*
THE INDIVIDUAL LEVEL OF INTERPRETATION
The Mandala Symbol in Astrology
Briefly recapitulating the preceding: The activity of any living organism operating at strictly the biological level — whether an animal, a plant, or a human being — is controlled by a power that resides in the species, not in any one of its particular specimens. This power is able adequately to meet the conditions of life in the environment, to protect, maintain, and, if possible, expand the role the species plays in the biosphere, each life-species having a particular function to perform within the extremely complex pattern of biospheric interdependence.
When a human being operates at the strictly biological level, he or she, like any animal, is controlled by this generic power operating in the form of instincts, and his or her consciousness has a compulsive and organismic character. It is probably also diffuse and subjective, for it is neither objective nor "reflective" or self-conscious. It may be compared to the rather unformulatable feeling of health experienced by a young person who has never experienced illness, directly or vicariously.
At the sociocultural level, a human being participates as a "person" in the limited and structured field of activity of the society in which he or she was born and educated. The mind of this person is given a characteristic form by a particular language and by collective patterns of beliefs and assumptions impressed since birth upon his or her developing psychism. The validity of these patterns is unquestioned. In primitive societies or archaic kingdoms, a person is almost totally identified by the clan, class, or religious group to which he or she belongs. The person has a role to play and a name which represents that role. If the person conforms to the role and to what society expects or demands, he or she is secure within the limits of the birth-status. Thus, a sociocultural and ethical level is added to the biological level; and the demands of the two levels at times clash, causing more or less serious disturbances.
If a normal, well-adjusted person, operating at the sociocultural level and relating to other persons according to definite social and ethical patterns of relationships, experiences conflicts between biological urges or attachments and the social patterns which condition and often rigidly rule his or her life, religion is there to help re-establish some kind of relatively harmonious adjustment. In such a person, the feeling-experience of "being I" exists and may play a very important role; but it is based on all that refers to the place (position or status) the person occupies in a family and in the larger field of society. This feeling-realization of being I myself is almost ineradicably associated with a name. The person asked who he is will say: I am Peter Smith, and usually adds what his family status, occupation, or profession is. These names and labels characterize the ego-sense of identity.
Looking from an astrological point of view at the situation of a person identified with a sociocultural situation, such a person's ego is (as already stated) symbolized by Saturn and the Moon: Saturn refers to the social status or position which guarantees social security as well as biological livelihood, and the Moon to the capacity to adjust one's feelings and reactions to what this status or position requires. At that sociocultural level, a person's birth-chart is like a map showing the special character and intensity of the basic natural factors operating within this person and the particular manner in which they are interrelated (astrological aspects). Yet such a chart has, however, no actually individualized and autonomous center. The ego does not constitute such a center. It oscillates and is swayed by forces over which it has no steady control. It is only the center of gravity of an ever-changing situation.
It is only when the process of individualization has begun, and an individualized consciousness based on a deep, often poignant feeling of separateness and estrangement or even alienation from the level of strictly social activities and relationships has asserted itself (at least partially and sporadically), that one can speak of the existence of a truly individual center. In a birth-chart that center is found where the horizon and meridian intersect. It is there that the individual center — the real "I" disengaged from family, social, and eventually, cultural patterns — is to be found. It is there as a potential and gradually actualizable center. Such an individualized birth-chart can then, but only then be interpreted as a mandala.
A mandala, in the usual two-dimensional sense of the term, is a configuration revealing a more or less symmetrical arrangement of various kinds of forms, scenes, and symbolic images around a center. Usually the mandala has an overall circular form and, in the majority of cases, a basic quadrangular structure is apparent. Tibetan mandalas are particularly well-known, and they are used in meditation to focus the mind and to reveal through symbolic senses, pictures, or diagrams the nature of a process of integration leading to a vivid experience of a central Being or quality of being. In European Gothic cathedrals, rose windows are also considered to be mandalas. In them we may see Christ as a central figure surrounded by his twelve disciples. In classical astrology, the zodiac is also often represented as a mandala, with the Sun at its center. A human body may also be pictured surrounded by the twelve symbols of the zodiacal signs or constellations.
At the individual stage of human existence, the birth-chart represents the mandala of personality. Its center symbolizes the mysterious power and experienced feeling to which the little word "I" refers. At the level of an individualized human consciousness, this "I" should no longer be considered an ego in the sociocultural and Saturn-Moon sense of the term, though it will try to use the types of functional activity symbolized by Saturn and the Moon for its own purpose. How then can we speak of this profound realization emerging in a human being who feels himself or herself "separate" from the family and culture that produced the material body, emotional temperament, and mental structure that altogether constitute his or her personality?
Most people would refer to this realization of being an autonomous and essentially (if not actually) "free" individual as the manifestation of a self that has at last succeeded in becoming aware of its own existence as an independent entity. This word "self" has, unfortunately, been used in many ways and in reference to many levels of consciousness and activity; its use, whether or not one capitalizes the first letter of the word, can be extremely confusing.
In my main philosophical work, The Planetarization of Consciousness, (1) I stated that one has to postulate in every structured and organized system of activity and consciousness — every living whole of existence — the active presence of a Principle of Wholeness. While we may speak of it in an abstract sense as a "Principle", it has also to be considered a power of integration, a binding force. I spoke of it either as ONE or SELF. It is not, however, a one or the One. It has no particular form or attribute in itself. It simply is wherever an existential whole (an entity) operates. It inheres in any entity, be it an atom, a cell, a human being or galaxy. Without it there could only. Be an undifferentiated, diffuse, and infinite expanse of "substance-energy", or — in a purely abstract and transcendent sense — Space.
1) Now in its fourth edition (Aurora Press, Santa Fe: 1977).
The seers-philosophers of old India have given various names to this Principle. When considered as a "Presence" (an unsubstantial "breath") within a human being, they spoke of it as atman. In relation to the whole universe, they usually gave it the name brahman. The great revelation that took form in the ancient Upanishads was that atman and brahman were essentially identical. The same power of integration, the same mysterious, actually unreachable and ineffable Presence, was inherent in all living beings; and as life itself was but one of its particular modes of operation, the Whole universe and all it contains were alive.
As a Principle and power of integration SELF is present everywhere, but its mode of operation differs at each level of existence. Since a human being functions and is conscious at several levels, SELF has to be understood in a human being in several ways — biologically, socioculturally, individually, and eventually, transindividually. It is best, however, not to speak of a biological self or an individual self, but instead of a biological, sociocultural, and individual state of selfhood. Biological selfhood has a generic and, in the usual sense of the term, unconscious character; sociocultural selfhood has a collective character; and individual selfhood is achieved by undergoing a long and arduous process of individualization. The process of human evolution has so far consisted in bringing the sense of self from the unconscious darkness of the biological nature to a condition of ever clearer and inclusive consciousness through the development of ever finer, more complex cultures and of ever more responsive and conscious individuals. A still more inclusive and universal realization of SELF should be achieved when the state beyond individual consciousness is reached — what I have called the Pleroma state of consciousness.
Because the process of individualization of human beings began many centuries ago and was given a definite and objective form through the development of an abstract and intellectual kind of mind, the great religions and philosophies of the last millennia have in various ways stressed the importance of the individual stage of selfhood. Because of the crucial importance of the Hebraic tradition and its basic concepts in our Western civilization, I might mention here the rather ambiguous, yet in a sense revelatory manner in which the ideal of individual selfhood was apparently presented to the consciousness of the founders of that tradition.
In the Bible (Exodus 3:14) what is usually translated as "I Am That I Am" (Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh in the Hebrew) is revealed to Moses as the new Name of God, superseding, as it were, earlier ones which may have referred more specifically to the power of life (biological level). In the following verse God moreover refers to himself for the first time as JHVH (Yod-He-Vau-He), the sacred word often spoken of as the Tetragrammaton. I believe that this Name was revealed to Moses because he was the leader of a most likely quite heterogeneous group of tribes, and his task was to integrate them into one "People" under a definite kind of structural Law which later became the Torah.
The foundation of the Tetragrammaton comes from the same Hebrew root (hayah) as Ehyeh, "to be". Although Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh has almost universally been translated as I Am That I Am, etymologically and more precisely, it gives expression to something more like I will be what I will be — or even "I will be what I am becoming" — for the fact is that the modern Hebrew language has no word for simply "I am." The exact meaning of the Biblical statement is indeed a matter of great controversy among the Rabbis, ancient or modern. The original Hebrew meaning at any rate seems to indicate a fourfold process of integration rather than an established fact. It should be considered a mantram: and it may have been meant to apply to not only the integration of tribal groups that had separated themselves from the biological realm which Egypt came to symbolize in the Hebrew tradition, but at least eventually to the individualization of human consciousness and will in any person ready to pass through a long period of spiritual gestation — the long, difficult, and often tragic process symbolized by the forty years of wandering in the desert.
In the Kabbalah — the esoteric Hebrew tradition — it is said that "Man is still in the making." Man, as an individual, is even today in the making. The process of individualization began in earnest and in a public sense around 600 B.C. — a period marking a definite turning point in the evolution of the consciousness of Man as an archetypal being. It was the time in which lived Gautama the Buddha in India and Pythagoras in the Greek world; and their respective teachings opened the way to the slow and gradual actualization of a new mode of consciousness and mental development necessary for the process of individualization. From this time on, it became possible for all human beings to steadily experience the feeling of "being I" in a truly individualized, stable, and centralized manner; but though this possibility began to impress itself upon social ideals and (with Christianity) religious institutions, only a relatively few human beings have been able fully to actualize the new potentiality. This, I must add, apparently always happens when a new opening in consciousness is made, so great is man's resistance to change at both the biological and the sociocultural levels.
The basic purpose of a mandala, especially in Asia, is to evoke, through powerful symbols, various aspects or stages of the process of consciousness integration and centralization. By meditating on a mandala, which in most cases has a basic fourfold structure, the individual-in-the-making is at least theoretically helped to actualize in a correct and meaningful manner the innate potential of his or her particular nature. On this Earth plane, the number 4 is a basic key to the process of concretization of what at first is only an ideal or potentiality. In Carl Jung's psychology, the mandala-concept is stressed because according to this great Swiss psychologist the field of consciousness has a center, and consciousness operates in four characteristic ways which he called "psychological functions": sensation, feeling, intuition, and thinking.(2)
2) Cf. Carl Jung, Psychological Types. See also my book. The Astrology of Personality, "The Dial of Houses", p. 210ff, where I relate these Jungian categories to the Angels of the birth-chart.
An astrological birth-chart can be regarded as a mandala if it is understood to be a symbolic two-dimensional representation of a centralized field, not only of consciousness, but of purposeful activity. This field — the field of space surrounding the newborn — is primarily divided into four areas by the horizon and the meridian lines forming a perfect cross. The four points at which the cross meets the circumference of the field are called the Angles. On the horizontal line, they are the Ascendant (or eastern point), and the Descendant (or western point), and on the vertical line of the meridian, the Nadir (or Immum Coeli) and the Zenith (or Mid-Heaven). These four angles represent the four characteristic types of activity which participate in the building and development of a conscious and stable center within the whole human being. They are the "roots" of the individualized consciousness.
Through these roots the l-center can draw sustenance and power from the world of biological experiences and the realm of sociocultural cooperative activity and interpersonal relationships. It can also receive what may become actual Illumination from the eastern angle, the Ascendant; for it is at this symbolic point of sunrise that the "I" can most effectively discover its purpose — or rather the purpose of the birth of a living organism that served as the biological foundation for the rise of a particular form of consciousness to the level of a stable and operative individuality.
This biological foundation is symbolized in the birth-chart by the Nadir or I.C. At the sociocultural level, whatever guarantees a relative degree of permanence and psychic security (particularly the home and the land of birth) is represented by this angle. It is where an individual can find the particular quality of his or her rootedness in the culture which formed his or her concrete personality.
The western angle (the Descendant) refers to the power that, in the process of individualization, the consciousness draws from the relationships which both the physical organism (the body) and the socializing person constantly enter into in everyday living. No human being is born or lives in a vacuum. Living is relating — whether the relationship is given the positive meaning of steady and fruitful partnership in personal love and social cooperation or the negative meaning of enmity. Consciousness grows out of relatedness. Through the experience of close relationship (whether positive or negative), the I-center becomes more clearly able to define the quality of its being and the scope of its constructive activities.
The fourth angle is the Zenith (or in terms of zodiacal longitude the Mid-Heaven), and it symbolizes the power the individualized consciousness draws from participation in any larger organized system in which it plays a definite role. At the sociocultural level, this angle refers to professional activity, but more generally to whatever brings the I-center in touch with a broader, more encompassing system of being.
Every organized system of activity and consciousness, while it is a whole having component parts, is also a part within a greater whole. The universe is a hierarchy of wholes, and consciousness inheres in every whole. But there are levels upon levels of wholeness. In every whole there is a point (or rather an area of potential activity) at which the lesser whole can Contact and receive some influence, power, or "blessing" from the next greater whole. This point is symbolized in astrology by the Zenith. For the person who is striving to become individualized and to reach fulfillment as an individual, the next greater whole in whose being he or she can actually participate may only be his or her community, nation, or culture. It should eventually be Humanity-as-a-whole-and by Humanity I mean far more than a chaotic collection of human beings spread around the globe; I mean a vast planetary Being that is also in the process of unfolding its immense potential of activity and consciousness.
While at the Nadir an individualized human being is still able to find a power of sustainment in the energies of the biological functions and in the-cultural tradition, at the Zenith the individualized being should eventually open himself or herself to the descent of a "transindividual" power and to the revelation of the place and function he or she potentially occupies within the vaster whole of Humanity. What could only be "intuitively" sensed as the uniqueness and strictly individual purpose of life at the Ascendant (the symbolic sunrise point) can in principle be clearly seen and concretely applied at the Zenith (the symbolic noon point). At the Zenith, when the individual is ready to take this radical step, he or she may be "reborn" as a full-fledged and, in a real sense, consecrated individual, able, egolessly and consciously to act as an agent of Humanity. Such an individual can then be empowered by Humanity (then perceived as a spiritual organism of unanimous consciousness — a Pleroma of transindividual beings), to actually perform what he or she was born for, his or her dharma. The astrological symbol of this empowerment, and of the Source of the power made available to the individual for the welfare of the whole, is a star in the vast system of organization we call the Milky Way, the galaxy within which the solar system and all it contains constitutes but a small unit.(3)
3) The Zenith and Mid-Heaven (and Nadir and Immum Coeli) technically and astronomically are related to two different frames of reference. Zenith and Nadir refer respectively to two points of the sky, the former directly overhead, and the latter its exact opposite. If a person stands upright on the surface of the globe, the prolongation of his or her spinal column would be, above, one of the trillions of stars in the visible sky, and below, first, the Earth's center, then a point at the antipodes, then an invisible star above the other side of the Earth. The meaning of the Nadir and of the symbolic fourth House it begins is to be deduced, first, from the concept of the soil on which the person stands, then the Earth-center (the center of the planetary whole), then the realization that any existent is polarized by Its opposite-objectivity (the visible sky) by subjectivity (the invisible inner center), light by darkness, etc.
In traditional astrology the terms Zenith and Mid-Heaven are usually used interchangeably. The Mid-Heaven is, however, astronomically a point in the zodiacal circle. It is still the point above, but classical astrology uses the zodiac as the foundation of all essential astrological meaning -- although parallels of declination are also used which do not refer to the zodiac. When I have spoken of the star above the head, it is of course the star at the actual zenith. The Mid-Heaven is the symbolical zenith in any system based on the zodiac.
For a full discussion of stars, see my book The Sun Is Also A Star: The Galactic Dimension of Astrology, especially Chapter 9., "The Challenge of Galacticity in Humanistic Astrology," p. 173ff.
In every human being, the potentiality of eventually becoming related to such a "star" is inherent; but it is only a potential, a very distant one in most instances. In order to actualize this potentiality, a human being has, step by step, to raise the level of his or her consciousness from the biological to the sociocultural, then to the individual level — and not merely his or her consciousness, but also the quality and character of his or her activity. The process leading from the biological to the sociocultural level can be called the process of enculturation; from the cultural to the individual, it is the process of individualization. The path that leads beyond the individual is the transpersonal Path; and I shall devote the next chapter to it. I shall try to suggest how to approach a type of astrological interpretation meeting the most significant needs of individuals seeking to tread that path of radical transformation, or even only to orient themselves toward the distant goal that the concept of the transpersonal path may evoke in them once they have become dissatisfied with both the patterns of our society and the narrow, so often blind and aimless pseudo-individualism of "doing my own thing".
The Birth Chart and the Planets
in a Mandala-type of Interpretation
Whether or not they clearly realize it to be fact, the majority of human beings, especially in the Western world, are struggling through the slow and arduous process of individualization. In interpreting the birth-charts of these individuals-in-the-making, it is therefore advisable and often imperative to assume that at the symbolic center of the birth-chart a centralizing entity — or power of integration — at least partially, perhaps weakly or spasmodically, operates. The birth-chart can therefore be considered a mandala; and all mandalas have to have a center and a circumference. Everything that is contained within this circumference should sooner or later be referred to the center. All the contents of the mandala of personality acquire their meaning by being related to the center. They are potentially, if not actually, powers which the central "I" should be able to use in order to express itself, to establish its position and status in the social environment, and to leave a characteristic mark — the signature of its individual being — upon whatever it is able to affect.
Any integrative process requires some kind of boundaries which set limits to it and define its scope in spatial terms. When a birth-chart is considered a mandala, its center is, I repeat, the point at which the horizon and meridian axes cross. There stands, if not the actual individual, at least the potentiality of individualization — the individual-in-the-making. The circumference which sets limits to the field of existence of an individual — his or her basic living space — is, in present-day astrology, the zodiac. The zodiac also symbolizes for the individual generic "human nature", which also sets limits to individual development, yet not impassable ones. In the Western world, all but a few astrologers use what is called the tropical zodiac, which, to an astronomer, is the ecliptic, the Earth's orbit.
At the biological level of interpretation, the zodiac is the field of electromagnetic energy surrounding the Earth. As the Sun's rays strike our biosphere at constantly changing angles month after month, they release into it and induce varying types of energies. The twelve signs of the zodiac represent twelve fundamental types of energies. The day of the year a person is born determines the type of energy providing the foundation on which the different biological processes operate, each in its own organic manner. This solar energy is then distributed by the Moon, and modified by the functional use the planets make of it.
At the sociocultural level, a person's "sun-sign" (the position of the Sun at birth in one of the twelve zodiacal signs), gives the astrologer some basic information concerning the "character" (or "personality" factor), of that person as he or she participates in family or social activities. By character is meant — or should be meant — the way of least resistance and maximum effectiveness this member of a society has found to operate among other members and in relation to a central collective authority. We have already seen what the other planets represent at this level.
When a birth-chart is interpreted at the individual level, the Sun symbolizes the "will" of the individual. But it should be clear that such an interpretation does not invalidate the biological and the social meanings of the Sun in this individual's life. The power of will which emanates from the individualized Sun is conditioned by the organic vitality and the psychic state and character of the person, as he or she strives to establish a stable, steady, and powerful life-stance. What is called "will" is the power of the I-center to order the mobilization of the biological and social energies operating within the circular space symbolizing the whole person in order to act in an individual way — thus to express its relatively unique character and purpose in life.
In modern astrology, the Sun is spoken of as "planet", and so is the Moon. Yet neither the Sun nor the Moon is in fact a planet in an astronomical sense. In an individualistically oriented astrology, they are considered planets because they represent functions or powers which, at least theoretically, are at the disposal of the central being, I-myself — just as are the functions represented by the actual planets. Every planet and every astrological factor found within the birth-chart — the mandala of personality — must be referred to the I-center, which gives them a conscious and individualized meaning.
In an individualized person, biological vitality becomes will, and the collective psychism of the community, class, or nation takes a particular form symbolized by the Moon. We refer to this particular form when we speak of the "feelings" or psychic state of a would-be individual as he or she struggles through the process of severance and detachment from the collective psychism in an attempt to experience "rebirth" as a liberated, autonomous, self-actualizing individual.
Today the term "psychic" most of the time designates phenomena and states of awareness which are outside of the field of what our particular culture-whole acknowledges as reality, yet which somehow are able to affect those participating in that field. I believe that many, if not most of such psychic phenomena have their roots in the disassociation occurring in a person's field of consciousness when he or she is pressured by special life-circumstances to sever the threads of attachment which link his or her "inner life" to the collective psychism of family and/or culture. The pressure may also be exerted by some transcendent power or group-entity constituting a sort of whirlpool of consciousness within the collective psychism of the culture — somewhat in the sense in which psychological experiences that have been repressed by the ego (for reasons of security, or out of sheer inertia and perhaps fear) tend to aggregate as "complexes". These complexes seek self-expression, or even revenge, by pressing upon and perhaps overwhelming the defenses of the ego.
In other cases, however, these extra-conscious pressuring factors or forces may be intent upon helping people, still in partial bondage to their culture and tradition, to break through. If there have already been drastic attempts to free oneself from Saturnian bondage — attempts which have left serious psychological scars — these higher types of psychic factors may become healing agencies. To the "psychic" experiencing the flow of healing power, they often seem to be "departed souls" living on "the other side" and eager to help struggling human beings on "this side".
Many interpretations of what is involved in para-psychological occurrences and psychic or spiritual healing are possible, and in spite of the astronauts' landings on the Moon, which they physically experienced as a barren globe of sand and rocks, the real nature of our one and only satellite remains a great mystery — a mystery perhaps hidden in the extraordinary fact that from the Earth the discs of the Sun and the full Moon appear to be of practically the same size. This fact (which is what makes total eclipses possible) is indeed extraordinary, for it means that the small Moon had to be just close enough to the Earth so that it appears to be the same size as the far bigger and more distant Sun.
A polarization is evidently indicated, and at the level of the individual the Sun-Moon polarity points to that of the individualized will and a collective psychic power which is still much of a mystery. Some people may call it "soul", others (with Carl Jung) the "anima". It is, I believe, the counterpart of the principle of individuality. We shall see, in Chapter 5, what role it plays when a new process begins which leads from the individual state, the "I", to a transindividual condition of being.
In the birth-charts of men and women trying consciously to meet problems and opportunities related to the process of individualization and at least temporary disengagement from collective values, the planet Mercury plays a most important role. It gives mental formulation to the solar will. It seeks to impersonalize and provide a conceptual foundation — a raison d'etre — for the often unclear (because emotional) urge the would-be individual experiences to live his or her own life.
This urge is seen in its emotional and personal aspect in the position of and the relationship between Mars and Venus. In these planets we can see symbolized what the drive toward individualization produces in the personality and consciousness of the "self-actualizing" human being seeking to assert (Mars) his or her own "difference", and to revalue (Venus) what his or her family and culture had impressed as being moral or immoral, beautiful or ugly, socially acceptable or unacceptable.
At such a level of interpretation, Saturn, at least potentially, becomes the active power of the Father-within, the "law" of one's own being. But the center of that individualized, or individualizing, being is not a planet; it is symbolized, I repeat, by the central crossing of horizon and meridian. This I-center finds in Saturn the power to stabilize, steady, and insure the validity of its deep sense of uniqueness — its "identity". Saturn certifies, if not the new name the individual may have adopted, at least the "self-image" he or she is building.
Jupiter may refer to the manner in which the social status and group experiences of the individual have contributed to the urge to develop a realization of uniqueness. Jupiter is also the pride engendered by the process of individualization — a pride needed, at least at the beginning of the process, to overcome the fear that individualization may prove too painful or a tragic failure. This pride can nevertheless, later on, become a great obstacle to further growth, because it can cut the individual "I" off from the power of its roots and insulate it from the descent of spiritual and transformative forces. At this individual level of consciousness, Jupiter can indeed have a more insidiously negative meaning than Saturn, because it tends to fill the Saturnian structure of individual selfhood with an ever-increasing feeling of achievement and a desire for fame and adulation. At the biological level, Jupiter too often leads to excess in eating and overweight. At the individual level, it may produce an over-estimation of one's importance, an unjustifiable Messianic complex, or even a paranoid attitude. As we have seen, it is at the sociocultural level that Jupiter can most beneficially and constructively operate, because it is essentially the "social" planet.
When a birth-chart is interpreted at the individual level, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto can play two very different roles. They can be interpreted as extensions of the individual person in his or her relation to society and cultural processes, or as relentless disturbers of the personality and the individual's peace of mind.
Uranus, in the first and positive sense, symbolizes the potential "genius" of the individual; and by genius I simply mean the capacity a person has to impress vividly upon the collective mind of his culture or community a vision or ideal which has "come to" him from a source of whose nature he is not clearly (if at all) aware. The "I-conscious" individual has emerged from his or her natal cultural matrix and is most eager to do his "own thing". The individual, even though willing to learn from the past of the culture, is intent upon expressing himself (or herself) in an original and creative manner — upon leaving his mark on society, or at least upon a few individuals to whom he has become close and an "inspiration". To do so in a strictly professional sense is to do it at a sociocultural level in terms of what one has learned. This is the application of, in the broad sense of the terms, craftsmanship or professional skill. It refers to "talent", but not to "genius". Talent is a sociocultural factor; genius, the mark of a truly individualized person — unless it manifests in a strictly mediumistic manner, in which case one can speak of "possession", such as occurred in prophethood or shamanistic performances at the tribal level.
In an individual's birth-chart, Uranus represents the area and the conditions in which the "genius" of the individual may find expression. Nothing in astrological terms, however, can show whether this expression will be significant for anyone beside the individual. The expression may satisfy only the need the individual has to reach beyond the sociocultural level and prove to himself that he is indeed an individual. This need has nevertheless a transformative character, as far as this single person is concerned. If the act or work of genius can transform a whole community or an entire culture, then it is truly linked with a manifestation (however limited and temporary) of the vast movement of human evolution. The individual may believe that what he created has such a meaning, but he does not really experience the source of the creative influx as a transcendent entity or power unless he has already reached beyond the strictly individual level.
This cannot occur as long as the mandala of personality has, as it were, a solid center. The personality is not only strictly defined and limited by its circumference — its outer form; it is also closed to inner influences that would affect its center. The I-center has to "open up" if transcendent and transindividual power and light is to flow into the mind and eventually the entire personality. Nevertheless, a pressure may be experienced which may be called an "inspiration" or an intuition. It might be symbolized in some cases as an osmotic seeping of the substance of a supermental reality into an individual consciousness sufficiently relaxed to allow this to happen. This gradual "seeping" should more specifically be interpreted as a Neptunian, rather than Uranian, process. Uranian events generally have a more explosive or lightning-like character. They are, at least at first, particularly experienced at the circumference of being. There, a ruthless conflict may take place between Saturn, seeking to maintain securely and at whatever cost the outer form and inner stability of the being, and Uranus' revolutionary impacts.
From the materialist's point of view, the revolutionary events which produce a breakdown of either a society or an individual person are thought to be "upheavals", not unlike volcanic eruptions; and undoubtedly such upheavals can readily occur when experiences which the ego had refused to admit to the field of consciousness have accumulated as "repressed psychic contents" in dark regions of the personality — the Freudian subconscious or Jung's personal unconscious. Such repressed psychic material and the energy it potentially contains are not unlike toxins accumulating in the body, occasionally flaring up when biological energy is at a low ebb or under attack by an outside force. Yet the fundamental causes of the most significant and ineluctable Uranian crises should rather be sought in a realm that transcends merely personal repressions.
Generally speaking, whenever the possibility for any system of organization (a living entity) to operate at the next higher level has opened up because a new evolutionary cycle had begun, a state of tension develops in that living system. This tension spreads — at first in an unnoticeable manner — throughout the system, and slowly but gradually increases. A whole society and the leaders of its culture experience restlessness and a deep discontent which need only a catalyst to explode. A mere spark of indignation caused by a scandal, a book, or poem that somehow hits a sensitive spot can be such a catalyst, as well as widespread hunger or poverty having reached an apparently unbearable level. The deepest cause of the explosion is the simple fact that a new cycle has started, releasing in a public form new dreams and hopes able to fire the collective imagination of human beings. Thus the famous saying: "Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come."
The Uranian revolutionary is an individual in whom certain personal factors have produced an unusual sensitivity to the change of rhythm caused by the opening of a new planetary cycle. If such an individual is not conscious of this sensitivity, and even less of what planetary and historical cycles are, then Uranus can only operate (symbolically speaking) within his or her closed-centered field of consciousness. The individual considers what he or she does and thinks as being his or her own, even if the feeling is strong in his or her consciousness that somehow the idea or impulse to act has "come to" him or her. In whatever way it may be believed to have come, the activity is bound to cause some sort of crisis; and the events it spawns may be strongly cathartic.
With Neptune, we are dealing not so much with critical events as with slow, persistent, and perhaps insidious changes. While Uranus may try to batter down the fortified walls of the Saturnian ego, Neptune tends to dissolve them. It has therefore been called the Universal Solvent and its erosionary operation compares to the slow but repeated action of sea waves upon the rocks of the shore. If Uranus refers to the restless discontent with conditions as they are and have been for a long time, Neptune evokes the appearance in the consciousness of the visionary image of what might be or should be. The Neptunian individual tends to be the dreamer of Utopias. His or her function in a culture is important because man cannot actually produce what he has not first imagined, imprecise though the images may have been.
To these Neptunian imaginings Pluto, in its positive aspect, brings concreteness and also a degree of fanaticism. Pluto is the ideologist. For the Plutonian individual, everything has to be decided and acted upon the basis of great impersonal, or rather superpersonal, principles. Pluto brings the universal into the particular, the cosmos into the human person. This can be magnificent or devastating — and at times both. If Pluto has often been given a bad reputation in astrological circles, it is because its symbolic action is utterly unsentimental and unconcerned with personal feelings. The sentimentality and constant concern with personal values and issues so evident in our present American culture can be seen as a reaction against the fact that human beings are now confronted with the insistent need of making decisions requiring the understanding of large scale planetary and cosmic principles; and most people are frightened by having to deal with such vast — and to them incomprehensible — issues. In panic they cling to the ropes that bind persons to an elusive play of attraction and repulsion. The ropes constantly break, love turns into hatred, or, what is worse, selfish indifference.
In the charts of most people, Pluto plays no significant individual role, but only refers to the person's involvement in collective and social or political Plutonian crises. When Pluto performs an important individual function, the individual often tries, consciously or instinctively, to gain personal advantage from these collective crises. Even in a catastrophic inflationary period, some individuals manage to make huge fortunes. The man who gains wealth or power through black market operations or by dealing in dangerous drugs — and also the munitions maker, the "merchant of death" — may have a Plutonian character. Pluto has also been associated with gang leadership because criminal gangs are the products of disintegrating social conditions, which have a Neptunian character. The idealistic and, at the present stage of social and cultural evolution, mostly unrealistic concept of egalitarianism is Neptunian. Necessary as it undoubtedly is when Saturnian rigidity and Jupiterian privileges have become static and meaningless, the Neptunian process of leveling down leads to social chaos and the negation of all functional differentiation — a necessity in any organized system of activity. When this occurs, Pluto has to act. It acts positively when it clearly formulates new principles of cosmic order to serve as a foundation for a new society — or, at the individual level, for anew personality and a new body. Pluto acts negatively when the individual uses chaos to gather around his or her ego and totally dominate a blind collectivity of lost souls eager for order and personal contact at any cost.
Going Beyond the Individual Level
In the preceding discussion of the symbolic characters and meanings of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, I have already gone beyond the strictly individual level of human consciousness and life-responses, because I referred these planets to a process of transformation which affects the deepest roots of individual being — the transpersonal process that leads to a fourth level of activity and consciousness, a level beyond the individual. I did this because the value of a strictly individualistic type of consciousness and even of actual experience is today being challenged by worldwide events and possibilities which can hardly be ignored, even by the most individualistic human beings intent on self-fulfillment regardless of what may be working against it. We can, however, observe Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto as they operate in a more restricted sense. They can indeed operate, as it were, at the service of the individual self seeking to actualize as fully as possible its potential of birth as a particular human being in a particular environment. They do so when their activity balances that of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.
As I have pointed out in several places,(4) Uranus can be seen to be the power that constantly opposes the conservative and security-obsessed activity of Saturn by producing minor shocks and crises compelling the mind to overcome its formalism and traditional assumptions, and by inciting the consciousness and feelings to open themselves to new ideals and broader viewpoints or more inclusive attitudes. Neptune, on the other hand, counter-acts the social ambition and unrestrained expansiveness of Jupiter; it seeks to depersonalize the motives of the individual and to give a more universalistic and humanitarian quality and character to the ideal of individual fulfillment. As to Pluto we can see this often cathartic and relentless planet performing a useful function as the purifier of Martian desires and impulses — a purification taking the form of a repudiation of all that does not strictly belong to the character and temperament of the individual.
4) Mainly in my book. The Sun is Also a Star: The Galactic Dimension Astrology (Santa Fe, Aurora Press.)
In other words, the three trans-Saturnian planets impel, and sometimes even compel, the self-actualizing individual to overcome the inertia of old biological and social habits — even the inertia implied in self-satisfaction with past achievements which marked only minor steps on the road to the fulfillment of all the possibilities inherent in the individual nature. Yet at the level of individual selfhood, these transformative planets do not fully reveal their essential character, simply because the central "I" finds it impossible to imagine that it could be "more-than-I". The individual may eagerly strive to fulfill his or her personality; but what in the individualized consciousness says "I" finds it nearly impossible to accept not being the central power to which has to be referred all that the mandala of personality contains. The "I" can accept Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto only if they act as inspirers, inventors, light-bringers, mind expanders — and all their activities have to be directed toward the superb fulfillment of the experience and feelings of being a unique and creative individual self.
One might say that such a feeling of uniqueness is no different from what I have previously described as the ego-feeling, but there is a basic, even if outwardly subtle, difference. The ego operates at the sociocultural level and is mainly concerned with preserving the form and security of the boundaries of the human being as a person able to keep successfully alive in a physical and social environment. The individualized and self-conscious "I" cares mostly for its central position and the fact that it should be the ultimate authority in all personal decisions. The ego is moved by fear, and often by guilt, a by-product of fear; the I-center is moved by pride. It will accept any transformation that gives more prestige or power to the personality, but only if that prestige and power serve to magnify the feeling of being-I. The transformative process must not endanger the centrality and the supreme importance of the "I am" realization. Transformation must be for the purpose of greater fulfillment as an individual. And the individual cannot conceive that such a fulfillment should be regarded as a preliminary step leading to a radical and utterly renewing metamorphosis of all the implications of being.
Yet the possibility of such a metamorphosis is what characterizes the human stage in planetary evolution. As I have already stated Man, archetypally considered, represents a stage of transition between "life" and "light" — between dark planets and radiant stars. Man is planetary matter on its way to becoming the stellar energy we call light. Man is the "alchemical vessel" in which matter can be transmuted into spirit.
When Man appears on the stage of planetary evolution — whether on our Earth or on any other dark planet — the phase of biological organization of physical materials (atoms, molecules, cells) has already proven successful. Next comes the stage of collective cultural organization, which has been going on with varying success for millennia. Then, on the foundations built by life and culture, the process of individualization begins to operate. This process has so far been a rather disconcerting and questionable mixture of success and failure. More than the other stages, it has a transitional character because it represents the point at which two opposite currents can meet. The meeting occurs, however, in conditions of extreme instability and with the possibility of unpredictable results.
There are two currents. What we interpret today as "evolution" is only one of them. The complete process of existence is a two-way process. Spirit descends toward matter as matter rises toward spirit. The individual is the place of meeting; but it is a difficult meeting. The individualized human self seeks to perpetuate itself, believing itself the summit of evolution, the crown of existence. It craves for fulfillment as a separate, unique individual. It clings to what it calls "my identity". As long as it can, it remains blind to the power and light that comes "down" to meet its precarious and inherently tragic eminence. The center of the mandala of personality remains closed to anything but what can be referred to it by the conscious mind.
Eventually, the stubborn and proud refusal to admit the existence of and, to meet what is beyond the individuality and its closed circle of being, must give way to an increasingly open attitude. But this is a difficult, often cathartic, and critical process — a transpersonal process. For whomever is experiencing it, the meaning of almost everything one had neatly characterized and evaluated inelectably changes; new needs take form, new problems have to be solved.
In order to meet them significantly, the astrologer-psychologist has to reinterpret whatever data he or she uses. A transpersonal approach to both astrology and psychology has to be developed. It can only be successfully practiced if based on a genuine and thorough understanding of what is really at stake once the individual opens up to the descent of spiritual, supermental forces. Such an understanding requires an at least partial or tentative realization of the nature of the spiritual Source from which the subliminal light and the transcendent power flow. This light and power may be directly experienced by the fully open individual consciousness, but the Source itself can only be envisioned or evoked through the intermediary of some kind of symbol, image or mythos.
For an astrology that has long considered a human being as a miniature solar system, the state of being beyond the individual is most significantly symbolized by our galaxy, the Milky Way — an immense cosmic organism of radiant stars. One human individual can be imagined to correspond to each of these stars, and an individual's star is symbolically the star exactly at the Zenith at the place and time of birth. In the Christ-mythos, it is the Star of Bethlehem, the Christ-star that represents the divine Identity of Jesus, the totally open individual — the supreme product and apex of human evolution, thus symbolically speaking, the "Son" of archetypal Man. The transpersonal Way — or in the symbolism of esoteric traditions "the Path" — if successfully trodden, leads to the "divine Marriage", the union of the Son of Man and the Son of God; and the word God is here but a symbol to evoke the ineffable reality of a transhuman and divine state of being.
The Astrology of Transformation
