Epilogue

*

EPILOGUE

Dane Rudhyar

Seven and a half years have passed since the first chapter of this book, Astrology for New Minds, was published as the first of a series of six booklets dealing with what I then for the first time called 'humanistic astrology.' This humanistic approach, however, was already evident in my first volume on astrology, The Astrology of Personality (1936) and I had used the terms 'harmonic astrology' and 'harmonic psychology' since 1932.

As a result of the widespread youth movement which developed during the fateful and revolutionary Sixties - the Hippies, the protests against the Vietnam quagmire, the many-sided struggle against 'the Establishment' and our materialistic and computerized society - groups of various types mushroomed all through the U.S. striving to help spiritually and culturally uprooted individuals reorient their approach to life, their consciousness, and their interpersonal relationships. At one time the term 'counterculture' was emotionally bandied about as a rallying standard, together with long hair, convention-defying clothing and community-living in often substandard conditions. The exciting days of that period are now largely memories, and the drug-taking revolutionary youths are in their late twenties or thirties; the colleges are peaceful, and now the main focus of attention is the 'personal growth movement'! Hundreds of groups provide the young and not-so-young with seminars, conferences, conventions, directed trips to special places of inspiration in which they are given supposedly new techniques and often magical passwords assuring growth in consciousness, more integrated or successful lives - even business lives thus, more self-assured, emotionally freer, more mentally aware and objective, better adjusted and happier personalities.

Many years ago Carl Jung built his psychological practice on the concept of the integration of personality through a process he called "individuation." Also during the first half of our century the American New Thought Movement featured a cult of personality, success and happiness with a more or less religious background, particularly emphasized in Unity. Today these movements are given a more sophisticated and focused form through long and often exhausting sessions of concentrated personal and group training; and we see in this the widespread influence of a great variety of Near- Eastern, Hindu and Tibetan teachers-gurus who, especially since the arrival on the Euro-American stage of the notorious Gurdjieff, have made people work hard to gain the promised ability to solve all their mental, emotional and physical problems.

The not too obvious fact - not obvious at least to the individuals caught up in the excitement of working with the new techniques - is that the end-result of this selfconscious attempt at developing well-adjusted and successful personalities, seemingly free from the cruder forms of subservience to our Western Puritan morality and our Scholastic rationalism and materialism, actually is a subtler, but very pervasive and dominant, ego. This is true even where much stress is in theory placed upon ego-surrender. And the reason for this is quite evident. If the ego is to be surrendered, what does the surrendering, and to whom is the surrender made?

We reach here a very subtle metaphysical as well as psychological issue, which cannot be understood and met in purely psychological terms; yet it is the central issue. It has to be met either in religious terms - the ego and personality being surrendered to Christ, or to God under whatever name He is called - or in so-called esoteric or occult terms. These imply the belief in the existence of super-physical realms of existence and consciousness, and of more-than- human (or 'divine') beings of great power, love and knowledge to whom a merely human person can be intimately related. The relation may be thought of and perhaps experienced in various ways. For the Christian and Hebrew mystic it may take the form of a 'dialogue' between the "I" and the supreme and absolute "Thou," God; for the Theosophist the relationship may be experienced in physical or transphysical meeting with the "Master" once the individual has resolutely entered upon the occult Path leading to Great Initiations, foreshadowed by the many types of lesser initiations dispensed by a variety of gurus.

This is not the place for discussing such transcendent matters in any detail, but they had to be succinctly mentioned because the practice of the kind of 'person-centered' astrology to which this book refers will inevitably bring them to the fore, if this practice is pursued truly in the spirit I have intended it to be pursued. Since I gave some publicity to the term, humanistic astrology, numerous astrologers have called themselves 'humanistic astrologer.' Classes are given and articles are written about 'humanistic astrology'; and the way the words are used associate their user with the above mentioned 'personal growth movement.' Planets in a chart are thought to refer to 'energies' operating within the personality and the basic problem a person faces is how to integrate or harmonize these energies so that he or she may live a fuller, better adapted and thus, more successful life.

Some astrologers are content to use astrology as a purely descriptive procedure. They tell their clients the way the energies most likely operate in them, what are the good and bad points in their characters, what they can expect in terms if not of actual events, then at least of important turning points and crises in their lives. Other astrologers take a more purposive approach, suggesting ways of improving the client's life and character, of harmonizing discordant influences, and of selecting compatible partners and a satisfying profession. This approach can lead to a kind of astro-psychotherapy and can be of great value to the usual psychotherapist, whether he be a psychiatrist or a family counselor. It can take the place of the religiously oriented approach according to which a confused, distraught or guilt-ridden person sought comfort and advice from a priest or minister acting as the mouthpiece for a hallowed and revered tradition. At a time when this tradition has lost most of its effectiveness and credibility for strongly individualized and egocentric persons, person- centered astrology can indeed fulfill an important function in many lives.

We are, however, at a time when an increasing number of individuals are deeply feeling or intellectually realizing that the achievement of personal well-being, happiness and self-fulfillment may not be the most important goal, at least as long as this goal is defined and desired in terms of the old order characterizing our Euro-American society. It has become banal to say that mankind is in a state of deep-seated crisis; and not only fans of astrology, but a vast variety of schools of thought speak of an impending Aquarian New Age. Even the reverse side of the Great Seal of the United States 200 years ago dedicated our nation to a "New Order of the Ages." What all this means is that we may have to think of the fundamental keynote of our present period not as fulfillment, but as transformation. This implies a radical change of attitude and orientation in psychology and in the arts, particularly in our attitude toward ourselves and our 'self-image.'

If this change constitutes today the most basic issue we have to face, the 'personal growth movement' has evidently to be given a new meaning. It may represent a necessary step, but more as a means than as an end. In principle, a wholesome and well-balanced personality should in any case be a valuable asset; but, if it is only a means to an end, focusing one's attention and efforts almost exclusively upon the means is likely to defeat the end. If today the process of transformation of mankind is the essential evolutionary end to be reached, individual persons may contribute to this end by developing a particularly outstanding inherited capacity - genetically or in terms of past lives - at the expense of other faculties the use of which would serve no great purpose in the present human situation; and this may lead to a relatively unbalanced and one-sided personality. Students of occult philosophy have often been told that the apparent failings of a disciple may be used by the Master to produce needed results.

The basic question is whether or not a wholesome, harmonious and happy personality, operating as a physical-mental organism and socially successful according to the standards of our Western culture, is the highest 'spiritual' status a human being can attain. Such an individual may represent the most perfect form our culture can produce, but if the crucial need today is trans-formation of the basic values and standards of this culture, then perfection of a probably obsolete form (the beautiful people!) can be an obstacle rather than a help. A person can be a very warm, generous, talented and beautiful ego; but being so may make the surrender of that ego to the Divine very difficult - and we see this fact already stated in the Gospel parable of the wealthy man who could not give up his many possessions to follow Christ.

This has a direct application to the practice of astrology and the approach an astrologer takes to the interpretation of a client's birth-chart, its progressions, transits and related techniques. Is the astrologer to tell his client how to avoid crises which might be the necessary means for spiritual transformation? Should he (or she) send this client to a new locality where, according to astrological theory, the effect of some potentially nefarious planetary aspect could be made inoperative? Should the astrologer strongly veto the selection of a mate because a comparison of his client's and the potential marriage partner's charts show that the union might be stormy and produce conflicts? Yet conflicts may generate challenges and dynamic responses which both partners may need in order to transform agents in their society, thus serving a collective super-personal evolutionary purpose.

Such questions may be answered in several ways, and the answer is rarely an easy one. It entails the kind of responsibility most astrologers are not prepared to assume; yet they may assume as much responsibility when routinely predicting events, for by so doing they become, consciously or not, parts of a life-process in which the prediction and the fear it causes can be important factors. Here I may refer the reader to the ninth section of this book, Astrology as Karma Yoga. More recently, the way I have theoretically answered the above mentioned questions is to develop what I have called a transpersonal astrology - an astrology of transformation. What it implies has been discussed in a small book, From Humanistic to Transpersonal Astrology (Seed Center, Palo Alto, 1975) and a larger volume which carries my ideas much farther: The Sun is Also a Star (E. P. Dutton and Co., New York, 1975).

The last mentioned volume, whose subtitle is "The Galactic Dimension of Astrology," deals particularly with the Study of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. These trans-Saturnian planets are shown to be the main agents for transformation; they are 'transpersonal' planets whose allegiance, as it were, is to our Galaxy, a vast cosmic organism of billions of stars. Our sun is only one small star within this celestial whole, so huge that it takes the Sun 200 million years to revolve around a still mysterious galactic core.

Our solar system proper - the heliocosm (from helios, sun) - ends at the Saturn orbit; and radiationally this ringed planet has always been the symbol of limitation and boundaries, but also of the concentration and solid organization required for the development of individual consciousness and self-conscious identity. The "solar wind" - direct emanations of solar particles - apparently does not reach farther than Saturn. But just as a human body, which we normally perceive as bounded by the skin, actually reaches farther in surrounding space through an electromagnetic aura, so the aura of the heliocosm reaches beyond Saturn. This aura is the realm where Uranus, Neptune and Pluto move in a remarkable threefold geometric pattern; and it is through these planets that, symbolically speaking, the power of the Galaxy mainly operates. They are galactic agents whose transcendent power beats the cosmic rhythm of cyclic transformation for the denizens of the solar system.

By studying the positions of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto in an individual birth-chart (especially in the houses and on particular zodiacal degrees), their relations (aspects) to the other planets and the chart's four angles, and also their interrelationships in the zodiac, the astrologer can visualize the basic rhythms of the process of transformation which may affect the client's life. I say "may affect," for many people are either too insenitive and unevolved, or they refuse to be transformed. Such a refusal, in a sensitive personality, usually leads nevertheless to crises and often (but not always) to upsetting events. What matters in any case is not the event, but the individual's response to it; and no one can quite foresee what this response will be, for this is the area of individual freedom - possibly the only area.

However important it is to be transformed, there can be no real transformation where there is no form to be transformed. Transpersonal astrology in no way detracts from the value of a person-centered astrology. It adds another dimension to the interpretation of individual birth-charts, and on a larger scale, to that of mundane charts erected for collective persons such as nations. What is written in this book provides a practical as well as philosophical foundation for any more transcendent approach to astrology; and at a time when astrologers are impelled by the pressures of our modern living and the urge to produce or demonstrate their skill in the use of new techniques - which often are only gimmicks or short-cuts - it seems particularly important to state and restate basic principles without which a psychologically and spiritually constructive use of astrology cannot stand.

October 1976

Palo Alto, California

Person Centered Astrology