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THE HOUSES AS FIELDS OF EXPERIENCE  

 

 Dane Rudhyar

 

Astrology is the study of the cyclic motions of celestial bodies, but such a study would be no more than a branch of astronomy if it did not also imply a frame of reference in relation to which these cyclic motions can be given meaning. This frame of reference is not the same today as it was when man lived a purely tribal, agricultural life within narrow geographical boundaries. Today in natal astrology, or what I call person-centered astrology, the most important frame of reference is the individual person. Such an astrology is concerned with the special orientation of an individual human being who is conscious of his own individuality — or at least seeking to be conscious of this individuality and of all that it implies in terms of relationship to the total environment. This environment, astrologically speaking, is the entire galaxy and especially the solar system. What astrology claims is that the orientation of an individual to this solar and galactic environment — that is, to the "planets," Sun and Moon included, and to the stars — can define his orientation to his biospheric and social environment.

A man lives both within the Earth's biosphere and within a society — that is, a group of people, a community, and a nation which have definite racial, cultural, and political-economic characteristics. He is primarily a biological organism, but he is also a person whose consciousness, mind, emotions, and behavior have been conditioned, and often rigidly determined, by the collective values that prevail within his family and his society.

Living, in individualized human terms, means experiencing. It is to be aware, to reflect upon what one is aware of, and to relate experience to past experiences — whether these be personal experiences, or experiences which society has reflected upon, recorded, and generalized into a tradition — social, scientific, religious, ethical, cultural, etc. Strictly speaking, one can speak of "experiences" only in terms of changes in the relationship between an individual and his environment — outer events — or changes in the ever-shifting relationship between the different organic and psychic components of the total person — body, mind, feelings, "soul." Where there is no awareness, there is no experience. An experience requires an experiencer.

The experiencer is changed by the experience, even if, having been aware of what occurred, he refuses to accept it within the field of consciousness over which, in most cases, his ego has dominion. This refusal changes the experiencer in a negative manner; and if the process of refusal is repeated, it gives form to a complex, and perhaps eventually neurotic or psychotic disturbance. In any case, if there is awareness of outer or inner changes there is an experience; but this experience is most often conditioned partly by external biological factors, partly by the intellectual and emotional pressures of family, culture, and society. When this occurs, the experience is not "pure'" in terms of the essential individuality of the person. What our present-day "sensitivity training" — as well as many ancient techniques of meditation and interpersonal relation — seeks to produce is a purification of individual experiences. Man should learn to see, feel, hear, touch as if all his sensations were reaching consciousness for the first time, and as if all his responses were spontaneous, fresh, and "innocent" because purely natural.

This quality of naturalness could refer to the biological nature of man's instincts and emotional drives, or, equally, to the individual nature of the person. What is "natural" for a particular person may not be at all natural for another. In between these two levels of nature, social and moral patterns, traditional ways of seeing, touching, meeting, responding, are in most cases operating, confusing all existential situations and deflecting, disorienting or even perverting the experiences. All these distorting pressures may be related philosophically to "karma" But how do we handle this karma? How do we clarify, purge, and reorient, first, a person's perceptions and then his responses?

There are many ways to approach this difficult feat, and many spiritual, occult, and mystical disciplines have been devised to such an end. Astrology, as I think of it, presents us with another method. This method has very little to do with the current popular use of astrology, or a similar use in ancient Alexandria and Rome, but it was not unfamiliar to alchemists, Rosicrucians, and other groups. What is involved in such a use of astrology is the realization that the universe around any individual person presents him, in symbolic terms, with the image of what he needs to orient himself adequately in terms of his own individual truth — in Hindu philosophy, dharma — to every basic kind of experience he could have in a lifetime. I spoke of the birth chart as a "set of instructions" given by "God" — or the universal Principle of Harmony — to whatever is born at the moment and place for which the chart is cast.

According to this conception, every astrological house symbolizes a basic type of human experience. The zodiacal sign at the cusp of the house and whatever planet may be found in this house — and in the future the individual stars which actually fill its space — indicate the manner in which each of these twelve basic types of experience should be met, and indeed would be met if there were no interference, no karmic pressure to disorient, confuse, and alter the experiencing process. The birth chart as a whole represents the "dharma" of the individual, what he is meant to be — provided, of course, that the chart is interpreted in a holistic, nondualistic, and not ethical — that is, good-bad, fortunate-unfortunate — manner. Each house of the chart symbolizes a specialized aspect of this dharma, one of the letters of the original twelve-letter Word, logos, that is the "truth" of the individual, that is, his spiritual — and therefore, in an individualized sense his natural — identity as a person.

Such a dharma refers to some integral set of activities needed by the environment in which the individual is born. A man is born as an answer to this need. The universe — and, more specifically, the planet Earth and mankind-as-a-whole — is, in the broad sense of the word, an organism; and just as a white blood cell is produced and dispatched to an injured part of the human body to fight possible infection — that is, to meet the need of that part of the organism — so a man is born at a certain time and place to meet a particular need of mankind. This is this man's dharma, his "truth of being," his essential identity. And his birth chart is the potent symbol, or mandala, of this identity. It is his celestial Name, the "Signature" of his destiny.

As nature is prolific and cautious, several human beings may be born in a large popular aggregation with exactly the same birth chart. They are formed to meet the same need. As this need of their society may be complex and may operate at several different levels, their lives may be — in terms of outer events and results — very different. They may differ, first, because their genetic and environ- mental-social backgrounds are different and, second, because some may succeed in fulfilling their "instructions" while others may achieve but very partial success, or even fail utterly. This success or failure has nothing essentially to do with the chart. What the chart represents is a set of potentialities. Every release of potentialities, anywhere and at any time, contains the bipolar possibility of success and failure, of fulfillment and frustration succeeded by disintegration. Such is the most fundamental law of existence — simply because existence implies duality and all energies are bipolar.*  

* For the development of such a metaphysical concept, cf. The Planetarization of Consciousness, Chapters 5 and 6.

What this means in terms of a thorough grasp of the meaning of houses is — I repeat — that every house represents a basic type of human experience. A human being as he goes on living meets these twelve types. What he does with them will make his life, relatively at least, a success or a failure — and in most cases, a mixture of both. He is, in the deepest sense, free to move along the positive or the negative path. The positions of the planets — always now including the Sun and the Moon — do not determine his choice. They simply indicate the type of energy he can best use in order successfully to meet the type of experience symbolized by each house.

Neither Mars nor Saturn indicates anything that is "bad" or "unfortunate" in terms of an individual's dharma. If Saturn is located in the house that refers to a man's attitude toward what he owns and to the use of his possessions, it simply means that this individual should manage what he has carefully, conservatively, and with a keen sense of responsibility. Whether the man could be called rich or poor according to the social standards of his society has really, or let us say, spiritually, nothing to do with this Saturn position, because what a person-centered astrology should deal with is not external events or any quantitative fact, but only, or at least essentially, with qualities of being, feeling, thinking, and behavior. The essential fact not only psychologically speaking, but in terms of the most fundamental evaluation of any aspect of human experience, is not what a person does, feels, or thinks, but the quality of his actions, feelings, and thoughts; and this quality is, of course, related to the individual's motivation, but not necessarily his conscious motivation.

Twelve Catagories of Experience

It may be asked, of course, why out of the immense variety of human experiences we select only twelve basic categories. There are no doubt metaphysical and "numerological" reasons for this number twelve, and I have already mentioned some of them. The basic number is four, and it refers to the cross of horizon and meridian in our western-style two-dimensional astrological charts. The division of the circle into four sectors and all the patterns that can be based on the fourfold principle — itself an expression of the dualism inherent in all experience — are typical of all mandalas.

Carl Jung has paid great attention to mandalas, because of their worldwide use in all ancient cultures, and because they symbolize what he calls "the process of individuation," or of whole-making. The basic task of man is consciously to become a whole being at all levels of his existence; and he can become whole only by referring all his experiences to a common center, which is also projected as the 'circumference of his total person. In other words, he must consciously realize the place which each experience occupies within the total person.

In this process of becoming whole, two factors stand out: consciousness and power. All human experiences and values can be evaluated in terms of consciousness and power. Without consciousness, power is subhuman in its manifestations; without power consciousness is an abstraction, an insubstantial essence or breath, with no existential referent. In astrology, consciousness is seen as operating in terms of the horizontal axis of existence; power and the capacity for integral existence is referred to the vertical axis.

In any existential whole consciousness operates inevitably in a dualistic mode: consciousness of self, consciousness of being related to others. Selfhood and relatedness are the two fundamental terms in all existential realities, but there are several levels of selfhood, and relationships also operate at various levels, exteriorizing different qualities of being.

Power also operates in a dualistic mode: the power to stand as a self, to fully manifest the inherent potentialities of one's individual being, to become whole in concreteness of existence; and the power to answer the need of one's environment, group, or society, that is, to fulfill one's dharma, one's place and function within the sphere determined by one's individual capacities.

Selfhood refers to the East point of the birth chart, the dawning point of Light — and Light is a cosmic expression as well as the substratum of consciousness in its existential aspect. Relatedness belongs to the West point of the horizon — the symbolic coming-together of human beings for the purpose of reflecting upon shared experience.

Power in terms of personal integration is represented by the Nadir of the chart, which in modern astrological charts is approximated by the cusp of the fourth house — lmum Coeli. Power in terms of social and communal integration is represented by the Zenith, which in modern astrology is approximated by the Noon-point or Mid-heaven.

According to Carl Jung, man has four basic functions: intuition, sensation, feeling, and thinking. Intuition is related to the astrological Ascendant — the symbolical sunrise — because intuition is consciousness, aware of itself operating. In the opposite direction, sensation establishes a person's relationship to other entities surrounding him; we therefore refer it to the Descendant or cusp of the seventh house. Feeling, is obviously symbolized by the Nadir point, because feeling is the most immediate manifestation of the response of an integrated organism to whatever he experiences as a change of state. At first, it is a change of internal biopsychic condition; later on it refers to variations in the attitude, or mood, one presents to experiences which alter one's basic sense of selfhood, of security, and of power as a person. Thinking, is a process based on words and syntax, which in turn are symbolical expressions of a particular culture and social form of human togetherness. It is thus represented by the Zenith — or in modem charts Mid-heaven — because at this point man becomes conscious of experiencing within a communal setup.

The chart as a whole is divided by the horizon into two halves — or hemispheres in two-dimensional projection. The below-the-horizon half can be said to be characterized by the key words TO BE; the above-the-horizon half, by TO FUNCTION.

To be a conscious self implies discovering oneself as the "subject" of existence and, gradually, to realize one's powers, to express them and eventually to increase, reform, or transform them. In the below-the-horizon realm a person essentially thinks, acts, and feels subjectively; he exists in a world centered around himself, and his approach to experiences is oriented toward self-realization and self-expression — and also of course toward dealing with the results of these subjectively valued activities.

In the above-the-horizon realm relationship is the keynote; thus partnership and the results of cooperation and/or sharing are stressed. The keynote is participation — participation in a process in which at least two and eventually many more people are involved. "Functioning" exists when there is an awareness of being part of a whole — of having a particular place in an organized and structured process, whether it be organic in the biological sense, or social-political-cultural.

In every hemisphere two basic points are to be considered: the horizon-created and the meridian-created "angles." The Ascendant refers to the original creative impulse which exteriorizes an archetypal form, a creative Word. This impulse has to be "incarnated" in a concrete substantial organism. A stable and integral condition of being has to be reached through which the individual being can use "power" — that is, biological and psychic energies — not only consciously but effectively. And this refers to the Nadir and the fourth house.

Thus we might say that what was a release of potentiality at the Ascendant becomes actualized in a subjective and strictly person-centered sense in the fourth house. This process of concretization occurs in three stages. Each of the first three "houses represents a type of experience which, if successfully met, will bring the process to a point of culmination. These three phases repeat themselves in terms of each angle, and thus manifest the astrological sequence of angular, succeedent, and cadent houses. The first, fourth, seventh, and tenth houses are angular, because they represent the creation or exteriorization of the meaning of each of the four angles. The second, fifth, eighth, and eleventh houses are succeedent, and the others, cadent

One can define the basic character of these three categories of houses by using the following key words:  

Angular houses: to be

Succeedent houses: to use

Cadent houses: to understand or transform

Thus the first house refers to the subjective discovery of being, or individual selfhood. The second house refers to the use of what the individual being finds available in order to exteriorize itself, in the broadest sense, one's possessions at birth, including all innate capacities of body and psyche. The third house is the field of experience that brings to us an understanding of the relationship between being and using, between the subjective sense of self and the objective reality of the means for action, that is, the possessions of the self.

When we start from the Nadir, we start with "to be" — a stable, more or less well-integrated personality, operating from some kind of "home" or root foundation of organic existence. This refers to the type of experience represented by the fourth house — angular. The fifth house — succeedent — symbolizes those experiences which allow a person to use the biopsychic energies generated by any stabilized organized whole. The sixth house — cadent — is the field of experience which enables him to understand the results to this self-exteriorizing use of energy, to cope with negative results, to improve his technique of action and transform his motives.

We shall see in a moment how the key words for the three categories of houses work out in the above-the-horizon realm dealing with functioning in terms of human relationships and with participation in the activities of a greater wholes group, a society, a nation. But as we survey the first six houses — below-the-horizon realm — we can see a broader pattern emerging, which will also repeat itself in the sequence of houses above the horizon. Six basic operations can be defined which, below the horizon, refer to the subjective consciousness of self. Above the horizon, these same basic operations refer to  the development of the kind  of consciousness  which results from relationship, cooperation, and finding one's place in society. These six operations can be defined as: being, having, informing, maintaining, expressing, and transforming.

The experience of "being" in the first house leads to and becomes substantiated by that of "having" — having a body, having possessions, having talent, or, negatively, lacking these in any satisfying sense. In the third house, a process of giving form through selection, classification, organization goes on. This means adjusting to one's environment, relating sensation to sensation, developing cunning and intellect, and formulating and communicating one's responses to one's environment.

The fourth house refers to everything that maintains the individual characteristics of the self in a stable form; the fifth house to any experience through which the personal self seeks to exteriorize its power; the sixth, to experiences which impel one to transform, reform, or broaden the consciousness of self — or in most cases, only of "ego" — thus to personal crises at all levels and dealing with possible solutions to personal problems.

The same kind of sequence can be seen operating in the above-the-horizon realm of experience, of which the Descendant — seventh house cusp — is the archetypal point of origin. The seventh house refers to the "being" of relationships, that is, to the quality of our approach to relationships — how we med: the world, and particularly "the Other," whether it be partner or companion — and above all, how we should learn to meet and work with others regardless of how our society, religion, and culture have been trying to condition us by collectively held images, ideals, and taboos. The eighth house refers to the use to which we put the energies born of togetherness — that is, of possessions held in common — which obviously must take into consideration the collective rules of business, investment, transfer of possessions, etc. Such a use, under certain circumstances, can imply a regeneration of self-centered activities, a transformation of "self-image" — especially whenever a conflict occurs between this self-image and the "image of relationship" — what Carl Jung describes as the anima in a man's life, and the animus for a woman.

The ninth house is very specifically the field of experiences which induces in us a deeper understanding and a greater expansion of consciousness. These experiences give form to our appreciation and evaluation of social and cosmic processes. They deal with our attempts to generalize and communicate, no longer personal and environmental issues and concerns, but what affects all men and the universe as a whole. And as the Mid-heaven is reached, we are shown the most fruitful way to "achieve," to bring matters of communal importance to a head, to fulfill our individual selves through participation in the work of the world.

The eleventh house suggests the best way to put to use, and enjoy, what we have achieved, to express ourselves as members of a community rather than as individuals — and also to imagine better modes of togetherness, new forms of business or social organization. Then the twelfth house ends the cyclic process of experience essentially in one of two ways: it can mean a fulfillment in under- standing and wisdom of the inner life, which reaches toward the emptying of life contents, that is, "death" in the symbolic sense, which in turn leads to the beginning of a new and higher phase — or on the other hand, it may lead to a disruption of all relationships and a tragic sense of failure which prolongs itself beyond the cycle's end into ghostly unresolved memories.

And then the cycle begins again.

How to Use the Houses

Every new experience is a challenge to the individual's ability to be himself, to stabilize his personality, to assimilate what will make him grow and mature so he can best participate in his community and more generally still, in the evolution of mankind. He is challenged and tested by the experience. He has to discover his individual truth of being and to develop all his innate capacities through the experience, accepting it fully and being ready to assume the responsibility for its fruits, while at the same time being as much as possible "free from attachment to these fruits" — as Krishna enjoins his disciples to be in the Bhagavad-Gita.

The first great experience is, of course, birth, but every experience can be approached and met as a new birth. Really to live is an act of unceasing rebirth. The problem for every person who seeks really to live as an individual, and not merely as a replica of some social, moral, or religious prototype, is how best to approach these ever-renewed rebirths — how to meet every type of experience in what the existentialist philosopher calls an "authentic" manner or, in Hindu terms, how to fulfill his dharma. As a man fulfills his dharma he neutralizes an ancient karma and he answers the human need that called him into being.

To the humanistic astrologer who accepts the fundamental attitude I have outlined here and in all my writings, astrology is a means to this end of individual fulfillment. The birth chart, and other kinds of astrological charts that refer to the beginnings of cycles of existence, small or large, are to be used in terms of this end. They are "instructions" that formulate in a celestial code the best means to reach the fulfillment of one's dharma through authentic responses to every basic individual experience.

Every person will try to decipher this code according to what-ever knowledge or capacity for intuitive illumination he has acquired. He should do the deciphering by himself and for himself. But since we usually live in confused or oppressive social conditions, and our psyches are filled with conflicts and doubts, we often need or want to consult an interpreter adept at deciphering the celestial symbols. Still, it is our own life, our own past, and our own dharma — and we should strive to do the interpreting for ourselves, for every interpretation is itself, potentially at least, a rebirth in understanding which may open up a new phase in the total cycle of unfolding our consciousness.

An individual's birth chart tells him how he can best fulfill his destiny. Of course, the study of and meditating on one's birth chart is not the only way to achieve this understanding. There are many other possible approaches, but astrology has great universal validity when approached in the right spirit. Everything in a chart refers to the best way of meeting life's experiences in an authentic manner. And the houses constitute the basic frame of reference in terms of which we should interpret the celestial instructions.

As I stated above, there are many systems of house determination, especially where the cusps of the intermediate houses, that is, those between horizon and meridian, are concerned. This obviously generates a great deal of ambiguity and confusion, and there is no way at present to solve the problem in a completely satisfactory manner. Perhaps this is what should be in terms of our highly individualistic society, for it suggests to us that there are today alternatives for everything, that no truth is "absolute." and that we have to learn what we can and then forget it, allowing the intuition — or the God within or the Inner Guide — to show us the most significant alternative for us as individuals, here and now.

Some astrologers seek to escape the ambiguity by ignoring the houses completely and relying solely on the planets. But a similar ambiguity exists, as we have seen, concerning which of two or more zodiacs is the best, and if one relies only on the angular relationship between the planets and devises various systems in order to refine ad infinitum the analysis of such an over-all pattern of planetary relationships, it is possible to evade the most basic issue: Who am I?, which is not the same as: What am I?

The what refers to the pattern of the entire solar system as seen from the birth locality, because this what deals with the particular organization of the basic life functions and psychic drives within the person, that is, the way in which life energies operate in a particular person. On the other hand, the who refers to the cross of the horizontal and vertical lines in our modern charts, since it is this cross that defines the particular orientation of the individual to the universe around him. If we thought of stars instead of degrees of the zodiac, this who would be symbolized by a star rising exactly at the East point, and one culminating at the Zenith exactly at the moment the air hits the lungs of the newborn. The stars at the West point and at the Nadir would reveal the complementary polar aspect of this essential who.

Today astrology is still basically zodiac-centered, and the Sun factor still dominates its popular aspect. We have to deal with what is available, just as a pianist has to deal with the equal-temperament twelvefold western scale system if he is to play, compose or improvise on a piano. A new sense of tone is slowly developing within music, however, and is giving birth to new instruments and a new approach to combinations of sounds. The same thing is happening in astrology. There are astrological "classicists" who worship seventeenth-century models, just as there are musicians who swear by baroque music. Some astrologers, as well as some musicians, however, are looking toward the future rather than the past — toward the individual person rather than the tradition-bound "silent majority." One must always decide where one belongs.  

In other words, if we want to use the astrological material available today — because we really have to! — we have to determine the character of the houses by the zodiacal sign and degree at their cusps. We can also consider the "planetary ruler" of the zodiacal sign at the cusp and, of course, whatever planet may be located in the house.

The sign at the cusp refers to the kinds of experiences that can best enable the individual to actualize his birth potential within the realm structurally defined by the house being considered. If we see that Sagittarius is at the cusp of the first house, that is, the Ascendant, we can deduce that the individual's search for "being" will be most successful in terms of experiences involving Sagittarian characteristics — expansiveness, broad understanding, social consciousness, the study of general principles, teaching, perhaps traveling, perhaps religious pursuits, etc. If Sagittarius were at the cusp of the second house, the Sagittarian characteristics would apply to "having" — that is, to possessions and their use.

In the case of a Sagittarian cusp, Jupiter is the "ruler" of a house. The ruling planet of the house refers to the type of energies most needed to meet successfully the type of experience related to the house.

When a planet is located in a house, this indicates that the function represented by the planet finds its best area of manifestation in the field of experiences referring to this house. Conversely, if this type of experience is to be met successfully, the kind of functional activity represented by the planets will be most effective.

Again let me stress that, according to this new person-centered approach, there are no "bad" or "good" planets. Every planet represents valuable and necessary types of life-energy and functional activity. Mars and Saturn are just as good and fortunate as Venus and Jupiter. And the same applies to interplanetary aspects, which are no longer to be thought of as "fortunate" and "unfortunate," but rather — to use a now current terminology — "soft" and "hard," or, as I would say, form-building and energy-releasing.

This, then, is how a humanistic astrologer approaches the interpretation of the houses. In the next part of this volume, I will discuss the meaning of each of the twelve houses more specifically. In concluding this section, I should perhaps emphasize even more strongly a point stated above.

Astrology is a language. It uses symbols, and these symbols have to be decoded and interpreted. No system of interpretation is absolutely "true" — no more than any theory of science, or any system of social morality is absolutely "true" Everything depends for its validity on the time, the place, and the person, or the integrated and stable group personality. In fulfilling his destiny to the best of his possibilities a person has to use what his environment and his culture, including the language he speaks, offer him at the time. He may change his environment, but essentially he cannot change the time and place of his birth —  that is, his archetypal structure of being. This structure is his own "truth," everything should be referred to it, not self-centeredly, but in terms of conscious and effectual participation in some greater whole.

We can effectively participate in a whole only if we are willing to accept at least some of its means of expression and forms of thinking and knowing. Thus, if we are to operate in the western world today in terms of astrology, there are things we must accept. They are there to be used. We must use them as they seem to us, at any time, to best meet the special requirements of our life philosophy and the needs of people with whom we want to communicate.

Thus, if we believe in the validity of a house system and a particular zodiac, it is these we should use — and use them as consistently as possible. We are familiar with them. We identify our mind processes and feeling responses with them. And, if we do this honestly and logically in terms of whatever situation we meet, or of whatever people demand of us, we will be successful. It will "work."

Science and technology "work" because mankind, under the ruthless and aggressive leadership of western races, has needed the kind of results they provide in terms of expansion, comfort, environmental mastery, ego pride, etc. These results are dear to us, and we have achieved great things with them. We are now coming to realize, however, that such results may have very negative aspects, and may actually destroy us all. Many of us, young people especially, have recognized these negative aspects and are reacting strongly against this civilization into which we have been born. Yet, even as we try to envision a new world, we still have to use the means available to us in working toward its conception and birth.

This is always the case. No man is born alone and without a past. All he can do is to repolarize this past, first within his own nature, then in his environment. No man can transform a culture without being informed of its contents; he cannot affect something within which he does not, in some manner, participate.

 

The Astrological Houses

 

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