Proem

There is a remarkable autobiographical fragment written by Francis Bacon around 1603/04, "in stately Latin", and found in his cabinet. It consists of a "Proem", in the form of reflections on his life's work, and in the course of it he says: "For myself, I found that I was fitted for nothing so well as the Study of Truth; as having a mind nimble and versatile enough to catch the Resemblances of Things (which is the chief point) and at the same time steady enough to fix and distinguish their Subtler Differences; as being gifted by nature with "Desire to Seek, patience to Doubt, fondness to Meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to consider, carefulness to dispose and set in order; and as being a man that neither affects what is new nor admires what is old, and hates every kind of Imposture. so I thought my nature had a kind of familiarity and Relationship with Truth".

Having had a similar motivation myself all my life, and having been able, in the most crucial seven year period between the ages of 63-70 (1979-1986), to be introduced to and study in depth, and in parallel, both astrology and the works of Jung, I was led, between 1991 and 1993, by destiny or the stars, to incorporate a summary of all I had learned up to then, of the knowledge I had put together in this lifetime, in a book, Astrology as a New Model of Reality", subtitled: The Philosophy of Astrology and its Relation to Jungian Psychology. 

As well as the particular themes indicated in the title and sub-title, the subject of this work is that one has to be inclusive as possible, for knowledge of any particular subject to be correctly aligned to the current state of knowledge in other fields. This is contrary to the prevailing custom of considering each subject as a law unto itself, with its own dogmas that do not have to be subject to criticism from other fields. It can and does ignore advances in other such fields that may invalidate those dogmas, and for this reason its adherents prefer not to hear about them. But unless our ideas develop consistently along the whole front they become quickly irrelevant if not obstructive and subversive.

Most people are uneasy with anything that exceeds their own limits of consciousness, and like to be left undisturbed within their own circle of familiar ideas, while conventional opinion safely takes care of all the rest. Or they identify their own egos with their territory. To range too widely and to bring in other things is too much of a threat or challenge.

People correctly educated, knowing only particular subjects, even unconventional ones like astrology, will think on reading me that I get all my facts wrong, since nothing I say conforms to what they have been taught in school, university or Sunday bible class, in so far as it refers to anything they have considered at all; or else it touches on subjects they would rather not consider, such as the psychology of the unconscious, since this tends to undermine their favourite fantasies, beliefs, convictions and projections. 

I address this question of general tunnel vision, and the resulting mental that prevails in our world, in the Introduction to the above work, perhaps in rather uncompromising terms. the equivalent in the social and political world is unyielding sectarian dogmatism - frozen minds. It is true that it may be difficult for those committed to a specific career, and having to qualify in ti within a limited time and financial span, to cover a wide range, or even several subjects, and perhaps the absence of such a career favoured this in my case, as well as a predominance of earth and air, leading to a realistic balance between physical, practical activity and intellectual pursuits, initially between science and art (in astrology, saturn conjunct Neptune). And a predilection for one thing led to another.

Music and Meaning

BY
MICHAEL McMULLIN

There are two aspects to the question of meaning in music, one of them involving the specifically musical ways of expressing meaning, the technical analysis of the process of musical symbolism; the other involves a discussion of the meanings expressed, of meaning in general and the role of music in this context in Western civilization. I have gone into the first of these aspects in a previous essay, "The Three Dimensions of Music" (unpublished), at least to the extent of defining the nature of symbolism, of a symbolic analysis and, in a general way/the various kinds of interpenetrating meanings and levels of symbolism in music. An introductory essay on this subject was published in The Music Review of February, 1947 under the title "The Symbolic Analysis of Music". My present endeavour is to call attention to the second aspect.

DAS SYMBOL: The concept of symbol is fundamental to any discussion of meaning, and so it must be said here that the sense in which I am using the word "meaning" is that of symbolic significance—that is, in the sense of seeing in the particular manifestation an expression of a greater whole. This inclusive- ness can expand in ever-widening circles, like the ripples from a stone dropped into water, until eventually the whole cosmos is implied. This is the universe in a grain of sand, or: "As above, so below". Each part is a whole in itself and, at the same time, a part and a reflection (a microcosm) of a greater whole. This is the philosophy now called "holism" but it is also symbolism. And, what is more, it accords with the principle of correspondences, which is the basis of astrology and much ancient wisdom. Thus, meaning is not a matter of rationalistic concepts or material values, but of awareness of relationships and correspondences, depending on sensation, feeling and intuition in equal proportions to thinking. Here we are dealing with perceptions and not with opinions.

We are focusing our attention on wholeness and relatedness, as well as on distinctness—first we have to have differentiation and then integration of the separate entities into a greater whole, so that "integration" becomes a keyword. We no longer see the world as a collection of unrelated fragments—that is, as meaningless. There is nevertheless a strong reluctance prevalent today among those conditioned by past prejudices to see connections between things; they prefer to have everything in separate pigeon-holes, filed and indexed and, above all, disposed of and requiring no further thought. This suits what Jung called "the levelling platitudes of the so-called scientific view of the world, and the destruction of the instinctual and emotional forces which results from it". "The whole of reality is replaced by words", which are separative. Therefore there are no standards of value, no means of comparing concepts with nature. Art, on the other hand, deals in whole reality and provides such a contact and a basis of values. It might be argued that the evaluation of perceptions is arbitrary. Some people—most people today, probably—like to see the commonplace in everything. This is the "reductionist" mentality; the ideal is to reduce everything to "nothing but", as Jung pointed out. The highest expressions of the spirit are "nothing but" repressed sexuality, the fear of death or looking forward to the next meal, and the whole universe is "nothing but" a random assemblage, or disassemblage, of atoms, electrons or something else. Others prefer to see the wonderful in everything, or the whole in everything, and a totality of order and meaning. Is there a qualitative difference between these two points of view? What you see depends upon your level of development. The minds of commonplace people are inevitably rooted in the commonplace, and it does not occur to them that Bach, Beethoven and other great artists move on another mental and spiritual level. One can deal only with what is within one's own experience, and the lesser cannot comprehend the greater. "One cannot talk of the ocean to a frog in a well." Art, on this higher level, is an esoteric language, addressed only to initiates or, at most, to seekers on the path. Particularly is this so in music, where special powers of insight and receptivity have to be consciously developed and matured.

I am concerned only with music in Western culture, where it occupies a unique place and is of a different order from that of any other. It is, as Spengler pointed out, the dominant and most characteristic art of our culture, that which, more than'" any other, embodies its essential Weltanschauung. Further, music has reached with us a far higher level of development than it has done in any other culture—and of music alone of the arts can this be said. There is absolutely no comparison between the complexity and sophistication, the immense and varied resources and the technical mastery over them, of Western music and those of any other culture. It is true that this development is overwhelmingly intellectual, and in the order of the "aesthetical" as opposed to the "magical" (Rudhyar), or "telluric" (Keyserling) element of Oriental music. Different dimensions are emphasized. But our music is also a vehicle for the expression of a correspondingly vaster, more grandiose and higher order of mental and spiritual concepts. The development of polyphony gives the potentiality for an entirely new level of expression and of a more powerful expression than that of any other an. This has been fully realized, and music has been the source of the highest spiritual expression throughout our culture. One can say that the voice of God has come to the West not through organized religion but through music, and that music's great "bodhisattvas", or avatars have been the messengers of a higher reality. This can be directly experienced in their music, but one never hears of music in this context, or not of Western music. Present Westerners in general are unaware of and indifferent to their priceless musical heritage, or those seeking a "spiritual" music go in search of any kind of exotic music but never their own, while those who concern themselves with music insist for the most part in regarding it as having no relation to anything in life—unless merely to the composer's personal mundane or physiological concerns or perhaps to his personal intellectual problem of how to modulate from C to F minor in three moves.

Awareness of music on a spiritual plane, however, has to be cultivated, like any other kind of spiritual awareness. But for us Westerners, at this stage of evolution, music is an obvious and eminently available gateway to a higher level of experience, and a means of meditation. An insight into this experience can be had through psychedelics; Aldous Huxley has given one description. But it can also be had sometimes as an unexpected and spontaneous revelation, provided one is open to significance in music. Part of this awareness is a new and intense responsiveness—resonance--to the actual sound-vibrations, the "tone" itself as a physical and qualitative sensation. This is the "magical" element that Rudhyar points out as the main dimension in Oriental music; but it is present in our music too, though unrecognized by theorists. Composers, however, are very much aware of it, and it is one of the three indispensable dimensions in all and any music and also the basis of symbolic effect. This intense consciousness of the tone is also a very important factor for the performer if he is to make the music come alive. This factor is of course developed in combinations of tones, as tone-colour in instrumentation, and was even a very important and conscious element in early vocal polyphony.

Meaning, in this higher sense, is something directly perceived and selfevident once one is open to this dimension and is not "translatable" into words—or there is no need to translate it. For example, in listening to the great choruses in Bach's B minor Mass one is obviously in the Himalayas of music and of the spirit. Perhaps this is what is meant by the champions of "pure" music. But there are innumerable layers of meaning, and at less rarefied altitudes it helps to analyse them and to be able to point to them. Such an analysis, it must be remembered, is not a "translation" but "a finger pointing at the moon". It may help in understanding the music; but perhaps it helps more in understanding everything else, by comparing concepts with music. By doing this systematically we arrive at a new and non-rationalist method of thinking.

There is a type of meaning that resides purely in what one might call quality of feeling. A good example is the "second subject"—actually the main subject—of the first movement of Schubert's string Quintet in C. The movement is focused on this theme, which is the only real melodic subject in it, and on the peculiar quality of feeling it contains. It seems a very simple melody, and one might say it is very appealing, a lovely tune, sad or happy according to taste, and leave it at that, as usually one must. But to understand its essential quality, and therefore its message, is not at all easy. Of course it is contrasted with the introductory and almost despairing passages that precede it ("first subject" etc.), and this puts it in context. Then one has to put oneself in a state of complete openness and, at the same time, of concentration, and it may take many hearings and much contemplation to capture its essence, which is very elusive. It is an intimate message of one soul to another—or of collective humanity. Of course here again its quality cannot be rendered in words, but if we can point to some of the impressions we get it might help others to appreciate it—or it might not. At any rate, we can deny that it is merely "aesthetical", or no more than a vaguely pleasurable experience, or a mere foil to the "first subject", and we can say that it has spiritual significance, with some intensity. There is no need to say anything of the extraordinary beauty of the second movement, which may be self-evident enough to allow the use of this very unspecific word.

In this example we are almost exclusively concerned with the dimension of feeling, which is the least analysable in words. Much more can be said in the context of the other two dimensions, those of sense-perception and thinking. These three correspond to Jung's three basic psychological functions, and in "The Three Dimensions of Music" I have denned them as "Lyrical", "Dramatic" and "Symphonic" (or "Epic"), on the most general level. In the process of symbolism they correspond to the Individual, the particular object (sensation), and the world in general or the cosmos. The central phase of the process—the particular perception or sensation—could be called the "symbol" and sets up the relationship: subject object cosmos. But "symbol" is more the entire process. In music, the corresponding dimensions are melodic (pitch rhythm), tonal (instrumental) and form. All are rhythmic, and "harmony" is either an extension or counterpoint of pitch rhythm or of tonal rhythm (harmonics). In the dimension of feeling (the individual's response) we are concerned with evaluation. In that of sensation we are concerned with the objective or concrete experience, but on successive levels, from that of the sound, via all kinds of correspondences involving the other senses, to that of any part of the perceived environment (nature), while in thinking we relate ourselves to the universe, in our philosophical or religious function or Weltanschauung, and express our evolutionary status and our historical environment, in the most general sense embodied in musical forms. All the dimensions interpenetrate and exist, in greater or lesser degree, in any artistic expression. In "classical" art the proportion is balanced. The three dimensions or functions correspond to the elements Water (feeling), Earth (sensation) and Air (thinking). Intuition, Jung's fourth function (Fire), applies in the apprehension of the set of relationships—the symbolic field—and its significance ("inspiration"). This requires a supra-ordinary state of awareness or consciousness a focus and concentration on the part of the composer and a mental capacity on the part of the listener to resonate in a commensurable manner. This is usually limited in the case of non-artists.

In the concrete dimension it is a matter of apprehending the elements of environment that correspond to and are the starting-point of the musical expression and that themselves are symbolic. The meaning then is the individual's (feeling) perception of these and their further significance. Where words are associated with music such correspondences are usually obvious, and both Albert Schweitzer and Arnold Sobering have gone into this question in much detail with reference to melodic figures in the cantatas of Bach. Here analysis can help a great deal. No music exists in a vacuum, and the very word "meaning" refers to its relevance to the world we live in. Certain kinds of music emphasize, in one way or another, this concrete or dramatic dimension more than others, and, just as in Oriental music this is so on the level of actual sound-sensation, in our music it can be so on more complex levels of association of an indirect kind, especially in conjunction with the use of orchestral colouring or instrumental colouring, often involving harmonic colouring (chords here have not primarily a pitch function but that of blending the tonal qualities of instruments). One has only to think of Debussy. Here the term "symbolist" art is very relevant and refers to the emphasis of this dimension; it applies pre-eminently to French music of that period, as well as to poetry, and is much more suitable than "impressionist" for the painting as well. In other cases, or other periods, it is not so obvious and often needs pointing out, if we are to appreciate the context and to understand the meaning; the allusions of the music, and their significance, must otherwise be at least partly lost. For instance, the avenues of cypresses of the Villa d'Este are used as symbols by Liszt, as rows of dark standing sentinels, representing the past, threatening in a way, everything Saturnine. One could use astrological symbols in such a context, because these are archetypal and apply on an infinite number of levels. The cypresses are obviously referred to in the music, where they are given a feeling significance, and not merely in the title. In symphonic poems the same dimension is often emphasized to an even greater extent, and besides Debussy we can look at a work like Tapiola of Sibelius, capturing the brooding atmosphere and antiquity of the Finnish forests. The forest god, Tapio, is again closely related to the archetype Saturn, in its aspect of time and antiquity, especially, and its very strong "telluric" quality.

Exactly the same principles often apply in other kinds of composition where it is not generally, if at all, recognized, or stated by the composer, by way of title or otherwise. This is particularly so in the music of Sibelius, especially in his later symphonies, where the formal element is at the same time very highly developed—and developed in a very interesting way. The seventh Symphony, for example, is unquestionably oceanic in context, as is the third, while the fifth has very strong affinities with Tapiola and forests. The only time I have seen this recognized is in a reminiscence by Compton Mackenzie of crossing the sea to the Hebrides, when he felt a close association between the seventh Symphony and this oceanic environment. Without a recognition of this, however, a good part of the meaning must be lost, because a whole world of associations is missing, though the work can, of course, still be appreciated on other levels. The tenth Symphony of Shostakovich is another case in point, and to me it is a tone poem of the Russian steppes and forests—actually having many affinities with Tapiola; take away these associations, and the colour is gone: one merely has a reproduction in black and white.

Often the associations are not at all obvious, as in the foregoing examples, and the meaning, the context, is as difficult to come at as the exact spiritual quality of a melody. Sometimes one comes upon it accidentally, it seems. This happened to me once when I happened to be reading the Chinese poet Wang Wei and at the same time listening to the French Suites of Bach, when I understood that each was talking about exactly the same things. I reflected that each belonged to the classical period of his culture and that they had an almost identical outlook and relation to the world. A similar coincidence was that of Bartók's Sonata for two pianos and percussion with Baudelaire. The Bartók took me a long time to understand, until I heard them as nocturnes looking out over an industrial city and saw them as a reaction to negative environment, much as the poetry of Baudelaire, even though they do not coincide exactly in time. A very good case of pointing musical significance on this principle is the description of the great organ fugues of Bach by Sacheverell Sitwell in his book Splendours and Miseries, in a chapter entitled "Fugue". Here he uses an intuitive imagination to shed a great deal of light on the music and enhance one's appreciation in a way that no pedantic (and frequently erroneous) formal analysis could do.

A further level of environment is that of the state of civilization as a whole and the over-all human predicament. This merges into the philosophical dimension but often involves at the same time, very markedly, the dramatic one. We have seen it in the case of Bartók, and it is even more conspicuous in much of Shostakovich, as in his eighth and fifteenth Symphonies. It is foreshadowed in Mahler, with his monumental Farewells to European culture; Shostakovich gives us a preview of death and annihilation, ending with an invocation of the Valkyries and a dance of skeletons. In this way he is much more contemporary than those who think he should have been writing electronic "music". In the fifteenth Symphony in particular he is seen as a master of the grotesque and the macabre, which alternate in the movements, and exactly reflect the contemporary scene. In other places—the finale of the sixth Symphony—we have a Lumpenmarsch which, far from being a jolly piece of fun, "trivial but enjoyable", reminds us of Bruegel's peasants, belonging to some nightmare, or of a typical modem parade of the insane. Since the Politburo, too, see no meaning in music, such things could be openly stated and pass for a description of "a toy shop" and, inevitably, "the triumphant spirit of man". If one takes meaning into account one has the only final yardstick with which to evaluate modem art: what is it saying, and what is its relevance? Or is it merely itself a psychological symptom of the prevailing state of chaos and neurosis? Scarcely anyone understands any form of art, and most follow along with the lastest fashion or whatever is the going "opinion". What is acclaimed in its time is frequently worthless, and what is accepted from the past is as frequently congealed into some formula of permanent misconception, as in the case of Hamlet.

* * *
In the third dimension, that of form, we have to consider meaning on a higher level, transcending both the individual and the present (the concrete)— the level of the higher mind, the philosophical dimension. This is the dimension that has been so overwhelmingly developed in Western music, both horizontal and vertically (polyphony), so that it has been accused of "formalism" and abstraction. Rudhyar, contrasting form with substance (the tonal dimension), points out that Western music tends to consist of arrangements of "notes", on paper, rather than "tones", or living sounds. This is certainly true in the minds of theorists, and no doubt of many musicians who look on, say, playing the piano in much the same way as acquiring dexterity on a typewriter, combined with the panache of a juggling act. It is absolutely true of the course taken by the European mind generally in the development of an abstract rationalism and technology, divorced from life and real values. But art, though often reflecting the resultant situation, is not part of this regress but is a channel for the expression of higher values. The great composers have certainly not been the exponents of formalism but positive guides for human development, teachers and pioneers, among the avant-garde of collective humanity. Their message, though embodied in the cultural forms of their times, is concerned with universal values and is timeless.

Polyphonic music is above all a development in the formal dimension. In a single melodic line there is of course form too, in so far as it has meaning, just as there is tone-colour once it is sung or played and not on paper; but the expression is preponderantly lyrical/emotional and/or "magical" (tonal). But once it is combined with another melody the balance is shifted towards the formal/intellectual. There is an extra sphere or level of meaning in the interrelationship between the voices, or melodies, and this increases, potentially at any rate, in geometric proportion with the number of parts. One could say the expression is three-dimensional instead of two, because the third dimension is now so much more conspicuous or extended. Naturally the form extends horizontally as well as vertically, and the horizontal aspect is vastly elaborated in the developed polyphonic forms. In the simple forms, such as canon, one is at once presented with something very much more intellectually stimulating than a single melodic line. Why this is so is not so easy to explain; but, on the other hand, it is not much in need of explanation; the symbolism is basic and largely unconscious. One could say, on the whole, that one is confronted with an integration of independent voices, or with unity in diversity; and of course many other levels of symbolism could be discovered by a detailed analysis. Such become correspondingly complex in a developed form like fugue. Spengler has pointed out the correspondence of polyphonic music generally with the "soul" of the Faustian culture, with the feeling for infinite space and with the intersecting vaults of the Gothic cathedral in the spatial heights of the dimly lit interior.

The high point of the polyphonic period was the high point of European culture, its "high summer" and classical period, in the proper sense of the words. This could be taken to cover, broadly, both the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and so to include the baroque, where the keyboard has become the dominant medium and influences style, even in vocal and choral music. Fugue is the most powerful and integrated form yet developed, and the great organ fugues of Bach are probably on the largest scale of any single integrated “movements” in music. The complete integration is the most outstanding characteristic, being a union of distinct individualities. Marked by the rhythmic recurrence of the fugue subject, the form exhibits the endless metamorphosis, transformation and combinations of this subject and comes nearer than any other form to correspond with life itself. The various fugal techniques, such as inversion, diminution and augmentation, and "tonal" answer, are very fundamental to musical expression and are the basis of thematic transformation, which is to reappear as a vital principle of musical form and development. The nature of a fugue subject, characteristically a short, very strongly marked motif, of a pregnant, symbolic kind, is also basic to the most highly developed musical forms, and this kind of motif or theme is to recur constantly, especially in the works of maturity of the great composers. It is always associated with increasingly integrated forms and with an increasing development of polyphony, and the reappearance of these factors in such works speaks for itself. They are features of maturity, both of the culture and of individuals.

Sonata form, on the other hand, parallels the increasing development of rationalism, separate individualism (with an emphasis on the separate) and Aristotelian logic, and its main characteristic is obviously to focus on duality, or dualism. It is a movement influenced by the "Renaissance"—that is, the adoption of Greco-Roman thought-forms, and away from the Gothic, or the innermost self of Western culture. Based on the contrast of two opposing themes, which are never reconciled, it does away with integration on principle, so that it becomes a heresy to suggest that a movement is monothematic or to infer, or deliberately to insert, any connection between the different movements of a work. Theorists of today cling to sonata form like an immutable dogma, even for modern works, as though music could not exist without it—as though musical form has for some reason to remain, finally and for good, stuck in the eighteenth century.

In the Romantic period the tendency towards separation goes much further, and the emphasis on a drawn-out melodic line supported by a harmonic background of chords corresponds to the emphasis on the individual and to the "feeling" dimension again. In the succeeding era this individual becomes progressively more alienated, and the music shows increasing dissociation, coming to look like the representation of a psycho-analyst's case-book. There are, however, other currents with a different emphasis, notably that of Liszt, succeeded by the symbolists, reaffirming in different terms the "tonal" or objective dimension of music, and this becomes combined with a reaffirmation of the formal dimension and thematic integration in Sibelius.
The most characteristic medium of the sonata period was the string quartet, which in itself is a rather integrated medium and still carries with it polyphonic implications, though there is a strong tendency for dominance by the first violin and a mainly supportive role for the three other instruments. The other very prominent medium of the period is the concerto for solo instrument against the orchestra, and the romantic and individualistic implications of this are plain enough. We find the dominant style, even in writing for the piano, to be that of bowed stringed instruments, with such features as rapidly repeated chords, unsuited to keyboard instruments. Haydn, more than anyone, is intimately associated with the string quartet, as is Mozart, in his profoundest works—which include the string quintets. It is perfectly in keeping with the period that the most profound and far-reaching works of Beethoven, which are also the most highly developed formally, are the string quartets. The last quartets of Beethoven are particularly interesting with regard to every aspect of the formal dimension, and they are indeed one of the focal points of the whole of Western music. Coming at the end of the sonata period proper, which preceded the Romantic era, they transcend it altogether and constitute a phenomenon that does not belong in that context—or in any particular context unless that of a future we have not yet reached. Or their context is universal and epochal—that of a message to humanity at large at the end of the Piscean Age.

In an article in The Music Review (February, 1963) Deryck Cooke demonstrated very clearly the thematic unity of the last quartets and their basis on one or two key motifs. This fact is of profound significance, as is the nature of the motifs. It is interesting that, as he points out, one of the motifs, opening the Quartet, op. 127, is the subject of the extraordinary fugue of the finale of the piano Sonata, op. no. 110. Cooke has given us an excellent thematic analysis of op. 127, showing that it is monothemalic and that the whole Quartet is derived from this motif, that is, from the opening introductory chords. Otherwise, at first sight, or even at many other sights, it is hard to understand the relation of this chordal introduction to what follows. Here I am concerned particularly with the three following quartets, which form a triune, a unity in themselves, based on, or deriving from, what Cooke calls the dark minor motif, G#-A-F-E. He finds a hint of this motif also in op. 127. All these quartets are enigmatical; they are quite opaque to the ordinary standards of evaluation. Where the formal implications are resisted or taken as something eccentric, no start can be made to understanding them, since these are inherent in the music itself, part of the expression, and not merely a question of theories of analysis. Beethoven was not a professor of music, idly experimenting with "scholastic formalism" or struggling with "the problem of the finale" and throwing in this or that movement as a joke. One would sometimes suppose that he was a rather wayward student causing raised eyebrows in some of our pedagogues and never quite succeeding in sorting himself out. Joseph Kerman, for example, has given us a valuable and very detailed analysis of the quartets and, in many places, throws a great deal of light upon them. We can be grateful for it; but he continues to resist the idea of thematic unity, in spite of Deryck Cooke, to whom he refers, and only grudgingly admits that the "dark minor motive" does occur here and there in the group of three. He insists on seeing sonata form even in the fugue of op. 131, as though it were impossible to relinquish this last lifeline to the known and accepted. One could see "sonata form" in anything by dividing the notes into "first groups" and "second groups", conceding that the development is missing, or rudimentary, and so on. Here it is contrary to everything about the works; but it is consistent with a resistance to any suggestion that there might be some meaning in them. The movements are analysed as though they were haphazard or randomly thrown together with no particular meaning or relevance to the rest of the Quartet— let alone quartets.

The formal principle underlying these quartets is thematic transformation, and this carries many implications that give it much more in common with fugue than with the sonata. Kerman admits this principle in some of the movements; but it applies to all of them. The quartets are monothematic; this is apparent from listening to the C# minor and, with careful attention, to the A minor. By carefully analysing the notes, as Deryck Cooke has done, it is clear with all of them. Beyond this, all three are essentially monothematic as a whole, giving a development of this idea on a scale comparable only with Bach's Art of Fugue.

There is also an interrelationship between specific movements in different quartets. The third movement of the B Quartet (Andante) was to me in- comprehensible for a long time until I saw it as a different facet—different mood—of the first movement of the A minor (see Ex. i), The second theme of this movement of the A minor Quartet is so obviously identical with fig. (a), except in note-values, that there is no sense in calling it a "second subject": it is just the first theme seen in another light, or from another viewpoint. Or it is an evolution of feeling-values. It is not a different character in a drama, as one understands a sonata second subject to be. It is true that it is in F, instead of A minor, and if one uses key-analysis to point to another level of symbolic relationships it is perfectly valid; here for example, the emphasis of the 6th of the scale has a decided significance in relation to the other quartets. This kind of significance is susceptible to further development of symbolism in ways hitherto undreamt-of. On the other hand, the way in which key- analysis is often used has little meaning except as a lesson to students in text- book modulation. In discerning thematic relationships key does not enter much into it, and a motif is identifiable, in any key, as a fugue subject. An exact notational comparison is also not necessary. Deryck Cooke has pointed out how fugal methods of thematic transformation, such as inversion, augmentation and diminution, apply here, and he has defined another one, which he calls "interversion", meaning "the switching around of notes in a phrase". There is also an intuitive comparison by which a correspondence is felt, independently of note-comparisons on paper. This is sometimes a question of the emphasis of certain notes in a phrase, or of intervals {e.g., a semitone progression at a focal point or points). It can depend on a certain type of leap, or the mere fact of a leap in a certain place, of varying interval, provided it is a leap; or the length of notes in relation to their place in the sequence. For example, the second theme of the C minor finale corresponds with the fugue subject, not only by interversion, but by emphasis on B and the characteristic drop of a minor 3rd (see Ex. 2). In C of Ex. 2 the germinal four-note motif of all three quartets can be compared with A and B. The degree of the scale makes no difference, for purely thematic comparison. C is the germinal motif; it is a kind of seed, which is metamorphosed in all three quartets—a process of organic growth. This motif has to be pregnant with meaning; it must have a hidden meaning, even an occult meaning. D(B-A-C-H) has a certain suggestive relationship to it which may be highly significant.

It is interesting that thematic transformation of this kind is, in exactly the same way, the key to the mature works of Sibelius. This is obvious in a case like Tapiola, but it seems to have been overlooked in the symphonies, which are solemnly analysed as being in "sonata form". Many very interesting aspects of transformation can be seen in the first movement of no. 5, while it has been noted by Cecil Gray that the entire seventh Symphony is evolved from the basic progressions of the modal full close, in the scale of C, embodied in the opening woodwind motif.

The logic of thematic transformation and fugal metamorphosis may perhaps be compared with the intellectual logic of correspondences. In the holistic world-view everything is related to everything else, not causally or rationalistically, but synchronistically, by correspondences and through a hierarchy of levels. Thus a germinal, motivic theme is an archetype that can be interpreted on a multitude of levels. The logic of correspondences is symbolic logic and is non-Aristotelian; aesthetics can be interpreted only in a non-Aristotelian system. This kind of thinking belongs to the future, to a different level of perception, and this has a bearing on the meaning of the quartets we have been considering. Their meaning is also to be interpreted as a psychological and Spiritual signpost to the future. Their message is becoming relevant now much more than was the case in the time they were written, when they could not be appreciated. 1 think that Joseph Kerman has given some very useful pointers, for example, when he associates the idea of "integration" with the C minor Quartet, for the same theme of integration is of vital psychological importance to humanity at present. But to find the Presto "childlike", and to see in it a "rustic dance", is to descend to the belittling and the ridiculous; one cannot imagine a dance less rustic than this. I should say a cosmic dance, or the dance of Shiva, and that Wagner, in the passages he quotes, came much nearer to understanding its context. I believe that the whole Quartet embodies a spiritual message that is scarcely intelligible to us, that it is transpersonal and transcendent and that to appreciate it requires profound contemplation of each phase of the work—that is, a feeling-contemplation and not only an intellectual one. One has to associate it with one's innermost experiences, "mit innigste Empfindung". The Heiliger Dankgesang is an experience from another world, from a higher plane of existence. To say that this is "tragic", or to see "optimism" or "pessimism" as subjects of these works, is surely meaningless—qu'est-ce que cela veut dire?—while to see them as expressing Beethoven's personal anxiety about death is perfectly reductionist and Freudian. One must have a higher conception of art than that. To find the right symbols, or universal archetypes, to express the over-all meaning of these quartets, one would have to resort to astrology, and I believe that, in fact, the three quartets can be related to a configuration in Beethoven's horoscope that is extremely remarkable and the significance of which is transcendence—in the B Quartet, death and regeneration. I have taken up this theme in its astrological context elsewhere in an article published in Astrology.

REFERENCES
1 The great philosopher Dane Rudhyar was originally a composer and became also the principal founder of modern psychological astrology. I refer here to his book Culture, Crisis and Creativity, published by the American Theosophical Publishing House (1977).
2 The Beethoven Quartets by Joseph Kennan (O.L'.P., 1067/78).

Seven Essays on Astrology, Physics and Metaphysics

Jupiter Neptune and the Tonality of the Piscean Age


Michael McMullin


The astrology we learned from Alan Leo recognised a special affinity between the principles of Jupiter and Neptune. As rulers of Sagittarius and Pisces they are also co rulers of one another's signs, and both planets have associations with the horse Neptune especially, it seemed, and this is born out empirically in practice. Sagittarius is the more obviously horse related, being associated with the Centaur Chiron; but Neptune as Poseidon, the god of the sea, had the horse as one of the animals sacred to him a symbol of gushing springs and his chariot was drawn by swift steeds with golden manes. He himself would sometimes take the form of a horse, and in this way fathered on Demeter the wild horse Arion.

We do not nowadays hear much about the relation between these two planets, except that Jupiter is co ruler, with Neptune, of Pisces. We hear nothing about Neptune and Sagittarius. Poseidon however was the brother of Zeus , and had dominion over earth as well as sea. Springs and rivers were his, and he was known as earth shaker. Their other brother Hades, or Pluto, was lord of the Underworld and the Shades.

But Zeus became undisputed ruler on Olympus, which means essentially the affairs of men, at least of Greek civilisation. He was a sky god, or thunder god, manifesting tangibly in the elements and storms a more threatening deity than the Sun, and more immediate a mediator, or solar hero, taking the place of the Sun god, which was a more remote and mysterious power, belonging to a different dimension. In fact the planet Jupiter has the character of sun in the making, with a complete set of satellites. As a space god, Zeus represented the perceptible and outer world, and was the deity of light and consciousness, so much developed by the Greeks, and of philosophy. Though concerned with the visible world and conscious thought, the arrow of Sagittarius nonetheless aims at the beyond, and at the meaning behind appearances; it is a fire sign, and aims at intuition, and its planet is a lesser sun.

Life on earth and within the solar system is bounded by Saturn, the principle of incarnation into matter and time. Saturn is the time barrier, the ring pass not of our perception. Beyond Saturn is the cosmos, in one sense, and timelessness; in another sense the inner world, the unconscious which includes the Underworld. The Greeks did not want to know about time, and banished Chronos, who "was driven from the sky and cast to the very depths of the universe". 1) They worshipped space and the visible world.

Our sense of space is dependent upon the perception of objects in the outside world, or in a sense our projection of psychic contents outside of ourselves; while our sense of time is of change within ourselves and in relation to ourselves or movement. Thus space is forever stretching outwards or expanding, while time is gravitational, and is contracting inwards towards the centre, or to a point. Of course we only perceive space in terms of time i.e. our own physiology and so in a sense space is movement outwards or horizontally, on a flat earth model, and time is vertical, aspiring to the heights or to the depths.

Jupiter or Zeus therefore rules space in this sense, and is the principle of expansion of the visible universe, or over the surface of the earth, and now into inter planetary space. Though a god and a fire principle, representing Spirit (the Sun), Jupiter operates inside the time barrier.

The principle of Neptune implies of course transcendence of the earth realm and the orbit of Saturn. Poseidon rules the oceans where there is no conscious civilisation, and on the other hand water has always been a symbol for the unconscious. As the planet of higher feeling values, of colour and the astral realm, we are in the world of devotional religion, of mysticism and the soul, and not in that of concrete reality, not in the space of the material world. That is to say, actually in this other world, not just pointing to it, like the religion of Sagittarius and the ninth house. Religion however is a common theme between them. Neptune as we all know represents the dissolution of forms, spreading out like smoke, or dissolving or merging into the ocean and the formless, and this is a type of expansion but not of a form, or as a form, not an enlargement but a thinning out and disappearance, as of a wraith, a de materialisation. Nevertheless it suggests a merging into space in a sense, but now into inter stellar space, not the space of this world of objects; it is space more in the sense of limitlessness, as suggested by the ocean, free of definition (Virgo), "the void"; so that space, in the sense in which we have been using it, is not really the right word, but only in the sense of inner or subjective space, or beyond limits (Saturn). It is really a higher dimension of space, outside the time barrier, not contained within particular cycles. In the mystical language of twentieth century physics one might say "space time". But the idea of space, even if different kinds of space, is common to Jupiter and Neptune, both rule Pisces, and the opposition of one or both of them to Uranus is a striking feature of the horoscopes of both those explorers of space, Galileo and Einstein, who likewise both have Sun in Pisces. They represent perhaps the start and finish of the scientific (Uranus) and theoretical penetration into outer space that characterised the second half of the Piscean Age.

With the advent of the Piscean Age Zeus is no longer the king of the gods, and has to give way, at least for the first thousand years, to the other kind of space, represented by the vertical fish of the constellation, and the devotional Christian religion. Expansion into Jupiterian space and the cult of the material world characterises, with the horizontal fish, the second half of the Age, and our two planetary principles represent the duality inherent in this mutable sign the other sign of Jupiter being also mutable and having the duality of the Centaur. Originally Poseidon was master of and had his own empire over the entire earth, but for the classical Greeks was supplanted by Zeus. He remained however the equal of Zeus, and " in the art of classical antiquity Poseidon very much resembles Zeus: he has a similar majesty when he is depicted standing, his chest bare, grasping his trident". 2)

The relationship between these archetypes is illustrated very clearly in terms of music and tonality. Some time ago I published a suggested Tone Zodiac in the Astrological Journal, after experimenting with this idea for a while. Most previous attempts at matching the twelve keys used in Western music, or the twelves tones of the chromatic scale, with the Zodiac had automatically started by equating C major with Aries, and following on round the wheel in an anti clockwise direction, in the order of the keys and signs. 3) This can only be done by having no regard to the character of the keys in relation to the signs, and none of the exponents of this piece of automaticism can have been musicians. A little knowledge of tonality however, and a little thought, will tell us that the dominant modality of Western Culture (the Piscean Age) since the middle ages has been the major scale, and the prototype of this scale is the scale of C major (the white keys of the piano, starting on C). It then makes sense to match Pisces with C major. As for following on, there are two good reasons for not proceeding in an anti clockwise direction: scales were originally sounded downwards, from the higher octave to the lower, and this is still evident, and sounds most natural, in a carillon of bells; and since we start in the context of the astrological ages, these follow one another in a clockwise direction, from the point of view of the circle of the horocope, or backwards in relation to the cycles of the planets in the Zodiac.

The first test to make of this idea is to see whether the sign Pisces does in fact match the key of C major in practice. Where the rulership of Jupiter is concerned it seems to me that the character of Jupiter as an astrological symbol does in many ways correspond with the character of C major. It is positive, optimistic, confident. Compare the first Prelude and Fugue of Bach's "Forty Eight". With the greatest composers these things are intuitive, and we find this idea explicitly confirmed in Mozart's "Jupiter" Symphony in C major. Perhaps the most striking confirmation of the association of C major with Pisces and the ocean is seen in the two symphonies of Sibelius which are very obviously oceanic in symbolism and association, the third and the seventh. These are both in C major and the only ones in this key. The Seventh can be understood as very consciously historical in conception, and as constituting a Full Close to the Piscean Age. It is based thematically on the melodic progression of the old modal full close, and it starts with a most explicit ascending scale of C major. As regards its oceanic setting, one cannot prove this, any more than one can prove Neptune astrologically, or prove that Jupiter rules Pisces, or that there is such a thing as "Pisces". One could write a fairly convincing essay on the subject and a musical analysis of the symphony; but to anyone who understands music in any degree, just as a listener, and becomes familiar with this work, the association must be self evident.

Our music also has minor keys, major and minor scales constituting the diatonic system. Minor scales are fluctuating (the ascending form differs from the descending), they are based on the minor third, an interval lacking the confidence of the major third, with a much higher individual (subjective) and feeling content and obviously more related to the watery element. If again we stay with the white keys of the piano but start on the note A, we get the scale or key of A minor. Since like C major it is still on the white keys, A minor is related to C major and has the same key signature; it is called the relative minor. This minor key would correspond to the Neptunian rulership of Pisces, and there is in fact a very remarkable confirmation of this in Beethoven's A minor string quartet, op.132, which is full of the deepest implications of the archetype Neptune, water, and the world of higher feeling and transcendence. 4)

If we leave Pisces and C major and follow round the signs and houses in a clockwise direction, with one key to each sign (one key signature), following the chromatic scale, E flat falls on Sagittarius, the other sign of Jupiter, a fire sign and falling in the ninth house. This is the sign of Jupiter as archetype of the hero; first as solar hero, representing the Sun, and then in the form of Prometheus, and his Sagittarius Chiron associations, as the prophet hero who sacrifices himself to bring fire, and insight, to humanity. We can expect confirmation here from Beethoven, the most Promethean figure we can think of, and a Sagittarian, with Jupiter on the cusp of his ninth house. In fact, E flat does seem to be the heroic key for him, is the key of the "Eroica" Symphony, and of the "Emperor" Piano Concerto. Both these works have as a first theme a figure which one can easily associate with the heroic motive and the arrow of Sagittarius. In the case of Sibelius, his fifth symphony is in E flat, and the theme of its finale has been very aptly compared to Thor swinging his hammer in this case the Nordic and perhaps more elemental form of Jupiter. It is also interesting to note that in Holst's suite "The Planets" the broad expansive theme of Jupiter is in E flat.

The link with Pisces and the key of C is seen in the fact that the relative minor of E flat is C minor, the other key with three flats. In this key we have the C minor symphony of Beethoven, the Fifth, which seems to announce the Day of Judgement for the Piscean Age. This could be Poseidon as earth shaker, or the power and judgement of Zeus, with ninth house associations of law and tribunals. C minor is the natural key for works in a dark and tragic vein, and one of the most impressive examples of this is the Eighth Symphony of Bruckner, Bruckner's tragic symphony. The slow movement of this work is an intense and devotional prayer. In Beethoven's last piano sonata, in C minor, op.111, the first movement, in Beethoven's own notes, suggests Atlas, the brother of Prometheus, bearing the burden of the world; while the long final set of variations enters fully into the transcendental realm of Neptune.

These are some ideas which suggest that astrology and music, which used to be very much associated in men's minds, can be mutually illuminating, and can also illuminate everything else. Many of the present practitioners of each subject will disagree with this, and prefer to believe that their discipline has no relation to anything, or to the world at large; that is to say, exists in a vacuum and has no meaning. This is to repudiate Jupiter and Neptune, which in our world are the symbols of meaning, conscious and unconscious to deny that they exist. In terms of a horoscope it is to live exclusively below the horizon.


References:

1. Larousse encyclopedia of Mythology.
2. Ibid.
3. A number of such Tone Zodiacs are reviewed in Joscelyn Godwin's Harmonies of Heaven and Earth (British edition by Thames and Hudson, 1987) including my own.
4. To do more than state this is not possible here, but I have gone into it in detail, with musical analyses, elsewhere.
(2352 words)




"The Crack Between the Worlds"

Michael McMullin


Jung used the term synchronicity to refer to an "acausal connecting principle" between seemingly unrelated phenomena occurring together at a given moment, or in any Now. This principle has to do with meaning, and relationship, and is the aspect of things that has always interested the East, especially Chinese philosophy. In a discussion at the end of a lecture1 Jung said: "It is like this: you are standing on the sea shore and the waves wash up an old hat, an old box, a shoe, a dead fish, and there they lie on the shore. You say: "Chance, nonsense!". The Chinese mind asks: "What does it mean that these things are together ?" The Chinese mind experiments with that being together and coming together at the right moment . . . "

The Western mind in contemplating a phenomenon is interested in how it happened or what produced it, and not in what it means. It is focused on How? rather than Why?. When it invokes Chance this implies that phenomena are disconnected and meaningless. It sees the isolated event, rather than its relationship to everything else that happens around it and to itself. It is interested in what caused the event in the past, and the effect of the event in the future, but not in the configuration of events in the present. This fixation on causality is connected with utility and an exclusive focus on the material means of living, while forgetting about living itself, which takes place in the NOW. In terms of the horoscope it amounts to being stuck in the sixth house, or the Virgo end of the Virgo Pisces axis.

It is not always clear to astrologers that living in the NOW is the proper focus of astrology. The past is one's point of departure (birth chart) and path of development, and how it applies in the NOW, the future is contained in the NOW past and future are only one's present being extended in time. To look upon astrology as a method of prediction, while it might be interesting or amusing, even "useful" sometimes, is to mistake its point and to subordinate it to the miserable prevailing view of life and reality. Whereas to understand what it means and to accept its validity at all compels a completely different idea of the world, subject to different principles from those inculcated into us from infancy. This different view of things requires a different kind of thinking, using other categories of language, for these must conform to or be consistent with a different kind of reality. It is a question of new wine and new bottles. It is a training to see a different reality, which makes astrology essentially a spiritual exercise, as Father Cassidy refers to it in his recent article. To see all phenomena as inter related and part of one whole requires or results in a spiritual or religious attitude to life and is inconsistent with a separatist and materialist one. This is what astrology teaches us, if we follow up its consequences, rather than try to fit it into the prevailing attitudes. In fact it contradicts these as soon as you recognise that persons born, say, under Leo have certain characteristics in common. Either this has to be nonsense, or all the prevailing beliefs of Western Civilisation are; and you cannot have it both ways. But as distinct from believing in something we are told, the Leo test is verifiable by simple observation, much more than in the case of other kinds of esoteric or ESP phenomena.

As long as we confine ourselves to simple statements of verifiable observations and probability such as that concerning those born under Leo, or if I put a match to that paper it will burn (unless a wind blows it out, etc.), we have no problem. Each concerns a relationship between phenomena. We could use the term "elective affinities" 2 instead of talking about cause. It is only the formulation of explanations or generalisations that creates the difficulty, as these depend on a general attitude to life and a world view, or in other words constitute theories, abstractions and rationalisations, or "laws", which are always artificial, subjective and relative. The fallacy in such explanations often resides in the linear and sequential idea of time. They are conventions, and those to which we have been brought up have become not merely obsolete but dangerous anachronisms among the consequences to which they have given rise. They are like nuclear waste, and have persistent half lives. Into this category come concepts such as that greatly acclaimed quaternity of causality, accident, free will and determinism. These cannot logically coexist either with one another or with the nature of things revealed by astrology, and we need new terms. We don't have to think in mechanical categories.

The difference between the match to the paper observation and the Leo one is that of focusing on the immediate detail of a particular interaction, like the sea separately washing up each of the objects listed by Jung, and understanding the inter relationship of things on a wider basis i.e. the relationship between the objects, and between them and the observer, or the stars, or anything or everything else. We could say the difference between Virgo and Sagittarius, ultimately Pisces; between Mercury and Jupiter, earth and fire, or utility and meaning. To see only one of these poles is to lose our sense of orientation and balance, and consequently of logic. The Mercurial intellect functions in Virgo in conjunction with sensation, the earth element, but without the inner functions, of feeling and intuition. It is as though we never come above the horizon in our horoscopes to see the wider issues or sense the connecting principles.

Jung remarked during a discussion (after a seminar talk on The Symbolic Life, given on April 5th 1939 to the Guild of Pastoral Psychology) : "When the intellect does not serve the symbolic life it is the devil; it makes you neurotic." He is referring here particularly to religious symbolism and ritual; but symbol and correspondence are the language of inter relationship, and the terms which incorporate wider issues. To see things as symbols is to see them in relation to the whole; which is to give them meaning. As phenomena they are not isolated, but facets of the All, or in the first place of certain archetypes. And the whole of course includes ourselves, since we are not detached observers; therefore it is also to see things as representing parts of ourselves, and to empathise. The most integrated and inclusive terms for this view of the world are provided by astrology, which formulates a new logic, and within the framework of the houses and the signs clearly delineates the whole process of arriving at it. It is not formulated on intellectual constructs but, being based on intuition, is wholly empirical and handed down or arrived at as experience. (Intuition, like sensation, is not judgemental, as are feeling and thinking, but a matter of objective observation, this time of the collective unconscious.)

The true function of astrology therefore goes far beyond "reading the stars", associating these with events in one's life, and either interpreting this as best one may within the current conventions of thought, or leaving it uninterpreted and just an intriguing mystery. It goes far beyond its use as a technique for counselling or for psychological analysis; interesting though this may be, it does not itself take us out of our intellectual prison. Much more important is the fact that if we accept astrology and squarely confront what we see, we are faced with "the crack between the worlds", and we have the opportunity to jump out of our prison. In this respect it is a spiritual path, for it gives us a view, through the crack, into another reality. It is a route to seeing meaning in everything around one in any present moment, and how it relates to oneself, and others; or, in short, to coming alive in the NOW. This can be developed, until it can become a yoga of consciousness expansion.


Notes:
1. The "Tavistock" Lectures, given in London to the Institute of Medical Psychology, Sept/Oct. 1935.

2. Elective Affinities is the title of a novelette by Goethe on marriage and extra marital love affairs, but was a technical term of 18th century chemistry, referring to the relation between substances. Astrologers sometimes refer in a similar way to the interaction of psychic and/or other energies coming together in a particular time and place, marked by transiting planets and events.

(1438 words)



Mechanism, Frequency and Oysters.

Michael McMullin


Introduction

The trouble is that we don't really understand what we are dealing with in astrology, any more than in life, and if we understood life we would in the same measure understand what astrology is about. I begin to suspect that it is written in the same language, and we don't know the language. If our ideas of life are largely illusory, then of course our ideas of astrology must be too; to understand either we have to see into or understand a different level of reality. This has major implications in practice, and not only in principle, in terms of interpreting the horoscope. What exactly is it telling us? Is it telling us what we should or should not do ? What we should avoid ? Or what will happen to us whatever we do and whether we avoid it or not ? Or does it tell us what is the meaning of it all ? What do these planetary configurations actually represent ?

We may suppose that if we are swimming in our pool of illusions should doesn't come into it, and our illusions must have some purpose in their own right that is to say, working through them must be what we need, they are our rôle, until they have served their purpose our persona, and you cannot just say to a person: "Be real". It depends on what is real. But perhaps the only real thing we can know is our real Self, and the aim is to be this. Or should we be our horoscopes ? These must be not our real Selves but only stages in the evolution of them.

The answer to all these questions is the answer to what life is about. They are not just the local concern of astrology or astrologers. Rather, astrology brings these issues into clear focus; it formulates the questions, defines the issues, and the terms in which they can be related and understood. In this sense it is not a study which we have to explain and accomodate in terms of our ordinary ways of thinking; but it is the key to an entirely different way of thinking. As Rudhyar wrote, it offers a key to an understanding of the mysteries of life and the universe. Here we have the mysteries spelled out. Astrology is thus an intellectual initiation in terms of spiritual archetypes, or a path of initiation, and the most valid spiritual exercise for our time.

I have just finished reading a most satisfying book, The Case for Astrology , by John Anthony West (Viking Arkana, 1991), in which not only are the rationalist opponents of astrology systematically demolished, with exemplary thoroughness and a finesse and command of language (unlike the logical and literary ineptitude of the opponents) that amounts to virtuosity ; but also the real issues and the spiritual nature of astrology are properly understood. The author is an Egyptologist, and he claims that astrology was used as part of initiatory techniques in ancient Egypt, for choosing the auspicious moment. The stars, especially certain constellations, were the realm of the gods, and of eternal life the escape from time. In our time it is a question of re establishing connection with the gods, on a more conscious level.

Statistics

In the course of the above mentioned book the author reviews rather thoroughly various experiments and ideas that seek to establish in scientific terms a possible causal or statistical validation for astrology. In the case of Gauquelin I think he does this too thoroughly, and devotes more space to the subject than it is worth; though it does illustrate once more the length to which academics will go to avoid having to progress or accomodate to their fixed ideas anything incongruous, no matter how factual or statistical. Gauquelin devoted his life, it appears, to accumulating statistical evidence showing that certain planets tended to be close to the Ascendant, or otherwise angular that is in quadrature aspect to the Ascendant in the horoscopes of persons especially eminent in certain professions. For athletes this would be Mars, for scientists Saturn, artists Venus, and actors Jupiter. In Cosmobiology the "Mars effect" would be expressed as: Mars = Asc., "A fighting spirit", or "active team work" a statistical conclusion in the first place. Gauquelin has shown that for those to whom there is no reality except measurable quantity, there is some obscure statistical relation involved, even if the focal points appear to come in the middle of the twelfth and ninth houses rather than actually on the angles. To an astrologer this means very little in terms of total horoscope interpretation. He did not, it seems, assess any other astrological features that members of his categories may have had in common; and since nothing else is shown as statistically significant, and singling out isolated details for quantitative research is naïve in any case, the results of all this effort can have very little value, and perhaps are more negative than positive considering what is not shown. Astrology is a science of so complex a character and of such astonishing integration that singling out arbitrary factors of this kind is essentially meaningless, and of comparable perversity to trying to assess the quality of works of art by counting and measuring.


Frequencies and Resonance

A less simplistic manner of thinking manifests in the area of electro magnetic fields and resonance. J.A.West cites a number of interesting conclusions arrived at by experimenters here which contradict some of the main idées fixes of orthodox mechanism. Thus: all organic life corresponds to certain precise frequencies, and not to others, while some, which are similar to those of micro wave ovens and other electronic devices, actually produce deformities, e.g. in chick embryos (Dr Jose Delgado). Prof. Giorgio Piccardi of Florence University showed that extra terrestrial, even galactic factors are linked to cycles in chemical reactions, and that colloids and water, the basic media of life, are sensitive to magnetic fields of very low frequency (VLF) and very little energy, so negating one of the stock "disproofs" of astrology, that any possible planetary signals would be too weak to have any effects on earth. Another researcher found: "Field and EMR variations strike the entire mass of . . . an organism and provoke oscillations or . . . resonance of all the structural elements capable of responding" (Thomas, Springfield, Ill. 1962). The genetic code could therefore be a response to frequencies prevailing at the moment of conception (the quality of the moment).

The phenomenon of resonance means that a relatively weak signal or vibration can set off or catalyse an effect out of all proportion to its own strength, through coinciding with a vibration already inherent in a body. It is a sympathetic reaction, of like responding to like, rather than a mechanical or "billiard ball" effect of energy imparted from outside, or something being pushed by a force equal to the momentum imparted. In a case of resonance the main energy is inherent and comes from inside. "An essential feature of resonance is that frequency is more important than the strength of the signal, if in tune with the natural frequencies of a system" (Seymour). Resonance applies also in atomic and molecular reactions.

Dr Percy Seymour, an astronomer and authority on cosmic and planetary magnetism, showed that the tidal forces of the planets can be phase locked to some of the frequencies of the earth's magnetic field the latter are tuned to the planets. The magnetosphere amplifies the tidal forces of the planets. "The sunspot cycle is linked to the positions and motions of the planets as seen from the Sun". "He compares the solar system to a huge transmitter of cosmic music" (West). Individuals can be "astrologically pre set" to certain planetary frequencies. This can mean, not causation, but that the solar system is a working model of human development and evolution, and that all its parts function to the same design. Each life has to develop in and through the symbolic conditions to which it is born, these are the plan laid down for it. Harmony and resonance are in the first place differentiation of number, and have the archetypal meanings of number. Frequency and resonance are words that have a respectable air in the context of contemporary science, but one could just as well talk of elective affinities,1 or refer to resonance to account for the new planet Pluto having received the right name, or any phenomena of synchronicity.

"Mechanism" means driven by a force outside the machine, itself lifeless, and the force lifeless, even if brought into play by design. Life is what does the designing, and cannot be created by mechanism. An organism responds as a whole, according to its nature or intent, which is contained in it. If we have "mind only", the design and the designer are of the same nature, or part of one whole, like the cells of the body, and we don't need "mechanism". The "material" world and the "immaterial" are all various forms and levels of energy and number, only differing in their level of differentiation, as in the descending, or ascending order of the harmonic series. Resonance implies responding to something akin to your own nature, in other words values and harmony (Venus), not coercion by something different and outside. Inside corresponds to outside, and all is resonance. "Mechanism" is just a way of thinking of things as separate, inert, and only related in terms of coercion, and forces, and is part of the current materialistic and nihilistic world view or philosophy of compulsion. It is as though we worshipped, like the Romans, only Ares or Mars, the god of war, applied force, and violence, and would have nothing to do with Aphrodite, or Venus, the goddess of love and relationship. Mars is undoubtedly also the god of mechanism. Taken together with Saturn, the principle of resistance and materiality, this Mars/Saturn combination is an apt symbol of most of our history over the last thousand years.

Since Venus is the principle of magnetism or attraction, at first sight it looks as if this is taken into account in Newton's law of universal attraction though the principle of this is not understood. It amounts however to contraction rather than attraction the principle of contraction towards the centre, the opposite polarity to expansion or radiation, and it is given the name of gravity, which is weight. It is obvious then that it comes under Saturn, as a property of solids and also of molecules. "In the true aspect of the structure of matter, a molecule = a solid = a crystal" (Schroedinger). A solid is "largely withdrawn from the disorder of heat motion". Heat motion implies fire, and expansion (Jupiter), and we have the earth/fire polarity. A solid has form "is withdrawn from entropy", it persists in time, all of which properties refer to the archetype Saturn.

The term "entropy" refers to diffusion, a tendency of anything not a solid to spread out, mix, and arrive at a state of equal distribution or equilibrium in any available space. Such an equilibrium, apart from temperature change, would then be static; but entropy applies to heat or energy also. The final equilibrium would be theoretically stable, changeless and permanent, and such a state of equal distribution is referred to as disorder, (as opposed to the order of solids). This whole process comes under Neptune, a contrary principle to Saturn. In the case of molecules, these diffuse in a liquid or gas as units, even if maintaining their own internal structure. Since the idea of diffusion is tied to the idea of space, it can only apply in the material world, in which space is the measure of the relationship between forms (times), and can only be measured by time (movement). Space is outside, and time inside (in the sense of that which endures or has form). Diffusion ultimately tends to do away with space, and time as well, since if everything is equalised, and without forms, there can be no meaning to space, and no movement (time), which probably explains the transcendent character of Neptune. Schroedinger came to the conclusion that ultimately there is mind only, a tenet of Bhuddism (a Neptunian philosophy), that had also been arrived at earlier by another physicist, Sir Arthur Eddington. He noted that "consciousness is never experienced in the plural"; there is plurality only of bodies, and the plurality of minds is only extrapolated from bodies, and is an illusion. 2 "Entropy" has to be a space time extrapolation of transcendence, and also an illusion.

In the context of science we are always looking for influence. The term influence immediately pre supposes mechanism and causality. So long as one thing "influences" another, causality is safe. It is when things follow parallel courses without at some point intersecting that they threaten our thought system. Sun signs or the Zodiac do not find themselves vindicated by any of the accepted modes of influence or statistical experiments. Scientific critics, even including Gauquelin and Seymour, adopt the premise that if there is no demonstrable "mechanism" to account for people born under Leo being Leos (and we must remember that this can mean either Sun or Ascendant in Leo), this disproves astrology as far as the Zodiac is concerned. But since this correspondence of physical and mental characters with birth signs can be seen, is an obvious fact of life, it can only be, if anything, mechanism that comes out disproven, not astrology. It also disproves that the ability and training to count qualifies a person to think. How can you count Leo ness ? You cannot count quality. It is just the relevance of the signs that eludes or is denied by all the would be mechanics, whereas in astrology, in spite of this, the signs and houses are the most important factors. Wolfgang Döbereiner encourages his students to interpret a chart in its essentials before putting in any planets, and then with only the Sun (for sign and house) and Ascendant ruler. It is not so easy to imagine tidal effects or even electro magnetic fields emanating from the signs or the houses, and if they exist they elude detection so far. If however, as we are told, the geomagnetic field is five times more extensive on the side opposite to the Sun, it is just conceivable that some possibilities still remain of finding varying resonance effects for the signs also, to save the face of astrologers. On the other hand when it comes to symbolic directions of the various kinds, especially converse ones, it does not look as though they are ever likely to be accepted within the fold of true believers, or as J.A.West says, of true unbelievers i.e. of true rationalists.



Oysters

John Anthony West refers to the experiments of Prof. Frank A. Brown pointing to the operation of so called 'biological clocks' through celestial rhythms. The most appealing of these experiments was performed with oysters, which open and close with the tides. Brown took his oysters inland, and found them to adjust their rhythms to what would have been tides in the new location, if there had been any water. Therefore if it is not the tides directly which 'cause' this, by washing over the oysters, it must be the Moon. The oysters have a lunar affinity, i.e. a lunar nature, and do not need a cause. They are lunar in principle; so are the seas, and they follow the archetype, as the eyes of the race goers follow the horses. The horses do not emit an influence, that has a chemical or even electro magnetic effect on the physical constitution, but it all comes from inside the race goers, who latch onto an archetype because of an inner affinity. If they had the refined sensibilities of oysters they would be able to do so without having to be physically present at the racetrack.

Professor Brown wrote, after other experiments, that living things "have imposed upon them from the environment metabolic rhythms of exactly the nature of geophysical frequencies". But as J.A.West rightly observes, "an astrologer . . would dispute the use of imposed, and would maintain simply that Brown's natural geophysical frequencies were but the Harmony of the Spheres making itself manifest". In other words the basic numbers, proportions and relationships inherent in all creation. We do not need an outside cause, not even under the appellation "God", who cannot logically be separated from that creation (Spinoza). All derives from and returns to One.

J.A.West includes in his book a short section on Cymatics, a technique for the study of wave forms developed by an Anthroposophist (follower of Rudolf Steiner), Hans Jenny. This is a greatly refined development of "Chladnic figures", patterns produced in sand by different notes played on a violin. Jenny invented the "tonoscope", whereby the patterns made by sound in different materials could be photographed, "providing a spectacular array of forms and patterns". This demonstrates in the first place the relation of form to frequency (or in other words to number): "form is impossible without frequency, and frequency is inexplicable" (West). Form also depends on the nature of the materials being vibrated there is a qualitative difference. If we compare this to the tone quality, or tone colour of musical sound as produced by different instruments, which depends on particular combinations of harmonic partials, we can see that what is being photographed is not only the quality of sound, but the quality of matter, and that form (matter, Saturn) is created by sound: "In the beginning was the Word". The Egyptians "credited Thoth with Creation for his interpretation in words of the Divine Will." Thoth is equivalent to Mercury, or Hermes, the inventor of language, and the principle of nervous and electrical impulses, the mediator of solar energy and messenger of the gods. In alchemy Saturn was referred to as Mercurius senex (form derives from frequency). West says: "Cymatics makes it clear that the ancient concept of the Harmony of the Spheres must be taken literally". He relates it to the study of the idea behind reality, or the "third force" in "The Law of Three", which "insists that for anything to happen in the universe three forces, not two are necessary" (3 seems to be the number of Mercury). "We must guard against the too facile conclusion that we are 'influenced' by the music of the spheres. We are not 'influenced'. In some subtle but ineluctable fashion we are that music"; we resonate to the harmonic chord (Venus) sounding at birth. "It is not that the child ( at the moment of birth) is influenced by the planetary configuration, but rather that he or she inescapably shares in the meaning of that moment". The soul or personality "will be tuned to that chord". Astrology exists to interpret that meaning.

That meaning moreover is fundamentally related to the time of year (signs) and the time of day (houses), whether or not this is demonstrable in crude statistical experiments. Astrology represents an entirely different view of reality from that represented by this latter approach and it is a mistake to confuse this issue by mixing them together, like trying to measure meaning or prove a symbol through the law of averages. They are two states of mind that are mutually exclusive "truth is a state of mind and not a thought nor a remembered syllogism nor an opinion" (W.B.Yeats). Eventually it is for the mechanical state of mind to evolve and catch up with the esoteric one, to make that jump or change of level, not the other way round; and this is certainly beginning to happen on the frontiers of science.

Any interpretation inevitably involves the problem of "free will", and this hinges on the ideas of interaction and values. This very well fits the concept Elective Affinities, of reacting according to one's nature. According to West, the answer to the question: "Do we have free will or do we not ?" is that it depends on whether we are subject to emotional compulsions: "As long as our emotions are not involved, we have it. But no sooner do our emotions become involved than we lose it". This fits well the meaning of Aquarius, of freedom, and suspension of the emotions, or non attachment. We act according to our compulsions, and our type, both pre figured in our horoscopes. Not because of Fate or determinism, but because that is how we are, our nature. Great drama or literature is inevitably concerned with "the protagonist ensnared in his own personality". And yet the possibility is there to change levels the step, or quantum jump, to Aquarius. We are talking of levels of consciousness and, always, to be more conscious is the purpose of life, and free will, if it has any meaning, is synonymous with consciousness.



References:

1. Elective Affinities is the title of a novelette by Goethe on marriage and extra marital love affairs, but was a technical term of 18th century chemistry, referring to the relation between substances. It suggests that 18th century chemists had a less mechanistic view of matter than modern ones.

2. Erwin Schroedinger, What is Life ? Cambridge University Press, 1944.
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The Geometry of Time

Michael McMullin

Introduction

Time, space and infinity are among the great metaphysical mysteries confronting humanity, and upon our understanding of these depends our whole conception of, and attunement to reality. Your naïve 19th century scientist of today imagines space as some kind of objective limitless extension, in every direction, existing independently of objects or matter, while time is a one dimensional linear extension, or "flow", from before to after, with an equally independent existence. Both are still seen as absolutes, in spite of 20th century theories to the contrary e.g. in relativity theory "the concept of space, taken separately, has no meaning whatever", and as for time, "each of two systems moving relatively to each other has its own time?, and "the concept of simultaneity in the general sense does not exist".1) Western science is space orientated, and has never understood time. Though understanding space too, in the metaphysical sense, depends upon time, space orientation as a state of mind is extraversion and a concern only with what is outside, with objects or what is supposedly outside and therefore "objective". It feels very uneasy with psychology, which tends, like Eastern philosophy, to show that what we imagine to be outside depends upon what is inside, and is therefore highly subjective. Our obvious, concrete, factual and unquestionable world is only a moonlight mirror upon which we project our idées fixes, and as a species create for ourselves.

This applies also to science, which is anything but objective; rather, as anyone can see, tends to be highly emotive, and its practitioners or at least camp followers, when their egos are at stake, can easily be as fanatical and fundamentalist as any religious bigot , inquisitorial witch burner or revolutionary tricoteuse in the name of "rationalism". All experiments in science start from a premise or belief, and the outcome is tailored to that. The way in which the question is formulated governs the answer, or even contains it; one could say that the question is the answer. And this depends on our state of mind; "truth is a state of mind" (W.B.Yeats). Physics up to recently has been wedded to the idea of fragmentation that truth can be found by breaking everything down into ever smaller components and separately contemplating each fragment. This means compulsively reducing everything to space, since size refers exclusively to spatial dimensions. Everything must consist of, and can be comprehensible only in terms of particles, getting smaller and smaller to keep up with an elusive and ever retreating reality. This is a type of infinity, eventually equalling zero. This point of view has produced modern technology, but unless we start linking things together again, and ourselves to them, our universe will fly apart and actually arrive at zero.

Space is precisely the consciousness of what is outside, the consciousness of separateness; while time recognises that everything outside is also inside. Nowadays however we are seeing the beginning of an enantiodromia, or reversal of polarity, over to wholeness, and this is emerging in the general consciousness in respect of ecology, psychology and sociology, and also in physics (on the very fringe), in ideas that must be totally incomprehensible to our Newtonian fundamentalists who, like "poor Jim Jay, got stuck fast in yesterday" (Walter de la Mare). In the holographic universe every point of space includes the whole of time, every moment of time includes the whole of space; "everything is everywhere and always". We can start thinking in terms of Ouspensky's six dimensional space (A New Model of the Universe).

Time is cyclic, and we are seeing a re emergence in modern language of Hermetic philosophy: as above, so below, and seeing the universe in a grain of sand. The ongoing renaissance and expansion of astrology is not only a part of this, but may provide the key conceptual framework to embody this kind of thinking. It can enable us to see many things in their true perspective and relationship, and its development in this direction constitutes its real significance and potential for the future.



Space and Time

The idea of dimensions is evidently closely connected with the idea of space. Geometrical forms are tied up with 3 dimensional space, or vice versa, and it is impossible to imagine another dimension perpendicular to these three and of the same kind. If there are other dimensions they must refer to a different order of reality, and be in fact immaterial. The idea of matter also depends on the three dimensions of space, and on geometrical forms on solidity. To emphasise this connection, solid is equivalent to crystal; as we quoted from Erwin Schroedinger in another essay, a molecule = a solid = a crystal. This means that the molecule, on its scale, is a structure enduring in time, as is a crystalline solid on its scale. In Schroedinger's words "the molecule presents the same solidity of structure as a crystal", and "the atoms forming a molecule, whether there be few or many of them, are united by forces of exactly the same nature as the numerous atoms which build up a true solid, a crystal". In a gas or liquid composed of molecules, "only the atoms within every molecule are linked in this way". He also has the equation: gas = liquid = amorphous, and "in the so called amorphous solids where we find no crystalline structure we have to regard the thing as a liquid with a very high 'viscosity' (internal friction). When heated it softens gradually and eventually liquifies without discontinuity". A classic example we used to be given in school is amber; and things like pitch, wax etc. would qualify. So matter can be solid (crystalline) or in the form of relatively freely associated molecules in a liquid or gas. A solid in the true sense has geometrical form. In astrology we have the archetype Saturn which already contains these meanings and implies just these qualities, of solidity, matter, crystallisation and form.

Although the geometrical form of a crystal is defined or perceived in space that is, as an object outside the observer, its status as form and solidity depends upon its persistence, at least to some extent, in time. It appears to remain static, while everything else changes and flows. It maintains its outlines and definition as form in fact is synonymous with something that persists and has a certain fixity. In Schroedinger's words again, it is ?withdrawn from entropy?. Here we have other meanings of Saturn, and especially its connection with time. In fact the only meaning of the concept space is our perception of forms (other times) in relation to our own time or inner change, and we measure all time by planetary cycles (our own speed or physiology).

Astrology finds its archetypes in the solar system, since this is the scale of our own range of perception and governs our life cycle and vital rhythms. Since archetypes are universal principles, by analogy these are principles of all reality, on every scale, and the measure of all concepts, whether in physics, psychology, aesthetics or any other sphere. Thus the structure of atoms is analogous to that of solar systems; electrons correspond to planets, their relative velocities and the space within atoms are the same; but the scale, or level of reality, is entirely different, and outside of our range of perception we can only judge of them indirectly and by inference. They are in a different dimension.

We can gain insights into basic ideas such as space and time by relating them to planetary archetypes and what we know of their meanings, through our own astrological experience and through the collective knowledge and experience of humanity embodied in mythology. Space and time are essential categories of our perception and orientation within the solar system, and as beings living within the material realm on earth. But only in those terms, and not applying outside our immediate time system. This is symbolically bounded by the planet Saturn, the orbit of which limits the solar system proper and our material world, of which Saturn, surrounded by rings, is the ring pass not, or time barrier. Outside of this is the immaterial, of which the three major known planetary gods were not members of the pantheon on Mt. Olympus ruled by Zeus. In other words, not part of the conscious, everyday world of the senses on which Greek civilisation was focused. Zeus/Jupiter is a space god, the god of the upper air, and of the 3 dimensional geometrical space of which we are consious, and which is contained within time, or defined by time and by our perception of concrete material objects; but time itself (Cronus) was banished by the Greeks to some obscure nether region.

The Saturn principle can be thought of as containing the system, as revolving round the centre but tending to contract towards the centre, and therefore as centripetal. This is the principle of matter or materialisation, or the condensation of energies. It is this that creates a time cycle or a form that endures, that counters entropy, and concentrates or binds energies. The same applies to atoms. This contraction principle forms matter (molecules) by binding atoms; but if there were no counter principle it would continue to contract within the atom itself until reaching its ultimate expression in a black hole. This must be pure contraction, density, darkness and death, with no space left, something like absolute zero in temperature, and no light absolute darkness. Perhaps contraction to a point with no dimensions (no space), as though one pole of infinity; it can be a subject for interesting speculation.

The Saturn principle makes towards death, rigidity, age, and time brings death; father time and the symbol of the Reaper are one and the same. Or the end of the cycle, but, so long as the cyclic movement is maintained, the beginning of a new one. Within the orbit of Saturn is Jupiter, the counter principle of expansion, and centrifugal force. Evidently this maintains the cycle against infinite contraction, is a counter principle to gravity note the association with grave, and death; while Saturn, on the outside, prevents infinite expansion. These two principles together maintain the planets in their orbits and the cycles of time and life in the material world. One could say that Jupiter maintains the principle of space between material forms, and does not allow them to contract into one another; and it is only their separation in space that allows us to perceive and distinguish them.

As ruler of the fire sign Sagittarius Jupiter is also a fire principle, or a spiritual principle, associated with life, rather than death. It maintains the conditions for life in the material realm, allows expansion (in breathing) alternating with contraction, or the rhythmic pulsation that characterises life as we know it. The Sun as the central fire of our system is the life principle itself, Jupiter its minister or Solar Hero, maintaining the system against Saturn, outer darkness and the dragon, or Devil. (Jupiter itself nearly qualifies as a sub Sun, on the way to becoming a Sun, and has a complete set of planets.) Fire is radiant energy that motivates the system. Heat, as expansion, is the disorder that counters form and solidity and makes for entropy (expansion and diffusion); and it produces light. The term entropy, as used in physics, is or was supposed to mean a state of ultimate equilibrium and equal diffusion of matter and energy in subjective ( i.e. non existent) "space", and therefore the end of motion and a kind of cosmic death. It means no cycles or forms and no Saturn principle, hence "disorder", absolute expansion, the opposite pole of infinity to a black hole, or the other end of nothingness. But in our terms, made clear in astrology, it would mean transcendence of 3 dimensional space and the orbit of Saturn. Within this orbit it is the combination of expansion and contraction that maintains life, circulation and cyclic development, and the combination of light and darkness (Sun and Saturn) that makes consciousness possible, and eventually enlightened consciousness or individuation.

It is the Saturn/Jupiter principles together which produce cycles, and therefore time. Eventually when we take development or evolution into account these are spirals, and in P.D.Ouspensky's New Model of the Universe the solar system is, like atoms and everything else on different scales, ?a world of inter connected spirals?, in which such concepts as gravitation become unnecessary. Each "world" or level on the different scales, appears "solid" to an observer on a higher level. One could very speculatively suggest in this context three main levels of observation: the electronic (micro) level; the human level (as things appear to us on earth); and the cosmic (macro) level, the galactic point of view. We find ourselves exactly at the mid point on these scales. It is doubtful if anyone has thought about the dimensions of time and space, and the relation of these to questions of scale, infinity and incommensurability, and the nature of reality, with anything like the clarity and significance of Ouspensky, writing in the early decades of this century, and already anticipating and better defining some of the most advanced conceptions being proposed in its last decades.



Dimensions of Time

Dimensions beyond the three of space perceptible to us are dimensions of time, and these constitute other levels of reality, or inner dimensions, or psychic reality. There are also three dimensions of time, making six in all; but they can change into one another. The next higher dimension to the space we know always appears as movement, or time. The first dimension of time, the line from before to after, is, subjectively, the way the world appears to us from within our own life cycle, as successive foci of attention in relation to our own physiology and sensory equipment. Its speed changes as our speed does, and as we slow down with age time appears to pass us by more quickly. When we are young, a year contains a lot more and is much longer than when we are old, and of course during gestation as much happens in one month as in an average of seven years of life after birth. Rather than thinking of the first dimension of time the "fourth dimension" as a general line, Ouspensky suggests thinking of it as parallel lines, or better, zig zags. We only see a point at a time, and this is a cross sexction of things. What we actually see in one moment is a cross section of everything within our range of vision, arranged in "space" that is, in the relation of one thing to another with reference to ourselves. Otherwise we could see the whole of the life cycle of anything say a plant, from seed to full growth and flower in one piece. Our unconscious mind contains our own wholeness though we are not conscious of it; and our wholeness with humanity (the "morphogenetic field"). The most we can consciously take in at present is our individual wholeness in diagrammatic form as shown in our horoscopes.

The second dimension of time is a surface, the co existence of everything that "happens" sometimes referred to as the synoptic universe; while the third and most difficult to understand dimension is the co existence or realisation of all possibilities. All six dimensions, three of space and three of time, are represented by the six pointed star, made of two triangles combined, one inverted, as the material world, and the other, pointing up, the spiritual or immaterial. In astrology we can assume that these higher dimensions become perceptible through the action of the outer planets. Uranus seems to be connected with the electronic level of reality, which in Ouspensky's terms consists of more time than space; we only become aware of it through its time dimensions, or motion, without which it does not exist. Uranus has to do with breaking up solidity, or the conversion from one dimension to another, and surely with the quantum principle, of jumps in level. This would be the principle converting the cycle of eternal recurrence into the spiral of evolutionary development. When there is no longer solidity Neptune brings flow and diffusion in all directions, leading ultimately to "entropy", in terms of materialistic science, or transcendence, out of space and our time cycle; that is, de condensation, and back to mind only. "Entropy" obviously depends on the concept of absolute space, in which there could be no more time (no movement); but several physicists well before the present revolutionary era have arrived at the ultimate reality of mind only, a tenet of Buddhism, and these include Schroedinger and Sir Arthuir Eddington.

Relativity theory talks of a "space time continuum", as though space and time were of the same order and something "objective" and "out there" certainly an extraverted view of time. The term "magnetic field" covers discreetly a range of vague areas for science, while itself being indefinable. It is no more precise or discriminating than "aura", but if anuthing less so. "Aura" refers to "subtle bodies", or higher level (dimensional) energies transcending and preceding material manifestation. Broadly speaking in esoteric teaching there are three such "bodies" or dimensions: the etheric or formative (Sheldrake's morphogenetic field), the astral (feeling level, associated with Neptune), and the mental or spiritual. "Magnetic field" on the other hand is a vague term which does not refer to any explicable phenomenon, nor have any meaningful implications. Assuming that it refers to something of the same order, then aura is the more expressive and meaningful term. According to Alan Leo the ecliptic zodiac defines the earth's aura. Magnetic fields are connected with frequencies, and so with resonance; one can think of the principle of Uranus as operating here, and especially in the case of shattering through resonance. All "space" is conceived of as a "field", and matter as "disturbances of the field"; this preumably would come about through polarisation, again Saturn as the principle of polarity. We might then be talking of vibrational nodes. When however we arrive at Chaos Theory and fractals circular equations and feed back, the cyclic nature of phenomena and repetition on different scales, this applies equally to time or space. The repetitions can be of spatial patterns or events (astrological patterns) everyday synchronicity, the cycles of history, "septars" (Döbereiner) or the amplification of wave patterns, are all examples of fractals in terms of time. On the frontiers of speculative physics today the "field", otherwise known as "space time", has become a sea and concentration of pure energy, which may conceivably have, for us, something to do with Pluto.

It already appears that many independent researchers and inventors around the world have discovered practical ways of tapping into an all pervading cosmic energy, and the technology is there to replace all the known and destructive forms of energy production.2) It will be necessary however in parallel, before this too is misused and perverted, to replace the destructive forms of thinking that characterise our present civilisation. The new energy is referred to as "zero point energy", meaning that it is independent of temperature, or is different from heat energy, and so is not detectable by present technology; or "space energy". Most scientists, notwithstanding their Ph. Ds., are not at home in pure thought. They automatically accept conventional concepts and do not understand that thinking is in the first place the analysis of language and the definition of terms. To say for example that "space is a vacuum" is a contradiction in terms: a vacuum = nothing, and you cannot apply "is" to nothing; there is no such thing as nothing (a vacuum), and it cannot be. Similarly "space energy" contains the contradiction of space, which is by definition nothing, and static, and energy, which is of a different dimensionality, is immaterial (has no relation to "space"), and is or is potentially active. In so far as the universe is energy there can be no such thing as space, in its terms, but only in relation to our perceptions; and the term "energy" is itself undefined. We are limited in our understanding by the forms of language, modelled on our perceptual limitations. The idea of the universe as a "fast spinning vortex which we cannot perceive", because too fast, cannot mean anything in an objective sense, but may have validity in the sense of fitting into a conceptual model or set of equations. To think of "space energy" in terms of vortices is interesting from the point of view of our archetypes, since following the inward spiral of a vortex, with the circles getting narrower and converging to a point, suggests the universal principle of contraction, condensation or "gravity" (Saturn), while following the widening outward spiral suggests expansion and radiation (Jupiter), anti gravity, or a spin in the opposite direction (the suspension of time). It is possible that the idea of the vortex supplies the essential geometrical figure that represents time, and the transcendence of time. For with the new energy we are in the world of the immaterial, of a different and higher (prior) reality. As a quotation I come upon from Itzhak Bentov has it: “Space” = “a sea of consciousness of awareness, or thought or intention” in other words mind only. “Every iota of it contains the totality” (there is no space). “1 c.c. of 'empty space' contains more enfolded energy than all created matter in the entire material universe”.



1. Quoted from Ouspensky, A New Model of the Universe.
2. See: The Coming Energy Revolution, by Jeane Manning, (Avery Publishing Group, Graden City, New York, 1996).

(3600 words)




The Horoscope as Vibrational Pattern

Michael McMullin



Repression of the Feminine

It is interesting to note how the attitudes or ways of thinking prevalent today, far from being "advanced", "rational" or "enlightened" as they think themselves, reflect accurately the psychological condition of contemporary humanity as essentially schizophrenic. This arises from the systematic devaluation and repression of the feminine part of the psyche, exactly as portrayed in Goethe's Faust, in favour of the analytical intellect (Virgo Pisces). A repression of the feeling function (Moon and the element water) is equivalent to a rejection of values, moral, ethical and aesthetical (Venus, the archetype of value, is exalted in Pisces), and we have a society where what is called "value judgement" (a tautology) is taught in its educational system as something to be avoided and a mark of inferior thinking. Repressed and denied contents always become destructive, hence insane (rather than "rational").

Beyond this again it is still more interesting to note how the same situation can be expressed in truly rational terms through the planetary archetypes, which are at the same time psychological components. Thus the one sided emphasis and manifestation of the two masculine archetypes Mars and Saturn which, while denoting the most necessary positive attributes of energy and self realisation plus discipline and boundaries, overdriven and carried to absurdity become aggression and violence plus egoism and rigidity. Turned into intellectual principles ruling our entire view of the universe, Mars becomes the god of mechanism, Saturn the principle of materialism and "rationalism", walled in against the intrusion of feeling values or intuition (i.e. biological or psychological realities, as opposed to intellectual fantasies).



Jupiter and Saturn

It is characteristic of our present stage that we must carry everything to extremes, and oscillate wildly between one polarity and the other. As one generation goes overboard in one direction, say of disciplining their children, the next goes to similar extremes in the opposite way, and imparts to them no manners, no structure to their lives nor restraint, and believes in teaching them nothing, except that life is about having their every whim immediately gratified, and that there is no such word as NO. One can understand the virtue of the Confucian Golden Mean. The German astrologer Thomas Ring 1) quotes from Fritz Riemann, a psychoanalyst, who in Basic Forms of Anxiety suggests that humanity, as dweller on the earth, is subject to the same tension and balance between the centrifugal and centripetal principles as the earth itself in its rotation on its axis and its path around the Sun. The planetary archetypes of these principles are Jupiter and Saturn, expansion and contraction, respectively space and time. "Space" constitutes our relationship to what is outside us, or, simply, relationship; while time represents contraction towards the centre and what is inside. On a cosmic scale, the centre around which the system revolves keeps it alive is its Sun, while on the individual scale this is the inner Sun, or astrological Sun. The inter relationships between individuals and others outside keep us evolving, in a process of differentiation, of growing consciousness and within an ever changing pattern of energies produced by the inter relationships between the planetary orbits. "Space Time" can be thought of as a balance between expansion and contraction, and it is Riemann's idea that the same opposition or tension is built into humans as unconscious impulses. He derives from this a classification of four basic forms of anxiety or fear: 1. Fear of giving oneself of loss of self and dependency (Schizoid); 2. Fear of becoming oneself insecurity and isolation (Depressive): these would come under Jupiter, as fear of expanding, and a kind of shame. 3. Fear of change of mortality and uncertainty (Compulsive); 4. Fear of necessity of finiteness and limitation (Hysterical). These last two represent fear as an experience of the body/soul relationship, and come under Saturn, especially in a context of Moon/Saturn aspects, and a repression of the feminine, or soul.

It is possible that the first two cases may be associated with a father complex, and afflictions of Sun or Jupiter especially by Pluto, and the last two with a mother complex. Individually the loss of the father could lead to an inhibition of self confidence and Jupiterian expansive qualities, and a tendency to withdrawal, while the loss of the mother could lead to an inhibition of the Saturnian quality of independence and self reliance, and to the subsequent need for a substitute mother. In either case, development as an individual and fully functional adult requires the preservation, rather than the repression of the positive attributes of the archetypes Mars and Saturn. The proper function of Jupiterian qualities must depend in the first place on a healthy Mars, and while the feminine is devalued and the one sided and inflated forms of Mars and Saturn held up as the ideal, it is nevertheless just the positive side of these archetypes that are described by Robert Bly (in Iron John) as conspicuously lacking in the typical modern man, deprived of the traditional rituals of initiation into adulthood by the elders. In such case the absence of a healthy development within the family of these components could lead to their emergence in inflated and negative forms in the culture as a whole, the collective conscious, by way of compensation, and a stultifying of individual judgement and independence, a result which favours the "market economy" and the manipulative policy of the plutocracy. The mass media controlled by the latter follow up this advantage by encouraging the "masses" to think of themselves as completely infantile, by the standard of communication served up to them, and ready to believe anything.

The patterns of thinking following from these conditions can only be described as neurotic. In a recent book Rupert Sheldrake looks at the question of how homing pigeons find their way back after being carried long distances by train, in baskets. The explanations attempted by the "sceptics" and "realists" suggest a degree of naïve gullibility beyond anything that can be attributed to simple superstition (or "primitive peoples"). For example, that the pigeons have an in built "mechanism" that registers every twist and turn on the journey outwards, so that they can reproduce it in reverse when finding their way home. We must be able, at all costs, to have a mechanism, or our whole system of thought will collapse. This is always what is at stake when a person whose security depends on being at one with the generally accepted collective view of reality is confronted with any idea or proposal that seems to counter or threaten this. He is not interested in the merits, factuality or reasoning presentable in particular instances, but with the danger of upsetting the subjective basis of his world. It is a form of clinging to home and authority, to mother, or even the womb, or a missing father, and can only be addressed by psychotherapy of some kind.



Genetics

A favourite stand by for the mechanism syndrome, and almost synonymous with it, is the idea of genes, since this covers a huge vague area about which little is known and almost anything can be assumed. We have only got to suppose a gene for anything to make it automatically acceptable as a mechanism, whether it is homing pigeons, the psychic abilities of animal pets or the complex behaviour of ants and bees. "Gene" is related to "Genius", and as a blanket word for something barely understood it serves a similar purpose of cover up; the most impossible attributes of skill, knowledge, experience and insight (e.g. Shake speare) can be simply explained away as "genius", without requiring any learning or practical means of attaining to these qualities. And we should have to explain a genius in terms of genes, even if we cannot hope actually to isolate a "gene" for a chemical Bach. But an automaton animated by genes may be an adequate model for certain types of mind, though even here we might prefer the term psychological complexes.

Explaining everything by assuming a "gene" is to fall into the trap of the causality syndrome, wherein any part or feature of an integrated whole can equally well be taken as the cause of all the rest, since all is inter connected and the whole is reflected in every part. A good palmist can read a person's life from the lines on the hand, and it might as well be claimed that his life is caused by these lines, and that surgically altering them would change his inherited make up. The mechanists would like on the one hand to have everything about a person explained as "genetic", and at the same time, as the result of "education" and environment acting on a blank page.

Mental "illnesses", like everything else, are explained by genes and mechanisms. Manic depression is a further obvious case of imbalance between the archetypes Jupiter and Saturn; but here, instead of being repressed or inhibited, each functions independently and without being balanced by the other, and they alternate. The manic phase represents undisciplined Jupiter, altogether out of touch with the world of Saturnine reality and practical boundaries (Jupiter is a fire planet, and an excess of fire in the horoscope is conducive to this result); while the depressive phase is Saturn without any compensating expansion, optimism or enthusiasm that should be provided by Jupiter. When this condition occurs in cases of identical twins, 70% share it, and 30% do not. This has to be genetic or environmental, and "the only possible explanation" for the 30% is environmental. Inherent differences of character are not considered as a possibility. Depression is thought to be due to "a deficiency of chemical messengers (hormones) in the nerve cells" such as noradrenaline (Mars). A lack of self esteem is referred to "coping mechanisms". "Those without an intimate relationship are more vulnerable to depression", and so are those who lose their mothers before the age of eleven; the chemical explanation for which surprising discoveries is the "switching on of a genetic mechanism" 2). We have projected ourselves into our own machines.

On the other hand the astrological make up cannot be decided ("caused") by either heredity or environment, but it is a code of the pattern read higher up in the harmonic series, probably as high as we can go, and relatively more archetypal and less differentiated. The genetic make up is, like each cell, the shape and soles of the feet, the iris of the eye, the hand, the outer ear, or anything else, in correspondence to or an expression of the whole pattern, and so is the outer life, the family, the environment and the associates, and the events in life, and these are not the causes of anything, nor even the effects, but the manifestations of different facets of a whole. The material manifestations can be seen as the end of the line, or the crystallised form of the pattern of energies, like audible sound, which can be analysed into harmonic partials on successively higher degrees. "If it were not for the body, this physical world would be non existent for us" (Alan Leo, Esoteric Astrology). The body acts as a sounding board. "A given type of character can only be expressed by means of a body that is exactly adapted for the purpose . . . The plan of the body is expressive of both character and fate; in fact the horoscope is built into the very fabric of the body . . . " From the same source we find: the synodical periods of the planets form simple (harmonic ?) proportions to the gestation period, while the Moon at the prenatal epoch determines the Ascendant at birth. Thus the genetic make up could, if we are to be obsessed with that particular stage, be associated with patterns of resonance; while the unquestionable relation of the Ascendant to character and bodily type (personality etc.) puts that obsession into proper perspective. To quote Alan Leo again: "The geometrical figures caused (manifested) by the motions of the heavenly bodies are eternally changing . . . ; they are never repeated in the same form during the cyclic revolution of the whole zodiac." The body is "moulded upon the pattern of the geometrical figure to which it is related." As for heredity, "a child is born into a family with which it is either in harmony or the reverse; . . . the geometrical figure fits in with the horoscopes of the others, or it is impossible to find even a semblance of a fitting." As we know, astrological contents can run in families, as though "inherited". In psychological language, repressed contents can be passed on from parent to child, and this can go on until somebody faces up to and deals with the problem. In the language of occultism, evil thought forms can follow through from other incarnations, like clouds, or actual entities, and such things we may especially associate with a twelfth house Pluto, and/or afflictions from this archetype to the lights. In terms of other incarnations, members of a family or associates in the present life may have been together in other lives, dealing with the same issues.



Cancer

In all these things we are dealing with patterns of energies, and naturally diseases, whether physical or mental, have to do with the non harmonious either inadequate, blocked or disproportionate functioning of these energies, which are reflected in the endocrine glands, as in the chakras or main energy centres, and seen in the aura. Homeopathic medecine recognises this and addresses the energy pattern; its prescriptions consist solely of frequencies, in a neutral medium, not of substances (chemicals). While "material medecine always looks for cause in the realm of effect", its consequences in the energetic bodies are an important part of the manipulative techniques practised on modern society. "The refusal to admit that what happens in our lives is an expression of what is going on inside us . . . is a force serving the cause of cancer". 3)

It is significant that cancer is a disease of over production and of excess. It is also associated with the suppression of the feminine, "with twisted and suppressed emotions". Cancer is the conclusion "to the morbid and pathological processes existing in our society . . . it is a disease of fear". 3) All these statements correlate with the astrological sign Cancer; apart from its name, it is a water sign, of feeling and emotion, is the sign of the Moon, of femininity itself, ruling the breasts and the womb; and it is the sign of fecundity, generation, and growth. It is also the sign of the exaltation of Jupiter, the planet of expansion, which when out of harmony can lead to over production and excess. Even as regards fear, and perhaps morbidity, natives of this sign tend to show these characters in certain respects the hermit crab withdraws into its shell. In astrological symptomatology, afflictions of Moon and Saturn could bring about some of these conditions, and if Jupiter, and perhaps Uranus, are also involved in the pattern it can show the disease itself.

The same cancerous condition of over production, excess and waste, combined with morbidity, is obvious in the whole contemporary scene and is the ruling principle of the economic system on which it is based. The predominant slogan for politicians is "growth", and "more jobs", without any regard to what is growing or where it is leading. Natural resources and the very foundations of life are being indiscriminately destroyed, means of destruction manufactured (part of the "growth") and piled up or distributed to all and anyone, and this is good if it "gives employment" (i.e. produces profits for certain people). One of the best examples of this insane profligacy is perhaps the unreckonable quantities of paper produced and used for the distribution of every conceivable kind of inanity, "marketing" and insidious propaganda; for which vast tracts of Northern forests are being destroyed at an ever excellerating rate. Since this whole economy exists solely to inflate to an infinite extent the "profits" and power of the plutocracy (the few), while the costs to everyone and everything else count for nothing, a condition exactly analogous to cancer, an astrologer can see it as a perfect manifestation of Pluto in Sagittarius, representing an unlimited inflation of the Jupiter principle, in the interests of the concentration of malignant power. (Tolkien's fable The Lord of the Rings describes this situation in a starkly real picture, while the hero who is opposed to the Dark Lord, "Strider", is a positive Sagittarian figure.)

Cancer as a disease can thus be seen as a negative growth of the feminine principle, a repressed function turned destructive. If Jupiter is exalted in the sign Cancer, it must not be forgotten that Saturn is exalted in Libra, the sign of Venus, the other feminine principle. This is the sign and principle especially of relating, and we can take it to mean that separate individuality is most valid when combined with relating to others on the basis of justice and love (magnetism). When this feminine principle is repressed we get unlimited egoism and ego inflation (or one sided Saturn), in parallel with the unlimited expansion and growth of inflated Jupiter. The healthy functioning of the Jupiter principle is relating to what is outside us, reaching out to the greater whole, first in the social sense, then in the sense of the wider cosmos, and the spiritual dimension. Hence Jupiter is the archetype of meaning. The healthy functioning of the Saturn principle concerns the integrity of the individual as part of the whole and as a material entity. We live in "a fundamental but dynamic tension between these two aspects of our nature". 4)..

The conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn the Great Conjunctions are probably of much more significance than is generally realised at present. Wolfgang Döbereiner in his system of Septars has a method of deriving subsequent historical events from each Great Conjunction that occurs in a new element (See Réalta Vol. 2 No. 1). Since 1842 the element has been earth, and I have noticed in individual horoscopes that Saturn overshadows Jupiter in those born during these conjunctions, and materialism prevails in their thinking. It is likely therefore that this applies to the culture as a whole over the whole period, and we may see a change in Dec. 2020 at the winter solstice, when the conjunction is in the first degree of Aquarius. Before this, on Jan. 21st 2008, Pluto enters Capricorn. This point of ingress is close to the direction of the galactic centre at 26°57' Sagittarius, and a special form of higher radiation (galactic) is known to be strongest in the direction of Sagittarius, which would seem to confirm the astrological character of this sign and its principle.



The Integration of Energy Patterns

The principle of Aquarius has to do with the understanding of higher energies, frequencies and vibrational patterns. When this is achieved an entirely new reality must replace that understood today in the collective consciousness. The various fringe disciplines, therapies and studies approaching this understanding today will inevitably link up. Psychology, with its study of the inter relation of psychic components or archetypes is already associating these with energy patterns and tracing them back not merely to childhood and parental relations, but to experiences of the trauma of actual birth, and beyond, to other incarnations, "ancestors, mythological demons and heroes". 4) The final step back is to planetary energy patterns, where everything can be related. Homeopathy is perhaps one of the disciplines closest to this realisation, and to an extension and enhancement through an integration with both psychology and astrology, from which psychology will benefit to the same extent.

The Great Conjunction of 2040 is in Libra, when we might hope for a re emergence of the Venus principle, of harmony and attraction, to balance the domination of Mars, as aggression, repulsion and mechanism. We can re interpret the world in terms of resonance, where like attracts like and everything is inter connected, instead of consisting of chaotic "particles" rushing about at random and banging against one another. "Our vibrations create patterns in the atmosphere", to which like is attracted. The pattern draws substance and "gains weight and form which, if sustained, determines the crystallised form that eventually will manifest in the material world". 3) "What we are depends on material we have worked into our aura".

Rupert Sheldrake talks of "morphic resonance", and his wife, Jill Purce, works with sound and has developed a method of tuning in to patterns of resonance through the voice after the model of Tibetan chant: "Everything in the world has its identity because of the periodicity and the regularity of its movement and this is what makes one thing separate from another, and gives it form". The horoscope may one day be identifiable with a sound or vibrational pattern of the type shown in Hans Jenny's photographs, or Cymatics, or character represented as a pattern of energies, as it probably exists in the aura seen by clairvoyants as colours. This also is the magnetic field.

Rodney Collin 5) distinguishes three main kinds of energy in our environment: Light, which is produced by the Sun, and is galactic; Sound, produced by the phenomena of Nature and limited to the Earth; and in between these lies the magnetic, arising from the planets and limited to the Solar System. "Magnetic influence, acting on matter, is that which gives rise to visible form". The planetary archetype of magnetism and attraction is Venus, but the Moon is also associated with magnetism, and is referred to by Collin as the Great Magnet of nature; and these are the two feminine archetypes, and may together govern the morphogenetic or magnetic field. "Light, magnetism and sound constitute a clear hierarchy of energies, characteristic respectively of a sun, of a planet, and of nature. And they represent the means by which these cosmoses act upon us, by which the first endows us with life, the second with form and the third with sensation." They are three levels of manifestation or differentiation, corresponding broadly to spirit, soul and body. The solar or spiritual level we presume to transcend the particular pattern or incarnation; identical twins are not identical in character, even at a very early stage, and how we develop or actually use the energies is not shown in the horoscope.


References:

1) Thomas Ring, Astrologische Menschenkunde Vo.III,p.382. (Bauer Verlag.)

2) Dr. Patrick McKeon, Coping with Depression & Elation, (Sheldon Press 1986)

3) Martin Miles, Homeopathy & Human Evolution, (Winter Press 1992)

4) Una Maguire on the work of Stanislav Grof, in Psychotherapy in Ireland, (The Columba Press 1994).

5) Rodney Collin, The Theory of Celestial Influence, p.44. (Shambala) This is a work full of the most potent ideas that should be known to all astrologers, even though it is not directly astrology.

(3852 words)




Astrology as Paradigm

Michael McMullin


INTRODUCTION

Astrology like religion is concerned with the interpretation of the cosmos in which we find ourselves, the laws that govern it and our relation to it. They are really the same thing, and while both are founded upon our contemplation of the awe inspiring wonders and vastness of the heavens, religions are an expression of this in the form of myths, parables, and personifications, but astrology adheres to the more directly observational terminology of constellations and planets. However it still interprets these as archetypes or gods with direct relation to human life and character, and analagous in principle. In Platonic and neo Platonic philosophy these two approaches are more or less synthesised or identical, and are completely so when we go further back to Pythagoras, where the language becomes number and harmonic proportions cosmic harmonies. In ancient Egypt all spheres of life, religion, astronomy, art, agriculture and death were understood in relation to a unified cosmology ("unified field"), that seemed not to "evolve" but to have been complete from the beginning in a civilisation that lasted four thousand years, and left behind achievements of which we are not capable today 1). This last is also true of some South American civilisations.

In the last few centuries all spheres of thought have become increasingly separated and unrelated to everything else, astronomy being reduced to mechanical measurement of supposedly meaningless phenomena; ways of thinking that synthesise and relate things together are banished astrology even more than religion, because it refers to the same phenomena as astronomy and is a more direct challenge. In recognising that all cosmoses, on all scales from galactic, through human, to cellular, molecular and atomic correspond and are formed according to the same harmonic principles, astrology potentially reunites all ways of thinking and applies to everything. In using celestial archetypes it re connects to religion and mythology, on a more conscious and less allegorical but no less symbolical level, and is referring to the most fundamental or all embracing level of archetypes or ideas, which, like all phenomena on earth or in the universe, are hierarchical in organisation. It is a fore runner in this respect of the new paradigm of thinking that is now increasingly apparent in many different areas and disciplines, even sciences, to the extent that one wonders if we have reached the "hundredth monkey" effect and passed a threshold. More and more we are hearing of reality as patterns of energy, as thought forms and even as mind and consciousness, bringing us again to Plotinus and well on the way to Pythagoras, while our late lamented obvious and positive world is turning into a pathetically childish subjective projection we "create our own reality", and can change it at will, even the past a message which has been coming through from mysterious sources, such as "Seth", and Castaneda, for much of this century.



THE STUDY OF HISTORY

Very evidently then history is cyclic, like the solar system and everything else, and linear time belongs with Tweedle dum and Tweedle dee. An astrologer would hardly have thought otherwise at any period; but modern astrologers do not appear to address this question. This probably derives from the socially outcast status of the subject, which has to be pursued in cellars, as it were, like the old alchemy, and dare not mingle in the open with academically respectable and recognised studies. But the changing intellectual climate should soon make it possible to recognise that the study of cosmic and natural cycles (i.e. astrology) is the only possible and reasonable background and foundation to the study of history; not to mention that the cyclic development of human conceptual cosmology (i.e. consciousness) is the essentially interesting theme of history, if not its actual meaning and purpose.

Up to now we have had only two historians leaving out Vico both writing in the first decades of the XXth century, who have seen history as cyclic and as a succession, and sometimes co existence, of quite different cultures or civilisations, each complete in itself as an organism and with a life cycle of birth or initial inspiration, growth, maturity, decline and disintegration. These are Toynbee and Spengler, who are almost never mentioned nowadays, unless dismissively, since this whole approach is heretical to the point of undermining every single dogma and idée fixe of conventional academic teaching. It is indeed quite equivalent in this way to astrology, and though neither of these two historians mentions astrology, as far as I recollect, it belongs necessarily to the same way of thinking, that is, it is non Aristotelian. Seeing history as cyclic, or as histories, implies inevitably comparing one culture with another, and perceiving their stages of development in terms of the phases of cycles, and of cycles within cycles, like those of the different planets, even if one never mentions planets. This leads to thinking in analogies and symbolism, and in the case of Spengler particularly this method permeates his work through and through. He is dealing primarily with Western culture and civilisation, while referring for comparison to others such as the Chinese, and especially to the Byzantine or Islamic culture which was contemporary and contiguous with ours. His definition and delineation of Western Culture, which he also calls "the Faustian", is naturally quite different from the orthodox and linear one, which always includes ancient Greece and Rome; but it fully makes sense in terms of the astrological ages. Each astrological age includes a number of cultures; in our own Mediterranean area the Greco Roman and Persian clearly belong to the Arien Age, the Egyptian to both the Geminian (pre dynastic twin kingdoms) and Taurian (the United Kingdom), to which last the Sumerian and ancient Irish equally clearly belong, all with their Bull symbolisms. The time span covered by Egyptian civilisation even enters into Aries with the appearance in the Twelfth Dynasty of the Ram of Amon as dominant symbol. Western Culture and Christianity are most explicitly Piscean; then, about half way through, going over into the opposite polarity, Virgo like Faust, selling its soul (Venus is exalted in Pisces) in favour of the analytical intellect. This meaning is implied, indeed spelled out in the Gospels and the symbols of Christianity itself; but symbolic thinking is entirely alien to the rationalist mentality, and belongs, with astrology, to the coming paradigm and the next, Aquarian Age.

A recent work, which the publishers introduce with six or more pages of eulogies by many of the more advanced and interesting among contemporary thinkers, consists of an exceptionally clear and well expressed account of the history of academic philosophy from the ancient Greeks to the modern and post modern era the chapters on these last two (i.e. the present predicament of thought) are especially good. It is called The Passion of the Western Mind, by Richard Tarnas, and while it does full justice to each thinker or kind of thinking touched upon, even astrology as a factor in Renaissance thinking, and gets each separate picture right, is yet unable to see the whole, and as history or an account of European Culture is still more notable for what is left out. Nearly every important overt thinker is taken into account (but not the more interesting underground river of esoteric thought), except the two who are most relevant in the context of history, Spengler and Toynbee, for the possibility of history being cyclic is meticulously avoided. Spengler called his work the "Going under of the West", and accurately delineated the features of our present civilisation as characteristic of the last stages of a cycle (the twelfth house to an astrologer). Cycles wax and wane, and the current mentality of collective ego inflation cannot bear the idea of not seeing itself as the most "advanced", "developed", and "evolved" of all possible life forms, the triumphant outcome of a steady though accidental linear "progress" from orang outang to "positivist". This took place in a chaotic and haphazard though inexorable and infernal Darwinian penitentiary.

One can interpret history from the point of view of rational thinking, of Christian theology (rise and decline of), the development of science and technology, the quality of art and culture and architecture, of taste and the quality of life, or of the consciousness of meaning and the level of spiritual awareness, and quite different histories result, going in different directions, round in circles or nowhere. To understand the whole picture one needs to see all these aspects in relation to one another, and much more besides; one needs to take in other cultures and civilisations, other world views and other levels of awareness, and have some idea of the spiritual Odyssey of humanity in general and where it is heading. One needs to understand mythology, psychology, and above all astrology, which is the science of cycles and all their phases, and is in fact the "geometry of time". History is a study of development in time and subject to the same rules, and no more linear than the solar system but how many historians understand even this basic first principle? Nearly the only one, and certainly the one who has understood it best, and best fulfilled the other criteria listed above, is Spengler, and when all these features of the culture are considered together as a whole, a completely different picture emerges from that of the orthodox vision. This latter sees civilisation virtually beginning with Greek philosophy and developing in a straight line, apart from some early theological diversions, through the "Renaissance", and the rational demonstration by Copernicus that we revolve around the Sun, rather than vice versa, leading to the "Enlightenment" and the final shedding of any non materialistic illusions, making possible the ultimate emergence of the all knowing and clear sighted rational man of today, even if he is only an accident and no longer the centre of the universe. This is the model followed by Tarnas, though he does understand that on the frontiers of present thought things are beginning to look rather different. He seems to imply nevertheless that history is subsumed in the thinking function and that it is professors of philosophy who lead the way, seemingly unaware of the other three functions; that the rational intellect is the great measure and goal of evolution, and alone constitutes "mind". In reality rationalist philosophers are no more than an epiphenomenon of hardly any importance, except as a symptom of the last stages and decline of the present civilisation, which by this time has lost its creative vitality and inspiration has lost its soul. A good symptomatology of the stages of civilisation is suggested by Rodney Collin, taking as index the level of comparative religion, or the scale of the "Declining Absolute". This descends from the galactic (or ultra galactic), to Sun, planets, the world of nature, man or even sub man e.g. bacteria, or "chance", where we are today the final degeneration or diseased state. In this last phase the only development open to us is in technology and the increasing elaboration and perfection of machines, which also become our only form of aesthetic and even spiritual expression.

The real nature and character of European or Western Culture on the other hand is best seen in the Gothic cathedrals, and in polyphonic music, neither of which have anything at all to do with either the "Renaissance" or with Greco Roman culture and civilisation, or indeed with any other culture we know. Neither have the early medieval and monastic periods of Christianity; one only has to listen to some plain chant to experience directly the inner spirit of this culture, and then look at some Greek sculpture, to appreciate the difference. The completely different world view represented by pre baroque (pre Reformation) music, i.e. 15th and 16th century polyphony, and how alien it is to ours, and our post Lutheran music, escapes altogether historians like Tarnas, who see only rational thought and scholastic theology. The true spirit of Christian and Gothic culture, which did not , like the Renaissance, arise in Italy, but as its name implies is characteristic of the more Northern races, and chiefly was manifest in France and the Lowlands to begin with, is in many respects the polar opposite of the Greco Roman, as time is to space, inner to outer, and has more in common with that of Plato and Pythagoras, which goes back to Egypt. The cathedrals too sprung up as it were ready made, in the elventh century, out of nowhere, and are based upon cosmic harmonies. They did not evolve by stages. Where did the knowledge come from ? Certainly not from Aristotle. While we cannot here go into this to any extent, it should nearly be sufficient to point to the extraordinary development of music as its major and most profound spiritual expression, which is unique to Western Culture. No historian but Spengler seems to have understood this; but music, and other art and literature, is surely a much more essential expression of "the Western Mind", particularly its "Passion", than the ever narrowing and retrogressive world view of academic rational philosophers, whose idea that history consists of themselves is probably also unique. Scholastic philosophy around the time of the Renaissance adopted Aristotle, who is more characteristically Greek and also more in line with the development of the analytical intellect than the neo platonists or the early Christian theologians. The cosmic background to this progressive restriction of vision to the immediate foreground is of course a reversal of polarity (enantiodromia), at a certain time and place the Italian Renaissance from Pisces to Virgo, implied inevitably perhaps in the double sign, and even foreshadowed in the gospel story of the loaves and fishes. And it is true that this opposite polarity has more affinity with the Greco Roman extraverted and essentially surface and material view of the world than with the Christian one. While the first half of the age, and its essential character, mythology and devotional religion, is closely Piscean, even Neptunian in nature, it becomes increasingly Virgoan in its waning period as the original impulse loses its vitality. If humanity needs to develop the analytical intellect on its way towards consciousness this evidently has to be at the risk and cost of suspending all other faculties and forms of awareness.


THE STUDY OF OTHER SUBJECTS

In the larger view astrology turns out to be not merely an aid or an extra aspect but fundamental to the study of history. There is no doubt that it could also clarify the still longer view of geological history if and when we get round to applying it. In the short view it is already being applied to economic cycles, those of productivity of various commodities, or weather, and diseases. All of which is only an extension to the use of astrology to study and understand the cyclic pattern of individual lives from birth to death, both in principle and as revealed in their particular horoscopes.

The study of cycles in time however is by no means the only application for astrology, since all reality, material and psychic, turns out to derive from rhythmic patterns of energy, to be consolidated (to our perception) rhythm, or time rendered spatial the "geometry of time". To begin with, and in closest relation to horoscopic analysis, are such fields as psychology, physical health (medical astrology) and homeopathy this latter embodying an approach already having a close affinity with that of astrology and being eminently compatible. Astrologers at present tend to be conditioned to the same parochial, "specialist" and separatist view of their subject that prevails in the academic world generally, in spite of their exclusion from this world as cranks, gipsies and simpletons; so that even psychology, which is so obviously virtually identical with astrology, is regarded with suspicion as an alien field which intrudes on the virgin purity of a medieval art form, concerned only with predicting immediate events (fortune telling) and individual horoscopic analysis. The present rôle of astrology in an over all change of paradigm and as potentially throwing light on everything is not pursued or seemingly apparent to them. It is all very well exploring every aspect and detail of its technique that we can learn from the past, but its future lies in developing our understanding of the basic planets and signs and in an ever expanding application of that understanding to illuminate all areas of thought and study. Almost nothing has been done hitherto in that direction and even our basic concepts of the planetary archetypes and their relation to one another tends to remain static rather than expand and develop. Over the range of meanings with which we are currently familiar the patterns are not always consistently thought out. No archetype, by its nature, is ever static, clearly defineable or limited, but rather capable of endless expansion in the understanding we have of it, according to our own development and extent of consciousness. At present the perceived meaning among astrologers of the planet Mars, for example, tends to remain as though a fixed quantity, instead of a theme for meditation and illumination; whereas the multiplication of extraneous and irrelevant factors such as asteroids or small divisions of the ecliptic are taken as significant, in the same way as the multiplication of "information". It is a question of adding more and more factors which are less and less understood. The in depth understanding of the primary archetypes is to be attained more by the application of intuition the faculty with which we understand symbols and perceive connections and analogies than by searching into past practice, and their relevance and application in terms of modern concepts, scientific, artistic or otherwise, changes as we go and has no relation to the world of medieval, Renaissance or 17th century astrology, and still less to the astrological forms of other cultures, which can be sidereal, tropical or anything they please and be valid for them. But our world did not exist for them.

In our world the concepts of physics are changing so radically that they are beginning to merge by themselves with fundamental astrological archetypes, which refer to time, space, gravity, magnetism and resonance, matter and non matter, form and formlessness, expansion and contraction, and of course energy and its cycles and different modes and levels of manifestation. An understanding and development of this relationship can contribute very essentially to both sides of the equation and to our conceptual model of reality, and how all these aspects of it and types and levels of energy relate to one another and to our subjective perceptions. Very little or nothing has so far been done in this area of thought.

Besides philosophy, history and science, there are other general fields in which the relevance of astrology has scarcely been investigated or considered but in which it could be equally rewarding. In the realm of art criticism, that is to say in understanding the styles and implications of the works of painters belonging to different astrological signs, we have one of the few such areas in which an extremely interesting pioneer work does exist, in Wolfgang Döbereiner's Astrologisch definierbare Verhaltungsweisen in der Malerei (translatable as: "Astrologically Definable Characteristics of Style in Painting"). Seen through this kind of lens we at once relate to a different kind of reality from that of academic and conventional art criticism, but the same kind as that in which artists themselves operate, and of which the language is symbol and analogy. At the same time astrology can provide a further insight in terms of the artist's personal and individual horoscope into the conditions, problems and context in which he, or she, has to work; in other words there is often a psychological explanation where there is no aesthetic one. All this is hidden to a conventional art critic.

There are of course similar possibilities in applying astrological understanding to music, a few of which I have myself explored, to a minimal extent2). Music is particularly obscure and unintelligible to the academic mind, which adopts the 'credo' that it can under no circumstances refer or relate to life or the world in which we live, and whose only procedure therefore is to measure the various means used, like astronomers with the solar system, without ever considering that they could be related to ends, or that the composer might be saying something apart from producing a harsh or agreable sound, as the case may be. In music we are immersed directly in Pythagorean harmonies, or the harmony of the spheres, and the principle of manifestation in octaves, as well as cycles and rhythmic patterns. The twelve tones of the chromatic scale are obviously comparable to the signs of the Zodiac, or at least invite that comparison, which can refer to the keys in which certain compositions are written; and the seven planets of traditional astrology suggest and have been understood as corresponding to the seven notes of the diatonic scale. Apart from this, the planetary archetypes, especially in their mythological aspect, are sometimes significant for understanding the implications of major works. In one case I am quite confident, as astrologer and musicologist at the same time, that an understanding of the three trans Saturnian planets provides the key to an otherwise incomprehensible trilogy of late Beethoven quartets. But this whole field is virtually virgin today, although it used to be recognised that astrology and music are closely related and that music likewise is a source of higher knowledge.

In the case of literature an excellent example of the part that can be played by astrology in illuminating an obscure poem is given by an article recently reprinted in Réalta3), by Ernest Willbie and titled The Key to Yeats. There are probably few areas of literary criticism or appreciation where a knowledge of astrology would not add an extra dimension of understanding, apart from the study of the horoscopes of authors, which give the psychological context and background that cannot otherwise be properly assessed. This same consideration applies to judging character potential in any field of activity, particularly when it comes to fitness for public office. In biography generally, and even more in the case of subjects from the past or from history, to neglect studying the horoscope must seem to an astrologer like ignoring the only possible source (apart from the works in the case of artists) of objective evidence, comparatively speaking, that does not depend upon mere opinion, garbled reporting or guesswork. (A good example would be Robespierre, the horoscope of whom shows a manic depressive at an advanced stage of regression).



ASTROLOGY AS A LANGUAGE

If astrology has a universal application as a language of correspondences and analogies, this idea is by no means new. The Occult Philosophy of Agrippa (1553) "holds that the universe is articulated by a network of correspondences, 'occulted' or invisible to the senses", and during important epochs before this in the history of the West "such studies have occupied the greatest intellects"4); and one could say, are more in character with the religious and Piscean pole of our culture. Even if they had to go underground, it is these esoteric currents that, in spite of official history, keep alive the hermetic tradition and true knowledge, that can be born again in the following culture. The difference between this kind of knowledge and what is popular today is not that between the "mystical" or "ideal" and the rational or "enlightened". Neither is it between "romantic" and "classical", or subjective and objective. What is called "realist" thinking can be based on superficial and immediate impressions rather than on more inclusive and extended observations (lacking time and more spatial), for example the linear view of history and of time generally, as opposed to the cyclical. This too is based on observations, but on more inclusive and extended ones; and therefore is more empirical, not less so. It is right to rely on observation, as Bacon proposed, but this means also the necessity of observing connections, using memory, noting cycles, and seeing things in their time dimension, as enduring forms; i.e. being able to see ahead, and view distances, the far view as well as the immediate present. This is the Platonic view, and is also the introverted or Promethean orientation. The real polarity is that of the introvert and extravert points of view, not of subjective and objective. In terms of the psychological functions it is intuition/sensation, both of which are equally objective, or are simply perceptions; but directed inwards or outwards respectively. (Feeling and thinking are the judgemental, therefore subjective functions). "Critical rationality" is useful only when applied to comprehensive observations and no use applied to ephemeral or superficial ones; and all rationality also is interpretation. "Direct observation of the forces of nature" and quantitative materialism (complete extraversion), which excludes any understanding of the understander (or of psychology), is the most delusive kind of subjectivity, and leads to an inflation of the thinking function (Descartes Hegel).

It is the esoteric or intuitive tradition that is more in line with our new paradigm, and the development (not regression) of understanding of astrology as a basic language in this sense, of a kind of unified conceptual field, in tandem with modern knowledge and consciousness, is to be looked forward to as something quite new and of unlimited potential for helping to broaden that consciousness. It is not a question of astrology as it is, becoming tolerated and fitting in with a new view of reality; and still less of it being made acceptable within the old paradigm of mechanical causality. Rather, it essentially IS the new paradigm; it IS the new way of thought.

(4326 words)
REFERENCES;

1) Serpent in the Sky, by John Anthony West, an exposition of the researches in Egyptology by R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz, 1987 (The Julian Press)
2) Astrological Journal, Spring 1984, and Réalta Vol.1 No.1, Feb. 1994
3) Réalta Vol.3 No 4, Nov.1996, but originally in American Astrology, Oct. 1970.
4) Joscelyn Godwin, Music and the Occult, 1995 (University of Rochester Press).


Cycles and Patterns, Time and Space

Michael McMullin


Part One

CORRESPONDENCES

If in the hermetic view "the universe is articulated by a network of correspondences", this at first sight seems quite contrary to the supposed scientific view of a concrete material world articulated by "mechanisms" of cause and effect. This latter view claims and is held to be the result of and confirmed by observation. Observation implies much more than the mere objective registration of sensations. It means more importantly relating them, through memory, to what we already know, or think, and to our conceptual paradigm, which is interpreting them. We only actually observe and register what seems to fit the ideas to which we are already committed. Since sensations to begin with are also interpretations by our sense organs, the whole process is scarcely "objective" in any degree. When even the most superficial observation depends on memory, the difference between the two world views is really that between relatively disconnected memories and more organised and coherent ones; the short view and the long view. It is a question of covering a wider range of observation, on more levels, and with more awareness, and with greater consciousness of time spans, so that we begin to discern patterns and rhythms instead of only isolated phenomena. In this way our perceptions make sense. It is exactly comparable to the process of classifying plants and animals in biology into a hierarchy of phyla, classes, orders, families and genera, whereby we recognise and relate them in terms of recurring patterns, amounting basically to rhythms and correspondences, similarity of function and analogy. There is thus, notwithstanding Darwin, no real difference in method between our two world views, but only in paradigm, that is, in subjective interpretation, and this amounts to the application of this method in a restricted and selective manner only, instead of to everything. Or possibly it is simply a refusal to apply it to phenomena involving time (requiring more memory), and an orientation in terms of space only. But by all the criteria we have distinguished, the hermetic view is more scientific than the ?scientific? one, since it applies the same method more comprehensively.

The observation and interpretation of repeating patterns is fundamentally the nature of all knowledge and studies, and it is precisely this that enables us to link things together and make connections on various levels. This linkage is just our interpretation of phenomena, or our perception of how they are related and make sense, that is, have meaning, instead of being separate, disconnected and meaningless. It follows that the degree of meaning depends upon the degree of interconnectedness that can be discerned, and how we can relate one thing to another, in terms of hierarchies of derivation. This represents already an increase in consciousness. The quality of knowledge depends in the end upon its function of integrating us into the whole universe, rather than on its particular precision in small areas. By learning to perceive the network of correspondences we discern ever new connections, until, ideally, everything is seen as on some level interconnected and integrated as a whole. This would be something like cosmic consciousness.

When we talk of hierarchies we are thinking of the derivation of each class of phenomena by progressive differentiation from origins that were simpler, in the sense of nearer to unity. Such can be animal, mineral (e.g. the periodic table of the chemical elements) or vegetable; social and cultural, astronomical or of any other kind. The most basic of all hierarchies is that of geometry and number, where all is seen to derive from the "Primordial Scission" of original unity, and closely related to this is the differentiation of sound in the harmonic series. The resulting proportions are seen as cosmic harmonies, principles pervading the whole of creation, and constitute the highest level where we see correspondences. The level of number also carries the most basic meanings, or orginal archetypal forms, which permeate everything. The patterns condensing out of the idea world become increasingly differentiated as they materialise, which has probably something to do with fractals. The perception of correspondences (or analogies) not only within hierarchies but between them, and on different scales, is the intuition of the connection between the idea world, or world of archetypal forms, and the material world, and this is the essence of meaning. For this reason materialistic science finds it difficult to admit correspondences between hierarchies (inter hierarchical), or the numerical and harmonic significances behind forms, as in the recurring patterns in nature, of pentagons (in flowers), hexagons and spirals. There is no easily imagined mechanical connection, which in any case is a matter of supposition only. Goethe recognised the harmonic basis of the archetypal leaf, of which the other parts of plants are metamorphoses, while photographs of micro organisms like diatoms resemble Hans Jenny's photographs of patterns made by harmonic sound in different media (cymatics).



PATTERNS IN TIME

Astrology is our primary study of patterns in time, and of correspondences in terms of life or existence in time, and constitutes the experimental and experiential link between the archetypal or idea world and the material world of sense perception. What we think of as the material and objective world, that we see "out there", is our perception in terms of the three dimensions of space, and in fact is visual, and the rest is time, or movement. The sense of touch for example is not activated without movement, and sound in the same way is the perception of successive alterations of air pressure; it is only visually that the world appears as all laid out at once. The fourth dimension is time and movement. We think of patterns as rhythms perceived in space, and this includes geometrical forms and circles; but of cycles as complete forms in time. Some very rewarding thinking on this subject can be found in Rodney Collin's Theory of Celestial Influence, where he says (p.167): ?Certain patterns in time must represent organic forms just as certain patterns in space do.? A year is such a form (a cycle), and can be seen on different scales as a breath for the Earth, for us a cycle divided into seasons, lunations and many other sub cycles. Rodney Collin points out that the Aztecs' calendar derives from the conception of the year as a nonagon, or 9 pointed circle, of which the intervals of forty days represent significant times still recognised in certain customs and traditions. The gestation period is seven (a lunar number) of these ninths. We all moreover have our individual speeds or inner times, which vary with age and type, and passing through the years represent for us ?an extraordinarily intricate series of repeating time forms?. ?A year is not at all a unit of individual time, as we often suppose, but rather the scenery through which personal time passes. For man's time moves against the background of the Earth's time, itself also moving . . . . A similar mistake is to take historical or astronomical time as an extension of human time, of our personal time. This is quite wrong, and gives rise to all kinds of distorted views of events in the world and universe around us.? A year is a life cycle for annual plants and many insects, for us our lives in years fall into the phases which govern cycles in general typified by the lunar phases and are further divided by the different planetary cycles, all varying measures of time, or different times. In principle a life cycle as an organic form, measured in harmonic periods, is the same length on any scale, from gnat to Sun, or electron to galaxy, and time is relative. The repeating stages in the various phases, cycles and sub cycles constitute correspondences, anniversaries, seasonal repeats, even times of day, and the horoscope can symbolise time in any of these rhythms.

Since all time is cyclic, this means the inner world, whether physiological or psychological, is cyclic, and corresponds to the planetary and other cycles; therefore the mental world of ideas has to belong to these cycles. The term synchronicity probably refers to the coincidence between inner and outer, what is felt (or thought) and what is observed, or between time and place. An example of this would be the development of a confrontation with established ideas during a transit of Saturn opposite Mercury. This latter could be regarded as an omen, on a large scale; but a more particular omen could be a bird coinciding with a thought, or a hexagram of the I Ching. Again the idea world is behind all phenomena, or time behind space.



TIME AND FORM

A cycle, expressed in two dimensional spatial terms, has to be a circle, or a circular pattern with repeating rhythmic features such radial arms of different lengths, like the spokes of a wheel, major and minor, and circles within circles (different octaves ?), like the photographs in cymatics, or a spider's web. This would be a frozen pattern of rhythms in time. In three dimensions it would be a solid, or "matter"; instead of a 2 dimensional pattern or diagram it would be "the real world", and this consists likewise of frozen or arrested patterns of frequencies that is, of time rendered temporarily spatial. One could say that all form (all geometry) is only frozen time, and space does not exist without it (i.e. without objects "in it", and defining it). Since any kind of radiation, whether electromagnetic or sound, expands in three dimensions or in every direction, "sound is volume", and the interplay of harmonies, which "rapidly becomes extremely complex", leads to the creation of form.

When we talk of frequencies we imply some kind of alternation or recurring pattern in time, or vibration, of which sound is the most earthly embodiment or manifestation since it is transmitted in terms of air pressure. But it is not clear in the case of the extraterrestrial kind just what is recurring or vibrating, and it is begging the question to say "photons", "elctro magnetism" , even "energy". One can refer for convenience to all kinds of vibratory frequency or manifestation in time as sound, since they are the same in principle, or perhaps one can say that sound symbolises this time dimension. It can be still more inclusively symbolised as "the Word", and this brings in the extra implication of meaning. ?That which we call visible matter is but a symbolic perception 'as if' it were a condensation of something unknown, perhaps unknowable . . . . It is 'Formation, Transformation, Eternal mind's Eternal recreation' (Goethe, Faust ).? And: ?Form, images as archetypal, autonomous, indeed transcendental patterns prior to and playing with substance . . . would prove to be the basic regulators?.(1) In any case: ?It is this web of interaction, this vast complex of harmonies, that we respond to as 'the world' ? physical or spiritual or of consciousness. ?The key to this harmonic world is number, and the means by which number is to be understood is geometry?.(2) Being understood means expressed in terms of space, or made comprehensible visually whereby we can more easily relate it to the "known", or the total plan or static pattern that we can perceive or visualise outside at any given moment; which means, in turn, bringing it to a stop, so that we can look over it. For this reason we can never "understand" time as such; we can only live it, or be it, for time is being.

Astrology confirms that ?for each cosmic being including man time and form create a single pattern?. (3) Time and form are symbolised in astrology by Saturn, which also means condensation, endurance, coherence and organisation qualities necessary to produce a form, or a particular time system, or pattern of vibrations or harmonic chord. The form, in its relative coherence and persistence, is the time. For each organsim this is itself and its inner being or nature; it recognises itself by its time. Time is our continued existence as a conscious entity (as a microcosm), in relation to other entities (space) as we perceive them. Each entity has its own time, rate of change and relative scale, which really amounts to its consciousness. If nothing changes there can be no consciousness; which also needs the polarity of self and other (time and space). But consciousness means the persistence of the subject through change a higher entity than the cycle itself. We cannot directly perceive other times (consciousnesses), therefore translate them into space i.e. into geometry, and this is what we call form i.e. immobilised time. We recognise forms in space, what is outside, or other forms or times, and compare or relate them to ourselves in terms of speed; speed is the comparison of times, or scales. Speeds have to be reckoned as relative to size and to different wholes. When we see movement of objects in space, it may be as though seeing some outer effects of various times, giving changes in the configuration, but against a static background; it may even be comparable to a cinematograph.

If Saturn is persistence, as cyclic motion or centripetal "force" (contraction), and Jupiter as a fire and light principle is expansion, radiation and centrifugal "force", relationship to the beyond, these principles represent in the functional sense time and space, even if these are only modes of perception or manifestation, and as such subjective categories. What it is that persists or radiates is another question, whether we call it energy, consciousness, or life, but for the most complete manifestation, at least on the material level, for coherence and differentiation, time and space must be in balance. Separateness as lack of over all coherence must mean too much emphasis on space, and conservatism, rigidity, egoism, too much on time i.e. on the individual cycle. Inorganic matter would be form at a lower level, with too little of the Jupiter principle, (life and growth), and not cyclic as a whole, organic form much higher (more organised, more inclusive, with more life). The more complex, in the sense of differentiated and at the same time organised, the more of a microcosm corresponding to the whole of creation; and no doubt the more consciousness. For consciousness we must require Jupiter and Saturn in equal proportion, or at least alternating about a point of balance.

If we call the central activating principle spirit the astrological Sun, or the Sun in the solar system this is embodied within time or form. Change within forms can be either harmonious growth and development or disruption of the form and disintegration; while change between forms is perceived as movement in space. Both are perceived as change or movement, or in other words, as Ouspensky puts it, time is the intrusion of a fourth dimension into our static perception of space. In so far as Saturn is time, this probably means the time span or persistence as a whole of any given form, or its cycle, which we cannot perceive directly in our three dimensional visual world, for we are within time and part of it, or it is us. The nearest we can come to seeing this whole is probably in astrology, where we see the major factors in the macro cycle at the initiatory moment of all the micro cycles that can and do derive from it, and are stamped with the same pattern, or follow in outline the same script. We see it as a cross section, and in a sense we see it in terms of pure functions, before knowing what is functioning, or for how long; we see it as a chord of frequencies that spread out into everything; or a pattern of inter connectedness, quite transcending causality and apparent in seemingly unrelated areas. Astrology shows an integration prevailing over the whole field of phenomena, past, present and future, that it is difficult to conceive, imagine or believe.



MUSIC

In music we have pattern or organisation in time in terms of successive aural perceptions rather than simultaneous visual ones. Sound comes with us addresses our own time; we do not move through it, but it is directly experienced in terms of our own time (or physiology) that is, it is not condensed into matter, forms or other times. If it has a form or pattern we cannot perceive it all at once unless we plot it as a diagram in visual terms or in space. We hear music as rhythmic or harmonic sound (as distinct from noise), which is also organised harmonically in terms of scales, octaves and harmonic intervals that recur rhythmically and rise and fall against a background of regular pulsations, and directly address the life rhythms of breathing, heart beat etc. All this is much more immediately felt and in the inner or time dimension than any visual or conceptual experience. We understand it intuitively, emotionally and through direct sensation strongly feel it, in every sense, before we start associating it with anything outside. It also addresses us in the primary archetypal terms of number and harmony.

So far this is relatively instinctual and unconscious, and it cannot be intellectually or consciously integrated (acquire conscious meaning) until converted into space (or visual concepts, images). A large scale musical work of art, if it had nothing but instinctive rhythmic correspondences, like a satisfying meal, might be therapeutic, but not much to write home about, in proportion to the trouble the composer had taken to produce it and the performers to execute and interpret it. Even an immediate emotional association has to be visualised and related to conscious experience, or given spatial dimensions, to mean anything in terms of our life as a whole; a simple melodic figure, rising or falling, at once suggests a visual pattern, a curve, undulating motion etc., and an association with a number of possible experiences in life, or concrete images. Contrary to prevailing opinion, the potentiality for symbols and correspondences are much greater in music than anywhere else, and it is comparable in this respect to astrology though this is an interpretation of symbols rather than an expression or experience in terms of them. But astrology shows us that meaning is associated with Mercury and Jupiter, the archetypes of conceptual thinking and space and light space consciousness. These form a polarity in terms of signs and houses, and show that light and visualisation are a condition for the conscious integration of one's sensory experiences into the greater whole. First they are conceptualised and related to the known world in the third house; then harmonised with the greater whole, through the intuition of correspondences, in the ninth.

Since all forms of harmonic sound, radiation and frequency manifest in octaves, or distinct energy levels or quanta, this means in seven stages or intervals before a repeat of the same frequency on a new level its double in terms of the ascending harmonic series. The octave is self replication; Scorpio, the eighth sign, means death, sex and renewal. There are seven terms for growth, seven stages to completion. In the musical scale these are unequal stages, which the ear interprets as harmonious. Harmony invokes unity (involution), and the number seven is a key factor in creation: made up of 3 + 4, it represents spirit and matter a geometrical form embodied in the pyramid; as a lunar number, the reflection of spirit onto Earth.

That certain combinations of the periodicities of the planetary cycles do form series of harmonic intervals that exactly correspond to the major scale is demonstrated by Rodney Collin, who concludes: ?The octave or musical scale is a notation, adapted to man's hearing, of this harmony of the planetary cycles, which in turn is an echo of a great law which controls the development of all processes in the universe?. (3) The harmonics of the solar system or the music of the spheres were demonstrated in a different way by Kepler, who also showed that the elliptical orbits "have their Origin in the Concern for Harmonies between the Planets" (Kepler). His successors in recent times show that the ratios of musical intervals are a law of nature e.g. in crystalline structure, in chemical compounds, the structure of the human ear, and everywhere.(4) Music is the language that comes in terms of the truth of direct experience, in terms of our inner reality, and not spread out in space as something other. It comes nearer than any other to being directly archetypal, or the language of pure ideas, which have nevertheless to be visualised in some way to be consciously understood; that is, they have to be embodied in a visual pattern or symbol. But in this sense music is the language of the reality behind the phenomenal world; or it directly addresses the "harmonic field", or the field of meaning..



Part Two


THE PLANETS AS FUNCTIONS

The planets are more like processes or functions which control, or whose cycles form the overall harmonic pattern of the solar system, which corresponds with that of any organism on any scale. They do seem to have an affinity with the functions of the endocrine glands, which also no doubt constitute some kind of energy centres, or frequency modulators. Rodney Collin, describing "glandular types", shows a fairly convincing relationship between the planets and the glands, which lie on a spiral from the centre (heart) outwards to the pineal gland near the top of the head. The pancreas, near the centre, is associated with the watery element, and together with the liver controls digestion and the storage of sugar; as a predominent influence it produces a characteristically lunar type of person: "with all their flesh forms full and rounded ('moon faced') . . . passive, moody" etc. Mercury and Venus are related to the thyroid and parathyroid, situated in the throat, and Mars evidently to the adrenals. The pituitary glands, behind the bridge of the nose, show a close and interesting relationsip to Jupiter and Saturn. The posterior pituitary type comes out exactly like that recognised as the Jovial: short, rounded, stout, with large head, inclining to paunch, little hair on the body; tends to periodicity and rhythm in moods and activities; fond of poetry and music, gay, cheerful, tolerant the Falstaffs of the world. It is interesting to us that this gland controls the involuntary muscles, especially those of the intestines, bladder and uterus. It controls milk production, and is the gland of maternal qualities. This gland, ruled by Jupiter, shows very evidently why this planet is exalted in Cancer, and has a close relationship to lunar qualities; and we may note at the same time the close association of pancreas and liver. The anterior pituitary is connected with masculine traits; its type is long boned, with strong frame, firm muscles, long head, rugged face, square jaw, projecting cheek bones, large teeth; Saturn.

Not only does Jupiter have this lunar connection, but also a relation to the qualities of Venus. The gland associated with this planet is the parathyroid, which controls the passive vegetative life (Taurus), and tissue building and increase in bulk cellular growth and expansion. While sodium is the element associated with the posterior pituitary, calcium is that of the parathyroid. In esoteric astrology according to Alan Leo Jupiter governs the cells and etheric body. Its principle of growth and expansion applies on the psychological and spiritual levels (ninth house) as well as on the physical. Jupiter and Venus, with perhaps the Moon, are the "benefics" of traditional astrology, and in the night sky they are the two brightest and most conspicuous objects after the Moon.

The relationship of Jupiter to the posterior pituitary is confirmed in homeopathy through the connection with sodium and the homeopathic application as a remedy of potentised sodium chloride (Natrum muriaticum), which is common salt. Persons needing this are the opposite of jovial, and lacking inner radiance and joy (Jupiter and Sagittarius): they seek isolation, have a separative urge, and inner contradiction. They are trying to cast off the mother (the sea) for ego realisation or individuality, and when this becomes too much for them they develop a pathology for which the remedy is Nat. mur. (like cures like).(1) Whitmont points out that the sea as the source of all life is the Mother and also the collective unconscious; and salt is the most widespread substance on earth next to water. That salt as it were crystallises out analogously to consciousness, and that the storage of sodium is characteristic of animals and the appearance of feeling, the beginning of soul life. It is concentrated in the organs of feeling and perception. In all animals the proportions of calcium:potassium:sodium in the body fluids are close to those of sea water, whereas plants have more potassium: ensoulment takes place at the expense of pure vitality and regenerative power. In the same way that the sense of space is necessary for, and perhaps the mother of consciousness, enabling us to distinguish self from other, "to find individuality . . . . it is necessary to cast off the motherly forces supporting us in the sea of unconscious soul life", and salt, as it crystallises out of solution, aids in the precipitation of the ego. When this creates an imbalance, with too much emphasis on salt, as it were, homeopathic Nat.mur. restores the equilibrium, as though putting some of it into solution again or cancelling it out, on the principle of like cures like.

While sodium and potassium are ingredients of tissue liquids, calcium and magnesium are found within tissues themselves, especially muscle and bone, and play a part in the solidification of substance in correspondence with Venus as the principle of Taurus and the second house. In this sense calcium, and Venus, are principles of passivity, female and yin. Calcium, as the main ingredient of the oyster shell, represents immobility, while the animal itself lacks form and is capable of very little movement consists really only of content, belongs to Cancer and is lunar. As we have seen before, it also reacts directly to the Moon by opening its shell with the tides, and this constitutes its only movement. Magnesium on the other hand is associated with activity and mobility. As Whitmont says, it is present in chlorophyll, as well as in flash bulbs, and is evidently associated with creation and destruction, with light and energy of the electro magnetic order. In homeopathic provings it shows a close affinity to the autonomic nervous system, nervous spasms, and the thyroid gland, and we can therefore refer it to Mercury, and possibly also to Uranus. The magnesium personality is the most erratic and violent, and fits closely the picture of the negative side of Uranus in astrology.

The substance and symptom pictures in homeopathy probably represent various configurations in the energy field comparable to aspect patterns in the horoscope, and a systematic correlation of these remains as a major and one of the most important fields of research for the future. The fact that the exact concurrence of symptoms, covering a wide range of different afflictions, physical and mental, of a specific poisoning (e.g. of the Black Widow spider, described by Whitmont) can be brought on by purely emotional and physical strains, and cured by the homeopathic (dematerialised) form of that particular poison, suggests an entirely new view of reality, having nothing in common with the one to which we are accustomed. Often the symptoms are primarily the result of repressed emotions, instincts etc., requiring psychotherapy more than a substance remedy. But astrology is there too to show it in the pattern of birth, in the energy or function pattern, which tends to react in such a manner as to produce these symptoms. There is already a pre figured imbalance or symptom pattern in the harmonic chord sounding at birth. Whether the pattern, function, harmony, configuration, or whatever it is, manifests as corresponding physical symptoms, psychological problem, astrological archetype, events, visible features of the environment, or is subsumed, even symbolised in the properties of a creature and a chemical substance used in the homeopathic materia medica seems to be all the same.

If the planets/endocrine glands represent functions, we might well ask what is a function, and what part does it play in producing the total energy field or configuration ? Evidently to produce symbolic or analagous manifestations on every level, both inside and out, the ultimate wave patterns must be of great complexity; but this may be the effect of complex interference patterns resulting from a limited number of fundamental tones. And, as Whitmont mentions, the simillimum effect may relate to the fact that any wave can be cancelled out by a wave of the same frequency and wave length coming from a different direction or out of phase with it.

In discussing the symptom picture that therapeutically responds to calcium, Whitmont writes: "it is the calcium energy field in a state of one sided preponderance which imbalances the whole". This balance probably depends upon a limited number of factors, in different configurations, represented by the planets in astrology. They could also act in different ways or modes, represented by the zodiacal signs in which they are placed. If we further compare the energy field with a harmonic chord, the planetary factors might correspond to the notes of the major scale, and the zodiacal signs to the twelve chromatic tones which determine the harmonic context of each note or the key it is in. In the case of the calcium or any other atom this might correspond to its place in the periodic table in terms of octaves and orbital or quantum levels. The remedies are not substances but "qualitatively distinguished energy fields which are building stones of our peculiar human nature" with specific physiological qualities or one could say of all nature. In its most quintessential expression this energy field, function field or chord comes down to numbers, the primary functions.

In numerology, Six may be the number of Jupiter; it is said to be the number that represents time and space(2) (the six pointed star), upon which our senses depend for separate focus. If Four is the number of Saturn, and incarnation into the material world, the cube also has six sides. In the generation of hexagonal numbers 1+6+12=19, a number "playing a complex part in all questions of manifestation in time and space". Further: "Pythagoreans do not consider it a coincidence that nineteen should so frequently crop up in celestial measures and cycles: synodic returns of the moon follow a 19 year cycle; nineteen and multiples of nineteen determine many measures involving the planet Jupiter." (5)

It is interesting in terms of archetypal numerology and the creative process to relate the planets to numbers, and if we are right in assigning Jupiter to Six, there is strong reason for associating Venus with Five, the number of creativity and joining together, or synthesis or integration. The pattern formed in the course of eight years by conjunctions of Venus with the Sun, superior and inferior, as seen from the Earth, is a double pentagon, the inner orientated "almost precisely towards the outer with regard to its corners".(6) In this way Venus represents values, beauty when we think of the pentagon pattern of so many flowers, and the sense of attraction, sympathy and resonance, in the short range or within the Earth's orbit, while Jupiter, on the intuitive level, is the sense of unity with the beyond, or values on the religious level. Mars on the other hand has the function of splitting up and separation, and its conjunctions over 15 16 years form two intersecting and irregular octagons. “Separative urges are necessary” for growth, tempering and renewal. “. . . If all of life's dynamic is dramatic creation . . . drama includes indeed presupposes and even necessitates – conflict”.(1) The essential ingredients of conflict are energy and resistance, or the conflict between the established order and the challenge of new impulses, represented by Mars and Saturn in astrology, and the quadrature aspects between planets the division of the circle into eight.

While Jupiter forms with Saturn the basic polarity of expansion and contraction, and I have suggested space and time, there is obviously a strong case for a further polarity of gender. Not only is Jupiter exalted in Cancer, but co ruler of the mutable water sign Pisces, where Venus is exalted. If we think of Venus as Aphrodite, another form of this archetype is Pallas Athene, the patroness of wisdom and learning, who was the protecting goddess of Odysseus, the wanderer (IXth house) by sea (Pisces and XII). Odysseus is surely a Jupiter figure, particularly in the form of the archetype of the hero. The prototypical mythical hero being Prometheus, the association of this figure with Sagittarius (the centaur Chiron) and with the liver, as well as with fire and intuition, shows a close connection with Jupiter.

The affinity between Jupiter and Venus further throws light on the function of Jupiter with regard to relationship. While Venus as the ruler of Libra is the archetype of harmony and resonance, and in the context of the seventh house of relationship to the other always carries social implications, Jupiter in the larger sphere refers to one's relations to society, and to the outside world in general, eventually to the whole of creation. Jupiter in this last sense, and as a fire planet, represents intuition, the function which perceives symbolic relationships, analogies and correspondences, and which in turn can be regarded as the psychological or spiritual equivalent of resonance, ruled by Venus. On the physical level of substance (Venus in Taurus) the equivalent kind of resonance is shown in the simillimum of homeopathy. Saturn, as a polarity to this relating aspect of Jupiter, is the individualising, self sufficient or isolating principle. As an individual time cycle it represents a kind of psychic gravity or contraction, or ego consciousness, against Jupiter's reaching out and sociability, and eventually expansion of consciousness into another trans individual dimension, or the collective unconscious.

In the Greek pantheon there is no doubt about the masculinity of Zeus as ruler and father of the gods; but on the other hand he is the only Olympian figure who was paired with a wife, the lunar goddess Hera, with whom there was a constant interplay and rivalry, and who may be another aspect of Jupiter. If we look at the polarity of Jupiter with Mercury, between them they rule all the mutable, mental or functional signs and houses; Mercury below the horizon, referring to the particular and close range, Jupiter above, referring to space and the long range. The archetypal number of Mercury, by the figure made by its conjunctions with the Sun in a year, two triangles, is Three, showing it in direct octave relationsip to Jupiter. Mercury is associated by Sucher with the transmission of cosmic Intelligence. Mercury or Hermes is generally accepted as hermaphrodite, the origin of this word, and the evidence strongly suggests that this applies also to Jupiter. In this case we have a balance of gender among the planetary archetypes, if we accept that the Sun, as spirit, is beyond polarity and gender: the mother/father, wife/husband archetypes are then Moon and Saturn; Venus and Mars make a second obvious gender polarity, both in myth and in psychology as anima/animus; leaving two that are both or either, as hermaphrodite, or mutable, and we have a correspondence to the three modalities. Mercury is the messenger of the gods; Jupiter, as archetype of the hero and of meaning (for example, an avatar, or a prophet) is the same thing. Bringing fire from the gods to mankind means bringing intuition, the ability to understand the hidden language (it does not mean teaching them cuisine). Both Mercury and Jupiter are functions of consciousness: Mercury, as nervous energy and communication, memory and the birth of consciousness, leading to discrimination in space and conceptual thinking; Jupiter perhaps as communication with the World Soul, to use an alchemical concept. Venus then as a polarity to Jupiter would be the individual soul, and the Mercury Saturn polarity gives us the conscious ego. World versus ego would thus be a further dimension or interpretation of Jupiter Saturn.

If, on the physical level, the anterior pituitary has a masculine function of overseeing and controlling all the other functions, the posterior pituitary has a feminine one, of tending these functions, smoothing out and healing, or 'mothering' them. ?Only Jupiter and Saturn have a complete system of moons, producing harmonies corresponding to all the other functions; and thus the pituitary gland, in both its parts, bears a quite special relation to all other functions and to the organism as a whole?. (3) The orbital energies of the inner planets might represent a more individual and more immediate level of energies. Venus Mars may be yin/yang, passive/active; in the case of Mars, Sepia (Cuttle fish dye, melanin, related to adrenalin) seems to be connected with disorders of the adrenal function, and the contra sexual characters, but especially in women: "Sepia's revolt is against the feminine character"(1) (represented by the Calcium carbonate of the shell, and Venus), and comes out as an exaggeration of or possession by the animus in women, which is Mars in astrology. But Jupiter/Saturn cover much wider or more general and perhaps trans personal spheres of meaning. In the context of the organism Jupiter and Saturn can be seen as growth and form (Moon/Saturn perhaps as content and form), the two principles which must always work together. In the psychological sense, Saturn is the conscious ego (time), or the unit of consciousness held together by memory; Jupiter (space) is what we are conscious of, or the world in extension. In this process both elements are needed all the time, as inner and outer in associated co existence. The principle of similarity (like cures like) in homeopathy shows that the two energies (or conditions), inner and outer, are linked by a symbol; the outer correspondence is shown to be functionally identical with the inner pattern, whether somatic or psychological and analytical psychology shows this too. On either side, inner or outer, it is the same harmonic field pattern that is being addressed, or adjusted(1), time and space are shown to be different aspects of the same thing: “for all problems of existence are essentially problems of harmony” (Sri Aurobindo).

The "archetypal field", or morphogenetic field, or the pattern of energies, within and without, may be shown to some extent by the horoscope and its unfolding in time. “The symbolic field offers a working hypothesis of cosmic patterns that guide matter, life and psyche like grand musical themes with variations occurring in different figurations, keys, harmonies and instrumentations”.(1) The harmonic configuration (or energy field) seems to be determined by (or reflected in) the planetary positions at birth and their distribution in relation to the horizon the time of day. This means that the complex inter weaving of cyclic forms (time forms) as seen from any point on earth, daily, yearly, lunar and planetary seems to be imprinted, or simply represented, at the first breath of the newborn. But why just at that moment? We represent perpetuations of that energy field life cycles of our particular kind that start at that moment, somehow materialisations of the energy field itself, but imprinted on the substratum of our genetic energy field. The already existing formative field is thus definitively orientated in a particular way for this life time (cycle); and it is arranged as to how the functions or energies will act according to the time as well as day of birth and the zodiacal degrees on the horizon and the Midheaven. Indeed not only this, but the exact degrees on which are found the main factors in the chart, especially the Sun, Moon, Ascendant and Midheaven, in an overwhelming number of cases seems to impart psychological characteristics or preoccupations specific and peculiar to that particular degree, and unrelated to the next. (In this I am referring especially to the degree delineations by Adriano Carelli; and there are also the relations of the planets and points to the fixed stars to take into account, and this may be something of the same order.) To attempt any kind of rational, theoretical or even vaguely speculative or comprehensible explanation for these "facts" i.e. observable phenomena, seems quite beyond our present conceptual pretensions; and this cuts these pretensions down to size and leaves us once more looking at the idea of the miraculous. The only possible conclusion is that we are so integrated into the whole of creation that the idea of "explanation" must be irrelevant or unfeasible, since this assumes standing outside and looking at the rest of the world as 'other', projected into space. This is manifestly unreal, and in reality we are it: "That art Thou" has always been the basic tenet of all serious religions. Discriminating consciousness has somehow to learn to co exist with this reality, and in fact be predicated upon it. “For in that higher and less hampered experience we perceive that consciousness and being are not different from each other . . .” (Sri Aurobindo).
(6900 words)

REFERENCES:

1. Edward Whitmont, Psyche and Substance, North Atlantic Books, 1991.
2. John Anthony West, Serpent in the Sky, The Julian Press, 1987.
3. Rodney Collin; The Theory of Celstial Influence, Shambala 1984.
4. Joscelyn Godwin, in Cosmic Music (Inner Traditions, 1989), gives selected essays by three recent researchers in the field of World Harmonics, who have taken up again this main theme of Kepler's life's work, which has been neglected and ignored in the interval.
5. Quoted by J.A.West from R.A.Schwaller de Lubicz: Le Temple de l'Homme..
6. W.Sucher, an Anthroposophical astrologer, in: Practical Approach towards a New Astrosophy.






TIME AND MR DAWKINS


It is continually fascinating to observe how things come together, and how certain ideas unfold and become concurrently manifested in events. We can call this in the short term synchronicity, or, in the larger cycles and amplified waves, astrology, and in either case we are dealing with patterns of time.

I have recently experienced a satisfying example of this synchronicity in connection with the recent entry of Pluto into Sagittarius. Dr Liz Greene, in a penetrating address she gave last September ('95), stressed fundamentalism, in all Sagittarian matters (religion, philosophy etc.), as especially likely to characterise this transit on a world scale. She pointed to the intellectual ferment and polarisation of ideas preceding the French Revolution which marked the last time this transit occurred, resulting in the Revolution itself after Pluto had passed through Capricorn. Three days ago a beautifully fundamentalist manifesto by Richard Dawkins appeared in some newspapers, suggesting that astrologers should be in prison for fraud, and for offending ?the aesthetics of astronomical truth?. By popping up with this tomahawk waving right on time Mr Dawkins delights us by unwittingly illustrating the aesthetics of astrological truth. Shortly after this I received the tape of Liz Greene's lecture, which I had been trying to get for about four months; while also for some weeks, as it happened, I had been reading Carlyle on the French Revolution, and just lately been at the stage where the comparisons between that period and the present and near future had been particularly striking me apart altogether from Pluto in Sagittarius, which I had not been thinking about at that time.

It so happens, moreover, that Mr Dawkins, in his burlesque, as I must call it, dwells on two particular concepts composing his aesthetical view of the universe, and considers that these above all finally dispose of astrology. Both of them are to do with time. He tells us, to our amazement, that when we imagine groups of stars forming what we, like the Greeks, Babylonians and other primitive peoples, suppose to be "constellations", we are really looking at stars and galaxies incalculably removed in time, and of course, space, both from us and from one another, which only accidentally happen to appear as groups, and which we childishly refer to as rams, goats, lobsters etc. (even Centaurs !) Navigators of old used to make the same mistake, looking at a similar flat sky universe.

The other stock cliché convicting astrologers of fraud is of course gravity, though this weapon is a brash one, and something of a dangerous boomerang, since no scientist, pseudo or genuine, can tell us what it is. Astrology however is not, like astronomy, based on this speculative "force" called gravity, and does not depend on it. It can show, on the other hand, that both these concepts so confidently flourished by Dawkins, time, and gravity, and also the establishment, are, all three, aspects of the archetype Saturn (Chronos), just as death is, old age, and the past, and all forms of rigidity.

The ordinary astronomer or scientist works with terms and premises which are taken for granted and have not been defined concepts which are generally accepted as meaning something and therefore uncritically assumed to be objective facts. Among these are space, time, motion, velocity, matter etc. In reality these are completely subjective ideas and are only "facts" as psychological phenomena. Astronomers may be proficient in mathematics, but in precision of thought and language they are not, or very seldom are. In addition to this their range of knowledge and mental development tends to be very limited. Dawkins (an Aries, we are told) rashly throws out random references to aesthetics, Beethoven, Freud and Jung, subjects which happen to be my own specialities (another synchronicity !), and of which he certainly knows nothing, but of which he ought to know something, as they might help to bring him down to earth. Furthermore, a person whose business is with the solar system, the stars and the universe would do well to become thoroughly trained in metaphysics and philosophy, and esoteric teachings, East and West, before standing up to make assertions about time, space and ultimate reality.

Most important of all, some education in general semantics would help to raise the standard of literacy prevailing among astronomers, and help them to preserve their own integrity and avoid rushing into polemics for which they are poorly equipped. A recent contribution to the Dawkins debate by another astronomer shows a characteristic inability to distinguish between words like "thought", "fact" and "fiction", while to put such a person in the witness stand to define "truth" might provide a worth while entertainment on television. A required reading before taking up a public appointment in any branch of science or technology could be, let us say, Alfred Korzybski's Science and Sanity

(Sent to the Astrological Journal, May 1996)