Why Houses?

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WHY HOUSES?

Dane Rudhyar

Most astrologers would probably agree with the general statement that astrology is the study of the correlations that can be established between the positions of celestial bodies around the Earth and physical events or psychological and social changes of consciousness in man. The motions of celestial bodies are, with very few exceptions, cyclic and predictable. As far as we can see, ours is a universe of order, even though this order is not too apparent from close up, since from our position on Earth in the midst of the happenings, involved in them, and emotionally reacting to them, we are 'unable to perceive the large picture of cosmic existence. When, however, we consider celestial events which occur at an immense distance from us, we can readily experience the majestic rhythms outlined on the background of the sky: the rising and setting of the Sun, the Moon, and the stars, the New and Full Moon, the conjunctions of planets and other periodic phenomena. Thus astrology, by referring man's seemingly unpredictable and aleatory experiences in his earthly environment to the rhythmic and predictable changes in the position and the interrelationship of the celestial bodies, gave to mankind a most valuable sense of order, which in turn produced a feeling of at least transcendental security.

There are many ways in which man can react to and interpret his realization that definite and at least relatively reliable correlations can be established between what occurs in the universe around the Earth and outer or inner changes in human lives. Quite obviously such reactions and interpretations depend fundamentally on the stage of man's evolution in terms of the capacity of his senses to perceive what happens in the sty, and the state of development of his consciousness, his psychic faculties, and his intellectual as well as physical tools for measuring and interpreting what he experiences. All this finds expression in the social, religious, and cultural environment which provides the star-gazer with a certain kind of language, basic beliefs, and a socio-cultural way of life.

To disassociate astrology from the state of the culture and the society in which the astrologer lives and makes his calculations and interpretations is quite senseless. Any conceptual system has to be understood in terms of the conditions of life — social and personal, as well as geographical — of the men who act, feel, and think. The "truth," or rather the validity, of an action or a thought can be ascertained only by referring it to the larger social-cultural picture, and, deeper still, to a particular phase of the evolution of mankind, or at least of a section of mankind.

Because this often is not done, or done with a bias produced by projecting one's present state of consciousness upon the minds and feelings of men of archaic times and other races, much confusion arises. Astrology is a particularly fertile field for confusion and the proliferation of dogmatically stated opinions, whether or not these take the form of supposedly scientific analyses and erudite compilations of texts or of psychic hunches or "communications." Many complex theories and confusing interpretations have developed because astrology has been thought of as a thing in itself, a mysterious "science" using a puzzling terminology unchanged since ancient Chaldean times and supposedly still valid. Yet this terminology quite obviously has failed to fully take into account the radical changes in human consciousness and in man's awareness of the Earth's and of his own place in the universe which has occurred over these many centuries.

As a result the present wave of interest in astrology is encountering all kinds of obstacles and flowing confusingly into various channels. Much of the time this means losing sight of the basic function of astrology, which is to bring a sense of order and harmonious, rhythmic unfolding to human beings — not human beings as they were in old Egypt or China, but as they are today with all their emotional, mental, and social problems.

Locality Centered Astrology in Archaic Times

Until the end of the "archaic" age in the sixth century B.C., when Gautama the Buddha lived and taught in India and Pythagoras in the Hellenistic world, the consciousness of men — with perhaps rare exceptions — was fundamentally locality-centered. Relatively small groups of human beings lived, felt, and thought in terms of what one can best define as "tribal" values. Tribal groups, the basic elements of human society at the time, were as bound to the particular land from which they drew their subsistence as an embryo is bound to the mothers womb. The tribe constituted an organism; every member of it was totally integrated into this multi-cellular organism. Each member of the tribe was dominated psychically by the way of life, the culture, the beliefs, and the symbols of the group, whose taboos he or she could not disobey. There were no real "individuals" at this stage of human evolution; all the values upon which the culture and beliefs of the group were founded were expressions of particular geographical and climateric conditions, and of a particular racial type. The tribal community looked to the past for the symbol, if not the fact, of its unity; that is, to a common ancestor, or to some divine king who had brought it a revealed kind of knowledge and a special psychic cohesion.

The astrology which developed at this stage was also locality-centered far more than truly geocentric, that is. Earth-centered. Every tribal village had a central place which was considered to be either the center of the world, or the entrance to a secret path that led to such a center. What we today call the horizon defined the boundaries of life. Above it, the sky was the habitat of the great creative hierarchies of gods. The dark region below the horizon was the mysterious underworld to which the Sun retired every night to regain the strength needed to bring light again to man's horizontal world. It is of course possible that a few priest-initiates were aware that the Earth was a globe which revolved around the Sun; but if there was such a secret tradition communicated orally through rites of initiation, it apparently had no bearing on astrology.

For primitive, tribal man, astrology was an integral part of religious symbolism as well as a means to foresee periodic natural occurrences affecting the life of the community and especially its agricultural activities or the mating of the cattle. In such a condition of life and with human consciousness focused upon the soil and the total welfare of the organic community, astrology was quite simple. It was essentially based on the rise, culmination, and setting of all celestial bodies — "stars" as well as the two "Lights," Sun and Moon. Two categories of "stars" were readily differentiated. Most of the stars as they rose and set kept their relationships to each other unchanging; that is, as they traveled around the sky, the pattern these dots of light made remained "fixed." Other celestial bodies, on the contrary, moved independently of each other and at times appeared to go backward; they were called "wanderers," which is what the word planet originally meant. Some of these planets appeared to the trained observer as small discs, rather than dots of light, and they were considered to form a category of celestial objects very different from the stars. Their periodic conjunctions were noticed, and their motions were plotted so that they could be measured and conjunctions foreseen.

Plotted against what? The obvious background or frame of reference was the permanent pattern of the distant stars. We must, however, realize that to the archaic mind the stars were not fixed. They were observed to rise and set. The only thing actually fixed was the horizon. Nevertheless the overall geometrical pattern which the stars made on the dark background of clear subtropical and desertic skies remained the same for centuries. It could therefore serve as a frame of reference, if it was subdivided for the convenience of measurement.

In order to understand how the concept of zodiacal constellations arose and the symbolic form it took, one need only realize that all tribal societies, as far as we know, used totems. These totems were associated with clans within the tribe; and these clans, in a sense, represented functional organs within the total organism of the tribe. Most often totems were animals with whom the men of a clan felt that they had some special relationship. They could, however, also be natural objects such as plants.

When men of past eras sought to give a more definite form and permanence to their society they sought to model it upon principles of functional organic order. The cosmos was felt to be an organic whole animated by a bipolar universal Life-force, symbolized in astrology by the two Lights, in Chinese philosophy by the Yang and Yin principles active within all forms of existence. Indeed, Sky and Earth were seen ideally as two polarities, the former creative and divine, the latter receptive and fruitful, but filled with wild disharmonic energies which had to be integrated and domesticated — from domus, meaning "house." The wise man — the "Celestial" in China — stood as it were in the midst of these polarities, partaking of both Sky and Earth. His task was to impress creative Order upon earthly nature and to organize society according to cosmic rhythms and principles. In some cases the reverse process also operated, and totems were projected upon the Sky in order to emphasize the close connections which the clans felt they had with their celestial equivalents. Thus constellations were named after various tribal totems. Later on, the symbol of the Grand Man in the Sky, whose every organ corresponded to a constellation, was established.

This type of thinking prevailed in Greece, where heroes were transferred to the sky after their death and constellations were named after them. Later, in Medieval Europe, in alchemical and occult circles, the Sky was referred to as Natura naturans and Earth-Nature as natura naturata — the creative and receptive polarities of life.

In regions such as Egypt and Mesopotamia the seasonal factor is not as obvious as in more northern European regions; but the inundations of the Nile marked the most crucial moment of the yearly cycle. Astrologers here were first of all star-gazers and it is safe to assume that their zodiac referred to the constellations. Again let me stress that astrology at this point was locality- centered much more than Earth-centered. No Egyptian astrologer would have worried about what could be observed in the sky of the polar regions, or of the southern hemisphere. These worrisome problems began to appear only when it became known that the Earth was a globe revolving around the Sun, together with the other planets — when Western men began to travel and look at skies very different from those of Europe.

When this happened the old astrology became if not completely obsolescent, at least loaded with obsolete concepts and with an archaic terminology which in many instances no longer flakes any real sense. A great number of long observed and tabulated correlations between occurrences in the sky and events in the Earth's biosphere have certainly remained valid. But this validity now belongs to a new order of human reality. The consciousness of men who think in terms of the heliocentric system and travel all over the globe has lost at least a great deal of its binding attachment to a particular geographical locality, and society is no longer operating at a local or a tribal level. Men have been released from the tribe, "individualized" and uprooted, and even if some of them are still in fact locality-bound, in theory and in terms of the new universalistic religions. Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, they feel themselves to be, and are regarded as, "individuals."

If astrologers fail to take in consideration such historical, spiritual, intellectual, and social-cultural facts, remaining blind to the basic realities, the confusion arising from the use of obsolete terms and concepts will be perpetuated and the most basic issues will remain misunderstood.

The above paragraphs form an indispensable background for the student as he comes to familiarize himself with the concept of astrological houses. What are houses for? How did the concept arise, and what has become of it in modem astrology? How many houses should there be, and what are the complex problems one faces in determining the boundaries, or "cusps," of these houses?

To answer these questions in detail is beyond the scope of this book. But a few basic points should be stated as clearly and simply as possible before we come to the study of the four Angles in astrological charts, and of the different levels of meaning which should be attributed to the twelve houses as they are used at present

Zodiacs and Houses

From the point of view of archaic astrology, the concept of houses was very simple and posed few problems. As we saw a few paragraphs back, the astrologer needed a frame of reference or background on which to pinpoint exactly the positions of the Sun, the Moon, and the planets, and their angular distances from each other when seen from the particular area in which the tribal group lived. But the astrologer probably realized sooner or later that there were two possible frames of reference. One of them was the unchanging patterns made by those star groups — constellations — which are found close to the ecliptic; that is, close to the narrow band or belt in the sky along which the Sun, the Moon, and the planets move. Such a frame of reference is obviously spatial: celestial bodies moving over the spatially extended shapes of the zodiacal constellations.

The other frame of reference was most specifically a durational one, for it defined the time it takes for celestial bodies to rise in the East, culminate overhead and set in the West. What is involved in such a type of measurement is, in modern terms, the daily rotation of the celestial sphere above and below the horizon. Such a rotation provided the ancient astrologer with the concept of "hours" and also of "watches," for especially during the night men had to be on watch for possible dangerous intrusions, whether of predatory animals or human enemies. The watchers worked in relays of two or three hours.

In the daytime it was the motion of the Sun around the visible sky which was the basic factor, for its changing elevation resulted in changes of temperature which in turn affected all or most human activities in agricultural societies. Changes in solar elevation could easily be reduced to the crossing by the Sun of various sections of his daily path around the visible sky; thus the time factor could be analyzed also as a space factor — actually the basis of the sundial, which measures time in terms of space. But this kind of space could be interpreted as strictly "terrestrial" space, while the space defined by constellations was "celestial" space; the differentiation was no doubt most significant at a time when the Sky-Earth polarity was the basis of a vast number of concepts with endless possible applications. This difference is still important to many astrologers, as we shall see presently.

When the modern astrologer speaks of these two frames of reference for the measuring of the motion of Sun, Moon, and planets he at once mentions that the first refers to the apparent yearly motion of the Sun around the zodiac — which today we understand to be in fact the revolution of the Earth around its orbit, the ecliptic — and the second to the daily rotation of our globe around its polar axis; but quite obviously this was not the way in which the ancients thought of the matter. And what is important are not the so-called "facts" — as we see them today — but the meaning man gives to his immediate and direct experiences. Astronomy deals with observable facts, while astrology is the study of the meaningful, rational or irrational, responses that man gives to these facts in terms of his concept of the nature and character of the universe.

But to return to the two frames of reference used for the measure of the positions, the angular relationships, and the cycles of Sun, Moon, and planets: the first one is what we today call the zodiac; the second, the circle of houses. But these terms and the way they are defined and used are very ambiguous. You can conceive any number of "zodiacs" depending on what you want to measure; likewise our modern astrological houses and the "watches" of archaic astrology are very different — different in number, in size, and in meaning. We will try to throw some light on these ambiguities and to clarify the position taken by astrology in the western world.

First we should realize that the first zodiacs were most probably lunar zodiacs divided into 27 or 28 sections, usually called "asterisms" or lunar mansions. Obviously one cannot normally see the star groups over which the Sun passes at any time of the year; one has to deduce this Sun's position from the stars that rise or set just after sunset. It is far simpler to ascertain the position of the Moon at night in relation to the stars. Thus a stellar frame of reference for the Moon's monthly cycle is indeed the more logical, especially for nomads who raised cattle which had to be watched at night.*

Then one should consider the fact that the yearly cycle of the Sun through the constellations could also be measured in another manner. We speak today of the yearly motion of the Sun in longitude along the zodiacal path; but it can be measured equally well in terms of changes in declination. What this means is simply that sunsets never occur at exactly the same place in the western horizon. Only at the time of the spring and fall equinoxes does the Sun set exactly West. At the solstice of summer it sets about 23½ degrees to the North-West; at the winter solstice, about the same number of degrees to the South-West. Moreover, there are also changes in the elevation of the Sun in the Sky throughout the year, which determines the ever-varying angle at which the lays strike the Earth's surface, and as a result the seasonal changes in temperature and climate.

*Lunar zodiacs seem to have been divided into 27 or 28 sections, evidently because the Moon takes 27+ days to circle the celestial sphere of the "fixed stars." The day is the basic measure of time because it refers to the alternation of light and darkness, of waking consciousness and sleep — the most fundamental fact in human experience. Lunar zodiacs refer to a type of human consciousness in which all that the Moon symbolizes is basic — a consciousness which found expression in matriarchy and which is dependent on biological-psychic factors and feeling responses. The solar zodiac presumably came into prominence as patriarchal types of organization won over matriarchal systems. In ancient India there were long wars between solar and lunar dynasties. The development of theism at the time of the Bhagavad-Gita in India, then with Akhnaton in Egypt, and finally with Moses was undoubtedly linked with the ascendancy of a "solar" type of consciousness, and later with the growth of individualism.

There were great cultures which erected huge stones at the western horizon in order to measure the position of the Sun in its yearly cycle of changes in declination — which in turn was related to seasonal changes. Whether these cultures also used a zodiac of constellations may not be too easy to determine, though both types of measurements may have been known — the zodiacal type referring mainly to the Moon, the declination or seasonal type to the Sun.

The concept of the zodiac became ambiguous and lent itself to much confusion when astrologers became fully aware of the motion called "precession of the equinoxes," which introduces a constantly increasing discrepancy between seasonal and stellar measurements. With the reappearance of the sidereal zodiac (constellations) in western astrological tradition, which for many centuries had exclusively used the tropical zodiac of signs referring to the fixed pattern of equinoxes and solstices, this confusion has become more pronounced.

I shall not discuss here in detail the values of these two solar zodiacs, which most unfortunately use the same terms — Aries, Taurus, Gemini, etc.—to refer to two different sets of factors. I shall only say that while the sidereal zodiac divides the band of twelve constellations whose boundaries are most uncertain and have been altered several times — the last time, some forty years ago — the tropical zodiac refers to a clearly known and precisely measured factor, the Earth's orbit. It depends also on equally clear factors, such as the equinox and solstices, with definite seasonal implications which are very significant in the lives of human beings living in the temperate regions of the northern hemisphere — it is our western civilization that today is dominating the whole world.*

*For a discussion of the two zodiacs, the precessional ages, and the beginning of the so-called Aquarian Age, see my book Birth Patterns for a New Humanity (1969).

There seems to be little doubt that the archaic civilization of which we have record used zodiacs — lunar and/or solar — which were "sidereal," that is, based on constellations; but these civilizations did not conceive or image the universe as we have since the Greek period and especially since the early European Renaissance. Moreover, these early civilizations were found in somewhat different regions of the globe and under different climatic conditions. And I cannot stress too much the basic importance of these facts when we try to discuss and evaluate astrological data and techniques.

The Eight "Watches"

Let us now consider the second frame of reference which can be and has been used for the measuring of the positions of Sun, Moon, and planets, namely, the circle of the astrological houses.

It is indeed most likely, as the late Cyril Fagan pointed out not long ago, that in archaic astrology what we now call houses were periods of time — "watches" — which were based on the rise, culmination, and setting of the Sun. These were divisions of the solar day into four basic periods, the fourth significant moment of the cycle being postulated as a counterpart to the culmination of the Sun at noon, that is, midnight.

One should understand the philosophical-psychological as well as the cosmological meaning of this fourfold pattern which dominates astrological thinking. The fourfold division of any cycle rests on the realization of the dualism inherent in all existence and in human consciousness. l have already mentioned the polarity of day and night, light and darkness, conscious activity and sleep, Yang and Yin. In the philosophies of India we find constant reference to the states of "manifestation" and "nonmanifestation." In the Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna as the embodiment of the universal Self (Brahman) states that he is the beginning, middle, and end of all cycles. But these existential cycles are only "half cycles," for every period of cosmic manifestation (manvantara) is balanced by a period of nonmanifestation (pralaya)— a cosmic day by a metacosmic night.

The periods of transition between these days and nights — whether in the cosmos or in human experience — are the most significant moments of existence. They are symbolized in human terms by the horizon, because this horizon divides the daily motion of the Sun into two basic periods, separated by sunrise and sunset. In near-tropical regions dawn and dusk are brief. The day bursts out quickly and night falls rapidly — a fact of great importance if one wishes, unwisely, I believe, to transfer certain ideas — for instance, the concept of "cusp" — belonging to a subtropical astrology to the astrology valid for temperate and high-latitude countries.

The awakening to conscious living — dawn, the alpha point of the day cycle — and the conclusion of the day's activity at sunset — the omega point — are and always have been basic in astrology, as well as in religious and cultural symbolism. Noon is the point of culmination of effort, leading — especially in hot climates — to a phase of nourishment and rest. In polar opposition to it, midnight is the time of deepest mystery, a very magical time.

A further division of this fourfold pattern in time was logical, especially when linked with the need to define the length of night watches. A three-hour period is quite fitting for such watches, and the 45-degree angle is easily calculated when the advance of the Sun in the sky is plotted on the horizontal plane of the sundial. This 45-degree measure has had a great deal of meaning in occultism and apparently is very significant when electrical and magnetic force fields are studied today.

The eightfold division is probably also related to the attribution of the number 8 to the Sun. In India the chariot of the Sun god was driven by eight white horses, and the numerical symbol which the Gnostics attributed to the Christ as a Solar Principle — Rudolph Steiner spoke of Christ as a great "Solar Archangel" — was 888, or 8 operating at the three levels of consciousness, biological, mental, and spiritual.*

*Cf. my book The Lunation Cycle for a further study of the eightfold patterns in terms of the lunation and the eight types of soli-lunar petsonalities. A series of articles I wrote long ago for American Astrology, "The Technique of Phase Analysis," also uses in a special way charts divided into eight sectors.

Cyril Fagan recently claimed that the eightfold division of an astrological chart was the earliest on record, and he pointed out that these eight "watches" were given meaning in terms of the progress of the Sun around the sky in a clockwise direction — and also in terms of the types of activities most characteristic of the four watches elapsing between sunrise and sunset. He is most likely correct in such an assumption, but only as it applies to the type of agricultural society of ancient times, even though evidently such a pattern of activity still exists wherever men live close to the soil they cultivate or to the animals they raise. It is a vitalistic pattern, and the Sun is always to be considered in astrology the source of the Life-force. But as man becomes more and more divorced from, indeed alienated from, the soil and the instinctual, seasonal rhythms of life — as man develops an individualistic mind and an ambitious ego — the vitalistic patterns lose much of their meaning. A new set of problems develops, and today it is the solution of these new problems that is the main task for astrology. Why? Because it is at this level of psychomental individualization that modem man's most crucial needs exist. And everything has value in terms of its ability to answer to the need of mankind — whether it be astrology, or medicine, or science and knowledge in general.

Modern man's individualistic psychomental rhythm operates in counterpoint to that of soil-bound and locality-centered human beings. This is clearly demonstrated by the fact that in terms of contemporary consciousness, it is known that the planet Earth rotates on its axis, and not that the Sun moves daily around it. Thus the entire picture is changed, and we see the sequence of the modern astrological houses numbered and interpreted counterclockwise. Man's consciousness, mind, and sense of individual selfhood grow and unfold from potentiality at birth to a gradually more complete state of actualization in opposition to the rhythm of the Life-force. This inevitably produces individual problems, conflicts, and psychological complexes. But it is the human way to maturity, self-reliance, and creative fulfillment as a "person."

Two Basic Approaches to the Sun

From the archaic astrological point of view the determination of "watches" was simple enough, for they were nothing but divisions of the time it took the Sun to move around the dome of the Sky from sunrise to sunset. When astrologers were able to define the position of the Sun at any moment with reference to zodiacal stars and constellations, it was relatively easy to determine the approximate zodiacal positions of the beginnings of the eight watches at three-hour intervals. No special problem was involved, and the closer one lived to the equator the more harmonic the picture was.

When, however, one considers the Earth as a globe rotating on its axis and revolving around the Sun, and one seeks to build an astrological system which is no longer "locality-centered" but "globe-centered," and yet is relevant to individual persons who experience the universe from a particular point on the surface of this globe, all sorts of difficulties are met. Now three-dimensional facts are somehow to be projected upon a two-dimensional sheet of paper. At least three sets of coordinates can be used — local, equatorial, and ecliptical. To make matters much worse, the conservative and tradition-oriented attitude of most astrologers has impelled them to keep using many terms and figures of speech which fitted the archaic world-view but no longer make sense today in terms of our astronomical knowledge. Astronomers themselves have not done much better in some cases by using the same terms to refer to two sets of facts — for instance, longitude and latitude — and retaining old names.

There is not space here to go into technical details involving spherical geometry and the various systems of house division, that is, domification. Still, it is important for the modern student of astrology to realize that what he usually takes for granted in dealing with the houses of a birth chart is susceptible of several basically different interpretations. Cyril Fagan, who reintroduced the concept of the sidereal zodiac, also sought not only to promote the division of a chart into eight houses but to interpret their sequence in a clock-wise direction. This probably was the ancient practice, at least in some regions, but Pagan's error was, I believe, to force archaic vitalistic beliefs upon modem individuals. We might as well accept Chaldean mythology as a basis for a renewal of religion! Every time and every culture has its own characteristic needs, and today we require an astrology which meets the needs of psychologically oriented, confused, and alienated egos — and particularly the needs of a large number of modem youths who, probably for the first time in history, have become fascinated by astrology, and this for very definite even if often largely unconscious, reasons.

The meaning of the astrological houses, as they have been used in the Christian-European culture, is intimately related to the zodiac, arid it is at least one of the reasons why western-style astrology has used a twelve-house system. Therefore I must again refer to the zodiac.

By analyzing recorded horoscopes in Greece, Alexandria, or Rome, one may prevent a good case for the claim that the shift from a sidereal to a tropical zodiac — that is, from constellations to signs representing equal degree sections of the ecliptic — was due to an improper knowledge of astronomical facts, to a general confusion in the minds of men living during a disturbed period of history — which, in a sense, rather closely parallels, at a different level, our own time. But conclusions of this kind are usually superficial, and do not, I believe, give the deeper philosophical reasons for the adoption of this zodiac. Too much is left to chance and to the mistakes of one or more individuals. Something much deeper is at stake, and it remains a fundamental issue today, though in a different way. The issue is metaphysical and cosmological, and it deals with the meaning to be given to the Sun.

A few pages back I stated that the constellations were originally devised in order to provide a convenient background on which to plot out the motions of the Sun, the Moon, and the planets. This may have been the way in which the relationship of the Sun to the constellations was thought of at a certain period of history, but there is abundant evidence that in archaic times this relationship was also given a different, almost dramatically opposite meaning — a meaning which is still very significant in terms of a type of metaphysical thinking which I have developed elsewhere. According to this approach, the Sun is to be considered only as a channel or lens through which the energies of cosmic Space are focused and directed upon the Earth and every living organism on it.

From the one point of view, the Sun is the dominant factor and the constellations merely form a background for measuring its motion and its cyclically altered relationship to the Earth. In the second case, the active factor is space itself — and we would say today galactic space. The Sun is only a focalizing instrument — some occultists have said "a window" through which pour day in and day out the immense energies of a space which is far more than three-dimensional and physical.

These two concepts of the fundamental nature of the Life-force can be called respectively monotheistic and pantheistic. Any student of religion knows how fiercely the Christian church has fought against anything related to pantheism. Witness the condemnation by the Roman Catholic Church a few years ago of Teilhard de Chardin's world view, in spite of his constant efforts to disclaim any pantheistic influence.

In archaic astrology, at least in some countries, the twelve constellations were understood to be the collective bodies of "creative hierarchies" belonging to a cosmic "World of Formation" — which in its totality might today be called the Divine Mind. From this point of view the Sun — and in a secondary way the Moon and the planets — were thought to be agencies that mobilized and released the creative energies of this Divine Mind. Other constellations might also be creative aspects of this Divine Mind but because they did not have in the Sun and the planets direct channels to step down their energies to the level of human vibrations and consciousness they were only rarely effective in a human sense. The twelve zodiacal hierarchies were therefore the only ones truly in charge of life processes on Earth.

Such a cosmic picture was essentially "pantheistic," even if the metaphysical seer was able dimly to envision beyond this "sphere of the fixed stars" a still more transcendent realm, the realm of the Primum Mobile, or in more philosophical terms that of the forever unknowable Absolute, the Ain Soph of the Kabbalah. In contrast to it we have the "monotheistic" world picture in which the One God manifesting Himself vividly and personally to man is represented by the Sun, the solar I AM, the Egyptian Aton.

From this monotheistic point of view what is basic in human existence is the relationship between the creature man and his Creator, between the human and the divine. This relationship, in terms of astrological symbolism, becomes the relationship between the Earth and the Sun; and this relationship is expressed in the orbit of the Earth. Every month of the year — the high point of the month being the Full Moon, or for some people the New Moon — represents the development of one of twelve basic responses of human nature to its twelve essential types of Soul consciousness, twelve avenues through which the one divine Life can find means of expression.

From this point of view therefore the zodiac is logically and inevitably an "orbital" factor. It is the Earth's orbit, to which we keep giving the old and not very revealing name "ecliptic" — a name which has little to do with what it factually as well as symbolically represents. The stars then constitute a background on which the great "dialogue" between the basic types of men and the one God is carried on. They constitute a wondrous cosmic scenery on the universal stage. Nevertheless, some individual stars may become significantly involved in human affairs, but if they do, they refer to supernormal Visitations which more often than not intrude in, and tend to disturb the dialogue between earthly man and his Creator — that is, the Sun.

As the planets, from this orbital and heliocentric point of view, are also creations of the Sun, and as the light or rays they reflect upon the Earth have their source in the Sun, they simply differentiate or modulate the original solar Power, the God power of creation. It is therefore logical to interpret their positions and mutual relationships in terms of the Earth's orbit Indeed the orbits of the planets — some inside, others outside of the Earth's orbit — can be considered force fields which act upon the relationship between the Earth and the Sun. The Moon is especially significant in this way because as it revolves every month around the Earth, it distributes — symbolically at least — the energies released by the Sun at New Moon and reflected at all times by the planets.

Because of the paramount importance of the Earth-Sun relationship, it was almost inevitable that the basic twelvefold classification of the main aspects of the year-long cyclic pattern of changes in this relationship should be applied to the circle of houses. Twelve houses were believed to match and to be closely related to the twelve signs — not constellations — of the zodiac. But we should clearly understand how this was done.

The old locality-centered astrological outlook had become globe-centered — geocentric. The orbital-zodiacal relationship Earth-to-Sun was transferred to the entire Earth-globe, rather than to a particular locality bounded by its horizon. This can be seen clearly from the fact that what we call the "horizon" today in astrology — the "rational" horizon of astronomy — is a great circle which passes through the center of the globe. It is not the local horizon of the place for which a chart is made; it is only parallel to the local horizon.

This local horizon is to be understood as a "mean horizon" which does not take into consideration whether a person is born in a deep valley or on a mountaintop — a difference which is, after all, extremely small compared to the size of our globe, so that when the Earth's surface is seen from several thousands of miles above it, even the highest mountains appear almost insignificant in size. Besides, all astrology today deals with "mean positions" rather than with actual ones, which makes sense once we consider astrology to be a language made up of archetypal symbols and essentially "numerological" in the attribution of specific meanings to the separate factors constituting a cyclic series — that is, the series of zodiacal signs, of houses, and even of the planets in terms of their distance from the Sun.

But, to return to the relationship between the twelve zodiacal signs and the twelve houses. What is implied in the manner in which the traditional or classical type of European astrology interprets this relationship is the idea that the zodiacal signs refer to the energy substance of life processes' while the houses deal with the existential, concrete, and circumstantial ways in which these processes operate during the life-span of an individual, or of a collective social entity. For at least some European astrologers today, the zodiac — of "signs" — is the positive force field from which flow all energies operating in the Earth's biosphere; the circle of houses, then, represents the receptive and sensitive terrestrial realm. This, in more modem terms, is the theistic differentiation of God the creator and man the creature.

The two polarities, divine and human, are in principle symmetrical. Man's "destiny" is written, not in the stars but in the tropical zodiac which refers to man's dynamic celestial nature, natura naturans. The actual "circumstances" according to which this celestial destiny works out in his daily life are indicated in the houses, and by the positions of planets. Sun, and Moon in these houses. The two cyclic series, signs and houses, are thus obviously progressing in the same direction, that is, counterclockwise.

This is and has been the basic attitude of the western astrology which we still find taught — with individual variations — in most text-books. Unfortunately, the terminology used is often confusing, because many of the archaic and "pantheistic" concepts are still in evidence. The spread of "sidereal astrology" is making the confusion worse. Historically speaking, Mr. Fagan and his followers are probably right, as long as they speak of the archaic past — a past which is still affecting the many conflicting schools of astrology in India, land of spiritual traditions. But psychologically speaking they have failed to understand the deep change in human mentality that took place partly during the Greco-Latin period and even more during the European Renaissance. They do not understand, as I see it, the crucial need of human beings today; and their involvement in scientific techniques and their claim that astrology has value as an entity in itself — that is, as a system which must be recognized by the "scientific community" — seems irrelevant in terms of the present needs of our society in crisis — unless, of course, one believes that the future of mankind will be determined by an even more total reliance on technology and on the analytical intellect and its processes.

This does not mean that there is no validity in the siderealist's approach, or that the classical techniques of European astrology are in many ways confusing and obsolete. There is never a clear-cut question of "good" or "bad" in social-cultural, religious, or scientific matters, for the simple reason that all human minds do not operate at any time on only one wavelength. The world still contains a great number of archaic, locality-centered, race-bound people and of nationalistic individuals worshiping more or less dogmatically the "great heritage" of their particular country and/or culture. The demand for fortune-telling in terms of specific events is as great as it ever was, and probably greater; and the search for comfort, egocentric happiness, sensual enjoyment, and social prestige is still the drive of most human beings in our affluent and deeply polarized, neurotic society.

Astrology adjusts itself to the mentality and emotional expectations of the person who comes to it as a practitioner as well as a client — just as psychology does, and even medicine. You get what you give. As you ask, so will the answer be. What you want to know and, in most constructive situations, what you need to know condition, if not entirely determine, the kind of knowledge you will gain.

Person-Centered Astrology

We are living in an age of extreme individualism, and the "humanistic" approach to astrology which I have been formulating for many years seeks to bring to individual persons a more conscious realization of the deeper meaning of their experiences, so that they may be able to fulfill both their essential individuality and their destiny, that is, their place and function in the universe. In this type of astrology the human being is not understood to be exterior to his birth chart; he or she is not supposed to "rule" it by repressing its "bad" features and seeking to profit from the "good" ones. The birth chart is seen as the formula structurally defining a man's "fundamental nature." It is a complex cosmic symbol — a word or logos revealing what the person is potentially. It is the individual person's "celestial name," and also a set of instructions on how a person can best actualize what at his birth was only pure potential — "seed potentiality." The birth chart is a mandala, a means to achieve an all-inclusive integration of the personality.

I have developed these ideas at great length in many books and a large number of articles. Once they are well understood and emotionally as well as intellectually assimilated, it should be obvious that the entire approach to the interpretation of the basic factors in astrology has inevitably to change — otherwise the psychological results for the client, and for the astrologer as his own client, could be unfortunate, if not at times disastrous. Essentially the approach should not be "ethical," that is, based on a dualistic attitude — good-bad, fortunate-unfortunate. No birth chart should be considered "better" than any other, even if obviously some charts indicate "easier" lives than others — but great and creative persons very rarely have an easy existence, inwardly if not outwardly.

Such a type of astrology, aiming at answering the needs of men, women, and adolescents in our individualistic society, must cast a new light upon most of the old concepts of astrology, especially where the nonconforming youth seeking to build a new way of life is concerned. A humanistic astrology must be person- centered because its basic concern is the development of the individual person — development in consciousness and feelings as well as development through external actions. And this person-centeredness has very definite implications and practical-technical consequences, for what such an astrology seeks to define and interpret is the direct relationship of the individual person to the whole universe, which, in practical terms, means his relationship to our galaxy considered as a cosmic "organism."

Archaic astrology was, as I stated, locality-centered. European astrology in its classical form was Earth-centered, the Earth being studied as a globe. What we need now, in a more definite and consistent sense than has been attempted during the past decades of this psychology-oriented century, is a person-centered approach to all the contents of our galactic universe. This approach is perhaps, in one respect, closer to the locality-centered archaic astrology than to the globe-centered astrology of the recent past; but the role of the locality — the character of which affected a tribal group of as yet non-individualized human beings swayed by vitalistic urges — should now be taken by an individual person, at least partially able to develop an independent, totally open, creative, and conscious approach to his total environment, cosmic as well as biospheric and social.

Such a change of emphasis will be particularly evident when we approach the topics of natal houses to which this book is devoted. I shall attempt to define the practical consequences of the new perspective; but I wish to stress from the outset that the change cannot yet be effected fully with the astronomical data at our disposal. Much more has to be known concerning the galaxy and its millions of stars. Still, we can begin to reorient our interpretations in the direction of what should develop fully in the centuries to come. In fact, insofar as natal houses are concerned, this reorientation does not greatly alter the meaning traditionally given to them, or at least most of them, but it introduces new levels of meaning and it particularly shifts the main emphasis, insofar as planetary positions are concerned, from zodiacal signs to houses. The drawback of course is that such a shift requires that the precise moment of a person's first breath be known. But modem hospital techniques and parental interest are now lessening the difficulty of meeting such a requirement.

The Astrological Houses