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THE SEED IDEA IN ASPECTS
From seed to flower to fruit and
back to seed again. The ground rule of Life is that all things abide
in the One, proceed forth into manifestation and return back to the
One again. This is the eternal return in all its variations which
astrology so elegantly describes and which Dane Rudhyar so eloquently
demonstrates in such works as The Lunation Cycle and, with Leyla Rael,
The Astrological Aspects. However despite the emphasis placed on this
cyclical concept by Rudhyar, and its further exposition by others, most astrologers continue, blind eyed, to
interpret a 270° square like a 90° square, a 120° trine like a 240° trine
and so on. To do this is to lose half the message that an aspect is
giving us. Contrary to the way most astrologers still seem to work and
think, life processes unfold themselves in cycles of 360° and not 180°.
The fundamental difference
between the out-going, waxing hemisphere aspects and the incoming,
waning hemisphere aspects can readily be seen if we think of the cycle
of the seasons or of the lunation cycle or the daily cycle. Each of these cycles can be seen to start in
darkness: ie., mid-winter, the dark of the Moon, midnight. Thus, in the signs, 0° Capricorn and NOT 0° Aries is the seed point, when the seed idea of the new cycles is all still
latent potential waiting to be born. These cycles all reach their
culmination at the opposition, at their point of fullest light: ie.,
mid-summer, the Full Moon, Noon.
Between these two poles lies the square points. The
astrologer who interprets outgoing squares in the same way as incoming
squares, is in effect saying that Spring is the same as Autumn,
sunrise is the same as sunset and the First Quarter of the Moon is the
same as the Last Quarter. Of course there are dynamic similarities.
These different squares do both represent challenging times of crisis
and change. But whilst at the outgoing square of Spring, the First
Quarter and sunrise, we see the excitement of growing life moving out
into the world, leaving Mother Earth and dark unconsciousness behind,
by contrast at the incoming square of Autumn, the last Quarter and
sunset, we see fulfilled life giving back its harvest to the Earth,
the efforts of the day are surrendered to the coming sleep in
preparation for the next round. Thus the first half of any cycle is
concerned with growth as the cycle's seed Idea moves out into the
world: to produce a plant, flower and new seed. By contrast in the
second half of any cycle the emphasis is on developing a fruit or pod
by which it can return back into the earth to begin its eternal return
once again. Of course within this broad scheme each specific phase in
the total 360° cycle has its own properties and expresses a different
aspect, pun intended, of the total process of unfolding the root Idea
of that cycle.
THE SUN-NEPTUNE IDEA
The root idea of any planetary
cycle is the archetypal process represented by the planetary pair
involved. In this study I would like to explore the unfolding of the
Idea of the Sun-Neptune dance. To understand this let us first of all
look at the principles of Sun and Neptune separately.
In simple terms,
the Sun-Neptune cycle can be seen as the cycle of the relationship
between the focused Individual Unity (Sun) in relation to the all embracing
Collective Unity (Neptune). The Sun represents the conscious individual, the
focused leader, the purposeful Hero Soul shining with his own unique
inner light; in contrast to Neptune, the boundless Collective
Unconscious and the ocean of unitive reality. We can relate the Sun to
the differentiated individual Seed whose potential is to become a
unique, conscious carrier of a creative idea. By contrast, Neptune is
the great vessel of archetypes which substands all our lives and
dreams. Neptune's embrace reminds us of the ecstasy of paradise and of
the bliss of uroboric sameness from which we each derive our very
sense of self-hood. At its highest Neptune dissolves the little self
and opens us to the larger one-ness of things and the potentiality for
mystical union with the ONE. At its lowest it can dissolve our sense
of identity and capacity to function as a separate individual, leaving
us floundering in confusion, chaos and psychotic breakdown. Neptune is
the planet of poets and mystics, of alcoholics and pornographers, of
film makers, advertisers and illusionists. Her dream-like qualities
bring a self-deceiving charisma and an enchanting glimpse into the
mysteries of ecstatic merging. Psychologically Neptune can produce
that sense of alienation which comes from seeing too clearly that the
world is not the humdrum place it seems, that there are larger
realities behind reflex banalities and clichés of daily life.
Equally, as we know, Neptune can lead to illusions, based on the fear
of being separate and banished from paradisiacal oneness. How easily
we can deceive ourselves when intoxicated by the Siren sounds of
Neptune. This can lead the Sun-Neptune all too readily into being
seduced into living out the prevailing, family and cultural myths,
into living a socially acceptable lie.
The Sun-Neptune individual is
often an idealist, someone whose life is inspired by a larger social,
religious, or intellectual perspective of life. This inspiration can
empower one to make tremendous sacrifices for the good of the
collective. By the same token, the Sun-Neptune individual can have a
tendency to believe the dream to be reality, to find it difficult to
distinguish fact from fiction, and at a pathological level to suffer
from a disintegration of the Ego and an invasion of collective
material leading to schizophrenia and total psychosis.
- At a Physical
level, Sun-Neptune relates to hyper-sensitivity, fragility, and
potential weakness of the heart and a tendency to be readily invaded.
- At the level of the Family, Sun-Neptune represents the
mysterious, illusive father, perhaps the absent father, the idealistic
father, the artistic, creative father and the un-realistic, self
sacrificing martyr to a cause; and of course the alcoholic or drug
addict - the abdicated King.
- At an Emotional level, Neptune's open-ness to the feelings of others can make both for a very
sympathetic and insightful approach to life, and a debilitating
moodiness resulting from the ebb and flow of responses to the
environment.
- At the level of Will, Sun-Neptune produces
the charismatic leader, the powerfully imaginative artist, but also
the weak and impressionable individual who is easily exploited by
others, who gives away their will and gets drawn into confused and
chaotic situations and whose life becomes a tangled web of deceptions
and halftruths.
- At an Intellectual level Sun-Neptune
activates the intuition to encompass wholenesses of truth, and great
receptivity to the power of symbolism and mystical experiences.
- At
a Spiritual level, Sun-Neptune represents the Mystic who has
attained to Union, who has found themselves in order to make the great
return; who, through a particular art or service, consciously realises
that his or her uniqueness has been nourished all along by the
inspiration coming from the Archetypal realms.
THE
STAGES OF THE CYCLE
The phase we are born at in the
unfoldment of the annual cycle of Sun and Neptune shows the
relationship between our Individual Creativity and the Collective
Vision. Those born around the conjunction are people who can
deeply engage with and embody the Ideas and Ideals of their
time and of the eternal Realities. At the incoming conjunction the
individual is, as it were, moving irrevocably back into the womb of
the Collective. There is a merging of individual and collective
purpose. The German philosopher Hegel epitomises this phase. He
conceived of consciousness (Sun) and the external universe of objects
of consciousness (Neptune) as forming a unity in which neither factor
can exist independently. He saw mind (Sun) and nature (Neptune) as
being two abstractions of one individual whole. Hegel believed
development took place through contradictions and the resolution of
contradictions: dialectic. In his great work The Phenornenology of
Spirit Hegel championed religion.
Jean Paul Sartre is another example of the conjunction which can
perhaps be best expressed in the title of one of his most famous works
L 'Etre et le néant (Sun and Neptune) and in his desire
to produce a fusion of existentialism (Sun) and Marxism (Neptune). Of
all the seed Sun-Neptune individuals of this century, probably another
Frenchman Teilhard de Chardin, the Jesuit mystic, scientist and poet,
seems to be the most obviously visionary and important. His vision of
humanity which he sets out in Le Phonomene humain and Le
Milieu divin is a vision of a world in which all things are
inter-related and where all distinctions between matter and spirit are
dissolved. Here we see the individual (Sun) capture and articulate the
essential vision of Neptune in Taurus and set forth the seed vision of
a world which is evolving through consciousness (Sun) towards the
Omega Point where love will be all in all (Neptune).
At a social level, Yassar Arafat, who was born with an almost exact conjunction, epitomises the
individual who totally identifies with a collective dream and myth; in
his case, that of the new Palestinian state. His life has been given
to this myth. It is notable that after a life time of celibacy, of
sacrificing himself to the Collective, that with the Israel-Palestine
accord Arafat felt free to get married. At the separating conjunction
the individual is still identified with the vision but seeks to take
it out into the world.
-
THE
CONJUNCTION - SEPARATING
-
Girolama Savonarola, the Italian
Catholic friar and religious reformer who crusaded against Church
corruption, is an example of this phase. His vision of moral purity in
a decadent time led to his public burning of decadent material, the
original "bonfire of the vanities", and to his own martyrdom
which heralded the Reformation.
Mohammad, the founder of Islam, is
said to have been born on 5th May 570. If so, he was born at this
conjunction which would be entirely appropriate for a man who preached
so forcefully complete submission of the individual (Sun) to the will
of God (Neptune), and the equality of all men of every race. This
faith was to give birth to a tremendous rich flowering of arts and
science and philosophy during our own Dark Ages.
Another example is
Kate Millet, the radical feminist writer and lecturer and one of the
founders of NOW (National Organisation of Women). Her Sexual Politics
were a landmark in feminist thinking and explores the way in which
patriarchy uses sex to determine power structure. She has been very
involved in re-visioning (Neptune) the role of men (Sun) in society
(Neptune). As we shall see, many of the leading feminists have been
born at key phases in the Sun-Neptune cycle.
- THE OUTGOING SEXTILE
- The Number 6 relates to the
objective workings of life. At the outgoing sextile in any cycle a
working relationship is established between the bodies involved and
these ideas are put to work in the world in daily life. The sextile is
about working in the world, about tools and ways and means, the
hexagon of the busy worker bee. In the case of Sun-60°-Neptune this
could be said to be the hallmark of the well ordered mystical life
whereby the individual (Sun) establishes a daily relationship, and one
that is more easily integrated, with the transcendent (Neptune).
This
process is well depicted in the writings of Herman Hesse where he deals with the individual in relation to the forces of
the archetypal. But the immediate struggle and panic is missing. He
explores and articulates the relationship between the earthly
individual and the mystical impulse. His work (The Glass Bead
Game, Siddhartha, Demian) is full of romantic dreams and idyllic
landscapes.
This phase is epitomised at a social level by the great
writer and philosopher Jean Jaques Rousseau whose thinking on the "noble
savage" inspired the Romantic Movement. His Contrat Social sets
out the relationship between the noble impulses of free man (Sun) and
how they can find collective expression (Neptune).
-
OUTGOING
SQUARE: DOING BATTLE WITH THE COLLECTIVE
-
The outgoing square demands that
the individual meet the material world and grapple with the issues
involved in making the root principles of the cycle manifest. This is
often both the most problematic phase of any cycle and yet at the same
time one of the most fruitful and productive. As the Sun arrives at
the outgoing square to Neptune, the ego (Sun) is challenged to
separate from the collective in some way, to differentiate from the
archetypal and yet at the same time to carry forward the collective
vision into the world. Whilst Neptune's sea of origins actually
substands and gives rise to the individual, with the out-going square
there can be an uneasy alliance and a sense that one must 'do battle'
with the all-encompassing archetypal which both inspires and swamps.
The great Swiss psychologist C.G. Jung epitomises this struggle
between individual and collective. He describes for us in his
autobiographical work Memories, Dreams and Reflections how his
work grew out of his own personal struggle with the Collective and
with the threat of being swamped, in effect with his own potential
psychosis and breakdown. In a sense we could take the description by
Jung of the process of individuation as a description of the challenge
of the Sun-Neptune outgoing square.
Another example is Friedrich Von Schiller whose life was centred around the articulation of an
aesthetic idealism, an ideal of intellectual and spiritual
achievement. He saw that through art and poetry the ideal personality
which is latent in everyone may be aroused and achieve living
expression.
-
THE OUTGOING TRINE
- The American-English
poet/playwright T. S. Eliot is a fine example of the
outgoing trine. He epitomises the creative delight of this
phase: the religious sequence of The Four Quartets in which he
seeks the eternal reality, and the drama Murder in the Cathedral
on the murder of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, show the
Sun-Neptune theme. Eliot constantly uses Neptunian imagery, for example in
The Dry Salvages:
The river is within us,
the sea is all about us.
For most of us, there is only the unattended Moment, the
moment in and out of time. The distraction fit, lost in a shaft
of sunlight, The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning Or
the waterfall, or music heard so deeply That it is not heard at
all, but you are the music While the music lasts.
The great Indian spiritual
leader Sri Aurobindo also had this outgoing trine, and in fact, in his
chart there is a Grand Trine of Sun-Moon-Neptune. Sri Aurobindo's life
was motivated by the desire (the trine and number Three are very much
to do with desire and what delights the heart) to integrate the divine
into the heart of one's life. He sought to connect the ascent to
divine consciousness with an opening to the descent of the divine
principle into the material world. In this process he saw the birth of
a "superman" endowed with those supramental abilities which
transcend the merely intellectual.
-
THE
OPPOSITION: RELATIONSHIP OF OPPOSITES -
The opposition is analogous to
the Full Moon and can be seen as a point of fruition. This is the
phase of most manifest duality and objectivity, where an acute
consciousness of the two factors in the cycle is reached. Here the
individual (Sun) must become aware of relationship with the collective
(Neptune). The striving for individuation/separation is intense and
yet can only be successful if the individual truly understands the
extent to which individuality depends upon universality. The
individual with this aspect can both confront the Great Sea of
nouminal realities and be fed by it or fall in and drown.
Gerard de Nerval, the French romantic writer and poet who wrote the beautiful
and mysterious Chimeres, was born as the Sun was just 2°
from the opposition. He teetered on the brink of the ocean of genius
and madness for most of his life. We all know the story of how he led
a lobster on a ribbon through the street. As he grew older he sank
deeper into the waters of visionary psychosis; his stories became
increasingly fantastic, his capacity to distinguish reality from dream
became more and more tenuous, until finally he took his own life in a
state of psychotic breakdown.
Mozart's life also exemplifies the
artistic creativity as well as the fragile self-definition this phase
can bring. And of course, central to his life and work was his stormy
and idealised relationship with his father.
Born just 4° degrees
after the exact opposition is Simone de Beauvoir, the French feminist,
socialist, and existentialist writer. In her seminal book Le
Deuxieme sexe she develops the ideas of Hegel (Sun conjunct
Neptune) on self and others. Her work is focused on objectifying
(opposition) and giving back to the world (incoming phase) the
cultural myths of the male-female relationship. She is concerned with
the way in which a woman's biological processes (Neptune) compete
with her need for individual identity (Sun. Dr Beauvoir suggests
that women define themselves in opposition to men to their
disadvantage. As with other feminists with a strong Sun-Neptune, her
relationships with men were ambiguous, and her long term relationship
with Jean Paul Sartre (Sun conjunct Neptune) was clearly both fraught
and inspired.
Betty Friedan, the pioneer U.S. feminist of the 1960s
who founded the National Organisation for Women, was born at almost
exactly the same incoming opposition phase in the Sun-Neptune cycle as
Dr Beauvoir. Interestingly, she has more lately been pleading for
communal values (Neptune) as an antidote to the sort of extreme
individualism that some feminists have encouraged.
-
THE INCOMING TRINE
-
Just as the
outgoing phase equated to the delights of the flowers of Springtime,
the incoming trine equates to early Autumn when the trees are laden
with fruit. There is a sense of delight and an aspiration to give to
the world from personal abundance. Typical of this phase is the German
poet and philosopher Novalis who expounded a philosophy of
fairytale-like creative imagination, based on a vision of supreme love
and spiritual aspiration.
"Poetry is indeed the absolutely real.
This is the heart of my philosophy. The more poetical the truer".
Another typical expression of
the INCOMING TRINE is the
archetypal psychologist James Hillman, whose works, such as
Revisioning Psychology, focus on celebrating the archetypal
realities of the many gods within us and honouring their expression.
-
INCOMING
SQUARE: RETURNING TO THE ONE
-
At the incoming square it would
seem that the individual is concerned with returning the fruits of
individuality to the greater good of the Collective. We saw how the
outgoing square was epitomised in the life of C. G. Jung: the
individual wrestling to individuate himself from the Collective
Unconscious. Albert Schweitzer is a beautiful example of the incoming
square; he wrestled with the dilemma of how he could most effectively
dedicate his individual achievements (Sun) to the Collective
(Neptune). Schweitzer first trained as a philosopher and theologian,
then as a musician, and finally as a doctor, choosing to dedicate his
great personal accomplishments (Sun) in selfless devotion as a medical
missionary at Lambaréné in Gabon, often raising the
necessary funds for his enterprises through giving Bach recitals on
the organ.
At this phase the individual
seems especially conscious of serving "the gods" and the
archetypal and imaginal realms. It is notable that we here find Proclus
whose The Theology of Plato is one of the most
important books ever written on the gods, likewise Petrarch whose
reintroduction of the imaginative depths of the human condition into
14th century Europe did so much to fuel the Renaissance, and Joseph Campbell whose life was dedicated to expounding the mythologies of all
ages and cultures.
The present Dalai Lama is another example of
someone whose life is given to the larger reality. On the dark side Robespierre,
"the sea green incorruptible", embodies the
capacity of this phase to become drunk on their own vision of things
to the point where they are consumed and become a martyr to it.
-
THE INCOMING SEXTILE
- At the incoming
sextile the individual is approaching unity and working to
understand the nature of the mysterious One. In this phase the
individual feels called upon to organise, order and disseminate the
practical realities of the transcendent and mythical, ordering it and
making it available. Appropriately this sextile appears in the chart
of James Frazer, the Scottish anthropologist who compiled the twelve
volumes of The Golden Bough. This monumental source book
assembles the ritual, religious beliefs and folklore of native peoples
throughout the world. His life was focused on working to understand
the universal basis of the magical and religious beliefs of mankind
through the ages.
Another example of this phase is Colin Wilson, the
English writer and philosopher whose prodigious output has focused on
organising and presenting the Neptunian spectrum of ideas from
existentialism to dreams, depth psychology, poetry and mysticism. He
produced the Encyclopaedia Of the Occult as well as numerous
works on key Neptunian individuals.
RUDHYAR:
AN AGENT & INTERPRETER OF NEPTUNE
Rudhyar himself was the
embodiment of the Sun-Neptune process. He was born at the incoming
Quintile of Sun to Neptune. The quintile refers to knowing and the
empowerment which comes from knowing. Rudhyar knew about the
relationship of individual to collective and his writing is very much
an exposition of that relationship. But this is no ordinary Neptune.
It is the Neptune conjunct Pluto of the 1890s. This conjunction, in
terms of mundane astrology, marked the seeding of the "global
village" and the beginning of a new world civilization which is
even now beginning to emerge.
Neptune was the key to his
chart: it exactly sets conjunct his Sun-ruler Mars. Not only is it in
a close quintile to the Sun on the Aries Point, but the all-important Sun/Moon mid-point is
almost exactly square to Neptune. Through the vision of Neptune he
found his own Inner Marriage and access to his own creativity.
For Rudhyar was the
master of the relationship between individual and collective. He
thought about it, he reflected on it, he knew about it, he was
empowered by it, it held and informed his insights about man and the
world. Rudhyar reminded us that the process of individuation is that
universal process which ends in the realisation of meaning. It starts
with Form and ends with Significance; and all meaning is born within
the innermost of the individual, but an individual who, after constant
assimilation of collective life contents, has reached a condition of
fulfillment as integrated Personality.
Charles Harvey (1940-2000) was one of the most oustanding British astrologers of the 20th century. He was the President of the Astrological Association of Great Britain from 1973-1994 and thereafter continued to be its Patron. He was also co-Director, with Liz Greene, of the Centre for Psychological Astrology, and the Director of the astrological charity The Urania Trust. Harvey worked as an astrological consultant and teacher and lectured widely in Europe and N. America. He was co-author, with his wife Suzi-Harvey of Sun Sign-Moon Sign and with Nicholas Campion and Michael Baigent of the widely respected Mundane Astrology, and Working with Astrology, co-written by Michael Harding.
A fuller biography is available on the Urania Trust website at http://www.uraniatrust.org/news.htm
© Charles Harvey, extracted from an article presented for publication in 1998.
Title graphic with acknowledgement to Gelosoft.com
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