  |
 |
|
 |
||
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||
|
||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
THE TRIPLE CONJUNCTION OF JUPITOR, NEPTUNE AND CHIRON THE ARCHETYPES AND THE ORIGINS OF ASTROLOGY AN ARCHETYPAL VIEW OF THE HOUSES THE AGE OF AQUARIUS: WHAT’S NEW ABOUT THE NEW AGE? TIME, ASTROLOGY AND PREDICTION LADDERS TO HEAVEN: TRINES IN THE BIRTH CHART
I am going to claim in this talk that time has a qualitative as well as a quantitative dimension, and present astrology as the ancient art of determining and interpreting the quality of time. First my distinction between astronomy and astrology: Astronomy and astrology were one discipline in past cultures where intuition was valued equally with reason. Maths, as taught by Pythagoras, was about quality as well as quantity. Plato said to learn geometry was to learn about the gods and the ethics of the cosmos. And the principles of symmetry and equilibrium that appear in Nature on all levels of scale were morally meaningful to the Greeks. But quality which goes together with meaning has been stripped away from our science and maths. Left-brained reason is over valued in our culture and right-brained imagination is devalued. However this is now changing. A paradigm shift is occurring. For example, the new biology, views evolution as an emergent process in which the organism’s perception of quality plays a key role. And the images of deep space delivered by the Hubble space telescope are leading to a revision of the way we see our place in the universe. Those awe-inspiring pictures of distant galaxies seem to prove Aristotle right when he described the universe as ‘adorned’ with order (notice his use of a quality word – adorned). Order manifests in the natural world in the geometry of water crystals and flower petals. It determines the spiral shape based on the golden section structuring the nautilus’ shell as well as the great spiral galaxies. We find the same geometric patterns repeated on all levels of scale – an example of the very large being the hexagon that has appeared in the gas clouds surrounding Saturn’s north pole. Its straight lines and equal-lengthed are an example of random molecules self organising geometrically. And Alexander Lauterwasser has published some fascinating photos of the geometry that appears when water is oscillated at different rates – shapes emerging from randomness. As Aristotle said ‘Matter yearns for its own perfection’, and ‘yearns’ like ‘adorned’ is also a quality word, proving there was no split between perceptions of quality and quantity in the human mind in the 5th century BC.
From my understanding of the work of David Bohm, I have drawn this diagram of a model of reality that unites quantity and quality, reason and imagination, astronomy and astrology. When we’re awake we live in two realities – A, an outer world of other people and material objects, and B, an inner world of thoughts, emotions and mental images. When we’re asleep Level A disappears, and we wander about in our imaginings on Level B. A is measurable by our scientific parameters; B is not, as the subjective is not available to scientific study. Both A and B emerge from a common ground – C– which Bohm calls the ‘implicate order’. This is the subatomic level of the quantum flow in which patterns are contained in an ‘enfolded’ latent state. From here they ‘unfold’ and become ‘explicate’ as packets of particles that maintain their form over time. His concept of enfolded patterns reminds me of Plato’s Ideas – the forms of things dwelling in an ideal, transcendent realm from where they precondition all material manifestation. The above diagram presents a universe in which forms unfold out of a ground (Level C) to become explicate on levels B or A. There they sustain themselves for longer or shorter lengths of time before dying back into C. On B they become ideas and images: on A they become material objects. C feeds into A and B, B also feeds into A Wolfgang Pauli, another quantum physicist, saw the fluid way quantum wave patterns interpenetrate as similar to the way ideas associate and merge in the mind, which led him to conclude that the quantum level is more like mind than matter. So we need to distinguish here between different levels of mind. We could say B represents both our individual mind, and the collective human mind. Thinking in a Rupert Sheldrake way in terms of fields, we can see the collective human mind as a larger field containing the smaller fields of our personal minds within it. And then they are embedded in the all-encompassing field of the universal mind, which is level C, like Russian dolls within dolls. Pythagoras believed there is a universal mind present and active throughout the whole of creation in which our individual minds partake. So perhaps the universal mind, or mind of God, is what I have called Level C. My diagram can also explain the phenomenon of synchronicity upon which astrology rests. Jung defined synchronicity as: ‘the coincidence in time of two or more causally unrelated events which have the same or similar meaning’. One event can occur on level B – you think about your sister - the other event on level A –the telephone rings at that moment and it’s her. Or two causally unconnected events that share a wider meaning can both occur on Level A –for example two members of your family have the same birthday – a phenomenon that occurs in many more families than non-astrologers realise! Synchronicity happens when a pattern emerges from Level C in two places at once. The occurrence of the common birthday, for example, is a sign that an astrological family pattern is in the process of unfolding. As an astrologer I encounter synchronicity on a daily basis when I interpret birth charts. I rely in my work on the synchronicity between the patterns made by the sun, moon and planets at the time of birth (Level A because material fact), and the psychological patterns of the person born at that moment (Level B). As above so below! And it functions because, as Jung wrote, “Our psyche is set up in accord with the structure of the universe and what happens in the macrocosm likewise happens in the most subjective reaches of the psyche.” which is what astrologers have always known! So astrologers use level A, which is visible, to derive information about level B, which is invisible, and this works because Level A (outer life) and Level B (inner life) correspond. The mystic Jakob Boehme knew this too when he wrote, ‘If you want to know yourself, look at the world, and if you want to know the world, look within.’ Synchronicity is also at work between planetary movements and the unfolding of events on the world stage. Richard Tarnas in his book Cosmos and Psyche traces synchronicities between the cycles of the outer planets and historical events over many centuries. I feel he successfully proves that what happens in human affairs is not random but an expression of archetypal patterns unfolding. For example Saturn and Pluto are now at a stage in their current cycle where they relate to each other at an angle of 90 degrees, known in astrology as a square. This is a measurable astronomical fact on level A, and astrologers, using their level B qualitative knowledge, interpret this aspect as a tense, discordant stage in the cycle of two planets’ relating.
Astrology also puts events into larger frameworks of meaning by making us aware of diachronic time patterning. Diachronic means we can look back to the time when Saturn and Pluto last formed a tense aspect and see what was happening then and what is happening now as a continuous narrative. It was their opposition whose first exactitude occurred in 2001 just weeks before 9/11. So it’s no coincidence that the perpetrators of the atrocity are now being brought to trial, which will bring up the pain and horror into public awareness again, contributing to the sombre mood of the present Saturn-Pluto aspect. So how do astrologers know what meaning to give to planetary combinations? Well, according to my approach, it’s not about the planets themselves - Pluto’s not even a planet now - but about the archetypes behind them. To refer back to my diagram, the planets are on Level A and the archetypes on Level C. So the planets are the material representatives of the immaterial cosmic archetypes. Down the ages they’ve been personified and worshipped as gods and goddesses, and they still bear the names of Roman divinities. Gods and goddesses are on Level B. So what are archetypes exactly? Jung had a lot to say about them. He saw them as the foundational principles of order in the cosmos, dwelling in the collective unconscious – which is his name for Level C – from where they precondition our perceptions, and affect our thoughts, feelings and actions. In his younger years Jung saw them as projections of the human mind, but later he claimed they were living presences out there in the cosmos, with an independent reality. Astrologers work with twelve archetypes that carry the names of the signs of the zodiac and include the Jungian archetypes within them. We experience them as different qualities of time which we register on level B – the personal and collective human psyche. Each archetype has a field of probable expression. Here is a diagram of the fields of Saturn and Pluto, which are represented as overlapping because of the present square between them.
A planet’s field of meaning can be understood as a cluster of ideas, associations and emotional patterns on Level B which then can emerge – but must not – as events on Level A. The present connection between the two fields explains why we’ve experienced an escalation of violence this autumn – massacres in the US, increased suicide bombings in the Middle East, daily army funerals in Wootton Bassett. Also the news at home has been full of murders, rapes and cases of cruel abuse. It’s because when Saturn and Pluto merge the heat is turned up, and emotions that have been repressed can erupt. People act out of desperation as it’s also about being in a dire situation where there seems no way out. Radical change is needed, but human nature being what it is the suffering must reach a critical point before that change can happen. However, criminals are also being brought to justice. A Nazi war criminal, pursued for thirty years, is now going on trial, the south London rapist has finally been arrested and is in custody. It’s because the waning Saturn-Pluto square is a time when old crimes are exposed and retribution is demanded. The twelve archetypal energies that astrologers work with manifest not only in human life but throughout the whole of creation. All realms of nature have Level C - the universal psyche - as their common ground. So we can see a thing or phenomenon as having a particular quality because it participates in a certain archetype. This is the received wisdom behind the medieval chain of being and its system of correspondences. For example a sunflower in the realm of plants and a lion in the realm of animals both participate in the Leo archetype of which the sun is the planetary representative. So it’s no coincidence that both the sunflower and the lion are golden like the sun, and have a ruffle of petals and a mane respectively like the sun’s rays. They have an affinity (in the medieval sense of the word) with the sun and its metal, gold. Therefore the system of sympathies and affinities between the planets, metals and plants, which was used in ancient medicine and alchemy, can be explained by their archetype participation. The archetypes are not static but in flux. However there is an order to their dance. They become explicate from within the stream of consciousness of the universal mind with a timing that is patterned geometrically. The ancients were aware of this; Plato used the expression ‘the choreography of the gods’ implying that meaning is not found in the positions of the stars and planets themselves, but in their patterns over time that is like a grand dance. Plotinus described how ‘the figures of the heavenly circuit’ move in harmony, ‘All serve the dance and help make it more perfect.’ And this patterning gives coherence to the system as a whole in the sense of a long-range order.
To take an example of geometric patterning creating time quality: there are four peaks in the cycles of the sun and moon, each having a different quality and field of interpretation. These peaks were celebrated in ancient cultures with ceremonies and rituals. People then were more sensitive to quality than we are today, and valued those moments when cosmic energy becomes available for empowerment and transformation. New moon has the quality of seed time – it’s when we should begin new projects which will then culminate two weeks later at full moon which is the time of fulfilment. The waning moon is the time when we harvest what we have sown and face the consequences of our earlier decisions. So if we want to grow something (a business venture, for example) we should time this to the waxing moon, and if we want to diminish something (aches and pains for example) we should time their treatment to the waning moon. Alignments to the four directions are found in ancient earthworks and monuments where the squared circle appears as a basic pattern. The squared circle is also a foundational element in mandalas, which use geometry for the spiritual purpose of ordering consciousness. On its qualitative level the square stands for the cross of earthly life creating the bounds of time and space within the circle of eternity. The diagram above of the cycle of Saturn to Pluto depicts a cross being formed over a period of thirty-eight years by the series of conjunction, square, opposition, square and conjunction within the circle of the zodiac. So we can understand why, when two planets make a square aspect to each other, as they do at present, this is a loaded period of time, as they are temporarily positioned on the points where the corners of the square touch the circle.
Besides challenging squares, harmonious triangles also form in the sky, for example through the cycle of Jupiter to Saturn. Over a period of sixty years their conjunctions map out a great triangle, which is a harmonious geometric figure standing for progress and spiritual growth. If we include their three oppositions during the same period, then a giant hexagram is formed as in the diagram above. The hexagram also appears in the shri yantra mandala, which depicts upward pointing yang triangles in perfect equlibrium with downward pointing yin triangles - an image of the unio mystica, or the divine union of male and female energy. If we could freeze time we would get the complex image of sky geometry in the next diagram, which shows how the twelve archetypes relate to each other geometrically within the zodiac. These relationships are absolute and eternal.
But in time we experience each geometrical figure forming and dissolving again. The quality of any moment is determined by the dominant archetypal combination. Thus we can see the present moment as coloured by the qualities of the merging Capricorn and Scorpio archetypes – Saturn and Pluto being in a strong aspect to each other (Saturn is the representative or carrier of the Capricorn archetype, and Pluto of Scorpio). Also Pluto is presently in Saturn’s sign, Capricorn. To conclude, to diagnose the quality of the times astrologers use both their knowledge of the planetary cycles (level A - astronomical knowledge) and their knowledge of the fields of significance of the archetypes (level B- intuitive, imaginative knowledge). Having taught astrology for nearly 30 years, I see it as basic for students to become acquainted in depth with the qualities and subject matter of the twelve archetypal fields. And it was in order to teach this in an entertaining way that I wrote my book ‘Virtual Lives: the Animated Zodiac’ which brings the signs of the zodiac to life as twelve characters who narrate their life stories from birth to death. The events in their lives and the issues they have to confront, as well as their personality patterns, are all typical of the archetypes they represent. The student of astrology also needs knowledge of the qualities of the twelve phases of time cycles in order to determine what will emerge when in his life. My second book ‘Hercules Labours: the Evolutionary Path round the Zodiac’ was written to demonstrate the archetypal patterns emerging during a time cycle – in this case the 29-year cycle of Saturn. I use the myths of Hercules’ labours to describe the qualities of the twelve time phases, translating them into the kinds of challenges we meet in modern life. Conclusions: Phoebe Wyss November 2009 THE TRIPLE CONJUNCTION OF JUPITOR, NEPTUNE AND CHIRON With the triple conjunction of Jupiter, Neptune and Chiron at present squaring my natal moon in Taurus, I’ve had a strong personal interest in investigating its significance. A breakthrough came when I attended the Astrology and Healing seminar at the Astrological Lodge of London in June, where Melanie Reinhart was speaking. She had checked the frequency of this conjunction over the last thousand years, and to her surprise discovered it had only happened three times – 1115 in Virgo, 1881 in Taurus and 1945 in Libra - and concluded that the extreme elliptical orbit of Chiron must be the explanation. I was then more keen than ever to unravel its themes, its rarity making it a very special event. So I went to bed mulling over what the dates 1115, 1881 and 1945 had in common, and in my sleep the answer came – the re-emergence of ancient wisdom! In 1099 the Norman knight Hugh de Payens, together with eight other knights who had just returned from the first crusade, requested the right to create a base at the Temple in Jerusalem to protect Christian pilgrims. This was granted by the Pope, however the knights had a hidden agenda. They were interested in the treasure rumoured to lie buried beneath the Temple, and, as soon as they’d moved in, began excavating beneath their quarters. This was around the year 1115. And it seems they were successful. What they found was not gold and jewels but something far more precious – a cache of ancient scrolls that scholars today presume was buried there shortly before the temple was destroyed by the Romans in AD 66. The manuscripts included a number of apocryphal gospels not contained in the New Testament deriving from the Essenes, as well as scrolls containing ancient mathematical and geometrical knowledge, sea maps of the Phoenicians, and works by Plato and Hermes Trismegistus. The scrolls were taken to a priest named Lambert of St Omer to be translated. We know this happened before 1120 because a drawing survives, dating from that year, showing information contained in the Heavenly Jerusalem Scroll that was couched in symbols later to be used by the Freemasons. Robert Lomas and Christopher Knight, who investigated the links between the Templars and Freemasonry, have no doubt that this scroll was found under the temple in Jerusalem.[i] Another copy of the Heavenly Jerusalem manuscript was discovered eight hundred years later in that famous cave beside the Dead Sea. Hugh de Payens and his knights soon realised they were in possession of highly inflammable material that threatened the theological edifice of the Church. Because the scrolls contained Gnostic teachings that contradicted the central tenet of Christianity - that Jesus died on the cross to save our souls. They even suggested he was not a historical figure at all, but a mythical, sacrificial god-man like Osiris or Mithras, or the fertility gods of the nature religions.[ii] The scrolls were political dynamite! The Dead Sea scrolls were discovered in 1945 in a cave near the Essene town of Qumran on the Dead Sea. (In some places April 1947 is given for their discovery, but this is when they fell into the hands of the authorities.) Being now familiar with some of the contents of these manuscripts, we can guess the contents of that first cache discovered by the Templars. Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy believe that the Essenes, a Jewish Gnostic sect, active between 134 BCE and the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE, hid the manuscripts at both sites. Their book Jesus and the Goddess [iii] makes a case for Christianity deriving from Gnostic beliefs and practices as late as the third century, whereas the Church has taught that Gnosticism was an aberrant, heretical branch of early Christianity. So the triple conjunction of 1115 could have coincided with the first re-emergence of what is known as ‘the perennial philosophy’, and the conjunction of 1945 with a second re-emergence following the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls. What the knights found beneath the temple profoundly changed their lives, and produced in many a spiritual awakening. As a result they formed the Templar brotherhood in 1119. Many started living in monastic communities with strict ascetic rules, reminiscent of the ancient Pythagorean communities, and they founded churches and hospitals. The Hospitallers were a branch of their order, the first Hospitaller infirmary having been established near the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem to care for sick and injured pilgrims. (Chiron, we remember, is part of the equation.) And the brotherhood also became very rich very suddenly, suggesting that they may have used their secret knowledge to blackmail the Pope and the Church. However, although at first they prospered, they were playing a dangerous game. Their rituals diverged from official Christian forms of worship, and their beliefs were blasphemous. For example they practised rituals involving the death and resurrection of initiates, and are said to have worshipped the Earth Goddess and Nature’s fertility gods, as in the ancient mystery schools of Egypt and Greece. So did they manage to keep their heresies secret, or were these goings-on tolerated by the Church out of a fear that the Templars would divulge the secrets of the scrolls? By the end of the 13th century, however, their knowledge had became powerless to protect them, and Philip of France banded together with Pope Clement V to wipe them them. The massacre occurred in 1305. Their properties were confiscated and their Grand Master, Jaques Moloy, was crucified. But the perennial wisdom of the Gnostics lived on to re-emerge in the 17th century, and inspire the formation of the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross and the Freemasons - both groups appropriated Templar symbols. In 1615, under a Jupiter-Neptune conjunction in Virgo, trine Chiron in Capricorn, a pamphlet was published calling on people to join the Rosicrucians., which was followed by The Chemical Wedding’ – a 17th century bestseller. A Rosicrucian fever broke out all over Europe, and hundreds joined the movement (the Jupiter-Neptune conjunction signifies religious euphoria). Like the Templars 500 years earlier, many experienced spiritual conversion and renewal. The Freemason brotherhood began to gain popularity later in the 1640’s, and they also required their initiates to experience rituals of death and rebirth in Gnostic fashion. And so we come to the triple conjunction of 1881, which again brought an expansion of spiritual experience. Knowledge of Hinduism and Buddhism, and mystical Eastern philosophy, was being publicised in the West by the theosophists. The date of the triple conjunction, 1881, lies between the publication of Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled in 1877, and her The Secret Doctrine in 1888, in which she describes an ancient wisdom tradition underlying all the world religions – in other words Gnosticism. Incidentally in 1881 the first Vatican archives were opened to scholars for the first time. The triple conjunction of 1945, as we have seen, manifested in the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls, which was as threatening to the Vatican as the Templar’s earlier find. In The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception [iv], Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh claim the Vatican held back 75% of the manuscripts from the cache for over forty years, and called this ‘the academic scandal par excellence of the twentieth century’ . It also manifested in the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library – a third cache of ancient writings, which was uncovered in a cave in Lower Egypt. The period around 1945 also coincided with C.G. Jung’s promotion of Gnosticism through his publications on alchemy. He had been interested in the Gnostics since 1916, when he channelled his Seven Sermons to the Dead[v]. from the 2nd century Gnostic Basilides – or so he claims. It was his prediction that the feminine form of Gnostic wisdom, called Sophia, would re-enter modern Western culture by way of depth-psychology. In 1944, he published his major work Psychology and Alchemy[vi] in which he describes the transmutational process by which the impure soul (lead) becomes the perfected soul (gold), and presents it as a metaphor for individuation. Following in the Gnostic tradition, Jung saw spirituality as a process of inner transformation - a journey to meet the Self and at the same time to meet the Divine. As in Buddhism the goal of spiritual practices was therefore not to be ‘saved’ and to go to heaven, but to become a Buddha or Christ. So what can we say about the 2009 triple conjunction? The powerful teachings of conventional Christianity, that have moulded the spiritual life of the West for 2000 years, seem to be losing their hold on the collective psyche. Churches are being sold off, and congregations are falling in Britain and Western Europe at a rate unimaginable in 1945. And as the narrow, intolerant form of Christianity declines, its Gnostic roots are revealed, and we see the perennial wisdom re-emerging. It informs the teaching of the Indian mystic Osho (1931-1989) which has brought experiences of spiritual transformation to thousands of people in countries all over the world.[vii] And it is found in the teaching of Eckart Tolle, which is very close to that of Osho. He was invited onto Oprah Winfrey’s TV show in 2008, and in a series of broadcasts explained his teachings, and gave viewers a taste of meditation. Several million people all over the world tuned into this series via skype. In the last ten years there has been a spate of popular books and TV programmes that challenge conventional Christianity. For example Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code,[viii] which contains the heretical view that Jesus did not die on the cross but fled to France with his bride Mary Magdalene, sold 60.5 million copies. It has provoked wide interest in the feminine side of Christianity - the Gnostic Sophia - as well as in Templar churches such as Rosslyn, and the mystical dimension of geometry as evidenced in the pentagram layout of the landscape around Rennes-le-Chateau. Most of the books I reference at the end of this article have been written since 1990 for a mass readership. They are sold at stations and on airport book stalls, and have created a fascination in the wider population for heretical religious ideas and theories about ancient mysteries. So the collective spiritual revisioning is happening again in 2009. However, there is a darker side to the conjunction of Jupiter, Neptune and Chiron, as revelation and awakening seems to go hand in hand with wide-scale human suffering. The Peasant’s Crusade, that preceded the 1115 conjunction, was triggered by an epidemic of religious fervour that led 80,000 people to leave their homes mostly ill prepared, to march to the Holy Land. Most of them were massacred by the Turks, or died by the roadside of starvation and exposure. And the spiritual awakening of the Templars led to their cruel extermination. It was in 1881, after most of the native American population had been massacred, that Chief Sitting Bull finally surrendered to the American forces. At the same time the First Boer War was raging in South Africa. And then the year 1945 was a time of immense suffering in Europe. The second world war came to an end with the destruction of all the major German cities, leaving huge refugee problems that continued long after the cessation of hostilities. And in 1945 the Nazi concentration camps were opened up, and the world was presented with the first horrific images of the terrible suffering of their inmates. When we think of our present triple conjunction in connection with mass suffering, we note that it was preceded by 9:11 and the war in Iraq which has taken an enormous death toll. And at present there are huge refugee problems in Pakistan, and in Somalia where a human tragedy is unfolding. Hundreds are dying of starvation in makeshift refugee camps, and the supplies sent by relief organisations are being siphoned off and sold by unscrupulous traders. Thus mass suffering, which is Neptune subject matter, can be magnified by Jupiter to national disaster scale. However, when Chiron, the wounded healer, joins them in a triple conjunction, a well of compassion opens up. Chiron inspired the building of the Hospitaller infirmaries following the 1115 conjunction, and in 1881 the American Red Cross was founded to offer disaster relief to populations in urgent need of medical care and supplies. This was the forerunner of the British Red Cross, founded in 1905. In 1945 when Labour won the general election, Atlee was voted into power on the promise of the creation of a National Health Service, free to all. This was consequently established in 1948. However, in 2009 we are facing a major crisis in the National Health system, and a revisioning is urgently needed. So under the present triple conjunction we see a dramatic shift taking place in collective spiritual attitudes, and the re-emergence of ancient spiritual wisdom. This, however, is accompanied by the suffering caused by the threatened collapse of the world economy, and our loss of confidence in major institutions and in the integrity of those who govern us. What will the aftermath of the 2009 triple conjunction bring? These are momentous times indeed. Phoebe Wyss [i] Robert Lomas and Christopher Knight The Hiram Key 1996 THE ARCHETYPES AND THE ORIGINS OF ASTROLOGY Synopsis: This article makes a case for a collective awareness of the twelve archetypes, and of their qualities and meanings, preceding both the drawing up of the tropical zodiac, and the naming of the set of twelve constellations that lie along the ecliptic, thus suggesting an alternative view of the origins of astrology. We can take either a quantitative or a qualitative approach to the earth and sky. The former, left-brained and male, is analytical and proceeds via reason and measurement. The latter is right-brained, female and synthetic. It ascertains the quality of phenomena within their wider contexts of meaning through the use of imagination and intuition. Astronomy, which employs mathematics as a calculation tool, is an example of the quantitative approach, while astrology - the art of determining the quality of time - shows the qualitative. In their role as astronomers, the priests of the ancient cultures measured the cycles of the sun and moon and created calendars to organise daily life more efficiently. However, when they were wearing their astrologers’ hats, their task was a more momentous one. It was nothing less than striving to maintain on earth the divine order they saw in the sky. And this involved diagnosing the quality of the times, so that the appropriate rituals and religious ceremonies could be performed at the right moment to harmonise the human sphere with the celestial. The construction of the Cairo calendar (1), which consists of a listing of all the days of the Egyptian year, required both astronomical and astrological skills. Each day within it carries a three-part entry: first, the type of day, whether favourable or unfavourable, is noted. Secondly the appropriate rituals for the day are prescribed, and, thirdly, a mythological event is cited that encapsulates its quality. The Cairo calendar is thought to derive from the second millennium BCE. Perhaps our ability to distinguish time quality goes back to beyond the beginnings of the human race and is shared with the animals. But let’s begin in the Neolithic and Bronze Age periods when the moon was represented by different goddesses depending on her phase, showing that the different phases of her cycle were distinguished qualitatively. And the sun in Egypt had three different names depending on its position in the sky. ‘Lo! I am Khepera at dawn, Ra at high noon, and Tum at eventide,’ reads an inscription below a carving of the sun disk (2). Also in some cultures Venus bore different names depending on whether she was a morning or an evening star, which does not necessarily prove that people then were unaware that they referred to the same planet! Venus was personified as different goddesses at two discrete phases of her cycle, because, like the sun and moon, she was a ‘carrier’ of more than one archetype. In mythologies the world over we find the cardinal directions of north, south, east and west ruled by gods and goddesses whose different characters express the qualities associated in past cultures with these directions. The cardinal directions are also structurally decisive in the layout of ancient temples, which often have four gates in their outer walls, as well as in the ground plans of stone circles and ancient earthworks. The square bases of the Giza pyramids are perfectly aligned to them. Moreover alignments were created within the temples and circles to the solstice and equinox points - the four peaks of the sun’s annual cycle. These were celebrated with major religious festivals as times when the power of the divine cardinal archetypes could be tuned into. Our understanding of Aries, Libra, Cancer and Capricorn is derived from the collective experience of these high points in time and cardinal directions in space. And I suggest that they are cardinal in an absolute sense, irrespective of shifts in the solsticial and equinoctial points within the precessional cycle, being primarily associated with twelve divisions of the surrounding landscape and the horizon (3). The astronomers, who followed the sunrise points and measured the sun’s declination, also noted the mid-seasons when the sun’s progress along the horizon slows, which correspond to the south-east, south-west, north-west and north-east directions. These times of year were celebrated by the Celts with the festivals - Beltain, Lugnasadh, Samhain and Imbolc. And our understanding of the archetypes we call Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius is rooted in the collective experience of the cosmic energies that were tuned into during these festivals. Together the cardinal and the fixed points create two crosses or squares within the circle of the horizon (Fig. 1). Thus the squared circle, a basic form in sacred geometry, shines through in our experience of the qualities of these different periods of time.
When we add the four mutable sectors to these eight, the circle of twelve unchanging archetypes is complete. Fig. 2 shows a cross section of sky and earth, demonstrating how they relate to the local landscape and are extended above the circular horizon into the sky to become twelve celestial mansions.
To understand how the archetypes are related to the qualitative dimension of maths and geometry we must turn to Egypt and Greece. For the Pythagoreans, as for the Egyptians, geometry was considered sacred because it offered knowledge of the gods. In Egypt, where Pythagoras went to study maths, the archetypes were called the Neters, and worshipped as the mathematical principles governing the universe. The sacred tetractys (Fig 3) represents them as digits arranged in a pyramid form revealing their inter-relationships. I owe the following interpretation of the tetractys to John Anthony West, whose account is based on the research of the deceased Egyptologist Schwaller de Lubicz (4). It demonstrates how the Egyptians saw numbers as more than a system of quantities, intuiting their qualitative, mystical dimension. Thus the ten digits of the tetractys do not symbolise the Neters, they are the Neters, and therefore powerful, intelligent and purposeful cosmic forces in their own right.
1) Starting at the top, in the beginning is One, which is the Absolute, the All, represented by a point or circle. 2) Then One becomes Two, which is the primordial duality separating heaven and earth, represented in geometry by a line. 3) Then Two becomes Three, which adds a third transcendent point uniting the Two, represented by a triangle. Three stands for the passage of time with its cardinal, fixed and mutable phases. 4) Then Three becomes Four when matter is created. Four stands for material manifestation, the cross of earthly life, and is expressed in the four elements. Together the digits add up to ten, which then reduces back to one (1 + 0= 1). Within the pyramid the numbers also relate to each other through addition and multiplication. Thus 3 x 4 =12, which is the total number of the archetypes ruling earthly life, and twelve is also the number behind all the phenomena that make up reality. Also 3 + 4 = 7, representing the union of spirit and matter. Seven stands for progression within time. Just as there are seven notes in the harmonic scale so all phenomena develop in seven stages. The seven planets ruling the seven spheres also represent seven steps back to the One. So the twelve astrological archetypes derive from the four Neters forming the base line of the tetractys, which are the only Neters to manifest in substance. They correspond to the fixed archetypes we call Leo (fire) Aquarius (air) Scorpio (water) and Taurus (earth), which are known as the four corners of the material world. Their animal symbols are amalgamated in the mythological image of the winged sphinx that inspired Ezekiel’s vision of ‘the four living creatures’. “They four had the face of a man, and the face of a lion, on the right side: and they four had the face of an ox on the left side; they four also had the face of an eagle.” (5). (The eagle is an alternative animal symbol for the Scorpio archetype.) We should note that this passage derives from the period of the Jewish exile in Babylon, which predates by a century the time when historians claim the zodiac was created. When the four Neters on the base line of the tetractys are multiplied by the three Neters of the line above, representing the cardinal, fixed and mutable modes, twelve qualitatively differentiated archetypes result. These we refer to as the astrological archetypes. Twelve is the number of the sides of a dodecahedron – the twelve-sided solid, said by Plato to be the ultimate shape of the universe (and some of today’s scientists agree with him!). When flattened into two-dimensions, the dodecahedron becomes the circle divided into twelve equal parts familiar to astrologers (Fig 4). “The wheel of time formed with twelve spokes spins in the heavens maintaining order,” to quote the Rigveda (6). I see the circle divided into twelve equal parts as one of the structure-giving geometric forms eternally present in the universal mind.
In my previous article in The Astrological Journal (7), I described the absolute geometric relationships between the twelve archetypes that govern the different sections of the wheel, which are the alpha and omega states of the multitude of inter-relationships coming and going within time cycles. I also claimed that in any circle, whether a stone circle, a fairy ring, the ecliptic, or the circle of constellations behind it, the twelve archetypal energies align in the same order and with the same internal geometry. This archetypal geometry is responsible for the qualitative differences between the twelve sections of a circle manifesting in space, and the twelve phases of any time cycle. The tetractys demonstrates how One becomes Twelve, which is expressed in the myth of the divine child killed and eaten by twelve Titans. Afterwards, as we are told, Zeus blasted the Titans and created mankind from their ashes, implying that the twelve archetypes are scattered in all of us. This idea is also echoed in the myths of Osiris and Dionysius who were dismembered, and their parts were dispersed throughout the universe. Therefore the twelve archetypes are present in everything that exists, a truth that lies behind the system of correspondences known as the Great Chain of Being. Medicine in ancient Egypt, as in the European Middle Ages, was based on the correspondences between the organs of the body and the archetypes represented by the planets. And alchemy rested on the correspondences between the seven metals and the planets. This lost vision of an analogous universe can explain the passage in Exodus where Moses is instructed to make a breastplate set with twelve gemstones. The majority of the stones the Bible mentions are still listed today under their zodiac signs in popular astrology books. Moses, it should be noted, lived in the twelfth century BCE. That was eight hundred years before historians say the zodiac was invented (8). And then there is the story of Joshua who, after leading the Israelites across the river Jordan, was ordered by God to build a circle of twelve stones, one for each of the twelve tribes of Israel at a place called Gilgal (the name means wheel or circle) (9). In cultures the world over the number of the astrological archetypes has always been twelve, although the animal symbols used to represent them vary. They have had different carriers over the ages. For example, the fixed archetypes that we call Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius were once carried by the four stars Aldebaran, Regulus, Antares and Formalhaut (today assigned to Pisces) - which form a cross in the sky and were called ‘the four supports of heaven’. That may have been before the constellations they belong to were delineated and named. John Anthony West, drawing on the research of Schwaller de Lubicz, shows that the art and architecture of the Egyptians expressed the archetypes from pre-dynastic times onwards. In contradiction to orthodox opinion, he proves they had knowledge of the precession, and consciously employed symbols of duality during the age of Gemini, of bulls and cows during the age of Taurus and of rams during the age of Aries. He proves how they went to the lengths of dismantling and rebuilding their temples and monuments every two thousand years so that their architecture and symbolic art would accord with the new archetype coming in (10). I suggest that, when the age of Aries began around 2000 BCE, the Aries archetype, whose qualities the Egyptians were already familiar with, became identified with the small triangle of stars we know as the constellation of Aries the ram, then the heliacal rising stars. My thesis - that the twelve astrological archetypes were recognised and qualitatively distinguished from each other from very ancient times - requires us to adjust our ideas concerning the history of astrology. Our minds are steeped in four hundred years of scientific materialism, and stamped with the Darwinian concept of evolution. This influences the language in which our history books are written, and has resulted in the history of astrology becoming an account of a development from primitive beginnings to the state-of-the-art astrology we believe we have today. However it is primarily the left-brained side of the work, expressing in the invention of techniques and new methods of calculation, that has become more sophisticated, rather than astrology itself. I believe the art of the interpretation of the quality of time, deriving from an in-depth understanding of the twelve archetypes, was more advanced in ancient civilisations. So when the tropical zodiac was drawn up in the 5th century BCE - an astronomical work that enabled the tabulation of planets and stars according to degrees of the ecliptic - the twelve archetypes and their qualities were already part of Babylonian culture. Nick Campion in The Dawn of Astrology writes, “Marduk’s creation of the constellations and 12 months in the Enuma Elish points to an Old Babylonian recognition that twelveness is important for space and time” (11). The fifth century BCE astronomers created the signs by measuring the ecliptic and dividing it into twelve equal sections, which were then given the names of the archetypes, because time was already seen as patterned into twelve qualitatively different phases. The circle of the tropical zodiac thus became a carrier for the archetypes. I also suggest it was around that time that the full set of twelve constellations lying along the ecliptic were finally delineated and named, although a number of them (Leo, Taurus and Scorpio, for example) had been long associated with their respective animals and used as carriers of their archetypes. However it so happened that that phase in the precessional cycle was reached in the middle of the first millennium BCE when the sections of the ecliptic and the twelve constellations behind them coincided. Thus it was natural for those living then to see the sections of the ecliptic and the constellations as one and the same thing, which is why they share the same names. So perhaps the constellations were named after the signs instead of vice versa. They were certainly named after the archetypes. Robert Powell in his book The History of the Zodiac makes a case for the sidereal zodiac being earlier than the tropical and therefore being the true zodiac. I argue, however, that both the tropical and the sidereal zodiacs were drawn up at roughly the same time. The earliest surviving representation of a zodiac is on a tablet dated to 475 BCE. And as I see it the priests who created them had their astronomers’ rather than their astrologers’ hats on. I feel it is particularly important in these times, when our civilisation is approaching a crisis point during a mutable phase of a precessional cycle, to become aware once more of the twelve eternal archetypes that govern the cycles of time and invisibly structure our everyday lives (13). The Egyptians’ awareness of them enabled their civilisation to endure through cardinal, fixed and mutable phases for over four thousand years. Today the period of stability that enabled our culture to flourish is coming to an end. Our economic and ecological systems are veering out of control and chaos looms. We urgently need the calm acceptance that arises from the understanding that mutable phases always bring loss of coherence and the disintegration of systems, which is necessary within a cycle of renewal. And we need to revive the faith of our forefathers that the universe in which we are embedded is alive and intelligent and has a feeling soul. Also that whatever happens within it is ultimately an act of love. Divine love moves the stars, as Dante put it. ‘This one universe is all bound together in shared experience and is like one living creature, that which is far is really near….and nothing is so distant in space that it is not close enough to the nature of the one living thing.’ Plotinus (14) (1) A Bakir The Cairo Calendar (La Caire, 1966) Phoebe Wyss “From the summit of the sky the stars speak. They know everything but compel no one. The wheel of time, formed with twelve spokes spins in the heavens maintaining order. Built into this wheel are 360 pairs” Rigveda 1 The Anomaly of the Dendera Zodiac One day, while looking at a drawing of the Dendera zodiac, I noticed that the signs run clockwise round the wheel. Being used to signs running anticlockwise, I was puzzled. Had the nineteenth century artist who made the copy been careless? I checked his version against photos of the original zodiac, which confirmed that the signs indeed run clockwise, which means that the zodiac wheel is depicted as turning anticlockwise. My curiosity roused, I went on to investigate
a sample of graphic zodiac representations from different centuries and
different cultures and discovered the following: A list of the clockwise zodiacs found is given in the appendix at the end of this article. Presuming that the direction in which a zodiac is drawn corresponds to current astrological practice, and is not the error of an astrology-ignorant artisan or artist, these results have interesting implications. For example clockwise zodiacs are drawn facing north, with the east and the Ascendant on the right instead of on the left ((Fig. 1). This affects the geographical orientation of the houses and could also affect their signification. Secondly the greater antiquity of clockwise zodiacs implies that this was the consensus direction at a time in the past. If this is the case, it is likely that a switchover occurred in the late Hellenistic period when Greek horoscopes begin to be drawn anticlockwise. An exception to my claim that the clockwise zodiacs are older is the Glastonbury zodiac whose anticlockwise direction reflects the order of the signs as moving across the sky from the latitude of Glastonbury.
The Turning Wheel In the ancient quotation heading this article the zodiac is pictured as a spinning wheel. Now there is another image of a turning wheel, whose earliest extant representations date back to the same culture that produced the Rigveda– the swastika. The swastika has come to be associated with the Arians, the ancient inhabitants of north-eastern Europe who migrated eastwards through the Middle East to north India around 4000 BCE. However, older representations of swastikas have been found pre-dating the Arian migration, for example on boundary stones excavated from the sites of the Indus valley cities. Wikipedia dates the earliest Indus valley settlements of the first Mehrgarh period at around 5300 BCE and claims 3.500 - 1.500 BCE to be the period when this culture flowered2. Hinduism, the oldest world religion still practised today, could have roots that go back to the Indus Valley civilisation. It was therefore to Hinduism that I looked for the meaning of the swastika symbol, where I found that its equilateral cross symbolises the four directions of the sky - north, east, south and west - and is said to create order and stability.3 Astrologers will immediately associate it with the central cross in the horoscope, formed by the horizon and meridian. With the four arms of the swastika bent at right angles, pointing either right or left, the impression is created of a turning wheel, like the celestial “wheel of time” in the above quote which is also said to maintain order. Representations of both clockwise and anticlockwise pointing swastikas can be found throughout India, although clockwise is the most common. To Hindus the two directions stand for complementary forms of the creator god Brahma - right-facing representing the evolution of the universe and left-facing representing its devolution. The right-facing swastika also represents Surya, the sun god, which explains why the origins of its name have to do with good fortune and well-being, whereas the left-facing swastika has an evil reputation, presumably because it represents the destructive side of Brahma. The zodiac wheel is like the swastika in that it can be represented as turning in either direction. It revolves anticlockwise when north-facing, and clockwise when south-facing. If the zodiac wheel has come down to us from a civilisation living near the equator, where a low latitude minimised the difference between the two orientations, then the direction chosen in a graphic representation could have symbolic importance. I began to consider the associations with right and left that are deeply engrained in such ancient cultures as the Hindu, the Egyptian and the Pythagorean. East was associated with the right, with light, day, life and masculine qualities, while West was associated with the left, with darkness, night, death and the feminine. A similar signification of right and left crops up in the Mesopotamian divination technique using the liver of a sacrificed animal. The liver was divided into four quarters by a central cross. East, on the right, had a friendly and good signification, while West on the left was seen as hostile and associated with enemies. “What is right is mine, what is left is of the enemy” was the saying,4 which echoes the meanings given to the Ascendant in the east and Descendant in present-day western astrology. The seventh house on the western side of the chart is still the place of open enemies. In the liver map printed by Deborah Houlding in her book The Houses: Temples of the Sky.5 The parallel between the areas on the map and the astrological quadrants and houses is obvious. If the map given here is typical, then liver maps were orientated northwards, which also gave the correct east/right, west/left correspondences. These are lost when a map is orientated southwards as in present-day horoscopes. Houlding comments that the Mesopotamians believed different gods ruled over the compass directions, and accordingly different subject matter was associated with each of them. She also states that these people possessed a strongly developed system of heaven-earth correspondences, which was the basis of their astrology. The gods of earth and nature were associated with the south, and the infernal gods with the north, whereby the direction north-west was seen as the most inauspicious direction of all”6. Could this be the origin of our dark and sinister 8th house associations? Note that the eighth house that lies northwest in a north-facing horoscope moves to the southwest when we draw the chart facing south (Fig 3).
What are the Houses? Although there are no extant records of houses being graphically entered in horoscope diagrams before the late Hellenistic period, at least the angles must have been taken into account and used before then. Astrology evolved as a divinatory method based on reading signs in the sky, and interpreting the stars and planets in relation to horizon and meridian has always been integral to it. It is therefore highly likely that horoscope readings down the ages have been informed by an awareness of the directions and the different gods ruling them. I considered charts drawn in the south Indian manner in which only one wheel is depicted, represented in the form of a square – the wheel of the signs- and yet the houses are also implicitly present. In these charts there seems to be no orientation to the compass directions7 as the Ascendant appears randomly in any one of the boxes of the square. However, although the houses are not entered in the diagram, they are central to the interpretation of the chart, because signs are also houses. They are identical. Once the rising sign has been identified this functions as the first house. Then using whole-sign houses the other houses are counted round the square in a clockwise direction as the chart is turned to answer questions. I suggest that this type of map could have been prevalent in the ancient world with whole-sign houses being used. In fact the form may have originally spread from south India to Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece, where astrologers also adopted the clockwise zodiac that came with it. When a chart is drawn in this way, the impression is given that the houses revolve with the signs– in other words that they are part of the spinning wheel of time. This view even creeps into Houlding’s description of the houses in one place in her book, creating a contradiction in her argument. She explains succedent houses as follows: ‘(They are) so called because they are rising up and therefore succeeding to the positions of the angular houses by the diurnal revolution of the heavenly sphere.’8 However, in other places she seems to agree with Manilius, the Roman stoic who clearly saw the houses as static in the way we see them today. She quotes him as saying, ‘Mark the power of the temples: through them revolves the entire procession of the zodiac, which draws from them their laws and lends to them its own; the planets too, modify the various influences of the temples whenever they occupy realms not their own and sojourn in an alien place’. 9 So do the houses revolve or are they static? If horoscope diagrams were still being drawn in the late Hellenistic period in the style we have identified as south Indian, then both views could have existed side by side. The richness of our house symbolism has grown out of the custom in such ancient cultures such as the Hindu, the Egyptian and the Mesopotamian of associating different gods and myths with the different directions of the sky. In Egypt, for example, where the diurnal cycle of the sun was imagined as the voyage of the bark of the sun god, the different energies at the cardinal points of the sun’s journey were expressed through the sun’s changing names. As Khepri at dawn, Ra at noon and Atum at sunset, the sun died each evening and entered the underworld where, at the midnight nadir, he was transformed into an infant ready to be born as Khepri again at sunrise. The Egyptian association of areas of the sky with time periods was rooted in the custom of their astronomers of keeping two-hourly watches, from which the meaning of the word “horo-scope”– watcher of the hour– is said to derive. Therefore myths associated with the times of the day and year, as well as with the corresponding geographical directions, all contributed to what became the astrological symbolism of the houses. The Switch-Over During the centuries spanning the millennium around Christ’s birth a massive paradigm shift occurred as the rational Greek mind increasingly imposed its way of seeing the world on philosophy, science, religion and astrology. As a result the devotional and divinational astrology practised in the ancient cultures gave way to a more ‘scientific’ approach. Therefore it is likely that, as astrologers became more geo-physically and astronomically informed they switched over to erecting south-facing charts during this era. However, it is feasible that there was a transition period during which both chart orientations, northwards and southwards, were in use. In fact, as both clockwise and anticlockwise zodiacs can be found in the west up to the Renaissance, the switch-over period lasted a long time. In India today both orientations co-exist side by side - south Indian charts being drawn clockwise, and the zodiacs in north Indian charts, also square in form, being drawn anticlockwise. No doubt this can result in some confusion. Some examples of Hellenistic Greek horoscopes have come down to us, roughly drawn show the wheel of the zodiac with the cross of the horizon and meridian and the four quadrants indicated (Fig. 2). Unlike the south Indian charts these diagrams ground the zodiac in reference to the horizon, meridian and the areas of the sky seen from a particular locality, and we can presume that the meanings traditionally associated with these areas flowed into the chart interpretation. In these charts the zodiacs run anticlockwise, so they are drawn facing south. They therefore, reflect the new practice, although zodiacs found engraved on Greek coins of this period still runs clockwise. Is it possible that when astrologers, exhorted by Ptolemy, changed to south-facing, anticlockwise zodiacs they kept unchanged the signification of the quadrants and areas of the sky they were accustomed to use, and simply switched the zodiac wheel round to the opposite direction? Old habits die hard, and it is likely that most astrologers were not scientifically well versed enough to understand the implications of the change of direction for house signification. So they could have clung to the meanings assigned to the areas of the sky seen from their accustomed locality after they had switched to drawing their wheels anticlockwise. In other words they may have kept a northerly orientation for their houses after changing to a southerly orientation for their wheel of signs. In Fig. 3 we see the effect this would then have on the signification of the houses. The third and fourth and the ninth and tenth houses exchange places, which could lead to a confusion of their natural rulers and a possible merging of their meaning. This also applies to the following pairs of houses: 1st and 6th, 2nd and 5th, 3rd and 4th, 7th and 12th, 11th and 8th, 9th and 10th. To prove the feasibility of what I am suggesting, I would like to take the case of the “planetary joys” as described by Houlding10. The seven visible planets were traditionally linked to certain houses in which they were said to rejoice and therefore were strong. The allocation of the joys has been incorporated into Fig. 3 with the planets entered in their allocated houses in a south-facing chart. I am going on to suggest that this system of signification, which is behind some of the more puzzling meanings assigned to the houses in traditional astrology, could have been passed down uncritically from the time when charts were drawn north-facing. According to the ancient system of planetary joys the moon rejoices in the 3rd. This would have been the 4th in a north-facing chart, and would have corresponded to Cancer where the moon is dignified. Mars rejoices in the 6th, which would have been the 1st, corresponding to Aries, in a north-facing chart - the sign of his rulership. Mercury rejoices in the 1st, which was the 6th, corresponding to Virgo, where Mercury is indeed ruler. Venus rejoices in the 5th, which would have been the 2nd where Venus is strong as ruler of Taurus. Also, it should be pointed out that in Hindu astrology Venus rules in the south-east, which applies when the chart is orientated northwards and the 2nd house lies south-east. Thus the joys of the four planets entered below the horizon in Fig. 3 can be explained if a north-facing chart direction is taken. Above the horizon we find Saturn rejoicing in the 12th house. This would have been the 7th in a north-facing chart, which also makes more sense as Saturn is the ruler of the West in Hindu astrology (which is where I am suggesting Greek astrology originated) and is traditionally exalted in Libra– the sign corresponding to the 7th. The Sun rejoices in the 9th, which would have been the angular 10th house previously. Capricorn is not the sign of the Sun’s dignity, but when in the 10th he is in his full mid-day strength. That leaves only Jupiter, and I admit I can find no reason for Jupiter rejoicing in the 11th. So, although Deborah Houlding makes a strong case for the houses developing their meanings separately from the signs, if we accept the hypothesis that there was a switch-over from north-facing to south-facing charts in the Hellenistic period which confused house signification, a case can be made for a closer parallel between sign and house meanings than classical astrology admits. At least then the planetary joys would make sense to astrologers like myself who work with a close correspondence between the signs and the houses, a correspondence advocated with some authority by Howard Sasportas in his book The Twelve Houses11. It also explains some of the puzzling house rulerships that have been passed down from the ancients to present-day horary astrology. For example, older sources note an influence of the 1st house on intellect, the way the mind works and on speech - all Mercury matters that must have landed in the 1st at the time of the switch-over when Mercury was assigned to the 1st house in the system of planetary joys. When the chart is drawn facing north there is greater symmetry between signs and houses, because both the signs and the houses then progress in the same clockwise direction (Fig. 2). This means that in their cycles Sun, Moon and planets run through the same series of energies on both the levels - that of the signs and that of the houses, which strengthens the correspondences between them. This, I believe, lay behind the close identification of houses with signs in the practice of south Indian astrology. However, this correspondence is lost when the zodiac is oriented southwards. Then the houses progress in clockwise and the signs in anticlockwise order. The Relevance to the History of Astrology I believe these findings can be used as part of a proof that Greek and Mesopotamian astrology derived from India, which contradicts the accepted view in the west. We have been taught that it was the Babylonians who ‘invented’ astrology and taught it to the Greeks, who rationalised it and passed it on to the Egyptians and Indians, who until then had had no astrology of their own. The Indians themselves, however, have always disagreed with this view, maintaining that their astrology is more ancient than the Greek, and goes back to the great astrologer Parasara who lived more than 5000 years ago12. This would place him in the Vedic period, but it is possible that Indian astrology is even older than that. The earliest Neolithic settlements of the Indus Valley civilisation go back beyond 7000 BCE, and the sophisticated knowledge of geometry and alignments with the heavens possessed by this ancient culture is proved by the lay-out of their cities. The artefacts so far found prove that long-distance trade routes existed even at this earliest period, linking south India to north India and running westwards through Mesopotamia to Egypt. On their boundary stones animal figures are carved that we can link with the constellations, such as the scorpion, and the gods portrayed on their seals are represented with stars above their heads suggesting the practice of a devotional form of astronomy13. More knowledge about this will be obtained when their script has been deciphered. Seeing this civilisation as a focal point, I suggest that astrology passed to the Indus Valley from south India, and spread to Mesopotamia and Egypt along the ancient trade routes before the birth of the Mesopotamian and Greek civilisations. I am now going to mention a theory that supports this view but which may sound far-fetched. However, it could have a bearing on the question of why the oldest zodiacs are drawn north-facing. Using geomagnetic and carbon-dating evidence, John Hapgood in his book The Earth’s Shifting Crust proved that before the last polar shift the equator ran through Egypt. This means that the whole of the Indian subcontinent lay in the southern hemisphere14. In his view this last polar shift, which thank heavens was gradual and took place over several thousand years, was completed at the end of the Pleistocene age - the epoch before our own - by around 12.000 BCE. So, if there had been a civilisation living in India before that date, and if they had practised astrology, their southern latitude would have required them to erect their horoscopes north-facing. To conclude, I see the Dendera zodiac as a relic of the ancient way of drawing the zodiac running clockwise, which could have derived from south India where it is still drawn in this manner today. A search for the origins of astrology therefore leads us back along the ancient trade routes south-eastwards to the Indian subcontinent where a lost civilisation, living in what was then the southern hemisphere, could have preserved its wisdom for us throughout the last polar shift. There is no proof that this is the case, but there is also no proof that it is not. Phoebe Wyss
September 2006
1 Rigveda quoted by Linda
Johnsen ‘Twelve Ancient Houses’, The Mountain Astrologer April/May
2003
‘Everything breathes together’ (Plotinus) The paradigm shift, announced by the Uranus-Neptune conjunction of 1992-3, and emerging strongly during the present Uranus-Neptune mutual reception, is bringing in a new way of seeing reality. James Lovelock’s Gaia theory1 that presents the earth as an alive and conscious organism is gaining in popularity, and changing not only how we see the planet but how we see the universe. Also, systems science has revealed fractal correspondence on different levels of scale in both the material and non-material worlds, and the findings of quantum physics support a vision of existence as one interconnected whole, with all things arising from the common ground of the quantum flow. It has also discovered that particles, even when separate and at a distance from each other, remain connected and in communication. So we are beginning to entertain the notion of the universe as an alive and conscious organism. If this were the case, correspondences between the movements of stars and planets in the macrocosm and events in the human microcosm would be feasible, as these are then simply two levels on which the whole expresses an intention. This perspective brings a fresh understanding of the maxim ‘as above so below‘ on which astrology is based, and provides a context in which the phenomenon of synchronicity may be explained. C.G.Jung was the first to systematically investigate synchronicity, defining it as “a coincidence in time of two or more causally unrelated events, which have the same or a similar meaning”2. His work in this field, together with his exposition of the archetypes, has been seminal to the new paradigm. In his later writings Jung went beyond seeing archetypes as projections of the human psyche to describe them as formative ideas within the collective mind. He saw them as the foundational principles of order in the cosmos, similar to the Greek ‘divine archai’ underlying flux and diversity. As such they govern both our inner life and events in the outer world, thus linking these two levels. “Our psyche is set up in accord with the structure of the universe, and what happens in the macrocosm likewise happens in the most subjective reaches of the psyche.”3 In his groundbreaking book Cosmos and Psyche4, Richard Tarnas uses data from thirty years of research to demonstrate how the archetypes unfold across the centuries to mould human history. He speaks of an ‘ensouled’ universe, indicating that his experience of astrology has led him to see the universe not only as intelligent and rational, but also as having a soul in the sense of an inner life, imagination and creative purpose. The archetypes are presented in Cosmos and Psyche as nodal centres in the universal or collective psyche around which complexes of themes cluster as if held by a magnet. For example the archetype we call Aries is the centre of a constellation of ideas and behaviour patterns as shown in Fig. 1.
Twelve Rays of the Infinite In esoteric teaching the twelve archetypes represented by the zodiac are described as rays of the infinite, cosmic energies that manifest throughout the whole of creation. They express in astrology on three levels – the level of the signs, the level of the planets and the level of the houses. This third level of expression has not been generally recognised by astrologers, which this article seeks to rectify by proving that both houses and signs derive from the same sacred geometry, and are expressions of the same twelve archetypes. The archetypes are numinous, ineffable essences symbolised by the glyphs of the zodiac. Therefore, although they manifest in the signs, they are not the same thing as the 30-degree sections of the ecliptic of the tropical zodiac, or the twelve constellations of stars bearing the same names. Many astrologers, including Richard Tarnas, speak of the planets as archetypes, but a distinction should be made here. Just as Plato would distinguish between the Idea of beauty and its personification as Aphrodite, so we should distinguish between the twelve foundational essences and the planets that are their spokesmen or representatives. Several planets can carry different facets of the same archetype- for example Saturn and Uranus both represent facets of the archetype Aquarius - and planets can also incorporate facets of more than one archetype together. For example, Chiron who is believed to have come in to the middle reaches of the solar system from the outer Kuiper belt, crossing in turn the paths of Pluto, Neptune and Uranus, seems to have incorporated facets of the archetypes corresponding to these planets, namely Scorpio, Pisces and Aquarius. When the relationship between planets and archetypes is seen in this way, new planets can be included in the astrological system without the need to find new archetypes for them. The Sacred Geometry of the Zodiac Zodiacs appear in diverse cultures all over the world, and, although different animal symbols are used on different continents, their number is always twelve as this is the number of the primary archetypes. The circle of the zodiac presents the archetypes in their ideal, eternal relationship. Its geometry is absolute in the sense that it is the alpha and omega state of the patterns that form and dissolve in the flux of time. Studying its structure helps us understand how the archetypes relate to one another on the levels of the houses and the planets. The archetypes are polarised in the wheel in pairs of opposite principles, and the signs lying opposite each other, such as Cancer and Capricorn, are like the positive and negative poles of a magnet, linked by a strong current of energy flowing between them. Each polarised pair is at energetic loggerheads with the pair of archetypes lying at 90 degrees angle to it. Thus Cancer and Capricorn are linked in this strained way with Aries and Libra to form a cardinal square. Single archetypes are also connected energetically with those lying 120 degrees away from them round the circle to form equilateral triangles - for example Taurus is in a triangular relationship with Virgo and Capricorn, forming the earth trine. They also connect with those archetypes lying 60 degrees away on either side to form smaller isosceles triangles. For example Taurus, Cancer and Pisces are connected in this way. When the angles they make with each other are of 120 and 60 degrees, the energy along their lines of connection flows easily and harmoniously. Thus the circle of the zodiac contains three central squares, four central triangles and twelve smaller triangles round its periphery. We call the lines linking the sections of the zodiac to form these geometric figures ‘aspects’. Fig. 2, showing the geometry of the main aspects, is also an image of the absolute relationships of the archetypes within the universe. The geometric patterns it contains manifest in the geometry of natural forms such as flowers and crystals, and permeate the individual psyche as well as structuring the cycles of time.
To study astrology is to study geometry in motion. While the archetypes remain in the absolute order shown in the zodiac circle, a succession of varying relationships form between them and dissolve again through the motion of their carriers - the planets. These move round the wheel in cycles, linking the archetypes represented by the signs and houses in different ways and for different lengths of time, to produce new compounded fields of meaning. For example, as Mars carries the spark of the Aries archetype when he enters a house or sign the meanings and associations of Aries (as in Fig 1) meld with the associations of the archetypes governing that house or sign. For example, if Mars is in Cancer and in the sixth house, the fields of meaning of Aries, Cancer and Virgo merge to produce a combined significance. Where Earth meets Sky Time and space are brought together in the modern western method of drawing a horoscope with two wheels. If it is a birth chart, it is the time and place of the native’s birth that determines the alignment of the wheels. The figure of the squared circle is fundamental to the horoscope diagram. The circle stands for the eternal sky - the home of the gods - while the square stands for incarnation and earthly life. Producing the calculations needed to exactly square a circle was the mathematical challenge for ancient geometers, and seen as tantamount to discovering the sacred mystery of the relationship between earth and heaven. In Tibetan mandalas, used in meditation to induce exalted states of consciousness, the squared circle appears as a basic figure, and it also appears in the ground plans of ancient temples and Neolithic sacred sites such as Stonehenge.6
Fig. 3 shows the geometric pattern of squared circles and circled squares on which a horoscope map is based. The central cross with its perpendicular and horizontal arms corresponds to the angles and the cardinal directions. They cut the outer circle at the points where circle and outer square meet. These are mystical points that symbolise the sacred union of earth and heaven, which explains why we experience the cusps of the cardinal houses as power points. When ASC, MC, DES and IC are joined to form a square, it touches the inner circle at four more points lying on the diagonal cross. The lines of this cross, that run through the middle of the four fixed houses, end in the corners of the outer square that act like tent pegs, anchoring the fixed energy. These points, as we will see, are also power points. The modern western method of drawing a horoscope uses two wheels, which correspond to the outer and inner circles in Fig. 3. Each quadrant of each wheel is further divided into three sections. On the outer circle the twelve sections stands for twelve different areas of the sky. On the inner circle of the earth the sections represents different compass directions and times of day. The wheels mirror each other in that they are governed by same the twelve primary archetypes. Thus the inner wheel brings the energies of the outer wheel literally down to earth, to ground them in local space and time, and to provide a setting in which the circulating planets express. Horoscopes can also be drawn as squares, thus emphasising the earth, or as single circles that emphasise the sky, but the two-wheeled diagram is superior to both, as it mirrors our experience of a static earth with a circular horizon, surrounded by a sky that, like a wheel, turns once around us in twenty-four hours. Only when the inner wheel is drawn with equal houses measured from the ascendant, or using whole sign houses, do both wheels manifest the same archetypal geometry. When unequal house systems are used, the essential equality of the archetypes and their symmetry within the wheel is lost. Like the tropical zodiac, the equal house and whole sign house systems are based on the perfect and absolute archetypal geometry underlying all variations. However, this is not to claim that only these house systems are valid. Unequal houses are true representations of ephemeral geophysical and temporal conditions that come into being as stages within the diurnal cycle. And therefore charts that are erected, for example with Placidus houses, can be seen as ‘stills’ in the film of time, and as such they also have validity. Fig. 4 shows the natural zodiac - the ideal alignment of the wheels, which is only reached once in twenty-four hours, when 0-degrees Aries on the ecliptic aligns with the first degree of the first house. Then the archetypes represented on both wheels correspond and the absolute state is reached. At all other times there is disparity. But the changing alignment of the wheels allows a variety of archetypal combinations to form, providing the diversity that becomes the basis for different personality types. And just as the perfection of the natural zodiac is only reached at one moment in twenty-four hours, so once in 24,000 plus years perfection is attained in the precessional cycle. Then the constellations are aligned with the sections of the ecliptic whose names they bear, and the tropical and sidereal zodiacs coincide. These examples show that there is an absolute state that reflects the geometric patterns behind temporal phenomena in their perfection, and ephemeral versions that come and go, and these are our normal experience in the world of time.
The Gods of the North, South, East and West Our ancestors who built the pyramids and Stonehenge had a sense of the qualitative differences of the directions, inherited from their hunter-gatherer forbears, and their cultures were embedded in mythologies in which each direction had a different significance. In ancient China the southwest city gate was called the gate of man, the southeast the gate of earth, the northwest the gate of heaven, and the northeast the gate of ghosts and the ancestors. These quarter-directions are associated symbolically with the sunrise and sunset positions of the sun at the winter and summer solstices. In contrast, the west where the sun sets is associated in many cultures with death. In Thebes the necropolis together with the Valley of the Kings is situated on the west bank of the Nile. In Hindu mythology the west was ruled by Varuna, the god of water, who would seize wrongdoers and pluck them from the world of the living into his death-kingdom – a possible personification of the Scorpio archetype. In the wheel of the houses this archetype rules the eighth house, which lies to the northwest when a horoscope is drawn facing north instead of south - which has historical feasibility7. When the horoscope is erected facing north, the northeast coincides with the eleventh house, governed by the Aquarius archetype and traditionally the house of the ‘good spirits’, which could be interpreted as friendly ancestors. The northeast orientation of the main entrance to the Stonehenge circle has been seen as proving that feasts of the dead involving ancestor worship were celebrated there. But the north was viewed by the Chinese as a source of unfavourable influences, and in many countries north-south routes are seen as ghost paths. In the Middle Ages the north doors of Christian churches were bricked up to prevent evil spirits from entering. These examples show how the archetypes have been personified as the gods of the different directions, and have influenced the meanings ascribed to the directions in different cultures. It is also possible that these meanings have passed down into the signification of the astrological houses. Power Points in Time In ancient Egyptian mythology, sky and earth were represented as the lovers Nut and Geb, who had been torn apart and were seeking to reunite. The realm of Nut is the sky, represented by the outer wheel of the horoscope, and that of Geb is the earth, represented by the inner wheel. Where heaven and earth meet (the intersection points of the squared circle that correspond to the solstices and equinoxes) Nut and Geb symbolically copulate, and there is an energy exchange between earth and sky. In ancient cultures these points in the year were known as seasons of efficacy and marked with festivals, so that the whole community could benefit from them. In its early history, the Delphic oracle was believed to be active only once a year, when streams of magnetic current flowed accompanied by manifestations of spirit. Similarly all sacred sites had their times when they were ‘live’, and it was the work of the astrologer-priests to calculate when they would be ‘plugged in’. These used their knowledge of astronomy to create calendars, the simplest of which were solar based. The astrologer would note the points where the sun rose and set on specific days of the year, and landscape features along the local horizon were used to mark these points, or standing stones were erected so alignments could be created to them.
The Celts celebrated eight festivals during the year - at the solstices and equinoxes, when outer square and circle align - and also at the mid-season quarter-days, when the inner circle and square align (Fig. 5). These festivals were integrated into the Christian calendar as the eight high points of the year. Thus the horoscope can be seen as a calendar marking the seasons of efficacy as well as map showing the directions radiating from a central site within a landscape. Behind each pagan festival lies the respective archetype that is activated at that season. Also, the traditional meanings of the feast days, like the meanings associated with the compass directions, have fed into our signification of the astrological houses. Conclusion Archetypes are the divine absolutes ordering the cosmos and underlying the flux and diversity of life. Like geometric forms they are transcendent to empirical reality yet give it form and meaning. They pattern time and space, and their order and fields of meaning extend through every level of the universe, permeating both the microcosm of the human psyche as well as the macrocosm around us. Astrology presents a beautiful, lucid, 3-D geometry of archetypal forms and forces in motion, showing how they meet and merge to create patterns of meaning within great interlocking time cycles. There is, however, nothing mechanical about this archetypal interaction, as the universe is not a machine but a living organism. Because our consciousness is part of its consciousness, and our will contributes to the will of the whole, we are able to affect what comes to pass. For this reason astrology should not be seen as concretely predictive but, as Richard Tarnas puts it, as archetypally predictive. And we should never forget our role as co-creators in the great evolutionary process of creation.
Phoebe Wyss
March 2007
Synopsis History is not pure chance. Astrology, whose role it is to uncover the patterns lying behind human experience, reveals that humankind acts in accordance with the 25.000-year precessional cycle of cosmic energies. At present we find ourselves in transition between two ages. The age of Pisces is coming to an end, and the age of Aquarius is dawning. To move with the times rather than against them, we must recognise what is on the way out and what is coming in. Astrology can help us do this. In my article I summarise the great ages of the last 10.000 years, giving examples of how they expressed. I then define the characteristics of the age of Aquarius and suggest what manifestations of Aquarian energy can be expected in the future. Astrology is the art of determining the ‘quality of the times’. This expression may sound weird as we have been conditioned to view time quantitively, imagining it as a line stretching from past to future, divided into hours, minutes and seconds. But, although our lives may be said to be ruled by linear clock time, the fact that conventional clock-faces are round reminds us that time is cyclic. From the earliest cultures, when calendars were created using standing stones, time has been measured in cycles. These range from the very short to the very long. They range from the cycles of the processes in our bodies, to the life cycles of different species of plants and animals and the revolutions of the sun, moon and planets. Astrology draws our attention to the fact that each cycle, and each phase in a cycle, has its own distinct quality. For example, the phases of the yearly cycle of the sun are twelve, and their qualities are symbolised by the signs of the zodiac. At the time of writing we are in the Capricorn stage of the annual cycle, and the energy in the outer world and in the collective psyche is Capricornian. Next month this will change. But there is a background energy to the present that will not change for the next 2000 years, and which is Aquarian in quality. In the words of the song, we are at the dawning of the age of Aquarius. So what does this mean? The age of Aquarius is a stage in the precessional cycle of 25.728 years. Due to a wobble in the earth’s axis, as the earth turns, its poles prescribe a circle in the same way that a spinning top does on the ground. For this reason, Polaris is at present the pole star (the star that orients us due north) but in ancient Egypt the pole star was Alpha Draconis and in 12,000 years it will be Vega. Because of the wobble, the Spring equinox point moves backwards along the ecliptic at a rate of one degree every 72 years. Its full cycle round the zodiac lasts over 25.000 years. Thus it spends over 2000 years in each sign. The ecliptic is the astronomical name for the path of the sun. The tropical zodiac is a division of the ecliptic into twelve equal sections of 30 degrees each, beginning at 0 degrees Aries, the Spring equinox point. As a result of the precessional shift, the signs have moved out of synch with the constellations of stars whose names they bear. 3000 years ago, for a short while, they overlapped, but now it will be 22.000 years before they come together again. History shows that the zodiac sign through which the equinox point is travelling is activated and colours the age, affecting attitudes, beliefs, religions, art, architecture and world-views. Also it shows that there is a radical paradigm shift at the beginning of each age, which can be expected as the signs contiguous to one another are very different. This is why the transitions, which last several hundred years, are periods of chaos and tumult. We are now going on a short journey through the last six great ages, to compare them to each other and see how their different energies manifested. Roughly 10.000-8000 BC The age of Leo- shadow Aquarius The Lascaux cave paintings, dating from this period, tell us that the people who roamed the prairies at the end of the last ice age were artists as well as hunters. This was the age of heroes in which the Babylonian legends of Gilgamesh and the Greek legends of Herakles had their origin. The opposite sign to the zodiac sign characterising the age is always present as its shadow. In this case it is Aquarius, and Aquarius can be seen manifesting in what we know of Atlantis, the lost continent, which according to legend survived beyond 10.000BC. Channelled information on Atlantis, and memories surfacing in past life regressions, stress the inventiveness of their scientists who developed marvellous machines and technologies unknown today. But they used their technology destructively, and the downfall of Atlantis is blamed on their abuse of their knowledge. Roughly 8000-6000 BC The age of Cancer- shadow Capricorn Cancer is a water sign and legend has it that this was the age of the Biblical flood and Noah’s ark. Mirroring the Cancer principle, the people of those days lived in tribal families ,which were governed as matriarchies. Moon worship was central to their animistic nature religion, in which sacred rocks, springs and caves were focal points. Carvings of curvaceous fertility goddesses have been found that date from this period, often pregnant. In Mesopotamia, China and Egypt the first homes and public buildings were being constructed of stone and timber, as an expression of the Capricorn principle. Roughly 6000-4000 BC The age of Gemini- shadow Sagittarius Gemini is a mutable air sign. It’s about people, society, communication and the intellect. Rama, the Indian avatar of the age, is credited with creating a society based on reason. Writing was invented- the cuneiform and pictogram scripts- and the first written versions of Genesis and the Vedas date from this time, together with the first libraries. The Biblical story of the tower of Babel is an age of Gemini legend, signifying an awareness of the problems of communication between people with different languages. Sagittarius, the shadow side of Gemini, brought instability through the migration of whole populations. It was the time of Abraham and the dispersal of the tribes of Israel and many lived a nomadic life, as travel and trade became easier with the spread of the invention of the wheel. Roughly 4000-2000 BC The age of Taurus- shadow Scorpio Taurus is a fixed earth sign, and this period sees the creation of settlements and the rise of agriculture. The Israelites are given the land of Israel to settle in. The Egyptian pyramids and great megaliths like Stonehenge, together with many stone circles and massive earthworks are created in the fixed phase. Cows and bulls are taken as sacred symbols. Krishna is the Indian avatar of the age- the cow herd who played the flute. The sacred cows of the Hindus are remnants from the age of Taurus, and from Crete comes the legend of the minotaur and the practice of the sacred bull dances. The goddess Diana of Ephesus is pictured bedecked with bull’s testicles. In Sumeria we have the god Baal, and the Israelites are forbidden to worship the golden calf. The age of Taurus brought a long, stable period of prosperity to Egypt. Temples were built to Hathor, the cow goddess, who was worshipped together with Apis the sacred bull. In Egypt the Scorpio shadow side of Taurus emerges in their preoccupation with death. At this period they perfected their mummification skills, developed complex funerary rites and created the necropolis, where tomb art and architecture rivalled that of the temples of the living. The Indian goddess Kali, the destroyer, who wears a belt of dangling human skulls, is another Scorpionic figure of the period. Roughly 2000 BC- 0 AD The age of Aries- shadow Libra Now rams and lambs replace the bulls as sacred symbols. Jason goes in search of the golden fleece- an Arian sacred symbol corresponding to the Piscean grail. Amun, the ram god, called the most famous oracle in Egypt, is celebrated in the temple of Karnak by a long avenue of seated rams. The greatest Pharoah, significantly named Rameses, is glorified for his exploits on the battlefield. Reading the history of these times in the Old Testament, it is obvious that Mars, the God of war, signifying male power, rules the age of Aries. Besides a line of Rameses, other warrior kings include Marduk the terrible ruler of Babylon, and Odysseus who led the Trojan heroes to raze Troy. Throughout the Roman Empire gladiatorial combat is a popular public spectacle, and the Roman armies conquer an Empire. The Jewish religion with its wrathful god, Yahweh, and Moses, the prophet of the age, express Aries energy. Lambs are sacrificed as burnt offerings in the temple, and ritually eaten at the Passover. It is appropriate that the offerings are burnt as fire is the element of Aries. A pillar of fire is followed through the desert when Moses leads the Isrealites out of Egypt, and when his god appears to him it is in a burning bush. But the Libra shadow emerges and mitigates the Arian fire. Thus Moses also gives the people the tablets of the law. In Greece, the philosophers define justice and declare man to be the measure of all things. Libran proportion and symmetry create the miracle of Greek and Roman architectural achievements, and Libran grace births the beauty of the male and female forms in great works of sculpture. Roughly O – 2000 AD The Age of Pisces- shadow Virgo Christianity is the new religion expressing the qualities of Pisces, with its roots in the love and compassion taught by the Buddha. Pisces is a water sign, and water now becomes symbolically an important element, together with the fish- a secret symbol for Christ. Baptism is a Christian sacrament- total immersion being practiced by the early Christians- and holy water is used in the churches. The gospels tell how Christ walked on the water, chose fishermen as his disciples, telling them to be “fishers of men”, and fed the 5000 with five loaves and two fishes. Jung wrote of Jesus “It would be clear to anyone acquainted with astrology that he was born as the first fish of the Pisces era, and was doomed to die as the last ram (?????? lamb) of the declining Aries era.” Neptune is the ruler of Pisces and consequently the Christian era was characterised by martyrdoms, revelations, miracles, holy relics with magic powers and a stress on faith rather than reason. The Christian myths worked subliminally causing people to engage emotionally with them at a deep unconscious level. The emphasis in their conditioning on sin and guilt opened people up to emotional manipulation by the priesthood during this age. Guilt together with fear and compassion are aroused by the sight familiar in churches of the tortured Jesus hanging on the cross- an image which later in the age of Aquarius will be considered barbaric. “He is dying for your sins”, the people were told. However, the religious myths of the Pisces era touched a deep archetypal level in the human collective mind, producing wonderful music, painting and poetry, such as will not be seen again for many millenia. It has been suggested that a great age can be divided up into three phases of circa 700 years each, the first being cardinal, the second fixed and the third mutable. I will try to apply this to the age of Pisces. Cardinal (0-700 AD) Cardinal energy in Pisces expresses as strong religious fervour, which rouses a similarly fervent reaction. The early Christians are persecuted and martyred. In the first centuries AD missionaries travel widely throughout the known world, spreading the good news zealously. Mohammed is born, and from the sixth century onwards Islam is in competition with Christianity, which inflames fanaticism on both sides. Although both religions preach peace and love, they teach salvation for converts and damnation for infidels. The two religions expand fast due to the strong cardinal energy. Fixed (700- 1400 AD) Fixed energy in Pisces is expressed by the stable feudal society in which the monasteries flourished and the great cathedrals were built. The power of the church preserved the status quo through its totalitarian rule. Monks took vows of chastity, poverty and obedience (reflecting the Virgo shadow) and after entering the monastery embarked on a life of hard, physical work as one form of service (Virgo), combined with prayer and worship in the ‘services’- as the Piscean counterpart. Many monasteries founded hospitals and other charitable institutions, as the Virgo principle expresses in the wish to serve the poor, sick and needy. A spiritual path of service, however, requires poor and needy to serve but due to social conditions there was no shortage of these. Otherworldly Piscean ideals eschew material comfort and there are no improvements in the general standard of living during this period. Most of the population are desperately poor- any excess they earn being taken to build and deck out the great abbeys and cathedrals. They are taught to despise worldly wealth, the flesh, and the devil. The more they suffer physically, it is implied, the better it is for their souls, and they will get their reward in heaven. The emotionally-loaded myths of the Christian faith embedded themselves deep in the collective psyche and the priests kept the people in a state of guilt and fear. The shadow, Virgo, is reflected in the teaching that disobedience, closely linked to sex in the Genesis story, was the original sin, making most people feel like sinners. The apocalypse, which was expected any moment, was continually hanging over their heads. Images of hell and its tortures were painted on the church walls. Thus the more lurid side of the Christian faith is Piscean in that it floods the mind with the archetypal expressions of cruelty and suffering dwelling in the collective unconscious. Religious cults that mortify the flesh- flagellation and hair shirts and other sado-masochistic practices- are rampant. However, such practices together with extreme fasting are said to have the power to give glimpses of ecstasy and heavenly visions by loosening the link between soul and body. Mutable (1400-2100 AD) The fifteenth century that brought the Reformation dissolved the fixity of the middle ages. Schisms created turbulence. Renaissance humanism diverted the focus away from God back to man, and the invention of the printing press challenged the censorship of the church. Classical pagan learning was widely disseminated, such as Aristotle’s science, reawakening interest in the natural world. We can observe the Virgo shadow expressing here and in the following centuries as empirical science is born. The principles of Virgo and Pisces, representing two types of mind and two ways of seeing, are expressed in the growing conflict between science and religion. Virgoan rationality triumphed in the age of enlightenment, and scientific materialism became widely established when the material benefits of science and technology were realised. In the last part of the age Virgo has turned the tables on Pisces and science has become like a religion that everyone has to believe in, with scientists playing the role of the priests who determine what is truth. The reductionist approach has persisted into the 21st century. We have been taught to see the universe as a machine, and the human body as a mechanical object. Truth is that which has been tested scientifically in replicable experiments. And Darwin’s theory of evolution, which sees us as the result of random chance natural selection, in competition with one other and other species for survival, has made a creator god superfluous, and banished the holy and the mysterious that so enthralled us in the earlier stages of the age of Pisces. Transitions As the contiguous signs in the zodiac are
very different from each other, the transition periods are marked by clashes
of paradigm, and characterised by a general confusion and loss of certainty.
When the old world passes away, there is a gap while the new one is being
established. Between 2160 and 2040 BC, the transition between the ages
of Taurus and Aries, the Egyptian old kingdom collapsed and the land of
Egypt was plunged into anarchy. The Pharaoh, who was no longer worshipped
as a god, lost his authority. The nobles warred against each other in
violent power struggles and, as law and order broke down, temples were
pillaged and statues and inscriptions destroyed. There was a similar time
of social unrest in the lands of the Roman Empire around the time of the
birth of Christ, during the transition between the ages of Aries and Pisces.
The old gods were losing their power over the people, and new prophets
like John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth were disrupting the status
quo with their visions. I believe that the transition from the age of Pisces to the age of Aquarius began in the second half of the eighteenth century, when the ideas of radicals like Tom Paine and Jean Rousseau threatened the old order leading to revolution. During the terror France fell into an extreme state anarchy and chaos- similarly Russia after its revolution- typical of the transition period. The new values of the Aquarian age coming in revolved round human rights, the abolition of slavery, women’s rights, social justice, freedom and democracy. But Leo, the shadow principle behind Aquarius, emerged as the reactionary backlash, bringing forth such dictators as Napoleon, Lenin and Stalin who, in the name of the people, created totalitarian dictatorships that were the opposite of what the revolutionaries had fought for. During a transition period old and the new exist side by side. Radical reformers campaign for the new ideas, while conservative die-hards cling to the old. In the 20th century with the age of Pisces coming to an end, the power and influence of religion dramatically declined all over the world producing secular societies. The fervour of the present evangelical manifestations in the USA seem to contradict this. But I see this religious fanaticism as a temporary phenomenon, stirred up by right-wing politicians who have their own agenda. It corresponds to Pluto’s transit through Sagittarius, and will lose momentum when Pluto enters Capricorn in 2008. The new age movement that has spread widely over the last thirty years is Aquarian in nature. The complementary health treatments and innovative personal growth therapies are centred round finding yourself and being true to yourself. Aquarius respects individuality, which also means being tolerant of societal and cultural differences and celebrating diversity. In new age circles religion is seen as something personal not institutional. In their exploration of alternative spirituality, a new generation are proclaiming the right to follow their own spiritual paths. Not scriptures and ecclesiastical authority, but the spiritual experience of ordinary people of different backgrounds and with different outlooks will be valued in the Aquarian age. In art and music we entered the age of Aquarius in the early 20th century. The emotional sublimity of the great art and music of the age of Pisces was suddenly lost. Today instead of Michelangelo we have conceptual art, and art designed to shock and challenge. We have art with a social and political messages, like the sculpture of Alison Lapper, now placed on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square. In music, instead of the divine harmonies of Handel or Mozart, we have atonal compositions that challenge our ears and the wildly liberating beat of rock music. Another sign that the age of Aquarius has arrived, is the cyber revolution transforming our lives. Just as Neptune, the ruler of Pisces, is associated with oil, so Uranus, the ruler of Aquarius governs electricity. Now with the oil running out, alternative more Aquarian forms of energy need to be found. Aquarius is an air sign, and the waves in its glyph are the electromagnetic waves passing through the air around us- radio waves, the waves of the channels of TV companies, of countless telephone conversations, radiations from mobile phones and their masts, wireless connections to our computers etc. Now the age of Aquarius is here, TV, the internet and the mobile phone are facilitating the exchange of information, speeding up communication between people all over the globe and birthing the global village. But above all it is cutting-edge physics and biology that is bringing in a new paradigm. The materialist-reductionist scientific world-view, which I see as an expression of the earth sign Virgo- Pisces’ shadow- is on the way out. Quantum physics has given us a new vision of the universe as composed of waves and particles organised into formative fields. The unexpected ( typical of Uranus, Aquarius’ ruler) enters with the chance of quantum leaps, and uncertainty with Heisenberg’s discovery that the act of observing influences the observed. The discovery of the phenomenon of entanglement, by which particles that have connected remain connected with each other regardless of separation in space and time, shows reality as a dynamic web of interconnection. It leads to the realisation that we are all part of a greater whole, that the individual is a holographic component of the human family- the human ‘holon’. These ideas are still too new and revolutionary to be digested by most of us. But, as the age progresses, they will become absorbed into our world-view, and their philosophical implications will create a truly Aquarian understanding of the self and the universe. During the twentieth century we moved from conquering the air to conquering space. The age of Pisces (water) saw the conquering of the oceans. In the second half of the twentieth century air travel became affordable for ordinary people, satellites were put into orbit round our planet, probes were sent to investigate other planets in our solar system and spacemen reputedly landed on the moon. If Noah’s flood was a Cancer (water) catastrophe, September 11th was an Aquarian (air) catastrophe. The destruction of the twin towers came from the sky. So what does the Aquarian future look like? Divisive and narrow forms of loyalty to our country and religion are on the way out. The family of man is on the way in. There is a movement towards loyalty to the whole of mankind, and mutual responsibility for the whole planet. An early step towards world government was the establishment of the United Nations, which was born out of the desire for a community of nations and commitment to international law. We can see Bush’s imperialism, including the invasion of Iraq, action taken in defiance of the United Nations, as an example of the Leo principle breaking through. Leo believes might is right, and does what he chooses in spite of popular protest. World government, when Aquarian and not Leonine, does not mean world domination but people power. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, this power is felt where like-minded groups are banding together, often connected through the internet, to represent various political, social and environmental concerns. Social change in the coming century will come from such grassroots movements and be driven by mass popular demand. The G8 meeting in 2005 to make poverty history, where the debts of the poorest countries were forgiven, had this kind of popular support. Also people power organised the largest protest marches ever seen in 2003 in an attempt to prevent the invasion of Iraq. Such groups are now acting to try to prevent catastrophic climate change by creating alternative sustainable forms of living. The future will bring the development of techno-culture through a convergence of technologies. There will be further multimedia growth and gene technology is unstoppable. We can expect genetic manipulation of animals and humans to create hybrids. It is rumoured that this also happened in Atlantis, and that the scientists from those times are back again! New technologies will aid our exploration of deep space and revolutionise astronomy. Space travel will become routine and life could be discovered on other planets. In the age of Aquarius things could happen leading to a completely new way of seeing ourselves as a species- for example contact with aliens from other stars. We must expect the unexpected and the unpredictable - quantum leaps in growth but also sudden catastrophic destructions. Uranus, the ruler of Aquarius is a dangerous planet, often bringing in the new by radically exterminating the old. But to compensate for any approaching catastrophes, we can rejoice that the Aquarian values will be prominent: altruism, mutual aid and cooperation, solidarity and cooperation rather than competition. As we become increasingly aware of our interconnectedness it will further an attitude of supporting, protecting and furthering all forms of life. This understanding of our interdependence will give us an increased sense of respect and responsibility for our planet and for all life on it. Phoebe Wyss
January 2006
Synopsis In this article I question the consensual view of time as linear, running from past to future, and discuss other conceptions, for example that time is cyclic. The movement of stars and planets in regular cycles enables astrologers to determine time quality and predict the future. Sub-atomic physics has discovered that time can move backwards on the quantum level, and a teleological view of time presents a case for reverse causality- the pull of the future producing present events. In dreams we move freely forwards or backwards in time, and in meditation we can jump out of time completely and rest in a timeless state. The edifice of modern science is built on the law of cause and effect, which rests on the concept of linear time moving from past to future, so any alternative concept of time meaning a change in paradigm threatens its foundations. Time is the concept we use to explain our experience of change. We perceive movement in the world around us and movement in our inner world- the rise and fall of our breath, the shifting thoughts in our minds- and two big questions arise: if there was no movement would there still be time, and if there was no observer to register movement would there be time then? In other words, does time have objective existence? Until recently, most people believed it did. The sun marks time as it circles the sky, alternating day with night. The seasons follow each other in a predictable round. We watch the waxing and waning of the moon and follow the longer time-cycles of the planets. In ancient cultures these were plotted against the background of stars, which were seen as fixed- the eternal home of the gods. Time was measured against a background of eternity, but now we know the stars are not fixed. They also move. Knowledge of the cycles of the heavenly bodies enables the astronomer-astrologer to span time and obtain information about the past or envisage the future. Up to the 17th century the two roles were united. Newton and Kepler were both astronomers and astrologers- their left-brained logical and mathematical skills working together with their right-brained intuition. Today astrologers still study astronomy, but most astronomers reject astrology. They have settled for the left-brained approach to reality and focused on a yang form of time. The astrologer’s cyclic view of time is female or yin. When they scan the night sky with their telescopes, astronomers look into the past. The super nova of 1987 took 170,000 light years to reach us though, for the astronomers viewing it, it was happening now. They were seeing the past in the present moment. Astrologers see the future in the present when they make predictions. We can say the difference between them is that the astrologer is interested in time quality, and the astronomer deals with time quantatively. Although orthodox archaeologists are reluctant to recognise this because it disagrees with their evolutionary paradigm, the pyramids, stone circles and vast earth works scattered across the globe point to the existence of an ancient global civilisation with a very advanced knowledge of astronomy. The mathematics embodied in these edifices proves they could not only measure the cycles of sun, moon and planets, but also the 25.000 year precessional cycle of the stars. (Due to a wobble in the earth’s axis, the equinoxes and solstices appear to move backwards through the twelve constellations that give their names to the zodiac, completing a full circle in roughly 25.000 years, which is known as the precession). An unsolved question is why the people who built these massive edifices went to such immense cost and effort? It has been calculated that eighteen million man-hours went into the construction of Silbury Hill- part of the Avebury complex in Wiltshire. It was started around 2660BC and is the largest man-made mound in Europe. Was Avebury built as an observatory, or as a huge clock of earth and stone to measure time, or did it have another purpose? Time keeping was certainly more important to the early agricultural communities of the 4th and 3rd millennia BC than to the hunter-gatherers who preceded them. The times of sowing and reaping needed to be established, but, just as important, the times of the religious festivals accompanying the seasons. The nature gods who they believed had power to grant good or bad harvests needed to be placated, and rituals performed for the well-being of the people and the land. For this purpose the times of the equinoxes, solstices and new moons had to be established. The oldest calendar known dates from the city of Akkad, and was created around 3.800 BC. Based on the combined cycles of sun and moon, it divides the year into twelve months of three hundred and fifty-four days, starting at the spring equinox and the month of Nisan (Aries). When required a 13th month was intercalated called “the month of dark sowing”. Indian calendars also began with Aries, who is still seen as an initiator in modern astrology. According to Indian legend, the world began at a date in the distant past when all seven planets were conjunct in Aries. From around 4000 BC measurements of time and space were being structured systematically. The 12:60 system evolved, whereby days in the year corresponded to the 360 degrees of the circle, and became the foundation of our time-space based consensual reality. That astrological myth was already bound up with time keeping in Akkad, can be seen in the names of the Akkadian months. For example, the second month- Kharsidi- means “the propitious bull”. 6000 years ago the time qualities of the twelve divisions of the sun’s annual passage through the ecliptic that are recognised today were already determined. The summer solstice, when the sun is at its height, had special significance for the Egyptian Pharaoh, who was seen as the earthly embodiment of the sun, and alignments were made accordingly in temple architecture. The avenue of ram-headed sphinxes at Karnac, for example, is oriented to the setting sun at the summer solstice. Ramses II’s great temple at Abu Simbel, however, honours the rising sun in Aries. When it was built, the sun in the precessional cycle was passing through the constellation of Aries at the spring equinox. Since then, however, the precession has moved it on, and the “miracle of the sun” in Abu Simbel no longer coincides with the equinox but takes place in February. Due to its alignment twice a year the first ray of the rising sun penetrates the length of the temple to reach the inner sanctuary, illuminating the statues of three gods placed there. For the crowd of worshippers, gathered in ancient times to witness this spectacle, it must have represented an experience of spiritual rebirth and renewal. In order to appreciate the significance of such alignments, we need to understand how the Egyptians saw the relationship between heaven and earth. In contrast to our present allocation of gender, Nut the sky was female, and Geb the earth was male. They were depicted as a pair of lovers. The ancient Egyptians saw sky and earth as two parts of a whole that had been torn apart. At certain stages in the cycles of time, however, alignments would come into place between them, which represented copulation and insemination. Then an energy exchange occurred in which earth energy was relayed to the sky, and sky energy to the earth. I believe the key to the puzzle of why the pyramids and sacred sites are located where they are lies in the myth of Nut and Geb. They could have been so placed to create alignments between earth and sky. It was Robert Bauval who first pointed out that the Giza pyramids are constructed in the form of a flat isosceles triangle, mirroring the isosceles triangle formed by the three stars in Orion’s belt. The Egyptians, who had a devotional attitude to the stars, worshiped Orion as the stellar form of their god Osiris. Mark Vidler in his book The Star Mirror carries Bauval’s findings further. In the geometry of the great pyramid he discovers altogether eleven alignments with eleven major stars, which were exact during the period around 2450 BC. If my conclusion from the myth of Nut and Geb is correct, the Egyptians would have experienced these alignments as a channelling of energy from sky to earth and from earth to sky. Thus in building the pyramids they were spiritually exploiting the potential of the time quality at certain epochs in the precessional cycle of the stars. Alignments only remain in place for about fifty years and are then lost. Over the centuries since 2400 BC alignments from the pyramid with single stars have come into being, but it seems that for an epoch to be significant an exceptional number of them need to occur at once. Vidler discovers this applies to our present age. At the beginning of the 21st century, the eleven pointers of the great pyramid were again all aligned to some of the brightest stars in the sky. He interprets this as meaning we are living at a crucial time in human history, and believes our epoch was foreseen and pointed to by the designers of the pyramid. As if to give literal meaning to the myth of the lovers Nut and Geb, Vidler goes on to discover alignments between the brightest stars and the tallest mountains on earth as well as sacred sites. Comparing their earthly coordinates with the celestial longitude and latitude of significant stars, he not only discovers alignments but also that isosceles triangles are formed when the sites are connected by straight lines. Synchronicity has it that isosceles triangles are also created in the sky when aligned stars are connected. The chances that three stars or three mountains should form exact isosceles triangles are so remote that his findings are mind-boggling. For example, after discovering an isosceles triangle between Ben Nevis, Silbury Hill and Mt Brandon, he then discovers that three stars forming an isosceles triangle in the head of the constellation Draco are at present vertically aligned to these landmarks- the star Eltanim, the eye of the dragon, being exactly above Silbury. I suggest that the leys, avenues or cursors, extending across the countryside from sacred sites such as Avebury, reflect the straight lines of this celestial geometry, and that they were constructed to channel the energy received from the sky to other sites or places of habitation. So, to conclude this section, a knowledge of planetary and stellar cycles enabled the astrologers or priests of ancient cultures to predict times when their temples and sacred sites would be ‘plugged in’, and the current would flow, and plan their religious festivals accordingly. I also go along with the theory that the Egyptians mummified their dead to preserve their etheric bodies, which are the templates for their physical bodies, until the time came round when the key alignments were formed within the 25.00 year precessional cycle that would allow their resurrection and ascension to the stars, their true home. As we have seen, for the people living between 4000 and 500 BC time was cyclic- a wheel of eternal occurrence. But since then, from the ancient Greeks onwards, time has become consensually linear, at least in the west. Christianity, unlike the more ancient Hindu religion with its cycles of reincarnation, rests on linear time. It is needed for the doctrine of a fall in the past and redemption in the future to take place. Christian theologians taught that time is absolute and God-ordained, that it began at the creation 4000 years ago, and runs in a continuous line until the end of time at the last judgement. Over the centuries people have become more time conscious. The first mechanical clocks appeared in 12th century in European monasteries to summon the brothers to prayer. Then, after the industrial revolution, clocks became of paramount important to coordinate the shifts in the factories. In the 19th century factory owners would present their workers with pocket watches to ensure that they arrived punctually. The great edifice of knowledge that science has erected since the 17th century rests on linear time. Without it there could be no law of cause and effect, so crucial to scientific proof. Without it there could also be no Darwinian evolution or Marxian concept of social and economic progress. Thus by the 20th century not only did we all accept unquestioningly that time was external, but we had become slaves to it. However, a seed of dissent had been sown back in the 18th century when the philosopher Emmanuel Kant suggested that time was psychological. He saw it as an innate sense that moulded our perceptions, and, when in the late 20th century neuroscientists came to investigate the brain, they found they agreed with him. It is now proved that our brains regulate how we experience time- the part responsible being a loop of dopamine generated neural activity with its centre in the frontal cortex just behind the eyes. Incoming impressions are collected in packets in a present tense window. Then, like a film editor cutting a film, the brain rearranges the separate impressions contained within it into a time line, backdating some in the process. Scientists have also found that the way
we experience time depends on our dopamine levels, which explains subjective
differences. Time, as we all know, crawls slowly for the child during
a boring lesson at school, but flies for the pensioner. Einstein also made us aware of how time depends on location. For example, from a theoretical viewpoint in outer space all the planetary cycles in our solar system could be viewed at any given moment in their totality. And everything that has ever happened on our planet could theoretically be experienced in the present tense by observers at different points in deep space observing us through telescopes. The way we experience time also has to do with the speed of change. Here I suggest a mental experiment:
If we speeded time p so that the sun’s cycle lasted one hundredth of a second, we would hear the music of the spheres, as the planets create resonances according to the pitch of their orbits. Mars, for example would be heard as a deep bass. Mercury, so often retrograde, would give forth a chirping note, and Venus a harmonious chord. Shortening the sun’s cycle further to a thousandth of a second would make the outer planets audible, and then the whole solar system, heard from the sun, would play a grand regular chord, or a varying melody when heard from the earth. When a year is shortened to a hundred thousandth of a second, sounds disappear into the supersonic, and we enter the range of heat radiation. Then the paths of the sun, moon and planets would appear as solid lines each glowing with one of the colours of the rainbow. Movement therefore, and with it time, is transcended at this speed, and our solar system becomes a solid geometrical figure composed of light and colour. A philosopher may surmise, as speeding up time transforms matter into sound and then light waves, that the higher oscillations correspond to higher dimensions of consciousness, and that matter and time only appear when the speed of oscillation is slowed to a lower pitch. Is life eternity in slow motion? By the end of the 20th century, Steven Hawking was questioning Einstein’s theory of relativity and proclaiming there is no time without matter, and that time, space and matter, which are interdependent, began with the big bang. Quantum physicists began observing how time disintegrates on the quantum level. They saw particles exiting from a tube at one end before they had entered it at the other, proving time can also move backwards. The weirdness with which time is experienced on the quantum level is similar to how it is experienced in dreams. Here it is rarely linear. It can contract or extend, and we can transcend it by reliving the past or dreaming the future. It is as if time has an extra dimension in dream consciousness. Instead of being a line it becomes a field- a flat surface around which our attention jumps from one impression to another, which are all present together. Therefore, although time when bound up with space and matter in normal waking consciousness seems to run linearly from past to future, this is not the case in other states of consciousness. I believe that prophets, mediums, clairvoyants and intuitive astrologers can enter the state of consciousness where time has an extra dimension while remaining in the normal waking state. They can thus stand both outside and inside time. The techniques taught in spiritual schools to raise consciousness through meditation and prayer can also lead us to experience a state where time is transcended. Teachers in the zen tradition speak of the power of the now- a heightened clarity of vision in the present moment in which both past and future are contained. In meditation we move from the periphery of the wheel of time, where we continuously and inexorably turn on the time line, to the still, silent hub of the wheel where time is no more. We have reached a point in our evolution where the paradigm of a forward-moving cause and effect time line is weakening. If, as quantum physics has proved, time can also run backwards, then so can cause and effect. The teleological view of history emphasises the pull of the future. For example, a couple get married and this event requires them to meet, which they do at university two years earlier. But this event requires them to choose to go to the same university, which they do three years earlier, and so on until finally their marriage requires them to be born. In this case the wedding stands for the pull of the future. Perhaps those astrologers who have a talent for predicting future events are tapping into teleological causes. Astrologers possess an overview of time cycles, and know how to interpret time quality. This allows them to predict events that are likely to occur because they correspond to the quality. They also erect charts accordingly to the rule that a cycle unfolds the potential contained in its birth moment. For example, your life as described in your birth-chart is an expression of the time quality of your moment of birth. Yet at the same time, paradoxically, nothing is predetermined. The time quality of a particular moment is a precondition, but what we do with it is up to us. At every point there is always more than one alternative, and our choices help to create the future. In conclusion, reality on a higher plane beyond time and change can be compared to a geometric shape of great complexity, eternally complete and perfect. However, we find ourselves on a lower and slower plane of consciousness on the time line, moving round it as in a dance. We dance the geometry of time according to the patterns created by the cycles of sun, moon, planets and stars. Time is needed for our dance to unfold, its shape to become evident, and its meaning to be clear. It is a sacred dance, a sacrament, in which the whole is felt as truth and perceived as beauty. Phoebe Wyss
April 2006
According to Plato triangles are the basic building blocks of the universe because they are the most stable of forms. The Egyptian pyramid, built to last for all eternity, is composed of four triangles which together create an ideal balance and stability. Pythagoras, the Greek mystic who united mathematics, astronomy and music into an ordered whole, coined the word ‘kosmos’ to describe the universe. He found beauty and structural perfection in nature, seeing the mathematics behind natural forms as evidence of a spiritual intelligence at work. The heavens also bear witness to a grand design, presenting an awe-inspiring spectacle of geometry in motion. Planets move in time in and out of significant alignments, creating geometrical relationships with the horizon and with their fellow planets. The birth chart is a moment of frozen time, a snapshot of the geometrical patterns of the moment. When we find a grand trine of three or more planets in a chart, this mirrors a phase in the complex dance of the planets when a great triangle had formed in the sky. In sacred geometry the triangle stands for transcendent harmony, and is special because it is said to contain the golden ratio. It represents perfect equlibrium, God resting within his/herself as the trinity- the one in three and three in one. In numerology one stands for unity, and is represented by the point. Two stands for division and duality and is represented by the line joining two points, and three represents a third transcendent point above the line and equidistant to the first two points, which resolves their conflict and carries their meaning onto a higher level. Therefore the triangle is a symbol of spiritual development. The planets involved in a trine work together and support each other, as energy flows freely round a trine without blockage, conflict or stress. However if transpersonal planets* are involved, there will be karmic problems to work through before the positive manifestation of the planetary archetypes can be accessed. Seen from the viewpoint of karmic astrology, our lives upon lives provide us with situations and opportunities for spiritual growth as we gradually become masters of the elements within us. Earth, water, air and fire stand for four different spiritual paths on which we refine and perfect our physical body (earth), our emotional/astral body (water), our mental body(air) and our etheric/energy body (fire). In order to understand our specific karmic tasks in the present life, we can look at which elements are accentuated in our charts by planetary placements. Each element is represented by three signs of the zodiac (Fig.1) in a horoscope. Trines connecting planets in the same element are like the rungs of a `ladder to heaven´ enabling us to climb upwards through using the resources of that element. However, before we can climb a ladder we need to make sure the rungs are safe, and we must always start at the bottom. FIG
1 An order of priority in our karmic work is indicated by the order of the signs. Thus Aries, Taurus, Gemini and Cancer represent the first-rung level of the four ladders, Leo through to Scorpio the second rung, and Sagittarius through to Pisces the third. We have come into the present life with some rungs in place and with some rungs missing. Transpersonal planets* in our trines indicate that the respective rungs are unsafe, and karmic issues need to be resolved before we can use them to climb. Habits of feeling (water), thinking (air), acting(fire) and relating to the material world(earth), formed in past lives, cause problems until we change them. A ladder is only complete if a grand trine has formed. A grand trine, for example in earth, shows we have mastered earth skills in our past lives, and developed our physical body to be a fit container for our spirit. The presence of one or two sides of an incomplete triangle indicates that we can already access many of the resources of this element, but we still need to add the dimension symbolised by the missing rung. The wheel of the houses is conventionally divided into four `quadrants´ each consisting of three houses. A study of trines requires us to divide the wheel up into three groups of four houses which I call `trigants´(Fig. 2). These are valid both for the wheel of the houses and for the wheel of the signs. The first trigant is cardinal, the second is fixed and the third is mutable in its energy. FIG.
2 I have set the wheels in Fig. 2 so that the houses match their corresponding signs. You will see that the points of the triangles shown in Fig. 1 are each anchored in a different trigant (Fig 2). The order of the trigants indicates an evolution as we pass round the wheel. Aries to Cancer (houses 1-4) is concerned with personal empowerment. Here we individuate by developing our personal resources in the elements fire, earth, air and water. We are developing a secure sense of self to act as a firm foundation from which we can relate to others and play a role in the world. In the second trigant, Leo to Scorpio (houses 5-8), the energy is fixed and concentrated. This is the trigant of crisis, where are mirrored back through our relationships with others, and where our ego clashes with other egos. The third mutable trigant, Sagittarius to Pisces (houses 9-12), is the field of ego transcendence and transpersonal involvement. Depending on how far we can let go of personal desires, we can be creative here with the transpersonal levels of fire, earth, air and water by identifying with dimensions greater than ourselves. THE FIRE LADDER A personal planet in Aries trining one in Leo means that the first two rungs of the fiery ladder are in place. In past lives we have learned to trust our energy and to move with it, thus linking Aries vitality and drive with Leo´s centredness and creativity. We can be aflame with enthusiasm and gusto, able to act spontaneously and effectively to make things happen with the right timing through our willpower and intuition. Our confident and expansive energy gives us the power to command. Learning the art of living totally we can become afire with the joy of creation and can ignite others. When a personal planet in Leo trines one in Sagittarius it means that our fire has become a torch to light the way. The spiritual fire of the third trigant gives us an overall view and higher understanding. We are able to set goals for our creativity and, powered by Leonine force, fly straight as an arrow to our target. Through letting go of personal ambition we open a channel for the cosmic creative force. The higher a flame mounts the more transparent it becomes until at its tip it completely disappears. A trine from Sagittarius to Aries links the top of the fiery ladder with the bottom rung again. Not progress in linear form, as the ladder symbol seems to indicate, but a vision of life as spiralling cycles lies behind astrology. Thus, after mounting onto the highest rung, we return to climb again. However the experience of Sagittarius then gives the innocence of Aries a new flavour. Pushy, opaque ram fire is made luminous in this trine by the far-sighted wisdom of the archer. Filled with the fire of aspiration we now radiate more light than heat. THE EARTH LADDER Trines between personal planets in earth show that in past lives we have learned to ground ourselves. For example, Taurus linked to Virgo indicates an ability to value and utilise the physical plane. As a karmic benefit we may be blessed with a healthy, graceful body, and a comfortable, well functioning environment. We are learning to be alchemists and turn stones into gold, working to refine and beautify the mundane, and to create quality through touch. A trine from Virgo to Capricorn means we can contribute our personal skills to projects of transpersonal scope. For example, using our business acumen to manage collective resources, we find fulfilment in both in serving those we know personally, and being of service to the community in general. On the transcendent point of the earth trine sits the occultist, whose wisdom can subdue nature to divine purposes. His task is to spiritualise matter, refining it to make the earth a temple for the human spirit. In a trine from Capricorn to Taurus, the management skills of the former are combined with the talent for attracting abundance of the latter. We are hedonists enjoying what we have, but are also able to use our resources wisely for the good of others. Serious dedication to making a contribution to society is tempered here with an awareness that personal needs must first be met. Like an apple tree nourished by its own deep roots in the earth, we can then yield harvest upon harvest of rich fruit. THE AIR LADDER Trines between personal planets in air indicate that we have learned to use our minds. A rung between Gemini and Libra shows personal empowerment through clarity of thought and knowing our own truth. We have developed rhetorical skills in past lives and can express our ideas convincingly but, more important, we have also learned to listen. Dialogue with the other is possible and with it mutual understanding, partnership and love. A trine from Libra to Aquarius shows that we can harmonise with others in groups as well as in one to one relationships. Our mind is less occupied with personal concerns than with issues relating to the collective and we are inspired by a humanitarian vision. The mental ego drops when we understand that intelligence is a function of the whole. Like snowflakes falling into a pot of water, touching the surface and disappearing, so true knowledge dissolves in us, becomes us and changes us. That we have learned to be with others without losing ourselves is shown by a trine from Aquarius to Gemini. We can play a role in the world without compromising our own truth. Seeing the interconnectedness of all life, and understanding that we do not own our thoughts but that they come and go, we can relax our busy minds. Then all words lead to silence and all thought to the peace that passes understanding. THE WATER LADDER Personal planets in the water trine show we are becoming masters of our emotional body. The first stage of Cancer to Scorpio indicates the ability to access our imaginative and psychic powers. We have found emotional security, a home in ourselves, and can thus allow closeness in our relationships and be vulnerable without feeling threatened. We can encounter the dark side of the psyche in ourselves and in others with psychological understanding, nourished by our deep sources of love and trust. The trine from Scorpio to Pisces indicates that we have made progress in overcoming the exploiting ego that blocks love. Understanding that the other is a glass mirroring aspects of ourselves increases our compassion and leads to altruistic commitment. Beyond the ego lies the ocean of the collective soul. Becoming porous, letting go and letting be, we are carried by the current and reach a state of equanimity beyond joy and sorrow. The drop enters the ocean only to be reborn as a water drop again. In the trine from Pisces to Cancer, we experience the full range of human emotions while understanding the need to set personal boundaries. In this trine we integrate spiritual life and personal relationships, remembering that before we can truly love our need to be needed must disappear. Then we do not love, we are love. * As personal planets I count: Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter. I see as transpersonal: Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and Chiron. Phoebe Wyss
November 2006 |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
©2005
Phoebe Wyss • 22, Saxon Road • Hove
BN3 4LE • Phone: [44] (0)1273 417997 •
astrophoebe@btinternet.com |
