for the Sabian presentation has been made in the foreword to Problem Solving by Horary Astrology. Mathilda Shapiro and Margaret Morrell were responsible for the actual start of the present text by suggesting that its serialization in abridged form would help in the clarification and refinement of its details. The debts to these young women is very great because, during the time the articles ran in American Astrology Magazine from February, 1940, through January, 1941, they gave an evening a month, helping to prepare the installments.
The manuscript in this 1940 draft did not meet the needs of a fundamental text, at least as these were uncovered on several cross-country lecture trips, and so it was withdrawn from the publisher then interested in the series. The smaller How to Learn Astrology was written and issued as a trial balloon to determine the acceptability of a general approach which was in no way either fundamentally metaphysical or blindly authoritative. That two further texts have preceded this fourth one, which is logically the first, is due in part to exigencies of publishing and in greater part to the extraordinary difficulties in its preparation. Miss Shapiro has read each of the four drafts completely, as well as galley proofs, and has done yeoman work in checking keywords and delineations on the basis of her experience in using them through several recent years. Mrs. Morrell has read page proofs and checked the mathematics throughout. The author's secretary, Miss Elsie Boyle, who has now lived through her third astrological book, has taken almost entire responsibility for technical typographical and stylistic points.
Astrology, How and Why It Works is dedicated to Paul G. Clancy, primarily in recognition of his outstanding contribution to American horoscopy. He arranged to open the pages of his magazine to the Sabian materials at a luncheon conference in the summer of 1935, long before the author felt his contribution was ready for the general public. Mr. Clancy has created many channels for the New World's revitalization of the stellar art, providing a focus of stimulation in this country not unlike that created by Alan Leo and his Modern Astrology a generation ago in London. Ten years of friendship with Paul Clancy have been a happy, rewarding and at times adventuresome experience.
The book is released for publication very reluctantly. The final reading of its pages has been a devastating event because, if the achievement is a compensation for the effort in what it reveals of an ultimate promise, the performance does not call for any excessive pride. The difficulties, largely verbal, remain as nearly insurmountable as they were three decades ago, largely because astrology, in a curious way, is a more refined instrument of analysis than any possible common tongue used for its description. It is virtually impossible to restrict particular words to special horoscopic meanings, simply because the requirements for knowing them in such a fashion would be no different from those for grasping the astrological indicator per se, i.e., there would be no communication of idea. Experience, to become astrologically transmissible, has to be carried behind language in a very real sense, and this has made is necessary to write these pages in cliches and formulas, with every reasonable lean upon sheer repetition.
A fundamental vocabulary has grown up with usage, so that some terms can be committed to memory by the newcomer, and thereupon used in his mind as pegs on which to hang the fabric of the new dimension in his thinking. Hence it has been possible to supplement these orientation words to some extent, and to set them apart as keywords. This spares the average person any distress over the very great problems that lie, so to speak, behind the scenes, and that are inherent in the conglomerate of stray materials such as rest in disorder beyond the impressive outer facade of every human science. No effort has been made to compromise a final utility by any superficial pretense to an exactness or un-ambiguity which not only does not exist, but probably never will. Thus ideas which are co-ordinate astrologically can appear ridiculously disparate in everyday language, as in the classification of the three temperaments in Chapter Nine. Many horoscopic implications would seem complete non sequiters to the uninitiated, as in details of the microcosmic alphabet commencing in Chapter Ten.
The principal source of difficulty, when an effort is made to approach astrology critically, but from the outside and without an adequate preparation through an actual experience with its intellectual mechanism, is that there are an unending host of distinctions which are very sharp in horoscopic analysis, but definitely hazy when expressed in any simple form of words. An illustration is the contrast between will and identity in Chapter Fifteen. When individuality and personality are compared, on the one hand, or personality and emotion, on the other, the word personality is employed in two distinct connotations, as can be observed on just later in the chapter. This usage is more convenient for the astrologer than to bring in a new term, since he has no difficulty in seeing personality as a function-in-process in the one case, and as a circumstantial fait accompli in the other. It often takes the neophyte a number of years to discover that this overlapping of reference can be a contribution to clarity rather than confusion. In this text, as an example, he will find sagacity as a keyword for Sagittarius in Chapter Thirteen, and also in Chapter Fifteen as a distinguishing mark of Jupiter in contrast with the intelligence of Mercury and the wisdom of Saturn. Again, consciousness is seen in Chapter Three as a ninth-house matter, and in Chapter Fifteen, as another phase of Jupiter's activity. These apparent inconsistencies are multiplied indefinitely in horoscopic literature.
The least obvious but most serious of the difficulties in astrological writing is the fact that the English language makes no basic separation whatsoever between objects which identify action because they are ends in view, and objects which are merely the potential material of experience. Hence there is no self-identifying vocabulary to keep planetary meanings from slipping off into house or sign significations. In the case of the Venus implications, described in Chapter Fifteen, there is a rulership of money, which is almost the basic second-house meaning, as explained in Chapter Four. Food and clothing, as indicated by the same planet from the activity perspective, are really sixth-house factors, as brought out on in the table at the end of Chapter Three. In time, of course, as the horoscopic vocabulary is enriched, these problems will recede more and more into the background.
New York City, March 19, 1945
This book has served the needs of students and friends of astrology for a quarter of a century and I am happy that it will now serve a wider audience as well, through a paperback edition which incorporates all the latest corrections and revisions. I am especially pleased that this popular edition is served by the quality of the new publisher, Penguin Books, and by the company my books finds with theirs.
Stanwood, Washington 1970