*
PROGRESSIONS AND TRANSITS
Personality as an Unfolding Process
In dealing with any process of growth or basic transformation, one has not only to envision, at least along broad and tentative lines, the possible end of the process, one should also be able to discover when its successive phases can be expected, and to learn about the conditions under which the periods of transition from phase to phase are likely to occur.
Two factors are implied in any change taking place in an organism or organized system of social activity: (1) the necessary internal readjustment of the organism and its functions in order to meet successfully what is involved in the change, whether this requires expansion, contraction, or radical reorganization, and (2) the environment's reaction to the change. The "environment" may be the family or society, and its reaction may be actual or expected by the changing organism. Also, in many instances, the internal change will be the result of external causes, of important events taking place in the biosphere, family, and/or society, in which one operates, making internal changes necessary.
If we consider a birth-chart the symbolic seed of an individual personality, we can readily see that the growth of the germinating seed into a large tree depends, on the one hand, on the inner rhythm of the natural process of unfoldment of seed-potentialities into the actualized form of the tree, and on the other hand, upon weather conditions, sunshine and rain, and what insects, large animals, and human beings might do to the growing tree.
Astrology provides techniques for dealing with these two kinds of factors. The timing of inner changes in the process of biopsychic and mental-spiritual unfoldment of a particular person can be deduced from the study of what are broadly called progressions — of which there are several kinds. Another type of timing is derived from the actual motions of the planets — day after day, year after year — after the birth-moment: the transits.
These two types of techniques should be clearly differentiated, but, unfortunately, they are usually not. In one sense, both progressions and transits are the results of the fact that a birth-chart is a snapshot taken of a single moment in the continuous process of cosmic change, and that the planets whose positions are marked in the birth-chart keep moving; on the other hand, in progressions this motion is given a restricted and very special character, which is essentially different from what it has in transits. By mixing up the two techniques and not keeping the types of indications they provide strictly separate, astrologers lose the possibility of getting a clear view of the relationship between an individual's inner growth and the impact of the biopsychic and social environment upon this growth. Moreover, astrologers are taught how to calculate or observe progressions and transits, and how to interpret them according to keywords and formulas, but not why they should be considered valid.
In the techniques of progressions and transits, the new positions of the planets are usually referred to the birth-chart, which remains the foundation for astrological judgment — as it must be if we are concerned with the karma and dharma of an individual person. But astrologers also use a third approach in which the state of the solar system on any day and hour is studied with no reference to an individual's birth-chart — or in the case of the popular "sun-sign-astrology", only to a person's natal sun-sign. The astrologer then assumes that the state of the solar system as a whole is reflected in that of the biosphere: "As above, so below." Thus, the tensions represented in the sky by a square of, say. Mars and Saturn can be expected to manifest in all living organisms within the biosphere as a tension between the impulsive, outgoing Mars-function and the limiting, contracting Saturn-function: in all living organisms in the biosphere and not merely in individual cases.
Granted that such an effect exists, it can be compared to that of the weather. Yet the weather is a factor affecting only a particular locality, while the state of the solar system — the sum-total of all the currents of energy generated by the motions of all material masses with the strong electromagnetic field of the solar system — should affect the whole Earth, or at least the areas of the globe under the direct line of impact, and everything in that area. The determination of what constitutes a "direct line of impact" is a very controversial matter; and so is the often postulated correspondence between geographical areas (or nations) and zodiacal signs. These matters belong to the field of "mundane astrology", however, and they cannot be covered in this book. I mention them here because they do not properly belong to the category of transits either, for this word refers to the passage of one moving body across another which is either practically non-moving or moving more slowly.
In the following I shall suggest what may be a more realistic explanation of why secondary (or solar) progressions are significant and what they specifically reveal; then I shall deal with transits. Both techniques can be used at all levels of interpretation, but I have so far refrained from mentioning them because their application at the first three levels has been formulated in detail in many books, but primarily in terms of a predictive type of astrology.
At the individual level of interpretation, transits and progressions have much the same meaning as the one I will now explain in relation to a transpersonal interpretation. But at the individual level, the birth-chart is the dominant factor, because a strictly individual life should lead, in principle, to the fulfillment of what was potential in the natal chart. In transpersonal astrology, on the other hand, the dominant concern of the astrologer is to understand the dynamism and rhythm of the transformative process itself. The birth-chart is only the starting point of this process, which even physical death may not end — if the individual has succeeded in raising his or her I-center to the transindividual (or symbolically, the "galactic") level. From the transpersonal point of view, "rebirth" may be more significant than "birth", if the karma of the past has been lived through, absorbed and neutralized. But until this is accomplished — a rare occurrence — the natal foundation of the personality, with all it implies and all the future possibilities it may evoke, remains an essential base of operation.
Secondary or "Solar" Progressions
According to the principle of this type of progressions today by the most commonly used — what occurs in the sky during the day following birth gives us symbolic information concerning what can be expected to happen during the first year of actual living. The positions of celestial bodies 48 hours after the birth-moment thus symbolize the biopsychic condition of the infant as he or she begins a third year of life. The astrologer finds out what the "progressed" positions of all the planets will be when the client has passed his or her twenty-first birthday by looking for them in the ephemeris for the year of the client's birth, 21 days after the actual day of birth. The usually stated formula for such progressions is "one day in the ephemeris equals one year of actual living."
The value of such a symbolic procedure is constantly demonstrated, but the character and meaning of the information thus gained are often either exaggerated or wrongly interpreted. Most astrologers do not even question why it is that the technique gives significant results. They simply use the one-day-for-a-year formula as if there were nothing puzzling about it. Some astrologers with a more inquiring and philosophical type of mind have tried to find the logic in this correspondence, and the best explanation has been that any whole cycle of motion can in some way be considered analogical to any other cycle. Thus the day cycle produced by a complete rotation of the Earth on its axis is analogical to a year cycle produced by the Earth's revolution around the Sun — or, on a still larger scale, to one Complete gyration of the polar axis in nearly 26,000 years (the cycle usually referred to as the cycle of "precession of the equinoxes").(1)
In spatial terms this would also mean that the Earth's equator (any point on it accomplishing a complete rotation in one day) symbolically "corresponds" to the Earth's orbit — that is, in astronomical terms, to the ecliptic, and astrologically speaking, to the (tropical) zodiac. This is one way in which the surface of the globe has often been divided into twelve longitudinal zones, each being made to correspond to (or be "ruled" by) one sign of the zodiac.(2)
Such a type of justification for the technique of secondary progressions is abstract and symbolic, and I had accepted it as valid until some years ago, when I realized that today one might consider the ideal, complete life-cycle of a human being to be about 90 years; and that in order for the prenatal period of gestation of a human being to cover a full yearly cycle of the Sun-to-Earth relationship, it would have to last some 90 more days. One might assume that since the Sun is the source of all life on Earth, in order for the life-force in a newborn baby to be fully developed, the formative period of gestation should have to encompass a whole yearly cycle.
The next question to come to mind is this: why should this entire formative period be passed in the closed field of a physical womb? And the answer is that while the physical body of a human being is normally developed in the mother's womb in nine months, the part of the total human being that is more than a physical body requires for its development 90 more days (3 months) in a relatively open field — a field in which the organism, by breathing air, is potentially related to all other living organisms in the biosphere (as air circulates around the globe quite rapidly) — organisms which also breathe air. In the field represented by the home, the baby comes in contact with people and experiences the basic rhythms of life. The baby's senses react to light, heat, moisture. He or she experiences hunger, pain, and we may assume, a sense of isolation in a strange world. Yet the baby is still held within a "psychic womb" — primarily the mother's psyche, especially when he or she is breast-fed, and truly loved.
All these primordial and basic experiences and affects are necessary for the development of the psychic nature of the child, and for the development of what I mean by intelligence. I have defined psychism as the power that integrates a human being into his or her community and culture (and first of all his or her family environment). This power, binding as it is, is as necessary for the growth of a fully developed personality as the nine months in the physical womb are necessary for the formation of the physical body. By "intelligence" I mean the capacity inherent in a human being to make whatever adjustments are needed to successfully operate in a biological, and, especially, a sociocultural environment. Biological adjustments are at first entirely instinctual and remain so at their deepest level when life-or-death situations suddenly arise; but a person's adjustments to society — to family, religion, school, peer group, and business — require a conscious and deliberate process of adaptation, which is really what is meant by "intelligence". In its more primitive form, intelligence is cunning. In school it is the ability to deal not only with the mass of knowledge one is supposed to remember and assimilate, but with what teachers and the whole educational system expect of a student. What we call "intelligence tests" are given to ascertain the ability a person has to function effectively and in a normal way in a particular society and culture.
Recently publicized data indicating the crucial importance of the experiences to which a baby is subjected during the first weeks of his or her existence may be thought to provide a general, but existential and concrete, support to my interpretation of the reason why progressions can be exceedingly significant if used in the proper manner. This, however, does not alter the fact that progressions have a symbolic character. For example, it would be rather absurd literally to expect that bringing a baby to a doctor on the third or fifth day after its birth — or a visit by the grandparents on one of those days — would have definite repercussions on the course of events during the baby's third or fifth years of life. Yet in some instances, an apparently routine event might leave a deep psychic impression which could produce a psychosomatic reaction at a later date. Generally speaking, astrological progressions do not refer directly to concrete events; they symbolize the particular manner in which the more-than-physical, psychic and mental, parts of the human personality develop. Concrete events evidently affect this process of growth; but one might also reverse the situation and believe that it is the character of the process which, according to the newborn's karma, precipitates outer events of various types.
In the ninety days that follow birth, the Sun moves about 90 degrees, thus through three zodiacal signs (or possibly four, if one is born with the Sun at the very end of a sign). During that period only the planets closer to the Sun than Jupiter advance far from their natal positions; some may even regress a few degrees after the day of birth. The more distant planets, from Jupiter outwards, move only very short distances, either forward or (during their retrograde periods) backward. The Moon alone completes not only one, but three turns of the zodiac — its sidereal period lasting 271/3 days, equivalent in progressions to 271/3 years.
The passage of the progressed Moon through each of the twelve houses of the birth-chart has therefore a unique meaning. As it passes through a house, the progressed Moon indicates the field of experience in which the development of the intelligence and the psychic nature of the person can be expected most significantly and/or successfully to operate. The first revolution of the progressed Moon is primarily a period of formation; the second, one of personal or individual expression and at least relative achievement — if all goes well. If the individual remains solely at the level of individual consciousness, the third period, after the 56th year, should be one of either personal fulfillment or gradual degeneration or crystallization. If, however, the individual has deliberately and consciously entered the path of radical transformation and remained on it, the last third of the life can be the most important, as it may bring clearer and steadier transpersonal realizations, and the ability to radiate at least a degree of mature and spiritually illumined wisdom.
The passage of the progressed Moon over each of the four Angles of the natal chart usually coincides with, and helps us interpret, some important inner or outer changes in a person's life and consciousness. The passage over the Ascendant is particularly important, for it often correlates with a change in one's environment or in one's psychological or physical relation to the environment. The change should lead to some kind of personal readjustment, perhaps the readjustment of one's intuitive feeling of identity in terms of the new environment or of a new realization of the meaning and value of the already familiar life-situation — the sense of individual selfhood being always intimately related to and most often conditioned by the various kinds of close relationships and associations one has entered, positive or negative as these may be.
When the progressed Moon crosses the Descendant of the birth-chart, changes in relationships are often expectable, or rather as this progression is about to occur one should try to pay closer attention to the quality of the relationships one is involved in, and to reassess their value.
The crossing of the natal Nadir (the cusp of the fourth house) by the progressed Moon may stir the feelings and should impel one to become more objective to what these feelings are and arise from — perhaps the home situation. As the progressed Moon crosses the Midheaven, a new approach to one's mental, social, or professional activities may seem valuable, if not imperative.
In my book The Astrological Houses,(3) I discussed the basic meanings of the houses considered as categories or fields of experience, and I shall only briefly summarize here the characteristics which are of most value in terms of the progressed Moon's passage through them.
In the first house, a person tends to experience the results of being-an- individual; in the second, that of having to use and manage resources or possessions — and, more deeply still, the experience of "potency" or lack of potency in any field. As the progressed Moon passes through the third house, a person would do well to focus his or her attention on problems dealing with the family environment, the neighborhood or matters concerning a learning situation — and as the progressed Moon crosses the I. C. into the fourth house, the focus should shift to defining one's personal space, whether in a physical or psychospiritual sense. This includes matters concerning one's place in one's home and/or country, and one's relation to the parent who most deeply affects the roots of one's feeling nature.
The fifth house refers to experiences resulting from desiring to be or seeing oneself multiplied in a biological or psychological progeny; the sixth house to the realization that it is necessary, willingly or not, to fit into some kind of sociocultural or interpersonal pattern of development — and often of "service" at whatever level service may be asked of the person. The seventh house is the field of experiences produced by associating with, or merging one's identity into, the life of another or several partners for an implicit common purpose. In the eighth house, a person experiences the results of partnership in terms of set patterns of social or "occult" activities; this is the house of business (the result of contractual agreements), and of communal rituals (whether sociocultural or religious), in which a number of people participate.
As the progressed Moon passes through the ninth house, a person would do well to focus on the opportunities to expand and to fit, more meaningfully or successfully, into either legalistic, intellectual-academic, or religious-cosmic patterns. This should lead to a more significant or valuable type of participation in one's community or nation — thus to professional or public experiences adding a larger dimension to one's field of activity; all of which relates to the tenth house. In the eleventh house, this tenth house type of participation will show its results — as various kinds of social and cultural enjoyments and entertainment, or as frustration and experiences of revolt or transformative activity. In the twelfth house, the results of an entire cycle of experience have to be concentrated upon, accounts should be closed, and a person should prepare to enter a new cycle, perhaps at a higher level of consciousness.
What has just been said refers more particularly to the personal and individual levels of interpretation, but these have to be considered when one deals with progressions because it is very rare for a young person before the age of 28 to definitely commit his or her being to the ideal of radical transformation. What may seem to be such a commitment refers most likely to the process of individualization and liberation from family and/or sociocultural patterns of behavior, feeling, and thinking. In the vast majority of cases, transpersonal realizations emerge out of the much-publicized crisis of the forties — which I once called adolescence in reverse. Yet under the pressure of the at least partial breakdown of our traditional Western culture and religion, and often through the action of psychedelic drugs, young people in their twenties experience at least a yearning for transcendent realities and a presentiment of what they entail. This, in many instances, leads to an intense, though not always steady and lasting, involvement in mystical or pseudo-mystical groups and practices, especially the practice of some kind of "meditation".
Every house of a chart can refer to several levels of experiences. A person-centered interpretation primarily stresses personal experiences to which a meaning is given in the light of the ideal of personality integration and fulfillment. On the other hand, a transpersonal type of interpretation would normally see, in the passage of the progressed Moon through a natal house, a special opportunity to deliberately adapt the experiences which the house symbolizes to the goal of transformation. The twelve houses can thus become twelve stations on the transpersonal way — the first house and the Ascendant which begins it marking, at least theoretically, the decision to consciously change one's sense of identity. As we already saw, on the transpersonal path the Moon can be interpreted as the "soul"; thus, lunar progressions can sometimes be interpreted as referring to the relation of this soul — as I have defined the term in preceding chapters — to the "higher collectivity" rather than merely to the process of constant adjustment to the "lower collectivity" represented by family and society. Secondary or "Solar" Progressions.
According to the principle of this type of progressions today by the most commonly used — what occurs in the sky during the day following birth gives us symbolic information concerning what can be expected to happen during the first year of actual living. The positions of celestial bodies 48 hours after the birth-moment thus symbolize the biopsychic condition of the infant as he or she begins a third year of life. The astrologer finds out what the "progressed" positions of all the planets will be when the client has passed his or her twenty-first birthday by looking for them in the ephemeris for the year of the client's birth, 21 days after the actual day of birth. The usually stated formula for such progressions is "one day in the ephemeris equals one year of actual living."
The value of such a symbolic procedure is constantly demonstrated, but the character and meaning of the information thus gained are often either exaggerated or wrongly interpreted. Most astrologers do not even question why it is that the technique gives significant results. They simply use the one-day-for-a-year formula as if there were nothing puzzling about it. Some astrologers with a more inquiring and philosophical type of mind have tried to find the logic in this correspondence, and the best explanation has been that any whole cycle of motion can in some way be considered analogical to any other cycle. Thus the day cycle produced by a complete rotation of the Earth on its axis is analogical to a year cycle produced by the Earth's revolution around the Sun — or, on a still larger scale, to one Complete gyration of the polar axis in nearly 26,000 years (the cycle usually referred to as the cycle of "precession of the equinoxes").(1)
1) Cf. my book, The Astrology of Personality (1936), especially Chapter 4, "A Key to Astrological Symbolism", and in terms of the historical significance of the cycle.Astrological Timining: The Transition to the New Age.
In spatial terms this would also mean that the Earth's equator (any point on it accomplishing a complete rotation in one day) symbolically "corresponds" to the Earth's orbit — that is, in astronomical terms, to the ecliptic, and astrologically speaking, to the (tropical) zodiac. This is one way in which the surface of the globe has often been divided into twelve longitudinal zones, each being made to correspond to (or be "ruled" by) one sign of the zodiac.(2)
2) A great deal of confusion has been spread by the use of the "solar arc" method of calculating secondary progressions. In this technique all planets each day (or year) after birth are supposed to move forward at the same speed as the Sun does. This procedure actually refers to what Sepharial called the Radix System, which was meant as a simplification of the more involved "primary directions" dealing with the daily cycle of the Earth's rotation. Everything in the birth-chart was moved ahead a whole degree for each year of actual living. Later on, the average rate of the Sun's motion (0° 59' 08") was substituted to the archetypal measure of one degree. This, I believe, is not a sound procedure, considering that these systems are purely symbolic. In an archetypal sense, the year has 360 days. From an existential point of view, the ratio between the lengths of any two cycles is never a whole number. The reason for this is that in the realm of actual existence, the immense multiplicity of interrelationships in operation constantly introduces a factor of indeterminacy. Nothing is ever exactly what it was meant to be. In principle, 360 rotations of the Earth should correspond exactly to a complete revolution around the Sun; but in fact an infinitely complex set of pressures slightly lessen the Earth's speed as it moves along its orbit.
In The Astrology of Personality, I gave a different interpretation to the Radix Directions, speaking of them as the translation of space-values (one zodiacal degree) into a time-value (one year of human time). This technique, when applied to the degree distances between important factors in the birth-chart, gives very basic results which mainly refer to the karmic structure of a human life. It can be profitably applied to the distances between planets and angles in rectification, when the exact birth-time is not known, but it must not be confused with secondary progressions.
Such a type of justification for the technique of secondary progressions is abstract and symbolic, and I had accepted it as valid until some years ago, when I realized that today one might consider the ideal, complete life-cycle of a human being to be about 90 years; and that in order for the prenatal period of gestation of a human being to cover a full yearly cycle of the Sun-to-Earth relationship, it would have to last some 90 more days. One might assume that since the Sun is the source of all life on Earth, in order for the life-force in a newborn baby to be fully developed, the formative period of gestation should have to encompass a whole yearly cycle.
The next question to come to mind is this: why should this entire formative period be passed in the closed field of a physical womb? And the answer is that while the physical body of a human being is normally developed in the mother's womb in nine months, the part of the total human being that is more than a physical body requires for its development 90 more days (3 months) in a relatively open field — a field in which the organism, by breathing air, is potentially related to all other living organisms in the biosphere (as air circulates around the globe quite rapidly) — organisms which also breathe air. In the field represented by the home, the baby comes in contact with people and experiences the basic rhythms of life. The baby's senses react to light, heat, moisture. He or she experiences hunger, pain, and we may assume, a sense of isolation in a strange world. Yet the baby is still held within a "psychic womb" — primarily the mother's psyche, especially when he or she is breast-fed, and truly loved.
All these primordial and basic experiences and affects are necessary for the development of the psychic nature of the child, and for the development of what I mean by intelligence. I have defined psychism as the power that integrates a human being into his or her community and culture (and first of all his or her family environment). This power, binding as it is, is as necessary for the growth of a fully developed personality as the nine months in the physical womb are necessary for the formation of the physical body. By "intelligence" I mean the capacity inherent in a human being to make whatever adjustments are needed to successfully operate in a biological, and, especially, a sociocultural environment. Biological adjustments are at first entirely instinctual and remain so at their deepest level when life-or-death situations suddenly arise; but a person's adjustments to society — to family, religion, school, peer group, and business — require a conscious and deliberate process of adaptation, which is really what is meant by "intelligence". In its more primitive form, intelligence is cunning. In school it is the ability to deal not only with the mass of knowledge one is supposed to remember and assimilate, but with what teachers and the whole educational system expect of a student. What we call "intelligence tests" are given to ascertain the ability a person has to function effectively and in a normal way in a particular society and culture.
Recently publicized data indicating the crucial importance of the experiences to which a baby is subjected during the first weeks of his or her existence may be thought to provide a general, but existential and concrete, support to my interpretation of the reason why progressions can be exceedingly significant if used in the proper manner. This, however, does not alter the fact that progressions have a symbolic character. For example, it would be rather absurd literally to expect that bringing a baby to a doctor on the third or fifth day after its birth — or a visit by the grandparents on one of those days — would have definite repercussions on the course of events during the baby's third or fifth years of life. Yet in some instances, an apparently routine event might leave a deep psychic impression which could produce a psychosomatic reaction at a later date. Generally speaking, astrological progressions do not refer directly to concrete events; they symbolize the particular manner in which the more-than-physical, psychic and mental, parts of the human personality develop. Concrete events evidently affect this process of growth; but one might also reverse the situation and believe that it is the character of the process which, according to the newborn's karma, precipitates outer events of various types.
In the ninety days that follow birth, the Sun moves about 90 degrees, thus through three zodiacal signs (or possibly four, if one is born with the Sun at the very end of a sign). During that period only the planets closer to the Sun than Jupiter advance far from their natal positions; some may even regress a few degrees after the day of birth. The more distant planets, from Jupiter outwards, move only very short distances, either forward or (during their retrograde periods) backward. The Moon alone completes not only one, but three turns of the zodiac — its sidereal period lasting 271/3 days, equivalent in progressions to 271/3 years.
The passage of the progressed Moon through each of the twelve houses of the birth-chart has therefore a unique meaning. As it passes through a house, the progressed Moon indicates the field of experience in which the development of the intelligence and the psychic nature of the person can be expected most significantly and/or successfully to operate. The first revolution of the progressed Moon is primarily a period of formation; the second, one of personal or individual expression and at least relative achievement — if all goes well. If the individual remains solely at the level of individual consciousness, the third period, after the 56th year, should be one of either personal fulfillment or gradual degeneration or crystallization. If, however, the individual has deliberately and consciously entered the path of radical transformation and remained on it, the last third of the life can be the most important, as it may bring clearer and steadier transpersonal realizations, and the ability to radiate at least a degree of mature and spiritually illumined wisdom.
The passage of the progressed Moon over each of the four Angles of the natal chart usually coincides with, and helps us interpret, some important inner or outer changes in a person's life and consciousness. The passage over the Ascendant is particularly important, for it often correlates with a change in one's environment or in one's psychological or physical relation to the environment. The change should lead to some kind of personal readjustment, perhaps the readjustment of one's intuitive feeling of identity in terms of the new environment or of a new realization of the meaning and value of the already familiar life-situation — the sense of individual selfhood being always intimately related to and most often conditioned by the various kinds of close relationships and associations one has entered, positive or negative as these may be.
When the progressed Moon crosses the Descendant of the birth-chart, changes in relationships are often expectable, or rather as this progression is about to occur one should try to pay closer attention to the quality of the relationships one is involved in, and to reassess their value.
The crossing of the natal Nadir (the cusp of the fourth house) by the progressed Moon may stir the feelings and should impel one to become more objective to what these feelings are and arise from — perhaps the home situation. As the progressed Moon crosses the Midheaven, a new approach to one's mental, social, or professional activities may seem valuable, if not imperative.
In my book The Astrological Houses, (3) I discussed the basic meanings of the houses considered as categories or fields of experience, and I shall only briefly summarize here the characteristics which are of most value in terms of the progressed Moon's passage through them.
3) (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1972).
In the first house, a person tends to experience the results of being-an- individual; in the second, that of having to use and manage resources or possessions — and, more deeply still, the experience of "potency" or lack of potency in any field. As the progressed Moon passes through the third house, a person would do well to focus his or her attention on problems dealing with the family environment, the neighborhood or matters concerning a learning situation — and as the progressed Moon crosses the I. C. into the fourth house, the focus should shift to defining one's personal space, whether in a physical or psychospiritual sense. This includes matters concerning one's place in one's home and/or country, and one's relation to the parent who most deeply affects the roots of one's feeling nature.
The fifth house refers to experiences resulting from desiring to be or seeing oneself multiplied in a biological or psychological progeny; the sixth house to the realization that it is necessary, willingly or not, to fit into some kind of sociocultural or interpersonal pattern of development — and often of "service" at whatever level service may be asked of the person. The seventh house is the field of experiences produced by associating with, or merging one's identity into, the life of another or several partners for an implicit common purpose. In the eighth house, a person experiences the results of partnership in terms of set patterns of social or "occult" activities; this is the house of business (the result of contractual agreements), and of communal rituals (whether sociocultural or religious), in which a number of people participate.
As the progressed Moon passes through the ninth house, a person would do well to focus on the opportunities to expand and to fit, more meaningfully or successfully, into either legalistic, intellectual-academic, or religious-cosmic patterns. This should lead to a more significant or valuable type of participation in one's community or nation — thus to professional or public experiences adding a larger dimension to one's field of activity; all of which relates to the tenth house. In the eleventh house, this tenth house type of participation will show its results — as various kinds of social and cultural enjoyments and entertainment, or as frustration and experiences of revolt or transformative activity. In the twelfth house, the results of an entire cycle of experience have to be concentrated upon, accounts should be closed, and a person should prepare to enter a new cycle, perhaps at a higher level of consciousness.
What has just been said refers more particularly to the personal and individual levels of interpretation, but these have to be considered when one deals with progressions because it is very rare for a young person before the age of 28 to definitely commit his or her being to the ideal of radical transformation. What may seem to be such a commitment refers most likely to the process of individualization and liberation from family and/or sociocultural patterns of behavior, feeling, and thinking. In the vast majority of cases, transpersonal realizations emerge out of the much-publicized crisis of the forties — which I once called adolescence in reverse. Yet under the pressure of the at least partial breakdown of our traditional Western culture and religion, and often through the action of psychedelic drugs, young people in their twenties experience at least a yearning for transcendent realities and a presentiment of what they entail. This, in many instances, leads to an intense, though not always steady and lasting, involvement in mystical or pseudo-mystical groups and practices, especially the practice of some kind of "meditation".
Every house of a chart can refer to several levels of experiences. A person-centered interpretation primarily stresses personal experiences to which a meaning is given in the light of the ideal of personality integration and fulfillment. On the other hand, a transpersonal type of interpretation would normally see, in the passage of the progressed Moon through a natal house, a special opportunity to deliberately adapt the experiences which the house symbolizes to the goal of transformation. The twelve houses can thus become twelve stations on the transpersonal way — the first house and the Ascendant which begins it marking, at least theoretically, the decision to consciously change one's sense of identity. As we already saw, on the transpersonal path the Moon can be interpreted as the "soul"; thus, lunar progressions can sometimes be interpreted as referring to the relation of this soul — as I have defined the term in preceding chapters — to the "higher collectivity" rather than merely to the process of constant adjustment to the "lower collectivity" represented by family and society.
Progressed Lunation Cycle
Progressed-to-Natal vs.
Progressed-to-Progressed Considerations
While the progression of the Moon through the houses and in contact with natal planets in these houses are significant, because the Moon should always be intimately linked with the Sun, the most important cycle of progressions to be considered is what I have called "the progressed lunation cycle." The different periods in this soli-lunar cycle are made obvious by the ever-changing size of the Moon during the 30 days this cycle lasts. What changes, however, is not the Moon itself, but the relationship between the Sun and the Moon as seen from the Earth. The progressed lunation cycle therefore is the cycle of relationship between the progressed Moon and the progressed Sun.
The progressed lunation cycle no longer strictly belongs to the category of progressions in which a moving planet is referred to the natal position of other planets. In technical terms, the lunation cycle is a progressed-to-progressed cycle, whereas the above-mentioned progressions of the Moon through the houses, as it forms aspects to the planets of the birth-chart, refer to the progressed-to-natal category of relationships. In progressed-to-natal progressions, the astrologer deals with the relationship between the seed-in-the-beginning (the birth-chart), and what has emerged from it at one or another moment in the process of unfoldment and self-actualization. This approach and technique is particularly valid in a strictly person-centered interpretation because, as I have said, at that level personal growth is essentially considered the actualization of a definite set of potentialities symbolically described in the birth-chart. Thus any new phase of growth should validly be referred to or compared with the original seed-potential. What occurs in the new phase of development may either help or endanger the hoped-for total and harmonious fulfillment of what was in the seed-in-the-beginning (and can be said to remain — perhaps within the genetic structure or perhaps in an electromagnetic "design body", linga sharira in Sanskrit).
On the other hand, progressed-to-progressed indications increase in significance when an individual has become definitely intent on radical self-transformation, and therefore pays less and less attention to the past from which he or she is consciously emerging. From the transpersonal point of view, the progressed lunation cycle, as a progressed-to-progressed cycle, establishes the basic rhythm on whose dynamic foundation an individual's attempts at radical self-transformation operate. From such a transpersonal point of view, the progressed lunation cycle serves a purpose broadly similar, in terms of process, to that which the birth-chart has in terms of individual structure of being. Yet, in order to see how far one has moved away from what originally had been a determining and binding factor, one can refer the progressed lunation cycle to the natal chart.
I personally do so by marking on the outside of them natal chart the position of each progressed New Moon. The natal house in which the first progressed New Moon after birth occurs may not be the house in which the natal Sun is located. If it is not, anew house (and the life experiences to which it refers), at least temporarily receives the life-accent. The places of the succeeding New Moons inevitably fall in subsequent houses, as they occur about 30 and 60 degrees ahead of the position of the first New Moon. The zodiacal degrees on which they occur, and also of the progressed Sun and progressed Moon when in opposition (progressed Full Moons), are often most significant, the symbol of the degree (in the Sabian series) giving a clue to the overall character of the new phase of personality-unfoldment the progressed New Moon begins, at least until the progressed Full Moon some fifteen years later.(4)
4) For a study of the meaning of degree symbols In astrology, I refer the reader to my book An Astrological Mandala: The Cycle of Transformations and Its 360 Symbolic Phases (New York: Random House, 1973). The extraordinary manner in which the Sabian Symbols were obtained, the remarkable inner structure of the entire series of the 360 symbols, their modern character and how they should be used, is explained at length in that book, written in 1972 but preceded, many years ago, by a series of articles on the subject (American Astrology, May, 1954 - October, 1957).
Recently, however, Antony Milner, a graphic artist as well as astrologer, has designed charts especially for the study of all the phases of the progressed lunation cycle in itself — thus entirely as a progressed-to-progressed cycle of planetary relationship. A visual symbol of the whole process is provided which has been found to be extremely helpful in giving to students and clients a vividly experiential picture of the development of their life and personality during a 30-year period.(5) While this development in most cases occurs at the level of the gradual process of individualization or of personal fulfillment in terms of a particular, cultural way of life, it can just as well be interpreted at the level of a transpersonal process. In such a case, the progressed Full Moon is particularly important, because it marks, at least potentially, the beginning of a psychomental process of discovery or recovery as the result of what had occurred during the fifteen years since the preceding progressed New Moon.
5) For a detailed explanation of how to use the progressed lunation cycle, see my book. The Lunation Cycle (Santa Fe: Aurora Press, 1971), and The Lunation Process in Astrological Guidance by Leyla Raël Santa Fe: Aurora Press, 1979).
The first fifteen years of the progressed lunation cycle are usually related to the unfoldment of some new impulse or life-opportunity having been released around the progressed New Moon — it most often had been developing during the preceding two or three years in the inner life, or even in terms of outer events acting as a necessary prelude to the more definite start at the time of the progressed New Moon. The fifteen-year period following the progressed Full Moon theoretically operates in two ways: 1) The mechanisms of action that had been built or grew up during the waxing half of the cycle tend slowly (or sometimes suddenly around the time of the progressed Full Moon) to lose their efficacy or their power to forcefully draw the attention of the maturing I-consciousness; 2) at the same time, a process of mental development is given an opportunity to unfold its potentialities. What had mainly been physical and social or cultural activity (or the acquisition of a new technique or capability), during the waxing hemicycle of the progressed lunation cycle is, if not replaced by, at least combined with and inspired by, a deeper, more objective or transcendent development of the mind — a development having its origin around the time of the progressed Full Moon.
On the transpersonal path, a progressed Full Moon may coincide with some kind of "illumination" or the intuitive revelation of a new goal and purpose. It can be an excellent time for withdrawing from and beginning to transcend the past, especially if what had occurred since the progressed New Moon has proven frustrating or illusory. It usually is a moment of choice — thus a "crisis" — even though at first the choice is not yet clearly definable. It becomes clearer at the progressed Last Quarter when a final confrontation with what remains of the past often occurs. About three years before the coming progressed New Moon, the transition between the closing progressed lunation cycle and the next one begins. This is what I have called the "Balsamic" (an old alchemical term) or "seed" period of the 30-year cycle. It is often a life-phase during which transformative forces are best able to operate. If one realizes that such a period has begun, one should feel particularly open — yet discriminating — to any opportunity for changes that may come one's way.
At any level of astrological practice, the progressed lunation cycle can be an extremely valuable psychological tool. The lives of individuals groping for a basic understanding of why and exactly how they had to pass through a series of perhaps traumatic experiences have been illumined and at least partially transformed by its use. Transformation cannot be truly effective unless the individual has become objective to the events of the past and — the next step — detached from them. One, however, is never entirely detached from a past one still does not understand, and with which one has not come to terms and accepted as a necessary step in the process of developing character and consciousness. The sense of guilt — or even of personal inferiority — is born of lack of objectivity and understanding. On the transpersonal path, guilt and inferiority complexes are largely responsible for either some kind of collapse based on a subtle type of defeatism and mistrust of one's power, or — by compensation — for the kind of price that is bound to insecurity and fear.
In order to overcome these repressed, unconscious, or semi-conscious feelings, the progressed lunation cycle and all that relates to it can be an excellent tool. If well used by an astro-psychologist, it can be more effective and safer than "regressions" in semi-hypnotic states, and even than dream-analysis — which, when made by the dreamer may be too subjective, and when made by most psychologists, too dependent upon intellectual concepts and specialized forms of training. Unfortunately, however, the progressed lunation cycle Is still not used by most astrologers, perhaps because they seem unable to think in terms of whole processes — especially processes spanning several years — and because their training has prepared them to think primarily in terms of separate and isolated events.
An event has been defined in physics as the intersection of world-lines. But these world-lines are in fact curved; they are the abstraction of cyclic processes. To understand an event is to be able to perceive it not as an isolated entity, but as the intersection or conjunction of cosmic or planetary cycles. The event has to be perceived not by an "I" involved in its own existence, prestige, or happiness, but by a mind able to embrace entire processes and to give meaning to all their phases. Theologians and philosophers have spoken of understanding an event sub specie eternitatis — but "eternity" is a misunderstood and glamorized word which simply refers to the cyclic character of all existence. The Latin phrase simply means that existence can only be understood as a vast complex of cyclic processes. No event can be understood in isolation. It has not only a past and a future, but it is a combination of a vast number of cyclic activities at many levels.
Thus I repeat: progressions should not be interpreted in terms of precise, expectable occurrences. Astrology should not be a "predictive science", or even merely a descriptive process in which all the described features remain basically isolated, because unrelated to a holistic grasp of the whole life-span, from birth-to-death. Especially at the transpersonal level, the realization of the direction or orientation of the entire life-process is an essential factor. Life has to be purposeful and meaningful — however distant the fulfillment of the purpose may seem. One should not attempt to define such a purpose in precise, concrete terms. Metaphysically speaking, there is no conceivable end to the process of transformation, because there is no end to the hierarchical series of wholes. The spiritual life simply consists in taking the next step toward an open-ended future.
Another point should be made concerning the technique of progressions and the difference between progressed-to-natal and progressed-to-progressed aspects. In the first case, when the progressed Sun or Moon or any other planet reaches the place of a natal planet, the latter does not directly affect the progressing planet. A progressed Sun, for example, would bring to a natal Saturn power and light; but Saturn would not "do" anything to the Sun. What might be said to happen is that at the age corresponding to the progressed-to-natal aspect, the life-force (the Sun) will tend to and should focus its attention upon all that Saturn represents in the circumstances defined by the birth-chart and manifest in the life. This, however, could have two kinds of results: on the one hand, the Saturnian sense of form, organization, and responsibility could be thrown into a sharper and clearer relief and probably aroused to action. On the other hand, however, whatever basic fears and sense of guilt or inferiority that exist in the psyche may be revealed. The Sun pours its light upon everything: a diamond will sparkle magnificently; a decaying fish will decay more quickly.
The situation is different in a progressed-to-progressed situation, because in such an aspect both planets are moving and, let us say, their conjunction is an actual fact in the sky a few days or weeks after the child was born. In this case, what is represented by the two planets can at that time be said to have blended in the psyche of the baby, and to have become the unconscious source of life developments which at a later age will potentially allow the individual to objectify and release whatever in infancy had been stored in the psychic depths.
According to the transpersonal approach to astrology, the progressed-to-natal aspects seem to mark particular times at which an opportunity to neutralize the karma of the past appears. The progressed-to-progressed aspects refer more characteristically to openings in life which allow the energy of dharma to operate through what is symbolized by the relationships between the planets forming the aspects. The progressed lunation cycle is of course a progressed-to-progressed cycle, and much can be gained from its study that may enable the intuitive astrologer to gauge objectively where the client stands — and to advise him or her concerning the kind of efforts and activities most conducive to foster a radical change in attitude and outlook.
The Transits of the Planets
While progressions refer primarily to the development of tendencies of all kinds inherited from the past — genetic, cultural, spiritual — and all these internal tendencies operate mainly through the lunar and soli-lunar cycles, the interrelating cycles of the transiting planets should be interpreted specifically as patterns related to pressures and impacts coming from the outside. By the term "outside" I mean here what is outside of the field of consciousness — outside of the realm over which the ego rules, and whose center is "I", the song of individual selfhood, often turning into a harsh series of discords. The "outside" is the collectivity in relation to the individual. But, as we have already seen, there are several kinds of collectivities. At each level at which a human being operates, his or her activities are influenced by and often have to fit into rigid collective patterns, not only of behavior, but — though the person may not be fully aware of this — of feeling-responses and thought.
At the biological level, "collectivity" refers to the whole biosphere, and to human nature's reactions to changes. whether they be regular seasonal changes or cataclysms. At the next higher level, collectivity has a sociocultural character; transits refer to the way a nation and its various institutions — political, religious, and commercial — impress their collective power upon the men, women, and children whose lives they control, not only outwardly, but psychically. Transits then act primarily upon the psychism that binds people, and as societies become more complex and more mentally structured and active, what was at first only "psychic" takes increasingly more intellectual or mental forms. The psychomental pressures, symbolized by the transits, in turn produce — directly or indirectly — concrete and physical-material results, what we call "events."
When at a certain stage of the process of individualization, the consciousness of a person becomes evolved enough to become aware of the possibility — or the actual existence of — a contact with a realm of transindividual beings, this person can become directly and individually related to some aspect of the "higher" collectivity which encompasses the spiritual aspect of mankind. A one-to-one relationship can be established between the human individual and the "star" that symbolizes his or her trans-individual selfhood, or a particular aspect of the "galactic" consciousness operative in this higher collectivity may focus itself upon the mind of the individual on the transpersonal way. Before such a direct and individualized relationship is established, the higher collectivity can undoubtedly affect human beings, but the connection operates in a psychic and unconscious or semi-conscious manner, rather than as a direct and individualized line of influence.
Some scientifically-oriented astrologers who dismiss progressions as being "symbolic" and not referring to actual facts are willing to accept transits as factual because they deal with what is actually happening day-by-day in the sky. But while a transiting planet is concretely observable, to speak of it in the astrological sense implies that one thinks of the natal positions of the planets as having been somehow indelibly stamped upon the human being, or of the shape of the universe surrounding a newborn as a kind of permanent enveloping structure. In this structure the natal planets would be like windows through which the "rays" of transiting planets could pass. When Mars passes over the natal Venus-window a "transit aspect" occurs; and theoretically the Mars energy affects and somewhat blends with whatever the Venus-type of activity and consciousness represent in the birth-chart and in the life of the person to whose birth-chart Mars' transit is being referred.
Another explanation is that at birth the organism of the baby is, in a sense, programmed to respond in an individual manner to the ever-changing interaction of ten variables — the planets (including the Sun and Moon). A simple illustration would be found in an ordinary alarm clock: when the moving hand of the clock passes over the alarm indicator set for a selected time of day, a bell rings. Whoever selected the time and set the clock jumps out of bed — or sometimes yawns and falls back to sleep. Each natal planet, the Angles of the chart, and other secondary factors could, according to this illustration, be considered indicators set once and for all at birth. When the day-by-day moving planets in the sky pass over (transit), the positions of these indicators around the face of the clock, the person can be expected to react. The character of the reaction depends on the nature of the planets involved, that is, of both the natal planet and the transiting planet.
These illustrations, however, leave unanswered the basic question posed by such explanations, which try so hard to appear concrete and factual. The only satisfactory way to approach the problem, at least in the present state of our knowledge, is to think of both the birth-chart and the transits as potent symbols. The birth-chart is the foundation of a person's life, from birth to death; the transiting planets represent the manner in which the solar system — or any "greater whole" within which the little whole (the human being) operates — affects this foundation and the development of the lesser whole, the human being. It really does not matter how one tries to explain the way what occurs within a greater whole affects the lesser wholes it contains. One may speak of "correspondence", "synchronicity", or an "inner clock" set at birth and continuing to run at its own speed while the solar system maintains its complex rhythmic patterns of ever-changing interplanetary relationships. All explanations are symbolic. The important point is to understand what each component of the symbolic system one uses refers to at the level at which one's attention is being focused.
In every situation with a cyclic character — that is, one that has a definite beginning, a growth process and an eventual ending — two factors are always present, because such an existential cycle starts with one single dynamic impulse which establishes a basically invariant rhythm of being, the "unity aspect" (or alpha) of the cycle. We may call this unitarian impulse, and the form it takes, "the Word" that is "in the beginning", or the genetic code, or the archetype of the life-cycle, or the "Tone" that sustains and keeps all the operations of a living organism integrated according to a relatively unique plan of existence. But whatever it is called, it is a permanent factor, at least within the scope of terrestrial existence.
When operating at a strictly biological level, a human being is not aware of the existence of such a primordial and invariant factor. It is spoken of in Genesis 2:7 as "the living soul" breathed into the human form by the ruler of the realm of life (the biosphere), the Biblical "Lord God", Yod-He-Vau-He, the Tetragrammaton. The birth-chart of a single human being is a symbolic representation of this permanent factor, and the transits refer to the effects that conditions in the biosphere and the strictly physical environment have on the daily development of the biological functions and their psychic overtones.
At the level of a conscious human being operating in society, the birth-chart is to be considered the archetypal pattern of his or her personality — or we might say "personhood." When the person who has developed under the powerful influence of a particular language, religion, culture, and social way of life succeeds in asserting his or her own individual center, "I", the birth-chart becomes a mandala symbol in which everything is referred to this autonomous center, its consciousness and its theoretically independent will-power.
At these two levels (sociocultural and individual), planetary transits refer to what the constantly changing conditions prevailing in the family, social, or business environment can do to the personality and individuality of a human being operating in that environment, as well as, to his or her physical body and its functions.
As the individual begins to walk on the transpersonal path, the relation of the individual to his or her collectivity takes on another character. Then, planetary transits may often refer to situations that seem to disturb the process of transformation — as distractions, temptations, or challenges to the sincerity and dedicated will of the traveler on the path. The cultural enjoyments or achievements (for example, wealth or fame) which society may offer can be deterrents or tests indicated by planetary transits. But at this stage some of the transits may also be interpreted as — and they may actually be — attempts from this "higher collectivity" of spiritual beings (the Pleroma) to intervene in the process of transpersonal overcoming of and detachment from culture and social concerns — and also from biological attachments of various kinds. Such "interventions" are especially related to the transits of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, for these planets outside of the Saturnian boundaries of the solar system proper can be symbolically regarded as "agents" or ambassadors of the galaxy whose function is to convey messages from the transindividual realm to the I-center of the mandala of personality, and also to serve as guideposts helping to orient the individual on his or her way to the "star."
The study of transits can be a fascinating exercise in intuition, if it is not more or less unconsciously conditioned by the textbook interpretation of what is supposed to happen when transiting planet A crosses over, opposes, or squares (or even forms a trine or sextile to), the natal position of planet B. In the case of the faster planets — Mercury, Venus, and Mars — with short periods of revolution around the zodiac, the entire repeated cycles of these planets should be studied in relation to a person's life and natal chart. Repetitive patterns may emerge from such a study, and recurrent events or internal feelings would point to factors in the personality that especially need to be understood and dismissed as irrelevant when one is engaged in the process of radical transformation. These factors may be strengthened by interpersonal contacts or made a repeated source of confusion and doubts by environmental pressures — for example, the pressures of one's peer group, or repeated bouts with a chronic illness.
Mercury and Venus transiting over natal planets may be related respectively to the passing influence, direct or indirect and insidious, that the cerebro-mental and emotional trends operating in a culture and its fashions have upon the people living in that society. And intellectual fashions are as much in evidence as fashions in clothing and group-behavior or interpersonal relationships such as marriage and love-affairs. We may believe that the way we feel and express ourselves emotionally is strictly our own, indeed, an absolutely personal matter; but this is a fantastic illusion, especially in our modern world where the media spread fast-changing fashions in every field of personal activity, feeling and thinking — witness the results of the movement of youth protest and the "flower children" of the late Sixties.
In principle, Venus and Mars are intimately connected with personal emotions, and these too are far more determined by collective trends and pressures than we care to admit. What psychologists and educators like to call "spontaneity" is, in the great majority of cases, the working out of unconsciously determining images, or of interpersonal influences assimilated by the psyche, but whose source has been forgotten.
The transits of Jupiter and Saturn are more specifically related to the larger aspects of collective living - to religion, the authorities, and the law. Jupiter takes about twelve years to circle the zodiac, and its passage through the natal houses at times shows the impact which money, wealth, expanded social contacts, or the desire to meet and work with people have on various fields of experience. Jupiter refers to expansion in general, but the possibility of expanding very often depends on the general conditions of business, of taxes, or of the way one's peer group reacts to religion, politics, or commerce. If Jupiter moves over a person's natal Sun or Ascendant, this does not need to mean that greater wealth or prestige is experienced, but rather that the Jupiterian factors in society will have a more focalized influence in the person's life during the time of the transit.
The nearly 30-year long cycle of Saturn is particularly important because it may interweave and react upon the also 30-year long progressed lunation cycle. The phases of these cycles do not operate simultaneously unless a person is born just at New Moon. While the progressed lunation cycles deal with the autonomous internal unfoldment of the birth-potential of the human being, the Saturn cycle refers primarily to the development of his or her sense of security and ego. During the first 30 years of life, a person largely depends upon his or her physical-emotional vitality — and in many cases also upon parental support — to give him or her a sense of security. In normal times, this sense of security takes, at the mental and emotional levels, the form of either total reliance upon a tradition and parental way of life, or of a revolt against the family and class environment — this revolt providing the youth with a negative kind of sustainment. Both alternatives, in fact, are usually experienced simultaneously, at least after puberty.
During the second 30-year cycle, the Saturnian sense of security takes, at least theoretically, an individualized character which was actually locking before the first "Saturn return". The youth in his or her twenties, however, often pretends he or she is already truly an "individual" completely self-motivated arid secure in his or her identity. Yet he or she is still constantly affected by social and financial pressures which force the would-be-individual to respond to collective pressures in order to securely maintain this identity. After 30 the problems this poses should be handled more consciously and in terms of an inner sense of security. After the age of 60, the more or less "retired" person may have found outer security in his investments, in the support of his or her children, or "social security" — or in some cases in public prestige and fame. Even if these social props are missing, an individual may develop a deep and unshakeable sense of security on the basis of a philosophical or (more often) religious kind of understanding and acceptance of his or her destiny. This is the wisdom of old age. But if the experiences of the preceding Saturn cycles have been frustrating and embittering, and life has seemed dreadfully empty, Saturn's transits may bring rigidity and sclerosis to the organic and intellectual functions represented by the planets being transited.
Yet in most cases, when Saturn transits over the zodiacal degree occupied by a natal planet, one should not be led to expect some deeply sobering or at least dreary experiences, but rather the probability of some situation impelling the ego to deal more effectively with that life-function or aspect of the personality which the natal planet symbolizes. When Saturn passes over the natal Sun, the vital forces may be negatively affected, and their tone lowered, but the cause of this should be found in either a previous weakening of the ego's stability, or in the impact of social-political or religious and ethical forces. These forces may operate from the "outside", as for example a business failure caused by a national depression or change in fashion, or an encounter with the police which either was or was not justified. There are many instances of a person assuming a heavy business responsibility or an important and demanding political office when Saturn crossed his or her natal Sun. Saturnian forces may also operate "within" the mind and psyche in terms of what used to be called "one's conscience" — the product of a collective tradition which one may have refused to follow, yet which has remained entrenched in the subconscious (the collective psychism).
Transits of Uranus are likely either to cause sudden changes or to bring transformative processes to a focus in the area of the personality these transits affect. The 84-year Uranus cycle is extremely important in our present individualistic and intellectually-oriented society. I believe that, once a human being reaches an individualized status through the use of an effective and relatively independent mind, this 84-year span is the archetypal measure of life. This of course does not mean that a person cannot live longer; but if he or she does, forces beyond his or her individuality may be operating — some of which, however, may derive from a special genetic background, in turn related to particular biospheric conditions. The 90-year period produced by three 30-year long Saturn cycles may have much to do with living a few years beyond the 84 years of the Uranus cycle. As to the transit cycles of Neptune and Pluto — respectively 163.74 and 245.33 years — they transcend the field of a normal lifespan at this present time of human evolution. Their transiting squares and semi-squares to their natal places as well as the full range of aspects they can make to other natal planets may symbolize disturbing or cathartic, but also potentially regenerative, crises of growth or identity.
The transits of these trans-Saturnian planets gain a particular importance as an individual walks on the transpersonal Path, because this individual has taken a step which, if he or she is sincere and persistent, brings him or her to the attention of the "higher collectivity" of trans-individual beings. Especially when Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto pass over the Sun, the Moon, and the four Angles of the birth-chart, they often refer to definitely critical turning points in the life of such an individual, and the astrologer using a transpersonal approach has to be very careful in suggesting what meaning these crises might have in the process of repolarization of the mind and the activities of his or her client.
It is never possible, from strictly astrological data only, to predict what concrete forms such crises may take, and the transpersonal astrologer should certainly not indulge in definite predictions. At this transpersonal level, what exactly will happen is of no real interest. The essential requirement is to be truly open to the possibility of a radical transformation of any element within one's personality. The character of the I-center of this personality may be particularly affected when Uranus crosses, opposes, or squares the Sun. The conjunction of transiting Uranus with natal Sun almost infallibly correlates with a basic change in the life of an individual on the transpersonal path, often with what is called an identity-crisis. Yet the inertia of the Saturnian insistence on inner or outer security may not allow the crisis to release its deeper potential of transformation or reorientation.
If, for example, a person loses his or her job or public position when, let us say, Mars and Uranus pass over his or her natal Midheaven, such a person may experience discouragement or bitterness (especially if Pluto is also involved), and fight to be transferred to a similar job or use his or her knowledge of the job-market for the same purpose. The planetary transits can be considered indicators of an upsetting event, which an astrologer might have expected. But the individual who has his or her mind oriented toward a process of transformation would consider this loss of job under such aspects as life's "revelation" that it was time for him or her to use this opportunity to transform whatever the Midheaven symbolizes for him or her as an individual center of consciousness — as an opportunity far deeper than merely passing from one job-situation to a similar one.
The astrologer's task at this transpersonal level is to evoke whatever seem to be new possibilities — whether of action or of understanding — to help the client "relax the cramp in the conscious" of which Carl Jung spoke, yet without losing the faculty of discrimination.
A transit of Neptune may excite and confuse the part of the personality it contacts with glamorous visions or hopes inconsistent with the individual dharma. These often use the material with which the individual's religious tradition — or some other "esoteric" teaching — had filled his or her mind. If this happens, a time often comes when Pluto will de-glamorize that mind and leave it empty and bewildered.
It is important to be aware of the rather extraordinary fact that the archetypal length of the cycles of these three transformative agents of the galaxy as they revolve around the Sun are so interrelated that two Uranus cycles equal one Neptune cycle, and three Neptune cycles, one Pluto cycle.(6) In other words, the operations of these three planets should be studied and understood as constituting a threefold process. What begins with Uranus, proceeds through Neptune and — as far as we are able to comprehend at this time — ends with Pluto. This does not mean that there is no planet beyond Pluto; one may have been discovered, but it may not be a planet in the same sense as the others. Even if it is, Pluto may still represent the end of a particular process — the total atomization of what was once a "solid" structure. This process, symbolized by Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, if successful should be followed by another phase referring to re-organization at a new level. I have symbolized this reorganization process under the name Proserpine — but Proserpine may not be a visible planet. It might remain invisible if the collective, planet-wide crisis of transformation now being experienced by mankind is not given a constructive meaning and ends in some kind of catastrophe.
6) l have discussed the interactions between these cycles and the meaning of the passages of these three planets through each zodiacal sign in my book The Sun is Also a Star already-mentioned. The transits through the natal houses were treated in The Astrological Houses.
Considered from a holistic point of view, the value of transits is that they help us divide a human life-span in several ways, and thus enable the astrologer to watch the unfolding of a complex pattern which can mean not only personal growth, but also transpersonal transformation. Seen from a person-centered point of view, this pattern is itself encompassed by the repetitive circle of birth, death, and new birth; what had been potential "in seed" develops, reaches a degree of fulfillment, then disintegrates — leaving some kind of harvest and a definite amount of unspent energy and unfinished business, both of which in turn will condition a new life-cycle. This cyclic sequence constitutes what the Hindus called samsara — the wheel of birthing and dying — the wheel of karma, always revolving, producing new and often repetitive lives, all related to one another according to a "horizontal" kind of relationship-in-time.
The transpersonal approach, especially when founded upon the principle of holarchy, evokes for us the possibility of another kind of process — a multilevel process that does not close upon itself. Such an approach postulates the interaction and interdependence of lesser and greater Wholes. It reveals the relative value and purpose of the "I-realization" to which our Western world's individualism (or philosophical "Personalism," or occult monadology) has given an absolute character. It attempts to evoke through symbols of universalistic interaction and interdependence the twofold interrelationships between levels of wholeness — the "descent" of the higher being synchronous with the "ascent" of the lower — and of their eventual meeting.
What results from this meeting — this "marriage of Heaven and Earth" — is still, for most of us, a great mystery. Today it no longer needs to be a mystery; or rather, it can be understood and experienced as a "Mystery" in the ancient sense of the word: a ritual celebration within which action instantly reveals its meaning, and consciousness and activity fuse into a poem of existence. At this stage of the development of consciousness, human existence can be considered and indeed experienced as a wholeness of being gradually realized through cyclic and multilevel processes of change. Each level has its place and function. Each level answers to a basic kind of need; and all needs and all solutions interact and interpenetrate.
In the same sense, all approaches to astrology, whether in the mode of analytical knowledge or of synthesizing wisdom, can be said to interact and interpenetrate. Every approach, if sincerely, honestly, and effectively followed, can meet the need of some kind of human being. Yet because mankind today has reached new levels of knowledge and should also attain higher levels of understanding, the need for new symbols and new levels of interpretation is a fact that can no longer be dismissed or circumvented. The transpersonal approach to astrology presents us with a way of thinking which can help us to bring into a more ordered and meaningful pattern the increasingly more complex experiences whose impacts may easily confuse or even bewilder our mind and feelings. Objectively and unemotionally watching the unfoldment of this pattern can bring periodic revelations to individuals intent on using whatever confronts them in the fullest and most transformative way possible.
The Astrology of Transformation
