Event-Oriented and Person-Centered Astrology

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EVENT-ORIENTED & PERSON-CENTERED ASTROLOGY

Dane Rudhyar

In the first essay of this series, "Astrology for New Minds" two fundamentally different approaches to astrology were defined: the event-oriented and the person-centered approach. Let me briefly restate what these two approaches are.

In its most extreme aspect, the first of these considers astrology as an empirical science gradually built by men who in various countries noticed that certain definite types of events around them occurred at the time when they also observed celestial phenomena referring to the relative positions of the Sun, the Moon and the planets, and to the reappearance of some prominent stars at the horizon. These celestial phenomena recurred periodically, and so did the events on earth which had been observed to occur simultaneously. These men made careful records of their observations; and gradually through many centuries these records were codified into what we now call a science, i.e., a consistent body of knowledge dealing with observable phenomena.

Correlations between celestial phenomena and earthly events exist; and the scientifically oriented astrologer claims that they are reliable - if not absolutely, at least in a very large (but so far not at all precisely determined) number of observed and observable cases - provided of course that the recorded data accumulated by past generations of observers are well understood and used as originally intended.

A question at once arises in the mind of the enquirer. Why and how should there be a correlation between a conjunction of two planets, or the reappearance of a big star in the West after sunset, and the fate of a battle, the occurrence of a serious drought, the illness or the falling in love of human beings?

The astrologer who is a strictly event-oriented empiricist admits that he does not know the how or the why of these correlations. He seems to take for granted that there is a causal relationship between the celestial and the terrestrial events; and he speaks of the "influences" of planets and stars upon human affairs and upon the character and well-being of individual persons, or even of nations. He might say that we do not really know how gravitation operates, but that we nevertheless are using our knowledge that it is to be reckoned with. Because we have measured the gravitational pull of matter upon matter we can predict accurately how much thrust must be applied to a missile so that it may escape from the gravitational field of the Earth. All empirical sciences are indeed means of predicting what will happen when this and that factor come together under definite conditions; and astrology is not different from all other sciences.

However, some serious problems arise. While it is true that empirical science bases its laws and therefore its "prediction" of events - on repeatedly observed correlations between two sets of factors, these two sets normally belong to the same order of phenomena. The correlation is seen to be one of cause and effect, and there is always some relevance or similarity of nature between the cause and the effect. If one speaks of "influence," then one assumes that there is a medium that is the carrier of this influence. How does this apply to astrology, as it is used today?

As already stated in the preceding essay, it is today quite acceptable, scientifically speaking, to believe that the positions of the planets at any time within the entire solar system refer to definable influences exerted upon the Earth and everything that lives on its surface. Powerful waves of energy stream forth from the Sun, and probably to a lesser extent from stars and regions of the galaxy. But what has this to do with astrology's claim that a certain section of a person's birthchart refers to "possessions," another to illness or one's job, still another to death and legacy? Why is it that because Uranus passes in the sky over the degree of the zodiac at which the Moon was placed at a man's birth, this individual should expect without fail to experience some emotional upset, or some change in his relationship with his mother or his mistress? What causes this selectivity? What conceivable type of mechanism or process could explain the direct action of a particular planet upon a particular person, in terms of the person's meeting with another person who will change his life, or in terms of being run over by a car, or of taking a long journey which will prove successful because Jupiter is passing through a section of the zodiacal belt which occupied a certain angle of the sky when the person was born?

The honest empiricist-astrologer simply says that he does not know - that no one knows. But, he adds, these correlations have been empirically proven by numerous records, and so one can reliably expect that they will be repeated again and every time. To solve the problem, Carl Jung introduced the concept of "synchronicity"; that is, what happens at any moment of time carries everywhere the characteristic quality of this moment. But when one advances such a metaphysical concept one leaves the field of empirical science. Moreover, this does not really change one's basic approach to astrology - or more precisely to the meaning and value of astrology.

The approach changes only when one gives a different meaning to the purpose of astrology: what is astrology FOR? It is assumed by a great majority of the people that this purpose is to predict, according to the time and place of their birth, what is going to happen to them. This sounds simple enough; but is it really so?

Even if we take for granted that there are definitely known and relatively certain types of events occurring on the Earth and affecting the lives of individual persons when definite celestial events take place, this does not take in consideration the most basic problem, that is, the problem of what this knowledge will do to the human beings to which it is revealed. Moreover, if we look at this matter of prediction with intellectual honesty, we have to realize that when the astrologer predicts future events he is rarely able to pinpoint ahead of time (1) exactly what the events will be, (2) under precisely what circumstances they will take place, and (3) how they will affect the consciousness and the psycho-physiological health of the person.

Every so often we find in astrological magazines an author having made some prediction concerning world affairs congratulating himself for having "hit the mark" in so many instances. But we should look at what had been predicted; usually something rather vague which could have been interpreted in various ways. Let us say that an astrologer announces a ship disaster in the Atlantic Ocean during a particular week, or an insurrection in South America, or a scandal in Washington, D.C., or the fall of a European government. What good could such predictions have done, even if indeed what happened fitted into the broad categories of shipwrecks, revolutions, scandals or governmental upsets? Should all ships crossing the Atlantic remain tied up to their docks during the week in question?

When the prediction deals with an individual person, the situation is even more complex, for there is hardly any possibility of being certain of the level at which, and the actual circumstances in which "something" will happen that would fit the character of, say, a Saturn and Mars transit over the natal Sun, a solar eclipse on the Ascendant, a conjunction of the progressed Moon with the natal Uranus, or whatever it be. And, as I stated already in the preceding essay, prediction to human beings can be self-fulfilling; the prediction becomes a perhaps important factor in a developing situation, if only by generating some vague fear or an unwarranted optimism.

It is easy to take crucial events like the assassinations of the two Kennedys and show that they occurred exactly when a certain type of transit or progression did take place according to a particular system. But again would the foreknowledge of the possibility, or even the statistical probability, of some sort of catastrophe have constructively influenced the individuals who were to be killed? They might only have been hurt seriously and the shock might have had constructive results; and no astrologer could have been sure on astrological grounds alone that it would precisely be death. If President Kennedy had not known that Presidents of the U. S. elected close to the time of a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn have died in office, he might not have had a kind of fatalistic attitude toward his death.

But this is not all. Were all people who were born with the same birth-chart as President Kennedy assassinated at the same time? To determine whether this was so or not would obviously be the test of the validity of a strictly event-oriented and "scientific" astrology; and I have urged astrologers for over thirty years to unite their efforts to make such a kind of test. If at that time, thirty years ago in large cities like New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, the names and addresses of babies born with charts so nearly identical that no modern astrologer would have interpreted them differently had been taken - and if the lives of these children had been followed up year after year, we would have now indisputable proofs of the validity of astrology. I mean proofs of the extent to which this particular birth-pattern could have given a significant picture of the character of all these people and a reliable indication of the correlations between celestial happenings (transits, direction, progressions, solar returns, etc.) and the events in the lives of all of them.

It is obvious that the dozen or so babies which may have been born with charts practically identical to that of John Kennedy did not experience precisely the same kind of life-events. They most likely had different personalities molded by different surroundings and different hereditary backgrounds. Even if they married at the same time, had the same number of children, were promoted in the same year and died on the same day, the circumstances and implication of the actual events, and above all the responses of each of these individuals to the events, would have been different. How different? Would the fact that an astrologer could have predicted the dates of these events have added something very important to these lives? This is the important Issue.

The person-oriented, approach to astrology radically. It is no longer humanistic and holistic changes the situation the prediction of events which essentially matters; for the basic purpose of studying a birth-chart and discussing it wit!) the person to whom it refers is to help this person to become more positively, more meaningfully, more creatively, more totally what the potentially is.

The difference between the event-oriented and the person-oriented approaches is somewhat similar to that between laboratory Pavlovian psychology, and a most inclusive form of psychotherapy. The research psychologist is satisfied with recording events resulting from experiments and to analyze them statistically. The psychotherapist is preoccupied essentially with the health - psychic, mental and physical - of individual persons who seek his help.

Of course, the research psychologist experimenting with rats and monkeys, or attaching dozens of electrical apparatuses to the bodies of sleeping people or of men and women making love, may well hope that what he discovers will be "of use to mankind"; but will it necessarily be valuable? Might not this experimental psychological approach lead to a further dehumanization and mechanization of men and women? The possibility of tampering with the individual personality and of creating semi-human, semi-robot beings is certainly not to be ignored. Any true humanist should fight against such a purpose even if camouflaged under the attractive heading of "improving" human nature. The "improvements" which men have brought to the soil, the water and the air of our planet are a good example of what the intellectual and professional drive of knowledge for knowledge's sake can produce.

The basic justification for the technological, behavioristic and strictly event-oriented approach of our modern society is the proud belief that man's greatest achievement is the control and transformation of nature, that indeed he is godlike and in charge of the evolution of all there is around him. He can use his technology to do as he pleases, changing expectable natural events including the events of his own life - to this intellectual and visionary purposes. Such an attitude is most likely to bring mankind to a catastrophe, because it is entirely one-sided. It makes of the intellectual mind a relentless and ruthless dictator. It enthrones the ego, whose authoritarian will and conceptual abstraction create laws which operate effectively because everything that does not fit in is cast aside as unwanted nonsense or as enemy of the realm.

These remarks may seem to be very remote from the field of astrology, but actually they are not; because the two approaches to astrology which I have defined refer to a fundamental dualism of attitudes which is found in every area of human thinking and human activity. They are related intimately to two basic human temperaments and to the general atomistic and holistic approaches to existence as a whole. No doubt there is value in both; and, when exaggerated and left unchecked, either can produce inharmonious and unbalanced results. But for centuries our Western society has so emphasized the atomistic, analytical- intellectual and event-oriented approach that it has become indeed tragically disequilibrated and near collapse - perhaps only after a frightened and dreadful hardening of its stance.

Man can change his environment to suit his proud craving for power, comfort, expansion, and self-glorification; but unless he changes his basic attitude toward himself and revaluates radically his capacities and his motives, this relentless expansionism can only poison or destroy this environment and eventually himself. What matters is not, man as an ambitious-restless individual, or as a group driven by a common lust for power or wealth, but the harmonious interplay of man and his environment; it is not the quantity and scope of measurable achievements, but the quality of the consciousness and of the relationships freely entered upon and harmoniously fulfilled the quality of the purpose.

What is, I repeat, the purpose of astrology? Before any discussion concerning astrological technicalities is begun one should answer this question. For some astrologers it seems obvious, from their writings, that their implied purpose is simply to prove that future events can be predicted, and to show that they have the correct technical means and the skill to make correct forecasts - i.e., forecasts which, though usually quite broadly stated, spot the area in which the events occurred. The astrologer presents himself thus as a "professional"; he has done his job accurately for his client. How this will affect the total personality, the emotional life and the actions of this client is often. not given any serious, careful consideration.

In contrast to such an attitude I think of astrology first as a technique for the development of holistic thinking; then, as a tool to help a person to face in a new way all life-situations - and first of all himself as an individual person. I consider astrology a discipline of thinking, a way of developing a new quality of consciousness. It is a method of " self-actualization"; and, as we shall presently see, a kind of yoga - a yoga with one's destiny; and by destiny I mean the process of self-actualization, i.e., the basic schedule of lifedevelopments according to which a person can and should become what he was potentially as a newborn in a particular environment.

The purpose of astrology is not to tell a person what will most probably (or some astrologers might say, "inevitably") happen to him at this and that specified time; it is rather to assist him in relating everything that happens, inside even more than outside of him, to the total pattern of his life-development - to what he potentially is as a whole person. It is to help him to accept himself wholly so that he can meet consciously and openly all changes and opportunities, realizing as they occur their meaning and function in terms of the total character and purpose of his life.

To develop a capacity for holistic thinking - then, to assist the individual person in his process of self-actualization: these are two basic purposes. Let us see in greater detail what they imply.

Person Centered Astrology