Foreward

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FOREWORD

Dane Rudhyar

What is astrology for?

It occurs only to a very few people to ask this question. If they are studying, practicing or merely reading about astrology, most persons take for granted that astrology is a way of predicting future events with at least a fair degree of accuracy and of determining what are good or bad times for performing various kinds of acts - starting an enterprise, getting married, investing money, buying clothes, etc. Individuals who are concerned with psychological problems and are eager to know more objectively the weaknesses and strengths of their character come to astrology for somewhat different reasons. They want to understand themselves better. They also want to discover what makes other people behave or feel the way they do, so to be able to use this knowledge in dealings with them.

From these two points of view astrology can be considered, broadly speaking, a "science." A science is a method of gaining a knowledge of what is around us, and of predicting what is going to happen when various factors in our environment act upon each other - for instance, when certain chemicals combine to produce accurately foreseeable reactions. Such a knowledge, if it has proven reliable in a large number of carefully identified and measured instances, can be called "scientific," whatever the method to gain the knowledge has been.

"Reliability" in knowledge can best be attained when one deals with external facts and material substances. It can have only a statistical character when a knowledge of, either infinitely small particles of matter (or units of energy), or of human beings is sought. Still, such a statistical kind of knowledge can be quite reliable, if properly used; witness the atom bomb or much that pertains to the social-political field of mass propaganda. It is said that "knowledge is power"; and this is quite evident. However, the usually unasked question is: Why is power valuable - or what is the value of what this power will be used for?

This book is the outcome of an initiative which I took during the evening of February 26, 1969, when I decided to start the International Committee for Humanistic Astrology. The reason I made this move was that I strongly felt the need to state as clearly and widely as possible that astrology could be given an altogether different meaning. I sensed that today many individuals, especially in the younger generations, while fascinated by astrology, actually were asking for something that the "scientific," analytical approach could not give them. They were seeking a way of life in which their relationship as individuals to the universe would be given a constructive meaning. They wanted not so much to know the "how," as to realize in a new, cosmic way, the "why" of their existence. They wanted to be made whole, and to discover how best to achieve this.

There obviously is a fundamental difference between the type of experimental psychology taught in most universities and the depth-psychology of Carl Jung. College psychology analysis separates and studies intricate processes occurring in the physical body (especially the nervous systems and the brain). It tries to learn how these processes operate and are related to conscious and unconscious reactions. It does this by using ingenious instruments and setting up complex and largely artificial experiments with animals and human subjects. It thus obtains a mass of raw data which the experimental psychologist tries to piece together. On the other hand, the type of psychology connected with the names of Jung and Ira Progoff, and Dr. Assagioli's Psychosynthesis, is essentially a purposive type of psychology - a "healing way." It is meant to reveal powerful archetypes and to evoke a "function of reconciliation," an "image of salvation." It aims at allowing the unconscious powers within the person to release their "message" to the consciousness, through dreams or other closely related psychological materials. The basis of this type of psychology or psycho-synthesis is to acquaint us with a subliminal language, a language of images rich with symbolical meaning.

For more than 40 years I have tried to show that astrology likewise is in its deepest aspect a symbolical language. It does not have to claim that planets exert direct "influences" upon man through mysterious rays; in fact many of the techniques it uses cannot be logically justified on that basis. Assuredly man is "influenced" by the ever-changing "fields of forces" which the Earth, the solar system and the galaxy constitute; but to say this is very different from what astrological textbooks and magazines incessantly repeat. To analyze carefully day after day and year after year how the position of the various celestial bodies are related to the birth-chart and to deduce from this what most probably is to happen may be an intriguing game; but this does not touch the essential purpose of astrology. This purpose is not so much to tell us what we will meet on our road, as it is to suggest how to meet it - and the basic reason for the meeting. Which quality in us, which type of strength is needed to go through any specific phase of our total unfoldment as an individual person. This has little to do with whether the events, or the persons met during this particular phase, are to be catalogued as "good" or "bad." What is important is not the event - any event - but whether or not we are able to meet it with best results in terms of our growth.

The several essays which constitute this volume were published as a series of booklets during the years 1969, 1970 and 1971. Thousands of each booklet were sold and they elicited remarkably warm responses. It seems imperative therefore to reprint the entire series as a single book. My thanks go to Mr. and Mrs. Ed O'Neal whose warm interest made these publications possible, and to my dear wife, Tana, who labored diligently, not only with the typing of the manuscripts, but with the routine work involved in our most informal Committee.

Because of the ever mounting demands on my time and decreasing physical vitality, I am no longer able to carry on contacts with the people who wish to join I.C.H.A. However, a group of friends and students in Berkeley have volunteered to carry on the work. I am sure they will do so with a younger and fresher spirit, and they plan to establish a closer rapport with all the friends of Humanistic Astrology.

In closing may I add that I have only a warm regard for astrologers who are striving to establish astrology on a more secure and dependable foundation through the use of "scientific" techniques, and especially for those who are trying to "re-think" astrology in terms of more philosophical and harmonic concepts. My only aim, in this "humanistic" approach has been to stand against the present de-personalizing trends which augur so badly for our Western civilization, and to place the individual person at the place where it belongs in astrology, i.e., at the center of its concern. I am concerned with persons, not with a system or a profession - persons who live and struggle toward the actualization of their fullest potential of being, NOW.

Dane Rudhyar

November 21, 1971

*Publisher's Note: In 1975, I. C. H. A. was discontinued, having accomplished the main purpose of its formation. At the same time, Rudhyar and Tana were divorced. Rudhyar is now married to Leyla Rael, who is a leading interpreter of his astrological and philosophical work.

Person Centered Astrology