Preliminary Considerations

*

PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS

Dane Rudhyar

The last section of the essay entitled "First Steps in the Study of Birth-charts" dealt with what I call "The Moment of Interpretation." This is a factor to which very little attention, if any, is given by the ordinary astrologer who is simply concerned with telling to his client what he sees in his birth-chart and what is in store for him in the near future. I stressed in that chapter the essential importance of evaluating, as much as is possible under ordinary conditions, the stage of unfoldment at which the client is at the moment of interpretation, that is, at the time of his life when, through the intermediary of the astrologer, he is being confronted with his birth-chart - the archetypal pattern of his individual being and destiny, his "celestial Name." Knowledge prematurely disclosed may be deeply harmful; and as I wrote: "Knowledge should be given to the knower in terms of his capacity to use it constructively . . . timing of the giving of knowledge is all-important." I also stressed the vital significance of the relation of astrologer to client - a relation as crucial as that of psychiatrist to patient, and in terms of spiritual unfoldment, of guru to chela.

Because of this, it should be obvious that nothing may be more psychologically unsound, if not futile, than the "blind" reading of a chart; that is, interpreting the chart of what is then merely an abstract entity, perhaps of unknown sex, with which the astrologer can have no personal relation. Truly, a chart erected for a particular time and location on the Earth's surface pictures for us the archetypal character of whatever is born then and there. But in natal astrology, at least from the humanistic point of view, we are dealing with living, feeling, growing persons, and not merely with abstract forms. In a similar sense a Jungian analyst, face to face with a client who tells him about a revealing dream, is not dealing with the archetype of the" devouring Mother" or the "Ideal Lover," but with a person whose psyche had reached a stage of its development which had tuned in to these broadly defined great Images inherent in human nature as we know it today.

For these and other reasons it should be easy to understand my reluctance to discuss "in the abstract" a particular birth-chart without being confronted with a particular person having particular needs. If I did this, then I would be in fact telling the reader interested in humanistic astrology how he should go about studying and interpreting any birth-chart at any time. Yet, essentially, each living situation bringing together the interpreter and the chart of a real person requires its own particular approach. The tragedy of our modern civilization, lost in the sand dunes of an uncompromising intellectualism, is that it deals most of the time with abstract entities and intellectual models of situations which one has to meet according to preconceived "how to" programs, with a statistical allowance for minimal error. Much can be achieved by following this approach; but this type of achievement is materialistic or at least ego-centered. You achieve what your intellectually eager ego sets itself to accomplish.

When man accepts this way of doing things, he can never go beyond the boundaries of his ego and the official stereotypes of his society. He plays golf on the moon - what a characteristic achievement! Wherever he goes he finds only the image of his own ego-barrenness and of the mechanistic model he has made of his body functions. Because most people today want to know how to do everything, they cannot go out of the circle of their own concept of "doing." This is why we witness today a strong reaction against this setting-up of standardized situations and an eagerness to open one's consciousness wide - often too wide, by compensation! - to the irrational and the aleatory.

There is a middle path. One can tell a student what in principle and in most cases is worth doing - how to start in ordinary cases, and what it is better not to forget. But such directions should be learned in order soon after to be able consciously to forget them, retaining only the faculty to move at once to what is essential in any particular situation.

Education today rests on two very serious mistakes. The error of most professors consisting in imparting to the student a mass of more or less unrelated data and information of various kinds referring to how to act in standard situations. But all this data and these recipes tell only how mankind has reached the place where it is now in his evolution. What matters is not what has been done in past occurrences, but the development of the power to recognize, accept or create new situations and develop new and more adequate human responses to them. On the other hand, many young people and a relatively few progressive educators are intensely concerned with discarding all set patterns a discovering new situations, without realizing that they should first develop the faculty required constructively to meet new situations into which they most often run unprepared, and thus at great risks of selfdeceit or mental confusion.

If in these series of essays, and in all my works I have constantly interjected considerations which to many people seem to be digressions from the main line of study, it is because it is not so much what one studies that matters, but how one studies it. Data have evidently to be remembered, at least basic ones from which, as needs arise, all the others could be derived deductively as well as intuitively; but they are only the foundations on which a meaningful and creative approach to what one deals with can rest. It is the approach that is important. It alone will tell what you will find.

The way one poses a question already has in germ the solution. Rigidly set scientific laboratory experiments give results which are inherent in the way the experiments were planned. Very often it is due to completely unplanned "chance" occurrences that an important discovery is made. Yet, without having previously developed the faculty of being aware of meaning, if the unexpected occurs there will be no discovery. What is involved also is the capacity to give up old and cherished concepts and expectations - a very difficult achievement for most people, trained scientist included.

All this applies to astrology and the attitude one should develop to the interpretation of the birth-charts of individual persons if one seeks to follow the humanistic approach. In this approach what is first of all required is the ability to consider the chart as a whole, and what is more, as an organic whole. Everything in this chart is related to everything else. No factor is independent from the others, whether or not it makes any of the conventionally classified "aspects." It is true that the chart is a formula of relationship between a variety of component parts and functions and that therefore it can be considered an abstraction. Yet, I must repeat that in actual fact, existentially, it reveals a unique being confronting you at this particular moment of interpretation. Somehow the interpreter has to accept this confrontation as a situation which is part of his own life - and as a challenge to the development of his own awareness of human values and human problems.

Using a now fashionable term in psychiatry, the astrologer should develop "empathy" toward what the chart represents; or if he or she cannot do so, it would be best to abstain, for not all confrontations can be productive of a significant harvest. They cannot be productive, if there is no feeling-realization that they constitute real "encounters" - meetings which may in some ways introduce a new factor in human lives.

A most needed element in such meetings is, for the astrologer, a sense of humility. Not cleverness or intellectual brilliance in the interpretation, but the humble realization that he, as an astrologer, is merely a "mediator" between a human being, who may be confused and uncertain, and the universe - or Life as a whole, or God. He should take to heart the statement of a great psychologist, Dr. Jacob Moreno, who often stated that he was not the one to heal a patient; God only did the healing. The astrologer likewise may reveal to his client most constructive and healing facts or aspects of his individuality and destiny; but the revelation is only focused through his mind. It is the universe, the Sky-God, the client's Higher Self - names matter little! - that spoke through him. When the practice of astrology, or the practice of medicine and psychiatry or psychoanalysis, becomes mostly if not exclusively a "business," then a vital factor is missing.

The situation linking astrologer and client at the moment of interpretation presents also an important difficulty, one which is also more or less found in medical or psychological consultations. The consultant has acquired knowledge in terms of some definite set of symbols - and all technical words, categories of symptoms and names of diseases are indeed symbols. These symbols have definite meaning for the consultant; they may awe or confuse the patient or client who may have either no knowledge or, what is worse, a superficial and perverted knowledge of their meaning - and especially of their meaning in his particular, more or less unique case. The problem of true and complete communication can thus be a hard one to solve. In the astrologer's case this problem is most of the time very serious, because the symbols used - Saturn, a square, an eclipse on the client's Sun, etc. - have a mysterious and fateful ring. On the other hand, if the astrologer does not mention to a client who is vaguely familiar with them the names and symbols used as the background for the interpretation, he risks having this client feel that he is only speaking "out of his hat," according to some psychic intuition. The effectiveness of the interpretation may thus be at least partially lost.

A middle course is also possible and advisable in all such cases. Some simple and basic statements concerning the purpose of an astrological interpretation and the meanings of the main planetary factors in a birth-chart should be made. A clear and easily readable chart should be shown to the client who thus will be confronted with his "celestial Name," or as I previously wrote, with a fundamental' 'set of instructions" concerning his place in his planetary environment and the function which he would naturally and spontaneously assume if he were not also perhaps under the disturbing pressure of family, social and religious-cultural forces.

What I have said so far, and other matters mentioned elsewhere, (1) refer to the approach a humanistic astrologer should take toward the interpretation of a client's birth-chart. What comes next depends on the situation in which the process of interpretation takes place. The most fruitful situation is, I believe, one in which the astrologer meets the client first as a human being, rather than as client waiting to be told something, and the client either presents his problems as he sees it, and gives a few basic data concerning his environment, his parents, his social condition and a few turning points in his life - or what seems to him to have been decisive turning points. The client should be clearly told that the purpose of the coming consultation should not be the satisfaction merely of his curiosity, and that the astrologer is not interested in "proving" the validity of astrology. In most cases such a preliminary interview is not possible, considering the usual way in which astrology is practiced; if so, it should be replaced by a letter giving the necessary information and a couple of snapshots of the would-be client. In either instance, a contact should be established at the existential level a "meeting" of consciousness, allowing for a feeling or intuitional response.

Then the astrologer should erect the birth- chart, preferably while alone, rather than in the client's presence. One of the reasons for this is that a fairly large number of items have to be calculated and related to each other, which demands a great deal of concentration and care. If the birthmoment is not exactly known and a process of "rectification" is required, the client's presence may help; yet in most cases this presence induces over-haste and an insufficient study of past astrological aspects, progressed New Moons, transits, etc. and their correlations with the few basic events mentioned by the client. Besides, in this first stage of the study, it seems best for the astrologer to use his mental faculties at the level of archetypal values - that is, in terms of number, rhythm, form and essential meaning. When, after this is done, the client is met face to face, then the level of the interpretative operation becomes existential and personal. To the basic factor of "essential being" is added that of "existential becoming"; and the latter acting upon the former sets in motion focalizing process directly related to the living experience of the client, as this experience has made him what he appears to be at the moment of interpretation.

There would be little sense in explaining here the calculations required for the erection of a birth-chart. Any number of textbooks and now of inexpensive paperbacks are available for this purpose. There is great value in at first writing down on a piece of paper all the elements of the chart; then in making a chart which is eminently readable and which gives a clear picture of what the sky at birth looked in two-dimensional projection. The problem of determination of House cusps is very important and every student, and especially every practicing astrologer, must solve it to his satisfaction. As I stated many times, astrology is a system of symbolism, a "celestial language"; and various types of language are possible and can be effective, provided the kind one selects is consistently and intelligently used, and one does not jump from one system to another. Every system that is truly consistent and based on astronomical facts - and not mere psychic intuitions or supposedly clairvoyant or clairaudient "communications" - is in principle valid at some level of understanding.

Likewise a dream can be interpreted according to Freud, Adler, Jung, etc.; and the various interpretations can be valid in terms of the different approaches implied in the system of these psychologists - approaches conditioned by their temperaments and life-purposes, as their birth-charts easily reveal. For the same reasons, patients can be cured by allopathic, homeopathic, naturopathic, osteopathic, etc., systems of medicine each patient, being attracted, according to his particular need and temperament, to one or the other system - at least if all schools were allowed to freely operate.

However, at least for people born in temperate regions, I strongly recommend the use of a House-system and of a chart-disposition in which the natal horizon and meridian are represented by the horizontal and vertical lines of the chart. The European way of making charts, giving to each degree of the zodiac an equal space on the outer circumference of the chart, does not logically fit in a person-centered type of astrology. In such charts the Houses are given different sizes and usually the meridian line is not perpendicular to the horizon. Yet a chart should show the sky exactly as it is experienced at a particular time and place on the surface of the Earth. Every other type of chart is not person-centered. (2)

In a birth-chart, each House represents (in two-dimensional projecton) thirty degrees of the actual space surrounding the newborn; but, because of the distortion introduced by the terrestrial latitude of the birth-place, thirty degrees of actual space contains either more or less than 30 degrees of the zodiac. As I see it, the 12 Houses symbolically constitute a spatial frame of reference for all individual experiences. Every celestial body, and as well the degrees of the zodiac, are contents within this twelvecompartmented structure.

However, in order to make the matter clear at first sight as one looks at the chart, it is good to mark across the circumference of the chart where every zodiacal sign begins within the Houses. This makes it unnecessary to add the zodiacal sign after each of the planetary symbols. Also, to add to clarity and to the holistic and immediate visual perception of the chart and its contents, it is important to link with colored lines the planets forming aspects. I use blue pencil for "soft" aspects (trine, sextile) and red lines for "hard" aspects (oppositions, squares, semi-squares). Other colors can be used for quintiles and septiles, or these aspects can be marked separately on the side of the chart, together with other relevant matters.

I cannot discuss here the problem of "rectification," for it is a complex and difficult issue. It is almost impossible to be sure of the exact moment of the first breath, when there is no record of it within at most a half an hour, unless perhaps the matter of life-events is unusually sharply defined and the rising sign seems fairly evident - and this, in most instances, applies only to persons at least past thirty-five or forty. The time of the first parent's death is usually a strong and reliable indicator. The transit of slow planets over the four angles of the chart are valid indications up to a point; yet as most often these transits are repeated three times within one or two years it is difficult to see which one of the three crossings gives the correct degree for the angle. If the indications given by the transits of two or three slow planets point to the same birth-moment, then of course the latter may well seem fully reliable.

The progression of the Moon over the angles, and especially the Ascendant, can also be used as broad means of rectification; but what is indicated is a period of days or months, and there may be factors delaying the type of change normally related to such lunar progressions over an angle. The older a person becomes, the greater may be the lag.

In general, one should avoid expecting that an astrological event will inevitably correlate with an existential life event or crisis of growth. A birth-chart does not tell what will happen; it reveals only a set of potentialities. It tells what Nature - or the universe, or God "intended" in producing such a birth. But the pressure of family, school, and society expectations - plus the interplay of interpersonal relationships of all types - introduce a multitude of factors affecting the actual life-events. The basic structure of destiny symbolized by the chart remains what it is - the acorn will not turn into an apple tree - but the actual life-contents of the structure are essentially unforeseeable. The growing oak may be stunted or partially destroyed by a variety of occurrences from which the tree cannot protect itself; neither can a human child.

Prevision is possible within limits because the structural factor in a human life is still very strong in spite of the person's possibility of giving to what happens an individual meaning, and therefore of making "free choices." The individual's free choice resides essentially in his ability to select the meaning he gives to the many crises of growth marking the beginning and mid-points of the smaller sub cycles dividing his over-all life-span.

The study of a birth-chart can proceed in a variety of ways. Each astrologer may discover a procedure - i.e., a particular sequence of investigations - which he feels produces better results. Yet I must repeat that from the holistic and humanistic standpoint it is essential to consider first of all the overall structure of the chart and this means the overall disposition of the planets in relation to the two basic axes, horizon and meridian. I have discussed this gestalt approach in the fourth essay of this series. The chart is thus seen to belong to a particular type; it is given a particular "form" - a significant form.

The next step is evidently the study of the contents of this form. The form represents the structure of an organism; and within this organism a number of basic functions operate. They are represented by the planets - including the Sun and the Moon. The two "Lights" symbolize the most essential functions in any living organism. Thus they should be considered first - separately, then in relation to the four angles of the chart - thus their "House positions." (3)

First, then, the chart is seen structurally to belong to several kinds of categories or basic types; the overall gestalt type (Cluster, Hemispheric, Tripod, etc.), the solar-zodiacal type (Aries, Taurus, etc.) and the soli-lunar types (New Moon, First Quarter, Full Moon, etc.) defined in my book The Lunation Cycle. Other general classifications are provided by the wellknown categories of Fire, Earth, Air, Water signs, and of Cardinal, Fixed and Mutable signs. Some signs may contain several planets, others none. The absence or the concentration of planets in one of the "quadruplicities" (the four Elements) or of the "triplicities" is a significant factor; and here we deal with what Marc Jones called "focal determinator."

It is very important to try to find in a birthchart a factor (or perhaps several factors) which somehow stand out, thus polarizing one's attention. Here we are dealing actually with an "esthetical" process. Confronted with a great painting, an onlooker finds his eyes drawn to some color, or form, or implied movement relating several forms, around which perhaps the whole picture may seem to revolve. Every person one meets and comes to know tends to be characterized by certain traits or combinations of traits. The caricaturist seeks to discover some dominant feature in the face or the bearing of an individual, then exaggerates it. The astrologer has to avoid this process of exaggeration, yet he has to recognize emphasis, accentuation, repetitive pattern, etc. When such attention-focalizing factors exist; and they nearly always exist in one way or another, even if the accentuation is only slight. If there is no emphasis at all, this too is obviously an emphasis, a negative one.

The focalization of attention has a two-fold significance. It concentrates the mind of the astrologer upon some relatively outstanding feature of the chart, but it does more if the mind is open and able to "resonate" to the universe. It polarizes a response from the sky; for the chart is an image-symbol of the universe. It is one single moment of the universe within which the client is born - born to fulfill a function, as every cell of a living organism does fulfill a function. The universe in its organic wholeness speaks with its myriad of stars, suns and planets. In some way. the astrologer has to become attuned to that: cosmic Voice. To do this he may find it easier to seek that factor or feature in the chart which, because it stands out, is like the keynote of the cosmic chord which indeed this chart is. It can truly become a key that unlocks the door to the revelation of either the basic meaning of the whole life, or the need which led to the person seeking advice or greater understanding at the particular time of the consultation.

When only one relatively brief consultation is possible, the most important, or at least urgent, aspect of the astrologer-client encounter is most often the solution of a particular problem of the moment. For this reason, the use. of a "horary" type of technique can be very significant in connection with the basic theme of the chart (i.e., the planetary gestalt). A specific horary chart can be made or, as already stated, the natal planets in the client's birth-chart can be introduced in a horary frame of reference - i.e. in a Housecircle calculated for the time of the beginning of the consultation.

This recourse to a horary procedure is not necessary, and it requires a special skill of interpretation. Whenever it is used, its purpose is to focus the attention of the interpreter upon some factor or factors in the birth-chart which can polarize an intuitive inner response, a deep resonance to the need of the seeker for understanding.

The solution of any of our problems is always around us, because this is a holistic universe, An individual person, just because he has become "individualized," has become relatively separated from the universal whole; or rather he thinks of himself as being isolated and insulated. And because he is seemingly isolated, he longs for contacts with other individuals. This is the cause of his problems. But the solution is surrounding him; and this solution is essentially to reunite himself in thought with the whole around him - that is, to stop insisting he is separate - which means, to surrender the ego in him that isolates him.

This is the reason why horary astrology, in particular, can work. It can work because at all times the universe surrounds an individual person with the solution of his problems, as the glove surrounds the cold hand. The shape of the problem is as well the shape of the solution. Problem and solution are two aspects of the same fact: an individual has separated himself from the universe around him, but the universe still remains around him, as the sea remains around the fish which is only a bubble of seawater separated from the ocean by a skin. But the fish does not know the ocean, and individualized man in most cases does not know that he is a bubble of "spirit" gesticulating in an ocean of spirit.

Essentially, interpreting a birth-chart to a client should mean establishing a conscious connection between the ego-centered and ego-bound individual and the universe. He is a tiny portion of that universe surrounded by a "skin" of mental consciousness. Within that skin all kinds of troubles develop. Astrology, like Jungian psychotherapy, or Assagioli's "psychosynthesis," or true yoga - should be a process of whole-making that is, a way of becoming and remaining in a state of resonance with the universe by fulfilling the function (dharma) for which one was born within the universe.

The "mystery" is that you are born "out" of the universe, yet remain "within" the universe; only, you forget this "within" state, because you are intensely ego-proud to be what you are: "I myself." The function of astrology could be - but most rarely is, indeed - to dis-egoize the consciousness, by allowing the universe to enter into it and to reflect itself upon the inside walls of the mind; these mind-walls acting as a moviescreen on which the great movements and patterns of the universe cannot only be watched, but allowed to tune-up and harmonize the consciousness. If the individual "lets go" (the great secret taught by Zen and all truly valid techniques of meditation), what Jung called "the cramp in the conscious" can be relaxed, and peace may be a constant presence within the assuaged heart.

"Philosophy, metaphysics! " the reader may say. But this is just what true astrology is. It was so to the ancient Chinese, to Pythagoras, to all the men who sought to help human beings to live in harmony with the universe, as functional parts of the universal whole. And in case one should believe that this is an "easy" life, a passive life of subservience to an external "Fate," I must add that a total acceptance of one's function and "dharma" whatever the consequences might he, and (as the Bhagavad Gita enjoins us to do) the wholehearted surrendering of "the fruits of action" on the altar where dwells the divine Presence of the wholeness of the universal Whole - these are certainly not easy and passive modes of activity.

The study of astrology has for essential purpose a discipline of the mind. But I am not one of those who speak glamorously of "the religion of the stars." It might be called a yoga with the universe; and I have spoken of it in preceding essays as a "karma yoga." But a yoga is not a religion; it simply provides us with a technique for reaching - through understanding or through total surrender in action and love - a state of unity with the universal Whole. Likewise the study and application to one's life and consciousness of the many variables in astrology can become a technique of understanding of all essential lifeprocesses, and through such an understanding, of identification with the great symbol of the universe, the Sky.

Because all life-processes are founded upon polarization, what is to be sought in a chart is the way in which polar opposites interact in any situation. To rise "above" the opposites by fulfilling them is the eternal task of human consciousness. Any astrological chart one interprets involves such a task; for nothing in the chart stands alone. The Ascendant implies the Descendant; the north node, a south node; Jupiter is nothing without Saturn; Venus without Mars, or Mars without Venus.

Any chart can be an endless subject for meditation. Each one is the whole universe perceived and understood from one particular center of consciousness. One can write endlessly about it; but it is rather to be experienced, to be lived. Unfortunately this is not what astrology means today to 99 percent of its devotees. And interpretative situations are almost never right or ripe for the release of true understanding, for such true understanding implies the overcoming of egofears and ego-passions. Alas, our present-day society is a society of egos, by egos and for the ego's greatest glory. This is the great human tragedy.

1) cf. the first chapters in the book The Practice of Astrology (Penguin paperback books).

2) A detailed study of the Houses will soon be published in book form.

3) The House in which the Sun is located tells at once the time of the day the person is born. As the astrologer often has to use ephemerides some of which give noon positions, others midnight positions, it is rather easy to make an error in making the initial calculations from the given birth-data. The simplest check on the accuracy of the calculation is the position of the Sun in a House. If the birth date says 1 a.m. and the Sun is placed above the horizon, it is clear at once that the calculations were wrong. Such checks are valuable, especially if calculations for several charts have to be made quickly in the presence of the client. The procedure of erecting a chart is simple enough, yet it allows for the possibility of a great many errors. This is why perhaps computers are welcome, and the day will come when every astrologer can call up by phone a computer service and have all the data available in a very few minutes. But, of course, computers can be incorrectly programmed!

Person Centered Astrology