As I mentioned in my little bio, I fell in love with astrology for its symbology and initially approached it as another discipline to learn in a “scientific” manner: gathering as many “facts” as needed to use such discipline. After all, I was mainly studying engineering with a dash of nonscientific knowledge in the form of philosophy, but even there I stuck to subjects related to intellectual reasoning.
Years later, already in the United States, I found the books of Dane Rudhyar and figuratively shelved an intuition: he was approaching astrology unlike any other author I had read, less appealing to my scientific mind but which resonated with my aborted philosophical career. A philosopher, says Rudhyar, doesn’t stop at the facts nor tries to get knowledge from them so as to use them, he instead pierces through the facts for the meaning behind them.
What I literally did shelf were his books, haha. Nonetheless, that intuition made me buy nearly every book Rudhyar authored, initially only about astrology but later about most other topic. Furthermore, I had them on a special shelf, moving them from city to city without ever being read. Sure, at times I would look at their table of contents but I even bought a second copy of one of his books, forgetting that I had one collecting dust already! And now it’s a book to which I refer often, for it is where he discusses, among other topics, the Gifts of the Spirit for each sign of the zodiac when interpreted as a psychological type.
Understanding Rudhyar
After I came back to Mexico and had two more existential crises, I reached to astrology as I had done in the past. This time, however, the approach I had learned to be a decent amateur astrologer, mostly represented by Noel Tyl’s humanistic astrology, was insufficient to help me. So, I dusted off Rudhyar’s books and began a journey that tied many loose ends in my psyche and eventually led to the WhatsApp messages that preceded this blog.
In the last few days, I read “The Astrology of Transformation”, Rudhyar’s final book on astrology. It was published in 1980, around the time I began to collect his books and just five years before his death. Surprisingly, or perhaps not, the concepts he introduced in this book, which he called his “astrological testament”, were not new to me as I read them for the first time! They are the logical conclusions of his entire philosophy which, I suddenly realized, is now my philosophy. I truly understand it, not only in the sense of being able to identify with it but, more importantly, how to apply it in the service of others.
In the book, Rudhyar talks about four different approaches to astrology as a psychological tool for helping a client in need, depending on the level of consciousness at which the client operates: biological, sociocultural, individual, or trans-individual. Some of you may remember a similar categorization I formulated over a year ago about four spheres of consciousness, to wit: biological organism, member of society, conscious individual, and spiritual being. I preferred calling them spheres, rather than levels, because they form a holarchy: a hierarchy of wholes based on encompassment, in other words, a greater whole encompasses all smaller wholes “contained” within itself. Let’s review the four spheres, updating their description to include some newer concepts since I last talked about them.
Biological Organism
Within this sphere, a human being is only a very sophisticated animal. In animals, the reactions to life events are governed by the instincts of the species and not the particular specimen, taking into account the cycles of day and night, the seasons, and the lunation. In a way, these were the conditions of early men when the tribe would act with a collective consciousness, protecting and ensuring its survival over any individual needs. Given the cycles lived, the astrology required was one of the lights: Sun and Moon. Astrology may have been used by early humanity to understand the cycles mentioned earlier, especially as it pertained to agriculture and other seasonal activities.
I once mentioned that medical astrology is a branch that focuses on biological organisms in modern times.
Member of Society
Once a human being realizes that he (or she, obviously) is not alone, he begins to interact with others in ways shaped by his family and ancestry, culture, and religion. Gradually, he builds a sense of “I” which gives rise to the ego as the set of mental functions—I prefer not to make the ego an entity—that maintains and feeds that sense of “I”. Such functions, his ego, are only able to draw content from whatever is available in either his conscious mind or his subconscious, and these only contain memories conditioned by his family and ancestry, culture and religion; at least at first.
Any sense of “I” automatically brings a “thou” which causes friction, particularly as it pertains to those people with ideas conditioned by a different sociocultural, ancestral or religious environment. Such friction may be resolved in what could be called the Yang way: by a direct confrontation to be won by some agreed-upon manner, or the Yin way: by understanding the other’s point of view. Either way, the member of society “succeeds” by navigating the waters of life amid such friction, under the guidance of the ego functions of his conscious mind.
It should be noted that most people operate in the field of experiences we call “life” as members of society, and that it is perfectly possible to lead a successful and reasonably happy life, to the point of being able to compensate some of their previous karma by living their personal destiny, albeit unconsciously.
The aforementioned humanistic astrology, as exemplified by Noel Tyl and his students, uses in part a set of correlations between planetary data and psychological needs, as defined by Abraham Maslow in his seminal article in the journal Psychological Review: “A Theory of Human Motivation” (1943). By understanding the pressures felt by the client in some fields of his life experience (astrological houses) with respect to specific needs (planets and signs) and their relationships (aspects), the humanistic approach may shed light on how to best use the ego power to survive and perhaps even thrive in the midst of a crisis.
Conscious Individual
Some people realize that there is more to their mind than its conscious content and perhaps some of what seems “external” is propitiated or even caused by their own mind. Perhaps a combination of synchronicities begins to reveal patterns when we react in bizarre and yet predictable ways to external stimuli, or when we repeat unsuccessful patterns of behavior. Whatever the reason, an individual begins to realize that his ego is influenced by psychic forces outside his conscious mind and seeks to integrate his entire psyche through the process that C.G. Jung called individuation. Jung claimed that at least a portion of that process will be attempted by everyone in their lifetime, mostly unconsciously.
By incorporating the contents of the unconscious to our conscious mind, we integrate our self image with our relatedness image, producing an individuality who will establish relationships from a position of individual power, instead of seeking to obtain power from others.
The goal, according to Jung, is an integrated personality centered in the Self, not the Ego—both capitalized to indicate archetypes. It should be noted that a personality’s “self” is still an “I”-center, even though it is now found at the center of the birth chart and not in the Saturn–Moon pair that symbolizes the ego functions, as we have seen in previous articles. In fact, the horoscope of a conscious individual may be interpreted as a mandala of personality where every symbolism is referred to its center. Even Jung’s four psychological functions may be found in the angles of such mandala, namely the cusps of the houses I (Ascendant), IV (I.C.), VII (Descendant) and X (Midheaven or M.C.), which correspond to Intuition, Feeling, Sensation and Thinking, respectively.
When a client’s consciousness operates within the sphere of a conscious individual, his problems are less of specific needs not being met and more of desiring a holistic understanding of who he is and how he relates to others. Issues like the eccentricity between our self image and our relatedness one, which produces internal friction, may be readily addressed by an evolutionary approach to astrology.
Most of what I have written is aimed at the growing number of conscious individuals, people who want to be the best distinct human personality they can possibly be while living their personal destiny, even though they still represent a minority to the vast numbers of members of society.
Spiritual Being
When we talked about the Cycle of Man, we mentioned the process poorly named “reincarnation”, by which a person is temporarily “bound” (for lack of a better term) to a “soul field”. Rudhyar spoke of the process of individualization as the integration of “body and soul” into an individual with reflective consciousness, which essentially means being conscious of his consciousness.
As stated on multiple occasions, the goal is to reach the state of Illumined Man, what Rudhyar called a “trans-individual” who actualizes a Spiritual Quality, a Letter in the original Word or Logos. Such state is achieved in part through a process of evolutionary spiritual growth over successive incarnations, where at any given time the current one is related to all prior in a manner similar to how ancestry operates in a person’s physicality. An illumined man belongs to what Rudhyar called the Pleroma, the shared consciousness of all illumined men which I termed Aeonic, for an Aeon is the duration of a Cycle of Being. This will be the Godhead Consciousness of maximum Unity at the end of each such cycle.
Rather than operating from an “I”-center, spiritual beings attempt to do so from a “We”-center that upon illumination will be the aeonic pleroma itself. Thus, the self must step aside much like the ego did in the previous sphere—and that is not easy to do. A spiritual being will have worked hard to integrate his being as a conscious individual but for some reason it wasn’t enough. He hears a call from within to become an organic member of an integrated humanity that no individual achievement can fulfill.
The transition from member of society to conscious individual may begin subconsciously, according to Jung, but not so to become a spiritual being. Matter rises to Spirit who descends to complete the divine marriage and thus the individual must reach to Spirit first. He or she must enter what occult traditions call the Path, which is entered through an Initiation process that identifies the self who must step aside. As we move along the Path, our conscious mind gradually begins to accept the subtlest Pleroma consciousness.
If the number of conscious individuals is small, it is easy to see that very few people will require the specific astrology of the Path. That said, astrology for spiritual beings must utilize a transpersonal approach, where the symbology is reversed, so to speak. Instead of interpreting the symbols as psychological needs or as opportunities for growth as individuals, they become signs of detachment, parts of our being that may be strongly felt as key components of the self and thus must be transcended.
Recall that, as in a mandala, all features in the chart of a conscious individual are interpreted in relation to the self at its center, where the horizon and meridian meet. The chart of a spiritual being, however, is like a mandala without a center. Its features must be interpreted as ways to release and let go, not just of the ego but of the self.
Astrology of Meaning
Much has happened in the last half century or so since Rudhyar tried to prepare the astrological community for a new approach that would soon be required, given an imminent threshold which we are actually living nowadays. Not only that, some of the inferences he outlined in his penultimate astrology book ”The Galactic Dimension of Astrology” are happening much faster or already happened earlier than predicted. There is a definite global sensation of newness that can only be categorized as Aquarian.
The value of community over strata and the rebellion to anything obsolete or in clear obsolescence, symbolized by Saturn’s functions and institutions, are clear indicators of the shift from Pisces and its reliance on solutions “from above” to Aquarius and its emphasis on mutual reliance and the power of relatedness.
And what can be said about science and technology, another aspect of Aquarius? The number of discoveries in this century, and the speed with which we gain more knowledge is incredible. Astronomy and cosmology, in particular, keep on providing more knowledge than astrology can assimilate, leading to new areas of specialization, as epitomized by the many astrologers focused on subplanetary bodies.
A few people, growing in number, are seeking meaning and fulfillment in their life. If properly interpreted, using perhaps a combination of the evolutionary and transcendental approaches, the birth chart may provide such meaning and point the way to fulfill it. I am committed to use Rudhyar’s philosophy and devise a study, or set of studies, that will help conscious individuals wanting to fulfill their destiny and spiritual beings either entering or firmly walking the Path. More on this as it develops.
Always Love. 🌹🙏💖
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