Four Essays on the Study of Astrology

Astrological Cook Books

Michael McMullin


Introduction

When I took up astrology in 1979 it was thanks to a new friend encountered at that time who had practised it in Wales, and who loaned me the text books she had used. These were Margaret Hone's Modern Text Book of Astrology, for basics and setting up a chart (for which I still find it provides the simplest and most straightforward method), and the several volumes of Alan Leo, and Carter's Aspects. It was reading about the planets in Alan Leo's Art of Synthesis that really inspired me and set me on a new course from which I never looked back. It was this book too, presumably, that inspired Gustav Holst to write The Planets Suite for orchestra. A natural step from this philosophical or theosophical viewpoint was to Rudhyar's Astrology of Personality, and I suppose that both these works can be called classics of modern astrology. During the following years of concentrated study the many other works of Rudhyar were my main guide, and then, over a twelve year period (a Jupiter cycle), as much astrological literature and different methods and techniques as I could get hold of. I would try out the various factors, points and theories championed by different authors, such as Arabian Parts, the Vertex point, "Uranian" astrology, "Cosmobiology", retaining what seemed to work and prove valid, dropping the rest. After coming out of this twelve year cycle I came to the conclusion that life is too short for making diversions into these limitless and tenuous byways, most of which lead scarcely anywhere, or for confusing the horoscope with every piece of rock or cosmic litter flying around in space, whether real or imagined, when essentially we are a long way yet from understanding the basic system of planets, signs and houses, with the modes and elements, and what they symbolise, and the cycles and phases of the planets in relation to the structure of the horoscope and the life cycle it represesents. What astrology itself represents and its fundamental meaning seems to be an issue not even addressed by the great majority of its practitioners, and probably not by any of those who seek to extend it into ever smaller, more remote and irrelevant details.

But even staying with the essentials it is hard to give due consideration to and to understand all of the factors that are relevant and important, such as the Moon's nodes little understood up to now , certain mid point relationships, and antiscions, that is the corresponding points the same distance from the equinox or solstice points but on the opposite side to that of each planet. One realises that astrology is such a uniquely complex and integrated system of symbolism that we can only grasp a very limited number of selected pointers and types of correspondence and interpret them as best we may. Nothing else demonstrates like astrology the total existential inter connection of everything in the cosmos and ourselves.


The Nature of Astrology

When we have selected the essential features with which to work, the next step of course is deciding how to interpret them. Here we are faced again not only with different schools of thought but with a study capable of unlimited development into the future, and amounting at bottom to no less than a metaphysics and philosophy of life. We are dealing with primary archetypes, and their understanding, and the levels on which we understand them, depend ultimately on our own level of development and our understanding of the meaning of life. Far from being a mere technique or learning the rules of a special profession, astrology, to the extent to which we understand what we are dealing with, puts our whole concept of reality into question. This readily explains the opposition to astrology from all dogmatic and one sided systems of belief, from orthodox religion to materialistic science.

Again however there are few astrologers who quite see it in this light, and it has to be admitted that it is still widely regarded as some kind of fortune telling technique, dealing in unavoidable fate and/or mechanical influences. Neither of these bears any relation to accepted reality, either scientific or religious, so that to some extent the opposition is justified.

The interpretations we meet with while trying to find our way through astrology range from the second of these categories, through a more or less psychological approach associated with counselling, to a more philosophical or mystical one coming originally from (in our time) the Astrological Lodge of the Theosophical Society. This last was taken up from the earlier generation by Rudhyar, who also studied Jung and added the psychological dimension. Rudhyar wrote no actual text books or manuals of astrology, and this tends to be the practice of his successors in the psychological school, who often refer contemptuously to "cook books", thus giving me the motivation for writing this article.


Cook Books versus Guess Work

Presumably what are meant by "cook books" are cut and dried rules of thumb for interpreting each feature of the horoscope, so that would be astrologers just have to look them up or learn them by heart. Margaret Hone's Text Book tends to work in this way but then it is intended for beginners who absolutely need something to hold onto in an entirely new and alien mental environment. The extreme form of cut and dried cook bookery reduced to more or less total meaninglessness is now to be found in computer programmes for churning out horoscope interpretations, and it is surprising indeed that even a dedicated anti cook book astrologer like Liz Greene has such things on offer, designed by herself.

But there is another side to this question which I have not seen publicly admitted or discussed, and it is this I set out to address here. In the first place, it is just this habit of interpreting everything for themselves that is one of the most conspicuous shortcomings of astrologers on the whole. Their readiness to rationalise any pattern into anything they want, and to adduce proofs or justifications from the stars for any preconceived interpretation, should be notorious. This is in reality one of the fatal temptations that beset an astrologer, and one of the first he needs to learn to resist. It lies in the nature of astrology, but also results from the absence of any academic training or discipline associated with the subject. Astrologers who write books habitually make assertions; they say that such and such is so and so, like oracles, without feeling any need to justify their statements, to refer to the contradictory statements of other astrologers, or even to give any hint of familiarity with the basic literature on their subject. We are in an ambience where anything goes. Then there is no sort of check or control in the form of informed criticism, since the media in general take no notice of astrology, and the few serious astrological journals are often ephemeral and always without the resources to be run on really professional lines.

In the second place, it by no means follows that one can simply put two and two together, say Jupiter and Uranus, or Sun and Pluto, and deduce by a logical process what the result is likely to be. Astrology must be a sacred science linked to fundamental human experience, both of the stars and of human psychology, and not in any way a system of fanciful or subjective assumptions, which is exactly what its opponents maintain it to be. When we start we learn various key words to orientate us among planets and signs, and the general nature of aspects, from which one can certainly make certain deductions that may prove valid in a case like Mars in conflict with Saturn; but even here there are many by ways in which something like this can manifest that are not at all obvious : for example, the liability to negative fixations; the need to reconcile oneself or come to terms with a bodily defect; or the fact that all aspects of these two planets carry the consequences further of the struggles of the forebears. The interpretation of even such basic symbols as these is evolving, and they manifest no doubt according to our psychic level.


Research and Experience

It is fairly obvious that extensive research is needed to provide interpretations where new or special techniques are involved, such as mid points or composite charts, and few astrologers are in a position to do this. Here we are dependent utterly on cook books. The same applies to new planets Pluto is the most obvious case in our time, but now also Chiron. It is my experience however that it applies to a large extent to everything else as well, even allowing for the probability of being personally unusually slow witted in this area, and exceptionally un Sherlock Holmes like. There are of course very good astrologers who see five or six clients a day throughout their careers, and have a very large experience from which to draw, so that they can read a chart to a large extent on sight. But this only 5confirms my point. It is just out of such experience that arose a book like that of Charles Carter on aspects, the most valuable feature of which, making it still the best available on the subject, is its strictly empirical character, without any ingredient of mere theory. In fact he often points out that experience proves contrary to what theory might expect.

Every astrologer has the chance to make his or her own observations which may be original, but even with much experience this has to be limited when seen against the thought and experience represented by the whole literature. In my own case I confess to being an astrologer of very limited practical experience, and with a bad memory, hence very dependent on cook books, if only to remind me of all the possible ramifications of ordinary features. I tend to do written analyses, when I do them at all, and to quote my sources. I had one client, an American lady, who claimed to be very impressed with the accuracy of the result. She said she had been to astrologers in America and had got nothing meaningful or relevant from them. I pointed out that it was not I but my cook books that were to be credited; she replied that the same books must be available to the other astrologers, and asked me to explain why the result was so different. I should like therefore to record here some of the cook books and methods I have found, by a process of rather rigorous critical selection and testing, to be particularly valid and to which I resort regularly and systematically when attempting to unravel a horoscope. It is understood of course that cook book delineations have to cover a certain range of possible manifestations of any feature and that one has to select those relevant in each particular case and consistent with the chart as a whole. It is keeping an eye on this consistency that is the main criterion to be observed in the effective use of cook books.


Interpretation: Preliminary Indicators

For the first stage of preliminary survey I have certain categories to be filled in at the bottom of my chart form, which I have adopted from various sources and found to be significant, though I do not believe they are generally used by astrologers. After listing as is usual the planets in each element, plus Asc. and M.C., and in each mode but specifically, not just by count, because the Asc. and M.C., the lights and the personal planets count for much more in this context than the outer planets I then enter the psychological type, in terms of Jung's types extravert or introvert, sensation, feeling, thinking or intuition. For this I am my own source. 1 After this the lunation type Full Moon, Last Quarter etc. according to the eight types delineated by Rudhyar,2 which are very much to the point. Next I think it worth noting to which of the four types of "mental chemistry" the chart belongs. These were defined by Marc Edmund Jones 3, and are classified by the speed of the Moon more or less than average (13?10') together with the position of Mercury, rising before or after the Sun (promethean or epimethean). The four types come out as : A. Moon fast, epimethean, perception keen, rational; B. Moon slow, promethean, perception deliberate; C. Moon fast, promethean, anxious (impatient); D. Moon slow, epimethean, deliberating (over cautious). A and B are balanced. I have in one or two extreme cases found the speed of Mercury to correlate with speed of thought, and this too might be worth researching.

The next thing I note is the over all pattern of the chart. Seven basic patterns were originally delineated by Marc Jones, and these have been enlarged upon and in some cases renamed by Rudhyar in his book Person Centred Astrology. These are of major significance in assessing the psychological orientation and area of awareness. Finally the Point of Focus is nearly equally significant; this also originated with Marc Jones, 4 and refers to the closest square or opposition in the horoscope. It points to the dominant conflict requiring resolution in the life. After this the strength of the planets is worth noting in their own sign, detriment, exaltation or fall, and any in mutual reception.

Having recorded these features on the chart form itself, in the space usually taken up by an aspect grid (which I regard as waste of space, since the aspects are drawn in on the chart itself, and are much more easily seen and appraised that way), there are several other general or preliminary features which can give us a very significant preview of the whole situation. One of these is the coincidence of important fixed stars with planetary or angular positions. If one wishes to go to the trouble of including coincidences of declination of fixed stars with the planets many more relevant indications are obtained. This comparison with stars sometimes yields little, and at other times can be of major interest. The standard cook book here of course is Robson. 5

After this I look at the degree positions of the lights and the Ascendant if known, as delineated by Adriano Carelli. 6 These delineations, while necessarily of a general nature, nevertheless taken together give a nearly unfailingly accurate over all view of the character in question I would say in perhaps 80% or 90% of cases. Sometimes they are uncannily accurate, even to small details; to such an extent that they can be used for rectification, in a much less laborious and frustrating way than the usual methods. I have pin pointed Ascendants from scratch by this method that is to say where no birth time is know within 24 hours. The sign can often be estimated from physique etc., or character, and the degree found through Carelli. Of course the correctness can then be confirmed by house positions and all the other methods, especially solar arc progressions by the mid point system. We can also take into consideration the degree of the Ascendant ruler, and of the Sun Moon mid point (the degree of equidistance) and of the Midheaven ; except perhaps for the last, these are not so regularly relevant. There are other systems of degree delineation, such as the Sabian Symbols (Marc Jones, taken up and re delineated by Rudhyar 7), but these I find only rarely hit the mark, and in any case the delineations are usually too vague to mean much or anything.

There is one other technique that can be recommended as worth while in a general survey, which is the plotting of dispositor chains, and this I take from the German astrologer Thomas Ring, in his 4 volume work Astrologische Menschenkunde. One or more chains are made from each planet to the one or more others which it disposits, and similarly from these to any they disposit, until all are accounted for. If there is a final dispositor this will come out on top, the others all deriving from it. Or there may be several chains or rings disconnected with each other; or there may be an isolated planet, as though unaspected. Such patterns can show in dispositor chains and not in ordinary aspects in the chart, and can lead to significant conclusions.

At some point in the preliminary survey of a horoscope I will consult in Alan Leo's Astrology for All, his delineation of the Sun Moon sign combination say Sun in Leo, Moon in Taurus. He gives a good paragraph or even page on each of the possible combinations, and these are in nearly every case of astonishing accuracy, and they always give a correct preview of the rest of the horoscope. This means 144 combinations, and I often wonder how one astrologer could amass such a quantity of accurate data; and if it is only theoretical to any extent it is of uncanny correctness in practice, forecasting almost every major trait of character. This book dates from the early years of this century and is still irreplaceable for these combinations, as well as having excellent delineations of rising signs.

Between these general features and the more particular delineations of signs, aspects and house positions is perhaps the consideration of the hemispheric or quadrant emphases of the horoscope, and then any aspect configurations there might be, such as T squares, Grand Cross, Grand Trine, Yod or others. For interpreting these things there is no source or cook book to compare with Bil Tierney's Dynamics of Aspect Analysis, which is probably the single most indispensable work in the literature. It is also equally good on retrograde and unaspected planets, as well as unusual configurations like Kites or Mystic Rectangles, and is virtually the only book that deals adequately with these subjects.


The Aspects, Signs & Houses

After all these various hors d'oeuvres as it were, we are now in a position to address the main course of the horoscope analysis proper; and I shall content myself with referring to a few works. Again to Carter's Astrological Aspects as the best general treatment of the subject, and I myself supplement this with Sakoian and Acker's Astrological Handbook, which sometimes fills in things not mentioned by Carter, and includes Pluto, which the latter does not. The Handbook is my main source for planets in the signs and houses, supplemented if need be by Sasportas on the houses. In special or difficult cases I will get supplementary insights from other sources, such as Thomas Ring on aspects, or of course from such things as Liz Greene's book on Saturn. There are special small works which prove valuable, such as Tracy Marks on the Twelfth House, and from other sources I get insights on particular subjects which turn out exactly correct, and are not to be found elsewhere: I will cite Stephen Arroyo on aspects of Pluto to the Sun and Moon (from Astrology, Karma and Transformation). There are other works which remain useful, such as Brunhübner's researches on Pluto from 1934, and certainly Darling on Medical astrology 8.

It remains to recognise the valuable work of Robert Hand on Transits which, though somewhat wordy, is fundamentally sound and will probably remain our mainstay in this area for some time. I do myself supplement it with Sakoian and Acker (Predictive Astrology), who again sometimes fill gaps or supply a view of the matter not mentioned by Hand; while I have not found any improvement, for secondary progressions, on Ronald Davison's The Technique of Prediction . On the general subject of cycles, seven year periods and stages of life Alexander Ruperti's Cycles of Becoming is another work for which there is no substitute.

For some time I worked with mid points, delineated in Ebertin's Combination of Stellar Influences, and while I found these generally valid and often bringing out things, especially in solar arc progressions, not shown by other techniques, I eventually decided that this is not worth the trouble it takes. This is largely because the delineations given in the above work tend to be very cut and dried, and this kind of planetary relationship is not easy to figure out for oneself. Ebertin and his associates, we are given to understand, base their conclusions on much practical research. There is no doubt however that a limited regard to mid point positions of certain planetary configurations in the chart can be important. For purposes of chart rectification, solar arc progressions involving the angles for the years of significant events, evaluated on Ebertin's system, can yield significant results more easily and abundantly than any other method, though they also produce a proportion of unreal or inapplicable ones.

When judging a horoscope, after assessing the relevant meanings of the patterns involved using the sources mentioned, which are based on actual experience supplemented by one's own experience when applicable, and relating them to the client, one is in a position to understand how the different features of a particular horoscope go together to make up an individual personality, differing from any other. The main outlines become clear, and the details fall into place on further acquaintance with the person, and more and more of the implications emerge, without reaching any limit to this process. This can be most interesting and illuminating to the astrologer; but it seldom makes any significant impact on the client, unless the astrologer is at the same time a psychotherapist and is being consulted with a view to treatment; or unless the client is prepared to take on board the different view of reality represented by astrology. It is always easier to perceive the hang ups and eccentricities of other people, while even if one can recognise one's own and their origins it still helps very little in smoothing them out or changing them. For this reason the most practically useful area of personal astrology might be that of relationships, and understanding the personalities of others. This may be especially useful in parent child relationships, while in partnerships, besides ordinary synastry or chart comparison, setting up a composite chart for the relationship can be illuminating. Here again Robert Hand's book on Planets in Composite is an indispensable cook book.


References :

1. A full exposition of this constitutes the first chapter of a book awaiting publication.
2. The Lunation Cycle, by Dane Rudhyar, Shambala 1971.
3. Relayed by Sakoian & Acker in Astrological Patterns, Harper & Row 1980.
4. As above.
5. The Fixed Stars and Constellations in Astrology, by Vivian Robson, The Aquarian Press 1969.
6. The 360 Degrees of the Zodiac, by Adriano Carelli, The A.F.A. 1977
7. An Astrological Mandala, by Dane Rudhyar, Vintage Books 1974.
8. The Essentials of Medical Astrology, by Harry F. Darling M.D., The A.F.A. 1981.

(3800 words)




Rhythms of Development

Michael McMullin


THE MOON

The most basic rhythms of life, apart from night and day, are connected with the Moon. Esoterically this represents the formative field, magnetic field, or life body (etheric body), while in the most mundane sense our time is governed by its cycles of months, consisting of four weeks of seven days. Since there are twelve months in the year, these numbers 4, 7 and 12 and their multiples are fundamental to our reality, and primary rhythms. The cycle of the Moon divided by four, besides giving weeks, gives us the four quadrants of the horoscope, and in terms of the progressed Moon these represent not weeks of seven days, but seven years.

The four phases of this cycle in relation to the Sun, from New Moon or conjunction to first quarter (waxing square), then Full Moon or opposition, followed by the third quarter (waning square), are the most graphic and dynamic demonstration , for all to see, of the stages to be gone through and the goals to be achieved in life, and perhaps difficulties to be surmounted in reaching these stages. These phases represent in principle the quadrature aspects in astrology, and can be seen as the discipline or structure of all development.

Four is the number of Saturn, which forms a polarity with the Moon, as rulers of Cancer and Capricorn, the solstice points, the 4th and the 10th houses, as mother and father archetypes, water/earth, soul and body, content and form; and as all astrologers know, the orbital period of Saturn coincides in years with the synodic period of the Moon in days (from New Moon to New Moon). This means that to all intents and purposes the Saturn cycle is an enlargement or augementation of that of the Moon, and coincides essentially with the cycle of the progressed Moon. While the lunar rhythm governs the menstrual cycle and the gestation period (the maternal phases), the life cycle after birth follows the augmented rhythm of the Saturn cycle, in its development of destiny and form in the outer and material world. In terms of the twelve months of the year, or the twelve signs of the Zodiac, the four quadrants represent the seasons, the monthly cycle of the phases of the Moon being augmented to a year; while in terms of the Saturn cycle of 29? years, or the progressed Moon of about 28 years, each quadrant is approximately seven years, and represents the seasons of human growth from birth to maturity. Saturn is the principle of incarnation into the world of polarity and matter, and of time, and this takes place at the Ascendant of the horoscope, out of the womb or lunar realm, which is that of the soul (Cancer). In the world of Saturn four predominates, the quartering of the circle being the symbol for Earth, discrimination and consciousness, the task to be undertaken in this realm.

We could say that the numbers 4, 7 and 12 define time for us, and are in the first place lunar; though in the gestation period (pre natal epoch) the number nine occurs. Once incarnated as an independent entity on earth our life cycle is bounded or conditioned in the long term by the cycles of Saturn, and time is by definition cyclic. We could think of seven as the number of the Moon, which rules the life processes on the cellular and biological level, and in 7 year cycles, within the long term boundaries set by Saturn and the number four. The number twelve, defining the number of months in the year, or our revolution round the Sun, and hours in the day, seems to have solar reference, and this is confirmed by the twelve year cycle of Jupiter, our sub Sun or solar hero. In the cycle of Uranus (84 years) 12 and 7 are combined, and 8 + 4 = 12, and this planet in principle has an esoteric relation to the Sun, and to the higher Self (outside the time cycle or consciousness and in another dimension).


THE SATURN CYCLES

The first Saturn cycle marks exactly the stages of growth, bodily and psychological, from infancy and unconsciousness (though not unawareness) to adulthood and the development of a mature ego, conscious of its path in life, at the age of 28 30. Each house in the Saturn cycle, going from the Ascendant in an anti clockwise direction, represents about two and a half years, and the stages of development are defined by the signs on each house in a mundane sense, starting from the spring equinox. The first quadrant therefore represents the establishment of the child as an individual and independent organism able to function in the material world and communicate with the environment (3rd house). We have passed through the signs of Mars, Venus and Mercury : in Aries birth as a new and separate entity, with the impulse for growth and self preservation; becoming aware in Taurus, through sensation, of the physical world; and orientation , in Gemini, and ability to move, function and interact with the surroundings. At the age of seven the body has reached the correct proportions in the development of the limb system, under the influence of Mars and Aries, ruling the whole quadrant; while psychologically the child is aware of being a separate ego. Education therefore should have focused on this mainly physical phase of development.

The second quadrant or seven year stage starts from the I.C. and Cancer, the sign of the Moon. Thus we come to the stage of development of the inner nature, the emotional or feeling nature, or world of the soul. The experience of an inner self in the fourth house needs expression and fulfillment in the fifth house, of Leo and the Sun. Education during this period should develop the sense of values and the imagination, and the means of self expression in music and the arts, instead of subjecting the child to premature intellectual cramming. Real intellectual development of the thinking function should start only in the third quadrant, ruled by the air sign Libra, if there is to be a natural and healthy formation of the psyche.

The first and second quadrants represent "what we are born with" (Döbereiner), and our subjective development, physical and emotional; the third and fourth "what each living being must acquire to be complete". In the third, "the relation to non subjective reality, another reality outside of oneself" is experienced. In the sixth house, ruled again by Mercury in Virgo, we have to adapt our subjective selves and our talents in a practical sense to the conditions which we find in the world around us, especially the social world and social norms, before separating from our parents and being confronted with the Other, the world above the horizon. Thus the sixth house is the house of crisis (Rudhyar), in the case of the first Saturn cycle approaching the crisis of adolescence, or the first opposition of Saturn to its natal place, at the age of fourteen.

The third quadrant, from age 14 to 21, is the stage of our intellectual education, where we are confronted with both other people, in a collective sense, and ideas to which we have to react and sort out for ourselves, or incorporate into our own experience. In the ninth house we reach higher education, or apprenticeship to functioning in the social order, or as a thinking being functioning in relation to the cosmos. At twenty one we are physically fully developed and legally "of age", but not psychologically. This last development has to take place in the fourth quadrant. Here we complete university education or other qualification for a career, taking our place in the social pollity (11th house), and, ideally, realising the direction in life required by our inner truth (12th house). Thus at twenty nine to thirty, our first Saturn return, we reach approximately the Ascendant again and the possibility of a second birth in the next Saturn cycle if we have not by this time capitulated as an individual and sold out to the collective status quo. Then no further spiritual or psychological development is likely. In any case it is during this first Saturn cycle that the houses of the fourth quadrant seem to have their more mundane and generally accepted meanings, and Jupiter and Saturn, once we reach the ninth house, represent the social environment in which we have to grow up.

During the second Saturn cycle we repeat these stages on a different level. Now we are grown up individuals functioning socially in the outer world, in jobs, careers, marriages, and bringing up families, and obliged to earn a living. This is in a way subjective, or taken as it comes while below the horizon, between 30 and 42, but when we reach the sixth house for the second time we are coming up to the second Saturn opposition, and also the first Uranus opposition. These mark the mid life crisis, in the early forties, which is like a second adolescence. This is the half way house, the start of the declining curve into old age; we tend to realise this suddenly, to review our lives, often with misgivings, and with fear of the future. Often we attempt to make a new start, or break off relationships. In the third and fourth quadrants of this cycle we should be reaching some understanding of the meaning of life and of our real individual rôle and function in that context, in preparation for the second Saturn return to its natal place. At the age of 56 we pass the Ascendant again in seven year periods (progressed Moon), and enter a time when a third birth is possible, onto a more spiritual level; until at the Saturn return at age 59 60 we enter the final phase of life, when ideally we retire from preoccupation with activities in the outer world and enter a decisive period of inner development the age of philosophy. Or, more often, simply decline into old age and senility. In this third cycle the houses and quadrants can correspond closely with the meanings they have in the first cycle, but on this new level.


THE URANUS CYCLE

These seven year stages of life and their relation to the various planetary cycles have been very well described by Alexander Ruperti in his book Cycles of Becoming. If we expand or augment this 28 year rhythm (4 x 7), three cycles of which, or at least two and a half (to age 70), form the average or normal life span of present day man, to one cycle of 84 years (12 x 7), we have the orbital cycle of Uranus. Here each house represents seven years, or a quadrant in the previous rhythm, and it is very instructive to follow the lives of individuals, according to their individual horoscopes, in terms of this rhythm. This gives a more detailed and individual result that the 28 year Moon/Saturn cycles, and the actual sign on the cusp of each house is individually significant in relation to the phase, as are the planets, which mark important developments or events as they are passed over or opposed in the progression round the horoscope.

While this may be less evident over the first quadrant, covering the development up to the age of 21, the houses in a mundane sense broadly correspond to the same stages, the first house in the sense of Aries sees the child developed as an independent and fully mobile organism at age 7, with a basic attitude and ego, and the first permanent teeth. The second house as a Venus house and Taurus, corresponds to the second quadrant in the Saturn cycle, and the development of a sense of values "creative self assertion" (Ruperti), and physical development of the reproductive and limb systems. The third house under Gemini represents the period of intellectual development of the third Saturn quadrant, age 14 21, up to full physical maturity, as well as orientation to the environment.

The period from 21 28 corresponds to Cancer and the fourth house, and many people marry and start their own homes now, and in any case finally leave the parental home. During this time, which Ruperti calls the Socio Cultural level, the basic attitude to society is established, coming up to crossing the Ascendant in the Saturn/progressed Moon cycle. This is normally a relatively introverted and subjective period, often involving an ego crisis and much self questioning, and at the same time a "rushing out to meet life" the waxing square of Uranus to its natal place. At this stage in order to illustrate more concretely the points I wish to make, I should like to turn to an individual horoscope, and the example I am taking has Sagittarius on the fourth house cusp. The subject of this horoscope quit the courese he was on at the age of 22 and took off to the continent on a period of studies, considerable travel and adventures lasting four years. This ended at age 26, when he settled in Dublin into a course of studies leading to a decisive orientation in philosophy and the arts, or higher thinking (Sagittarius). This happened while at the opposition to natal Pluto, which is in the tenth house of calling or destiny.

It should perhaps be made clear here that we are talking about the life cycle of the individual seen and interpreted in terms of the various rhythms defined by the major planetary cycles and key numbers. The life can be analysed in smaller units or larger ones, up to the Uranus 84 year rhythm which spans the whole life, for all practical purposes, and shows the over all development. In all cases the life cycle starts at the Ascendant, and we follow it through the houses and/or quadrants according to whichever rhythm we are considering; what we are following is the stage of life, or, as Rudhyar called it, "the point of self". As we go round the circle of the chart, in an anti clockwise direction, we pass through the houses and over the natal planets, wherever they are situated, once in a lifetime in the Uranus rhythm, but we are not talking about transits of the planet itself. In the Uranus rhythm the point of self is moving round the chart at the rate of seven years per house, regardless of the actual size of the houses; if we divide the number of degrees spanned by each house by seven, we can calculate how many to allow for each year, and therefore which planets become progressively activated each year, as we pass either over or opposite to them. (See diagrams at the end).

The fifth house, age 28 35, has Capricorn on the cusp, and brings the first public realisations of individual creativity. This specifically happened at the conjunction with the North Node in the fifth house. Ruperti calls this stage the Individual or Personality level, bringing the release of creative endowment. It also brought marriage, when opposite Neptune, at age 33?, and the birth of children in the physical sense. This meant the end of independence and new and serious responsibilities, in keeping with Capricorn, involving the necessity to earn a living not hitherto a prime consideration. Progressed Saturn turned retrograde around this time. The first enterprises embarked upon from this point of view came during the 7 year period covering the sixth house, and could be said to represent the necessity to adapt to circumstances and give the whole attention to practical rather than intellectual or creative issues. As Ruperti says for this period, the external confronts the internal, and opposite values and ideals have to take precedence. This period also involved for our subject a series of crises crisis being Rudhyar's key word for the sixth house; and at last a major economic one leading to emigration, at the opposition to Venus, ruler of the second house of established territory, and also of course of money, property, finances. This sixth house has Aquarius on the cusp and Uranus is actually in it natally; adaptation can only be forced, provisional and according to outer necessity, since in any real or inner sense it would be out of the question with Uranus here.

At 42 we come to the seventh house and above the horizon, as in the second Saturn cycle. This is marked by the opposition of transiting Uranus to its natal place, and the mid life crisis. Ruperti has for this seven year period: routine life and submission to the status quo; attempts to make a new start in life. Also: some deep changes in a positive direction, and an undercurrent of anxiety. All these statements apply exactly to our subject, who is landed on a new continent and has to attempt to earn a living in unfavourable circumstances and an essentially alien environment. At the same time a new dimension of awareness beyond the subjective is starting to develop, with an interest in Eastern philosophies and the spiritual dimension. There are no planets in this house, but there is an opposition to natal Mercury in Libra at age 47?.

Between the age of 49 and 56 Ruperti designates as a seed period, involving inner preparation, and a potential renewal of destiny and integration. We are in the eighth house in the Uranus cycle, and emphasis is on the meaning of life. "In the 50th year Uranus enters the eighth phase of its cycle, the regenerative phase". In the case of our particular subject, Aries is on the cusp of this house, and towards the end of this period decisive steps were taken to weigh anchor in the area of the previous fourteen years and return to Ireland. After selling the house and thus realising some capital, at the conjunction with Jupiter, a house and land was bought at home at conjunction with the natal Moon.

The next seven years covered the second Saturn return and a third birth the "conscious decision to devote the rest of life to creative fulfillment". We are now in the ninth house, and Ruperti speaks of "new spiritual activities". Our subject moves back to Ireland exactly at the Saturn return, and becomes established in a new territorial and economic base Taurus is on the cusp of this house. Age 60 is "the age of philosophy" a dedication to "the search for meaning and fundamental values". There is a spiritual re polarisation. At the time of moving and at the opposition to natal Mars our subject is separated from family and an entirely new life style is entered upon as a more or less self sufficient hermit, working the land. At the same time all the above developments are true, and there is a return to the pre sixth house position, and adaptation to material concerns (life) no longer takes priority.

This development comes of age, as it were, at 63, where the M.C. is reached in our cycle. "Sixty three is a particularly crucial age" (Ruperti). It is "the age of consummation of the important 7 year and 9 year rhythms of the life cycle . . . At age 63 the way in which the individual destiny and the collective destiny meet is a determining factor for the future". At the tenth house we arrive at the end result of the individual life, the Causa finalis; in Ruperti's words it is the time of "wisdom, of bringing life to some sort of seed consummation". It is also when we start to make conscious preparation for after life. After 63, "life will be stirred to its depth by a new impulse". The waxing square of Saturn "can mean a new, great adventure into spiritual realms". This is assuming that growth continues on the Uranus cycle, and it does not simply mean the onset of old age. The importance of 63 is explained in an interesting way by Döberiener, who says that one month in the womb is equivalent to seven years of life, so that the whole gestation period of nine months would correspond to 63. At 63 therefore we can have a new birth.

In the individual case we have been considering all of the above is exactly true, and at 63 not one, but two entirely new impulses came into effect, and set a course for the whole of this seven year period. As well as this, a quite new phase and outlet for creativity on the old course was realised, in the form of writing, Gemini being on the cusp of this tenth house. During this period, at age 68, natal Pluto was passed, confirming the "rebirth" character of this whole period.

At the age of 70 we reach the eleventh house cusp, the stage of "the suspension of polarity and subjectivity" (Döbereiner). Between 70 and 77 a "new rhythm of life contacts can now be established (the last Saturn opposition to its natal place) between the individual and society and between the conscious ego and the spirit within" (Ruperti). The new life contacts took place in our case during the first part of this period, and during the second part, accompanied by an extraordinary concentration of progressed and transiting planets and node in the fifth house opposite, a major work was completed as a consummation of the whole life tendency, and of the previous developments during the phase of transition through the tenth house. Cancer is on the cusp of the eleventh house, and the natal conjunction of Saturn and Neptune was passed over and activated during this last phase, between 75 and 77.

At the twelfth house, schematically the last phase of the cycle, and ideally the stage of Neptune and "the suspension of reality" (Döbereiner), where it is no longer necessary to adapt to outer conditions (VI), there is "a further change of magnetism" (Ruperti). "Seventy seven correponds to seven times eleven eleven being the number of the Sun and of the circulation of solar energy throughout the solar system" (the sun spot cycle). In the particular case we are considering, Leo is on the twelfth house cusp, and a Neptunian change of magnetism did in fact take place. Cancer and Leo, mundanely on the fourth and fifth house cusps in the quadrant of subjective creativity, are realised here on the objective level of the fourth and opposite quadrant, in a period of ideational creativity quite late in life. The horoscope used for this example of the Uranus rhythm is given below:



Sol, Luna and Saturn

Michael McMullin


Introduction

Astronomy and astrology having separated since the time of Kepler, they now represent two diametrically opposed views of the solar system and the heavens; the one based on mathematics and measurement, the other on meaning. It seems to many astronomers to be the difference between fact and fiction; but this is becasue of the very naïve world view to which they have been brought up, not understanding that measurements tell us nothing until they are interpreted, and the difference resides entirely in the interpretation. Astronomy (naïve astronomy) sees nothing but quantities and interprets them according to the world view dominant in the 18th/19th centuries (superstition, astrologers would say); while astrology sees qualities, and interprets these in the light of a developing tradition which goes back through the wisdom of the ages and is embodied in mythology (supersition according to astronomers). Both disciplines rely equally on constant observation, experiment and verification, and support these with theories which adapt the results to their preferred view of reality. It is this last which is very hard to change, whereas observations ("facts") can easily be selected, ignored or manipulated so as to avoid such a disturbance.

Essentially what we are talking about is attitude, and what distinguishes fact from fiction is solely whether it fits in with one's attitude; so these two words have no intrinsic meaning. As expressed by W.B.Yeats: ?Truth is a state of mind and not a thought nor a remembered syllogism nor an opinion?. The study of states of mind is psychology, but even this term is applied to different schools depending on attitude; but it does, unless applied exclusively to ?taking habits out of a rat? (Sam Gooch), take account of the subject as well as the object, or the observer as co important with the observed, a view to which 20th century physics also finds itself obliged to subscribe. This represents an attitude quite contrary to that which has grown up over the last five hundred years or so, and carried to its logical conclusion it undermines the whole concept of "objective fact". From now on the outside and the inside are included in one another and are part of the same reality; while the concept "reality" itself refers to our thought processes. We come round again full circle to Hermetic philosophy, abandoned during the Renaissance in favour of Aristotle.

Astrology lies ready to hand as the best language for this way of thinking, which has been kept alive in the background from the Middle Ages, and also in alchemy. Astrological symbols played an important part in the language of the alchemists who are shown, in the light of the knowledge we have been re discovering in this century, to have had an astonishing understanding of human psychology and psychopathology, and of the path of spiritual and psychic development that has always been the goal of life indicated by the sages. 1

In the long run the only criterion of the "truth" of a philosophy, a world view or a state of mind is the degree to which it is inclusive and integrates the inside with the outside and vice versa. While this judgement is still on the intellectual level, there is another form of knowledge on the inner or intuitive level, which is actually what motivates our researches in the first place as well as validates the outcome. Both these criteria of truth are referred to by Spinoza. The intuitive knowledge is solar; it comes from the unconscious or the depths of being the real self and has to do with the state of mind, and level of development (individuation) or psychological integration of the subject. This provides an inner guide to what is worth knowing. The other kind of knowledge is conscious and belongs to the thinking function, and consists of the discrimination and comparison of concepts or ideas over as wide a range as possible, including their empirical verification, to test their truth or validity by universality of application. Thus nothing can be understood in isolation a common pitfall for specialists and experts but only in relation to the totality of experience. This relationship constitutes meaning.

It is from this point of view that it is important to get our terms right and sort out and become conscious of the archetypes to which they refer or are related. Archetypes are key ideas, and it is a sorting of concepts into the right categories or the right psychological context, to be seen in their real associations and implications, which are disguised and confused in conventional thinking; for many of the concepts in current use either mean nothing or something quite different from what is assumed.

Astrology like myth is very much the language of psychological realities, so that the more clearly we understand its archetypes the more our ideas are aligned to truth that is, our own truth, which is the only kind that we can know. Also like myths, astrology relates to the stars and the solar system, but not in the same way as astronomy: not as supposedly objective phenomena to measure for themselves, but as a measure of what is inside, and this is what completely confuses astronomers. ? ' All that is outside also is inside', we could say with Goethe. But this inside, which modern rationalism is so eager to derive from 'outside', has an a priori structure of its own that antedates all conscious experience?. 2 The archetypes are these elements of psychic structure, and the planetary archetypes are very high up on the scale that is to say, they give rise to and differentiate into a vast range of related concepts and are very fertile fields for thought and insight. Archetypes are never capable of being clearly defined, and tend to merge into one another at the edges; yet they give rise to coherent families of ideas, to know the source of which is important to our understanding. Much futile thinking and going up wrong trails can be avoided by knowing the family to which an idea belongs, or one could say the psychological context and other ideas to which it is be related.


Father, Mother

I think we can call Sun, Moon and Saturn the three most important archetypes in astrology, and in psychology, and they form a very basic trinity, fundamental to understanding our lives. They are not quite the same as the Christian Trinity, though they relate closely to the same myth. That there is not a consistent understanding among astrologers of these essential factors is the subject of this essay, although it is one which can lead us far beyond the scope of a short article.

All three of these planets make fundamental polarities with each other, and it is these polarities it behoves us to examine. The most obvious one is the Sun Moon polarity, the luminaries of Day and Night which dominate our lives, determine our calendar and the primary rhythms of our existence, both within and without. They have always been naturally the focus of man's attention and objects of wonder, and of projection or identification with the primary deities, or psychic components. Although temporarily reduced by modern astronomy to an accidental nuclear reactor and a lump of volcanic rock, their mythological status will soon be restored by astrology, and even by anyone who stops to wonder at the fact that they are arranged to be exactly the same size, as seen by us, and to note the many other numerological "coincidences" connected with the Moon. 3 This equivalence in size makes for an even more perfect polarity. The images of Sol and Luna as King and Queen were the partners in the Sacred Marriage that was the goal of alchemy, and a symbol of the process of spiritual realisation and transcendance.

On the face of it this looks the polarity of gender, of Father/Mother, Man/Wife, and this interpretation has become something of a convention with astrologers. It also looks, as day and night, like conscious and unconscious or instinctual life, and the Sun is often spoken of as the ego. As this is sometimes spelled Ego, it gives rise to another confusion, since in Jung's terms 'ego' is merely the centre of consciousness, while in some other teachings Ego is the spiritual centre. Jung himself however, in the context of alchemy, is not too sure of the Sun's rôle, and tends to equate light with consciousness, which is a function of the ego, and traditionally a more masculine concern.

The luminaries fit naturally the rôle of god and goddess, and have been so identified in nearly all cultures, and this leads to the idea of father god and mother god, to make them more human and familiar. In fact the father and mother archetypes are very fundamental unconscious psychic factors, as well as being vital and actual biological and childhood experiences. The Moon moreover observably governs the female biological rhythms and gestation, and has always been associated with goddess figures, on various levels according to its phases, most basically with Eve or the Earth Mother. There is no ambiguity about the astrological feminity of the Moon, and its relation to motherhood and life on earth. The Sun however belongs to a very different dimension and, as the source of life and energy, is in no real sense a partner with the Moon. The idea of a father god is both natural and necessary, as a projection of this archetype, but the Sun does not fit it. The father god with whom we are most familiar, the Old Testament Jehova, is Saturn, the masculine archetype of the earth realm, and of matter, and the number 4, signifying the Cross, and incarnation into matter. Both the Moon (in the sign Taurus) and Saturn are therefore associated with matter and life on earth; the Moon also with water, the feminine element, and basic to life, and with instinctual, biological life and the unconscious (always symbolised by water). One could say with substance (Taurus) and content (water, Cancer). Saturn, in Capricorn, the cardinal earth sign and matter itself, form, structure and solidity, makes a polarity with Cancer. Scorpio, water and the depths the unconscious, makes the polarity with Taurus, while Cancer, being at the I.C., has similar implications, of depths and the contents of the unconscious, to be born, like the physical offspring, into the fifth house, as some kind of creative expression.

Astrology itself tells us that the opposite equivalent to the Moon as Father/Mother, masculine/feminine is Saturn, and the qualities attributed to this archetype all fit this symbolism. We have form opposed to content, relating to the social pollity and the collective as opposed to the family and the personal, to conscious life and the ego as against the biological and unconscious. Logical thinking (form), traditional structures, social organisation and affairs of state, and material (economic) affairs (as opposed to nurturing the family), are recognised as stereotypically masculine occupations, as against the much greater understanding of feeling values and relating on the personal level that is characteristic of women. In practice, and as an empirical experience, Saturn represents the father principle, as the Moon does the mother; the personal father and mother are often the rulers of the actual signs on the tenth and fourth houses.


The Sun is Fire

The Sun on the other hand, as ruling Leo, refers to the fifth house of creativity, and does not in astrology or in the zodiac stand in polar opposition to the Moon. Children, a product of the Moon in Cancer, next door, come into the fifth house, and one cannot hold that women are opposed to creativity. Rather, all mental creativity also has its substratum or derives its fecundity from the unconscious and is adjacent to the fourth house.

The Sun is a fire principle the fire principle and there are certain fiery qualities more associated with men than with women. Among these are aggression, war, valour (of the flamboyant kind), muscular activity, work and enterprise. All these come under Mars, not the Sun, and Mars is an unquestionably masculine god. Its polar opposite in this respect is Venus, ruling Taurus and Libra, opposed to Scorpio and Aries, and equally unquestionably a feminine goddess. Psychologically these represent the Anima and Animus, the contra sexual components in man and woman.

We thus have two pairs of polar opposites in gender, without including the Sun. The Sun is the source of life on earth, it animates the whole solar system, and who is going to say that man, rather than woman, is a source of life ? As regards the process of reproduction he is quite secondary, and woman nurses him. The Moon shines as a mirror of the Sun, and has no light of its own; are we going to say this of women, in 1996 ? It looks at present very much as though the light of men has gone out, not that of women. While if the light of humanity on earth goes out, it will be because man has sold his soul, his feminine component (anima), in favour of matter and power (Saturn) the temptation in the wilderness to the Devil, Satan ( urn), the principle of darkness and, together with Mars, the other "malefic", of masculinity. Aggression and ego in negative form are the two main sources of evil.

The Sun as fire, or radiant energy, is outside the realm of matter and polarity it is anti matter, and is spirit. Matter is energy that is bound or frozen by Saturn. No one can say that spirit has gender, nor that human males have more of it, or merely pass on spirit to females, who have none of their own. From my general observation I should be inclined to say the exact opposite.

One can say that the Moon nurtures life on earth, that the sub lunar sphere is like a womb for that life. So the Moon can be compared with the life body, or formative field, the etheric body. While the energy comes from the Sun, it is a stepping down of this energy that is needed for life on our level, and one can compare the Moon and the planets to an electrical transformer. This comparison fits exactly. 4

Although the concept "soul" is often applied to the Moon, this more correctly belongs to Venus (Anima), and would then have to be applied equally to Mars (Animus). This makes it feminine only in a masculine context. But it is connected with feeling (water), to which women are more open. In occultism feeling, or the higher octave of the feeling function, is associated with the astral body, Neptune, again connected with water, but in the context of transcendence. In order to preserve the idea of polarity of gender, which only applies inside the orbit of Saturn, it is obviously convenient to think of spirit as masculine, but this is supported neither by observation nor logic, and is only too evidently a hang over from strictly patriarchal cultures, and a residue of "male chauvinism". We have to change "chairman" into "chairperson", but we may go on comparing the male to a sun !


The Sacred Marriage

In archaic Europe God was the Great Mother (Graves); god became masculine naturally in patriarchal cultures, and with civilisation and the growth of consciousness, which tended to be a more masculine preoccupation. Hence god became, as Jehovah, mingled with Saturn, given an ego, and identified with the essentially opposite attributes of this archetype. This has been taken over by the second half of our civilisation (the devil was to be let loose after 1,000 years), especially from the Reformation, when Saturn came into his own.

For the Christian (Piscean) era the dominant myths are those of the Fall of man, and subsequently the Crucifixion, and both of these refer to Saturn. The Fall, from the spiritual world into the material, was induced by or on behalf of Satan (another spelling of Saturn); the Crucifixion refers to the incarnation of spirit into matter, symbolised by the number 4, and subsequent redemption and resurrection. The Son of God is the spiritual self, the fish swimming in the waters of the unconscious, and is consubstantial with the solar, ultimately universal spirit. Saturn as matter is also darkness, the shadow, and the combination of light and darkness, or spirit with matter, is what produces outlines, discrimination and consciousness. With too much light and no shadow outlines become blurred and we cannot distinguish separate forms; so light by itself does not produce consciousness, but needs to be mixed with darkness. The result is the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge; it is mythologised as the birth of the miraculous child, whose archetype is Hermes, or Mercury, the inventor of the sciences.

The Sacred Marriage is represented throughout alchemy as betweem Sol and Luna, but this does not mean man and woman, and alchemy was not needed merely to produce children on the physical level. Nor do the Sun and Moon do this. Mercury is sometimes referred to as the "child" of the Sun and Moon the small planet close to the Sun; and although astrologically Mercury has some association with child, this is probably because of his mundane rulership of the third house of conceptual thinking. As consciousness, he is the child of light and dark, and the alchemists did not get his parentage exactly right in that metaphor; while it is correct in a sense to say, as the Greeks did, that he was child of Zeus (god of space, the matrix of consciousness, and light) and Maia, Earth, conceived in a dark cavern (the Greeks did not recognise Time). When we distinguish different forms through our senses, we need space to separate them and perceive them as outside. Consciousness, leading to language and conceptual thinking, can however be very deceptive, and Mercury is also the Trickster archetype. In alchemy Mercurius is, as consciousness, the prima materia, the starting point of the discipline, which is to lead to the philosophers' stone, or the lapis, which turns all to gold that is, transcends matter, and life and death, and brings redemption.

The Sun and its shadow are shown in an illustration from the Rosarium as Apollo and Dionysus (Set, Saturn or Typhon), as light and darkness. "The lapis produced by the gods of life and death . . . dyed with the Sun and its shadow . . . birth and death 'one from two' the Sun united with its shadow" this makes clear the fundamental issue of the Sun/Saturn polarity in development of the self (the lapis). "The Sun united with its shadow" is shown as a solar eclipse, the Moon, or shadow, with its halo. ?The spiritual body which in most cultures is assumed to reside within man and to be immortal is a solar body of light". 5 ?The alchemist realises the conjunctio oppositorum in its last and supremest form? when he ?spans the mystery and paradox of the dual One: the sameness of Pure Being and Nothing, the Clear Light of the Void?. The Sol Luna conjunctio is then not a question of gender but of the descent of Spirit into life on earth, or the life body (Moon Saturn), as the means of realising the self of the ultimate conjunction of Sun with Saturn (the Sun's shadow, or consciousness). This is the same as Jung's conception of the individuation process as the integration of spirit with the conscious ego. But the self is properly the offspring of this integration, and interestingly is also symbolised as the miraculous child, or the child born of a virgin; and Mercurius was associated by the alchemists with the lapis, as well as with the prima materia.

Luna represents the means of life, within the realm of matter or Saturn, the father of this realm. The mystic marriage is perhaps of spirit with soul. Moon/Saturn are interchangeable to a certain extent, both representing physical life on earth, the biological life body (Taurus) and the individual consciousness or earth bound ego (Capricorn). Thought of as a triangle, we can make of these archetypes body, soul and spirit, the unity of which, in a greater circle, constitutes the goal of the alchemical opus, or the individuation process. ?The lapis blends the sexual opposites in a resting unity and eternal peace?. Fabricius reproduces a painting from the "Book of the Holy Trinity" illustrating the individuation process or the last conjunctio solis et lunae, showing the crucifixion (spirit incarnated into matter) immediately above (uniting with) a representation of the wonder that appeared in heaven of a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of stars (John 19:25:30). The woman is perhaps the soul united with both Sun and Moon and stars in a transcendence of matter; or ?a shining white soul which flies up to heaven with the spirit? (from another alchemist, Petrus Bonus of Ferrara, around 1330). This is ?clearly and manifestly the stone?. Sun/Saturn can be thought of as the unity of heaven and earth, ?at the end of the world?.


References:

1. Since Jung's thorough researches into alchemy as a psychological discipline, a most excellent account of the alchemists' work, its various stages, and its ultimate goal of transcendence is given in: Alchemy, by Johannes Fabricius, Diamond Books 1994.

2. Jung: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious , C.W. Vol.9 p.101

3. See especially Rodney Collin, The Theory of Celestial Influence , Shambala 1984.

4. Ibid.

5. Alchemy, p.194

(3600 words)






The Astrology of Wolfgang Döbereiner

Michael McMullin


Introduction

For some years now I have at various times been studying the system of astrology propounded by the Munich astrologer Wolfgang Döbereiner, and called the Munich Rhythm Theory. I first came across this in a book on the use of astrology for diagnosis in homeopathy brought to me from Munich by a friend, and later I found one of the earlier books of Thorwald Dethlefsen dedicated "To my teacher Wolfgang Döbereiner". This provided the extra motivation to investigate Döbereiner further and to obtain a substantial amount of other material. He publishes his own works, which can only be obtained direct, and they are nearly all in the form of transcriptions of tapes of lectures (though not the homeopathic one). This gives a better over all view of his personality and general way of thinking, applied to all kinds of topics which crop up in the course of exchange with the audience.

In the beginning of the homeopathy book, first published in 1982 and so relatively recent, he gives us the premises from which he sets out: that the relation of the world of appearances to Time is no longer understood. That is, its relation to an inner content and development, of which the structure is reflected by its unfolding in time. The world of appearances is a picture or reflection of another pre existing reality which unfolds according to a built in order, and not a haphazard sequence of collisions in space (Brownian movement).

The Zodiac provides us precisely with the key pattern of the way life is structured in cycles and unfolds in time. In human terms this means that our attributes are tied to time, and particular attributes can only be inherited at a particular time of birth, the houses of the horoscope corresponding to the Zodiac on a day for a year basis. These attributes (the planets) unfold according to this structure, in corresponding rhythms and on different levels.

When the horoscope is divided into four quadrants defined by the horizon and meridian, we have the basic structural form of manifestation and development in Time. The signs and the houses are a sub division of these and mark twelve developmental stages, in twelve basic forms expressed everywhere and in everything the signs being collective and the houses individual. His particular interpretation of these quadrants is the foundation of Döbereiner's quite original system of astrology, and is an integral part of his whole philosophy and understanding of reality, which is of an exceptionally high order and spiritual level on the same level, let us say, as that of Plotinus, with whom he could have had no serious disagreements. This puts him probably in a category by himself among contemporary astrologers, whether or not we agree with him in all particulars and workings out of his system a thing no responsible person can reasonably demand from any one fellow human being. He is a person who can think, and think for himself, and who understands just what astrology means, for our whole thought system, and its full implications for humanity. For this reason I regard him as not only one of the most important astrologers, but as one of the most important thinkers of our time.



The four quadrants

The four quadrants are categorised in the first place in the Aristotelian sense of the four Causalities, or the four bases (fundamental principles) of existence:




Figure 1
Quadrant I : the properties which become visible in the person himself.

Quadrant II : those which become visible or take form through the person; what he produces.

Quadrant III : the people or ideas which bind a person to the visible world, and which he
encounters outside himself (or projects).

Quadrant IV : the result and final meaning arrived at through the process of development. All
the properties independent of the personal and circumstantial life, which are
beyond this and unconscious, and survive individual existence.

These descriptions of the four bases (or phases of realisation) represented by the quadrants can be enlarged upon almost indefinitely. They are not easy to understand, and I can only attempt here as intelligibly as possible a summing up of the matter, condensed from discourses by Döbereiner on different occasions:

The 1st quadrant represents concrete, spatial reality, the entry into the time, space and polarity of the material world. The first or cardinal house is the initiating action of each phase, the "thing as such" and its inherent nature; the second house is the substance, here for example the body and its organs, and roots in the material world; the third house is the function, both in the physiological sense and in the sense of the occupation and differentiation of visible space.

The 2nd quadrant: Instinctual feelings press up to connect the inner (4th house) with outer experience for the orientation of action. This is the emotional or psychic energy, or libido, leading to creativity or the urge to give birth to forms (5th house) through "inner pictures" (evidently unconscious archetypes). But this needs a polarity, an encounter from outside, which takes place in the third quadrant, and which acts as a projection screen, or a visible embodiment, making a connection with the inner archetype. This quadrant is completely internal as opposed to physical, and only here do we actually experience things emotionally. In the 6th house we have to adapt our self expression to the prevailing external conditions and limitations in the world, and this is how we function as individual and rational persons.

The 3rd quadrant: Everything we encounter from outside. In whatever we encounter we are confronted with the contents of our own imagination; here we have receptivity to images (7th house), attachment to images (8th house), and use of images (9th house). The contents of the environment can only be translated to the individual through images. It is here that our inner capacity finds its object, or its material, or its motivation in the outside world; in other words we find our own inner world and needs symbolised in what we meet outside, and this symbolism is the content of what we encounter. We find inner archetypes outside in the things which have meaning for us, the finding of wholeness in the things we encounter. We need the constantly renewed stimulus of things and ideas coming from outside to react with and call forth our own inner creativity (second quadrant). The 8th house represents in one sense the ideas or view of the world to which we are attached or committed. This can include all kinds of ideals, systems and aberrations, as well as cults and cult figures upon whom people become fixated. Scorpio is the sign of fixed feeling. We can become fixated on an idea to the extent that we can transfer it to the first quadrant, i.e. crystallise it into material form, as a wish fulfillment. Nearly all of us are conditioned from birth to a certain fixed way of interpreting our perceptions of the world. We say: "everybody sees things thus, so it must be real". But with a different orientation of perception, not to say different senses, entirely different views of reality result; one only has to think of how things must appear to different kinds of animals, and also children, before they become fully socialised and conditioned. There are also of course adults who can tune in to other levels of energy, or see energy. The capacity for relating to the surrounding world depends on the potential of each individual for such relating, or for digesting, as it were, the impressions received (second quadrant). Stupidity is a kind of protection against impressions with which we cannot deal.

The 4th quadrant: What is effected as a result. This exists apart from intention or calculation, is self sufficient and independent of the subject; it transcends the ego. It represents what becomes of our lives, the truth of the person's being, the ultimate significance, which he himself cannot see. Saturn (10th house) puts bounds on subjectivity, and in the 11th house there is a suspension of subjective values, giving a more universal significance. In the 12th house is transcendence, the suspension of reality, entry into the "manifest truth of the world" (which is distinguished from what is materially real). Today we are trapped in the first quadrant, in the Causa materialis. Truth on the other hand is perceived in the third quadrant, unites with personal experience and takes on visible form in the second quadrant, or becomes an event in the first quadrant.

Döbereiner's interpretation of a horoscope is governed in the first place by this understanding of the quadrants, and the distribution of the planets shows how each quadrant is emphasised, or relatively neglected or unrealised. The houses and signs considered in their mundane or natural order are the beginning, middle, and end of each quadrant. Each third house is how we relate in this phase to the outside. Thus in the first quadrant, the Causa materialis, the 3rd house is factual, knowledge of outward differentiation in the concrete, spatial and factual environment; this also includes protection and differentiation of the ego. In the third quadrant, on the other hand, of the Causa efficiens, the 9th house is the knowledge of sensed or felt associations, that is of symbols and correspondences, going beyond concrete appearances and mechanical causality, and relating to the whole of existence. This therefore is the house of Understanding, in the spiritual sense, opposed to the 3rd house of Intellect. In the second quadrant, of the Causa formalis, the corresponding house is the 6th, which is the stage of the orientation of one's life instinct and self realisation to the conditions in which one finds oneself and into which one has to fit. One could say the comparison and utilisation of those conditions, and this is achieved through Rationality. Thus intellect and rationality are stages of developing consciousness, while understanding has something else added beyond the interests of the individual ego, an ingredient of awareness. In the twelfth house opposite the sixth, we are released from rationality and the necessity to adapt to the material world, and can enter into another kind of consciousness, or pure awareness or also unconsciousness.






The Ascendant, Sun and M.C.

In teaching his method Döbereiner insists on starting by acquiring a thorough understanding of the main structural features and basic factors of a horoscope. After the quadrants, the primary factors are the Ascendant and its ruler(s), the Sun, and the M.C. and its ruler(s). The Ascendant represents the "endowment", the attributes or make up with which we come into this world, and which strive for fulfilment or externalisation, and because of this seek out the appropriate event. The sign on the Ascendant, the placement of its ruler (or rulers in the case of an intercepted sign in the 1st house), and also any planets in the 1st house, show the nature of this endowment.

The Sun shows the manner in which this endowment is realised, or the behaviour, which "binds these attributes to time and space". The attributes unite with the behaviour in events the behaviour can satisfy the attributes by supplying the necessary events, when the attributes become identified with the outward manifestation: "The realisation (Sun) is the attempt to bring the endowment (Asc) as fully as possible into consciousness or experience". The endowment is, so to say, in a slumbering state and is driven out by this manner of externalisation. He compares it to the prince in the fairy tales who has been cast under a spell, while the Sun is the task which has to be performed for deliverance, the only way the dharma can be achieved. The Ascendant is the thing as such, the Sun is the fulfilment. The M.C. and tenth house shows the significance of the individual's development, his "calling" or "dharma" (not career, for he makes his living in the sixth house). Here extra personal criteria are binding; this is what he means to other people, or what his achievement means in terms of the world at large, as an end result. The situation of the planet ruling the M.C. then throws light on this.

Döbereiner as a teacher will start from the horoscope showing the houses but no planets, and insist on assessing the basic lay out of the person or thing concerned from this alone. Then the ruler of the Ascendant is added, and the Sun, and from this much, and perhaps eventually with the ruler of the M.C., he will read the essential life situation, the needs and manner of manifestation of the subject of the chart, whether a person or event. Only after this will the other planets be added, to fill out or confirm what is already manifest, and he insists that to be confronted with all of these from the start is only confusing, until we understand first how to interpret the essentials. In this way we come to appreciate not just the particular characteristics or events, but also the content, structure and reasons for them.



The Nature of "Fate"

What you don't realise in your attributes (Anlage, lay out, capacities, or potential) and integrate into your reality remains open, like a free valency, and has to be filled from the outside as an event or as Fate, as soon as an equivalent situation arises. A person cannot be influenced in a way to which he is not predisposed in his horoscope, and if you try to circumvent his fate, or the natural outcome of his inner make up, you are not doing him a favour. Döbereiner's viewpoint is not that planetary placements either cause, foreshadow, or predetermine your fate, but instead show a content which chooses available situations or conditions to fulfill itself, like a meeting or matching of energies. In other words it is we ourselves who seek out, or unconsciously set up the conditions we need to work out or correspond to our own reality, or resolve our inner incompatibilities, if not constructively and consciously within ourselves, then in the form of outer circumstances and events, thus referring the problem to the first quadrant. It is an equalisation of energies in a situation of unequal pressures or gradients, a seeking of equilibrium. A readiness or need for a certain development is carried around with us like a suction, which attracts what is needed from our surroundings. This can only be prevented by being aware of this need beforehand and equalising it by living it consciously that is by fulfilling our potential otherwise it will be fulfilled or compensated from outside. A victim of an attack or an accident has to have a psychic readiness for such an event, and if he were not inwardly set up for it he would have an immunity, it could not happen to him. "I could nearly say that there can be found in the chart of a slandered person the necessity to be slandered", or, if he doesn't have a suitable Mars combination, "he could walk among a herd of tigers" (an old Chinese saying) and not be harmed. In other words one is oneself responsibe for what happens to one, and this should be obvious from the fact that it can be read in one's horoscope. Döbereiner says: "If astrology brings no other result than that this is understood, this already is enough". This also means that we should trust in our fate, because if we are not carrying around within us some serious unresolved conflict that we refuse to deal with, no harm can come to us from "accidents", etc., and it is useless consulting an ephemeris before we step out of the house.

This also applies of course to the kind of messes so many of us get into in our lives, and to sickness. "A neurosis is always a protection during psychic cleansing processes, a religious procedure . . . . Then only rituals help". We find here a very humane (Piscean) view of neuroses, compulsions, etc., through seeing and understanding the patterns and imbalances in which they originate, and how these may be expressed or offset in a conscious and positive manner. He is extremely critical of psycho analysts, who address symptoms, like the medical profession, and merely "exchange the patient's compensations for those of the analyst or of the public system of rationality". A patient may have some symptom removed or suppressed and four years later succumb to another, or die of the first treatment, or even be run over by a car, while the doctors have no way of seeing the connection between these things, having no suspicion that there can be such connections. They take things out of their context (constellations) and so the patient can never be free of them. When, with the suppression of astrology, you don't know the sense or meaning of a sickness, you had better leave it alone. The client on the other hand has to understand that he must take responsibility himself for the constellation, and it will resolve itself. "Therapies cannot replace fate". It goes without saying that a good deal of astrology comes under the same censure, and Döbereiner is rather sweeping in this respect; I think he would sweep aside most of what I have to say myself as "pseudo culture philosophical Gequatsche" (empty twaddle, gibberish, balderdash). He does not allow that the four elements play any valid role, and does not show any sign of relating to Jungian concepts, mythology, or even traditional astrology. He is one pointedly propounding his own quite original system, but certain aspects of this are valuable enough to rank him as one of the most important thinkers in the field, and an essential contributor to the significant development and proper understanding of astrology in the future.

You could say that he has attained to a very realistic view of human behaviour and its motivations, free from cliché laden valuations, and consequently also free from moral judgements of individuals, since the inner make up and needs, compulsions and illusions of each are astrologically transparent. Describing things as they really are can often sound cynical when up against more naïve and conventional opinions; but cynicism implies a negative moral judgement, without sympathy, whereas here we are talking about understanding and the need for inner truth, confronted with the workings of destiny. Each individual has to work out his own truth according to the pattern represented in his horoscope, otherwise it will come to him from outside and appear to be fated.

These are far more than just a set of astrological text books. It is a whole initiation into the real nature of ourselves and the world, and our relation to it. And the key to this is his understanding of the different levels of reality, material, psychic and archetypal, or belonging to the realm of Forms, and the processes through which they manifest. As an exponent and teacher of thinking in symbols he is in fact parallel with Jung and on exactly the same course, laying the foundations of an entirely different logic and paradigm of reality from that to which we are conditioned at present.

"The first quadrant is the manifestation in appearance, or in material form, of what is successively realised in psychic form in the second. This manifestation can only take place in accordance with the directions coming from the third, and then only in a present that provides a suitable form". This is the process of materialisation of psychic contents that Jung referred to as synchronicity, whereby that which is still in the unconscious, not fully realised as an independent form, as it were crystallises out in an outer object. It is a question of the form taking shape according to the content, which precedes it in our language, of Moon Saturn. Our present civilisation is orientated exclusively towards the conscious and material form (Saturn), and ignores the content (suppression of the feminine, the Moon). It is only aware of the symptoms; while in reality if the content changes, the symptoms clear up by themselves. "The real is always a likeness of the content". Man determines the content of the outer world. Learning astrology means finding a comprehensible relationship between inner contents and external events. It means understanding "how you encounter your own inner contents in different forms of external manifestation. You learn to understand manifestations and phenomena, learn to recognise chains of symbols that is, certain signs which always appear simultaneously . . . And what you're learning isn't just astrology, it's a certain way of thinking . . . you're learning to redefine the phenomenal world in terms of its contents. Astrology in that sense is like a language which reflects what is there, which is constructed on the basis of the underlying structure of phenomena":

"of the concordance of the souls with the ordered scheme of the Cosmos . . . to the extent that their fortunes, their life experiences, their choosing and refusing, are announced by the patterns of the stars and out of this concordance rises as it were one musical utterance: the music, the harmony, by which all is described, is best witness to this truth".

(Plotinus, The Enneads, IV 3, translated by Stephen MacKenna)

Note: The publications of Wolfgang Döbereiner are obtainable from: Verlag Döbereiner, Agnes Bernauer Strasse 129, 8000 München 21. These consist of: Textbook of Astrology in six volumes, of which Vols. 1 3 are available in English. Also in English are Patterns of Experience, the volume of Astrology/Homeopathy. There are also fairly numerous volumes of transcriptions of seminars listed, but in German, together with a very interesting work on paintings and the astrological characteristics of the painters that are discernible in them. Unfortunately this too is at present only to be had in German: Astrologisch definierbare Verhaltensweisen in der Malerei .



THE WAY OF APHRODITE

Perhaps one of the most interesting concepts arising from the diagram fig. 2 is that, while the normal life cycle, starting from birth or material incarnation, growth, and progressive experience of the material world, goes through the houses in an anti clockwise direction, ending in death, or de materialisation, proceeding from the Ascendant round the circle of the Zodiac in a clockwise direction represents the process of manifestation from the idea world, or world of pure Form, into the world of time, space and material differentiation. In this case we start from Pisces and the twelfth house, the signs and houses corresponding to the ideal form, starting from 0? Aries or the spring equinox. The stages of this process are represented by the signs in reverse order to that seen from the earth's orbit, and it is these stages of materialisation, or levels of reality, that Döbereiner sees expressed in the work of painters belonging to the different signs. This is to perceive art according to its psychic reality, and is something new in both astrology and art criticism. He calls this condensation from the immaterial to the material worlds "The Way of Aphrodite", referring to the myth of the castration of Uranos, the sky god, the principle of Aquarius and of dimensions outside time and polarity, by Chronos (Saturn), time and materiality. The genitals were scattered over the ocean and created a foam, from which Aphrodite was born. The oceans are the realm of Neptune, of Pisces and the unconscious, and from this fertilisation from the Intellectual Realm (Plotinus), or the higher world of archetypes, the goddess of love and fertility was born, or Aphrodite generatrix, to generate in matter and time the world of forms as we know it. This can also be related to the fourth symbol of the Apocalypse, the angel pouring from a jug the water of life (Aquarius).

In the Zodiac this process is symbolised as we pass through the signs in a clockwise progression. Pisces is the ?open water of the nameless, in the depths of which all forms fall into one another, as in the comparison with water, which is always changing and remains changeless.? In Aquarius the forms existing in a fluid condition in the realm of Neptune become baled out, as it were, to origins, ?on the way from the undetermined to determination.? From the water of the nameless, forms are thrown up on land. Still free, without weight of gravity or subjectivity, they become symbols and energy patterns. In Capricorn they will be born into Time, or Division as separate forms fitted into Time. In Capricorn we are still beyond the threshold of time, and so timeless and changeless, but from this out, with the step into time and consciousness, changeability and isolation begin. In Capricorn we see ?the prototype of this independently moving world?. In the transition from Capricorn to Sagittarius the form becomes subject to time.

In Sagittarius determination in space is still lacking, and the separate areas and objects have no clear central focal point or perspective. The further condensation into distinct forms of life is seen in Scorpio, and the balance and full orientation in space in Libra. This process itself is the subject of the picture The Triumph of Venus by François Boucher (Sun Libra, Asc. supposedly Aquarius), painted in 1740, where Venus herself is materialising from the ocean in repetetive forms not yet fully individualised. (One finds something similar in the work of Escher, in studies of the manifestation and repetition of patterns on different levels). The picture of Venus (and also many others) is reproduced in Döbereiner's book Astrologisch definierbare Verhaltensweisen in der Malerei , where he describes all of the above in relation to the Sun and Ascendant signs of different painters, and how these are manifested in their pictures and styles. He begins in Aries and goes through the Zodiac, discussing several pictures of each of several painters illustrating the characteristics of each sign, the whole making a fascinating study in both art and astrology, of a quite new and pregnant kind.

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