*
PROLOGUE
This book could be called my astrological testament, in the sense that it brings to a conclusion my attempt to reformulate and give a new direction to modern astrology.
The first part of this 45-year-long endeavor began in 1933 when I started to write for the then new magazine American Astrology, founded by Paul Clancy, a series of monthly articles which was to last for more than twenty years. The first group of articles was used as a foundation for my book, The Astrology of Personality, published in 1936 at the request of Alice Bailey who had started the Lucis Press in New York.
This first part of my astrological work was brought to a conclusion in 1968 when I formed the International Committee for a Humanistic Astrology (ICHA) and wrote six essays now published as Person-Centered Astrology (N.Y.: A.S.I. Publishers). The second part began with the publication of From Humanistic to Transpersonal Astrology (Palo Alto, CA: Seed Center, 1975) and The Sun Also a Star; The Galactic Dimension of Astrology (N.Y.:A.S.I. Publishers). This present volume concludes what I am able to say concerning what I call "transpersonal astrology."
I began to use the term transpersonal in 1930, long before the movement of transpersonal psychology was started, and with a meaning quite different from the one the word has recently taken on in the field of psychology. I defined as transpersonal a process of "descent" of transcendent spiritual power and illumination through the normal consciousness, and eventually through the whole personality of a human being. The source of that power and light exists in a realm "beyond" the personal consciousness and the ego, but I saw in the transpersonal action a descent of power rather than an ascent of a person's consciousness and emotions. In traditional religious terms, as a man prays to God his soul reaches up to the Divine; and God answers by an outpouring of "grace" — a descent of the Holy Spirit. The transpersonal approach I have been presenting does not follow any strictly religious system of thought; neither is it "mystical" in the usual sense of the term. It is essentially metaphysical and cosmological — or one may say cosmontological, as it refers to cosmic "being" (ontos).
The term metaphysical, however, need not frighten anyone, because as I am using it, it simply refers to the expansion and generalization of very concrete, universal experiences and everyday modes of operation. For example, the two basic approaches to life-situations and personal problems I discuss in the first chapter of this book are matters of common human experience. All I have done is to go to the root of what they reveal, and to show that they can be related to opposite, yet from a more inclusive point of view, complementary cosmic polarities — the same polarities Chinese philosophy has named Yin and Yang.
Thus, basic human experience provides the foundation for what can become, potentially at least, powerful symbols evoking new possibilities in our lives. Unfortunately, however, most people are still unaware of the immense power of the symbols, and of the complex sequences of symbols forming the great mythos on which culture is always based. Perhaps most unfortunate yet, many young people grossly underestimate, or refuse to consider, the effect on what they call their "personal" lives of the symbols of the culture in which they have been born and raised. Especially because of the transcendent character of the transpersonal approach to life I have been presenting, I have had to use symbols to convey its basic realizations.
Astrology is the main symbol I have been using. It deals with the central problem of human existence, because it refers to the most basic of all such problems: the meaning of the relationship between man and the universe of which he is a part. It does so because the prima materia, as it were, of astrology refers to the most primordial and universal of all human experiences (at least, as far as our present humanity is concerned): the experience of the sky in its day and night aspects, thus of light and darkness, of waking consciousness and sleep. What astrology essentially does is merely to interpret this experience of the sky. It can be, and always has been, interpreted in two ways:(1) the symbolic and evocative way, which sees in the whole sky and the ordered motions of the lights of Sun, Moon, planets, and stars a revelation of the order of earthly nature in as well as outside of man — and, (2) the empirical and descriptive way, which seeks to give a systematic formulation to the correspondence between recurring events in nature and periodic changes in the positions of, and interrelationships among celestial bodies.
Today astronomy presents us with a picture of the sky fundamentally different from the ancient worldview. The human perspective has radically changed. We no longer think of the dualism of sky and earth, above and below. We are aware of the Earth as a planet within a solar system, which is but a small unit in an immense system of stars, the Milky Way Galaxy — itself in turn only one of apparently billions of galaxies. Whether all these galaxies are contained within a closed space, the universe, or whether they spread out into infinite space — we really do not know, even if many theories have been advanced.
Similarly, the validity of the picture of the constitution of human beings which our Western civilization had built on the foundation provided by the Hebraic and Greco-Latin tradition has been challenged in several ways since the mid-nineteenth century. The dualism of body and soul, of the human animal wedded to an angel, is giving way to the more complex concept of levels (or "planes") of being — of consciousness and activity. Such a concept is the foundation for not only the new and transpersonal approach to astrology I have initiated, but also for a multilevel kind of psychology which I had envisioned a long time ago — particularly in a large, unpublished volume, The Age of Plenitude (1942) — and about which I have lectured in recent years. This approach to psychology was more specifically outlined in my most recently published book, Beyond Individualism; The Psychology of Transformation (Wheaton, IL: Quest Books, 1979).
This present volume riot only adapts to astrological thinking and practice that multilevel approach to an understanding of Man (in the archetypal and non-sexual sense of the term), but it adds many new details to the formulations presented in Beyond Individualism. In this present book, the word "astrologer" could in most instances be replaced by "psychologist", for my approach to the immensely complex problems engendered by the mere fact of living in our city-dominated society transcends strictly defined categories of thought.
Understanding and, whenever possible, applying this multilevel approach is of paramount importance in any study of the development of societies and their cultures as well as of the growth of individual human beings. Every person, since birth, has been totally conditioned by the assumptions or beliefs of the culture in which he or she has grown up. The power of these assumptions and of the collective mentality formed by usually rigid religious, philosophical, or scientific concepts or dogmas is nearly as great as that of biological drives; and at times culture can overcome biology.
In the first chapter of this book, I have defined what I consider two basic ways in which human beings can meet the experiences of their everyday living. These two ways also refer to the characteristic spirit that pervades and ensouls a culture, its institutions, its basic philosophy, art-forms, and literature. At least for the last millennium, our Western civilization has powerfully stressed one of these two approaches to life, and in so doing it has produced both a spectacularly effective technology based on a relative mastery of material processes, and an increasingly ominous worldwide situation that could easily spell disaster. The other approach to life-situations and psychological problems is usually not well understood, because its character and implications have been presented in what, to our Euro-American mentality, seems to be a far too subjective, confusing, and naively symbolical manner by the men and cultures that have followed this approach. Symbols have, inevitably, to be used when trying to convey the meaning of this way of life, because it eludes precise intellectual and rationalistic definitions; but symbols can be used in different ways, and new ones more befitting the Western mind are now available.
Astrology today can, and I believe should, be considered a symbolic language — indeed a great mythos that could inspire and lead to much needed psychospiritual realizations many of the people who have recently been made to vicariously experience a totally new picture of the universe and the Earth, and who have acquired therefore a new sense of space and of cosmic organization. Technology has provided us with a distant view of our planet as a whole, experienced thus as the homeland of a humanity compelled, mostly against its will, to realize its fundamental unity in spite of constant international, religious, and ideological conflicts. But the science that produced this technology has not been able to create out of its discoveries symbols that could move and illumine the minds and souls of individuals, and still less of nation.
We need such symbols. Yet today only a small minority of vanguard minds are able to deal significantly with even symbols of the past, and attempts at creating new ones have mostly been failures or only temporary successes artificially induced by the media. Astrology, however, has kept spreading — but most of the time for superficial reasons. It has spread partly as a protest against the materialism and spiritual emptiness of our society, and against the academic institutions still hypnotized by the empirical method and the rigor of intellectual thinking — and partly as an escape from the responsibility of making decisions for which no rational reasons could be found for moving in one direction or another, so complex and filled with "unknowables" our modern society has become.
Astrologers, eager to acquire an intellectual respectability and a legal status long denied to them, have sought to "prove" the validity of their "science" by empirical research and statistical methods; but in the meantime, modern science itself, especially since the revolution induced by Planck and Einstein, has increasingly become a symbolic language. A holistic approach is gradually challenging the atomistic character of "classical" science. The worldview evoked by a new breed of "philosophers of science" reaches far beyond the rational. Some of the most progressive and farseeing physicists are touching almost transcendent fields of existence and evoking through their complex mathematical symbols the feeling of the inter-relatedness of everything to everything else — a feeling that has been sung for centuries by mystical poets and interpreted in cosmic terms by great seers and occultists. The field is indeed being prepared at all levels for a planet-wide refocalization of human consciousness and a reorientation of collective, as well as individual, hopes and desires. Astrology can play a significant role in the process — provided it does not cling to obsolescent "classical" ideas and a kind of practice that does not help or inspire increasingly individualized and self-actualizing persons to transcend their old habits of thinking and feeling, and repolarize their energies.
Such a help is needed badly. People everywhere need understanding as well as guidance. They are confused by a multitude of options which they are unable to evaluate because they lack the required perspective and clarity of mind. The problem is how this needed help and guidance is to be given and, first of all, on what basis?
The only basis I can find practical and effective as well as philosophically — and even aesthetically — significant is a multilevel approach to the human being. In terms of cosmology, or "cosmontology", this approach leads one to consider the universe as a hierarchy of fields of existence or systems of organization. It leads to the concept, not merely of "holism" in the sense Jan Smuts used it in his seminal book, Holism and Evolution,(1) but of what I have called holarchy.(2) In its application to human psychology and the future possibility of humanity's development, the concept of holarchy inevitably leads to the realization that a state of more-than-individual (or "transindividual") existence is not only a possibility, but the only unglamorous, realistic and practical way to give meaning and direction to the present day struggle of individuals and nations toward what many people, often naively, call the New Age.
1) (London & N.Y.: MacMillan Co., 1926).
2) The philosophical and cosmological use of the concept can be found in my book The Planetarization of Consciousness, now in its third edition (N.Y.: A.S.I. Publishers, 1977). At the time I wrote the book, however, I did not use the term publicly. The term itself is used and explored from various points of view in other works of mine, for example, We Can Begin Again - Together, Occult Preparations for a New Age and Culture, Crisis and Creativity, as well as in my already-mentioned most recent book. Beyond Individualism: The Psychology of Transformation.
The possibility of a really "new" Age can be seen in the interrelated cycles of planetary and cosmic motions, if properly interpreted, but cycles do not determine what will happen. They only evoke the possibility of the happenings and if it happens, something of its basic character. Man alone can decide what actually and concretely will happen — at least at Man's own level of existence.
Humanity is only a part of vaster wholes — the planet, the solar system, our galaxy — and these wholes hierarchically set the cosmic and planetary stages; yet, on the stage of the Earth's biosphere Man is a crucially important performer. Humanity no doubt has a role to perform, at least broadly defined by its place within these vaster wholes. The "score" is not of Man's own making, but the performance is nevertheless his, for better or for worse; and every truly individualized human being is a responsible aspect of Humanity-as-a-whole. The whole acts not only in the individual, but through the individual. The whole realizes itself in and through the acts, feelings, and thoughts of its individualized participants who have become open to its descents of power. As this occurs, the transindividual state of existence is reached.
The way to such a state is what I call the transpersonal path. In no basic sense is it different from what esoteric traditions have spoken of as the Path of Initiation; yet this hoary and haloed word, Initiation, can be seen in a new light once the human being who is to tread the path leading to it has actually emerged from the chrysallis-state of bondage to the particular culture that had formed his or her mind and conditioned his or her feeling-responses and behavioral habits.
Transpersonal astrology is astrology reoriented and repolarized to meet the needs of such individualized, or individualizing, human beings. It is not intended to meet the needs of every human being. It cannot be significantly and validly used by every astrologer; but neither should the controls of an atomic reactor be given to any college graduate having majored in ordinary physics. In the last chapter of this book I shall speak of the serious responsibility incurred by anyone using a truly transpersonal approach.
In closing this Prologue, may I stress the fact that every system of, or approach to, astrology may answer the need of, or fulfill a valid function for, at least some human beings. This is why a multilevel understanding of what is possible, meaningful to and especially required for a particular client is necessary. Moreover, at every level, the Astrologer — and this applies as well to the psychologist and psychotherapist — can approach his or her relationship to the client in two basic ways. The choice of the way depends on the astrologer's temperament, training, and philosophy of living. Both ways can be valuable, depending on the circumstances and the character and state of development of the two persons involved in the consultation. What these two ways imply will be the first topic I shall consider.
This will lead to a study of the meaning, value and purpose of symbols. Then I shall attempt to throw light on each of the four basic levels at which the data provided by astrology can be interpreted. There must be different levels of interpretation because the consciousness, and the energies of human beings can be focused at any one of these levels — and at times the focus of the consciousness oscillates from one level to the next.
Operating at the fourth level, however, is still for most human beings only a future possibility, and in the majority of cases a distant one at that. Yet, because mankind is today passing through a crucial crisis of reorganization and transformation, an increasing number of individuals, whether they are conscious of it or not, are seeking to work toward the concrete realization of this distant transindividual future.
For this reason, a greater understanding of what is involved in the transpersonal path of radical transformation is imperative. I can only hope that what I have written will assist those who are ready to gain such an understanding and to separate the possibilities inherent in our stage of evolution from the glamour and the ghosts of past eras.
The Astrology of Transformation
