ASTROLOGICAL ASPECTS

Photo: Tony Milner

ASTROLOGICAL
ASPECTS

A Process-Oriented
Approach

Leyla Rael
Dane Rudhyar
Artwork by Tony Milner
© 1980 by Leyla Rael & Dane Rudhyar

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quoted for purposes of review without the permission of the publisher.

Aurora Press, Inc.

P.O. Box 573
Santa Fe, N.M. 87504
Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Rael, Leyla, 1948-

Astrological aspects.

Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Astrology. I. Rudhyar, Dane, 1895-
II. Title.
BF1708.1.R33 133.5 80-18617
ISBN 0-943358-00-0
To Barbara Somerfield
and Henry Weingarten
in warm appreciation
and friendship

LR and DR
by Dane Rudhyar
Philosophy and Literature:
Beyond Individualism
Culture, Crisis and Creativity
Directives for New Life
Fire Out of the Stone
Occult Preparations for a New Age
Of Vibrancy and Peace
Paths to the Fire
*The Planetarization of Consciousness Rania
Rebirth of Hindu Music
Return from No Return
The Rhythm of Human Fulfillment
We Can Begin Again—Together
White Thunder

Astrology and Psychology:

The Astrological Houses
*Astrological Insights Into the Spiritual Life
An Astrological Mandala
Astrological Signs
An Astrological Study of Psychological Complexes
Astrological Timing
*An Astrological Triptych
Astrology and the Modern Psyche
The Astrology of America's Destiny
The Astrology of Personality
Astrology of Transformation
From Humanistic to Transpersonal Astrology
*Galactic Dimension of Astrology
The Lunation Cycle
New Mansions for New Men
*Person-Centered Astrology
The Practice of Astrology

*Indicates a title published by AURORA

 Contents
Preface
1. A Process-Oriented Approach to Astrology, Chart Interpretation and
Aspects
2. Familiar Aspects: Involution/Devolution
I. Growth through Spontaneous Activity
Phase 1 - Being
Phase 2 - Focusing
Phase 3 - Organizing
Phase 4 - Deciding
Phase 5 - Expressing
Phase 6 - Improving
II. Growth through Letting Go
Phase 7 - Realizing
Phase 8 - Sharing
Phase 9 - Understanding
Phase 10 - Revaluing
Phase 11 - Reorganizing
Phase 12 - Releasing
3. Less Familiar Aspects: Evolution
Growth through Meaning and Conscious Process
The Opposition and the Quincunx
The Trine
The Square
The Quintile
The Sextile
The Septile
The Octile or Semi-Square and the Sesquiquadrate
The Sesquiquadrate or Tri-Octile
The Novile
The Decile or Semi-Quintile
The Semi-Sextile
The Smaller Angular Values
4. Special Conjunctions and Oppositions: Retrogradation A Time for
Reorientation
5. Rectangular and Triangular Patterns in Horoscopes
6. Intuition and Interpretation: On Putting it all Together and "How To"
Appendix I - Example Horoscopes
Appendix II - Suggested Reading by Subject
 Preface
by Dane Rudhyar
After the publication in 1946 of the first version of the book now known
in its expanded form as The Lunation Cycle, I had intended to write a book
on astrological aspects. I had already outlined the sequence of the chapters
when Marc Jones, who was then editor of the books on astrology published
by McKay in Philadelphia, advised me that the publisher had decided to stop
dealing with occultism and astrology and was disposing of his stock on hand.
As, at that time, I could not find any American or English publisher interested
in my writings, I gave up the project I had in mind. I nevertheless wrote
series of articles dealing with aspects in a couple of astrological magazines.
Recently, having filed and indexed most of the many articles I had written
since 1933—when I began to write for Paul Clancy's new magazine
American Astrology—Leyla mentioned to me some of these old articles on
aspects. As she herself had successfully developed in a class she had just
given in San Franciso, an approach to the subject which I had only barely
suggested, she thought that her teachings, which had aroused a warm
response in her students, could be significantly combined with my old
articles, and this might produce a valuable book for people eager to have a
practical basis for the interpretation of interplanetary aspects.
I have always taken the approach that no aspect between two celestial
bodies moving at different speeds—as they all do—could be truly
understood unless it was considered a particular phase of the cyclic process
established by successive conjunctions of the two bodies. The prototype of
such cycles of relationship is the lunation cycle extending from new moon to
new moon; but any two planets considered as a pair produce such a kind of
cycle. The actual meaning of the cyclic series of aspects, from conjunction to
conjunction, depends on the character of the two related planets, but the
basic pattern of all such cycles has the same abstract, or rather 'archetypal',
character. If we understand the archetypal pattern of the cycle—that is, of any
cycle of relationship between two interacting entities—we have in mind an
instrument of universal validity. It can be applied at any level of existence
and consciousness. It provides a remarkably useful tool for the understanding
of the life-processes whose development is the warp and woof of all series
of events. We may think these events unrelated, as mere happenings, yet they
are in fact outer symptoms of the manner in which a cyclic series of phases
unfolds within a process that has a definite beginning, culmination and end.
Any phase of that process can significantly be referred to the original
impulse that started the process. It can also be understood in the light of the
manner in which the process culminates, and of the way in which it is drawn
to an inevitable end, out of which a new beginning may once more occur.
What I have just outlined in an abstract way will be found expressed in a
multiplicity of concrete details in this book. By far the major portion of it has
been actually written by Leyla who inspired the particular sequence of
developments in a few chapters. My main contributions have been the
chapters on the less familiar aspects and rectangular and triangular
configurations in horoscopes, though evidently the basic approach is always
in line with the type of astrological thinking I have used during the last 45 or
more years. This is assuredly not the only legitimate way of thinking
astrologically; and the strictly empirical and event-oriented approach
remains valid for those who can only operate in terms of external
occurrences and/or neatly classified psychological characteristics and types.
But today, especially among the searching and restless youth wary of
fashionable solutions and especially of traditional recipes, the demand for a
deeper kind of understanding is still constantly increasing in intensity.
I feel that this book will fill an important place in the spectrum of
astrological thinking and its study should amply repay the reader. Leyla has
given to it much time and has, I believe, carefully and effectively nurtured its
development, which is consistent and thorough. I trust it will be read in the
same attitude of concentrated attention and openness to ever expanding
mental vistas.
Leyla and I wish to thank our friend and assistant, Sandra Maitri, for
going over the manuscript and offering valuable editorial suggestions. The
example birth-charts found in Appendix I have been calculated with
Campanus house cusps, and we also thank Nicki Michaels for assuring their
accuracy by calculating them on her computer. We also extend our thanks to
Tony Milner who has artfully calligraphed these example horoscopes.
D. R.
Palo Alto
March 23, 1979
 1.
A Process-Oriented Approach to Astrology,
Chart Interpretation, and Aspects
Astrology as it is taught and practiced today has by and large lost its
sense of process. It deals primarily with traditionally established definitions
and descriptions, keywords and categories. A birth-chart is drawn on paper,
framed perhaps, and looked at as an objective thing, set once and for all with
an essentially static character. Whatever changes occur over the span of a
person's life are referred back to various, separately and statically defined
factors in his or her horoscope.
Yet astrology is based on celestial motion, and the human experience of
the sky is one of unceasing change. Every celestial entity is in a state of
perpetual motion, and celestial motions are also regular and periodical.
Astrology should therefore deal with the dynamism of existence. Because of
the regularity of the changes it records and interprets, it should be considered
a study of the processes of existence.
A process is nothing more nor less than an ordered sequence of changes.
It starts at some more or less well-defined beginning, unfolds in time through
a series of changes, steps or phases, eventually reaching some kind of
conclusion on the basis of which a new process proceeds. The alternation of
days and nights, the seasonal cycle of the year, the slow shifting of the Earth's
polar axis in relation to the 'fixed' stars: all are processes deeply affecting
human existence—which is itself a process operating individually in the
chronological unfoldment of the human life-span (with all its implications of
biological and psychological growth) and collectively in terms of long-range
cultural and historical developments. Astrology merely broadens,
conceptualizes, generalizes and codifies into principles applicable to human
development, the experience of such processes as seasonal changes and the
periodic change from light to dark, which are facts of common human
experience. It also extends this concept of process to the periodic
relationships between moving planets—indeed between everything in the sky
and everything else.
Because this sense of process is essentially missing from astrological
thinking today, the aim of this book is to reawaken in astrologers' minds the
realization that astrology does indeed deal with constant and rhythmic,
dynamic celestial motions rather than with merely static factors and
categories. Therefore, when interpreting birth-charts and applying astrology
to matters of human development and concern, a sense of process and of the
structure of celestial cycles must underlie the astrologer's efforts.
It is true that astrologers study and interpret what are called progressions
and transits. When such notions as dynamic process, ordered change and
unfoldment in time are mentioned, most astrologers immediately think of
these two techniques. Yet progressions and transits deal with time, motion
and change only in an overt, obvious way. Even they, however, are not
interpreted by most astrologers in terms of continuing processes, i.e., in
terms of real, existential motions or changes—human or celestial—and thus
not in terms of their fundamental, holistic nature and meaning.
Nevertheless, basic in astrological thinking and interpretation should be
the feeling that every factor and technique used in astrology—zodiacal signs,
houses, planets, aspects as well as progressions and transits—can only be
fully understood in terms of whole processes of change. The application of
the rhythms of celestial motion to corresponding developments in the lives of
human beings can never be fully significant and revealing if the astrologer
does not realize that human experience acquires its essential meaning when
studied in terms of personal and collective unfoldment. Process is at the very
root of human experience and development, because human life is primarily
the working out of a complex set of relationships between the components of
the total personality and between a person and all other persons or objects
and events encountered as the life process which began at birth unfolds its
potentialities.
To speak of relationship is also to speak of what in astrology are called
aspects. This book is primarily about astrological aspects. It is also a book
about chart interpretation. And it is also a book about /i/e-interpretation, that
is, how to use birth-charts and astrological thinking to see and understand the
unfoldment of dynamic, purposeful processes in people's lives, or rather,
how to see people's lives as the unfoldment of dynamic, purposeful
processes—their processes, their dharma, destiny or truth-of-being.
Dharma, however, does not refer merely to a state to be achieved, but to a
process to be lived, step by step.
This process, which must be lived and acted out step by step over the
span of a person's life, is nevertheless implied in the spatial organization of
the birth-chart, in the aspects and aspect-patterns linking the planets—
themselves representing dynamic centers or principles of activities and
functions. Aspects in astrological charts should be understood as injunctions
—instructions telling us how the activities or functions represented by two
planets should be related to one another in order to fulfill what is needed at a
particular phase of the whole cycle during which the two planets relate to
one another in all possible ways. In other words, aspects tell us what to do
with what is represented by two planets relating to one another in an
especially significant way; the particular significance of the aspect or
interplanetary relationship derives from the place this phase-relationship
occupies in the two planets' overall cycle with one another.
Conversely, if we are experiencing in our life a certain situation which
we can identify as being symbolized by two planets, the natal aspect or
relationship between those two planets can help us understand why—for
what productive purpose—we must deal with such circumstances. Implied
also is the best way for us to meet them. Even if what we face is not
immediately apparent in our birth-chart, if we understand the principles of
process underlying aspects, we will be better able to understand situations as
parts or phases of our lives as wholes, and we will be better able to deal
with them (or realize how we might have dealt with them) in conscious,
creative ways.
It is to be hoped that a practical, specific understanding of astrological
aspects will become clear in concrete ways as we proceed with the more or
less didactic material which will make up the bulk of this book. This book,
which talks a great deal about process, is itself a process. It needs to unfold
gradually in the reader's mind, step by step, as any ordered process of growth
or development. How could a book about principles of process do otherwise
than to itself unfold step by step, each step building upon the preceding ones?
Please do read it that way.
 But now, back to the matter at hand. We have made a rather serious
allegation: Astrology has lost its sense of process. Perhaps we should first
inquire as to how and why before suggesting how we believe it should be
restored and reincorporated into astrological thinking to meet the needs of
modern men and women.

HOW ASTROLOGY LOST ITS SENSE OF PROCESS

When cycles in time became circles in space, astrologers became so
involved with the circles that they forgot about the cycles of which the
circles were merely representations or symbols.
Any experience of time is difficult to measure or to define accurately.
Space (although philosophically just as 'abstract') is much easier to deal with
in a practical or conceptual way, especially when one is dealing with a
relatively small and manageable space such as one can 'trap' on a clay tablet
or piece of paper—space that stands still and doesn't squirm around when
one puts a ruler or compass to it in order to divide it up into even more
manageable segments.
Time and especially time-measurements, which are all derived from
celestial motions, are not as well-behaved and manageable as that.
Everything in the heavens is in constant motion, moving in relation to
everything else. Even the so-called 'fixed stars' are not actually fixed—they
merely appear to remain in the same patterns with reference to one another.
They also move, quite slowly but significantly, in relation to the vernal
equinox point and the seasonal cycle between the Sun and the Earth.
Moreover, although celestial motions map out many cycles—various orders
of time, let us say, such as the year or the day—and others like the sidereal
cycle of the Moon, the synodic cycle between the Sun and Moon—the
sidereal cycles of the planets, synodic cycles between planets, etc.—none of
these time-measurements can be precisely expressed in terms of any of the
others. There is always some ungraceful, inelegant shortfall or leftover
whenever we try to equate some number of one kind of celestial cycle with
exactly another, longer cycle. For example, 365¼, rather than exactly 365
days make up a year. There is therefore always some time 'unaccounted for,
as it were, and as smaller cycles go into but never exactly make up larger
cycles, shortfall or leftover time piles up. It intrudes itself in a spiralic,
unmanageable way. In order to make time less squirmy and more
manageable, calendars—and astrology per se—were devised.
Calendars actually 'trap' time in space to handle it more easily. They
project time onto spaces which can then be more easily measured, divided up
and meted out to appropriate activities than the time-experience when not
projected onto a particular space. Clocks (especially the now old-fashioned
kind with face and hands more than the new-fangled electronic, digital ones)
are a similar, although later and more ambitious because mechanical,
projection of time onto space.
Long before the kind of clocks and calendars we have now, astrology
was born as a means to provide a spatial method of measuring time—an
objective method. The creative, change- and growth-producing flow of time
was referred by astrologers and early calendar makers to the ordered
motions of celestial dots and discs of light. The first astrologies were the
first calendars and vice versa. They spatialized time for appropriate tribal
use just as later time was recorded and standardized for every person's
individual use by means of clocks and calendars which are synchronized to
celestial motions. To interpret and make time-experience concrete by space-
patterns became the function of astrology, in the same way in which to
interpret and make concrete the properties of numbers was the function of
geometry—and even today geometrical models are made to make intricate
algebraic functions more concretely intelligible.
A whole of time-experience—a complete cycle such as a year or a day, a
lunar or planetary sidereal cycle or a synodic cycle between two celestial
bodies—thus came to be projected into space, and it took the form of a
circumference: the serpent swallowing its own tail of archaic symbolism,
less exaltedly but more ubiquitously, the circle. The circle came to stand as
the symbol for wholeness—wholeness in space as a projection of less-
easily-defined and worked with wholeness in time. The advantage of
working with a circle was that the circle could be visually grasped as a
whole in one glance; a cycle unfolded at its own rate over time and could
neither be experienced all at once nor speeded up or slowed down. Circles
could also be divided into any number of segments or arcs. And while actual
cycles—both natural cycles on Earth and celestial cycles—are also divided
into phases, they are divided into more or less set numbers of phases.
In any cyclic experience there are particularly significant moments or
turning points. These mark out the phases whereby cycles develop. It seems
quite evident that the concepts of the signs of the zodiac, the houses of the
horoscope and astrological aspects as divisions or segments of a whole
circle originated in the recognition of such especially important moments
when something always seemed to happen that would give a vital direction to
the sequence of events developing throughout the complete cycle being
considered. Quite obviously, the beginning of vegetation in the spring and the
fall of leaves following the harvest stood out in the agricultural civilizations
of Mesopotamia and other temperate regions as high-points in the basic
seasonal cycle of the year. Likewise, sunrise, noon and sunset were selected
as similarly basic moments in the full day-and-night cycle leading—together
with a mysterious point opposite noon in the cycle of the day—to the basic
quadrature of all astrological charts and concepts.
A similar and even more graphic or geometrical fourfold cyclic pattern
was related to the phases of the Moon during the month. It seems quite plain
to us that the observation and recording of lunar phases led to the rational
and geometrical concepts of astrological aspects. The three basic aspects of
archaic astrology are thus likely to have been the conjunctions (New Moon),
opposition (Full Moon) and square (First and Last Quarters). These are
aspects born of the experience of time, and, from what we know of archaic
geometry even as late as Pythagoras, the figure of the square, which the
fourfold time-experiences of day, year and synodic month all inferred when
projected as space-patterns, must have been, together with the circle on
which the square was projected, the basic measurements of space.
The astrological aspect called trine, however, does not seem to have
come out of any primary sense of time-division. If we divide a circle into
three arcs and inscribe the geometrical figure of a triangle in it by connecting
the points defining the arcs, we would not be following a pattern suggested
by the flow of natural processes in the biosphere. Neither can an essential
threefoldness be inferred from observing any celestial cycles. If we think of
dividing a cycle into three parts, we do so as a result of being able to
separate the concept of a process from all our experiences of processes—
our experiences of processes in nature displaying always an essentially two-
or fourfold structure.
Herein lies the rub between circle and cycle, space-projection and time-
experience, geometry and process. With the trine, the danger of astrology
losing its sense of process arises. But so also comes into play the possibility
of astrology becoming truly a key to understanding the mysteries of man and
the universe!
When we speak about a trine, we are not specifically or exclusively
referring to the astrological aspect we use today, but more generally to
astrological notions of three-fold linking not based on time-experience and
process, but on space-projection, geometry and concept. In other words,
when triangulation appears in astrological thinking, it means that a shift in
emphasis has occurred. The change is from emphasis on experience to
emphasis on abstraction from experience, from cycle to circle.
We see the same nexus being reached in terms of the zodiac, when the
time-experience of the seasons became embodied, as it were, in a
geometrical design. In nature, unfoldment is paramount and the process of
change is step by step, although some steps may be seemingly large or
sudden. When the seasons unfold in time, what is important is the
relationship of each sign (or solar 'month') to the signs preceding and
succeeding it—thus, the 30° aspect semi-sextile, which, as we will see in the
next chapter, forms the foundation for a time-approach to astrological
aspects..But neither the 30° aspect nor the relationship of each zodiacal sign
to its two adjacent ones is or has been for a long time as significant in
astrology as, say, the relationship of opposite signs, signs at the four arms of
crosses or squares, or signs at the three points of equilateral triangles
inscribed in the zodiacal circle.
That the zodiac has come to be considered more of a circle than a cycle
even though its very basis is time-experience should be obvious. Otherwise,
how could we refer to something like 'Mars in Virgo'? In a very curious,
Alice-in-Wonderland way from the time-experience point of view, such
phrases make the same kind of sense as saying it is March, but my typewriter
is in September. Astronomically, it is like saying something more to the effect
of it is March, but Mars is where the Sun was last September and will be this
coming September. But why should the particular section of the sky the Sun
crosses in September carry September's qualities and somehow transfer them
to or through Mars when the Sun is not there and it is in fact spring? We have
always found it puzzling that astrologers have not considered the way the
zodiac is used to be more mysterious, or at least have not generally asked
deep and probing questions about it.
Such phrases as 'Mars in Virgo' and its attendant, above-mentioned
conundrums make sense if we understand that as the human capacity for
abstraction and conceptualization, and therefore astrology and the zodiac,
developed, the cycle of the seasons was projected as a circle in space. This
gave rise to the significance of the cardinal, fixed and mutable crosses, and
the earth, air, fire and water triangles, which developed as significant
symbols in their own right. However, as the 'timeward' flow of zodiacal
signs was 'interrupted' and, as it were, reshuffled by geometric inscription
and linking, the signs became increasingly thought of as separate entities,
eventually becoming in most people's minds little more than twelve boxes or
categories into which fall a variety of characterizations and personality traits
—these often having little if anything to do with natural processes such as the
unfoldment of the seasons or the span of a human life, but gaining far more of
what are attributed as their meanings from geometric, particularly triangular,
linking with other signs.1
Of course, it will be asserted that from a sidereal point of view the
zodiac arose as a frame of reference associated with the constellations,
which provided reference areas for celestial motions in the heavens where
nothing else stood relatively still long enough to be used as such a
framework. This may be so—at least in part and in some areas of the world
—but it would also appear that even before the constellations were 'fixed' as
definite celestial entities, the process of heliacal and achronycal rising and
setting of certain brilliant stars, along with seasonal changes, played a
significant role in astronomical understanding.2 Moreover, whether the
zodiac is considered in its tropical or sidereal aspect, it is always divided
into 360 degrees, even though the Sun appears to move a little over 365 times
around the Earth before returning to its starting point—be that the vernal
equinox or a point in relation to fixed stars. The number 360 is thus a
geometrical rationalization or conceptualization of the experience of change
—i.e., of time.
 In any case, an in-depth discussion of zodiacal development is beyond
our intent here. Our main point at the moment is that whether one approaches
the zodiac from a sidereal or seasonal point of view, the cycle/circle,
experience/concept, time/space issues remain the same: what was for the
earliest star-gazer/astrologers essentially the mystery of unfoldment of time
and the experience of change and process became for later
astrologer/geometers the fascinating possibilities of mathematically and
intellectually manipulating a two-dimensional abstract diagram in space.
Why the fascination? Because Greek philosophers like Pythagoras and
Plato believed geometry and mathematics held the keys to the mysteries of
Man, God and the universe. To the evolving Western intellect, geometry and
mathematics revealed a supersensible, 'perfect' or ideal pattern of order
behind, but not actually in, what were considered the less-than-perfect
manifestations of nature—human nature and the unruly periods of celestial
motions included. Geometer/philosophers sought their world of archetypal
perfection not in experience and existential reality, but in exact geometrical
patterns and rational numerical sequences and ratios which could be handled
by man's divine component, Reason, but which could never be encountered
exactly in the real world of the senses. Plato, for example, encouraged young
men destined for the responsibilities of public service to develop their minds
by studying, among other things, astronomy. But he warned that they were not
to trouble themselves too much about the actual heavenly bodies, but rather
with the mathematics of motion of ideal heavenly bodies.3
It was not a very large step from the mathematics of the motions of ideal
heavenly bodies to the mathematics of the geometry inferred from the
motions of ideal heavenly bodies. Planetary rulerships— i.e., geometric,
symmetrical schemata of relationships or 'affinities' between planets and
zodiacal signs—fairly soon became more significant than the planets
themselves or their motions, actual or ideal.4 The zodiac, the perfect circle,
first became more significant than the process it represented and the planets
for which it served as a frame of reference,5 then, the geometric relationships
among its individual signs became more significant than the perfection, let
alone the process, represented by the whole.6
 Thus, in all fields of human endeavor, and not only in astrology, the
chasm between the realm of static archetypes and the world of ever-changing
phenomena, between intellect (in the Greek sense of the term) and experience
widened. Experience—the realm of the senses and all natural processes—
was consigned to a rung of the value-ladder quite below the rank of Reason,
i.e., the realm of thought and rational processes. Nature had to be subdued by
Reason, considered the ensouling principle of man, and human nature was at
the head of the list. The body and its natural inclinations, character and
destiny as 'written in the stars' had to be forged into a fitting receptacle for
the divine soul, Reason.
Hence, the purpose of an individual's horoscope became to enable him to
'rule his stars.' The horoscope was a conventionalized map of the places of
the real heavenly bodies at the time of birth. It therefore referred to the realm
of nature, human nature, to the part of the human being which had to be
controlled or subdued by his reason. But if the wise man was to rule his
stars, i.e., his natural inclinations and destiny, he had to know what they were
and how to do combat with them. Astrology developed as an increasingly
complex descriptive typology, from which every person could ascertain his
or her strengths and weaknesses, wielding the former as weapons in order to
conquer the latter.
While the horoscope was referred to nature, the interpretation of the
horoscope was the province of the intellect. Since manifestations of nature
are many and celestial factors describing them relatively few, the myriad
relationships between factors in the horoscope became increasingly
significant. The ruler of one sign in the house of another indicated one thing,
which could be mitigated or tempered one way or another if something else,
the ruler of such-and-so rose in conjunction with the ruler of still some other
house or sign. This is not terribly different from what many astrological
textbooks today present as a more sophisticated psychological approach: "If
planet x is in sign or house y, the native tends to be. ... At times he may do
such-and-so, creating this or that type of problem. He will be most happy (or
successful) if he. . . rather than.... He should use extra caution when. . . and
should try instead to cultivate
In terms of what we are developing here, we should first realize what a
tremendous change this represents from the way in which ancient people
reverenced the stars and planets and sought to attune themselves to the
natural, seasonal processes and inevitable periodic changes over which they
believed the heavenly discs and dots of light unquestionably held sway. To
seek to attune oneself to natural processes is evidently quite different from
trying to rule and bend them to one's will! And it matters only slightly
whether the processes one interferes with are external, biospheric-natural
ones or internal, psychological, human-natural ones.
We are beginning, quite uncomfortably, to realize where the 'conquer'
mentality has led Western civilization, most obviously in terms of its
particular brand of science and technology. And yet, humanity has evidently
passed the point at which a more or less passive attunement to purely natural
and biospheric rhythms is possible or even desirable. Can there not be a
meeting ground between these two contrasting approaches to life? Can a
sense of process and attunement rather than separation and manipulation be
reincorporated, not only into astrology, but into human consciousness and
actions as well?
What we must realize is, first, that the time/space, process/geometry,
attune/rule dualities in astrology are representative of a whole range of
similar conflicts in practically all areas of human enquiry and endeavor.
Whether we say that the horns of the dilemma are represented by the right and
left sides of the brain, or whether we rely on feeling and experience or on
our intellects, a holistic world-view vs. an atomistic one, really makes little
difference. These are all different ways of depicting the same crossroads.
For, second, we must recognize that all such dualities essentially reflect the
fact that human consciousness has passed through the first two stages of a
developmental process which must now proceed to its third stage just as
synthesis must follow thesis and antithesis. But synthesis, contrary to popular
opinion, is not like running something willy-nilly through a Waring Blender;
it is more than mere eclecticism. True synthesis is like the integration of Yin
and Yang within the Chinese symbol Tai-Chi, the enfolding and
encompassing, dynamic Tao. It is a harmonization of opposites within a more
inclusive vision.
Astrologically, such a synthesis means bringing together the essence and
unique contributions of both the archaic/attunement approach and the
classical/archetypal approach. We must restore to astrological thinking and
understanding a sense of process and of reverence for the wholeness,
integrity and elegant necessity of life-processes, while retaining astrology's
sophisticated, abstracted symbology, conceptual tools and geometric schema
bringing into play the qualitative and archetypal aspects of number and form.
The approach resulting from this type of synthesis should of course
encompass qualities of each earlier approach, but it should also far surpass
both in psychological sophistication and philosophical inclusiveness.
Because human consciousness was able to formulate and use the two earlier
approaches, it developed the capacity for a broader perspective through the
experience and the process—even though the experience and process
consisted largely of, first, denying the significance of experience and process
in relation to a supersensible ideal, geometric realm and developing the
powers of abstraction, rationalization and conceptualization; then, turning
those very powers back on the material world, asserting that only what was
physical and could be grasped and manipulated by the intellect could be
considered 'real'!
We believe that the process-oriented approach we are developing in this
book has the possibility of going far toward stimulating the needed synthesis
in astrology. The reader should recognize, however, how different it is,
especially from the purely descriptive approach he or she may be used to
encountering in most textbooks. The process-oriented approach we are
envisioning is an approach not only to chart interpretation perse, but also, we
repeat, an astrological approach to life interpretation. It is an approach in
which the motions of celestial bodies become symbols of how processes
operate and unfold everywhere, and an approach in which a person's life is
seen and understood as the polyphonic unfoldment of a variety of processes,
all aimed at fulfilling some necessary evolutionary step or function. Such an
approach, like the approach of archaic or indigenous peoples, seeks
attunement rather than forcible mastery. But it is not an approach advocating
passivity or resignation. It is an approach promoting understanding and
meaningful living, and a transformative willingness to pass through whatever
life brings in order to grow and develop and actualize the potentialities
inherent in one's birth. It is an approach which ultimately flows from—and
toward—the realization that every life-process, whether in nature, human
nature in general, or in a particular person's life, is a phase of a larger
process, a step in the step-by-step unfoldment of something essentially
necessary for personal, collective or cosmic evolution.

A PROCESS-ORIENTED APPROACH TO THE BIRTH-

CHART
From a process-oriented point of view, we can best understand the birth-
chart—the map of the heavens drawn for the exact time and place of a
person's first breath—if we picture it as a stop-motion snapshot of a moment
in the flow of the life of the cosmos. It is, as it were, a slice of celestial
space-time as seen from planet Earth. The whole past of celestial motion is
behind and implied in the particular planetary, zodiacal, house and aspect
pattern appearing at the moment of our birth. And implied in both its totality
and each of its parts is dynamic momentum, that is, an inexorable
continuation of motion toward a future unfoldment. A birth-chart is thus a
celestial statement of where the universe 'is', and therefore what it needs
next, at the moment of our birth.
This celestial situation symbolizes the existential, human one— or vice
versa. In the history of the cosmos, or at least what we know of it, of our
cosmos—the Earth, humanity, our society, family, etc. —certain things have
been done, certain developmental and evolutionary steps have been taken;
certain attitudes, values, institutions, patterns of behaving, thinking and
feeling have been built, cycle upon cycle, process upon process, step by step.
The newborn inherits, as it were, a world and a cosmos already in progress.
Many things have been done, and they have been done well or badly. Some
lines of development have produced beautiful accomplishments or valid and
workable solutions to life's challenges. Other evolutionary attempts have
failed partially or utterly, or left behind toxic by-products or decaying
remains which must be neutralized or eliminated before the next constructive
steps can be taken in a particular area. Some new developments may be just
beginning and need to be nurtured to maturity; innovation may be drastically
needed in other areas.
At all times, a host of cycles of development, terrestrial and celestial, is
in process—and the next steps need to be taken in all of them. The birth-
chart shows us that each one of us is the potential taker of some next step(s).
It shows us not only that each of us is a potential taker of some step, it shows
us how—by handling what types of energies and by meeting and passing
through what types of challenges in what areas of life—we can endeavor to
answer the need we were born to fulfill. What is implied as a 'next step' by
the myriad of cycles frozen and focused into a birth-chart—each planet-to-
planet relationship, each relation of planet to sign, planet to house, sign to
house, etc.—has to be made actual, to be fulfilled in the world by a person
born at that particular time and place. Past karma demands that this be so; the
future, yet unborn but 'present' in seed, yearns for it as a foundation. If we
believe that life is indeed ordered and meaningful, we can also trust that we
will be 'given' to experience whatever situations we need, either through, or
in spite of which we can best fulfill our function.
This may seem somewhat abstract, but we can perhaps make it more
concrete by saying that, at least astrologically and archetypally, we can
follow many developmental processes as they unfold by relating them to the
phases—i.e., aspects—of symbolically appropriate celestial or planetary
cycles: for example, long, universalizing cycles of the development of culture
and civilization to the nearly 500-year-long Pluto/Neptune cycle; cycles of
sociocultural formation and transformation to the Uranus/Saturn cycle; local
political and social patterns to Jupiter and Saturn, and so on. From such a
point of view, we can actually watch our birth-charts taking form over time,
the natal positions and aspects 'clicking in', as it were, one after another, step
by step.
Similarly, if we are process-oriented students of history, psychology and
sociology, we can see the kinds of situations we face in our lives having been
formed over time and through individual and collective cycles of
development during the decades and years before our birth. We can actually
see that the kinds of problems we face in life become possible through such a
process. It may seem rather strange to speak of problems almost as if they
were privileges, but in a sense—an evolutionary, process-oriented sense—
this is indeed the case. Problems occur when traditions crystallize and
become ineffective, when the pressures of past karma necessitate
unprecedented solutions to equally unprecedented 'messes', or when new
potentialities engendered by positive steps forward in human development
require bold and enlightened innovation in order to be actualized.
 From such a point of view, we should realize that as our birth-charts
were once the 'transits' of a day in the life of the cosmos, so, too, are our
lives phases in the process of human development. What we often fail to
realize when we deal with what we call our personal problems is that they
are actually particular or individual focalizations of the developmental
challenges of our times. Changing values in interpersonal relationship, in
social institutions such as marriage and the family, in the roles of men and
women—problems with our children, their education, involvement with
peer-group activities, drugs, TV or fashion—economic difficulties brought
about by job-loss or the obsolescence of skills built over a life-time—
situations of psycho-spiritual crisis or conflict encountered in an eager
search for 'new realities,' modes of consciousness or levels of being: all
these and more are reflections and personal manifestations of much larger
patterns operating within our society and humanity as a whole at this time in
history and evolution.
To say this, however, is not to minimize or take away from the gravity or
importance of individuals' problems. Rather, it is to put the kinds of
challenges facing each of us today into a proper, workable and process-
oriented perspective. On the one hand, we can endeavor to understand our
birth-charts and lives from the point of view of a purely individual
psychology, exploring and primarily trying to deal with the personal-
psychological causes of our problems. We can even personally relate to the
past antecedents of our lives in a historical way, seeing what we presently
face as a continuation of a past having produced and passed on an impersonal
type of karma (residua) and dharma (potentialities). Or we can consider our
connectedness to the past in a reincarnational way—that is, in terms of
having been associated in some way with actual personalities who lived and
acted and participated in the past, creating and passing on a more personal
kind of karma or need for a 'next step'. Reincarnation can, of course, also be
thought of by postulating 'being' or 'having' a divine or immortal soul or
monad which, having incarnated here or elsewhere in the past, returns to
finish certain unfinished business or take the next step in some on-going
process of development. The variations on such themes are practically
endless.
 On the other hand, it may be equally important to also recognize the
reality of our interconnectedness with a larger whole, with collective
processes of development and unfoldment, to recognize the fact that we as
individuals with particular birth-charts face certain situations or problems in
our relationships, families, jobs, psyches or checkbooks because the
development of humanity as a whole, and particularly of the society of which
we are a part, has reached a stage at which new approaches to the principles
of human consciousness and activity underlying the forms of such situations
are needed. In other words, certain kinds of problems, capabilities or
challenges are indicated in individuals' lives and birth-charts because they
represent—both for the individuals and the collectivity—the means whereby
all can take the next steps in their respective, but interconnected evolutionary
processes.
Even this, we realize, may sound rather abstract and far-removed from
the experience and usual thinking of many people, astrologers and astrology
students. But it is a conclusion to which a truly process-oriented approach to
astrology inexorably points. Anyone who thinks he or she or his or her life is
independent of larger processes of development, or not structured by the
principles of cyclic unfoldment is not thinking realistically—or
astrologically. For if we encounter a situation in someone's life which we
can identify as having something to do with, say, Neptune in Libra or Venus
square Saturn in their birth-chart, we would not avow that either of these are
purely personal indications. While they may manifest in the personal life of
an individual, they are nevertheless symbols of universal human functions
and phases of development which must be lived through and actualized. . .for
a purpose.
We perhaps more readily see and acknowledge this when we look at the
birth-charts and lives of certain 'larger-than-life' personalities or public
figures. Some of us do indeed wind up performing large, public roles in
shaping values, disseminating information, inspiring great movements, etc.
But we should first of all recognize that the function of such 'greatness' is not
dependent only upon indications in birth-charts. Many people are born with
similar planetary placements and aspects, and many people born with so-
called 'promising' charts never seem to actualize much in the way of positive
results in their lives at any level. On the other hand, just as important as the
more obvious contributions of persons who gain some degree of renown or
notoriety is the growth and development that is called for in each of our
lives. Not only what we do, but also the quality of consciousness and spirit
in which we do it, perpetuates itself and continues to evolve, refine or break
down basic patterns of human behavior over millennia, whether we operate
at the level of personal psychology or in terms of larger social or cultural
patterns. Such a transmission is focused into the 'seed harvest' of our lives—
which can refer to our children (biological level), life-work (socio-cultural
level) and/or our contributions or 'input' to the one Mind of Humanity. As the
occult saying goes, "No work is ever lost."
This is perhaps a good opportunity to mention why we will present
examples of well-known contemporary and historical figures in connection
with, especially, the less well-understood and used aspects we will be
exploring. We present them because they fulfill two requirements of being
good examples: (1) their charts contain the particular aspect or configuration
we are discussing, and (2) the lives of these persons seem to have fulfilled
or exemplified in some way the taking of the step represented by the
particular aspect. This is not to say that a particular aspect indicates that
such-and-so will manifest in a person's life or that it 'makes' a person or his
or her life a certain way. No aspect or configuration presents a guarantee or a
'given'— for as we will see, even trines need to be actualized through a
process of development and do not 'magically' manifest by themselves. It is
to say that the particular example—chart and person and life—exemplifies
for us the meeting of a challenge and the taking of some 'next step,' i.e., the at
least partial fulfillment of the need the aspect symbolized.
Such examples notwithstanding, the questions still remain: When we are
not dealing with persons whose lives have, at least to some extent, already
been lived out and made manifest on a public level, how do we go about
understanding what is represented by aspects in a client's (or in our own)
chart? How do we know what particular 'need' or 'next step' in development
is necessary and possible for that person to fulfill or take over the course of
his or her life? Our answer: By familiarizing ourselves with the principles of
planetary meanings, cyclic unfoldment and aspect formation, we allow the
essential truths expressed through the principles to permeate, enlighten and
transform our thinking. By so doing, we greatly expand our capacity to give
meaning to life via astrological symbolism—for we evoke and develop
intuition.

WHY PRINCIPLES?
In a complex and dynamic universe in which countless variables
constantly interact, no one could possibly memorize enough definitions of
particular situations to 'cover' everything he or she might encounter. Thinking
in terms of broad, inclusive but flexible principles is the most effective, and
ultimately the wisest 'way to go'. But for some people, principles are like
scotch whiskey: a taste for them is not inherent and has to be acquired.
Especially today, astrological principles are often stated quickly, then
shunted aside in favor of more particular, memorizable statements or
paragraphs neatly tabulated in textbooks attempting to provide a compendium
of definitions for all possible combinations of factors under scrutiny.
It is, however, impossible to tabulate all possible combinations of
astrological factors if we take into account more than two of them at a time.
We can consider factor a in relation to twelve others, as when we deal with
planets in signs, or planets in houses, or signs on cusps of houses. (The
situation merely becomes more complicated if we take intercepted signs and
signs spread over two houses into account.) We can easily tabulate planet x
in six aspect-relations to each of the other planets. We can even turn this
around and make all the various pairings via six relationships mutual. But we
would certainly need a lot of paper and pencils to account for all the
possible threefold combinations of ten planets and six aspects—such as
Venus square Mars, with Venus also square Saturn (and Mars therefore
opposition Saturn); Venus square Mars, with Venus also square Jupiter (and
Mars therefore in opposition to Jupiter). . . Venus square Mars, with Venus
also sextile Saturn (and therefore Mars quincunx Saturn); Venus square Mars,
with Venus sextile Jupiter (and Mars therefore quincunx Jupiter), etc.
Even if we managed to tabulate each of such manifold combinations of
three planets and six-aspects with a computer, how would we deal with the
definitions? Each two- or threefold combination would still find itself in the
company and context of several other two- and threefold combinations, and
we would not be very much better off than when we started, when separate
definitions of twofold combinations were 'added' to one another. As many
astrology students have discovered, this procedure provides a less-than-
brilliant or even satisfactory overall interpretation—what is usually (and
wrongly) called 'synthesis'. Actually, each combination of factors not only
adds itself to the others, but changes them by its very presence. It is as true
in astrology as elsewhere that the whole is always greater than the sum of its
parts—and even greater than the sum of relationships between all its parts.
The interpretation of a birth-chart must proceed from an intuitive grasp of the
whole—and intuition is developed by understanding and using principles to
the point that they transform the thinking of the one who thinks in terms of
them.
What we have mainly considered so far in terms of tabulating complex,
interrelated factors is just the astrological side of the matter. What about the
human side? Human psychology being what it is, one can never account for
and define in advance all possible constellations of factors interweaving in
the life of a person. Even if by some stretch of the imagination it were
possible to tabulate all possible horoscopic combinations of astrological
configurations, one could never account for the variety of human beings
having similar enough charts; nor could one account for the actual level of
functioning at which persons live out what is symbolized in their birth-charts.
Because of differences in race, culture, religion, class, circumstances of
birth, etc., people differ widely as to the level at which they operate.* No
reference book—astrological or psychological—could ever pinpoint what
should be explored as significant and meaningful in a particular person's life
or chart at a particular time. The only way an astrologer can rise to every
occasion presented by a client's life and birth-chart at a particular time in the
client's life is by becoming thoroughly versed in principles—astrological,
psychological and philosophical principles giving a broad, inclusive and
flexible overview of the entire human and astrological situation at hand.
It is often feared that principles, especially those associated with
astrology, are too 'abstract.' But abstraction is not unreality, and the term
should not scare anyone willing to exercise his or her power of thought. To
'abstract' means literally 'to draw out of. To abstract principles from
experience means to penetrate the opacity of particularity and to perceive the
workings of the universal in and through the existential, no matter how
distorted or dense the material reality may be. It is to see the archetypal
behind and in every actual manifestation, and in some cases, to infer the latter
from the former. This is the true function of the humanistic, process-oriented
astrologer vis-a-vis his or her client's chart and life.
In order to be able to truly work with principles—or rather to have
archetypal principles work in us and operate through our thinking—we must
become so thoroughly acquainted with them that we 'forget' about knowing
them. Whatever we have to labor over in a (colloquially speaking) self-
conscious way—like trying to fit keywords into cumbersome sentences,
which often turn out to be grammatically perfect but don't really say anything
—we really don't know well enough. It hasn't become part of us yet, and it
therefore cannot work in and through us. True knowledge—which can come
through the use and direct understanding of astrological symbols (as well as
through a variety of other means, of course)—is always at the back of the
mind, quietly and unobtrusively structuring the thinking, never in the forefront
cluttering the conscious mind with a lot of memorized, half-assimilated
definitions or confusing and inconsistent intellectual associations.
The back of the mind in terms of thinking is very much like the back of the
neck in human anatomy, for neither are areas of which we are normally
conscious. Nevertheless, they are both exceedingly sensitive. We may be
unaware of the back of our neck for a long time if nothing particularly
stimulates it. But when something comes along and tickles it or stings it, we
know about it immediately, and we react spontaneously—and appropriately,
depending on the state of our expectations and inner fantasy at the time, on
what is doing the stimulating and the quality of it.
So too should basic astrological principles be so well assimilated that
they are 'stored' at the 'back of the neck'. When a particular client and chart
with no matter how complex a configuration or situation comes along and
stimulates that area, we will react spontaneously and appropriately,
intuitively grasping in one whole mental gesture the meaning of the situation
confronting us.
This may come as a new idea for many students laboring to 'put it all
together,' although it no doubt comes as no surprise to seasoned, experienced
hands used to the spontaneous working of what we would rather call 'active
intuition' than synthesis. Regardless of the term one uses, the way in which
one becomes able to respond at that level should be explored from several
angles and is perhaps prematurely discussed here; we'll return to the matter
in the last chapter of this book. For the moment, a general idea of where
working with principles could lead serves as a foundation for discussing
significant principles underlying astrological aspects and configurations from
a process-oriented point of view.

WHAT PRINCIPLES?
The principles we have to work with regarding aspects in astrology are
neither many nor complex. Most are based on commonly experienced
phenomena such as the changing of the seasons and the phases of the Moon,
or on everyday sorts of arithmetic procedures such as simple addition,
subtraction, multiplication and division. Most of all, what we have to try to
do is to approach the situation consistently, trying to follow to its conclusion
one line of reasoning and development at a time, all the while staying in
touch with and building upon the foundation provided by the basic facts of
celestial motions.
Very simply stated, certain principles structure all cycles. A basic
twofoldness is evident in all natural processes, whether we speak of the
alternation of light and dark in the day/night cycle, the waxing and waning of
the Moon in the lunation cycle, the 'waxing' and 'waning' of warmth and cold,
fertility and barrenness, the relative lengths of days and nights in the cycle of
the seasonal year. It really doesn't matter which phenomena we look at, for
evident underlying all of them is a basic distinction between the two halves
of cyclic process. The two hemicycles of a cycle refer to two realms of
activity, two directions of energy-flow, each of which predominates during
one half of a cyclic process.
Whether we think of spring, summer, fall and winter—sunrise, noon,
sunset and midnight—or New Moon, First Quarter, Full Moon, Last Quarter
—doesn't matter either, for a basic quadrature or fourfold structure is also
apparent within twofoldness in natural cycles. Because the two halves of a
cycle refer to different realms or levels of activity, the 'moments' or turning
points marking the cycle's quarters—one at the middle of each hemicycle—
will be distinctly different in polarity and direction from one another. While
each marks the midpoint of a hemicycle, that is, the moment at which the
activity or direction predominating during the hemicycle reaches its
maximum intensity, very broadly speaking, one marks the end of the
beginning of the total cycle, and the other marks the beginning of the end.
In order to transfer these generalizations about cycles to the particular
situation of astrological aspects, we must first get in touch, and stay in touch,
with the facts of planetary relationship: as seen from the Earth, two planets
come together in the sky, separate and conjoin again. The lunation cycle—the
cycle between the Sun and Moon producing for observers on Earth the
spectacle of the phases of the Moon—is the prototype or model for all cycles
of aspects, which are phase-relationships between moving celestial bodies.
For not only are the successive stages of the soli-lunar relationship defined
by the increasing and decreasing distances between the Sun and Moon; added
significance is given to each stage of the soli-lunar relationship if we
interpret the shape of the Moon as a symbol of what the relationship implies
at each phase.
No matter how we divide up the cycle of relationships, what names or
numbers we give its various phases or aspects, the basic facts of celestial
motions and planetary interrelationships remain the same. There is no
complication or confusion regarding them. Controversy and confusion arise
only when astrologers try to explain and agree upon just what angular values
constitute bonafide aspects and what they specifically mean, especially when
they occur between particular planets.
Practically all astrologers agree on the use of at least the so-called
Ptolemaic aspects, the conjunction, sextile, trine, square and opposition
(although few realize that Ptolemy was not actually referring to angular
relationships between planets when he named them, but rather to relations
among signs of the zodiac). Some astrologers go along with the Ptolemaic
approach that the conjunction is 'neutra', depending upon whether 'malefic' of
'benefic' planets are involved, the trine and sextile invariably 'good' or
'favorable,' and the square and opposition just as emphatically and
universally 'evil' or 'unfortunate'—or, in more modern parlance, at least
stressful or uncomfortably tense. Other astrologers, ourselves included, do
not agree that an aspect must be either good, bad or indifferent. From our
point of view, an aspect, any aspect, is what it is—a necessary phase of a
process, building upon the phase having gone before, forming a foundation
for the phases to come after. No phase integral and necessary to an organic
process can be good or bad in an ethical, moral or even a general sense.
While some astrologers advocate only the use of the five above-named
'major' aspects, others also use the quincunx or inconjunct (150° aspect now
increasing in popularity after having been omitted from most textbooks in this
and the last centuries, as it was considered by the earliest writers not as an
aspect per se but as a 'non-relationship'1), and its companion-aspect, the
semi-sextile (30°). Some astrologers also use semi-squares and
sesquiquadrates, 45° and 135° aspects sometimes referred to as 'minor'
aspects along with a series based on the quintile (72°) which was apparently
advocated or renewed by Kepler. Some astrologers have considered the
quintile to be as 'favorable' as a trine; others have considered it, along with
such aspects as the septile (513/7°) and novile (40°), too 'esoteric' or
'specialized' to be of general value. Some astrologers deny the validity of
these and other so-called minor aspects altogether. At the small end of the
angular value spectrum, the term 'micro-aspects' has recently been coined to
refer to arcs smaller than 7 Vi degrees which have been found to be
significant through harmonic analysis.
If the reader is still with us after such a litany—which for brevity's sake
includes only technical, not interpretive disagreements—we'll ask the
obvious question: How did such confusion and general disagreement come
about, and what can be done to alleviate it? The crux of the matter, we
believe, is not merely deciding what angular values are significant and what
they mean. It is rather whether one believes that there is only one valid
procedure for generating astrological aspects, or whether there are several,
each procedure of generation referring to a different way of interpreting the
flow of process at different levels.
A basic example of how the existing confusion arose can be shown
against the lunation cycle. Like all cycles, it naturally divides itself into two
hemicycles during which the Moon waxes and wanes. The hemicycles are
further divided into two quarters each by the straight-edged shape of the
Quarter Moons cutting across the night-sky. The fact that at the First Quarter
the Moon crosses the orbit of the Earth going outward (away from the Sun),
and at Last Quarter returns within it (toward the Sun), gives added symbolic
significance to the quadrature of the cycle, as do the absence of the light of
the Moon at New Moon and the fullness of the Moon-disc at the cycle's
culmination.
On the one hand, however, the appearance and disappearance of the
Crescent and 'De-crescent' Moons can be taken, along with two other
'matching' points inferred between First Quarter and Full Moon and Full
Moon and Last Quarter, to mark four other turning points in the cycle. These,
when superimposed upon the basic quadrature of lunation phases, map out a
basic eightfold structure. On the other hand, if one realizes that the Moon is
approximately 30 ° or the space of one zodiacal sign away from the Sun
during the Crescent phases, one may infer a basic twelve-fold structure
behind the lunation cycle. In fact, this—together with the realization that the
seasonal year could be approximately equated with twelve lunations or
months of about 30 days each, and the fact that the 30° arc between the New
Moon and Crescent was the span of just about one of these lunations—is
probably how twelvefoldness came to dominate astrology entirely. But does
that make a twelvefold schema of the lunation cycle any more valid or
intrinsically 'correct' than an eightfold division of it?
The twelvefold structure when applied to interplanetary relationships
generates the astrological aspects conjunction (0°), semi-sextile (30°),
sextile (60°), square (90°), trine (120°), quincunx (150°), opposition (180°).
The eightfold approach generates the semi-square (45°) and sesquiquadrate
(135°), but does not include the semi-sextile and sextile, the trine and
quincunx. If one can divide the cycle by 8 or by 12, why not by any other
number? Number 3 generates angular values of 120°, the trine also generated
by the twelvefold approach. But what about a number like 5, which generates
angular values not coinciding with any natural divisions of the cycle? We
could, of course, generate all the angular values we'd care to, then
superimpose the resulting schema on one another, keeping the aspects which
are common to all or most and discounting the rest. If we did so, we would
wind up back where we started, with the five Ptolemaic aspects, conjunction,
sextile and trine, square and opposition—and no doubt also with the definite
good/bad, favorable/unfavorable interpretation of them, because in the
process of multiple divisions and super impositions, we would have lost all
sense of process and unfoldment over time. . .which is exactly what
happened.
It seems to us, and is the track we will be following in this book, that
each schema of generating aspects and each number-principle forming its
foundation has its own validity at its own level. In relation to the process
generating it, every aspect has its own meaning. But no matter how many arcs
we divide a circle of aspects into, we must always refer them back and
understand them in relation to the cycle or process whereby the relationship
of two planets to one another develops over time through space. Each phase
of a cycle, no matter how many phases the cycle is divided into, has its own
place and function in the overall process of whatever is developing through
the cycle. And every angular value, while not necessarily marking a definite
turning point or aspect in a developmental process, is nevertheless part of a
phase, which in turn is part of the total cycle. Moreover, in actual practice
there are indeed horoscopes whose overall planetary pattern or
predominating configuration stresses eight foldness, or five foldness,
squares, rectangles or triangles of various kinds. Each must be read and
understood in terms of its own dynamic, in terms of the principles underlying
its own structure. It must be assessed in terms of its own integrity, not in
terms of a more or less rigid formula of interpretation imposed on it by the
interpreter.
Thus, only a deep, essentially intuitive understanding of the principles of
cyclic unfoldment, number and form—in that order— will do. We have to
start by trying to gain a thorough understanding of the way interplanetary
cycles unfold over time, how a series of aspects operates, one after another.
Then we can try to fathom the meaning of the numerical principles underlying
the further divisions of cycles into various phases and apply these principles
to actual configurations of aspects in birth-charts. In all cases, we have to try
to understand the dynamic direction of aspects, what they imply in birth-
charts as a challenge or directive to live one's own process, to become able
to take some necessary 'next step.'

_________
1 Cf. Manilius Astronomica, tr. G. P. Goold (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts:
1977) pp. xxxviii ff, text pp. 270 ff. Ptolemy's Tetrahiblos, tr. J.M. Ashmand (Health Research 1969
reprint of the 1917 English Edition), Chapters XVI, XVIII, XXI, pp. 36 ff.
2 Rupert Gleadow, The Origin of the Zodiac (New York: 1969) pp. 176-7.
3 Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (New York: 1945), p. 131.
4 Manilius, op. cit., pp. xiv ff, text pp. 433-452. Ptolemy, op. cit., Ch. XX-XXV, pp. 41-53.
5 Manilius, op. cit., p. xcviii
6 Manilius, loc. cit., (1) Ptolemy, loc. cit., (1)
* Cf. Beyond Individualism: THe Psychology of Transformation by Dane Rudhyar (Quest Books,
Wheaton, Illinois: 1979) for a complete discussion of the psychology of levels of functioning.
1 Ptolemy, op. cit., Ch. XIX, p. 40.
 2.
Familiar Aspects: Involution/Devolution
I. GROWTH THROUGH SPONTANEOUS ACTIVITY
The first half of any cyclic process is dominated by 'life' or necessity.
Something new—whatever it may be—needs or is karmically impelled to be
born. It has to struggle to overcome the inertia and 'unfinished business' of the
past out of which it is to be born; it has to gradually steady and focus itself;
establish itself in the world in a definite way; sever its connection to
whatever in the formative period of its life molded and conditioned it but
now hinders it from fulfilling its highest potentialities; integrate itself into its
environment as harmoniously as possible; and finally, come to as full a
fruition as possible in order to actually satisfy the need for which it was
born, grew and developed.
This is a basic outline of the first half of any cyclic process. It is called
the involutionary hemicycle, because a spiritual potentiality or karmic
necessity involves or incorporates itself in matter, in the world of actual
forms, during this half of the process. In terms of human beings, 'actual forms'
can refer to forms of behavior, talents or capabilities, or to more concrete
productions such as works of art, life-works, a business firm, an
interpersonal relationship or family unit, etc. In the world of nature, 'taking
actual form' is expressed in the process whereby a seed germinates and
develops into a mature, flowering and, eventually, seed-producing plant.
Regardless of what is developing, or the vehicle or form through which it
develops, the first hemicycle of any process refers to a series of phases in
which spontaneous growth in answer to a need occurs. The need may be an
'inner' one, that is, within the organism in whose life the growing is taking
place, or an 'outer' one, a need in or of the environment—which can be social
or psychic as well as physical and natural. Something grows and develops
during the first hemicycle of a process because the need exists for what it can
potentially become.
 Spontaneous growth in answer to a need is subjective, instinctual and
unself-conscious, carried along, as it were, on a wave of nature-born
impulsions. A slender green shoot reaches up through the dark crust of earth
into light. Sinking roots, soaring stem, reaching branches, light-collecting
leaves. . . exquisite flower—each in turn is planthood's answer to the warmth
of Sun, the love of caressing breezes and nourishing, moist earth. A baby
grows in the same way. He explores, first, his own body, then the
possibilities of his immediate, multi-colored surroundings because 'life' in
him is intrigued. Human life grows and explores itself, not yet knowing it is
itself, through him. He, and all humanity behind and 'in' him, struggle to
master wiggly, wobbly limbs and walk upright; he babbles, then speaks, and
'humanhood' not yet 'I' expresses itself through his lips. To exteriorize what is
latent within; to allow it to express itself through one by building the
necessary forms and structures to contain it and mastering the necessary
motions and tasks: this is the involutionary challenge. Through such a
process, the universal within rushes out and incarnates in the particular. And
in the process, the form-builder awakens. Reflected in the fruit of his labor
he discovers and recognizes himself 'I'.
In this involutionary process, life moves forth spontaneously in the
simplest kind of rhythm, one step after another, each step adding itself to the
preceding ones in sheer impulsiveness of being: one, one plus one, one plus
one plus one, etc. The arithmetic progression thus formed is an exuberant
rhythm of expansion and conquest. Such a rhythm is found in the series of
astrological aspects occurring between two planets' conjunction and
opposition, between the time they come together in the sky and the time they
face each other at opposite ends of the horizon, as far apart as they can be. It
is the rhythm of the waxing Moon, each 30° Crescent-step adding itself to
itself from New Moon to Full Moon. It is the rhythm of solar progress
through the year, each step defining the limits of a zodiacal signs month after
month following the vernal equinox—the symbolic beginning of natural
activity and biological growth.
Translated into aspects, such a rhythm spanning the involutionary
hemicycle contains six phases or steps—from 0° to 30°, 30° to 60°, 60° to
90°, 90° to 120°, 120° to 150°, 150° to 180°. Seven aspects—an important
number in all occult traditions—are formed: conjunction, semi-sextile (30°),
sextile (60°), square (90°), trine (120°), quincunx (150°), opposition (180°).
During the waxing hemicycle of the lunation cycle, the Moon grows in size,
and similarly, during the 'waxing* hemicycle of aspects between two planets,
their angular distances from one another—the size of the aspects— also
increase. But just as important as the aspects themselves are the phases of
interrelationship between aspect formation. Growth and development occur
between aspects; aspects are turning points which given structure and
direction to the process of growth.
A cycle of aspects between two planets refers to the process whereby the
functional activities represented by each planet grow and develop in co-
operation with one another. Some life-task or function that cannot be
performed by either planet's function alone must be developed by both
together. At the conjunction beginning the cycle of aspects, the functional
activity represented by the slower planet gives, as it were, a new direction,
orientation or creative impetus to the activities represented by the faster
planet. As the faster planet moves away from the slower, it 'carries out' this
new impulse, incorporating it into its activities. New forms—forms of
behavior, interpersonal relating or relationships, sociocultural forms such as
institutions, or more concrete forms like objects—are engendered along the
way.
As the faster planet moves farther away from the slower planet, it—like
the waxing Moon in relation to the Sun—reflects more and more of the
slower planet's 'light.' The faster planet becomes increasingly capable of
incorporating the meaning of the slower planet's activities into its own.
Finally, at the opposition between the two planets, the symbolical Full Moon,
the faster planet has become in a sense the 'equal' of the slower planet, fully
manifesting in its own way the new direction given to its activities at the
conjunction, reflecting back to Earth the fullness of its accomplishments.
For example, when related to human activity, a cycle of aspects between
Venus and Mars refers to the need and opportunity to bring the personal-
emotional nature to a new level of functioning or self-expression. This may
mean giving a new value to the capacity for personal-emotional self-
expression, or expressing oneself in new fields or at new levels of activities.
At the Venus/Mars conjunction, the outward-bound activity-orientation of
Mars gives a new direction and impetus to Venus' inwardly directed sense of
value. In the earliest stages of the relationship between the two planets, the
new orientation must focus itself at the level of subjective experience and
overcome the inertia of past patterns of feeling and behaving. As the
personal-emotional nature steadies itself at the new level or in the new
direction, it must express itself as an objective factor. To do so it takes on or
produces forms, the form of a relationship between persons; or perhaps
another kind of creative, self-expressive ability, as in the arts, develops. The
personal-emotional development or reorientation thus becomes embodied in
its creations. At the Venus/Mars opposition—the cycle's culmination—these
forms have become, as it were, a mirror: the personal-emotional nature
having created them is plainly or elaborately reflected in its creations.
Through the involutionary process, what began subjectively and
unconsciously has become objectively manifest and self-conscious.
Every person is born at some stage of the Venus/Mars cycle, although for
now we are concerned only with the 'waxing' or involutionary phases of such
a process. A particular phase in the process of personal-emotional
development is 'frozen' into everyone's chart at birth, and the natal phase-
relationship between Venus and Mars refers to the basic stage of personal-
emotional development or self-expression which must be fulfilled, i.e., made
actual, over the course of the person's life.
The same is true regarding every other possible planetary pair, for there
are no times when two planets are not related in some way. They are all in
the solar system together; they are all part of the whole planetary pattern.
Two planets are therefore always in some phase of cyclic relationship with
one another. They become in particularly significant relationship when
their angular distance from one another measures to certain values. They then
form 'aspects,' which refer to definite steps and/or turning points in the
process. In other words, Mars and Jupiter, say, are just as related when they
are separated by 100° as when they are separated by 120°. But when their
relationship comes to measure in the vicinity of 120°, the quality of it takes
on a particular significance; actions related to these two planetary functions
should—because it is necessary for them to—lead to more easily recognized
and definable types of results. Nothing else is meant by the fact that two
planets form a trine or any other type of aspect: the association of functions
represented by the aspecting planets should lead to a particular type of result
because that is what is needed at a particular phase of a developing process.
An aspect's presence in a natal chart attests to the fact that the need for a
particular kind of becoming exists, and that the capacity for it is also there;
life co-operates by 'setting the stage' and providing the necessary
opportunities and challenges, even though some of these may come in the
guise of crisis or neurosis, hardly recognizable for what they truly are.
Again, all planets, their mutual aspects or phase-relationships not in exact
aspect are integrated together into the whole of every birth-chart. Each need
and potentiality of being and becoming provides an impetus, foundation and
resources with which to work for all the rest—such interaction being most
focal between and among patterns of interrelated aspects, i.e., configurations
in which several aspects are involved.
Here we are perhaps getting a little ahead of ourselves. For before
discussing interrelated aspects we should first ask, "What are the phases of
becoming, the developmental steps marked by aspects of the involutionary
hemicycle? How does each operate when focalized into a birth-chart?"

PHASE 1 — SUBJECTIVE BEING

Just as a seed can be considered either a starting point or an end-product,
so too may the conjunction be considered the first or the last of the series of
aspects. And like a seed, an exact conjunction refers to a 'moment' of pure
potentiality. In practice, however, exact conjunctions are very rare, there
almost always being some number of minutes, however few, either short or
over two planets' occupying the same longitudinal position. In traditional
terms, a usual conjunction (that is, one between planets separated by no more
than 7° or, at the most 10°) can be either applying or separating. In the
former instance, the faster planet moves toward the slower, toward the
conjunction that will end the current cycle. In the latter case, the faster planet
moves away from the slower, thus away from the conjunction beginning a
new cycle of relationships and beginning the involutionary hemicycle of
aspects. Both types of conjunctions refer to the need and capacity for a very
special type of activity: activity close to the source. The applying
conjunction refers to activity nearly withdrawn into subjective synthesis at
the end of a cycle; the separating conjunction refers to activity still very
subjective (beginning of a cycle).
As an applying conjunction forms to end a cycle, the need the next
opening cycle will attempt to fulfill becomes, as it were, 'set' or formulated
in a particular way. When the conjunction is exact, it represents the actual
release of a new energy or power, of a new possibility of developing what
the two planets represent together at a new level or in some new field—in
order to satisfy the needs left unfulfilled by the previous cycle, in order to
build upon its accomplishments in a progressive way. As the conjunction
separates, the potency released at the moment of exact conjunction is
symbolically distributed. At this bare beginning of the cycle, however,
everything toward which the new release is directed exists only as a
potentiality which has to be developed. The conjunction beginning a cycle is
the symbolic New Moon—the absence of the Moon from the night-sky. This
means pure subjectivity, for there is as yet nothing outward to reflect anything
back to the consciousness at first wholly preoccupied with its subjective
experience of new power and possibilities.
Because a process is only starting to operate, the person in whose chart a
(or several) conjunction(s) appears may seem to be overly concerned with
the functions represented by the conjoining planets. Such subjective
experience almost inevitably includes an element of confusion and,
psychologically speaking, projection. The activities and consciousness of the
person with an involuntary conjunction in his or her birth-chart may reveal an
inability to distinguish between inner wishes, dreams or feelings and actual
realities in the outer world. For if one were able to consciously sort out new
possibilities, plan to go in a particular direction and act to start 'getting there/
one would not be barely beginning a new cycle. By definition one would be
much farther along in a process. New possibilities just barely beginning to be
subjectively felt are meant to be fascinating, although they can be
obsessively so, as well as overwhelming. This is especially so at the
beginning of a cycle when a rush of new possibilities is almost inevitably
juxtaposed against the lingering patterns—however obsolete or binding—of
the past.
The first category or type of relationships between planets— i.e., when
two planets are from 0° to 30° apart, from conjunction to semi-sextile—
therefore present the need to focus new possibilities at an existential level.
This necessarily means having to meet and at least tentatively overcome the
pressure of the past, or at the very least to render its 'ghosts' psychologically
ineffectual. In so doing, one born with planets in conjunction gradually
discovers the limits and the special purpose of the beginning of the particular
cycle, at least insofar as it can be felt or apprehended in his or her life.
Two factors are especially important regarding conjunctions in natal
charts: house position of the conjunction and how the conjunction is
integrated into the overall planetary pattern. Through the experiences
represented by the conjunction's house, the person can best, and will be
challenged to, exemplify—i.e., focus at the existential level in his or her life
—the new possibilities represented by the conjunction. These experiences
become a source of the power and material with which other related planets
and aspects operate. The zodiacal sign in which the conjunction occurs
merely indicates the type of quality of power—potency—being released.
A full and conscious understanding of what a conjunction refers to is
entirely a secondary matter for the person in whose chart one or several
appear. Activity is more significant than consciousness during the waxing or
involutionary hemicycle. For activity, at first spontaneous, instinct-ruled or
even compulsive, is what will eventually 'awaken' or given birth to a new
level of consciousness, in a new way, at the opposition. Consciousness thus
evoked will develop and evolve through the second or 'waning' hemicycle of
the process. Thus, the most significant meaning that can be given to a
conjunction is an actional, or rather pre-actional one—to allow the potency it
denotes to manifest in one's life, especially in the area of life indicated by the
house in which the conjunction falls.
A conjunction in a birth-chart can be seen, figuratively speaking, as a
'well-spring' through which potency 'close to the source' —and therefore
relatively unpolluted—can flow into one's life, if one allows it to happen.
The conjunction's aspects and phase-relationships with the other planets
reveal how that potency 'wants' naturally to be distributed in other areas of
life; where, if there are other aspects, especially oppositions, involved, the
results of allowing the conjunction's potency to operate in one's life can be
more objectively manifest and consciously known and interpreted.
 Disagreement about allowable orbs notwithstanding, we should perhaps
enlarge our conception about conjunctions, and learn to see aspects in a
birth-chart as having been dynamically formed, that is, as stations along a
continuum of meaningful relationships. Two planets in the same sign (or even
in adjacent signs and not yet 30° apart) still carry the quality of the beginning
of a cycle. They are still distributing the 'close to the source' potency of what
was released at the exact conjunction in a relatively spontaneous way. If a
third planet 'waxing' away from the two conjoining ones happens to aspect or
broadly oppose the degrees on and following which the separating
conjunction has spanned, the third planet's function (and house) can act to
focus or objectively manifest the possibilities—still in their formative
phases—of what the conjunction released. In other words, a planet opposing
even a widely separating conjunction (perhaps especially a widely
separating conjunction, for its potency is more 'widely' distributed and its
subjectivity less intense) helps to focus and challenge to actual manifestation
the power and possibilities released and made available through the
conjunction. This is perhaps most dramatic when conjunctions of historical
significance (Jupiter/Saturn; Saturn with Uranus, Neptune or Pluto; Uranus
with Neptune or Pluto; Neptune/Pluto, etc.) aspect and therefore need to be in
some way, depending on the aspect, focused through 'personal' planets in
natal charts.

PHASE 2 — FOCUSING
Phase 2 begins when the relationship between two planets spans 30°, the
faster planet being now 30° ahead of the slower one. In the soli-lunar cycle,
this approximately coincides with the appearance of the Crescent Moon—
literally 'the growing one'— usually about two-plus days after New Moon.
What gives added significance to the Crescent phase is that a dim outline of
the full Moon-disc very often surrounds the brightly lit slim Crescent. This
vague outline of the Full Moon is not, however, the result only of the
developing relationship between the Sun and Moon perse. The light
surrounding the Crescent is not the same lunar-reflected solar light as
illuminates the silver sliver. It is solar light reflected first onto Earth, then
onto the Moon—thus, "Earth-shine."*
 The symbolism of the Crescent Moon is thus complex and many-sided.
First, its appearance simply indicates that the cycle between the Sun and
Moon has proceeded far enough for some of what the cycle represents to be
seen, that is, objectively manifest, The Crescent or beginning of Phase 2
signals the end of the period of extreme subjectivity symbolized by the New
Moon and Phase 1. At least some of the power released at the conjunction
can and must be 'put to work' in Phase 2. Complementing the Crescent,
symbol of beginning, the dim outline of the Full Moon surrounding it
foreshadows, as it were, the culmination of the cycle. As the relationship
between the two planetary functions begins to manifest outwardly, some
vague hint of 'where it may be going' may be dimly perceived. This vision,
however imprecise it may be at this point, is meant to be an enticing promise
of fulfillment to come. Such enticement may be necessary, since Phase 1
fascination with new power and possibilities may have worn off by now; as
subjectivity lessens, more mundane concerns make themselves felt.
Because this presentiment of fulfillment is symbolized by Earth-shine,
however, it has a special meaning. Not only has the soli-lunar relationship
developed sufficiently to be perceived (the Crescent Moon), it has
developed enough to include a third, most important factor, the Earth. While
cycles of relationship most obviously involve two moving bodies other than
Earth, they are nevertheless viewed from Earth and given meaning in human
terms, according to what they present to human consciousness from its point
of view on Earth, and according to the human capacity—developed in the
Earth's biosphere—to render celestial phenomena meaningful. The Crescent
Moon surrounded by Earth-shine thus refers to the symbolic 'awakening' of
the Earth to soli-lunar development thus far. The Earth, the home of Man, is
the symbol of Man. Here, its reflected light symbolizes his vaguely dawning
first awareness that he needs to grow and develop in a new direction,
however imprecisely he envisions it. The Earth-shine refers to man's
capacity to participate in subsequent phases of the now three-way
developing relationship. However uncertain their efficacy or outcome, the
imaginai and actional capacities are stirred into manifestation during this
phase of a cycle. One can and must play one's part in coming developments.
Ideally then, the semi-sextile in a birth-chart represents a very natural
initial focusing of a vision of something toward which to work and aspire.
The power of imagination awakens, and with it a desire to manifest the
substance of one's imaginings. The question is at first, "How to?" but at this
phase it is premature. Images of possibilities must first become focused. The
question might rather be, "Whence do the images arise?" In Phase 2 of the
involutionary hemicycle, they 'descend' as it were to the level of personal
experience from the level of superpersonal potency. What was purely
potential in the beginning takes the first step toward directly involving itself
in actual form. Effective action follows imagination, and imagination forms
and focuses will so that subsequent action can be controlled and purposeful.
Everyday activities referring to planets in Phase 2 relationship should be
imbued with a sense of greater possibilities. The semi-sextile is thus no more
a 'weak sextile' than the sextile is a 'weak trine.' Every definite and clear-cut
relation has its meaning and is one link in the chain of relations.
As Phase 2 progresses, an urge to mobilization surfaces and intensifies,
especially around the middle of the phase, when the two planets are
separated by about 45°—in a magnetic field, an angle of maximum intensity
of forces. Here imaginai and actional momentum is tested in two ways.
Whenever one takes or even contemplates taking a step toward some future
fulfillment, all the pastward resistance or inertia within one rebels and
refuses to take the step. Resistance here can mean simple uncertainty or
hesitation expectable at the beginning of a cycle, or it can refer to more
deeply entrenched patterns of fear or preference which are carry-overs from
a past that has yet to be entirely assimilated. Fear must be met; prideful
preference must give way to the promptings of greater possibilities.
This becomes essential as the second challenge of Phase 2 is met. As the
person with planets in Phase 2 relationship (especially in or near semi-
square) matures and emerges from subjective enthrallment with a sense of
new powers, he or she encounters the 'real world' for the first time. As
subjective dreams and wishes are seen beside existential realities, some
degree of shock or surprise may be experienced. Two 'worlds,' inner and
outer, must be reconciled; peace must be made between the two. Frustration,
engendered by the apparent gap between some imagined 'utopia' and the
outer, inferior, perhaps inflexible reality one faces, should not be allowed to
team-up with and feed inner resistance. If this occurs, the capacity for future
ward activity becomes at least temporarily paralyzed, and a premature sense
of frustration develops. If, however, the focusing of vision so necessary and
indeed natural in Phase 2 has been allowed to occur, outer obstacles
overcome or humbly side-stepped by faith in a more long-term process
nurture rather than thwart a growing sense of capability.
Here again, no aspect or phase-relationship exists in a birth-chart by
itself. What is important is the relationship of all planets and relationships to
one another. Excellent examples of focal Phase 2 relationships are found in
the life and chart of Alan Watts, the British-born Zen scholar and promoter of
Oriental philosophies in the West. First, Pluto and Neptune, both in Watts'
seventh house, are approaching semi-sextile, being at his birth about 28½°
apart. Because these two planets move so slowly, this Pluto/Neptune
relationship is common enough in the horoscopes of persons born in the years
surrounding Watts' birth in 1915. But Watts' Sun in the first house at 15°
Capricorn broadly opposes them both—or more properly, opposes the
midpoint of the forming semi-sextile. In this way, it potentially focuses into
Watts' individual being and destiny what the Pluto/Neptune semi-sextile
represented. Watts' Moon is also in Phase 2 relationship with Neptune; it is
in the eighth house, about 42°—a semi-square—ahead of Neptune.
The Pluto/Neptune conjunction before Watts' birth released in 1891-92
the potency for an almost 500-year-long process of universalization, which in
our century has manifested through Phases 1 and 2 as an increasing
globalization of human activity and consciousness. Watts, the quintessential,
almost provincial Englishman by birth and education, nevertheless played a
significant role in what he himself considered the most significant
development of the 20th century: the meeting of Christianity and Buddhism in
the West. He wrote extensively about Zen and Eastern thought, long before it
became fashionable to do so or to sit zazen or practice meditation. In fact, his
life-work contributed greatly to bringing such practices to the attention of
Westerners, especially in America where almost the whole of his adult life
was spent.
Watts' work, however, was in no way divorced from his own 'personal,'
everyday life and essential being; as the Pluto/Neptune/ Sun configuration
required, it was focused through them. Watts felt that he had to help bridge
the philosophical, psychological gulf between East and West in the outer,
academic and intellectual world, but he in fact had also to reconcile the two
approaches and overcome the cultural inertia within himself. He tried to
accomplish the former—and wound up doing the latter instead, thus paving
the way for an outer, social and religious integration to follow later—by
becoming an Anglican priest in 1945. He hoped to bring what he felt was the
wisdom of the East into the Western Church. He nevertheless left the ministry
some five years later, having realized that the social and religious institutions
of the time were not broad enough to accommodate his purpose. Yet in spite
of outer obstacles, a vision of possibilities had become firmly focused within
him, and like a stone dropped into the middle of a pond, the ripples spread in
widening circles.
The waxing semi-square relationship between Watts' Moon and Neptune
was perhaps less happily manifest during his life. Married and
disillusioningly divorced several times, he could never seem to reconcile the
outer realities of a monogamous society with his subjective wishes and
dreams. Nevertheless, he lived his relationships in his own way—viz. the
title of his autobiography—endeavoring as best he could to overcome the
inertia of obsolete patterns of response and relationship.*
Before moving on to consider Phase 3 of cyclic relationships between
planets, we can illustrate another important point using Alan Watts' chart as
an example. (It may be a premature digression for some students, but it may
be helpful for others at this point.) Being able to see how a birth-chart forms
dynamically, can be a great aid in becoming able to interpret it significantly.
For understanding from a truly process-oriented point of view the dynamics
behind aspect and chart formation can lead to understanding dynamic
processes of human development. Understanding what the Pluto/Neptune
conjunction historically represented, 'watching' it separate and release its
potentiality through the first decades of the 20th century; visualizing the Sun
coming 'round to oppose the middle of its span at Watts' birth, potentially
focusing some aspect of the developing Pluto/Neptune cycle in and through
him and his life (even watching the Moon conjoining the Sun before his birth,
the soli-lunar cycle developing, passing over and including the
Pluto/Neptune semi-sextile by the time of Watts' birth); and understanding at
least some aspect of Watts' life as a manifestation of the Pluto/Neptune/Sun
potentiality: all these steps in thinking are process-oriented keys to
interpreting Watts' life and chart. Once the principles behind such a many-
sided 'seeing' are fully assimilated, they 'work' for interpreting all charts and
lives.

PHASE 3 - ORGANIZING
Phase 3 begins with the astrological aspect sextile, but no distinctive
shape is produced at this phase of the lunation cycle. Instead, the Moon
gradually increases in size, reflecting more and more of the Sun's light to
Earth. Similarly, during this phase of the cyclic process between two planets,
gradual growth and expansion continue on the basis of the initial release of
power (Phase 1) and its subsequent focusing and the overcoming of inner
resistance (Phase 2).
While the first phase (0° to 30°) refers to the actual release of new
potentialities and the subjective, captivating sense of new power and
possibilities attending such a release, the second phase (30 ° to 60 °) can
represent a reaction to it. The release of power must become focused,
resistance to the focusing arises and must be overcome during Phase 2.
During Phase 3, both 'action' and 'reaction' must be integrated within a wider,
more inclusive field of activity. This means that at the sextile, the creative
impulse, having at least somewhat freed itself from the pressures of the past,
and having at least tentatively acquired some kind of form (or direction),
these forms can begin to take advantage of environmental opportunities for
their growth and development. They can begin to become more focused and
useful within the environment in which the cycle is developing—and
opportunities for their development will present themselves, if all has gone
well with the previous phases, because the initial release of power
symbolized by the conjunction was in answer to a need which must begin to
become concretely fulfilled.
Forms focused during Phase 2 can begin to take on a life of their own. By
analogy, this is similar to the way a seed germinates and develops into a
maturing plant. Phase 1 and 2 polarize each other as the rootlet is polarized
by the germ whose upspringing it supports. Phase 3 then adds branches in
both directions. Roots branch out to explore the depths, seeking a broader
base of nourishment; leaves unfold to capture and transform radiant 'light'
into 'life.' The new possibilities, by now at least partial or tentative
actualities, anchor themselves in the realm of objectivity.
The sextile is thus a relation indicating a syncretic capacity, the
capability to draw upon and synthesize materials from a number of sources. It
thus refers to the capacity for the practical type of organization which makes
everyday life possible and significant. Involutionarily speaking, organization
means differentiation. Each developing organism must learn to do what it
does best. It becomes a specialist. As specialization occurs, a particular
organism becomes increasingly able to work with materials available from a
wider variety of sources, and to organize them according to the direction of
growth in which the cycle is proceeding.
In birth-charts, semi-sextiles usually link planets in zodiacal signs of
opposite polarity and in adjacent houses. Adjacent signs and houses are in
Phase 1 and 2 relationship to one another. Like any Phase 1 and 2
relationships, they stand in relation to one another as action and reaction.
Sextiles, however, usually link planets in signs of the same polarity and in
houses separated by an intervening house: inclusion is the key. As the
subjectively-felt creative impulse beginning the cycle matures enough to
include external realities, the environment accommodates and includes the
steadily growing forms.
When interpreting sextiles—actually all aspects—in birth-charts, we
should realize that what they represent is, in a sense, cumulative. A particular
aspect focused in a birth-chart refers to a specific kind of developmental step
which must be taken during the life of the person whose birth-chart it is. The
implication is that the previous steps leading to that particular aspect are
somehow—historically, hereditarily and/or karmically—condensed into
some kind of past which is nevertheless active as a foundation for the present
and unfolding life-pattern. On the other hand, the dictum Ontology repeats
phylogeny' is as valid in relation to human development ex utero as it is in
relation to the development of a fetus in the womb. We see this working in
cases where young children manifest some special kind of talent early in life.
Often, it vanishes or 'goes underground'—the child loses interest in it in
favor of other, perhaps more fashionable pursuits—around puberty or
adolescence. Depending, of course, on the child's birth-chart and life-pattern,
this may refer to an old form which has become obsolete and must be
allowed to disintegrate or to become transformed into something else. Or, in
order to reawaken the talent at a more adult level or to allow it to become
transformed, the youth may then have to pass through a developmental
process similar to the one we are discussing here—as it were, from the
'beginning,' symbolically a conjunction, regardless of any natal aspect.
Thus, while every aspect refers to a phase of a larger interplanetary
process (some including yet also encompassing one human lifespan), it also
refers to a personal 'mini-process' which must be gone through during a
person's life. Presumably, this is because every new birth is, in a sense, a
conjunction—a release of new potentialities which must be actualized
through a process of structured growth and development. This 'mini-process'
involves all the biological and psychological growing and developing we do
in order to become able and willing to take the steps to which particular
aspects in our chart refer. The actual outworking and schedule of this 'mini-
process,' its timing and the circumstances through which it develops, is what
progressions and transits in relation to the natal chart refer to. In other words,
in order to actualize fully, say, a sextile in a birth-chart, one must allow the
subjective sense of possibility or capability to surface in the psyche
(conjunction) as one matures. Inner resistance must often be overcome, one's
talents must be allowed to develop and express themselves through form
(Phases 1 and 2), and a certain kind of 'shock' at dealing with the 'real world'
may have to be experienced. Then (Phase 3), when environmental (relational,
social, historical, etc.) opportunities present themselves, one must be willing
to take advantage of them—or at least not be too quick to say "No," or "I
can't." The importance of allowing this mini-process to run its course
becomes increasingly significant as squares—Phase 4—in aspect
relationships are reached.

PHASE 4 — DECIDING
The square (90° aspect) marks an especially important turning point in a
cycle. In the soli-lunar cycle, it is marked by the distinctive shape of the First
Quarter Moon. The growing inside curve of the Crescent Moon has now
become a straight line, a cutting edge slicing its way across the night-sky.
What gives added significance to this phase in the lunation cycle is that when
the Moon reaches about a 90° angular distance from the Sun, it crosses the
orbit of the Earth, and moves away from the Sun and the place of the
previous soli-lunar conjunction (New Moon), going toward the orbit of Mars
and the place where the Full Moon will occur. The lunation cycle symbolism
thus implies cutting away on two accounts, for the straight edge of the
Quarter Moon not only cuts across the night-sky, but also across the Earth's
orbit. In human terms, cutting away literally translates as 'decision.' It means
a release from 'source,' because at First Quarter the Moon is no longer
pushed, as it were, by the power released at conjunction, but is geared
toward or 'drawn on' to the opposition by the 'promise' of the Full Moon.
This basic 'change of gears' occurs in any cycle at the 'waxing square'—
that is, when a faster planet is, say, 82° to 98° ahead of a slower one and
moving away from it—and it can be more clearly seen if we picture the
developing cycle as a vibration or wave. What results is a figure called a
sinusoid, which looks something like a horizontal letter S, or two half-
circumferences of opposite polarities, one below and one above a line of
equilibrium represented by the cycle's conjunction and opposition. The
involutionary hemicycle with which we are concerned here is represented by
the hemicircle below the line of equilibrium.

Looking at this figure, it is clear that if we start from A as a point of

departure, we will, on reaching B, have completed one quarter of the cycle—
a 90° arc. The two points A and B are related by an angle of 90° —a waxing
square. In terms of the involutionary process, it is easy to infer from such a
picture that the creative impulse involving itself in form since the conjunction
beginning the cycle (A) reaches the apex of its involvement at the square (B)
; the involutionary process 'bottoms out,' as it were. If the process is to
proceed to a full, healthy culmination (C), however, not only a 'bottoming
out/ but a basic change in direction is necessary. Further motion along the arc
AB will not lead toward C but away from it. Activity AB must now be
redirected to BC, by overcoming the inertia of motion (momentum) AB and
the pull of centrifugal force leading 'off track' to what we have marked as B'.
We can envision this situation metaphorically by picturing a car traveling
along the sinusoid figure, about to turn the corner of the waxing square. The
car is impelled into the curve by its own momentum and the angle of the road.
But about halfway through the turn, the driver must take over the steering
mechanism. If he fails to do so, centrifugal force will pull his car off track
and perhaps crash it. This can be averted only by a successful self-steering
maneuver which changes the direction of the car's motion away from B' and
definitely orients it toward C. The car emerging from the curve is of course
'the same' car, unchanged in its structure and appearance. But the driver's
capacity to steer the course before him—which is nevertheless not 'his own'
in the sense of being his personality's or ego's creation—has been challenged
by the experience and perhaps irrevocably transformed.
At one level, we can understand from the foregoing that a person with
important waxing squares in his or her birth-chart has at various times in his
or her life to meet 'squarely' the need for clear-cut decision—to allow the
situation to be faced to develop by not shrinking from opportunities (Phase 3)
or being narrowly bound to an attitude of resistance (Phase 2). When an
opportunity to 'seize the moment' presents itself, even if it takes the form of a
crisis or requires severance from well-familiar, comfortable patterns—
especially if it requires such repudiation of whatever of one's past
conditioning has become obsolete—the key to 'squaring' oneself with life can
be summed up in two words and an exclamation point: "Do it!"
But what really is implied and at stake in such a crisis?
We can think of it as a 'crisis in action' requiring definite acts of self-
assertion able to break the momentum of obsolete past conditioning. If the
'ghosts' of the past had to be met and at least tentatively overcome at earlier
phases of the process (particularly during Phase 2 and at the interplanetary
semi-square), they must definitely be banished at the square. If the inertia of
past patterns antedating the beginning of this new cycle had to be checked
early on, or worked out by meeting and working through past-conditioned
psychological projection, such inertia must definitely be broken now. In other
words, whatever in the past focused, molded and conditioned earlier forms
through which the process operated at that time and was thereby brought to
its present state, but which now hinders further development toward the
fulfillment of the cycle, must be repudiated. This means a basic reorientation
away from subservience to and dependence upon the past—no matter how
beautiful the tradition or satisfying the sense of security—toward a reliance
on a deeply felt and experienced intuition of what some future, more
autonomously achieved fulfillment could be. It means the need for a definite
kind of emergence into maturity where the planetary functions involved in the
square are concerned. It means the need for taking a stand, becoming
committed, and acting out the commitment. The waxing square can thus be
called an aspect of individualization. It forces one to emerge from the womb
of parentage, of culture and tradition, to stand on one's own feet and
foundation, facing the world as a true individual rather than merely as a
particular person —a specimen of one's lineage and times.
Behind this individualizing 'crisis in action'—behind the need for this
kind of future-oriented, self-assertive, decisive action—is also what we can
think of as a 'crisis in incarnation.' For incarnation, or the taking on of form,
is the aim of the involutionary process. Having focused and steadied itself
through earlier phases of the process, the creative impulse beginning the
cycle now needs to be given definite form to actually operate as an objective
factor in the world. Having at least tentatively overcome the inertia of the
past (Phase 2) and adapted itself to operating through available material in
current environmental conditions (Phase 3), the creative impulse seeks
definite manifestation.
When such a phase is reached in a cycle between two planets, it means
that through earlier phases of the cyclic process the functions represented by
the planets have been sufficiently steadied in relation to one another, within
some tentative form, to definitely take on a solid anchorage in the world of
physical and social realities. The person with a significant waxing square in
his or her birth-chart is called upon to be such an anchor, the vehicle or
'focalizer' through whom a definite kind of form-building activity can
operate, relating the two planetary functions and preparing the way for the
culmination of their relationship.
But how is this need for definite form-building activity different from
what we encountered as 'focusing in form' in earlier phases of the process?
Why call this need for 'incarnation' a 'crisis'? Answers to these questions can
be approached through understanding the meaning of the term crisis, which
comes from the Greek crino, "to decide." Decision, in turn, literally means
"cutting away," and any crisis or decision involves choosing among
alternatives, leaving one or some of them behind and embracing others. At
least two factors present themselves in any crisis or decision, but the most
fundamental choice at stake in major turning points of life is not between the
two or more mutually exclusive outer possibilities we are presented with.
Most deeply and fundamentally, it is between two basic inner qualities, one
of which eventually predominates as the spirit in which all outer decisions
are made. The two inner qualities are courage and fear. Behind all more
superficial choices, the waxing square as a turning point in an overall
process, which spans yet also encompasses our present life-cycle, presents
the 'choice' between these two.
Let us stress here that the kind of decision symbolically called for by
waxing squares in a birth-chart need not take the form of traumatic, or even
dramatic events, encounters or psychological crises. We often make what turn
out to be the most significant decisions of our lives without realizing how
important they are or to what they will lead. When major life decisions do
come in the form of crisis, it is often an indication that some more
fundamental decision had not previously been courageously taken, or that
some underlying, essential life-issue has been met with inertia or in a spirit
of fear. So-called "sins of omission"—especially those of which we remain
largely unconscious, so deeply ingrained is the fear and inertia called up in
response to meeting the situations engendering them—are often far more dire
in their consequences than "sins of commission." What we fail to do out of
fear, either when it is necessary for it to be done or for us to be able
deliberately to do it, often comes back to 'haunt' us in a sharper or more
menacing form than what we may have actually or even wrongly done out of
ignorance or misunderstanding.
Any waxing-square crisis not met, or met in a negative, fearful way,
engenders not only consequences which have themselves to be met and
corrected, but also more fear—which in turn forces us to meet other
eventualities in a negative way, thereby creating a vicious, self-perpetuating
pattern. When fear comes to dominate a person's actions, feelings and will,
all growth and forward motion— imperative and ideally vigorous at this
phase of the cycle—ceases. Outward or severe inner crises may be
necessary to 'force the issue,' as it were. They have the possibility of creating
in us perhaps sufficient tension, or even desperation, to enable us to break the
bonds of our own fear or inertia and take a step we would otherwise be
unable or unwilling to take. Crises help us avoid the pitfalls of so-called
"sins of omission" by forcing us to do something—doing anything being
better than doing nothing whenever fear and inertia have reached paralyzing
proportions.
In saying all this, we do not mean to stress the crisis-producing aspect of
the waxing square at the expense of its constructive—form-building—side,
for both are important at this phase of the process. In order for any new
structure to be built—safely and to last to fulfill its function—deep
foundations must be dug to support it. As high as the proposed structure is to
soar, that deep must the foundations go. They must rest on a bedrock of
conscious and courageous commitment, not on the shifting sands of changing
personal moods and whims. Such excavation is often difficult work. Tools
grind against encrustations, dirt flies and the builder's knuckles—or worse—
are inevitably skinned and battered. His back aches and his muscles may
protest, but his is useful, practical work. The waxing square, unlike the
succeeding trine which can be overly idealistic, is an aspect of practicality,
of having to deal in concrete ways with the planetary functions involved.
In actual practice, one must be extremely careful to distinguish between
this waxing, involutionary square—when, again, the faster planet is ahead of
the slower and separating from it—and the waning square which will occur
during the second hemicycle. In addition, here as with the semi-sextile, semi-
square and sextile, the terms applying and separating should not be confused
with the terms waxing and waning. Only in relation to the conjunction are the
terms applying and waning or separating and waxing synonymous. Thus,
there are, in a sense, four kinds of squares: applying and separating waxing
squares, and applying and separating waning squares.
If we call planet x the faster planet, and planet y the slower, a waxing
square forms between them when, say, planet x is in Cancer and planet j/ is
in Aries. The same type of waxing square occurs when y is at the beginning
of Aquarius and x is at the end of Aries. The waxing square is applying when
x in Cancer is at 10° and y in Aries is at 15°—there are 85° between them,
but this distance is increasing to 90°. The same is true of x at 27° Aries and y
at 2° Aquarius. There are also 85° separating the pair, but there will soon be
90°. Waxing squares separate when, after the planets have exactly squared
one another, more than 90 ° separates x and y, with x still ahead of y. X at 20°
Cancer is separating from a waxing square with y when y is at 17 ° Aries. X
at 7 ° Taurus separates from waxing square with y when y is at 5° Aquarius.*
The applying waxing square and the separating waxing square symbolize
different phases in the decision-making process. The applying waxing square
archetypally refers to a turning point in the process which has not yet been
reached, to a decision which has not yet been made. The person with such an
aspect in his or her chart has to 'steer through the curve,' as it were, and make
the decision. A separating waxing square indicates that a decision has, on
some level, already been taken and a direction committed to. It is up to the
person with such an aspect in his or her horoscope to work out that
commitment, to involve himself or herself in the building process proper.

PHASE 5 — EXPRESSING
The trine (120° aspect) begins the fifth step or phase of the involutionary
hemicycle. In the soli-lunar cycle, no distinct shape of the Moon is produced,
for after having, as it were, stepped across the Earth's orbit, it continues
gradually to grow. What had been a concave curve at the Crescent and a
straight line at First Quarter has now become convex. The 'direction' of the
cycle is definitely outward now. This fifth step in the cycle thus refers to
creative expression and outward application. It represents the means and the
opportunities, arising as a result of committed and deliberate action toward
an end felt and acknowledged to be necessary, to integrate what is now more
autonomously developing into a workable and productive way of life. What
was released as a potential answer to a need at the conjunction should by
now have become established enough to begin to fulfill that need, at least for
the person in whose life the development is occurring.
From a process-oriented point of view, aspects in natal charts are, in a
sense, cumulative. They represent the next step to be taken on the foundation
of earlier phases which have already occurred. Because they operate in
terms of what we have called a 'mini-process/ recapitulating these earlier
phases and focusing them into the present life-situation, a person with
significant waxing trines in his or her horoscope may appear to have to meet
and take major life-decisions whether or not waxing squares are also central.
But as previously mentioned, one often makes what turns out to be a very
significant decision without realizing the decision is anything extraordinary.
At the time the decision is made there is no way of knowing what larger
implications a seemingly minor matter may eventually have. Such a pattern is
typical of what can be expected in association with waxing trines, because
this aspect follows and therefore qualitatively includes or builds upon the
waxing square. Something in us responds to a challenge or opportunity, but at
this phase of the cyclic process, it may not be necessary—or even desirable
from a more inclusive perspective—for that 'something to be the conscious 'I'
or ego. This is still the involutionary hemicycle, during which spontaneous
activity is most important, more important than consciousness or
understanding.
In the subjective experience of a person with waxing trines in his or her
birth-chart, decisions may thus carry an aura of pleasant inevitability, or feel
as if they have already been made. Such a person often has the feeling of
merely 'going through the motions' when making decisions, of meeting a
situation whose outcome, while uncertain in terms of the form it will take, is
nonetheless never really in question in terms of the response the person will
offer. After the hard decisions of the waxing square have been taken and
outer obstacles surmounted, one can begin to envision an ideal of 'where' the
process is going. One can be fascinated and carried along by this idealism.
A contemporary psycho-spiritual guide has summed up in psychological
terms this involutionary process focused into every natal trine:
 The process of growth begins with an image of its goal, though this
image does not consciously direct itself. It simply appears. Even when
it is not in the visual form of a specific image, it is present; and it
expresses itself then as a nonconscious knowing of what is true in
principle. It is present as an image of the new condition which the
psyche is engaged in bringing to actuality. It is a goal that is an
active factor in the person because it is a potentiality working to
fulfill itself. Neither the goal nor the manner of its fulfillment are
thought out in advance; nor are they rationally decided upon. The
entire pattern discloses itself as it acts itself out; and often it is only
in the course of this enactment that the person discovers the nature of
the goal he is truly seeking. . .
Many instances of this come to mind in the lives of creative persons.
One thinks, for example, of Herman Melville as a young man going to
sea on a whaling ship with no possible way of knowing that the seeds
were being planted for one of the world's great expeditions into the
dimension of symbols. The writing of Moby Dick lay completely in the
future, but something drew him forward towards it. His experience at
that time, as throughout the later creative years of his life, was as
though one of his legs stepped forward on its own without his
deciding it, and the other leg was forced to follow and step a little
further. Thus, he was drawn on towards attainments without limit,
never knowing the ending nor even the immediate goal. He did not
decide it, and yet something within him forced it to be.*

The astrological significance of Dr. Progoff's thoughts is increased when we

realize that the Sun and Moon formed a waxing trine at Melville's birth—and
that the Sun also trines Saturn.
Nevertheless, even such a trine is no more a 'given' in a birth-chart or life
than a square or sextile. An immature, recalcitrant or rigid ego can pervert or
call a halt to even the most potentially creative processes in life. One with
involutionary trines in his or her horoscope must be willing to follow the
rhythm set by his or her process as it unfolds. Like Melville, he or she must
allow the necessary steps to be taken, one 'foot' to follow the other. For even
Melville's novel didn't actually write itself. On an archetypal level, it may
have formed and focused itself in his consciousness seemingly without effort
on his part. Yet his was the hand that actually wrote out the words, page after
page after page. His was the patience and perseverance through which
creative expression could operate.
These last mentioned qualities—patience and perseverance— are crucial
to a successful and actually productive Phase 5 relationship between planets.
For at the middle of the phase, the sesquiquadrate or sesqui-square (135°
aspect) occurs. It performs a similar function in the second quarter of the
cycle as the semi-square (45° aspect) did in the first quarter. At the middle of
Phase 2, the momentum of barely nascent imaginai and actional stirrings is
intensified and tested; at the middle of Phase 5, the decision and commitment
elicited by the waxing square is tested. What has been committed to at the
square takes on, as it were, a life of its own' during Phase 4. During Phase 5
it has the possibility of fully expressing itself. But it does so in an
environment whose realities have to be met, acknowledged and taken into
account. Just as the semi-square represented the 'shock' of a first encounter
with a 'real world' challenging the extreme subjectivity of the conjunction,
the sesqui-quadrate refers to a similar awakening, now to the realities—both
inner and outer—of what was implied in the decision made at the square.
The trine uses and thus exhausts the dynamic energy definitely focused
and directed in a particular way at the square. As the sesquiquadrate, a
'second wind' is required. The practicality of the square and the idealism
associated with the trine must work together to overcome whatever obstacles
appear to slow progress tow ard the accomplishment of a goal more clearly
perceived now than ever before. This phase of the cycle requires forceful but
controlled striving and outreaching; substantive growth, a general keynote of
Phase 5, thereby follows.

PHASE 6 — IMPROVING
The quincunx or inconjunct (150° aspect) brings the means and
opportunities represented by the trine to a more specific focus, and it begins
the sixth and final phase of the first hemicycle of activity. Whatever
adjustments in expression, action or application are necessary to bring the
whole cycle to successful culmination at the opposition should now be made.
In this sense, the quincunx is a 'last chance' aspect. For the opposition
represents a definite end—and therefore potential crystallization—of
whatever precedes it. Metaphorically, it is like taking a timed examination in
school. When the bell rings to signal the end of the period, one is finished
and hands in his paper, whether he has gone through all the material or not.
The results are in—Iacta alea est—and on that basis one will pass on to the
next form or not.
Subjectively, the quincunx often manifests as a sense of dissatisfaction—
dissatisfaction with self in a psychologically mature person, blaming and
frustration with others in the person not yet awakened to and accepting of the
realities of what surrounds him or her. Such acceptance does not need to
imply passivity or the willingness to accept what one knows and believes to
be wrong. It simply means awareness, on the basis of which one can act
appropriately to correct or improve what in oneself or in one's environment
falls short of what seems possible and desirable.
This sense of dissatisfaction with self arising at the quincunx is, however,
a new and significant development, for a real sense of 'self is just beginning
to dawn. The struggle to improve (Phase 6), to consciously overcome
resistance and shortcomings (Phase 5), to 'steer one's own course' (Phase 4)
during the second quarter of the process begins to give one a sense of being
alone in one's strivings, of being separate. This awareness, however, is not a
true and full expression of selfhood. For individual selfhood ideally and
archetypally will begin to blossom only as the opposition forms and after the
cycle culminates. The sense of separateness experienced at the quincunx is
preliminary to it.
The person with significant quincunxes in his or her birth-chart may
experience either an exaggerated sense of self-importance or an undue
preoccupation with shortcomings. Underlying both may be a compensating
yearning for belongingness, for unconditional acceptance which, regardless
of actual circumstances, may seem insatiable. But since it goes hand in hand
with true selfhood, true relatedness is only achieved at and after the cycle
culminates. The kind of belongingness sought and possible before the
opposition forms may represent instead a longing to 'return to the womb'—to
the subjectivity of the conjunction—and dissolve the structures of selfhood
that have been slowly and perhaps painfully taking form during the
involutionary process. Thus, while self-improvement is the significant task of
Phase 6, the emphasis needs to be on improvement rather than
narcissistically on self. The person with planets in quincunx relationships is
asked to meet and assimilate experiences which have the power to adjust and
refine the expression of what is symbolized by the two planetary functions
involved.
This improving, refining activity paves the way for the cycle's
culmination, the opposition (180° aspect) which both ends the first hemicycle
of activity and begins the second. The distinction between applying and
separating aspects is again crucial. Two planets nearing but less than 180°
apart form an applying opposition ending the first hemicycle. Two planets
having already exactly opposed one another and now (or at birth) separated
by more than 180° form a separating opposition which occurs at the very
beginning of the second hemicycle. Here, as the first hemicycle ends, we are
primarily concerned with the former, and will take up the matter of the latter
in Part II of this chapter and in Chapter 4.
In the case of the applying opposition, something needs to be brought to
fulfillment, to objective manifestation—or rather, something objective in
relation to the two planetary functions involved needs to be allowed to fulfill
itself through the life-pattern of the person whose chart contains an
opposition, always a most significant aspect and basic axis. This is still the
involutionary process whereby a creative, spirit-born impulse acts
spontaneously through us, in answer to a need—if we let it. 'Letting it' has a
different quality and different implications at each step of the way, that is,
each aspect of the involutionary series requires of us a different kind of co-
operation or, at the very least, non-hindrance.
This kind of non-interference with integral, spontaneous processes
becomes more difficult the more one becomes aware of oneself as a separate
'I' or ego having definite desires and dislikes. Indeed, the more one is
conditioned, as in our culture, to think of himself exclusively as a separate,
'rugged individual' (who is nevertheless not an 'individual' in the deepest
sense of the term, but merely conditioned to be as 'rugged' as he fears, or is
taught to imagine, everyone else is), the more difficult an accepting non-
violence to natural processes becomes. Such an attitude is often dismissed
out of hand or even ridiculed because it is mistakenly associated with
weakness and indecision.
The kind of objectivity and personal-emotional detachment necessary to
bring a cycle to successful culmination are, however, very different from
weakness and indecision. They are achieved only when a person is
courageous and inwardly strong enough to free himself or herself from the
tyranny of unconscious projections and compulsive, conditioned behavior.
The person in whose chart an applying opposition forms a significant axis is
asked to meet and assimilate experiences which have the power and
possibility of breaking such psychic bonds and thereby freeing and
transforming the compulsive behavior tied to them. What results is not to be
confused with coldness or indifference, either. For a person with an applying
opposition in his or her natal chart has also the possibility of bringing to
culmination and concrete, outward manifestation in his or her life something
expressing a fullness of relationship between the opposing planetary
functions.
As the exact opposition nears, the two planets, like the Sun and Moon at
Full Moon, face each other from opposite sides of the Earth, The faster
planet symbolically 'reflects' as much of the slower planet's 'light' as it can.
Since what is represented by the faster planet has distributed, incorporated
and been reoriented by the functional activities represented by the slower
planet throughout the previous hemicycle of aspect-relationships, the two sets
of functions together can now be called upon to do what neither separately or
in relation to other planets could previously have accomplished.
Metaphors summing up the cyclic process thus far abound. What began as
a stirring deep within a seed implanted in dark, hum us-rich soil now
culminates in a blushing bloom. What began for the newborn as the
potentiality of individual selfhood culminates in midlife as a sense of
identify. Having emerged as its builder and begun his labors in earnest at the
symbolical waxing square, the mature individual now faces the products of
his labor. He sees not only what they are, but himself, his identify, reflected
in them. As the process proceeds from this moment of realization—which
literally means to 'make real, ' to 'thingify'—much depends on this first
meeting of 'I' and 'It' or 'The Other.' Not only what is seen, but how the seer
responds to it is crucial.
 Under the illumination of the symbolical Full Moon—a 'harvest Moon'—
the involutionary process comes to a close.

II. GROWTH THROUGH LETTING GO

The second half of a cycle is characterized by the operation and interaction
of two complementary processes. They are best characterized by the terms
devolution and evolution.
Devolution is the continuation and reversal of involution, of the 'life'
process begun at conjunction. At the opposition, the cycle's culmination,
having exhausted the possibilities for growth inherent in the involutionary
process, the vital energy fueling the cycle, like the Moon after Full Moon,
begins to wane. The particular forms built as vehicles through which the
cycle came to culmination begin slowly to disintegrate as they are no longer
needed and the 'life force' is gradually withdrawn from them. Such is the
process whereby annual vegetation withers and eventually dies after having
produced flower and fruit; such is the inevitable "way of all flesh" after mid-
life. And so too is one facet of any truly total and multi-level process of
development. Assimilation and deconditioning must necessarily follow
intense activity and experience of a new phase of growth may later proceed
on as 'clean' and unambiguous a foundation as possible.
Devolution's polar complement in the second hemicycle is evolution.
While the change from involution to devolution is natural and continuous, the
change from involution to evolution requires a kind of mutation or 'quantum
leap' from one level, the level of 'life,' to another—the level of 'mind' or
growth in consciousness. During the second half of the cycle, the purpose of
life is to develop consciousness. As the power of 'life' wanes,
consciousness, awakened in the light of the symbolical Full Moon, develops.
As 'life'—which operates spontaneously and unconsciously in answer to a
need— devolves, 'mind,' which operates consciously toward the fulfillment
of a purpose, evolves.
In this chapter we are primarily concerned with the operation of the
devolutionary process, and we will discuss the evolutionary process and its
special rhythm in the following chapter. Nevertheless, the operation of the
two is so interwoven that, at least at first, we will have to consider them
together.
The operation and interaction of these two complementary 'energy
directions' is made abundantly clear in the often-used symbol of the birth-
death-rebirth cycle of annual vegetation. When we outlined the involutionary
process characterizing the first half of a cycle, we likened it to the process
whereby an implanted seed grows into a mature plant: germ, roots, stem,
branches, leaves. The culmination of the cycle—astrologically the opposition
aspect—can best be symbolized by a completely formed bud, a potential
flower. Contained in the nascent flower is also another kind of potentiality,
the seed. While the first hemicycle develops the power of a seed to grow, the
second hemicycle develops the power of a new seed to form and function.
After the cycle culminates, the seed develops within the unfolding flower.
In order for it to embody the full functional capacity of a seed, two things
must happen. First, fertilization must occur to form a seed; second, the seed
must be released from the parent plant. Fertilization refers to the possibility
of beginning the evolutionary process. It includes not only the possibility of
mutation, but it also stresses interaction with the environment, for external
factors (wind, insects or human beings) are in many cases necessary for
cross-pollination to occur. The process leading to the release of the seed
refers to the realm of devolution; as the seed forms within the flower, it in a
sense kills the plant that bore it. Having produced the seed, the plant
becomes an obsolescent form. The seed deprives of energy the antiquated
forms which are incapable of fulfilling the new need of the time—i.e., the
fertilization of the seed and its internal development. Only as the flower
withers and the plant disintegrates is the seed released from bondage to the
dying structure. Only when it is released can it bury itself in the soil enriched
by the decaying organic matter of the plant and its preceding generations—
and only then can it truly fulfill its functional potential.
The seeds released by a plant are, of course, biological seeds, insuring
the perpetuation of the species the following spring. The seeds forming at the
culimation of cycles of human experience are 'mind seeds'—also insuring the
continuation of strictly human life, but at a level other than the purely
biological. 'Mind seeds,' like plant seeds, also require fertilization and
cross-pollinization. In human development this occurs through interpersonal
and social relationship, and relatedness to works given special value and
attention.
Like biological seed-fertilization, relationship can be both evolutionary
and devolutionary in character, and at least at the beginning of the second
hemicycle, these two processes are inseparable. Relationship is
devolutionary insofar as through it, the limitations and shortcomings of the
growing consciousness are revealed. This should lead to the evolutionary
aspect of relationship in which the growing consciousness becomes aware of
its heretofore unconscious and limiting values and assumptions. This
evolutionary awareness in turn fuels the positive aspect of the devolutionary
process in which what were unconscious values and assumptions reveal their
obsolescence and are 'let go.' Relationships thus force the questioning and
breakdown of taken-for-granted, habitual patterns of behaving, thinking and
feeling which no longer 'work,' or elicit positive responses from working-
materials, partners or associates.
Thus, evolution and devolution most constructively interact in the second
half of a cyclic process when devolution takes its toll on whatever
developed as temporary vehicles during the first hemicycle. These
unconscious assumptions and forms of feeling and behaving were necessary
to the involutionary process, but after the cycle's culmination, they become
obsolete and stand in the way of conscious evolution. As these 'empty shells'
are 'let go' and allowed to disintegrate, the developing consciousness is freed
to give a new, more timely, appropriate and responsible rather than
reactionary meaning to its purposeful participation in life and social
processes and events. As objective consciousness, and the power of 'mind' to
formulate meaning, develop in scope and acuity, they further challenge
whatever stands in the way of the next evolutionary step.
Each half of the overall cyclic process thus essentially refers to a
different realm or level of experience and development—the first hemicycle
to the outworking of 'life' through spontaneous, unconscious activity in
answer to a need; the second hemicycle to conscious, mental and group-
participatory evolution, part of which necessitates and is facilitated by the
devolution or devaluing of what predominated during the first hemicycle.
Each of these processes— involution, devolution, evolution—operates
according to its own rhythm and 'schedule.' Each is represented
astrologically by its own series of aspects formed according to principles
exemplifying and befitting it. We have already outlined the rhythm of
involution dominating the first hemicycle of a process, and in Chapter 3 we
will explore in full detail the 'syncopated beat' according to which conscious
evolution proceeds. What we have now to do is to understand, at least
briefly, the rhythms of devolution—the inexorable continuation and reversal
of the 'life' process as it operates throughout the remainder of the arithmetic
series of aspects.

After the opposition, since the faster planet has moved as far away from the
slower planet as it can, it begins to return toward it—actually toward the two
planets' next conjunction—and the distance between them decreases.
According to the way aspects are considered in usual astrological practice,
aspects formed after the opposition decrease in size, in angular value, and the
order of aspects formed during the waning or devolutionary hemicycle is
essentially a reversal of the order of aspects formed during the waxing or
involutionary hemicycle. The waning quincunx follows the opposition, then
the trine, square, sextile, semi-sextile and, finally, the conjunction beginning
a new cycle. The semi-sextile, for example, occurs as Phase 1 of a six-phase
process in the involutionary hemicycle; the semi-sextile of the second
hemicycle ends both the devolutionary series and the entire cyclic process.
Similarly, the quincunx ends the involutionary series in the waxing
hemicycle, but in the waning hemicycle it is the first aspect formed after the
opposition.
This reversal indicates great differences in meaning between the (so-
called) "same" aspects in the two hemicycles. Unfortunately, practically all
astrologers do consider these two types of aspects— waxing and waning,
involutionary and devolutionary—identical in meaning. This is due to
thinking of aspects merely as categories of possible interplanetary or even
zodiacal relationships, and not as connected phases of ongoing, cyclic
processes. From a process-oriented point of view, a particular aspect has
significance only in terms of the place it occupies, the function it performs, in
the structure of a whole cycle of relationships. It is quite as senseless to
believe that a waxing and a waning square have the same significance as it
would be to say that the summer and winter solstices have the same meaning
in the seasonal cycle of the year beginning at the spring equinox. Youth has
not the same character as old age, even if one sometimes speaks of a second
childhood or 'adolescence in reverse/ Even if we consider the shapes of the
Moon at the first and last quarters, we see that they are oriented in opposite
directions. So are the Moon-crescent after the New Moon and the Moon-
crescent (or decrescent) before New Moon.
If two opposite stages in planetary relationships are called by the same
name and measured exclusively in terms of the same angular value, it
discourages the practice of properly differentiating between their meanings.
This confusing situation need not, however, be perpetuated. Rather than
thinking solely in terms of a series of angular values decreasing after the
opposition—i.e., 150°, 120°, 90°, 60°, 30°—we can also continue the series
of angular values and phase relationships begun at the conjunction. What we
work with then is a series of increasing angular values: Phase 7, opposition
to quincunx (180° to 210°); Phase 8, quincunx to trine (210° to 240°); Phase
9, trine to square (240° to 270°); Phase 10, square to sextile (270° to 300°);
Phase 11, sextile to semi-sextile (300° to 330°); Phase 12, semi-sextile to the
conjunction beginning the next cycle (300° to 359° 59').
Both ways of considering and measuring waning aspects can be
revealing. Measuring in terms of decreasing angular values tends to stress the
devolutionary facet of the second hemicycle, since the emphasis is indeed on
decrease and the reversal of the involutionary sequence of aspects. The
decreasing angular values are actually measured in relation to the coming
conjunction beginning the next cycle. The sequence from that perspective
shows devolution merely as a clean-up process between two involutionary
hemicycles. It stresses the devolutionary process's function of clearing up the
life-arena of useless or potentially harmful debris, so that the next life-cycle
can start on a clean foundation, the remains of the previous involutionary
phases having been fully broken down into 'humus' which will nourish the
next sequence of involutionary activity. This way of looking at the
devolutionary process fails to show that the ultimately radical clearing-up
process operates hand-in-hand with a process of consciousness development,
without which the next involutionary process would merely repeat the past
one—mistakes, failures and all. The phase-denominated, increasing angular
value way of considering the second hemicycle aspects tends toward
integrating at least some hint of this evolutionary process into the
devolutionary sequence. It—and even more the series of aspects we will
study in Chapter 3—points to the second hemicycle as a continuation of the
first in the sense that 'reaping' follows a period of 'sowing.'
From another point of view, nothing is actually changed by measuring the
aspects in one way or another, as long as one clearly recognizes that second
hemicycle or waning aspects are different from first hemicycle or waxing
aspects, and as long as one understands the interrelationship of major
processes operating through the cycle as a whole. Generally speaking,
waxing (involutionary) aspects refer to the instinctual building up of the
relationship between the two planetary functions involved. During the second
hemicycle, the fruit of the relationship is reclaimed. Devolutionarily, the
emphasis is on the breakdown of the interplanetary relationship, which
releases, so to speak, the 'seed essence' of the 'harvest.' What use is made of
that harvest as it is released, how and for what purpose it is assimilated and
incorporated into the life-pattern of the individual or the community, are
concerns of the evolutionary process.
As an example, we can continue the illustration of the Venus/ Mars cycle
we began and left unfinished earlier in this chapter. To recap what we said
regarding the first hemicycle of relationships between the two planets: the
conjunction beginning the Venus/Mars cycle referred to the need and
opportunity to bring the personal-emotional nature to a new level of
functioning or self-expression. At the conjunction, the outward-bound,
activity-orientation of Mars gave a new direction and impetus to Venus's
inwardly directed sense of value and capacity to give form. The new
orientation had, first, in the earliest stage of the relationship, to focus itself at
the subjective level; then, at the waxing square, to be allowed to 'burst forth'
or definitely 'incarnate' in the forms Venus built. During Phases 4, 5 and 6, a
commitment to creative, autonomous endeavor had to be established,
sustained and refined in order to complete the involutionary process. By the
opposition, the cycle's culmination, the personal-emotional nature has
become embodied in its creations, whether these manifest as actual forms
such as works of art, forms of behavior, or psycho-emotional exteriorizations
such as interpersonal relationships, etc. Reflected therein are the unconscious
and compulsive values and desires of their creator.
 The opposition between Venus and Mars refers to the need and
opportunity to bring expression at the personal-emotional level to objective
consciousness. This can occur only when the personal-emotional nature
becomes aware of its creations as separate from itself. True relationship with
them, rather than mere subjective reaction to them, becomes possible. In this
relationship, objective consciousness can be born, and the forms created
during the first hemicycle of activity can be consciously made to fulfill an
evolutionary purpose. Before this can happen, the nascent consciousness
must become aware of and overcome habitual patterns binding self-
expression to instinctual, biological imperatives operating at the
involutionary level.
In the first stages of the Venus/Mars cycle after the opposition then, the
nascent consciousness must disidentify with the strictly biological operation
of the two planetary functions. This can be accomplished primarily through
interpersonal and social relationships, in which the personal-emotional
nature becomes conscious of itself, of what it has become, by relating with
what it has created during the first hemicycle. This relating provides
awareness-stimulating feedback which forces the nascent consciousness to
become aware of the values (Venus) on which activity (Mars) had previously
been based. As Venus moves back toward Mars, she symbolically 'gathers in'
the harvest of their relationship—a harvest of meaning giving new purpose
and value (Venus) to activity (Mars) at the personal-emotional level. As this
occurs, the basis on which self-expression has operated heretofore has to be
re-evaluated.
At the waning square, the consciousness is thus forced to turn inward
again, to question the previously taken-for-granted assumptions and values on
which activity at the personal-emotional level operated. Some old forms of
expression based on old values reveal themselves to be obsolete, to be out of
tune with new values and purposes gradually being recognized and
assimilated. The old forms of personal-emotional expression must be let go,'
and, finally, released. As the cycle ends, consciousness at the personal-
emotional level again withdraws into subjectivity. It yearns for a new
creative impetus, for an opportunity to begin again, at a new level, to
develop new forms of personal-emotional self-expression. The Venus/ Mars
conjunction beginning the next cycle refers to the release of just such a
potentiality. It comes in answer to that need, and also in order to stir into
actual operation the new, yet unrealized and latent capacities 'seeded' during
the now-ended second hemicycle.
Again, we repeat, everyone is born at some phase of the Venus/ Mars
relationship, although we are now concerned only with the waning phases of
the cycle—and these primarily from a devolutionary point of view. For the
purpose of intellectual analysis and understanding, and in astrological
textbooks such as this one, the devolutionary and evolutionary processes
interacting throughout the second hemicycle can be somewhat separated. But
in actual living, especially in the lives of persons in whose birth-charts
waning aspects qualitatively or quantitatively predominate or form
significant patterns, this is not necessarily the case. The operation of the two
processes may be sequential or simultaneous, in the same or in different
areas of life, clearly distinguishable from one another or not. Only the 'active
intuition' of the astrologer or 'life interpreter' can pierce the 'meaning-enigma'
of the client's birth-chart and life-pattern.

PHASE 7—REALIZING
Much has already been said about the metaphorical and theoretical
meaning of this pivotal phase in the cyclic process. The most basic
significance of an opposition in a person's birth-chart is that it defines a
particular set of functional activities (planets), life-areas (houses) and modes
of operation (zodiacal signs) in which the person will be challenged to
repolarize his or her being. Such repolarization entails breaking away from
the level of being at which 'life' holds sway. It means transferring the center
of one's being from the level where what is represented by the opposing
astrological factors operates unconsciously, compulsively and essentially
rooted in biological imperatives, to the level of being at which 'mind'—
objectivity and conscious understanding—dominates and purposefully
directs activity.
Such a picture may seem very abstract and unrealistic to astrologers used
to defining oppositions simply as more or less irreconcilable conflicts
between what is represented by the opposing astrological factors.
Oppositions may indeed manifest in people's life-patterns as such conflicts,
but a truly process-oriented point of view indicates that this usual definition
is not so much wrong as it is incomplete. It does not take into consideration
the meaning of the conflict, what it is for in the client's life. In order to
understand the situation as a whole, the astrologer/life-interpreter must go
beyond this obvious and merely descriptive definition of what most
significantly is a dynamic process in a person's life. He or she must ask:
"What is my client to do about or with the situation confronting him or her? Is
such a conflict really 'irreconcileable?' If it is not, how can it be resolved?
Does its solution involve the client 'choosing' one pole of the situation—i.e.,
what is represented by one set of the opposing factors—over what is
represented by the other?" The most basic question of all is: "What can
meeting such a situation mean in the overall development of the client as a
human being, indeed as an individual person?"
In order to answer these questions, we must realize that latent in the
natures of people with Phase-7 oppositions in their birth-charts is a high
degree of development of the planetary functions involved in the
opposition(s). The person has been born at the apex of a cycle developing
what these planets represent. While the 'seeds' for their development are
within his or her nature at birth, the genetic, familial and/or social
circumstances into which he or she is born provide the 'flower' or matrix
within which they can develop in an actual, existential way. Such
development occurs throughout the 'mini-process' of the person's maturation.
As the person develops and each set of planetary functions manifests its own
kind of 'fullness' a contrast sharpens between what the two sets represent,
and the polar nature of the planets is emphasized. Hence, perhaps the most
challenging and potentially deeply repolarizing oppositions occur between
planets whose functions are by nature polar—e. g., Sun/ Moon, Sun/Saturn,
Moon/Saturn, Venus/Mars, Mercury/Jupiter, Jupiter/Saturn, Saturn/Uranus,
Jupiter/Neptune, Pluto/Mars.
When each set of functional activities first expresses itself in the person's
life, it may seem to do so more or less independently of the expression of the
other set of functions. This apparent unrelatedness or even antagonism is
because the opposition emphasizes polarity in the early stages of its 'mini-
process' development. Both sets of polar activities initially operate in the
life-pattern unconsciously and compulsively, perhaps through the genetic
constitutions or personalities of the parents, or through other circumstances
over which the person has little or no control or even awareness. As
conflicts and contrasts arise, they may even result in psychological
complexes. In order for the purposeful, functional nature of such conflicts to
operate, they must be allowed to 'come to a head.'
The person must, first, allow to come to objective manifestation what
each 'side' of the opposition represents, even if it means conflict or, initially,
neurosis. Then, his or her task is to allow the conflict to generate within him
or her sufficient dissatisfaction—'energy' or 'fire by friction,' as it were—to
enable an awareness to develop of what is at the root of the problem. In other
words, the person must realize that no solution to the problem is forthcoming
unless he or she is willing to find out and experience what really is behind
and implied in the situation. If the person accepts to be the field in which the
problem resolves itself—rather than insisting on an external or technical
solution to what is really internal and not subject to the manipulations of
technique—he or she has the possibility of becoming objective to both sides
of the polarity. Perhaps with a little guidance, he or she can come to see and
accept the wider developmental context in which the situation occurs.
Objectivity and acceptance eventually become detachment, which 'breaks
the spell,' so to speak, of unconscious compulsion binding the operation of
the opposing planetary functions to 'circumstance' seemingly 'outside' the
person. As the person accepts to look at the situation as a dynamic,
potentially growth-producing aspect of his or her life and being, both 'sides'
of the conflict are integrated into a larger picture. The problem is 'solved'
insofar as the person rises in consciousness to a level at which the conflict-
aspect of the situation ceases to be the central factor. What takes its place is
the challenge to express, harmoniously but dynamically—and above all,
consciously—an integrated fullness of what had previously, in another form,
conflicted.
Successful polarization thus ultimately actualizes a person's latent
capacity to bring to objective manifestation a creative fullness of what is
implied in the relationship between the two sets of opposing planetary
functions. This brings the previous, prenatal involutionary development
between the two opposing functions to culmination and 'flowering' in and
through that person's life. It makes of him or her a potential agent through
whom can be satisfied the need in answer to which the cycle began and
proceeded. For this last-mentioned reason, it is often most valuable for the
astrologer to refer back in the ephemeris to the previous, prenatal
conjunction of two nat ally opposing planets. The zodiacal sign in which the
conjunction occurred, any close, major aspects it may have made to other
planets at the time, and especially the meaning of the conjunction's Sabian
degree: all these are symbolic clues amplifying and making more explicit
what underlies the opposition-situation, and therefore what kind of
repolarization, in what arena of life, is required of the person meeting such a
situation.
For the person in whose birth-chart two planets are in Phase-7
opposition, failure to meet the life-experiences they refer to in such a way as
to facilitate repolarization ultimately means being swept away by the
devolutionary process in which crystallization and degeneration dominate.
The possibility is there for the person to become more or less permanently
'suspended' between the horns of a dilemma. In extreme cases, the result can
be a sort of psychic or psychological paralysis. The devolutionary rhythm
then takes its toll on whatever it is to which the person is consciously and
compulsively bound. Since repolarization and birth in objective
consciousness have not occurred, the person can find no meaning—no
broader developmental context—within which he or she can integrate the
painful 'letting go/ It rather appears to him or her as a 'no win' situation, one
in which he is 'damned if he does, damned if he doesn't'— i.e., painfully
bound to a conflict with no apparent solution, but afraid to let go of the
conflicting elements because they have become structural factors around
which coheres an otherwise unintegrated personality or life-pattern.
Degeneration follows such crystallization, and as any particular situation
degenerates, the tendency is for it to become essentially reconstituted in the
life in another form. But past failures—the 'sins of omission'—tend to
accumulate and complexity the situation. Successful repolarization becomes
increasingly difficult and unlikely—but certainly not impossible.

PHASE 8—SHARING
Phase 8 begins with the waning quincunx, and it is therefore related in
meaning to Phase 6, which began in the first hemicycle with the waxing
quincunx. While Phase 6 represented the necessity of refining and adjusting
expression, Phase 8 refers to the need to fine-tune vision, to adjust oneself to
the realities of what one is now able clearly and objectively to see.
Phase 8 also occupies a similar position in the second half of the cyclic
process to the one occupied by Phase 2 in the first hemicycle. For just as
Phase 2 initially focused the subjective, actional possibilities released at the
conjunction, Phase 8 focuses the objective possibilities of consciousness-
development released at the cycle's culmination, and the ability to give
meaning to experience steadies and grows. If the repolarization required
during Phase 7 was not successful, Phase 8 can refer to a reaction to and/or
compensation for the failure. It does so in terms of crystallization and
progressive degeneration—illness or fruitless neurosis.
In the lives of person with significant Phase 8 interplanetary relationships
in their birth-charts, this distinction between success and failure may not be
very clear-cut. For conscious understanding can develop on the basis of what
we like to call positive experience as well as on the basis of what human
beings fear and consider negative. Phase 8 relationships between planets
challenge the growing consciousness to go beyond such moral and ethical
dualities as positive/negative, good/bad, right/wrong, etc. They refer to the
need to meet experiences in such a way as to widen the scope of one's
understanding to include all necessities in their proper relationships to one
another. This may mean having to accept what is in lieu of wishing for what
'should be' in a moral or ethical sense—and at the same time trying to bring
to consciousness and work toward what is possible, what 'can be' in a
progressive, evolutionary sense. It may also mean operating, at least initially,
on blind faith, or in terms of a parrot-like repetition of affirmations in which
one does not wholeheartedly believe. This may be necessary as a foundation,
but truly inclusive understanding eventually needs to be based on a focusing
and sharpening of the kind of mind that actually sees the necessity and
interprets the interrelatedness of various factors and experiences. What needs
most to be 'let go' during this phase of the process is exclusion—the notion
that experiences are exclusively good or bad, that one will accept growth
only in particular forms. Openness and inclusiveness become increasingly
necessary as the waning sesquiquadrate approaches at the midpoint of Phase
8.
 The waning sesquiquadrate is related in meaning to the semi-square
encountered at the midpoint of Phase 2, for the sesquiquadrate is also a semi-
square—45°—from the opposition. Here the growing consciousness
naturally begins to disseminate or apply to external reality its steadying
vision and understanding. As it does so, it emerges from the realm of self-
referential illumination, where it is primarily concerned with itself, its own
pain, pleasure or process. As its attention turns outward, it may be shocked
by the realities of the 'real world' into which it is awakening. Such a shock
may force it to expand its growing understanding to include external realities.
Its capacity to give meaning is enhanced and broadened by such an exchange.
The question prematurely asked during Phase 2 becomes appropriate and
significant here: "How to?"—how to reconcile the difference between what
one sees and what one internally envisions? The answer: by exchanging
ideas and ideals with others, and by working with others toward the
fulfillment of shared goals and needs. Such working relationships provide
new materials—new understandings and unfamiliar visions—which, as
Phase 8 draws to a close, must be integrated into a workable philosophy of
life.
The waning sesquiquadrate is also related in meaning to its counterpart in
the first hemicycle, the waxing sesquiquadrate of Phase 5. Like the waxing
sesquiquadrate, the waning sesquiquadrate can also involve struggle, but in
the second hemicycle the struggle is to understand, to let go of exclusive
points of view, to include the understandings and the needs of others in one's
point of view, and to begin to assimilate the meaning of what one now sees.

PHASE 9—UNDERSTANDING
As the faster planet increasingly moves back toward the slower one, it
symbolically 'brings' with it the harvest of the interplanetary relationship thus
far. The waning trine and Phase 9 refer to such an 'ingathering,' a harvest of
meaning with which one can purposefully work. The flower may have faded
as the seed develops, but the fruit, protecting the seed until it is mature
enough to be released, progressively ripens. While the waxing trine
creatively focused the nature of the slower planet through the expression and
activities of the faster one, the polarity is reversed at the waning trine. The
functional activities of the faster planet enrich and bring new meaning— and
eventually the necessity for questioning and re-evaluation—to the functional
nature of the slower planet.
The waning trine is also related in meaning in the second hemicycle to
the sextile beginning Phase 3 in the first half of the process, for it occurs 60°
after the opposition, when the planets are separated by an angular distance of
240°. Opportunities to focus growing understanding, to work constructively
with others toward the actualization of a shared vision, present themselves.
By taking advantage of these opportunities, the person with waning trines in
his or her birth-chart discovers what his or her special integrative and
expressive capabilities are. He or she thus fulfills the waning-trine challenge
to focus in his or her life the harmonious, conscious expression of what has
been developing thus far in the cycle—i.e., the 'harvest' of the interplanetary
relationship. Creativity typical of the waning trine is not only based on
outward expression as it was in the first hemicycle at the waxing trine.
Creativity here is in addition based on 'intake' and responsiveness—on the
ability to respond at the level of holistic understanding, of intuition giving
meaning to the entire situation in which any event, encounter or experience
occurs.
All this is primarily a concern of the evolutionary process in which the
waning trine plays a significant part, and we will discuss the aspect of the
situation more fully in Chapter 3. What is significant here is that especially
as the waning trine separates from exact, its devolutionary facet—the
catabolic side of relationship and of what has occurred since the opposition
—becomes increasingly apparent. Since the opposition, consciousness has,
ideally, been growing through relationship, which first acted in its
evolutionary, fertilizing mode. As consciousness increasingly focuses, and
'mind' becomes formed enough to be able to give constructive meaning to
'life' or experience—no matter what it may be—this growth turns destructive,
as it were, of the cohesiveness of what was built up during the first
hemicycle. In other words, through Phases 7, 8 and 9 in general, relationship
and the need to understand and integrate in meaning all experiences have
pointed up the necessity to question the basis on which one previously acted.
This is why waning trines in birth-charts often refer to involvement in
relationships which turn out to be upsetting to the status quo. The most
obvious encumberances of consciousness brought over from the first
hemicycle— assumptions, dogmatic ethical assertions, taken-for-granted
values and beliefs, etc.—must be recognized as such and 'let go.'
Just as in the first hemicycle the waxing square forced one to dig down to
bedrock in order to build on a solid foundation, the waning square forming at
the end of Phase 9 forces the growing consciousness to plumb the depths of
what it rests upon. From the opposition, and particularly from the waning
trine, to the waning square, the growth of understanding undermines the
foundations on which activity previously operated. As the waning square
approaches, old forms of relating, feeling or behaving—or more concrete
forms such as tools, social institutions, etc.—reveal their inappropriateness
in the light of new understanding. They no longer fit in with new ways of
thinking, nor do they elicit positive results from the material with which one
is working or from partners or associates to whom one is related. As the
waning square forms, a tension toward the definite breakdown of all that has
become obsolete develops. What was an actional crisis in the first hemicycle
becomes in the second a crisis at the level of understanding and values—a
challenge to radical re-valuation out of which new insights, new values and a
new philosophical basis can eventually emerge. Persons born with planets in
Phase 9 relationship nearing Phase 10 relationship are challenged to meet
and assimilate experiences helping to focus in their lives just such an
ideological crisis.

PHASE 10-REVALUING
Like the waxing square (90°), the waning square (270°) is a particularly
important turning point in a cycle. In the lunation cycle, the beginning of this
phase is marked by the distinctive shape of the Last Quarter Moon, the first
definite shape formed after Full Moon. What had been the round fullness of
the Moon-disc has gradually diminished to a hemicircle, reminiscent again,
as at First Quarter, of a straight-edged scythe slicing across the night-sky. The
straight-edge of the Last Quarter Moon is oriented in the opposite direction
than the First Quarter Moon's. Here again, also as at First Quarter, the Moon
crosses the Earth's orbit. But now it comes back within it, moving toward the
orbit of Venus, toward the Sun and the place where the next soli-lunar
conjunction (New Moon) will occur.
 The lunation symbolism again implies cutting away—'decision.' The
crisis or decision is not at the actional level, at the level of life,' as it was at
First Quarter. It is now at the level of consciousness, of understanding—of
'mind'—a philosophical, ideological parting of the ways. When the Moon
crosses the orbit of the Earth going 'inward'—toward the next New Moon—
the cycle is symbolically no longer operating on the actional momentum
established at First Quarter and reaching culmination at Full Moon, it is
rather 'drawn on,' as it were, by the promise of the next conjunction, the
Moon's reunion with the Sun. As the Moon crosses the orbit of the Earth, it
symbolically begins the return to 'source.' Renewal will soon be necessary,
and possible.

The sinusoid figure again provides a graphic illustration of these

significant points. After the involutionary process 'turned the corner' of the
waxing square (B) and stabilized in the direction of the cycle's culmination
(C), motion in this general direction continued, even after the line dividing
the two hemicircles from one another was passed. Before the opposition (C),
the direction of activity was 'outward,' toward developing objectivity and
becoming conscious— in terms of the individualizing process, toward
actualizing the potentiality of individual selfhood. After the opposition (C),
consciousness develops, at least at first, along the same lines it 'awakened':
relationship. The initial upward thrust of the second hemicircle seems to
imply a kind of 'ascent' or expression of consciousness. A relatively minor
'course correction' occurs at the waning sesquiquadrate, midway between the
opposition and the waning square (D). The waning square presents another
significant turning point. Now, our metaphorical driver steers into the curve
fully conscious. Midway through it, he is forced, as it were, to yield to
centripedal force, to allow his car to be pulled inward, back toward source,
the next conjunction (A1), rather than 'off track' to D1. The decision here does
not involve 'taking over' as it did at First Quarter; now it involves—in its
devolutionary aspect—'letting go.'
Thus, the last quarter square is, like the first quarter, a moment of crisis
and reorientation. The decision now involves 'cutting away' at the level of
consciousness: severance from whatever in an individual is still rooted in a
taken-for-granted collective past. For the beliefs, dogmas and assumptions
beginning to be questioned at the close of Phase 9 are those inherited from
parents and collective, tradition-perpetuating institutions such as churches
and schools. From the devolutionary point of view, the person with
significant waning squares in his or her birth-chart is challenged to recognize
and root out internally whatever is still bound to this collective past. If such
severance does not occur, bondage to the collective past forces the person to
meet experience on the basis of handed-down solutions and techniques
which" cannot provide valid and workable ways of meeting present
problems because they developed in a different, no longer existing context, in
response to a different set of circumstances, needs and available materials.
Like a seed forming and drawing nourishment from a dying plant, a
person's mind is fed and formed by collective images impressed upon it
since birth. In the development of a seed, a moment comes when its
connection to its parent plant must be severed, or else both the seed and the
remains of the plant will return to the soil together. If the seed is not
separated far enough from the parent plant, the strong chemicals released by
the decomposing structure may pierce the seed's protective covering and
render it ineffectual, unable to weather the winter and germinate in the
spring. So too must a person who aspires to true individuality and inclusive
understanding sever his psychic connection with collective-cultural values
and beliefs.
 Thus, the person with significant waning squares in his or her birth-chart
is called upon to be the vehicle or 'focalizer' through whom some kind of
reorientation or 'revolution in consciousness' can operate—no matter how
limited or wide in scope its effects may turn out to be. The person will, first,
be challenged to probe deeply into taken-for-granted beliefs and values—his
or her Own' and those of the culture having impressed itself on consciousness
since birth. Some set of life-events or circumstances will prompt such
probing. They are significant in themselves insofar as they reveal the general
area in which the person must confront what is at the root of consciousness.
The outcome of the situation, whatever the actual circumstances may be,
depends on this inner probing being carried out and not evaded. It must be
done not only courageously, but, above all, honestly.
This last-mentioned quality of consciousness is perhaps the key to
meeting successfully the challenge of the waning square. For something—
some set of values, beliefs, ideas—to which one is attached has outlived its
usefulness and has become obsolete; mental structures, like the flowers of
spring and the husks of autumn, come and go according to the eternal rhythms
of birthing and dying. The inexorable rhythm of life, of change, decrees that
whatever is obsolete will, in time, disintegrate. But whether it does so while
one's being and consciousness are still attached to it, depending on it to
fulfill some function it can no longer perform—or whether the old structures
fail and disintegrate after one has 'moved on' to operate on the basis of more
vibrant and life-giving foundations—ultimately depends upon the degree to
which one is truly honest with oneself when confronted with the need to re-
assess and re-evaluate one's basic beliefs.
If one does not meet such a confrontation honestly, one remains attached
to obsolete ideas, and no-longer-valid assumptions and images structure
one's thinking and behavior. Solutions to life's problems founded upon such
values fail to 'work.' Time after time, they fail to produce the kind of results
one hoped would follow. Anger, resentment, resignation, bitterness: such is
the harvest of the failure to let go when letting go was necessary and
appropriate. Self-righteousness and a tragic sense of isolation can develop in
a rigid, crystallized ego, which mistakenly thinks itself victorious over
change. Degenerative diseases, whether of mind, body or both, nevertheless
set in. In the long run, change always wins.
 If, on the other hand, one does meet such a confrontation with one's
values and beliefs honestly—which may or may not occur the first time it
comes up—some cherished images inevitably emerge tarnished, revealed as
'rusting' and obsolescent if not completely obsolete. From the devolutionary
point of view, the second part of the waning-square challenge is indeed to let
them go, and in some cases, to help to hasten their demise both in oneself and
in others. The person having successfully faced the first challenge of the
waning square is thus asked, for ultimately constructive purposes, to be part
of a destructive, or destructuring process, which helps to break down
whatever in himself, his community or society is no longer positively
contributing to evolutionary progress, but instead stands in the way.
We have stressed here the devolutionary or 'catabolic' facet of the waning
square, but in actual practice one should neither dwell on nor minimize its
difficult side. What a waning square refers to in a person's life must be seen
in the context of a whole process, in terms of its function of impelling
someone to question the meaning of everything accepted since birth. This is,
unquestionably, a difficult task, especially if one resists doing it when it is
necessary. To question everything, however, does not mean that one is
required to discard everything, to "throw the baby out with the dirty bath."
On the contrary, the waning square is a kind of winnowing mechanism of the
cyclic process, asking us to separate the kernel of experience from the husk.
One does not throw out the kernels, just the husks—but of course one must be
able to tell the difference, and not be attached to the husks simply because
they have seemingly 'always been there' and one has become used to seeing
them.
This kind of mental focusing and discriminatory ability—using the term
discriminatory in its original and positive sense, not as it has recently been
popularized sociopolitically—results from meeting the ideological crisis of
the last quarter 'squarely.' It provides the foundation on which the waning
square can also operate in a positive, evolutionary way. As a person meets
the crisis of the waning square, focuses in on some basic issues and breaks
away from unquestioned subservience to collective dogmas, that person
becomes ready and able to contribute positively to the harvest of human
experience. The mind is open and free, yet also sufficiently focused to
release new images—'kernels' or 'seeds'—'mind-seeds'—pregnant with truly
evolutionary possibilities. Having met and assimilated experiences both
catabolic and focusing at the level of mind, the person embraces the
possibility of becoming more than merely a member of a 'demolition-derby'
team. He or she becomes, potentially, an architect of a new future.
The necessity to begin reorganizing consciousness around such new, but
as yet vague and indefinite images increases as the waning sextile, the
beginning of Phase 11, approaches.

PHASE 11—REORGANIZING
After the Last Quarter phase of the soli-lunar cycle, the Moon continues
to wane, to move within the Earth's orbit back toward the Sun—back toward
'source.' The directional momentum established at Last Quarter stabilizes.
Symbolically, consciousness has been forced inward, back on itself for
radical reassessment and revaluation. Yearned for now are new images
around which consciousness can reorganize, a new or renewed connection to
some vital well-spring of energy and archetypes.
The aspect beginning Phase 11 is the waning sextile, occurring when two
planets are separated by an angular distance of 300 degress. It is related in
meaning to both the waxing sextile beginning Phase 2 of the overall cycle,
and to the waxing trine beginning Phase 5; for the waning sextile is both 120°
from the opposition or the fifth aspect formed during the second hemicycle,
and 60° or two 'steps' before the next conjunction. Significant also is the fact
that in this second hemicycle the sextile follows the square, while it
preceeded it in the first half of the cycle.
While the waxing sextile referred to the need and latent ability to
spontaneously organize inchoate materials into new forms which revealed
their purpose as they developed, the waning sextile refers to the need and
latent ability to reorganize understanding having been disrupted by a radical
crisis of revaluation at the waning square. The most significant question
surrounding this reorganization is, "Around what set of new or renewed
images will reorganization take shape? To what source or 'resource' will the
increasingly subjective consciousness turn, to fill what it experiences as a
vacuum, an inner emptiness created when obsolete values and ideas were
recognized as such and rooted out? From whence will revitalizing images
arise? Whither will they lead?"
Such are the kinds of questions the waning sextile poses and challenges
us to answer. Depending upon our point of view, on the perspective from
which we view this aspect, the answers we offer differ. On one hand, we can
look at the waning sextile primarily from the point of view of its beginning
Phase 11 of the overall process, as the phase following the waning square's
'crisis in consciousness.' Having reassessed and found wanting many
sociocultural values and fashions in 'thinking-feeling' of relatively recent
vintage, consciousness may seek renewal in the very ancient past—
symbolically, the conjunction long ago beginning the now-ending cycle. In an
attempt to drink again of clear and unpolluted waters close to source,
consciousness goes, as it were, upstream, against the flow, to seek whatever
may remain of the spirit behind the original creative impulse.
If, on the other hand, we consider the waning sextile primarily as a sort
of second-hemicycle trine—120° or five 'steps' from the cycle's culmination
—consciousness may seek its new foundation in the present, depending upon
its own and its associates' resources and understanding, as these have
developed since the cycle's culmination, on the foundation of what was
realized then. The 'source' to which consciousness turns is symbolically the
opposition, and its focus is on the present rather than the past, on meeting
current problems—perhaps, symbolically, trying to clean up the 'river' having
become dirtied and polluted by the residual effects of past mistakes, whether
these have been 'sins' of comission or of omission.
From yet a third point of view, we can consider the waning sex-tile
primarily as two 'steps' before the next conjunction. The attempt at
reorganization then turns consciousness toward the future, opens and
prepares it for it. Rather than seeking an unpolluted source upstream, or
trying to clean up any particular 'harbor,' this solution follows the flow to the
sea, to the Source of all sources, Ocean of all potentialities. The deepest
possibility here is some kind of prophetic anticipation—a sort of psychic
pre-echo such as occurs acoustically on LP records sometimes—in which
new images are intuited or resonated to 'in advance,' images so new that a
cycle developing what is potential in them will not begin until after the
coming conjunction definitely releases them.
 All of the above refer to possibilities for the person in whose birth-chart
waning sextiles predominate or form significant patterns. To recapitulate an
ancient past, undoubtedly very beautiful and vibrant at its far-distant source;
to solidify and express a present built on and at the expense of that past; to
anticipate a future in which both are resolved yet superceded: these are the
possibilities of what waning sextiles can mean in relation to the planetary
functions involved. The key to all is reorganization, with an emphasis on the
re. For there is no prophetic anticipation of new images unless old ones have
definitely been let go. There is no truly now-oriented expression unless 'now'
is no longer merely an extension or possible repetition of the past. There is
not even any true recapitulation of the ancient past unless what is revived is
really of source—eternal and ageless, not dated and of limited applicability.
Some form of creative expression often results from or stimulates
reorganization of consciousness in the life of a person with planets in Phase
11 relationship in his or her birth-chart. Creativity is latent in his or her
nature, for the waning sextile is, as we've pointed out, the 'trine' of the second
hemicycle—120° or the fifth 'step' after the opposition. But what is
expressed and the spirit behind its expression now are not the same as the
ebullient creativity typical of the waxing trine. The term creative isn't quite
right either, because rather than bringing something new into existence,
creativity at the waning sextile deals more with reorganizing or rearranging
old materials in an especially evocative way. What are evoked are indeed
new possibilities—possibilities so new as to be 'seed possibilities'—
conveyed through forms so radically different from anything produced under
prevailing principles of esthetic or intellectual organization that they can only
be called 'seed forms.'
Seed forms are the bare, spare, essentialized and condensed expressions
of the end of a cycle. They at once recapitulate the ancient yet eternal past in
which the cycle was rooted, pose the unsolved problems of the present, and
anticipate as yet unknown and unknowable future solutions. They are
conveyors—evocateurs—of understanding and vision rather than concrete
forms serving utilitarian purposes. They may be philosophical or
psychological systems, or symbolic and evocative works of art. Whatever
they are, they are geared to a future of which their creator can see only the
structural outline or prenatal glow. They carry consciousness to its limits, to
the threshold of what can be known and consciously apprehended about the
future. Their function is to implant in the minds of their creators and public
alike the seeds for future development.
As Phase 11 proceeds, the waning semi-square forms. It is 45 °— again
an angle of maximum intensity of forces in a magnetic field— from both the
waning square and the coming conjunction. It is related in meaning to both the
waxing semi-square and sesquiquadrate, for it also occurs 135° after the
opposition. What is symbolized midway through Phase 11 is almost the
mirror-reverse of what was significant during Phases 2 and 5. In the first half
of the cycle, nascent future possibilities had to focus themselves, meet and at
least tentatively overcome the inertia of the past (Phase 2). Actional
capacities were stirred into motion, and expression became outward,
vigorous and potentially explosive by the middle of Phase 5 (waxing
sesquiquadrate). Now, as the cycle ends, consciousness turns increasingly
toward whatever it intuits as a new or renewed source of creative
potentiality. While the creator (or appreciator) of seed forms may feel
himself or herself to be the product of the past— which indeed he or she is—
his or her deepest identification should be increasingly with the future,
unborn though it may be. Creativity may thus be intensely subjective and
potentially implosive, for the person focusing the waning semisquare phase
of the cycle in his or her life and birthchart identifies with a future which few
others can imagine or relate to. The person will be inwardly impelled to
scatter seeds of potential rebirth—'seed ideas/ 'seed forms'—while being
challenged to embody seedhood or seedlikeness.
Thus, the functional activities represented by the semi-squaring planets,
the fields of experience represented by the natal houses they occupy, will be
those through which the challenge to 'seedhood' will come. The environment
in which the person operates may be hostile or relatively receptive to the
futureward vision he or she endeavors to embody and exteriorize—most
likely the former. In either case, the person with planets in waning semi-
square relationship will be challenged to become outwardly self-sufficient
and inwardly dedicated—like a seed, totally self-contained and consecrated
to participating in a process which is understood and accepted as far greater
than the span of the person's own life and consciousness. Like Moses and the
Promised Land, the seed-man or -woman of even the most prophetic vision
cannot actually 'enter' the future. The pressure of karma, of the unfinished
business of the past of which the person is indeed the product, is too great. At
this phase of the process, all one can—and must—do is to see and point the
way.
This most humbling of all 'lessons' increasingly hits home as Phase 12,
the final phase in the process, begins.

PHASE 12—RELEASING
The waning semi-sextile begins the final 'step' of the psychlic* process.
In the lunation cycle, the Moon is again a slim Crescent, or more properly,
de-Crescent, for it is oriented in the opposite direction from the Crescent
beginning the cycle. The inverted lunar Crescent rises for a few days ahead
of the Sun announcing the new day. Like the Phoenix descending into
consuming flames from which it will rise again, the Moon is soon caught in
the firey embrace of the Sun, and disappears from view until after New
Moon. What occurs between the two Crescents, when the Moon is absent
from the night-sky and darkness prevails, is thus unseen—a mystery—a most
profound transition between a cycle now ending and another yet to begin.
In more human terms, the Moon's absence from the night-sky symbolizes
the subjectivity to which consciousness returns at the end of a cycle. It has,
ideally, utterly repudiated reliance upon what is external and traditional,
dedicating itself instead to cultivating a vision of an unborn but increasingly
compelling future sustaining it from within. Outwardly, deeper issues may
seem, mysteriously, to take care of themselves, to be subsumed in a largely
unconscious process of inner assimilation and transition. Problems of daily
living must still be met, and since traditional solutions are no longer relied
upon, answers and the inspiration for new approaches must be sought within.
On one hand, such an inner search can mean an anarchic 'every man for
himself : "Don't bother me, I'm doing my own thing." While each individual
must seek an inner source of inspiration, at the collective level alternatives
replacing 'raditional approaches to daily living will arise, and they will
come through especially open and enterprising individuals. Some individuals
rising to the challenge of seedhood during the last phases of a cycle manage
to both free themselves from collective cultural domination and 'return' to
serve the collective by becoming dedicated channels through whom new
images can be implanted in human consciousness. They do not become caught
up in the kind of atomistic individuality possible when traditional constraints
have been abandoned. Neither do they spurn the possibility of being actively
related to a greater whole or greater process in favor of "doing their own
thing."
In birth-charts, waning semi-sextiles are not usually considered
significant aspects, possibly because they refer to matters not usually
requiring a great deal of conscious attention or even understanding from the
person in whose chart they occur. This is often true unless —and this is a
significant unless—the Phase 12 interplanetary relationship is particularly
focal in the birth-chart's overall planetary pattern (gestalt), in more
exteriorizing aspect to a third planet, or very close to (in orb of) conjunction.
An example of the first instance would be, say, a see-saw* chart in which
two planets in waning semi-sextile occupy one half of the pattern. An
example of the second instance would be what occur if faster planet A were
30° behind slower planet B, and either one or the midpoint of both were
aspected, say squared, opposed or trined, etc., by planet C. Such situations
would tend to bring out into the open a process of assimilation and qualities
of being which would otherwise remain more internal or subjective.
In these types of situations we see lived out (at least potentially) the inner
workings of what otherwise occurs subjectively when a cycle ends. The
person whose chart contains significant Phase 12 interplanetary relationships
—especially as they approach conjunction —develops and matures to focus
in his or her being the essence of both the accomplishments or 'successes' and
the unfinished business or relative failures of the entire now-ending cycle.
Both sides of such a polarity are latent in his or her being. Here the task is
living out the two. This means manifesting in more or less objective or
subjective ways both the assimilated harvest of a by-now degenerated past
and an openness to an as-yet unknown and uncertain future which is, ideally,
increasingly acknowledged to be necessary.
Thus, at the close of the cycle, as at the beginning, consciousness and
activity are poised, as it were, midway between past and future. An internal
polarization at final conjunction complements the one we saw operating at
the interplanetary opposition. The more deeply one probes past experience
for new solutions and inspiration, the more wanting and empty of vital,
compelling meaning past experience reveals itself to be. The more
consciousness tries to project itself into the future, to intuit in some relatively
definite way what a new creative impetus might bring and mean, the more it
falls back upon itself. Since it has been formed and molded by the past, a
steady vision of a truly new future will always elude it: old bottles should
not be used to hold new wine. A truly new future is always more than merely
an extrapolation of the past.
This Catch-22 characterizing the end of the cycle can manifest in a
variety of ways in the lives of persons whose birth-charts contain significant
waning conjunctions. Such people often learn to deeply mistrust the
traditional past represented by the conjoining planetary functions and
operating in the natal house occupied by their conjunction. Whether through
rebellion or inner compulsion, they may be driven to seek new directions for
these functions' expression. As long as a person is the product of the past
and/or rebels against it, he or she is bound to that past. The connection to the
past cannot be truly left behind until one comes in touch with a vision of a
future so compelling that it irresistibly dynamizes being, consciousness,
activity and incinerates pastward ties. Like Moses and the Promised Land, a
person cannot 'enter or even envision a truly new future— in that future's own
terms—until and unless the past in him or her is released.
The kind of release providing the 'way out' of the end-cycle Catch-22 is
more than a simple, conscious letting go. It is deeper, indeed more
mysterious. It is one thing for a dying plant to release seeds; it is another for
the seed to 'release' the plant that bore it, to allow it to die. Yet it is precisely
this more internalized release which enables the seed-in-the end to become
—after a period of dormancy —the seed-in-the-beginning. The two are not
the same: this spring's germs are not 'the same' plants as died last fall, nor
will this summer's roses be 'the same' flowers that blossomed last year.
What then transforms the 'seed-in-the-end' into the 'seed-in-the-
beginning?' What is the 'out' of the Catch-22 past/future polarization ending
the cycle? What calls down into the realm of human consciousness and
experience a creative release of truly new potentiality? We may say with St.
John, "In the beginning was the Word," but the creative Word is always what
it is—a particular, focused spiritual impulse—in answer to a need, a need
clearly focused and formulated at the end of a cycle which acts as a vessel,
as both an emptiness needing filling and as a container capable of receiving
and holding a creative downpour. As the vessel is formed, to such a shape
will the malleable, molten contents conform later on.
Thus, it is useless for the person caught in the end-cycle polarization to
turn exclusively to either the past for solutions or the future for inspiration.
The person with a (or several) waning conjunction in the birth-chart is
instead challenged to identify being, consciousness and activity with the
need for a new creative impluse in which both the past and future are united.
Such a person lives the duality inherent in the end of the cycle, and his or her
life and being give form and formulation to what is needed next. This need—
as it is lived is what will summon forth the release of truly new potentialities
beginning the next cycle. To the quality of the way the need is formulated, the
quality of spiritual impulse answers. It gives to the unfinished business and
decaying remains of the past an opportunity to become reincorporated into
living structures in a transformed way.
Just as one can call half-empty or half-full a 12-ounce glass containing 6
ounces—or concentrate on figure or ground, or the image of a chalice or the
two profiles forming it—so too can a need be lived in one of two basic
attitudes. One can focus upon the facet of personal lack, on emptiness,
confusion and frustration. Or, one can emphasize the quality of meta-personal
service behind making oneself a vessel fit to call forth and receive a new
potential fullness. To live an open-ended need instead of a closed solution
either culled or extrapolated from past experience represents the greatest
release and deepest 'letting go' of all. It is to sacrifice what the personal ego
wants and envisions for what the higher, transpersonal intuition senses but
cannot grasp. It is to die into the lesser so that the greater can later be born
and, like a seed, to allow a kind of 'empty/ dormant interlude between two
cycles to do its mysterious work.
As the cycle comes to a close, Oroboros curves back upon himself,
swallowing his own tail. The seed-in-the-beginning has now become the
seed-in-the-end, waiting to be transformed into a seed-in-the-beginning. It
occurs not 'again/ for all is new—and yet the same: eternal, Aeonic. So
subjective and protectively self-enveloped has consciousness become that it
cannot communicate the difference, nor needs it to. It is and does the
difference and the sameness of the task: Seedhood waits. . . and waits. It is
not 'patient/ for it knows not that time, an objective measure, passes. It is one
with the inner rhythm of the cycle. In spring, warm Sun, caressing breeze and
rain, blessed rain, will be answered by a green, upspringing germ. Again, yet
ever anew.

_________
* cf. The Lunation Cycle by Dane Rudhyar (Shambhala Publications: 1971).
* cf. In My Own Way by Alan Watts
* As we'll see later on, this is a very different picture from what occurs at waning squares, when from
a process-oriented point of view planets are separated by more or less than 270°, and waning squares
can also be applying and separating. An applying waning square would occur with x at 10° Capricorn
and y at 15° Aries. A separating waning square would occur when, after the exact square between x
and y, x had reached, say, 20° Capricorn, and y had moved to 17° Aries.
* Ira Progoff, The Symbolic and the Real (New York, Julian Press, 1963), pp. 76-77. 52
* This was an interesting typographical error that I thought I would leave here. —LR 80
* cf. Person-Centered Astrology by Dane Rudhyar, p. 175ff. 82
 3.
Less Familiar Aspects: Evolution
GROWTH THROUGH MEANING AND CONSCIOUS
PROCESS
One of the main drawbacks in astrology is that there are too many things
taken for granted, even by the most expert astrologers, without a sufficiently
thorough enquiry into the principles or postulates underlying the various
practices in everyday use. Why should only a few angular values—0°, 30°,
60°, 90°, 120°, (sometimes) 150°, and 180°—in most cases be honored as
the only ones entitled to be called and considered aspects? If others, like the
quintile (72°) or sesquiquadrate (135°), are considered, is there any reason
for doing so— and for either taking or not taking into account other angular
values such as 36° or 40°? Is there no way of understanding the complete
cyclic process within which all angular values find their place and meaning
so that such questions can be answered consistently?
In order to do so, we must understand that the series of angular values
based on multiples of 30° best describes the successive phases in the process
of growth and decay characterizing the 'life-cycle. We have seen that 'life'
operates in its positive, anabolic, building mode during the first half of a
process. This first hemicycle is best characterized as what we have called
the involutionary process, and it refers to the realm of instinctual activity and
nature-born impulsions. Life moves forward in the simplest kind of
arithmetical progression, one step adding itself to the preceding one in sheer
impulsiveness of being: one, one plus one, one plus one plus one, etc. It is a
rhythm of expansion and conquest. It is the rhythm of solar progress through
the year, which defines the limits of the zodiacal signs month after month.
With the opposition aspect, a new realm is potentially reached. On one
hand, the rhythm of 'life' continues, but in its catabolic, devolutionary mode.
On the other hand, a process of consciousness evolution may begin, based
upon but not exclusively limited by what has grown and developed during the
first hemicycle involutionary process. We have previously referred to this
twofold nature of the second hemicycle by likening it to what occurs in the
vegetable kingdom when a plant has already flowered and gone to seed. The
analogy is more apt and instructive at the level of involution and devolution
than it is in terms of the evolutionary process, for while the evolution of
consciousness in human beings can be generally likened to the development
of a seed in the second half of the yearly cycle of vegetation, it should be
obvious that the disparity between the level at which plants operate and the
realm in which human minds function is so great as to render the analogy
useful only for very broad, structural or inspirational purposes.
The distinguishing characteristic of the human potential is that human
beings have the capacity to go beyond merely biological functioning. This
ability develops as human beings (1) become objectively aware of life-
currents, (2) give conscious meaning to them, and therefore (3) assume
responsibility for their actions and reactions. Yet so great is the difference
between involution and evolution, between the realm of 'life' and realm of
'mind', that even these last-mentioned capacities, fully actualized, are only
the first three phases of the evolutionary process which begins at the
culmination of a cycle—its opposition or symbolical Full Moon. At all such
symbolical culminations, birth in consciousness is theoretically reached, i.e.,
it becomes possible. It becomes actual if the kind of radical repolarization or
reorientation we have spoken about previously is successful. When this does
occur, the tide turns, the subjective impulsiveness of expanding life stops.
The 'I' meets the 'Other.' The subject meets the object, and for the first time
becomes fully aware of the relationship—of the fact of being inextricably
related to the outer world and 'reality.'
It is on the basis of this awareness of relationship that 'mind' develops.
Conscious objectivity is the foundation of intelligence, and it is rooted in
duality and contrast. As the self consciously faces the world and other
selves, the instinctual feeling of wholeness of being characterizing involution
is superceded by an increasing feeling of 'dividedness' produced by an
increasing involvement in a myriad of relationships involving ever more
numerous facets of being.
Astrologically, this means that all progress, until the end of the cycle,
will be symbolized by a process of division, not addition, of angular values,
and the series of aspects thus derived is rooted in the opposition rather than
in the conjunction. From the opposition, the half-way point of the cycle, the
circle is divided into thirds, fourths, fifths, sixths, sevenths, eighths, and so
on. The sequence of aspects is thus: opposition, trine, square, quintile,
sextile, septile, octile (or semi-square), novile (or nonagen), decile (or semi-
quintile), etc.
Among the aspects of this series are the less-familiar, less often used and
understood aspects. There are also some aspects which we have already
encountered in our study of aspects formed by the additive process. Now,
however, aspects have been obtained by a fundamentally different process,
and they are no longer related solely to the conjunction beginning the cycle.
They can be understood significantly only if they are related to their source,
the opposition—that is, to the basic factor of awareness produced by the
dualism inherent in all conscious perception of external reality.
In order to understand the less-familiar aspects and the second-hemicycle
meaning of more generally used aspects also found in the first hemicycle, we
have first to understand the opposition from which the new process proceeds
—that is, to understand the nature of awareness, how it develops, and more
specifically, how each of the aspects of the second hemicycle, in its own
specialized way, refers to a particular stage in the evolution of awareness
and consciousness. In order to do so, we can approach these aspects in two
basic ways within the framework of a third, encompassing and unifying idea.
(1) As we divide the circle (cycle) into successively smaller, symbolically
more specialized arcs (phases), we can rely on our sense of the archetypal
and qualitative meaning of number—numerology —to guide us in
determining the meaning of each arc (phase) so derived. (2) We can look to
the traditional, symbolic meanings of the geometric forms we would inscribe
in a circle if we connected by lines the demarcations of the arcs obtained by
the division process. But (3), underlying both these approaches, the
numerological and the geometrical, we must retain the basic sense of process
which we attribute to any whole cycle. Only within a whole cyclic process—
which the two-dimensional circle merely represents—can any phase (or
arc), however derived, be given meaning.

THE OPPOSITION AND THE QUINCUNX

 Dividing a circle into two parts creates a diameter and two points on the
circumference separated by a 180° angle. Characteristic of this angular value
(yet little attention is paid to it) is the fact that whether one starts from one of
the two points or the other, there is the same distance between them—which
is not the case with any other aspect. The opposition thus describes a type of
relationship which is entirely unique, in a class by itself. This distinctive
relationship is what underlies consciousness and the development of the
thinking mind.
Consciousness, as we in the West understand the term today, implies and
depends upon duality and separation—the division between an inner and an
outer realm. Our thinking proceeds on the basis of such dualities—'I' and the
Other, 'in here' and 'out there'— or other categories such as hot and cold, joy
and pain, good and bad. Even more fundamentally, if there were no symbolic
diamter separating 'I' from Other,' there could be no 'I' as the thinker, and
there could be no Other' or categories to think about, because everything
would be One, and One would not be conscious of itself or anything else.
Thus, the diameter represented by the opposition separates 'I' from the
Other.' Only as 'I' sees the Other' can it distinguish and define itself. At the
stage of mental development represented by the opposition aspect, only the
bare fact of awareness—of 'I' as separate from some Other'—exists at first.
The subject faces the object; separating them is thin layer of skin or the
organs of sensation and perception. A person awakens and sees wall, bed,
chairs. He—we— takes this for granted and does not usually question what it
means or how it happens. In a sense, all philosophy is a many-sided attempt
to discover, or rather interpret, what is implied in this 'seeing,' through which
are defined both the object seen and the 'I' that sees. Neither exists without
the other, fundamentally speaking, on the plane where this 'seeing' occurs.
But 'seeing' is not understanding. It is a prerequisite for understanding,
and if evolutionary progress is to occur, seeing must lead to understanding.
Thus, the diameter represented by the opposition divides, but separation can
be absolute and irreconcilable, or it can be an impetus compelling us to find
a way of meaningfully relating two things or the subject and object that
appear to be separate. Any opposition can therefore be approached in two
ways or stages: from the point of view of unbridgeable differences leading to
confrontation, or in terms of a separation that exists for the purpose of
providing a foundation for a new level of relatedness to develop— whether
this relatedness is between persons, between a person and society, between
two facets of a personality or two areas of a person's life. Thus, the quality
of consciousness latent in the opposition aspect grows in acuity and
precision at the first stage of its development by laying stress on contrasts
and differences. At the next stage, it grows by trying to relate and integrate
the two halves of the field of experience symbolically divided by the
opposition aspect.
When the subject faces the object, one cannot be altered without the other
also being changed. Any change of 'shape' on one side of a boundary line
necessarily modifies the shape of the space on the other side of the line. No
one can transform himself or herself without changing the universe. Does this
sound abstract and metaphysical? It should not, for it deals with the most
practical of all facts: there can be no change in the outer world and in society
unless the individual's subjective being is altered, for better or for worse.
This is the challenge of the opposition: to allow the 'seeing' of the 'Other' to
alter one's subjective being, and therefore to alter the world in which one
lives.
Such an alteration is 'progressive' (i.e., in the direction of universal or
personal evolution) or 'regressive'—that is, degenerative. One can move
toward a new experience or meeting in a positive, creative and open way, as
in, "Let me see what this is, include it in my experience, give it a meaning."
Or, one can recoil in fear: "I don't want to see or deal with that." In the first
case, the opposition symbolically becomes a trine; the Two becomes Three.
The duality is bridged, and we will see later on that the trine has
geometrically the tendency to connect in a definite way the two sides of the
circle differentiated by the opposition.
In the second case, the opposition symbolically regresses to a quincunx.
Here, the quincunx carries the negative connotations of a fearfully or
antagonistically met sixth-house experience: personal maladjustment,
sickness, enforced labor, repairing the results of past mistakes, inefficiency
or omissions. A similar process often operates at mid-life, during the early
or middle forties—the symbolical opposition of the human life-span. If a
person cannot meet whatever then confronts him or her, internally or
externally, in a positive, progressive way, and feel secure about moving into
the second half of life, some form of behavioral or emotional regression may
occur. It can take the form of a quasi-adolescent love affair, perhaps with a
much younger person, or an emotional and out-of-proportion sense of
dissatisfaction with one's job, career or lot in life. In any case, behavior
more appropriate to an earlier stage of development reveals a more or less
unchangeable inability to move on to life's next phases. If the regressive
behavior becomes a permanent feature of the personality, disillusionment,
frustration and maladaption are almost sure to follow. Sometimes, however,
such a regression is not only temporary but therapeutic: something missed
can be picked up, and the cycle can afterward proceed to the kind of healthy
conclusion it could not previously reach, owing to the developmental
omission. Thus, while from this point of view the quincunx carries an
unpleasant meaning, it need not be considered absolutely 'bad.' For whatever
reason, some adjustments have to be made, some untaken step passed through
at last.
When looking at any particular quincunx, however, an astrologer has no
way of knowing whether it is functioning as a 'waxing' aspect following a
trine in the first hemicycle, or as a symbolic falling back after an opposition.
Here we are not primarily discussing facts to be applied directly to chart
delineation, but trying to understand an overall picture, a process-oriented
context within which holistic life-interpretation and astrological guidance
can intuitively occur. By understanding the archetypal possibilities and
pitfalls of all the various stages of a process, we can understand not only
particular aspects when confronted by them—either in natal charts,
progressions or transits—but more importantly, we can recognize their
analogues in life, whether or not they come alongside the 'proper' or
'expectable' astrological configurations.
We should keep in mind that when speaking of the quincunx, we have
now three basic ways or contexts within which we can understand such an
aspect: in the involutionary series as a 150° angular value beginning the sixth
30° step, in the devolutionary series as a 210° angular value beginning the
eighth 30° step, and in the evolutionary series as an opposition having fallen
back 30°.

THE TRINE
 When the Two becomes Three, what does the trine add to the opposition?
The first intuition or vision of a goal. The subject facing the object realizes
that he or she can use the object for some purpose. In the opposition there is
only awareness; conceivably, anything or nothing could happen. Either the
subject or the object could transform itself and thus change the other forcibly.
Under the pressure of life or evolutionary growth, however, the state of
perfectly even (albeit often tense) equilibrium represented by the opposition
cannot last. The inner or the outer must win. We have seen that this
essentially means that either the subject (you or I) will shrink from the outer
object or person, in which case the object 'wins' and there is regression for
the ego. Or, the subject will move toward the object in order to use it, to
include it in his life-experience and make it serve a purpose—in which case
both the ego and the object are victorious over fear and inertia, and the
opposition becomes a trine.
In order to fulfill such a victory, the subject has actually transcended the
battle; it has seen some purpose for a relationship with whatever is
confronting it. The bare 'fact' of awareness (opposition) becomes
transfigured into 'purpose' as the opposition leads to a trine. The total
experience (the whole circle) is no longer merely divided into two opposite
factors (hemi-circles); a third factor now links the two. This is the factor of
purpose and, at a higher level, of meaning, for meaning always deals with
referring something to a higher, more inclusive whole. The trine thus forces
one to ask in regard to what one becomes aware of at the opposition: "Where
does it fit in my life? How do I fit in with it? Where do we both fit into a
larger view? How can we most meaningfully use our relationship?" The trine
always presents a challenge to have a vision of what is possible.
Geometrically, division by 3 produces the triangle. Triangles were
probably at first sacred symbols, perhaps connected with the shape of
volcanic mountains and thus with the mysterious spouting forth of fire—
which is also symbolic, especially in relation to the myth of Prometheus, of
the power of Mind. Two other kinds of triangles were sharply differentiated
in archaic geometry as well: the descending equilateral triangle pointing
down from its base (or standing on its apex) and the rectangular triangle, of
which Pythagoras made a strongly mystical use, beside it being the subject of
his famous theorem concerning the square of the hypoteneuse (5) being equal
to the sum of the squares of the other two sides (3 and 4).
The first kind of triangle can be, as we have mentioned above, associated
with volcanic mountains, fire and Mind. It was exemplified in the American
and Egyptian pyramids (pyr is the root of the term for fire, pyros, in Greek).
The rectangular triangle is to be considered, on the other hand, the result of
halving a square or rectangle—and as such is a symbol of polarization and of
creative interplay, the hypoteneuse representing the divine power through
which the integration of two polarities can be effected. In the Pythagorean
formulation, the side number 3 represented Man, and that numbering 4 the
material world or Fate. The hypoteneuse, 5, symbolized the creative power
of Providence through which Man can overcome Fate and adjust the material
world to his need.

This numerical symbolism, undoubtedly far older than Pythagoras, is

most important. In astrology the trine aspect was introduced into the fate-
oriented (because unalterable) fourfold time-pattern of cycles, such as the
year or the lunation cycle. The trine represented Man as the constructive
power able through the use of his intellect to bring purpose and meaning to
the instinctual and seemingly purposeless 'wheel of life and death'—symbol
of all natural processes and of fate in Buddhist philosophy and elsewhere.
The number 3 is thus the symbol of active intelligence; multiplied by itself, 9,
it represents, as we will see, the establishment of human consciousness in the
realm of pure intelligence and the growth of the psycho-mental 'body' which,
collectively speaking, is civilization, and in the spiritually victorious
individual the 'Diamond-' or 'Christ-Body. The down pointing equilateral
triangle is what is specifically, geometrically produced at this point in our
astrological series of aspects. Its base, from which it is 'suspended,' joins the
two sides of the circle differentiated by the opposition, and in so doing
allows a new vision of the whole to incarnate.
As the self is able constructively to respond to this incarnation of
purpose and meaning, one not only displays the faculty of vision and
understanding (often-used keywords for the trine), but also experiences
ideas. On this basis, the self actually begins to transform the outer world and
all the relationships in which it has accepted to participate. Significant
relationship can also be with one's own talents and capabilities, which one
recognizes at the opposition. However, as the self seeks to meet the outer
world (or its companion) in terms of ideas and mental vision, the inertia of
the whole universe resists the transforming thoughts.
In other words, whenever we take a positive step toward embracing a
new experience, vision or relationship (fulfilled evolutionary trine), we are
changed. As we are changed and intend to use our new relationship or view
of reality, so too is the world around us in some way changed. The natural
process then is that everything in our environment, and everything in us, that
is still inertial and fearful, that doesn't want to be changed, stands up and
hollers: "Stop!"
In order to overcome this inertia, a further step must be taken: the square.
The circle must be further divided into four quarters, resuiting in the cross of
action. Vision must become action; purpose must carry the sword of
decision; mind must summon will in order to fight for the triumph of creative
thought over inner and outer inertia. The Three becomes Four; the trine leads
to the square—otherwise it degenerates into the sesquidrate, a 'reactionary'
aspect which we will discuss in both its positive and negative dimensions
later on.
 For now let us say that in relation to the challenge of moving from the
trine to the square, the sesquiquadrate operates in much the same way as the
quincunx did in relation to the transition from opposition to trine. At this
stage, as at the opposition, one can also experience defeat—the defeat of the
idealist or dreamer who fails to break through the 'shoulds' or taboos of past
traditions and through discouragement, fears or a sense of futility. Ideally, the
fully awakened consciousness (opposition) is so fascinated by its new vision
or the 'incarnation' of meaning (trine) that sheer conviction or devotion
carries it through the fear or inertia. If such a vision fails sufficiently to take
hold of the consciousness, what results is a period in which one has to
struggle—or re-struggle—through the inertia, inner or outer, blocking the
transition between trine and square.

THE SQUARE
The next step leads to the square aspect. Geometrically, dividing by 4
produces the cross within the circle, a very potent symbol which has been
used in all eras and by all religions or techniques for psycho-spiritual
integration. It is a figure in which two oppositions mutually bisect each other
at 90° angles, and similarly, the square can also be considered an opposition
divided by 2.
More will be said later on concerning the astrological grand cross
formed when two interplanetary oppositions mutually bisect each other
producing four squares. For now let us say that the cross within the circle
stands essentially for the focusing of universal energies through a particular
bi-polar form. The circle represents the lens, and the cross drawn through it
the means to focalize with extreme accuracy the image projected. We find
such a figure on camera or telescope lenses, and it also constitutes the
essential structure of a birth-chart.
In the birth-chart, the meridian is analagous to the spine of a human figure
standing with open arms; the line of the arms symbolizes the horizon.
Although much has recently been made of the rise of kundalini power from
the base of the spine to a spiritual center at or above the crown of the head,
the line of the spinal column can also be considered a channel through which
spiritual energies descend into the human form. As they do, they are
symbolically distributed through the figure's outstretched arms; through them
the descending spiritual energies (meridian) are made to permeate in an
individual way a particular field of being defined by the horizon.
The cross within the circle is thus a symbol of concrete incarnation, of
the actual form given to what previously existed at the level of vision or
archetypal Idea (trine). Likewise, the geometric square constructed by linking
with straight lines the four arms of the cross has since time immemorial been
a symbol of solidity, of actual, material form. In its negative aspect as a
square inertially resting on its base, it may refer to the imprisonment of spirit
in matter. A more positive meaning has traditionally been given to the
swastika, a whirling cross (as indicated by small lines trailing from each
arm) pictured poised in mid-motion, balanced on the tip of one arm. The
incarnation of spiritual energies symbolized by the square aspect is thus not
only concrete, but always moving from one stage of equilibrium to the next; it
is a symbol of incarnation in action.
Such a meaning becomes more apparent when we consider the square as
an opposition divided by 2. We have seen that the opposition is produced by
dividing the whole circle by 2, and further division by 2 produces the square.
Generally speaking, division by 2 establishes a contrast or rapport between
subject and object, spirit and matter, self and not-self. Wherever this
operation generates a new aspect, we will find that what was mostly
subjective activity becomes a type of activity in which some objective factor
is a strongly influential factor. At the level of the square, this objective factor
is the heavy, inertial, and sometimes unworkable nature of matter, against
which the subject must summon his will to impress upon it the vision
conceived under the trine.
In the first or involutionary half of a cycle, the square precedes the trine.
It represents the need to clear the ground of all obsolete structures before the
building operation of an integrated, harmonious way of life can begin in
earnest. At the level of involution, such integration can only be intellectual
and compulsively or in-stinctually actional; and it can only be achieved after
the severance or decision challenged by the square has been successfully
accomplished. In the evolutionary series, the square follows and builds upon
the trine—i.e., conscious, mental awakening. It represents the stage at which
concretization of the ideal or idea envisioned at the trine is necessary and
possible.
While it is possible and quite simple to differentiate between a waxing
and waning square in a birth-chart, it is not possible to know from the chart if
a particular waning square is evolutionary or devolutionary. For a 'last
quarter' square to be interpreted as evolutionary, the person in whose chart is
appears must be able in life to positively relate its meaning to the opposition
(or Full Moon) that preceded it—that is, to the beginning of real awareness
and individualized consciousness. Like all aspects in the evolutionary series,
the square refers to a definite, differentiated stage or level of consciousness
and potential achievement. By contrast, an aspect in the involutionary series
is not to be considered a definite stage of consciousness or potential
achievement per se. Rather than a set reality which is latent and which must
be actualized, it represents the beginning of a new phase in the gradual
focusing of power released in an initial act (the conjunction or New Moon).
What counts most in the first hemicycle is what occurs between aspects, i.e.,
the continuous development of an impulse—thus the process of development
itself, potentially leading to the successively differentiated stages of
consciousness and achievement represented by the evolutionary series.
When, in the evolutionary second hemicycle, one considers aspects the
results of dividing the circle—which is now seen as a whole —what is
important is the station reached as the result of the dividing operation. It
represents a set and definite category or level of human activity or
realizations. What is significant during this hemicycle is the use to which are
put the ability to understand ever more inclusively (trine) and the ability to
act in an increasingly focalized and effective manner (square). What matters
is the overall meaning one gives to a certain capacity (represented by the
aspect) in one's life, what one makes of and produces with that capacity.
The trine thus symbolizes the capacity for an ideological or visionary
type of activity; the square follows up with an architectural type of activity in
which a concrete model is built—for example, the by-laws of an
organization, the musical score of a symphony, the plaster model of a
building, etc. Then comes the task of actually demonstrating the power to
formulate the plan for others. The level of creative formulation is reached:
the quintile.
 Before proceeding to consider the quintile, we should first try to integrate
for practice what has been said so far regarding the opposition, trine and
square. To do so before leaving the square category is most appropriate,
insofar as the vision or purpose for action conceived or received under the
trine should be anchored—at least in intent—to the physical world at the
square.
When looking at the overall pattern of a natal chart, we should consider
any oppositions in it as dividing the field of experience represented by the
houses into two. An opposition also has a particular orientation within the
angles of the chart, which are two 'oppositions' inherent in the framework of
the chart itself—the Ascendant/Descendant axis (horizon) and the
Midheaven/axis (Meridian). Aspects crossing an opposition and thus
bridging the two hemicycles divided by it can reveal the best way a person
could include and begin to integrate in life the basic relationship or
confrontation (internal or external) represented by the opposition. When
trines cross the opposition and link the two hemicircles thus divided, they
indicate the capacity for including in understanding the two polarities of the
opposition; squares indicate the necessity for an actional solution to the
problem.
Although traditional delineations prize the presence and abundance of
trines in a horoscope, from the overall, process-oriented and therefore
cumulative point of view we are presenting here, it is not important whether
or how many trines appear in a chart. Any evolutionary aspect other than an
opposition or a trine itself implies the level of the trine having been reached
some time in the past—although it is probably best not to consider this 'past'
as merely personal history or even from a personal reincarnational point of
view.* The primary significance of trines in a birth-chart lies far more in
how they link hemispheres divided by oppositions or the natal horizon or
meridian. When they are connected to squares, they may reveal the nature of
the vision—thus what is possible—underlying a challenge to action in a
person's life; or, for a person having difficulty meeting some life-challenge,
they may reveal what could be a source of strength and inspiration. Trines
can also reveal how basic life-confrontations or relationships represented by
an opposition can be most meaningfully and productively understood.
 From this point of view, we can see that what is usually called a 'kite'
(Diagram 3-2) can be a particularly constructive configuration, and this will
become clearer when we study the sextile from a geometric point of view
later on. For now, we can see that the basic polarity AB is resolved in each
hemisphere through C and D, while the relationship CD bridges and
concretely links the two hemispheres divided by AB. If either C or D were to
be in waning square to a fifth planet (E), or if a T-square were to be formed
by a planet (F) squaring both A and B, a configuration particularly dynamic
and potentially creative of concrete results is produced.

All configurations in birth-charts are not so neat and symmetrical, and yet
all aspects in a chart—especially major and basic ones like oppositions,
trines and squares—are related to one another, if not directly and
geometrically, in terms of the actual interrelationship of functions and
activities in a person's actual life-process. The reason an astrologer studies
aspects from an overall, process-oriented perspective is to train the mind to
respond to and think in terms of principles of universal and human
development. As a result, the practitioner sees meaning not only in the
geometric and symbolic aspects of a natal chart, but also in what becomes to
him or her the transparent and also symbolic, dynamic aspects of the client's
life and being.
 THE QUINTILE
The quintile (72 ° aspect) is the first aspect in the evolutionary series not
also found in the involutionary/devolutionary sequence. It is produced by
dividing the whole circle into five segments. This operation results in a
pentagram, pentagon or five-pointed star. These stand as symbols of creative
(or "five-limbed") Man. The five-pointed star is an expression of Man's
'starry' (the literal meaning of the term astral) being. In traditional
symbolism, the star is considered in two aspects: one, the upward-pointing
star, and the other down-pointing. The latter identifies the 'fifth limb' with the
sex organ, through which the power of biological generation is expressed; the
former identifies it with the spiritual power of the creative mind centered in
the head—in a sense, the power of utterance, the power of the Word.
The upward-pointing star thus emphasizes the connection between human
mentality and the function of imagination. In the down-pointing star,
imagination arouses and sustains the generative functions in the realm of
material production and pleasure. It symbolizes creation and building for
their own sake, or under the spur of material goals—which ultimately leads
to self-destruction. It leads to self-destruction because the generative power
of life or material productivity belongs to the involutionary—not
evolutionary— process. What is important by the time the level of the
quintiles is reached is not the 'mindless' proliferation of life-forms, but
fulfillment of the truly human potential achieved by exercising the faculty of
conscious mental creation. Thus, the upward-pointing star shows the whole
human organism transformed into a dynamo generating power to sustain the
creative will, indeed the light' of the 'starry' being. This star radiates light;
similarly, the truly creative person emanates a world-transforming energy. He
or she has not only had vision (trine) and given it definite form (square), but
is also able to fecundate with it the substance of society, the collective
mentality of fellow human beings.
When we approach quintiles in birth-charts and especially, as we will
see in a moment, quintile-based patterns, we are not looking for literally
upward or downward pointing star-patterns. We should instead realize that a
quintile can operate—if it operates at all—in one of two basic directions or
polarities. The polarization is similar to what we found at the opposition: the
evolutionary process either progresses or regresses. Here progress is
symbolically identified with the head, with the spiritual-mental or conscious
aspect of man, with the activation of Vibration Five or Mind—-which is a
spirit-emanated power to be used in the context of a large evolutionary
process. Mind at the level of the quintile or Vibration Five does not mean
mere memory, or the simple (or even complex) association of sense
perceptions into intellectual patterns—no matter how superficially satisfying
or even exciting such activity may be. When fully developed, it leads to truly
creative (not merely productive) activity— that is, activity in terms of
creative spirit, activity therefore transparent to individual purpose.
Regression, on the other hand, identifies creativity with an earlier
process: the generation of 'life.' Such an emphasis is inappropriate at this
phase of the process, because the power of 'life' coupled with some degree
of individualization seeks only its own self-perpetuation and aggrandisement.
Moreover, since the quintile is the first aspect of the evolutionary series not
also found in the devolutionary sequence, it contains the potentiality of
victory over nature or materiality, whose tendency at this stage of the
devolutionary process is toward disintegration and uniformity (entropy).
While the victory that must be won is a mental victory, the urge toward it may
run amok if the consciousness has not completely realigned its 'allegiance'
from the 'life'- and matter-bound involutionary/devolutionary process. Since
the challenge of the square was to overcome inertia—the inner mental inertia
of old, inherited assumptions of what can and cannot, should and should not
be done—a dynamic momentum of conquest and overcoming had to be
established. It in turn may develop its own inertia (resistance to change), and
a pattern of activity for the sake of activity may develop. The consciousness
may restlessly yearn for activity only for the sake of the excitement of the
actor, and at the level of the quintile, this is most likely to be in terms of
intellectual, rather than truly mental, excitement and activity.
Such a pattern reveals a temporary or permanent inability to function
positively at the level of the quintile. Moreover, it can thwart the process of
transition from the quintile to the sextile. As we will see later on, the level of
activity represented by the sextile brings the individualized consciousness to
a point at which it should feel the need to participate in self-encompassing
processes of universal evolution by expressing its own essential genius in
harmonious relation to these larger processes.
Thus, Vibration Five, Mind, can operate in one of two ways: in terms of
purely material, intellectual or selfish desires (regression), or by expressing
one's creative genius (progression or forward evolutionary motion). The
expression of genius becomes possible only after what is represented by the
square has been 'squarely' met, and a definite reorientation of consciousness
and activity away from conquest and overcoming necessary at the level of the
square has been accomplished. Something truly creative can be brought into
being only after the inertia of the past that prevented it has been overcome
(square) and the new possibility thus liberated is recognized as something
that can indeed happen or be done. This recognition, moreover, must occur in
a new context—the context of a truly evolutionary process in which human
beings create in conscious, individualized and mental ways.
Practically speaking, this means that when two or more planets (or the
horizon and meridian) in a birth-chart form quintiles—and they should be no
more than 2° or 3° over or short of exact, and preferably less—the types of
activity the planets signify in the total life and personality can potentially
open doors to the influx of creative spirit. But the potentiality may not be
actualized if some stronger or more basic factor in the life or chart
effectively blocks this influx or the expression of it, or if the person has not
yet fully met the challenge to forceful, individualizing action presented by the
square— that is, if he or she has not yet emerged from the sea of collective
activity and consciousness.
These last-mentioned considerations are the primary reasons why
astrologers tend not to use the quintile aspect. The vast majority of their
clients (and many astrologers themselves) have not, as yet, truly
individualized out of the collective social and psychic matrix. Most human
beings on the planet today can go no further than the level represented by the
square. As we will see more clearly when we consider the sextile, they
cannot respond positively to evolutionary processes of spiritual integration
beyond the level represented by the Four.
Even if a person can function effectively at the level of the quintile or
Five, it does not mean that the person will necessarily prove to be a 'genius'
in the almost colloquial sense of the term. Conversely, all so-called geniuses
do not have birth-charts with outstanding quintiles. This is simply because
many (or most) of those whom we sometimes rather indiscriminately call
geniuses are not real creative spirits, but merely 're-arrangers' of previous
patterns of being, dispensing to society what satisfies its traditional desires
and appetites. In other cases, a great Personage who truly transforms society
can be said to operate in a manner transcending the realm of genius as we
understand the term here, as for example, the mouthpiece of some cosmic or
divine power (an Avatar).
Nevertheless, every person whose acts reveal the power and purpose of
the 'star which symbolizes his or her essential individuality can be
considered a genius. The person may not produce great works of art or give
birth to scientific theories. But in some way, he or she reveals spirit at work
—and spirit can act as destroyer of obsolete structures as well as projector
of new archetypes of living and new structures of social or esthetical
organization. Such destruction and/or projection can also operate on a
continuum of scales, from the very personal to the most public and world-
wide. The quintile presents the challenge to actualize the innate potentiality
of one's own creative genius—however brilliant or inconspicuous the flame
of it may be.
Since the quintile is one of the less familiar and less often used aspects, a
few examples might help to clarify its meaning. While we cannot go into
great interpretive depth here, we can at least point to a few examples which
the serious student is urged to follow up and examine more closely. We can
begin by mentioning the chart of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, which contains
several quintile-based aspects as well as a number of other significant
unfamiliar aspects. The basic quintile element here is the 71½° aspect
between the 10th house Moon and the rising Uranus; Mercury is also nearly
69° away from Saturn, and the Sun/Moon and Uranus/Sun angles measure
about 145° (bi-quintile) each. These bi-quintiles mean that a five-pointed
star is partially outlined by the Sun, Moon and Uranus. Two unmarked points
are left, one of which (0° Sagittarius) is near the Moon's North Node (5°41 '
Sagittarius). The other is about 23° Aries —the exact degree of the New
Moon of April 12, 1945, the day of Roosevelt's death.
Thus, at the death of this leader whose significance was worldwide, the
New Moon completed the five-pointed star linking an elevated Moon, a
rising Uranus, a third house North Node, a fifth house Sun (conjunct Venus
and the Part of Fortune) : this is indeed a most remarkable star! The
Sun/Moon/Uranus configuration is a symbol of transformation potentially
achieved through self-exertion and self-conquest and by passing through a
deep, personal crisis. We can thus see what the five-pointed star suggests in
the life of a man who gained the power to lead humanity in a time of global
crisis by virtue of the victory he had won over his own personal tragedy—
and the additional quintile between Mercury and Saturn links the sixth house
of personal crisis with the eighth house of personal transformation. This
victory was the substance of F.D.R.'s 'genius'; through it he was able to let his
'star' shine forth and incorporate itself into a world-destiny.
Of course, no discussion of indications of 'genius,' especially the kind
that expresses itself mentally, would be complete without Albert Einstein
coming to mind. Here, as in F.D.R.'s chart, three points of a five-pointed star
are outlined, and what is more, they link the two hemispheres of Einstein's
chart divided by a Jupiter/Uranus opposition between the 3rd and 9th houses.
The basic quintile is between Mars and Mercury/Saturn. Both Mars and
Mercury/Saturn are bi-quintile Uranus, one 'end' of the basic opposition.
Jupiter thus falls nearly, but not quite exactly, at the midpoint of the Mars,
Mercury/Saturn quintile, and Jupiter is also quintile Neptune. The
Mercury/Saturn conjunction is at the midpoint of the Jupiter/Neptune quintile,
thus semi-quintile to both. (We will see later on how the division of the
quintile into the semi-quintile—implying the division of the circle by 10—
releases in specific ways the creative power of mind represented by the
quintile.) It should come as no surprise to find such a veritable array of
quintile-based aspects in the chart of a scientist whose work stands as the
threshold of the Atomic Age and whose very being has come to symbolize
'genius.'
We might mention one point as we become more involved with examples
of less-familiar aspects in the lives of well-known persons. Very often
students' responses to such examples as Roosevelt and Einstein is, "OK,
that's fine, but what does something about their charts have to do with my
chart or my next door neighbor's?" It is important to realize that when
someone is born—with whatever aspects—there is no differentiation among
babies as to any particular one 'having' a special destiny to fulfill. Old wives
tales and birth-omens notwithstanding, a baby is not born with a sign saying
"This is the one who is going to be significant." In the next hospital delivery
room or down the block from where just about anyone was born, there was
also another baby being born with a very similar chart. Aspects between
planets are rather long-lasting and appear in many horoscopes of babies born
over a period of several days or even weeks. Granted, the house positions of
the aspecting planets change, but even these change relatively slowly,
considering the numbers of babies born every hour in large cities. When we
realize what all these considerations imply, we should conclude that an
astrologer must give to all clients the highest and most comprehensive vision
of birth-potentialities possible. The more an astrologer or client sees and
understands is possible, the more the person will be able to actually realize
and accomplish. The more one settles for a limited point of view—"This in
my or his life or chart could only mean this or that, and only on a personal
level," or "It couldn't refer to anything truly significant in a large,
humanitarian way"—the less one will be able actually to accomplish and
fulfill. We use astrology most constructively and creatively when we gain
from it a sense of what is indeed possible for us at the highest levels of our
potentialities. Seeing that, the challenge is then to keep our eyes open to life
itself, to be able to respond appropriately when some event or chain of
circumstances seems to say, "Hey, remember that quintile—or septile? If you
are able or want to do anything about it, here's an opportunity."

THE SEXTILE
The next step in the series of evolutionary aspects is represented by the
waning sextile or 60 ° aspect. This is a familiar aspect also belonging to the
involutionary/devolutionary series. In the evolutionary series, the sextile is
the level reached after the quintile. It results when the circile is divided by
six, and it can also be understood as a trine divided by two. Geometrically,
division by six produces a six-pointed star made up two interlaced
equilateral triangles.
In the six-pointed star or Solomon's Seal, one triangle points downward,
the other up. Two trines, two kinds of understanding and vision—are
potentially integrated here. On the one hand, the sextile therefore refers to the
ability to offer integrative solutions to bi-polar problems sometimes
necessitating the harmonization of different approaches to solving them. On
the other hand, the down-pointing triangle refers to the descent or incarnation
of spirit; the upward-pointing triangle refers to the ascent of matter, to its
readiness to receive the spiritual descent. Interlaced together, they symbolize
the very involutionary and evolutionary processes we are studying, and in
this sense the sextile markes the completion of the process. What tried to
'incarnate' at the trine, and could then only manifest as vision and
understanding; what had to overcome the inertia of habit and matter at the
square, and the restlessness of the intellect at the quintile, can now, at the
sextile be met and embraced by an ascending material form: a human
organism (involutionary process), awakened consciousness (opposition)
imbued with a sense of purpose (trine), a focused will (square) and mind
(quintile) can now receive and work with the downflow. The level of
consciousness and activity reached at the sextile is thus one at which spirit
and matter can be integrated through adequate management and
organizational genius.
As at previous stages in the evolutionary process, success in actualizing
the potentialities represented by the sextile is not guaranteed. The manager or
organizer can become so caught up in his own machinations and talents that
he fails to recognize the workings of spirit behind and through his acts. This
can lead to a fateful egocentrism or to a lazy, easy-going type of
consciousness which seeks the line of least exertion and thus fails to integrate
creative power with the material need that is calling forth the descent of
spirit-released power. When this negative possibility operates, the polarities
of spirit and matter become reversed: spirit that should have become
incorporated and active as a solution to the need of an evolving material
organism (a human being, a society), loses interest, as it were, in matter, and
flies back to its 'heavenly' or purely subjective realm —while matter, which
should keep evolving upward toward the spirit, falls back to the state of
disintegration and chaos without enlightened management. Spirit then goes
'up'; matter falls 'down'— and following this reversal of creative polarity, the
two cannot again attempt integration in the present cycle. The 'marriage of
heaven and earth' is broken; divorce ensues, often under the compulsion of
hatred—which is just as binding as love and which therefore will of
necessity call forth a new cycle in order to 'try again.' One can only hope that
the karmic burden of the failure is not so heavy that it cannot be overcome in
the opening phases of the following cycle, or that at least part of it may yet be
dissipated in the closing phases of the now-ending cycle.
The sextile can also be considered as a trine divided in two. At the level
of the square, we saw that bisection does not apply only to the division of the
circle into two halves (opposition). We found its basic meaning reappearing
in a somewhat modified form, and it will come up again when we consider
the octile (semi-square) and decile (semi-quintile). Here we find that
bisection again establishes a contrast, relationship and/or rapport between
self and not-self, subject and object. Now, after the quintile, this rapport is
established between the creative subject (the 'genius' expressing an
individual destiny or universal truth) and society at large, or a receptive
segment of it.
At the level of the quintile, there is no real working relationship between
creator and public, leader and led, the fashioning of a spirit-energized mind
and the racial organism of body and psyche subjected to the creative release,
usually under some kind of strain. The motto of a creator operating strictly at
the level of the quintile may be, "Art for art's sake." The individual who is
entirely absorbed in being creative does not take into consideration what the
creative expressions will bring to humanity—of if the person does, it is only
insofar as the reactions of society will affect his or her ability to create
further.
It was a great achievement for the individual Einstein to 'create' the
formula upon which the controlled release of atomic energy depends, but
humanity is now faced and must live with the reality of nuclear power in a
variety of forms. If our world-civilization succumbs to an atomic disaster of
one kind or another, or to the hysteria of fear and uncertainty the danger of
one has produced, the genius of Einstein and his colleagues may indeed
appear to future generations as catastrophically destructive—because of
having come as a premature 'gift' to an immature society. Such a realization
made Einstein and many other prominent atomic physicists of the post-War
years to take the lead in trying to educate people and governments into an
awareness of the political and social changes which the scientists' genius
made necessary, if humankind is to survive. What is necessary is a complete
shift of the level of consciousness of modern men and women, especially of
those who provide leadership and set examples of supposedly constructive
behavior for their societies. This shift in level of consciousness can be
symbolized astrologically as a change from an emphasized quintile-type of
consciousness to one in which the characteristics of quintiles and sextiles are
integrated.
What this means is that at the level of the sextile, not only sheer
creativeness (quintile) is important, but also the effect of the creative
expression upon the outer world and society. If the creative approach to life
represented by the quintile is to be made truly spiritual and fully constructive
at the sextile, it must take into consideration the need of the world. The
essential nature of spirit is to act only in response to need. The spiritual
action is always a necessary action free from all unnecessary elements—just
as the truly great work of art or elegant solution to a problem is one which
contains only necessary elements from which nothing can be subtracted
without impairing the harmony and beauty of the whole. Truly spiritual
activity at the level of the sextile must therefore be attuned to the purpose of
the whole—to what some may call Tao or 'the flow,' others, 'God's will'—or
at least to the purpose of a particular life-cycle.
Waning sextiles thus produce an unprecedented evolutionary challenge
today. They are most apt to operate at first in their devolutionary mode, as the
need for reorganization following a crisis in consciousness. This is because
the vast majority of human beings actually have little to do with the level of
consciousness represented by the quintile. They can go no further than the
level of the square—or,, to put it differently, they cannot respond to
evolutionary processes of spiritual integration beyond the stage (or
Vibration) Four. Only a mentally positive minority can respond to those
creative processes symbolized by the five-fold differentiation of the circle,
the five-pointed star or pentagram and the Vibration Five. It is this 'elite'
which today must experience a 'change of gears' from a dominant, mentally
restless Vibration Five to a vibration in which the principle of characteristic
response to life's challenges represented by the Five and the Six will become
integrated.
As consciousness truly progresses in the evolutionary series, it moves on
by way of ever-greater inclusiveness—that is, when reaching the level Six it
does not (or should not) abandon the powers of creativity gained at level
Five. The problem is to integrate the new powers (Six) with the old ones
(Five). Similarly, when humanity as a whole shifts from the level Four to the
level Five, it does so only gradually, by stressing successive 'overtones'
rather than by jumping from one 'fundamental' to the next. Today we are
witnessing a twofold process: on one hand, the majority of humanity is
slowly shifting the focus of its mass-consciousness from the level Four to the
level Five (witness the extreme emphasis on 'individual rights'); on the other,
the already mentally developed minority is hesitantly beginning to
incorporate into its approach to experience features characteristic of the
level Six.
These features are the ones which Jesus came to announce and to
exemplify. His coming sounded the keynote of a new 26,000-year cycle of
precession which began at the inception of both Christianity and the Roman
Empire. These features are also expressed astrologically in the sextile—but
the sextile considered as a step in the series of evolutionary aspects whose
keynote can be best defined as creation in understanding.
In terms of involutionary (i.e., instinctual and unconscious) activity, the
sextile represents balanced and practically effective action resulting from the
ability to link two polar rhythms of masculine and feminine impulses. This is
because the involutionary sextile includes two consecutive zodiacal signs of
contrasting polarity, for example Aries and Taurus, from Aries 1° to Gemini
1°. It therefore represents a complete, bi-polar type of activity, which is
nevertheless subjective, because it does not include a view of the whole
circle. In terms of evolutionary (that is, conscious and integrative) responses
to life, the sextile is also a symbol of practical effectiveness, but this
effectiveness operates at the level of creative mental processes and is the
result of the conscious integration of the will to create with the human need
that made the creation necessary. It is fully effective because activity at the
level of the evolutionary sextile includes a clear and compassionate
understanding of that which called forth the creative act—thus of the human
need, whether it be personal or collective.
Rarely, but occasionally, one sees a chart with a full pattern of six
sextiles, two interlaced grand trines. Two are in our files. One is the chart of
a young man (23 at the time of consultation) who had not at that time found
his 'place' in life. He has apparently taken the line of least resistance and
exertion, always managing to 'scrape by' on all levels, but little more. The
other is the chart of a woman, now past mid-life. She has led a most varied
and interesting life of accomplishment in terms of both social and spiritual
values. It is interesting to note that at the root of the life-challenges faced by
both people, has been the question of relatedness: two interlinked grand
trines, six sextiles around the circle, automatically imply three oppositions.
In the case of the young man, his relationship to his own diabetic body and to
God has been focal. In the case of the woman, interpersonal relationship and
relationship to a Teacher and a Work have been and continue to be
significant.
 THE SEPTILE
When we come to the aspect which follows the sextile in the evolutionary
series, we find it based on a division of the circle of wholeness into seven
equal parts. Such a division produces an angular value which cannot be
measured exactly in degrees, minutes or seconds of arc: 51° 25' 42" plus.
Converted into decimals it is 51.4285714285714. . . It is thus an 'irrational'
value. If we inquire into the occult meaning of numbers we find out that the
number Seven producing this value is a very special kind of number indeed.
Perhaps the simplest way to interpret the character of number Seven is to
say that it represents what remains after the Six has operated fully. The
meaning of such a remainder is clearly shown in the geometrical element pi,
which measures the relationship between the circumference and diameter of
a circle. This relationship is an 'irrational' one in that it does not measure to
any whole number, being 3.14159 etc., and it is also a most 'occult' value.
If instead of the diameter we consider the radius of a circle in relation to
its circumference, we readily see that more than six radii are necessary to
make a circumference. This 'more' constitutes the 'remains' or 'leftover' after
the sixth period of any cycle is completed. The Seven refers to the part of pi
that goes on forever, to what is left over beyond three diameters or six radii
—the indefinable plus required for a whole circle, which also gives it the
opportunity to become a spiral.
In order to take care of that 'left over' a seventh period is necessary, and
this seventh period is actually the seed-beginning of a new cycle. In the new
cycle, the 'left over' of the old cycle will be given a new chance to become
integrated and to progress in the vast scheme of universal evolution. Besides
the kind of leftovers that remain un-integrated from the preceding six phases
—whatever has not as yet managed to become integrated—there are also
leftovers that can't possibly be integrated because they are toxins or negative
by-products of the cycle. Rather than being integrated, these have to be
neutralized and eliminated so that they will not poison the succeeding cycle
now beginning to seed.
Every cycle has its 'left over'—and materials which could not be
assimilated to spirit, which the consciousness of the person operating under
the Six could not understand or provide for creatively. At the close of the
sixth period the actual cycle is ended, as far as outward and normally visible
manifestations go; but to the need of the disintegrating remains (or 'manure')
of the closed cycle, some new type of spirit-born realization answers—and
this realization eventually leads to the birth of a new cycle.
What should be realized in full consciousness during this seventh period
(reminiscent of the Biblical 'Seventh Day') is not essentially that everything
was well with the work done, but that there is never an end to creative
activity and that there are always ashes to take care of after the fire of life
has subsided. What the Seven tells to human beings is that no account can be
closed forever; that six radii do not make exactly the length of the
circumference; that nature (human and otherwise) is not simply rational, and
that it cannot fit into strictly rationalistic or mental patterns. There are
fractional numbers ad infinitum to take care of—the never-ending decimals
of the septile and the value pi.
To realize these things and to incorporate this realization into the
structure of one's inner being is to operate at the level of the septile. It is to
force oneself to be immortal—that is, to stride over the close of the cycle in
order to become a seed ready to sacrifice itself in order to be the foundation
of a new vegetation, when spring comes again. The number Seven is thus the
key to personal immortality— to identifying oneself with the entire cycle,
with the eternal. In a negative sense, it can refer to identification with
atomicization, with the process of disintegration inevitable at the close of the
cycle.
In order to be at all significant, a septile aspect must be very close to
exact. If we count it as a 5½° angle, two planets form a septile only if they
are from 50 to 53 degrees apart. A lesser distance should be considered a
semi-square; a greater distance is a sextile.
In addition to its outstanding quintiles, Franklin D. Roosevelt's chart
contains most significant septiles. Mars is just short of being 51 degrees
ahead of Saturn; and the Moon which is in sextile to Saturn, forms a septile to
Neptune (about 52°) and to Jupiter (if the time of birth was at the later hour
recorded, it seems, in his father's diary). As Jupiter and Neptune are very
close and their conjunction of obvious importance in F.D.R.'s life, we can
say that the Moon is in septile to this conjunction, whether the earlier or later
birth-time is accepted.
According to Marc Jones, the key meaning of the septile is 'fatality,' and
in the exact septile of Mars (retrograde) and Saturn we can see how fatality
worked in its strange and mysterious ways to bring tragedy and fame to
F.D.R. Mars and the Moon are in the tenth house, and the septiles they control
clearly deal with Roosevelt's public life, his death in office, etc. But there is
far more to these septiles than fatality—or this term has to be made to cover
a greater depth of meaning than is usually the case. In the septile we find a
potential gate to immortality, as well as the possible assumption of a
collective and historical destiny—a potentiality only, we must stress.
Lenin's chart contains a septile of Jupiter (26° 9' Taurus) to Uranus
(Cancer 18° 16'). He also died from overexertion in office. In the case of the
composer and super-star archetype Franz Lizst, the septile of Sun and Moon
did not produce tragedy, except if we consider the abuse of vital forces and
the over-spending of self as one. In Henry Ford's chart Mars in Leo (conjunct
Regulus) is septile Jupiter in Libra (20½°). Under the circumstances, this
could be considered a compelling destiny of wealth and social power. A
similar remark could be made concerning Andrew Carnegie's septile
between Mars (a symbol of iron and steel) and Neptune; the septile linking
his Moon and Venus presumably refers to his fame as a prototype of the
large-scale American philanthropist and culture-patron.
In the case of Evangeline Adams, Venus rising is in septile to Pluto in the
second house, and we might even consider the almost 54° aspect of her Sun
to Neptune a septile, especially in view of the obvious correlation between
Neptune and what turned out to be her astrological 'mission.' Similarly, the
53V2° aspect between Uranus and Mercury in George Bernard Shaw's chart
seems a valid septile indication of what became his world-wide influence as
a writer and humorist. Another significant illustration is found in Edgar Allan
Poe's septile between Neptune and his Sun/Mercury conjunction, for the
Neptunian factor—often linked to fantasy, mysticism. . . and alcohol!—
influenced his vitality and his literary work, bringing both tragedy and fame.
The septile between Neptune and Jupiter in Walt Whitman's chart had what
seems to be a happier outcome—an evident symbol of the expansive social
vision that made the bard of American democracy forever great.
 A more contemporary example is the chart of California's charismatic
Governor Jerry Brown—who has been known to claim to have "an essence"
rather than an "image." His horoscope displays the outline of four points of a
seven-pointed star. The Sun is septile Jupiter, which in turn is tri-septile
Neptune. Neptune in turn is septile Pluto. The chart of the spiritual teacher
Krishnamurti is also an interesting example. Here the Moon and Saturn are
septile as are the Sun and Mars. These septiles are made more interesting as
they define the two ends of an overall see-saw configuration;* all the planets
of the chart are contained within one septile or another. President Jimmy
Carter's chart has also a prominent septile between Mercury and the first
house Moon. Transiting Uranus was on the degree of this Moon during the
(1979) Camp David meetings with Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin. The
Moon rules the President's Midheaven, while Mercury, in the eleventh house
(transformation of social structures), rules also the ninth (religious or
philosophical ideology).
The chart of the contemporary 'consciousness movement' figure Ram Das
also provides an example of an interesting, if obvious in meaning, septile.
Rising Jupiter is 51½° behind Neptune at the nadir—a quite clear-cut
statement regarding social participation (Jupiter also rules the Midheaven)
and drugs, meditation and altered states of consciousness. Since Jupiter also
co-rules the sixth house (crises of personal transformation), and Neptune is
in the third (mental functioning), the issues of mystical experience and
spiritual discipleship are highlighted (no pun intended!).
These examples, however limited their scope, lead us to believe that it
can be shown on good evidence that wherever a septile is found in a chart,
and the individual is able to realize at least to some extent its positive
implications, the septile indicates the direction in which the individual is led
to his or her destiny by some outstanding achievement or compulsion—the
former being dependent upon a typical kind of inner attitude. One can
probably also say that the septile implies some kind of psychological
complex or spiritual compulsion—and in that sense it may be called an
expression of 'fate.' What seems to be fate or fatality to the living and striving
or suffering personality may be differently interpreted in relation to spirit,
which transcends (while including) the particular personality. Spirit compels
the inclusion of whatever remains valuable in what has previously been
devalued or denied. In a more mundane sense, the garbage has always to be
taken out, and leftovers cooked into new meals. The longer they stay around,
the more difficult it is to dispose of them pleasantly or creatively. In a larger
view, there are deaths (large and small) that are sacrificial gifts, and not
somber tragedies, simply because they are geared to the vast cycle of human
evolution, and as such are tokens of immortality.

THE OCTILE OR SEMI-SQUARE AND THE

SESQUIQUADRATE
If, instead of two interlaced triangles inscribed in a circle, we consider
two squares with all corners equidistant from one another, we have an eight-
pointed star and the foundation of the semi-square, which more rarely, but
equally accurately is also called an octile.
The semi-square is to the square what the sextile is to the trine, and there
is no reason, whether theoretical or practical, to give less importance to the
semi-square than to the sextile. The main reason why many students and
practitioners of astrology pay less attention to the semi-square than to the
sextile is that since the positions of the planets are expressed in terms of
zodiacal degrees and signs, one can easily detect sextiles, whereas semi-
squares are less obvious. This is, quite evidently, not at all a good reason,
and it is hoped that the outstanding importance of semi-squares will be
universally recognized and correctly interpreted. A semi-square is no more a
'lesser square' than a sextile is merely a lesser trine.'
Another reason for the lack of attention given to the semi-square is that
while the sextile is found in both the involutionary and evolutionary series of
aspects, the semi-square (or octile) occurs only in the latter. In the classical
past, astrology has dealt almost exclusively with the involutionary series and
thus ignored or undervalued the semi-square. But as a truly modern astrology
should be occupied primarily with psychology and problems of
consciousness, it is essential that it should give full significance to the
evolutionary series—of which the semi-square is an integral part.
The significance of the semi-square may be derived from that of the
square, in much the same way we derived that of the sextile from the trine.
The vision and understanding of individuals (trine) become the gift of
practical organization and management (sextile) when this vision (spiritual
triangle) is related to the need of any material organism, body or collectivity
(material triangle) in the midst of which this vision appears as an inspiration.
The square, on the other hand, refers to the level of consciousness at which
vision and understanding (trine) become transformed into the realization of
the need to act, and by acting to make the ideal a concrete reality. It means, in
a positive sense, a victory over inertia, fear and discouragement, because
vision, in order to become reality, must overcome the ghosts of the past and
the feeling of insurmountable difficulty which often accompanies the
realization of a new idea.
However, this overcoming of inertia is only a potentiality at the level of
the square. The need for it is felt, and if the individual takes and holds a
positive attitude, the victory will eventually be won through the use of
powers symbolized by the quintile and sextile. The precise blueprint,
established at the level of the square, will be on the way to becoming an
actual structure of earth-materials. We have seen that in any building
operation there are always left-over materials, things that did not fit. They
must be disposed of; they may be burnt or cleared away as sheer waste; or
they may be kept for future use. It is to this type of operation that we have
seen the septile refer.
The next step is the semi-square. The square, which referred to a
realization of the need to act and to make the vision concrete, is now
interlaced with a second square—much as the two triangles of spirit and
matter are interlaced in the six-pointed star. The second square now
represents the concrete, officially established organization or structure; but
organization and structure are built in the midst of an already functioning
society—that is, among people. What do the people think of it? How do they
respond to what it offers them? Do they feel it meets their needs, or do they
laugh at it and scorn its purpose? Do they try to destroy it, or ignore it and let
it decay unused?
The semi-square refers to all such problems of exteriorization. The
person of vision (trine) should not only formulate a set of ideals clearly and
approach problems with creative initiative (quintile), a genius for
organization (sextile) and the ability to use what is fit and to deal with what
is unfit (septile); he or she should as well take into consideration the way in
which others are likely (because of their past conditioning) to react. While
such a person undoubtedly feels that the work will answer a real need of the
people, the people must also feel that their need is being served. The semi-
square thus refers to the level of consciousness and activity at which the
response of the people must be integrated into the vision having become a
concrete social reality—or, in another field, the reaction of the body and its
organs must be integrated with a new technique of behavior based upon a
new ideal of spiritual or more healthful living.
As in the case of the sextile, the semi-square must be considered from
two points of view. It may mean integration, or a breakdown of policy. The
new organization and its products are accepted by the people—the new
apartment house finds tenants eager to move in— or, the people ignore the
products and perhaps even destroy their would-be benefactor. The key to
success is effective dissemination, just, as, in the case of the sextile, success
depended upon an effective schedule and policy of management. The most
effective kind of dissemination is the kind where no propaganda is actually
needed because the people's need is obviously satisfied by what is offered as
an answer to it. When in time of social chaos a strong leader and his group
tell the public the very words it wants to hear, or when a man like Henry
Ford presents a new product which is an efficient answer to the evident need
of the times, relatively little promotion is required. Yet some kind of
adjustment between need and concrete answer to this need is always
necessary.
The successful builder or leader is the one who plans in terms of such an
adjustment, yet who does not sacrifice the integrity of the vision. The balance
between opportunism and spiritual integrity is always a difficult one to
reach, let alone maintain. In formulating and concretizing the ideal, it is easy
for a creative person to rely too much or too little on what the people's desire
(rather than need) may be. Many trines may make real communication with
people (or whatever the vision is meant to serve) difficult, for the focus is on
the vision itself, while semi-squares may mean practical success but also
subservience to materialistic needs or changing fashions and a loss of long-
range spiritual vision.
Through the semi-square spirit scatters itself into matter; or at least the
energy of spirit is allowed to permeate an expectant, but usually not
comprehending chaos. In order to convince the people (or any collection of
material entities) of the value of a new organization, product or structure, the
leader, inventor or author has to become 'sales manager' as well—and this is
often a real crucifixion or self-sacrifice, far more crucial sometimes than the
one implied in the process of making an ideal concrete in a definite structure
or organization (square). The square means the concretization of ideas; the
semi-square their dissemination.
These are two phases of one process. A third phase could be conceived
in which the semi-square itself is divided into halves of 22½ each. Such an
aspect could be called a semi-octile, thus paralleling the semi-sextile. It
would refer to the stage of vulgarization of the ideal or spiritual vision.
When the latter is spread out among the many in order to meet their everyday
needs, it often loses most of its purity and integrity—yet it has nevertheless
become an active force in the world.
The absence of semi-squares in a birth-chart does not necessarily mean
that an individual will not be able to disseminate his or her vision or ideals.
The presence of strong semi-squares shows that a special stress should be
laid upon this process of dissemination, that it has the potentiality of being
especially effective or related in a purposeful way to personal or
psychological crises through which the individual can discover an essential
truth or destiny.
In Henry Ford's chart the Sun is in semi-square to both Venus and Uranus,
at the nearly exact center of the square which these two planets make. Uranus
is at Gemini 24° and Venus is at Virgo 23°, while the Sun is at Leo 8 °.
Mercury at 4 ° Leo could be said to participate in these semi-squares, yet it
is usually advisable not to give to the semi-square more than a three-degree
orb (thus allowing from 42 ° to 48 °). After concretizing (square) a new
approach to manufacturing (form-building, aptly symbolized by Venus and
Uranus), Ford sowed the idea of industrial mass-production into every
corner of the modern world. In his chart, Pluto and Uranus also form a 41
411/2° aspect which can be considered as a distant semi-square, inasmuch as
Pluto squares the Moon and adds to a chain of such aspects, linking Moon,
Pluto, Uranus, Sun and Venus—which thus contribute five points to an eight-
pointed star.
 In Andrew Carnegie's chart we also find a square divided into two
halves: the square of Saturn and Neptune is bisected by Venus. In such cases,
the bisecting planet should be considered the focal factor in the disseminating
process; on it rests the main burden for the spread of the vision or idea.
Venus in the chart of the American steel magnate and philanthropist rules the
seventh and twelfth houses, and Carnegie was noted for the manner in which
he established partnerships (seventh house) and built hospitals and social
institutions (twelfth house). He spread his vision via a Venusian kind of
activity, while Ford, with his Sun bisecting the square of Venus and Uranus,
worked on the basis of his own individual center—a paternalistic autocrat.
George Bernard Shaw is again another example of such a triple
configuration. The Moon and Uranus bisect a square of Jupiter and Saturn.
This square of the two planets of social consciousness indicates the potential
release of new ideals of social organization. Uranus's semi-squares to these
two planets focus the revolutionary and challenging character of the new
ideals, and the Moon contributes to this dynamic pattern a keen mental power
of intellectual adjustment to social situations. Neptune is also in exact semi-
square to Pluto and at the same time in sextile to the Moon and trine to
Mercury. It is also sesquiquadrate (135° aspect) to the conjunction of Sun
and Venus.

THE SESQUIQUADRATE OR TRI-OCTILE

A sesquiquadrate may be understood in a variety of ways. In the above-
mentioned case of George Bernard Shaw it may be considered the sum of
three semi-squares, thus as linking two of the points of an implied eight-
pointed star. This way of interpreting a sesquiquadrate (also called
sesquisquare) stresses the positive implications of the aspect. We see it then
as a semi-square added to a square—as an outreaching process of
disseminating ideas. It can also be understood as an opposition from which a
semi-square has been taken away—and thus defined, the sesquiquadrate is
one of two aspects having a very special meaning, especially in
psychological terms.
The first of these aspects, as well have already seen, is the quincunx. In
the involutionary series, the quincunx begins the fifth stage of outward
expression. It represents thus the 'works of life/ the 'work of the world,' the
extension of spontaneous activity by means of effective, yet largely
unconsciously acquired and applied technique. It shows instinctual life-
activities at a stage of refinement through critical and objective subservience
to standards of perfection. The involutionary quincunx is thus a symbol of
self-improvement.
Yet this is only its positive aspect in terms of dynamic activity. It has as
well a negative aspect which results from the failure to carry this dynamic
activity to the level where cooperation with other centers of dynamic activity
—other individuals, men and women, and also other living organisms of the
less-evolved life-kingdoms—becomes essential, after the opposition. The
quincunx is then a 'falling back' from the level of the opposition—thus, as we
have seen, a regressive step. It then represents sickness and whatever
personal neuroses and maladjustments come because the ego has been unable
or unwilling to adjust itself successfully to the demands of relationship and
cooperative activity.
Similarly, the 135° aspect is, in its negative connotations, a falling back
from the step required between the waning trine and the square. It then refers
to the inability to put over one's idea and vision. This essentially means a
failure to include the needs of others (or the need of one's body and organs)
in the plans one makes—a failure in compassion and in understanding the
conditions which a new plan or organization will have to meet when
becoming exteriorized and ready to operate in the environment whose needs
it should serve. The project and blueprints may be wonderful in and of
themselves. But if they do not take into account the character of the materials
which they should organize and integrate for use, or the needs of the people
expected to use what results from them, the outcome is an at least temporary
failure—and means for the planner a more or less acute sense of
disappointment, resentment, bitterness, or even a 'persecution complex.' His
public outreaching may then become overstressed, and he may fruitlessly
scatter his energies.
This does not mean that a person with natal sesquiquadrates will
necessarily lack outer success. The sesquiquadrate may manifest in its
positive aspect as a public outreaching—a square plus a semi-square. On the
other hand, a person of vision may be so identified with what he feels as a
mission to get his vision across to the public that he will do practically
anything to achieve recognition. He may meet the superficial demands of the
public and achieve outer success. But if success is built, not on the vision,
but on some kind of compromise in which that vision is lost or disfigured, it
may mean a sense of futility or a real inner failure in spite of success. In such
a case, the old saying "Nothing fails like success" may well apply. Therefore,
in order to be truly successful, the person whose chart includes significant
sesquiquadrates should be careful always to be aligned with the essence of
the inner vision, and to include the needs (not merely the wants and desires)
of others and of the public.
One often encounters a significant aspect pattern involving an opposition
divided by a sesquiquadrate and a semi-square. The line of least resistance
in such cases is to take an ineffectual, confused or self-destructive approach
to the problem of consciousness represented by the opposition. The meaning
of the conflict and opportunity defined by the two poles of the opposition
may not be clearly or sufficiently understood, and the nature of the possible
failure is indicated by the planet forming the semi-square and sesquiquadrate
with the opposition. The positive approach to such a configuration involves
using the function represented by the planet aspecting the opposing planets to
release the meaning of the opposition—regardless of how much personal
struggle, persistence or courage would be necessary. This configuration can
be considered analogous to—but also in a sense the reverse of—what
happens when a planet is in exact sextile/trine relationship to two planets in
opposition; for the focal planet in that case can be said to integrate what is
represented by the two poles of the opposition through a practical vision or
ability to manage people or resources.
An example in which the two ends of an opposition are linked by both a
semi-square and sesquiquadrate and a sextile/trine is found in the chart of the
Danish physicist Neils Bohr. A Venus/Neptune opposition defines the chart's
overall hemispheric pattern. While Jupiter (the planet of social
consciousness and participation) is trine Neptune and sextile Venus, Saturn
(representing authority and formal organization) is also sesquiquadrate
Neptune and semi-square Venus. At the focal point of the semi-
square/sesquiquadrate configuration, Saturn is on a degree (9° Cancer)
referring in the Sa-bian series to "the first naive quest for knowledge and for
an ever-elusive understanding of life." Bohr was, of course, at the forefront
of vanguard research in theoretical physics during the most exciting period of
that discipline's development early this century. Jupiter, at the focal point of
the sextile/trine configuration, is on a degree (23° Virgo) stressing the need
to "tame" powerful energies—a need Bohr recognized only too well, for he
was among the first to realize the socio-political implications of the Allied
effort to actually build an atomic bomb during World War II. The bomb was,
of course, a great 'success,' and it was built largely through the application of
ingenuity and imaginative innovation symbolized by Bohr's Venus/ Neptune
opposition. The failure of Bohr's (and others') efforts to have the use and
regulation of atomic power internationally shared —which would have
entailed the building of new social structures and authorities, astrologically
represented by Jupiter and Saturn— ultimately led to the global arms race
still continuing today.
Another example of the opposition/semi-square/sesquiquadrate
configuration can be found in the chart of Werner Erhard, the "wizard of est."
Here the fifth-house Sun opposes Saturn, which is retrograde, elevated and
rules the Midheaven; and Pluto in the second house of resources is
sesquiquadrate Saturn and semi-square the Sun. Pluto is also sesquiquadrate
the Moon on the Descendant, which is in turn square both Saturn and the Sun,
thus at the 'short end' of a T-square. What results is an interesting connection
between the two sides of the line of opposition: one side is released through
two very basic squares (Sun/Moon and Moon/Saturn), the other through a
semi-square (Sun/Pluto) and sesquiquadrate (Sat urn/Pluto).
Equally interesting, however, is a pattern formed as a result of the fact
that Pluto is actually at the inverse midpoint of the square between Saturn and
the Moon. In relation to a square, this pattern is similar to what happens
when a planet is at the inverse midpoint of a sextile, what is called a 'Yod' or
'Finger of God' configuration, resulting from two quincunxes linking two
sextiling planets to a third. In this case, two sesquiquadrates rather than
quincunxes 'point' to a third planet, and the 'base' of the configuration is a
square instead of a sextile. If there is any meaning in calling the
quincunx/sextile configuration a 'Finger of God,' one might consider calling
the analogous sesquiquadrate/square configuration a 'Finger of the World'—
for it challenges one to concrete action (square) that must be well-advertised
and disseminated, but which at the same time should stand on its own as an
almost self-evident answer to a pressing social or evolutionary need. In the
case of Werner Erhard, whether or not his efforts fulfill such a challenge can
only be left to the debate of his supporters and detractors—both categories
having many vocal adherents.
Another contemporary 'consciousness movement' figure whose chart
displays prominent sesquisquares is Ram Das. An almost exact conjunction
of the Sun and Uranus in the eleventh house is sesquiquadrate Neptune, which
in turn is sesquiquadrate Saturn. Since Saturn is also square the Sun/Uranus
conjunction, what we have called a 'Finger of the World' results. This whole
pattern is further integrated into the chart's overall configuration, for the
Saturn/Neptune sesquiquadrate also links two oppositions, Saturn/Pluto (the
latter being also conjunct Jupiter) and Venus/Neptune. Another
sesquiquadrate between the elevated Venus (ruler of the twelfth house) and
the first-house Pluto completes the rectangle structured by the two
oppositions. This is a most significant pattern which we will study more fully
in the next chapter. At this point, however, the pattern's repeated references
to public life, social participation and organization, drugs and mystical
experiences should help to illumine the challenges underlying Ram Das's
early, seminal involvement with psychedelic drugs, altered states of
consciousness, and his more recent emphasis on meditation and spiritual
development.
In closing this condensed section on two interesting but usually ignored
aspects, the complex chart of President Roosevelt again provides an
excellent example. His fifth-house Sun is sesquiquadrate the dominant tenth-
house and retrograde Mars; the eighth-house Saturn is in sesquiquadrate to
rising Uranus. The two sesquiquadrates are linked by the septile between
Mars and Saturn, the bi-quintile between Uranus and the Sun, and a bi-novile
between Mars and Uranus. These aspects refer no doubt to the tragedy which
nearly made physically impossible, and yet psychologically facilitated, his
professional career. They also show how an aspect with the potentiality of
defeat (the sesquiquadrate) can be made the very springboard to personal
triumph and spiritual victory.

THE NO VILE
By dividing the circumference of a circle into nine equal segments, we
produce the rarely used aspect called novile or nonagen (40°). The
geometrical figure that results combines three equilateral triangles. The
number 9 is not a primary number like 3, 5, or 7, but neither is it divisible by
2. It can, however, be divided by 3, and the novile can also be considered the
result of trisecting a trine. This combination of 'threeness' gives to the novile
its basic significance.
When we think about division by 3, we realize that we might also
consider the sextile the result of dividing an opposition or half the circle into
three 60° segments. But in order to be truly significant, the division of
aspects must always be related to the entire circle—that is, to the wholeness
of being, experience or a situation. If only half of the circle is considered and
divided by 3, the result is the negative meaning of the sextile: a kind of trine
(vision, understanding, ideal) which affects only half of life and
consciousness, and leaves the other half out of the picture. It then deals with
the meaningless proliferations of material nature un-illumined by spirit, or
with the subjective activity of a dream-like consciousness too weak or lazy
to meet and fecundate the material realities of our world. The sextile is
therefore not to be considered positively as a half circumference divided into
3 segments, but instead as the result of inscribing two interlaced triangles
into the whole circle.
Since the novile results from inscribing three interlaced triangles in the
circle, it can be considered a characteristic product of division by three—or,
to be more exact, we should really say, of multiplying by three, for it implies
the multiplication of the triangle (and thus the segments) within the circle.
One or two triangles becomes three triangles; three or six segments become
nine.
In the six-pointed star, we found two triangles, and we referred one to the
descent of spirit and the other to the ascent of matter. Such a duality means
opposition and contrast, and three oppositions are implied in any perfect six-
pointed star. But as we saw, dualities and contrasts may lead either to the
rhythmic integration of opposites, or to irreconcilable cleavage. The idea of
trinity, on the other hand, begins with the principle of harmonic integration
within an encompassing transcendent concept, pattern or image. The world of
life, as we know it in the biosphere, is essentially a world of dualities and
conflicts which may or may not be resolved into love and into the organisms
or organizations born of love. The world of mind is a world of trinities and
threefold relationships—even the quintile based on the Five is the third
aspect after the opposition in the evolutionary series. Life is based on power,
mind on meaning; and the capacity to see meaning in whatever there is in the
world of life is what is called intelligence—in the real and philosophical
sense of the word, not in an artificial sense as in IQ or intelligence tests, etc.
Meaning is envision or conceived by the mind when the dualities and
conflicts of the world of life are related to and included within a third factor
—God, the Universe, Self, man as a spiritual being—in reference to which
these conflicts and contests for power become productive and acquire a
purpose.
The nine-pointed star, as the result of the symmetrical interlacing of three
equilateral triangles, raises the meaning of the Three to a higher level: 9 is
the second power of 3, i.e., 3 multiplied by itself.* At the level of the Three,
a human being discovers and envisions the meaning and purpose of what he
or she experiences, and orients himself or herself toward the fulfillment of
this meaning and purpose. At the level of the Nine, the individualized person
discovers and envisions the meaning and purpose of what he or she is. The
trine leads to planning for action; the novile (when at all operative in an
individual's life) leads to personal rebirth—or 'Initiation'—to a basic
identification of the self with the purpose this self is seen to have within the
harmony of the universal Whole.
The novile thus represents the level at which complete fulfillment of
individual being is possible—either as an end in itself (negative approach)
or as the condition for positive emergence into an altogether new and higher
realm of being (beginning with number Ten). Thus number Nine is the number
of a fulfilled period of gestation (e.g., nine months of pregnancy) followed by
birth. This period also contains 40 weeks, and the number 40 has been the
symbol for a period of preparation for rebirth: the forty-year wandering of
the Jews in the desert, and in the recent Baha'i movement, Abdul Baha's forty
years of imprisonment in the town of Akka—a name meaning 'womb.' In
terms of Hindu chronology, the Kali Yuga (Dark Age) lasts 400,000 years, or
forty 10,000-year cycles.* Kali is the Great Mother in her dark, unconscious
aspect. Kali Yuga is thus the period during which a ne„w humanity is being
carried within the collective 'womb' of the old humanity. According to
Brahminical records, we have just completed the first 5,000 years of such a
process having begun in February, 3,102 B.C.
We can bring the preceding ideas to the level of the interpretation of a
birth-chart by seeing that the presence of noviles—or of one strongly
emphasized novile—in a chart shows that the individual may come to realize,
or will strive to realize, that the entire personality is a womb or matrix from
which a 'higher' being—a spiritually conscious Self—should emerge.
Christian mystics speak of the birth of the Christ-child within the heart as the
central experience of the spiritual life. In a less exalted sense, every aspect
based on 40° increments brings the possibility (not the certainty) of some
'birth out of captivity,' some emergence into a Promised Land, whatever it be
within the personality that is held captive, wandering in the 'desert' of
unconsciousness and spiritual aridity. The two planets in novile aspect
indicate the psychological functions which establish through their
relationship the matrix-field from which the act of spiritual liberation or
rebirth may occur.
For example, in the birth-chart of the Persian .prophet Baha'u'llah, who
claimed to be a manifestation of God, the Sun and Moon are 42° apart. This
is, in a sense, a very wide novile, as in most cases no more than a degree and
a half should be allowed for this aspect; but the Moon may be exactly 40°
away from the Ascendant, and such an aspect would be characteristic. If a
man is actually to be considered a physical incorporation of divinity, then it
would be logical to expect the Sun and Moon—the two basic vital powers—
to be in novile at the time of his birth. The fact that the Sun is rising (and that
the Part of Fortune is thus conjunct the Moon) adds immensely to the
significance of the configuration.
The complex chart of President Roosevelt again provides an example.
Here, the Moon is 39° away from Pluto, and Mars is 81°— thus bi-novile—
from Uranus. The 'captivity' F.D.R. underwent was of course a physical one,
a literal confinement to a wheelchair after he was stricken with polio. The
level at which he mobilized his energies (Mars), as well as the one at which
his capacity for adaptation (Moon) and public life (tenth house) functioned,
had definitely to be transformed. He was indeed presented with the
opportunity— disguised as the direst of crises—to be 'reborn' out of
adversity.
President Carter, whose experience of Christian rebirth in 1966 is a
matter of public record, has a novile between Venus and Pluto in his chart.
Both are significant, elevated planets—Pluto in the ninth house of religious
and philosophical ideology, Venus in the tenth (public life and, in the deepest
sense of the term, one's vocation or 'calling') and ruler of the Libra
Ascendant. The experience followed Carter's first, unsuccessful attempt to
become Governor of Georgia, and the symbolism is quite apropos in terms of
Plutonian catharsis and regeneration.
A prominent novile also appears in the horoscope of Mohandas Gandhi.
Straddling the Scorpio Ascendant, the twelfth-house Sun and first-house
Mars are separated by 39½°—an interesting configuration for the promoter
of ahimsa (non-violent resistance). Mars is on a degree (24° Scorpio)
stressing "the need to incorporate inspiring experiences and teachings into
everyday living," which is exactly what the great Indian leader urged his
countrymen to do. A moving testimony to the personal aspect of this
challenge to rebirth is chronicled by the Mahatma himself in his
autobiography, where he tells of his struggle to overcome the urges of his
strong sexual nature. Equally poignant is the virtually exact novile between
Albert Schweitzer's eleventh-house Venus and his first-house Sun. Striking
too is the novile between the Sun and Uranus in the chart of the theosophical
amanuensis Alice Bailey.

THE DECILE OR SEMI-QUINTILE

Only two or three aspects of smaller angular value than the novile are
worth mentioning. The first, the semi-quintile or decile (36°) is the result of
inscribing two interlaced five-pointed stars—a ten-pointed star—within the
circle. One star points upward, the other downward. These two stars have
traditionally been understood as the symbols of 'white' and 'black' magic—of
Man as a creator focusing through his mind and his right hand the creative
power of spirit—and man, the adversary of spirit, working against the tide of
evolution or the 'will of God,' and after more or less prolonged period of
power, being himself destroyed by the relentless pressure of the universal
tide.
This traditional interpretation of the two stars does not, however, exhaust
the meaning of their relationship. Insofar as the semi-quintile is concerned,
we shall say that the upward pointing star represents true creativity, while the
downpointing star represents the 'art for art's sake' approach—creation, or
rather mere production, for merely the sake of the producer's ego or of the
formalistic approach of a disintegrating or crystallized culture. Formalism in
all creative expressions means focusing on the outer pattern, the
circumference—style without substance. Indeed, it is the negation of
creativity, of the flow of spirit from a center—a flow conditioned by the need
to bring more harmony and fuller living into the world. The true creative act
is an act of compassion for whatever is chaotic and unintegrated.
The 'art for art's sake' type of attitude removes the creative act from its
central source, the spirit within, and considers not the 'act' but the technical
excellence or defects of a finished product or state of being, which must
conform to some traditional or fashionable pattern of perfection. Technique
as an end in itself is the death-song of creative activity, whether in the realm
of the arts or in any field in life—for example in the building of a refined and
intellectual ego which is also seen as an end in itself, or in politics when the
importance of so-called public opinion polls and the advice of advertising
and public relations specialists eclipse the real social and cultural issues at
stake. Nevertheless, technique has great value and cannot be ignored. It is to
the techniques of the old, disintegrating culture that people prophetically
anticipating the release of a new creative impulse must go in order initially
to acquire skill in focusing it.
The semi-quintile also refers to the relationship between a new creative
impulse and old techniques or traditional 'know how'—just as the semi-
square refers to the relationship between the new structure or organization
and the public which will have to receive and use it. This relationship
between a new creative impulse and an old technique is what is meant by
'talent' in the deepest sense of the word. To have talent is to be able to
incorporate a creative impulse into a technique.
The problem here is how to prevent the old technique from perverting
and deviating the new creative impulse, while not swinging to the other
extreme and scorning technique altogether, under the pretense that any
technique would pollute the anticipated and longed-for creative flow in its
inspirational purity. Talent, however, has come most often in our society to
mean mere technical skill—for our civilization worships technicians and
specialists, whether what they make leads to a richer, spirit-oriented life or
binds human beings to senseless, automated and indeed in the long-run
counterproductive patterns.
In President Carter's chart, the Sun and Moon are semi-quintile, while
Mars and Jupiter are quintile. Carter has, of course, a background in
engineering, and is noted for his grasp of technical matters, particularly
concerning the complexities of nuclear power and weapons systems. In
contrast to the sweeping social vision of, say, a Roosevelt, Carter's approach
to issues is more pragmatic and detail-oriented; he depends upon technique
and technical solutions rather than on a more philsophical approach.
Combining the two approaches in a more obvious way is R. Buckminster
Fuller, the scientist-inventor who has become a leading figure in the 'New
Age' movement. His Sun and Pluto are probably close to semi-quintile (we
have only a solar chart with which to work), while the Sun is also at one
point of a grand trine involving the Moon and Uranus.
In relation to the semi-quintile, we mention again a horoscope we
previously pointed out in relation to the quintile. Albert Einstein's quintile
between Jupiter and Neptune is bisected by a conjunction of Mercury and
Saturn (and the Part of Fortune), and no doubt symbolizes, on the one hand,
Einstein's capacity for the kind of painstaking, cautious work required during
his fruitless search for a unified field theory. On the other hand, it may also
refer to his essential conservativism, expressed both in his staunch resistance
to accepting the cosmological implications of quantum mechanics, and in his
speaking out against the use of atomic power after World War II.

THE SEMI-SEXTILE
Next after the semi-quintile comes the semi-sextile or 30° aspect— the span
of one zodiacal sign and thus the basic step in the
involutionary/devolutionary series of aspects. The semi-sextile in the
evolutionary series is, on the other hand, practically the last of these aspects.
It is produced by inscribing a dodecagon (or twelve-sided figure) in the
circle of wholeness. This operation, according to the Pythagoreans, was the
key to the perfection of cosmic order.
The twelve-pointed star within the circle can be interpreted as the
product of interlacing two hexagons (six-sided figures), three squares or four
triangles. It has thus a threefold foundation in terms of vision and meaning
(trine), concrete structure (square), and organizational activity (sextile). It is
all these things brought to the level of everyday activity in all organisms. It
is vision, meaning and purpose (3), expressed functionally and concretely
through structures of all types (4). It is structure (4) discovering its functional
meaning (3) in terms of experience. It is organization and management (6) all
the way down the line to the foreman of the factory—the delegate of the top
managers in the very midst of the workers, the 'materials' to be organized (2).
In short, the semi-sextile can be said to refer to actual functional activity and
to the everyday experience of the person who has to prove in terms of
practical results all he or she envisioned, knew, built and organized.

THE SMALLER ANGULAR VALUES

If we now try to understand the meaning of lesser angular values in the
evolutionary series—aspects smaller than the semi-sextile—we should come
to the conclusion that they refer to disintegrative or cat abolie processes. We
have already mentioned the semi-octile (or semi-semi-square, 22½°) as
referring to the vulgarization of an idea having been made a concrete
structure for everyday common use— that is, to the process following which
a spirit-conditioned value, by indiscriminate common use, becomes
materialized and abused. One could find similar meanings for other small
angular values—for example, the semi-semi-sextile (15°), as referring to the
automatism of habit and a consequent loss of meaning and value. On the other
hand, although the series for all practical purposes ends with the semi-
sextile, semi-octile or semi-semi-sextile, it can, theoretically be continued ad
infinitum, the angular values always decreasing and approaching 0° but
never actually reaching it. In terms of the old cycle, the next conjunction
implies the final act of death, a release of the life-principle from a worn-out
organism which is no longer useful. In this case, the end of the life-cycle
corresponding to the very small aspects of the evolutionary series (18°, 15°,
10°, etc.) is not actually a preparation for rebirth, but the final phases of a
disintegrative process.
On the other hand, increasingly smaller angular values can represent
preparation for a new birth in individualized consciousness, especially if the
ending cycle has been at least relatively successful. The smaller the aspect,
the greater the number of sides have the inscribed polygons to which they
correspond. The larger this number, the more closely the inscribed polygon
comes to being a circle. The difference in area between an equilateral
triangle or square and the circle within which they are inscribed is quite
considerable. This difference decreases as the inscribed figure gains sides. It
is very small if we think of a polygon with 360 sides, each representing a 1°
angle.
No polygon, however numerous its sides, will ever equal the circle in
area. But the circle is the mystic ideal, the ultimate goal rather than the
present reality. A mysterious 'something' is needed for this goal to be
realized in actuality, for the many-sided polygon (the end of the cycle) to
become the whole circle (time fulfilled, eternity, personal immortality). This
something is the gift of the Initiator, the God-spark, at the true Initiation. It is
the gift of immortality, of identification with the eternal, thanks to which the
end of a cycle becomes the conscious rebeginning of the next.
In the new cycle, the process of involution and progressive
differentiation begins again. It does so on the basis of the success or relative
failure of the preceeding evolutionary process. If this process has been at
least somewhat successful, we see its continuation astrologically when we
superimpose the geometrically-based, opposition- or awareness-rooted
aspects of the evolutionary series on the addition-based, conjunction-rooted
aspects of the involutionary series. Figure 3-5 illustrates this
superimposition.
In human terms, we can say that once a person's consciousness can
resonate to and operate at the level represented by, say Number or vibration
Five, the person can actualize a quintile-type of creativity in a new
involutionary process stressing spontaneous activity. Such a 'waxing' quintile
follows the sextile in Phase 3 of the first hemicycle, and the type of creativity
it symbolizes arises from and depends upon practical organizational abilities
and the capacity to draw on and synthesize material from a number of
sources. The waxing bi-quintile—another point on the five-pointed star—
falls in Phase 5 of the first hemicycle. It follows the waxing trine and
sesquiquadrate, referring to a type of potential creative expression built upon
idealistic vision and the capacity to persevere and be willing to stay with a
problem or situation until a way of working it through can be found. The
semi-quintile or decile occurs near the beginning of Phase 2, after the semi-
sextile. It refers to an instinctive, perhaps automatic application of an old
technique, carried forward or inherited from the previous, now-ending cycle,
which may nevertheless prove valuable in focusing the new direction
stabilizing during Phase 2.
 Similar reasoning can shed light on the meaning of other evolutionary
aspects in the 'waxing' hemicycle. The first aspect of the septile series
(51½°) falls after the semi-square and before the sextile, indicating the
necessity to eliminate or neutralize whatever was left out of the resolution
between the 'ghosts' of the past and potentialities of the future met at the
semi-square before a new organizational capacity is allowed to operate. The
second septile-based aspect (bi-septile, 1026/7°) follows the waxing square,
also symbolizing a similar necessity in relation to the 'de-cision' made at the
square. A triseptile (1543/7°) falls between the quincunx and an aspect of the
novile series (quad-novile, 160°) near the beginning of Phase 6. It deals with
the need to eliminate the leftovers from the process of adjustment and
refinement begun at the waxing quincunx, and its 'fate-ordained' action can be
a prelude to inner rebirth (novile) pre-ceeding the cycle's outward
culmination (opposition).
The novile series, too, interacts with involutionary aspects in a similar
way. A novile follows the semi-sextile and semi-quintile or decile, and
precedes the semi-square of Phase 2. The bi-novile comes between the
quintile of Phase 3 and the square beginning Phase 4. The waxing tri-novile
coincides with the waxing trine beginning Phase 5. And, as we have already
seen, the quad-novile follows the tri-septile in Phase 6 and immediately
precedes the new opposition beginning Phase 7 and, potentially, a new
evolutionary process.
As there are always cycles within cycles within cycles—cycles so
encompassing that what we human beings consider large processes are but
sub-cycles within them—there are always new beginnings, potentially at
least, at ever higher, more inclusive levels of activity and consciousness. A
closed circle is not a fact of ever-surging life. It presupposes objectivity, the
power to contemplate, as it were from above, a completed cycle—the power
of Man to remember and give meaning to his experiences. The first condition
of readiness to move to ever more inclusive levels is to envision the process
as a possibility, for no one can ever consciously reach what has not been
previously visualized as a possibility.

_________
* Many people have had the experience that what they were living through was actually, though in some
indefinable manner, the consequence of antecedent causes—i.e., of events long ago. One may of
course interpret such a strange feeling by accepting the hypothesis of reincarnation. But the conception
of reincarnation can be understood in several ways, and not only from the more or less popularized point
of view current today. In any case, we can say that our present is at least partially conditioned by the
past—by the past of our parents (what they have experienced and the way they have responded or
reacted to it as well as their 'unlived lives'), by the ancestral traditions and prejudices which have been
stamped upon our receptive minds in early childhood, and by the evolutionary past of mankind.
* cf. Person-Centered Astrology, "First Steps in the Study of Birth-Charts" (New York: ASI: 1980) by
Dane Rudhyar for an in-depth discussion of overall chart shapes (Gestalt).
* We can also interpret the number 4 as 2 multiplied by itself. The awareness produced by the
opposition is raised to a higher level of dynamic intensity by becoming a definite blueprint for action
(square). All we build is originally born out of what we have carefully observed. Perception (2) leads to
conception (3), then to constructive action (4).
* 10,000 years is astrologically the Great Cycle of Uranus. Cf. Astrological Timing: The Transition to
the New Age (Harper & Row, New York, 1969) by Dane Rudhyar.
 4.
Special Conjunctions and Oppositions:
Retrogradation
A TIME FOR REORIENTATION
When involution gives way to evolution, or vice versa, what is required is a
definite change in the level of activity and consciousness. When a planet
operates most focally in terms of its own kind of functional activities—that
is, in its cyclic relationship with the Sun—a period of transition is required
for the deep-seated change to occur. Astrologically, such a situation is
represented by the planet's retro-gradation—a phenomenon which is usually
not well-understood because it is not usually seen in its proper, i.e., cyclic
and process-oriented context. For retrogradation is nothing more nor less
than a phase of an overall sequence of relationships between a planet and
the Sun.
From a process-oriented point of view, the retrograde periods of planets
can be best understood when they are considered graphic representations of
certain 'aspects' the planets make to the Sun as seen and experienced from
Earth. Retrogradation always occurs when the relationship between a planet
and the Sun is about to change from one hemicycle to the next. Such a change
occurs, as we have seen, at both the conjunction beginning a cycle of aspects
and the opposition culminating the process. It refers to the need for a radical
reorientation in consciousness and/or activity involving the aspecting
planetary functions. In both instances, it can also include the possibility of a
certain kind of 'mutation' or repolarization.
The term retrograde literally means to 'move backward/ A planet is said
to retrograde when its motion appears to be contrary to the usual direction of
planets in their orbits, i.e., forward in the zodiac, from lesser to greater
longitude. Retrograde planets move backward in the zodiac, from greater to
lesser longitude. Only the planets, never the Sun or Moon, go retrograde; but
all the planets, at some point in their orbits, appear to stop, go backward for
a time, stop again and resume direct motion. To ancient and pre-Copernical
astronomer-astrologers, this was a most perplexing occurrence that could
only be plotted and perhaps predicted on the basis of past observation, but it
could not really be explained. So it remains for many students and
astrologers today, who truly understand neither the cause nor the meaning of
the planets' retrograde motions. The little R's and D's in the ephemeris are
accepted as if there were nothing puzzling about them.
Some astrologers maintain that a planet is 'weak' when it is retrograde.
Others, because a planet is as close to the Earth as it can be when it appears
to move backward, assert that a retrograde planet is particularly 'strong.'
Although they appear to contradict each other, neither of these views is
entirely false, but neither represents the whole picture either. In order to
understand the full meaning of retrogradation, it must, we repeat, be seen in
context. The periods during which planets retrograde must be seen in relation
to their whole cycles. The key, we cannot stress enough, is to understand that
retro-gradation occurs at a particular phase of each planet's cyclic
relationship to the Sun when seen from Earth. How many students of
astrology realize that any planet in or near opposition to the Sun is always
retrograde?!
Actually, when seen heliocentrically (from the point of view of the Sun),
there is no retrogradation; the planets always move in the same direction in
their orbits. Retrogradation is an optical illusion generated by our
geocentrism, by the fact that we view all celestial phenomena from the
Earth's surface. Four basic factors combine to produce apparent planetary
retrogradation:
(1) The above-mentioned fact that we are on the Earth, observing all
celestial motions from points on its surface,
(2) the place of the Earth's orbit in the solar system and the Earth's orbital
speed in relation to the speeds of the other planets,
(3) the fact that from our vantage point on Earth the Sun appears to move
while the Earth remains stationary, and
(4) the fact that none of the other planets moves at the same speed of
either the Sun (in its apparent motion) or the Earth.
All of these factors combine to produce the optical illusion we call
retrogradation.
The situation is similar to what happens when a fast-moving train
approaches and passes around a curve a slower-moving train travelling on
tracks parallel to it. When the faster train comes up on the slower train, the
slower train appears to the passengers in the faster train to stop and then
move backward as the faster train passes it. When the distance between the
two trains increases sufficiently, and the slower train enters the curve around
which it has been passed, the slower train appears (to the passengers in the
faster train) momentarily to stop again and then resume its forward motion.
Such are the mechanics of retrogradation. In order to apply them to the
actual cases of the planets, Sun and Earth, we have to differentiate between
two categories of planets: those closer to the Sun than the Earth and thus
inside the Earth's orbit (Venus and Mercury) and those outside the Earth's
orbit, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. This is because the
Earth, like the faster train in the above example, passes Mercury and Venus
around, so to speak, an outside track (in relation to the Sun), while it passes
Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, etc. around an inside track.
The cyclic relationships between Venus and Mercury and the Sun are
very special indeed. At first, when we observe the changing relationships
between these planets and the Sun, we may think we have found two notable
exceptions to the cyclic pattern of aspects we studied in the previous
chapters. Venus and Mercury do not appear to go all the way or 'full circle'
around the Sun, but rather to oscillate back and forth in relation to it, more or
less carried along by the Sun in its yearly zodiacal circuit. Mercury never
appears more than 28° of arc away from the Sun, while Venus's maximum
elongation is about 46°.
Of course, heliocentrically, Venus and Mercury do go all the way around
the Sun and travel in the same direction in their orbit. Diagram 4-1 illustrates
this cyclic pattern, and by studying it closely we can hope to understand the
cycle it represents, the mechanics and meanings of the retrograde motions of
these planets. We'll begin by first considering the instance of Mercury's cycle
with the Sun.
 Since Mercury's orbit is closer to the Sun than Earth's, Mercury is never
seen opposing the Sun; Mercury and the Sun can never be on opposite sides
of the Earth. Instead of a conjunction beginning the cycle and an opposition
dividing it into two hemicycles, what constitute the two major turning points
of the Mercury/Sun cycle are two conjunctions—but conjunctions very
different from one another. One of them is called the 'superior conjunction.' It
occurs when Mercury is on the opposite side of the Sun from the Earth. It is
called the 'superior' conjunction because when it occurs Mercury is 'superior
to' or 'above' the Sun. Like the Moon in relation to the Earth at Full Moon,
Mercury at its superior conjunction with the Sun is as far from the Earth as it
can be. It thus refers, astronomically as well as symbolically, to what we can
call 'full Mercury.' Moreover, Mercury is direct (moving in its usual
forward-in-the-zodiac direction) when it forms its superior conjunction with
the Sun.
The other major turning point in the Sun/Mercury cycle is called the
'inferior conjunction.' It occurs when Mercury, like the Moon at New Moon,
is between the Earth and the Sun, and as near the Earth as possible. It is thus
considered the conjunction beginning the cycle, symbolically a 'new
Mercury.' In terms of the cyclic pattern we have studied, Mercury waxes
from inferior conjunction to superior conjunction—from 'new' to 'full'
Mercury; after the superior conjunction, until the next inferior conjunction,
Mercury wanes. It does so both astronomically and visually from our point of
view on Earth, and the symbolism of the two hemicycles applies as well. As
Mercury approaches its inferior conjunction with the Sun, it appears to slow
in speed, to stop, and to become retrograde.
Mercury's retrogradation occurs as the inferior conjunction forms
because of a number of factors. The Earth and Mercury are on the same side
of the Sun, and both—let us not forget—are moving. As Mercury moves in its
orbit, the Earth speeds toward and around it, coming to pass it on a parallel
track in much the same way that the faster train of our earlier illustration
passes a slower train. As the Earth and Mercury near one another, Mercury—
like the slower train in our example—appears to slow down, stop and
become retrograde. When the Earth aligns with Mercury and the Sun in such
a way that they (the Sun and Mercury) occupy the same zodiacal degree
(inferior conjunction, which from the point of view of the Sun would be an
Earth/Mercury conjunction), Mercury is and has been (for some 10 days to 2
weeks) appearing to move backward. Around the time of the inferior
conjunction, however, Mercury cannot actually be seen in the sky, for it is too
close to the Sun in the daytime, blocked from view by the Sun's light, and it
does not appear in the night sky, being below the horizon with the Sun.
After inferior conjunction, the Earth and Mercury move away from exact
alignment. Mercury continues in retrograde motion, and because the Sun also
continues its apparent motion (actually the counterpart of our own—the
Earth's—actual motion), the number of zodiacal degrees between the Sun and
Mercury increases. From the time of the inferior conjunction, Mercury is on
the other side of the Sun from where it was when it first became retrograde.
Some 5 days after the inferior conjunction, Mercury has become far enough
from the Sun to be seen over the eastern horizon before sunrise: a morning
star.
Several days after this first appearance (approximately 8 days to 2 weeks
after the inferior conjunction), the Earth and Mercury have separated far
enough for Mercury to appear to stop and resume direct motion. A little more
than a week after Mercury turns direct, it reaches its greatest distance from
the Sun. For approximately 20 to 30 days after its first appearance, Mercury
appears as a morning star, but after having reached its greatest distance from
the Sun, the two—because of the variance between the speed of Mercury and
the apparent speed of the Sun—come progressively closer together. He-
liocentrically, this occurs because Mercury is preparing to pass on the far
side of the Sun from the Earth. Thus, about a month and a half after inferior
conjunction, the superior conjunction occurs.
At the superior conjunction, Mercury passes on the far side of the Sun in
direct motion. It becomes invisible as the superior conjunction forms, and
afterward emerges on the other side of the Sun from where it was before
superior conjunction. Thereafter, when it appears in the sky again, it rises
after the Sun and remains blocked from view by the Sun's brilliance by day.
A few days after the superior conjunction, having moved far enough away
from the Sun, Mercury appears over the western horizon after sunset: an
evening star. About a month and a half after the superior conjunction,
Mercury again reaches its greatest distance from the Sun. It appears after
sunset as far eastward of the western horizon and the setting Sun as it can.
Several days later, a little less than three months after the superior
conjunction, the Earth begins to overtake Mercury and prepares to pass it.
Mercury appears to stop, in preparation for retrogradation. The inferior
conjunction occurs about two weeks later, and a new cycle begins.
In a complete cycle of Mercury and the Sun (as seen from the Earth, let us
not forget), there are thus the following stages:
• Inferior conjunction—'new Mercury'—Mercury retrograde
• Mercury retrograde—'waxing' and rising ahead of the Sun (morning
star) for approximately 10 to 15 days
• Mercury direct—still waxing and rising ahead of the Sun (morning star)
for approximately 46 days
• Superior conjunction—'full Mercury'—Mercury still direct
 • Mercury direct—now 'waning'—rising after the Sun (evening star) for
approximately 46 days
• Mercury retrograde—still waning and rising after the Sun (evening star)
for approximately 10 to 15 days
• Inferior conjunction—Mercury remains retrograde while a new cycle
begins.
These phases of the Mercury/Sun cycle can be symbolically represented
as in Diagram 4-2. The important points to remember are: (1) From inferior
to superior conjunction Mercury waxes; from superior conjunction to inferior
conjunction it wanes. (2) The retrograde period of Mercury occurs around
the time of its inferior conjunction with the Sun. (3) At that time the planet
appears to come rapidly closer to our own, although it is the Earth which
actually nears Mercury. (4) During the first or waxing half of the
Mercury/Sun cycle, Mercury rises before the Sun as a morning star, and
during the second or waning hemicycle it sets after the Sun as an evening star.

The distinction between Mercury as morning star (waxing) and Mercury

as an evening star (waning) is a basic one to make when looking at any
particular birth-chart. As morning star, Mercury is behind the Sun in the
zodiac. It is either in the sign before the Sun's sign at birth or in earlier
degrees of the same zodiacal sign. Diagram 4-3 illustrates such a situation. If
we rotate the chart-wheel so that the Sun and Mercury are near the eastern
horizon (Ascendant), we will see that Mercury will rise before the Sun,
appearing (if it is sufficiently distant from the Sun in longitude) as a morning
star before sunrise. When the Sun rises, Mercury will be obscured by the
Sun's brilliance.

On the other hand, Mercury as an evening star (waning) is ahead of the

Sun in the zodiac. It is either in the sign following the Sun's sign at birth or in
later degrees of the same sign as the Sun. If we look at Diagram 4-4
representing a horoscope with the Sun and Mercury in this relationship, and
rotate the chart so that they are near the eastern horizon, we see that the Sun
will rise before Mercury, and Mercury will be in the sky but invisible
throughout the day. If we rotate the chart farther so that the Sun and Mercury
are near the western horizon (descendant), we will see that the Sun will set
first, leaving Mercury as an evening star over the western horizon.

The meaning of Mercury as either a morning star (waxing) or evening star

(waning) can be made clear if we realize that Mercury as morning star
heralds a new day, while Mercury as evening star closes an ending day-
cycle. This dualism can be significantly correlated with two terms borrowed
from Greek mythology: Mercury-Promethean (morning star) and Mercury-
Epimethean (evening star). Prometheus and Epimetheus were two brothers,
one who always looked forward, toward the future (Pro), the other who, gaze
fixed backward, always depended upon precedents and past experience
(Epi). These two mythological figures can be considered prototypes for what
we have come to call the 'progressive' and 'conservative,' for Prometheus
was a rebel and reformer, while Epimetheus was the historian, logician and
accountant. The terms provide a convenient way of easily differentiating
between the two halves of the Mercury/Sun cycle.
Leaving aside for the moment the retrograde period of Mercury, we
should stress that its cyclic relationship with the Sun otherwise exhibits the
same visual and phase structure as the soli-lunar and interplanetary cycles
we have been studying. At the inferior conjunction, Mercury is between the
Sun and the Earth, as we have said, a situation similar to what occurs at New
Moon when the Moon is between the Sun and the Earth. Mercury in this
alignment symbolically focuses most strongly onto the Earth—while it is
closest to it—the power of life (the Sun) beginning to differentiate and
develop as mind (Mercury). What occurs between the inferior and superior
conjunctions (Mercury Promethean) is entirely analogous at the mental level
to the already-outlined involutionary or first-hemicycle process spanning
Phases 1 through 6 of a twelvefold cycle. What occurs between the superior
and inferior conjunctions (Mercury Epithemean) is likewise similar to the
second-hemicycle process unfolding during Phases 7 through 12.
From inferior conjunction to superior conjunction, Mercury 'waxes.' It
moves away from the Earth, symbolically 'carrying out' the solar impulse
imparted to it at conjunction. This is the period during which Mercury as
morning star (Promethean) rises ahead of the Sun, heralding the new day. It
symbolizes the spontaneous outworking of the mind, often manifesting in
persons born with the Sun and Mercury in this relationship as cunning or
innate 'know how.' Mental associations are intuitive and analogical rather
than logical or analytical, because the mind, having received a new creative
impulse or direction from the Sun, cannot rely on an accumulation of past
experience in order to draw conclusions. Rather, in order to substantiate the
new impulse, it seeks new experience, fresh data, and it does so eagerly. As
at the beginning of any cycle, so much is new, fascinating and attractive.
Enthusiastically anticipating and experiencing new material, the mind races,
as it were, ahead of itself, pausing to 'take counsel' only after the event. It
gathers data, sometimes indiscriminately and apparently willy-nilly. Behind
this desire for new mental sensations stands the unself-conscious 'wisdom' of
instinct and the involutionary process—of the mind operating at the survival-
oriented biological level. Also structuring the experience-gathering process
is the power of the solar impulse imparted to Mercury at inferior
conjunction: the potentiality for eventually integrating fresh data instinctively
gathered into a new synthesis, within the framework of more inclusive, better
organized mental vistas.
Between the inferior conjunction releasing such a potentiality and the
superior conjunction at which it can be fully realized, the mind, thus impelled
and drawn on, reaches out toward the future, trying to focus into concrete
form today the ideals which should become realities tomorrow. New
experiences increasingly point toward and evoke a sense of new
possibilities. A major turning point in this first hemicycle of Sun/Mercury
relationships occurs when heliocentric Mercury reaches maximum elongation
west, its greatest longitudinal distance from the Sun. At this point in the
cycle, the Mercury functions are most focally challenged to project a vision
in symbols or concrete behavior which will serve as a foundation for the
actual fulfillment of solar potential and purpose at superior conjunction.
Mercury's maximum elongation in this first hemicycle thus fulfills a building
function analogous to the waxing square in the first hemicycle of
interplanetary cycles.
As the cycle proceeds, Mercury approaches the superior conjunction
with the Sun. The superior conjunction marks the transformation of Mercury
morning star (Promethean) into Mercury evening star (Epimethean). At
superior conjunction, this change occurs with Mercury in direct motion. After
superior conjunction, Mercury no longer waxes; it wanes. From the point of
view of the Earth, this superior conjunction is astronomically a 'full
Mercury,' since Mercury reflects to us a full disc, and the alignment of
Mercury, the Sun and Earth is similar to what occurs among the Sun, Moon
and Earth at Full Moon. At superior conjunction, Mercury is as far from the
Earth as possible; from the point of view of the Sun it opposes Earth.
 This is the symbolic culmination of the Sun/Mercury cycle. The Mercury
functions acquire the capacity to achieve a maximum of objectivity or
concreteness. As the superior conjunction approaches, the mind becomes
laden with unintegrated data and ideals which it must begin to sift through,
consider as precedent, order and assimilate. This need and capacity for
digestion at the mental level intensifies as the superior conjunction nears.
The developing mind, having satiated (or perhaps over-burdened and
confused) itself with new experience eagerly sought, is 'directly' challenged
to change over from its spontaneous, information-gathering, projective mode
to a more deliberate, organized, conservative one. In persons born with the
Sun and Mercury in this relation, this may lead to intellectual and analytical
clarity and a stress upon the need for mental organization, objectivity and
memory.
After the superior conjunction, the purely instinctual activity of the mind
allowed play during the first hemicycle (from inferior to superior
conjunction) must yield to the development of a deeper understanding, of
wisdom. The dual nature of Mercury becomes increasingly apparent as the
experiencer becomes objective to and separate from the objects of
experience. In contrast to the spontaneous nature of Mercury as morning star
(Promethean), Mercury as evening star (Epimethean) symbolizes the need for
deliberate and self-conscious application of mental power and systematic
reasoning.
Between superior conjunction and Mercury's maximum elongation east,
the Sun/Mercury relationship unfolds in much the same way as Phases 7, 8
and 9 in the twelvefold interplanetary pattern we studied in Chapter 2.
Maximum elongation again occurs as heliocentric Mercury squares the Earth,
but in this second hemicycle of Sun/ Mercury relationships, the square is a
waning or 'Last Quarter' one. Here the greatest possible stress on applying
mental objectivity is made. What had been in the first hemicycle an
enthusiastic drive to give vision and form to new ideals settles into a pattern
of trying to solve more immediate problems at hand. Mental functioning, if
not as innovative as in the first hemicycle, becomes more mature and
systematic. The mind is challenged to develop its ability to draw meaning
from things which have already happened. In so doing, it turns back upon
itself, as it were, and questions the basis on which it had previously
operated. This 'Last Quarter' square is again a crisis in consciousness, a
parting of the ways at the philosophical or ideological level.
As Mercury has waned, so too has the need for new experience. The
mind has been forced to turn pastward, to gain historical perspective for
assimilating experience previously gathered, and for providing a context
within which to attempt to answer its present questions. After maximum
elongation east, the situation is similar to what we encountered at the waning
sextile, the beginning of Phase 11 in the twelvefold interplanetary pattern.
Mental reorganization must occur, and it can happen either on the basis of a
reactionary return to what the mind perceives as the strength and wisdom of
tradition—or on the basis of a growing openness to a new creative impulse.
As the cycle closes, then, the question arises as to whether or not the
mind has become sufficiently universal in scope to interpret past tradition in
a transformed, presently applicable and open-ended way. As if in answer,
after maximum elongation east, Mercury begins to move back toward the Sun,
toward the coming inferior conjunction. As it does, it slows down, preparing
for its station and subsequent retrogradation.
The retrograde period closing the Sun/Mercury cycle spans in time about
the last tenth of the entire cycle (an average of about 12 out of 116 days).
Most positively, it refers to the final phase of the mind's attachment to the
past. But, as Mercury slows and reaches its station, if the mind clings to the
past, it can mean the mind coming to a reactionary standstill. This can happen
either out of fear, or because past experiences have not been fully assimilated
and must again be 'gone over.' The following retrograde period can represent
a crystallization at the mental level. It is on this basis, and with the purpose
of breaking it up, that the new cycle begins.
On the other hand, Mercury's station and retrogradation can symbolize the
mind going over past precedent or re-examining tradition in order to
repudiate what of it has become obsolete in light of present questions,
problems and future hopes. Mercury-Epime-thean/retrograde thus represents
a period of deconditioning preparatory to the release of a new creative
impulse at the inferior conjunction. This period of deconditioning may be
confusing or even chaotic, but it is necessary if the developing mind is ever
to become sufficiently free of the past to accept to go in a new, future-
oriented direction.
 In order successfully to pass through such a deconditioning process at the
mental level, the mind symbolized by Mercury-Epime-thean/retrograde turns
inward, away from the taken-for-granted patterns of thinking of family and
culture. It must unearth unconscious assumptions and question generalizations
habitually made from past experience. Its purpose is to 'return to source,' the
power of which will, at the inferior conjunction, fecundate the mind anew,
beginning a new cycle of mental development.
The person born with Mercury Epimethean retrograde may be unable to
accept the usual patterns of thinking impressed upon his or her nascent
mentality by parents, teachers and other traditional authorities. Instead the
person may rebel against the past so that new experience can be met more
freely than traditional constraints would allow. This may in many instances
lead to a more or less prolonged period of confusion, but even this should not
be considered absolutely negative. It should be seen as a necessary phase in
a developmental process and thereby given a constructive meaning. For
Mercury's station and retrogradation lead directly to the inferior conjunction,
a new creative impulse and a chance to begin again at a new level.
What actually occurs at any solar conjunction is and remains a mystery.
For a few days before and after the exact inferior conjunction, Mercury
disappears from view. When it emerges as a morning star on the other side of
the Sun, it is nevertheless still retrograde for some 10 to 15 days. A new
cycle has begun, and the 'seeds' for a new mind have been implanted—
assuming all has gone well at the close of the previous cycle and that there
were seeds to be sown. The mind emerging from the solar conjunction is
symbolically a mind which has experienced a mystery, an 'initiation' into a
new realm of being —however limited or casual this initiation may have
been. As a result of this and the previous period of deconditioning, the mind
has lost its trust or interest in customary impulses, yet it is not free from them.
The cycle has not progessed far enough for the mind to have even a vaguely
objective vision of 'where' or to what ultimate purpose mental development
is directed. The mind struggles to overcome its own deep subjectivity, as a
person who was profoundly asleep struggles to free his mind from strange
and wonderful dream-fragments clinging to consciousness as he rises to meet
and adjust himself to the morning's brightness. The mind is eager, but with
Mercury still retrograde and very near the beginning of the cycle, its activity
may be uncertain, its vision perhaps lost and recovered again —or so
subjective and idealistic as to be beyond the ken of other, more objective
minds. It awakens to the outer world and its realities only slowly,
assimilating the inward experience of the new solar impulse, and finding its
'balance between the two.
In the deepest sense, Mercury-Promethean/retrograde refers to the
possibility of a radical transformation at a very deep and basic level of
human functioning, for it follows and builds upon the period of cultural
deconditioning symbolized by Mercury-Epimethean/ retrograde. Moreover,
here, at the beginning of the 'life-dominated first hemicycle, Mercury travels
in a direction opposite to the motion of the Sun, the source of all life-power.
As the 'life'-cycle begins, Mercury opposes, as it were, its flow. What this
means can be understood when we realize that in animals, and even among
less mentally developed or primitive human beings living in jungles (urban,
suburban or otherwise) in want and fear, the Mercury-function is entirely
subservient to life's needs, immediate requirements and self-preservation,
and to unquestioned, deeply ingrained social imperatives and taboos. Then,
or after deconditioning has occurred in the lives of modern men and women,
intelligence may manifest primarily as rudimentary inventiveness and self-
centered cunning in satisfying desires and basic human needs, regardless of
the presence, well-being and desires of others.
A time comes in both collective and individual development, however,
when people begin to take a more objective and detached view of existence,
and eventually begin to think in terms of abstractions, symbols and collective
well-being. When this occurs, it means that the mind has become able to dis-
identify itself with the urgent and daily needs of the body and lower psychic
nature—thus, to stand still, to 'go against' and disassociate itself from more
primitive, organic cravings. It looks at these objectively, seeking
understanding and generalized knowledge transferrable to other persons,
situations as wholes and to the coming generations. All this comes under the
category of mind liberated from both the compulsions of culture (Mercury-
Epimethean/retrograde) and narrow body-centered desires—a mind working
'against the grain' of the life-force: a mind symbolized by Mercury-
Promethean/retrograde.
 When Mercury stops again and resumes direct motion, it symbolizes a
mind once more polarized toward projecting itself, its new and tentatively
focusing vision, into the world, toward experiencing a plethora of new
situations and sensations providing material on the basis of which a new
level of mental operation can be reached. After the reorientation represented
by the entire retrograde period, the new level of understanding to which the
mind aspires is no longer centered merely in the urge for self-preservation or
a craving for self-aggrandisement. Since the mind has (ideally) left behind
the compulsions of both culture and biology, it is therefore free to try to
substantiate the new solar impulse in its purity, to try to achieve a new level
of integration strictly in terms of the need to which what was released at
inferior conjunction came in potential answer.
Thus, the entire period of Mercury's retrogradation should be considered
a period of reorientation of the mind during which one cycle of activity and
development ends and another begins. It is essential that we differentiate
between the two types of Mercury retrograde—Epimethean (evening star)
retrograde and Promethean (morning star) retrograde, Mercury retrograde at
the end of a Mercury/Sun cycle, before inferior conjunction, and Mercury
retrograde after the inferior conjunction has occurred. And we must
recognize not only the difference, but also the continuity of process between
the two.
This difference and continuity becomes more than theoretical, and the
pattern we have studied more than abstract or academic, when we realize
that since Mercury's entire retrograde period never exceeds about 25 days,
any person born with Mercury retrograde will experience by secondary
progression* the inferior conjunction, and/or Mercury's station and
resumption of direct motion at some time relatively early in life. Even
someone born at the very beginning of the retrograde period will experience
the inferior conjunction by progression by age 12 or 13, and Mercury will
turn direct by progression by the time the person reaches 25.
For persons born with Mercury Epimethean (evening star), Mercury's
station and retrogradation may occur by progression at any time between
birth and approximately age 65, depending upon how soon after superior
conjunction they were born. Persons born with Mercury Promethean
(morning star), whether Mercury is direct or retrograde at birth, will
experience by progression maximum elongation (if it hasn't occurred before
birth) and superior conjunction—possibly maximum elongation after superior
conjunction too, depending upon when in the first hemicycle birth occurred
and how long the person lives. This 'process by progression' applies as well
to practically all natal aspects and configurations, except those involving
only very slowly moving planets. What occurs in a person's life and how he
or she responds and gives meaning to it when Mercury reaches its station,
turns retrograde or direct, reaches maximum elongation or conjoins the the
Sun has a particularly deep significance, for it gives direction and 'tone' to
the quality of mental development throughout the life. Since Mercury
symbolizes functional activities at the core of truly human experience, this
process has always basic and far-reaching implications and effects.

The cycle of Venus and the Sun (as seen from the Earth) is entirely similar to
the cycle of Mercury and the Sun, although the intervals are longer. While the
synodic period (from inferior conjunction to inferior conjunction) between
Mercury and the Sun is approximately 116 days, the synodic period of Venus
is about 584 days. While Mercury is retrograde for about 19 to 25 days,
Venus' retrograde period lasts between 40 and 50 days.
Both ancient mythology and traditional astrology have considered Venus
in her dual role as evening and morning star. Venus as morning star, rising
ahead of the Sun, is termed Venus Lucifer (literally, "the bearer of light").
Venus as the evening star, appearing in the western sky immediately after
sunset and thus following or setting behind the Sun, is called Venus Hesperus
(from hesperos, meaning "western").
While Mercury refers to the mind—the 'nervous' functions— Venus
represents the inner sense of value, a more 'visceral' type of functions or
emotional activities. Venus Lucifer, as morning star rising ahead of the Sun,
refers to a type of emotional activity which might be said symbolically to run
ahead of the self. It represents a spontaneous quality of feeling reminiscent of
adolescence: extroverted, enthusiastic, exuberant. The antennae of the
feeling-life are, as it were, extended to the utmost, and the faculty of intuition
may develop strongly. The sense of value is attuned futureward; idealism
may dominate the inner life, and emotional projection may run high.
 Venus as evening star (Hesperus) is by contrast a symbol of a more
controlled, reactive feeling-nature. While Venus Lucifer tends to look for
correlates to its evolving values, ideals and sense of beauty in the world,
Venus Hesperus tends to judge and react to life and events after things have
happened, according to a predetermined set of standards. Venus Hesperus
can theoretically be characterized as a more mature quality of feeling, for
emotionality is not as spontaneous and immediate as when Venus rises ahead
of the Sun as morning star. This is not to say that Venus Hesperus represents a
passionless or 'cooler emotional timbre, for it may be just as emotional,
perhaps in a more intense, introverted way. Venus as an evening star can also
indicate a type of emotional life strongly influenced by traditional or
conventional values, or an aesthetic sense dominated by a particular set of
standards. It is in that sense essentially conservative and deliberate or
calculated.
The same type of reasoning applies to Venus retrograde as to Mercury
retrograde. Venus refers to the sense of value, to the functional activity
whereby human beings pass judgement upon something's absolute or relative
worth: "This is good for me, I love it. This will destroy or irreversibly alter
me, and I must run away or protect myself from it." Venus is the 'planet of
love' only by extension, for it can just as well be the planet of hate. Its
function is to present to us vivid images of what will enhance or degrade our
status as human beings. The entire retrograde period of Venus refers to a time
when it is necessary and possible to reorient and renew the sense of value.
Retrograde Venus in a natal chart indicates that throughout the person's life,
he or she will be challenged and has the latent capacity (which must be
developed) to transform his or her sense of what is valuable and significant.
The first phase of Venus' retrogradation—Venus Hesperus (evening star)
retrograde—refers to a period of recapitulation of past feelings and values. It
represents the inner emotional life coming to a stop in order to be once more
fecundated by solar will and purpose. It can involve and require a period of
cultural deconditioning, when the feeling-aspect of the inner life must
question and emerge from domination by collective, taken-for-granted
standards and values.
The inferior conjunction occurs with Venus still retrograde, and it
signifies the end of one cycle and the beginning of the next. Venus and the
Earth are as close to one another as possible at this time, and the creative
impulse symbolically passed from the Sun to Venus at the inferior
conjunction, at least symbolically, is most focally transmitted to Earth. Thus,
in persons born with Venus and the Sun in close inferior conjunction, the
Venus-functions will tend to be unusually active and focused. But since Venus
is retrograde, the focalization tends not to be in terms of what we consider
'normal' biological or social effectiveness. It is rather more introverted, for
the feeling-nature turns inward for reorientation, and it may find coping with
ordinary emotional or social situations comparatively difficult. This is
generally true of the entire retrograde period, which can be likened to a shop
temporarily closed to customers for inventory and remodelling.
In biologically-dominated human beings, value is related almost
exclusively to self-preservation; but as human beings evolve socially and
intellectually, self-preservation becomes synonymous with group well-being,
both at the physical level and at the level of cultural images and ideals.
During Venus' Lucifer retrograde period, higher motives may transform the
primary biopsychic sense of value. In the search for such higher values, some
men and women turn to asceticism or altruism, sacrificing personal welfare
for the sake of great ideals or in the quest for mystical union with God. These
are all possibilities represented by Venus Lucifer retrograde, for it
symbolizes the feeling-nature seeking its independence from the instinctual
nature by opposing it more or less violently. Traditional values may have
been called into sharp question (Venus Hesperus retrograde), but the re-
nascent feeling-nature is still struggling to free itself from their domination.
When Venus turns direct, the success or relative failure of the struggle
begins to become apparent. For Venus as morning star (direct) turns the
feeling nature out into the world again. The new vision and purpose
'received' at solar (inferior) conjunction seeks to substantiate itself, and the
person born with Venus Lucifer direct is challenged to be a focalizer of such
substantiation. Pouring himself or herself into his or her creations, he or she
projects his or her values and ideals onto life, seeking to impress the stamp
of the new vision upon society. A new phase in the development of the
Venus-functions has begun again.
Of course, any characterization given for any single planet, whether
retrograde, direct or in any phase of its cyclic relationship with the Sun, is
always at least modified, if not 'alchemically' altered by other factors and
interrelationships in any particular birth-chart and life-pattern. Single
astrological factors can be discussed and evaluated only for the purpose of
intellectual analysis and instruction. The essential value of doing so is to
reveal the archetypal patterns of processes underlying all astrological
symbols, and to train the astrologer's mind to think in terms of them.

When we come to the planets moving outside of the Earth's orbit, the
situation is somewhat different from the pattern we studied in relation to
Venus and Mercury, planets moving within the orbit of the Earth. While Venus
and Mercury turn retrograde as they approach inferior conjunction with the
Sun—thus while they are between the Sun and the Earth—Mars and the
planets beyond it turn retrograde when, from the point of view of Earth, they
prepare to oppose the Sun. In other words, Mercury and Venus^are
retrograde during their 'New' phase, when one cycle ends and other begins,
while Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, and Uranus, Neptune and Pluto are
retrograde during their opposition with the Sun or 'Full' phase; their motion
opposes that of the Sun when they also oppose the Sun from the other side of
the Earth.
These facts alone are quite significant in understanding the meaning of
these planets' retrogradation, especially when we remember that retrograde
planets are as close to the Earth as they can be, and that retrogradation is the
result of geocentricity—that planets appear to retrograde as a result of the
special relationship between the Earth and the rest of the solar system. What
actually occurs to create the outer planets' appearance of retrogradation is
illustrated in Diagram 4-5. A planet, moving more slowly than the Earth, is
heliocentrically moving on the same side of the Sun as the Earth.
Geocentrieally, the Sun and the other planet are nearing opposition. But the
Earth is also moving, more quickly than the other planet. As the Earth comes
around the Sun and approaches the other planet, it moves between that planet
and the Sun. It passes the slower planet on an inside track—a situation again
similar to the illustration of the trains we presented earlier. The situation is
almost as if the Earth, here representing concrete reality and the need in
answer to which all planetary cycles proceed, intervenes in the developing
relationship between the planet and the Sun, just before that relationship
reaches its culmination. The Earth is to the other planet a 'reminder' of the
original need the cycle was meant to fulfill. The other planet, about to be
confronted with the concrete reality of what has been accomplished thus far
(symbolized by its opposition with the Sun) stops, goes over territory it has
most recently covered, and, so to speak, asks: "Have I forgotten anything? Is
there something that needs to be adjusted or redone before the cycle is
fulfilled and things become set? Are there any loose ends to be tied up? Any
mistakes to be rectified?"

While Venus and Mercury orbit within the Earth's orbit and therefore
represent two aspects of the inner life—mind and feelings —planets from
Mars outward refer to the realm of outer activity. Planetary functions
referring to the inner life undergo deconditioning and reorientation at the
most inward, subjective phase of their cycle with the Sun, for what is most
needed for a new cycle to begin is inner renewal and redirection. Planets
referring to more objective activities back up for retrogradation just as their
cycle with the Sun is about to culminate in outer manifestation—for what is
required to bring something to the kind of objective realization and
successful culmination possible and necessary at the opposition is
perspective, clarity and deliberate, focused action. In all cases, when a
planet has the opportunity to operate most focally in terms of its own type of
activities, the Earth intervenes, as it were, and the planet backs up, goes over
territory it had previously traversed, makes a major aspect with the Sun to
change its hemicycle relation to it and, finally, resumes direct motion into
new territory.
The deeper meaning of the retrogradation of the planets from Mars
outwards becomes apparent when we realize that what is possible and
necessary for successful culmination at the opposition—the above-mentioned
qualities of objectivity, perspective and clarity—is also the foundation upon
which the second hemicycle develops in its evolutionary mode. For the
opposition not only ends the first hemicycle of activity; it begins the second.
Retrogradation at the solar/ planetary opposition is thus an opportunity for
repairing whatever must be healed or redone in order to bring the cycle to
successful culmination. It is also, perhaps more importantly, a preparation for
a possible repolarization or change of gears, the success or relative failure of
which will determine the quality of experience and challenge —evolutionary
or devolutionary—during the remainder of the cyclic process. Retrogradation
is therefore an opportunity for radical transformation and reorientation, for
breaking the hold of 'life,' the sway of the involutionary/devolutionary
process, over the nascent consciousness, so that a new realm—the realm of
'mind' and the evolution of consciousness—can be entered and a new level of
functioning developed later on.
Like the retrograde periods of Mercury and Venus, the retrograde periods
of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, etc. must be divided into two phases—one before
the opposition to the Sun, one after it. But the sequence of what must be done
and the issues that must be met are in the case of the planets outside the
Earth's orbit the reverse of what has to happen in the cases of Venus and
Mercury. These planets within the Earth's orbit turn retrograde at the close of
their second hemicycle with the Sun. Their retrogradation therefore refers to
a deconditioning process, first, at the mental and cultural level, then to a
process of repolarization at the level of 'life' and biopsychic compulsion.
Since the retrograde periods of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn (and Uranus,
Neptune and Pluto) occur at the end of the first or involutionary hemicycle
with the Sun, deconditioning at the biological level must occur first.
Biopsychic compulsions must be met and brought under conscious control
before whatever will be seen or realized at the opposition can be made to
serve a progressive purpose at the mental-cultural level afterward.
Retrogradation prior to the solar/planetary opposition thus symbolizes
the planetary function coming to a stop, preparing the prenascent
consciousness to receive the objective illumination of the opposition. It
allows sufficient time for the planetary function to retrace the final,
culminating steps in its involutionary development, and for the process of
biopsychic deconditioning to occur. If the latter is successful, the opposition
symbolizes birth in objective consciousness. The following second
hemicycle of the overall process then stresses evolutionary development
rather than devolutionary disintegration.
After the opposition, the planet remains retrograde for a time equal to its
retrograde period before the opposition. This second phase in the retrograde
process is necessary as a period of transition during which the change-over
from one hemicycle and level of activity and development to the next can be
assimilated. The process of biopsychic deconditioning occurring before the
solar/planetary opposition may have operated in what seemed at first a
seriously disturbing or cathartic manner. The retrograde period following the
planetary/solar opposition also requires the kind of social and interpersonal
interaction we saw operating during Phases 7 and 8 of the twelvefold
planetary pattern we studied earlier. This leads to the planet's station and
resumption of direct motion, which ends the entire reorientation process. The
second hemicycle proceeds on the basis of what has been accomplished—for
better or for worse—since the planet first turned retrograde.
When Mars initially goes retrograde, some kind of brakes or self-induced
obstacles to its usual outward-directed activity tend to appear. Spontaneity
often becomes prey to inner conflicts or self-doubt. Something in the capacity
to mobilize energy and act—either for self-preservation according to the
values represented by Venus or within the set of social and religious
imperatives and taboos represented by Jupiter and Saturn—has become
problematic and needs to be re-examined. Rather than proceed in its habitai
manner, Mars may, so to speak, timidly check back with Venus: "Are you sure
this is what you really want?" Or it may double-check with Jupiter or Saturn:
"Are you sure this is permissible and really OK?" In this way, the capacity to
act (Mars) is purged of obsolete directives or taboos, strengthened or
repaired if necessary. Sexuality, aggression or ambition may become
particularly focal issues up for re-evaluation.
After the opposition, understanding of past mistakes should grow. Action
may still not be as spontaneous as when Mars is direct, but it is not as
unthinking either, having acquired a more deliberate character, wary, as it
were, of repeating past transgressions or of falling into compulsive,
biologically-dominated patterns. The capacity for action should now be
redirected toward accomplishing chosen ends, perhaps within a wider than
merely personal sphere of influence. As Mars approaches its second station
and then resumes direct motion, the capacity to mobilize one's resources may
again assume a spontaneous character, but by now it should have become
definitely reoriented, having a different set of values upon which to act, a
different set of goals toward which to aspire.
Mars is retrograde for only a relatively short time—about one tenth of its
two-year cycle. With the planets beyond Mars, the lengths of the retrograde
periods increase and span approximately the arc between the waxing and
waning trines of each planet and the Sun.
Jupiter turning retrograde refers to the need to reorient and perhaps heal
or repair the sense of social participation and/or religious activities. In a
birth-chart, retrograde Jupiter may refer to some kind of social or religious
maladjustment—that is, to an inability or unwillingness to participate in
traditional social or religious patterns and rituals in the usual, expected way.
This is because a person born with Jupiter retrograde is challenged to bring
to fulfillment in life a new level of social participation and religious feeling.
The new level of consciousness and activity should satisfy the personal or
meta-personal need which called forth the creative impulse released at the
prenatal Sun/Jupiter conjunction. For this reason, when interpreting a
significant aspect or retrograde planet in a birth-chart, it is often quite
revealing to go back to the prenatal conjunction beginning the cycle. The
zodiacal sign, and especially the meaning of the Sabian Symbol for the
degree on which the conjunction before birth occurred can be invaluably
instructive.
During the first half of Jupiter's retrograde period, before the Jupiter/Sun
opposition, the urge for purely personal expansion (so aggrandized in our
socity) may slow and reverse itself. The quest for power or outward
accomplishment may become an inner questioning, a search for a new set of
ideals or spiritual meanings. The religious sense may turn inward, toward
direct experience and away from the patterns of any particular church. After
Jupiter's opposition to the Sun, a new kind of co-operative spirit may
develop. An individual may feel pressure to integrate expansive urges with
the efforts of others sharing similar ideals. A need and capacity may develop
to formulate or express in words, actions or other forms what has been seen
or objectively realized at the solar opposition. The need to understand past
social or religious patterns may also surface, and an objective grasp of
historical processes may develop to deepen the mind and give a broader
meaning to social participation and religious striving.
As Saturn turns retrograde, all social and traditional boundaries may
come to be questioned. A person born with Saturn retrograde cannot rely
solely upon external agents—father, society, cultural assumptions—for self-
definition and stabilization. The person must become self-reliant and develop
his or her own resources. Fulfillment in stable personality must come from
within, born of individual experience and self-conscious introspection.
During the first half of Saturn's retrograde period, consolidation is required,
and dependence upon external structures must lessen.
This is why in the lives of many people born with Saturn retrograde the
father is absent (physically or psychologically) or otherwise unable to fulfill
the child's Father-Image in a constructive, satisfying way. Such a situation
can lead to one kind or another of father-complex—one in which the Father-
Image becomes overly idealized or distorted (because contact with a real,
loving and fallible father is lacking), or one in which persists a longing for
someone, sometimes anyone, to fulfill the father-role. In either case, the
Father-Image, such that it is, dominates the consciousness and life-pattern.
The way in which such a situation is usually worked out is for some
substitute for the structuring power of the father to be found. This may be a
husband, mentor or guru—or a compelling archetype, whether of a historical
or mythological figure, or a set of philosophical or spiritual principles. On
the one hand, such a solution may not be any real solution at all. For a
dependency pattern may merely perpetuate itself. On the other hand, the
mentor— human or otherwise—may embody for the growing person
something which has not been developed in the family lineage, something
which may be not only impersonal but transpersonal. In identifying with the
Figure, the youth may activate something previously lacking within and
become self-reliant and independent. He or she may also be challenged to
move to a greater-than-merely-personal level of activity and consciousness.
In such a case, the challenge of retrograde Saturn has been met at the highest
level, for the involutionary process of growth and development gives way to
a truly evolutionary process of self-actualization. Thus the initial father-
complex can be and often has been a steppingstone to greater personal
integration and significant accomplishment.
Since the father is the symbol of the structuring power of the culture, and
gives to the family its defining socio-economic and class status, a person
born with Saturn retrograde after its opposition with the Sun is also required
by circumstance or inner need to achieve these outer markers of stability,
definition, and social standing for himself. One may be unwilling or
temperamentally unable to accept inherited strictures on one's social
standing, and such a situation may be in the long run a blessing rather than a
curse. For the key to creative self-actualization is always the way in which a
person responds, the meaning given, to the circumstances of birth and life.
No birth-chart alone can ever tell an astrologer whether a person will use
seemingly difficult aspects and life-circumstances as a productive
springboard to greater integration, accomplishment or transformation—or if
he or she will become a hopeless neurotic paralyzed by insecurity, fear and
the complexities of defense mechanisms. Retrograde planets in general pose
such a challenge. A person born with Saturn retrograde after its opposition
with the Sun is especially challenged to discover and tap inner resources of
courage and conviction.
The retrograde periods of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto follow the same
essential pattern as those of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. But the periods when
these outermost planets are retrograde increase in length with the planets's
distance from the Sun. Because they move so slowly in relation to the Sun,
the retrogradation of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto occurs at the same season
each year as the Sun moves through the zodiacal signs between roughly 120°
and 240° away from the relatively stationary planet. This seasonal
retrogradation advances through the zodiac at the same rate the planet does.
Due to the transpersonal, transformative nature of what these planets
symbolize, and to the present stage of human consciousness in its
development, we may not be able significantly to define and distinguish the
retrograde periods of these planets from the periods in their cycles with the
Sun when they are direct. The idea of a 'reorientation of functions of
reorientation and transformation' is not only grammatically redundant but
obscure, and it also seems a distinction too fine for us to make at the present
time.
When we deal with planets at the level of transits, we can, how ever,
differentiate between direct and retrograde motion. A transiting planet often
passes over a natal planet or an angle of a horoscope three times because of
retrogradation. The first transit is direct, the second retrograde, and the third
direct again. When a three-pass transit occurs, it can be thought of as a
threefold process in which
(1) a need is felt or a situation is presented (first direct transit)
(2) a solution is inwardly conceived or outwardly presented (second,
retrograde transit)—and
(3) the new idea or form is worked out or developed (third, direct
transit).

When the transiting planet is Uranus, Neptune or Pluto, phase (1) presents a
challenge to transformation which is either assented to or fought against
during phase (2). The results of the transit—whether or not the transformative
process has been allowed to operate successfully—begin to become clear at
(3). Such a process sometimes repeats itself in its entirety, especially when
Neptune or Pluto is moving very slowly. An entire threefold process can thus
span a year or more, and a repeated, sixfold process two years or longer.
A more detailed analysis of a planet's retrogradation can be made
according to Diagram 4-6, in which the entire process of retro-gradation is
broken down into six basic stages or turning points. Such a loop can be
drawn and interpreted any time a process of retrogradation becomes
pertinent, either in terms of progressions or transits, of the time it spans or in
relation to natal factors it traverses. Linking into a process what occurs in
life at the times of the six turning points should enable the astrologer to
understand the underlying meaning of the process. Knowing the turning points
of the retrogradation process and what happened in the client's life in relation
to them should reveal to the astrologer the meaning of the events in the
client's development. The meanings of the Sabian degrees on which the
turning points occur should lend qualitative understanding and luminosity to
the interpretation.

1. The date and degree of a planet's entrance to the arc over which it will
pass three times
2. The date the planet becomes stationary, the degree at which it begins to
retrograde
3. The date and degree of the planet's aspect to the Sun (inferior conjunction
for Mercury and Venus, opposition for all the others)
4. The date and degree of the planet's second station and resumption of
direct motion (this will be the same degree as in #1 above).
5. It is sometimes interesting to note the date a planet re-traverses the degree
in which it previously opposed or conjoined the Sun.
6. The degree (the same as in #2 above) and date on which the planet leaves
the arc over which it has passed three times and enters upon new,
previously untraversed territory.

_________
* Cf. The Lunation Process in Astrological Guidance by Leyla Rael (ASI Publishers, New York:
1979) for a basic explanation of secondary progressions.
 5.
Rectangular and Triangular Formations in
Horoscopes
Only in astrological textbooks are planetary aspects separated from one
another. Their natural habitat is rather in complex interrelatedness to one
another—in birth-charts integrating a myriad of aspects into more or less
complex patterns. In fact, single aspects can never be fully understood out of
the context of all the other aspects in a horoscope.
For example, we have seen that an opposition refers to the phase midway
in a cyclic process when a change of gears has to take place, when one must
'wake up' and consciously participate in the rest of the process. As
awareness develops, one becomes able to use, and responsible for how one
uses, the activities or biopsychic functions, represented by the opposing
planets. The nature of the planets involved in the opposition; the zodiacal
signs, Sabian degrees and houses of the horoscope in which they are found;
and even the salient points about the prenatal conjunction beginning the cycle
of which the opposition is the culmination: all these indications give the
astrologer valuable clues about what the conflict leading to birth in
consciousness may involve.
The opposition itself, however, does not tell us anything about the best
way to use or integrate into the overall life-pattern the growing awareness
and objectivity, once awakened; it does not help us to understand the full
significance and dynamic interrelationship between the opposition-
symbolized factors and other facets of our lives and processes of unfoldment.
The aspects linking the opposition into the rest of the chart—that is, the
aspects the two planets at either end of it make to other planets—as well as
the aspects linking the two hemispheres of the chart divided by the
opposition: these are the keys to what can and most naturally should be done
with or about the awareness, capacity or development symbolized by the
opposition.
 In order to begin to be able to interpret the complex and dynamic
interrelationships between aspects, one of the first things the astrologer
should do is to try to determine whether specific group patterns of planets
and aspects exist in a particular chart. Groupings of aspects were not
unknown in traditional astrology, but they were almost entirely limited to
sequences of one kind of aspect. Of the latter, only the trine and square were
used in practice. Thus, when two planets in trine to one another were also
trine a third planet, three mutual trines or a 'grand trine' was the result. When
four planets formed a series of squares, a 'cosmic' or 'perfect' cross was
mentioned.
The main reason for considering these sequences of the same kind of
aspects significant was that the grand trine emphasized one of the four
elements (fire, earth, air or water), because the three planets were placed in
zodiacal signs of the same element. While to most astrologers, a grand trine
linking three planets is a very 'good' indication, there are astrologers who do
not consider it too favorable, for they feel it tends to over-emphasize one of
the four elements; it may also stress a rather dream-like approach to life
lacking in dynamism and concreteness. Likewise, the perfect or 'grand' cross
stressed one of the quadruplicities of zodiacal signs—cardinal, fixed or
mutable. Such a repetition of squares is usually considered very 'difficult,'
yet some astrologers saw in it a sign of remarkable strength and capacity for
action. Overall what was mainly considered important about these
configurations—the grand trine and perfect cross—was the factor of the
zodiac, not the strictly structural element, i.e., the geometrical pattern made
by the planets regardless of the zodiacal signs, elements or qualities in which
they were located, nor the dynamic element of their aspect interrelationship.
The meaning attributed to the familiar T-square^or T-cross) reflects this
preoccupation with zodiacal factors and repeated aspects. The configuration
was named for its two squares, not its opposition. And it is interpreted as a
perfect cross from which one of the four factors is missing. The 'empty' factor
is therefore seen as a zone of release for the energies produced by the
combination of three planets in two squares including three of the four
zodiacal elements.
What usually is not emphasized in interpreting the two kinds of crosses,
'perfect' and 'T'—and which is really a key to understanding all types of
complex aspect patterns—is the fact that these configurations are really
combinations of two kinds of aspects, opposition and square, while the grand
trine is composed of only one kind of aspect, the trine. The grand trine is thus
unique. There is no other configuration (except a stellium, which does not fit
into the same category of patterns as those we are discussing here) composed
of only one kind of aspect. Once the linking of different kinds of aspects is
recognized as significant, the possibility of giving specific meanings to
combinations of them according to the particular aspects involved should
become evident.
The three basic features of a primary planetary pattern are:
(1) that combinations of two or more kinds of aspects display a clear-cut
kind of symmetry,
(2) the configuration of aspects should be closed and complete, spanning
360°, and
(3) it should be a regular polygon capable of being inscribed in a circle.*
This last-mentioned criterion results from the fact that in astrology every
moving factor is related to and given meaning in relation to a whole
circumference or cycle, whether the 360° of the zodiac, or of the wheel of
houses, or the 360° span from conjunction to conjunction between planetary
pairs.
Patterns meeting the above criteria can be divided into two basic
categories: four-sided and three-sided figures, i.e., rectangles and triangles,
the square or perfect cross being only one specific case of rectangle, and the
grand trine being only one particular instance of triangle. In the following,
we will cover the basic figures, but especially if non-regular polygons
covering the whole 360° (such as trapezoids) are considered, the variations
are practically endless.

RECTANGULAR PATTERNS
Because the perfect square includes both square and opposition aspects,
it can be seen as the foundation of all regular, closed configurations in which
two or more types of aspects are interwoven. Indeed, geometrically
speaking, as already mentioned, the square figure is only a special kind of
rectangle—a rectangle whose four sides are equal and whose diagonals cut
each other at 90° angles.
The accompanying figure shows how, if we keep the vertical line
(theoretically the meridian of the birth-chart—or the line of the solstices) as
a basis, we can draw any number of rectangular patterns. In the square, the
four sides and four angles are equal. As we decrease the length of one side,
the length of the complementary side increases until, at the limit, the rectangle
becomes concentrated, as it were, into the vertical line.
We are thus dealing with a series of rectangular patterns, the two extreme
possibilities of which are the square and the line— astrologically, the grand
cross and the opposition (or multiple opposition) . In between these two
cases, we find a theoretically infinite number of possibilities for rectangular
patterns. The grand cross becomes a kind of ideal or archetypal rectangle.
Actually, only those rectangles which link aspects should be considered in
astrology, and six basic kinds can be distinguished.

This series of rectangles can be established very simply by considering

this angular relationship between the two diagonals or oppositions. In the
perfect square, the diagonals make two equal angles of 90° each. The
relation is thus 1:1. When, the oppositions are connected by trines and
sextiles, the diagonals form angles of 120° and 60° to one another; the two
angles are in 1:2 relation. A relation 1:3 is found in a rectangle linking semi-
squares (45°) and sesquiquadrates (135°). A relation 1:4 occurs when
semiquintiles or deciles (36°) and bi-quintiles (144°) are related. When the
angular distance between the two diagonals or oppositions are 30° and 150°,
we find aspects of semi-sextile and quincunx, and the ratio between the two
oppositions is 1:5. We can also add a rectangle in which the aspects between
the two diagonals are quintiles (72°) and tri-deciles or sesqui-quintiles
(108°); the ratio between two such related diagonals would be expressed as
2:3.
The series of four rectangles 1:2, 1:3, 1:4, 1:5 (not counting the square or
1:1 ratio and the quintile or 2:3 ratio) parallels the series of rectangles upon
which the shapes used in Greek design and architecture were based,
according to the principle of 'dynamic symmetry' rediscovered some years
ago by the American scholar J. Hambidge. Indeed, since the days of
Pythagoras, the rectangle was the very symbol and signature of Greek
philosophy and culture—the symbolic key to the mysteries of Man and the
universe.
The fundamental factor which all astrological rectangles have in common
is the presence of two oppositions as diagonals. It is this factor which must
be stressed in interpreting all rectangles, including the grand cross or perfect
square. What changes and gives each specific type of rectangle its particular
meaning and significance is the relationship between the two diagonals, the
aspects integrating the four ends of the two oppositions. In fact, whenever
two oppositions are found, what the astrologer should find out and consider
immediately is the way in which they are related to one another. The nature
of the aspects linking the four planets involved in the two oppositions of a
rectangle indicate what a person must meet and pass through in order to
achieve the kind of awareness and objectivity represented by the
oppositions, and how that awareness and ability to function, once it is
awakened and made manifest, can and must be integrated into the person's
life and the life of the community.
In more psychological terms, the opposition refers to a polarization of
two biopsychic functions and to the awareness and ability to consciously
participate in further developmental processes that can and should be
actualized on the basis of the tension of the polarization. An opposition or
multiple opposition alone is a theoretical possibility never net in practice. It
is in some ways reminiscent of what happened to Burden's ass—the donkey
who, standing equidistant from two equal bales of hay, starved to death
because there was no reason to go toward one pile rather than the other. This
is a situation in the abstract (for both the donkey and the astrologer) because
in practice one never encounters only an opposition or multiple opposition;
other factors are always involved. The opposition poses a challenge to
develop awareness, to break free of unconscious compulsion. How—in
relation to what other activities and functions besides the two opposing ones
—that awareness most naturally develops, what spurs it, what can or should
be done with or about it once it blossoms, can best be seen in other aspects.
In terms of rectangular patterns, these are represented by the aspects linking
the four ends of the diagonal oppositions.
At the opposite end of the rectangle-spectrum from the theoretical
multiple opposition is the grand cross. The simplest way to approach a study
of it is to consider the case of the zodiacal pattern constituted by the line of
the two equinoxes (Aries 1 ° and Libra 1 °) and solstices (Cancer 1 ° and
Capricorn 1 °). This is what we might call the archetype of all perfect
squares or grand crosses, the basic illustration of all quadrature.
Such a quadrature rests on the pattern of the seasons, which in human
experience is the origin of man's structured sense of time in relation to all life
processes. The daily flow of life-experiences would have no definiteness, no
larger pattern, no frame of reference if it were not for seasonal changes.
Through contrasts and well-defined changes, the flow of life begins to
assume a form, a rhythm, a sequential meaning and character of order. As a
result, human beings sense that there are laws of change, that time has a
periodical structure—that, therefore, predictability is possible. All this
makes civilization, science, philosophy—and, underlying them all, astrology
— possible. The square figure is indeed the symbol of all foundations of
concrete, masterful living.
Traditional astrology has unfortunately over-stressed the destructive
meaning of both the opposition and the square. Thus, oppositions are
popularly supposed to refer only to dilemmas, conflicts between opposite
points of view and the breaking asunder of opposing factors. Squares are
thought of as aspects of violence related to the shattering of things, to tragedy,
etc. These meanings are only partly correct—which is to say that they are
also partly wrong, for they are accurate only insofar as the negative
expression of planetary relationships is concerned.
As we have seen from several points of view, the opposition, positively
speaking, signifies the need and ability to be objective to happenings and
experiences. It is the basic symbol of consciousness or awareness, and it
need not, especially when linked with other aspects, refer to the kind of
situation in which Burden's donkey found himself. As to the destruction
associated with squares, it is directed toward obsolete structures—be they
behavior patterns, dependencies or crystallized dogmas, ramshackle
tenements or outmoded social institutions—which no longer serve healthy
functions, or toward objects and situations which must be removed and
cleared away before greater things can take place.
A perfect square configuration in a birth-chart represents a tight linking
of two kinds of consciousness-building processes (oppositions) which
produces four 90° aspects (squares) and leads to a very thorough and
exhaustive type of clearing-up activity. What is actually meant by this 'linking
of two kinds of consciousness-building processes?
In the seasonal cross of the year, spring activities symbolically oppose
fall activities—that is, the birth (or rebirth) of living organisms is seen to be
in dynamic contrast to organic disintegration and death. Out of this contrast,
human beings come to gain a consciousness of the impermanence of all that
lives, a consciousness of change. In the opposition between the summer
solstice and the winter solstice, human beings learn, on the contrary, to deal
with the relatively permanent factors in life: family, a home, a personality—
community, a state, a civilization.
These two kinds of consciousness taken together—the consciousness of
the inevitable periodicity of life and death and the consciousness of the
possibility of building long-lasting structures—refer to the very foundation of
all human realizations and endeavors, the very basis of human reality. By
integrating these two kinds of awareness, man functions as a civilized,
morally responsible, cooperative being.
 Therefore, the essential meaning of the grand cross configuration is the
need and capacity to develop a type of integration of awareness (opposition)
and activity (square) which is only possible if there is also the readiness to
give up all lesser allegiances and the attachment to whatever each planet at
the four corners of the perfect square represents. The type of integration
possible with a perfect square depends almost entirely upon whether the
individual is able, at crucial turning points, to let go of whatever he or she is
attached to. If the person does not let go, the perfect square can become the
kind of wheel of torture on which medieval criminals were quartered. If one
becomes objective to and free of the separative pulls and unconscious
compulsions of the opposing planets (i.e., of the bio-psychological functions
and drives they represent), then one can be a deeply and powerfully
integrated person. The key will inevitably be knowing when to forge ahead
and when to detach.
The character of the squares involved, whether they are 'waxing' or
'waning', involutionary or evolutionary, can give significant clues to the kind
of challenge of action and/or letting go that has to be met and the best way to
meet it. Whether the configuration falls in angular, succeedent or cadent
houses also points to the life-areas through which the consciousness-raising
process and subsequent integration through action is most likely to take
place. Of course, whether the cross is found in cardinal, fixed or mutable
signs is of signal importance.
A grand cross in angular houses and fixed signs is found in the horoscope
of Albert Schweitzer. The oppositions are between fourth-house Pluto and
tenth-house Mars; first-house Saturn and seventh-house Uranus. There is an
additional opposition between a third-house Moon/Neptune conjunction and
ninth-house Jupiter, and it forms a T-square to the first-house Sun/Mercury
conjunction. While we are primarily interested in the grand cross, it is
practically impossible to ignore these other aspects of the chart.
The grand cross itself primarily refers to the need for radical
transformation on two levels: the level of Mars (personal desire and capacity
to mobilize energy and act) and the tenth house (public life, Vocation' or
calling); and the level of Saturn (the sense of form or structure, authority,
one's relation to one's ancestral tradition and culture) and the first house
(individual selfhood). With Pluto in the fourth house, the deepest, most
fundamental 'tone' urging transformation welled up from Schweitzer's deepest
roots: his ancestral Christian-European tradition. Since Saturn is in the first
house, all the issues of this ancestral tradition became focused, for
Schweitzer, in his own individuality.
This was made very clear by Schweitzer himself when, at a great turning
point in his life he realized that he had not the
inward right to take as a matter of course my happy youth, my good
health, and my power of work. Out of the depths of my feeling of
happiness there grew up gradually with me an understanding of the
saying of Jesus that we must not treat our lives as being for ourselves
alone. Whoever is spared personal pain must feel himself called to help
in diminishing the pain of others. We must all carry our share of the
misery which lies upon the world.*
Thus, the Pluto/Mars opposition challenged a complete imper-
sonalization of the level at which passions, desires and the search for well-
being and achievement operate. True to its fulfillment, and the fulfillment of
the Saturn/Uranus opposition, Schweitzer broke away from his ancestral
culture by going to Africa, to live among and heal the natives there. He did
not merely break away in hateful rebellion; he infused the best of his
ancestral tradition with luminous meaning by taking the atonement of its sins
upon himself. Since the Saturn/ Uranus opposition spans the first and seventh
houses, it also presumably refers to Schweitzer's marriage to a Jewish
woman—a definite departure from normal Christian-European patterns at the
time, and another indication of his 'marriage' to those historically
dispossessed and persecuted in the name of Christianity.
The seeming serenity of Schweitzer's later years is, however, belied by
the picture of him his birth-chart presents: a man with tremendous conflicts
and a Saturnian sense of form, but also with passionate intensity (Mars in
Scorpio) and explosive energies swayed by deep and even dark Images
(Pluto in the fourth house). Schweitzer's peace had tragic roots indeed, and it
was not easily won. He believed that every man's personality is a mystery
that no other person should seek to probe or intrude upon. Indeed, his own
words suggest that this mystery may not even be a thing for the individual to
fathom himself. True to the grand-square (and T-square, a total of six
squares) in his chart, the mystery should be acted out rather than passively
known or observed. For Schweitzer, only in action does the mysterious
whole of personality reveal itself and become conscious in affirmations of
life and emanations of spiritual light.
The pressures of such high expectations of oneself could have been too
great for a lesser man to bear. Yet Schweitzer bore—and fulfilled—them
heroically. His great love for all life, the stability of his formalistic mind
sustained by the majestic, ordered music of Bach (of which he was
acknowledged the greatest interpreter) made him overcome within himself
what he had felt as the sins and foreseen as the disintegration of his European
culture. His way of overcoming was to heal the sick and, in fulfillment of the
highest symbolism of any Cross, to atone as an individual for the sins of the
many. Such an interpretation of Schweitzer's life and chart becomes the more
inspiring and accessible for each of us when we realize that from a process-
oriented point of view, his grand cross formed when the faster-moving Mars
and Saturn came around to oppose and square the relatively slower-moving,
historically significant Pluto/Uranus square.
While the life of Albert Schweitzer certainly points to the socially and
spiritually constructive possibilities of a grand square, the case of the
Russian dancer, Nijinsky, had a less happy outcome. In his chart the two
oppositions at right angles to one another are in angular houses and mutable
signs. Mercury at the nadir opposes retrograde Saturn at the Midheaven. A
rising, separating Moon/ Mars conjunction opposes to exteriorize the
historically most significant, forming Neptune/Pluto conjunction in the
seventh house. Despite his great renown and artistic ability, emotional
confusion and tragedies in unorthodox interpersonal relationships led to
mental instability and ultimate institutionalization.

If instead of a perfect square, we consider the other rectangle

configurations, we also find two lines of opposition, but their relationship is
of a different order. Between these two lines there is not the sharp contrast as
between the diagonals of the perfect square. A rectangle points in a certain
direction—the more so, the greater difference between the lengths of the
sides. It does not challenge, like the perfect square, a general, complete kind
of actional integration —a challenge which, if not successfully met, often
leads to a general confusion or tragic sense of failure or frustration. It
presents a challenge for a particular kind of integration.

This is why the rectangular shape has been used in many temples and
chambers of initiation. These buildings were built to symbolize the process
of transition from one stage of personal-spiritual unfoldment to the next—the
fulfillment of a great goal. Seen in the vertical plane, a rectangle becomes a
door, something to pass through, to enter a new realm. Practically speaking,
in a birth-chart, its orientation in relation to the angles and other horoscopic
axes is most significant. Most fundamentally, the two oppositions of a
rectangle pose the 'problem'; the aspects relating the four ends of the
diagonals of the rectangle indicate the best manner in which what is
represented by the oppositions can be integrated and the overall life-task
met.
Actually, what occurs in practice is that a client comes to an astrologer
with a basic life-situation or problem. When looking at the birth-chart, the
astrologer identifies the basis of the problem with one or both of the
oppositions. This lets the astrologer know what underlies the problem in the
client's life. The aspects linking the two oppositions reveal the best way the
client can meet and integrate the situation into his or her overall
development.
One of the most practically constructive and spiritually harmonious
possibilities of any rectangle is indicated when the two oppositions are
linked by sextiles and trines.* Where fully active, this 'harmonic rectangle'
points to the potential development of a character strongly organized in an
attempt to take an important step in personal growth and/or spiritual
development. The configuration tends to bring the polarized elements
symbolized by the opposing planets into a unity because a strong sense of
organization (sextile) and a cohesive, purposeful vision (trine) are potential
in the personality. Whatever tensions arise in the life or personality that are
symbolized by the opposing planets do not necessarily 'go away.' But they
can be 'laid on the altar,' as it were, or channeled toward the concrete
completion of a significant life-task.
Examples of 'harmonic' or 'mystic' rectangles abound. A most significant
case is that of Dag Hammarskjold, the late Nobel prize-winning Secretary-
General of the United Nations. The two diagonals of the rectangle are formed
by oppositions between Mercury and Saturn, and a Moon/Neptune
conjunction opposing Uranus. They are integrated by sextiles between
Mercury and Moon/Neptune, and between Saturn and Uranus, while Saturn
and Moon/Neptune are trine, as are Mercury and Uranus. To reach
integrations of often violently clashing opposites in the field of international
interests was the pattern-setting Secretary-General's purpose and, often,
ability. In active practice, his vision (trine) of global integration was tested
and brought down, as it were, to the level of practical, political organization
(sextile).
Stressing the more 'mystic' aspect of the configuration is the chart of Paul
Foster Case, the occultist especially regarded for his work and still-in-print
book on the Tarot. In his chart, Mars/Neptune and Mercury/Moon
oppositions structure the rectangle. The sextiles are between Mercury (which
is also conjunct Uranus) and Mars, and the Moon and Neptune. The trines are
between Mercury and Neptune, and the Moon and Mars. The total integration
evokes the potentiality for developing an innovative mind which is
mystically inclined and open to inspiration from 'higher levels.' The
involvement of Mars suggests also the capacity to mobilize resources and act
to fulfill the higher vision.
Another kind of powerful integration is shown in the horoscope of the
late Director (some would say despot) of the F.B.I., J. Edgar Hoover. Here
Mars opposes Saturn, while Mercury opposes Jupiter, making the personal
level of operation (Mars and Mercury) the conduit for sociocultural images
and imperatives (Jupiter and Saturn). The sextiles are between Mercury and
Saturn (a clear, well-structured yet conservative mind) and Mars and Jupiter
(the ability to organize a power-base and expand it). Jupiter and Saturn, and
Mercury and Mars are trine. Hoover knew where he stood in relation to
social issues, and he knew how to impress his vision on his surroundings. A
formidable combination indeed I
The complex chart of Henry Ford again presents a fitting example. Born
at the time of a Full Moon, his natal soli-lunar opposition is linked by sextile
and trine to the longer-lasting opposition between Saturn and Neptune, a
fitting symbol of the dissolution of social structures at the threshold of the
industrial era which Ford, the inventor of assembly-line manufacture, helped
usher in.
When two oppositions are linked by semi-squares and sesquiquadrates, a
particularly dynamic potentiality results. To our knowledge, this figure has
never been named, but it could be called an 'octilinear rectangle' since it is
based on division of the circle by Eight. Here, in a concentrated form, arise
all the issues we discussed in relation to the semi-square and sesquiquadrate.
Through meeting them, whatever is polarized by the two oppositions can
become integrated and manifest as a workable way of life or world-view.
Whatever is started in life should bring about very focused and concrete
results, particularly if the sesquiquadrate operates in its positive aspect as an
enthusiastic 'outreaching' (square + semi-square) and the challenge of the
semi-square (dissemination of one's vision in order to fulfill the needs of the
public one serves) is fulfilled.
An octilinear rectangle is found in the horoscope of Ram Das, in which
the Venus/Neptune opposition and the Saturn/Pluto opposition are integrated
by semi-squares between Pluto and Neptune, and Venus and Saturn. Venus
and Pluto, and Saturn and Neptune, are thus sesquiquadrate. The need to
break down and regenerate ossified social structures, authority images, etc.
is stirred into operation by the use of value-transforming psychedelic drugs
and mystical experiences or spiritual discipleship. The surrender of self, or
at least the radical transformation of one's sense of self-worth, is also
challenged by the Venus/Neptune opposition. Neptune is made the more focal
in this configuration, since it is at the 'point' of what we have called a "Finger
of the World"—a triangle whose base is a square, the two ends of which are
both sesquisquare a third planet. The square is between an almost exact
conjunction of Sun and Uranus, and Saturn. Since Neptune is in the third
house, the challenge is indeed to transform and transcend a culture- and
religion-conditioned sense of everyday reality—and to deepen the mind by,
at least at first, unfocusing its 'hold' on such a taken-for-granted sense of what
is 'real.' Jupiter, the planet of social participation and religious images, rises
(septile the focal Neptune and conjunct Pluto—which is semi-square
Neptune), and the Sun/Uranus conjunction is in the eleventh house of social
transformation—all told, a powerful challenge to lead and participate in
transformative processes as a result of personal experience.
 In general, the rectangle linking two oppositions by semi-squares and
sesquiquadrates can be particularly productive of effective integration if the
individual is thorough and persistent enough to actually put across and carry
out the vision, uncompromisingly and at the same time trying to take into
account the needs of the biospheric, psychological and social environment.
Much, of course, depends on the actual planets involved and whether the
semi-squares and sesquiquadrates between them are 'waxing' or 'waning,'
thus involutionary or evolutionary. If this type of rectangle links planets like
Mars, Uranus, Pluto and/or the Sun, the dynamic intensity of the configuration
would be particularly stressed.
While neither the semi-square nor the sesquiquadrate is part of the
arithmetically derived involutionary series, after we have understood the
principles underlying the three interwoven aspects of all cyclic processes
(involution, devolution, evolution), we can place these aspects in the waxing
half of a cycle. The semi-square falls at the middle of phase 2 between the
semi-sextile and sextile; the ses-quisquare falls at the midpoint of phase 5
between the trine and the quincunx. Each of these aspects, when waxing, can
be understood to be the point at which the process of the particular phase in
which it is found reaches its culmination and maximum intensity. In the sense
of cycles-within-cycles, as midpoints of phases these aspects are analogous
to oppositions (or division by Two) of the phases in which they are found.
They thus refer to a possible point of release or objectification of what needs
to occur during that phase.
The figure joining two oppositions by semi-sextiles and inconjuncts or
quincunxes has no name. It indicates that what the oppositions represent can
best become integrated through everyday work and close, personal bi-polar
relationships, possibly in which self-improvement and serving the needs of
one's partner would be stressed. Zodiacally, what is emphasized in such a
configuration is usually the relationship between succeeding 'masculine' and
'feminine' signs— although if the opposition aspects are not exact, the semi-
sextiles may link the ends and beginnings of the same signs. Only small orbs
should be allowed when one considers such a rectangle. The orbs can be a
little larger in the case of harmonic rectangles, but not larger than six degrees
in most cases.
 An example of a rectangle involving semi-sextiles and inconjuncts is
found in the horoscope of George Sand, the flamboyant 19th-century romantic
novelist and feminist prototype. The oppositions are between second-house
Mars and Neptune in the eighth house of sexual relationships, and between
the first-house Moon and Jupiter in the seventh house. The rectangle is thus
concentrated in the houses referring to personal expression and interpersonal
relationships and marriage. Sand's romances, scandalous for her time, were
well-publicized, especially her liaison with the composer Chopin. Through
them and through meeting the personal crises they engendered, she was able
to transcend the cultural imperatives and taboos of her day. In the process,
and through her ardent dedication to her craft, she set an example of
independence admired and emulated even by contemporary women.
Other rectangles based on the quintile occur when the ends of two
oppositions are related by semi-quintiles or deciles (36°) and bi-quintiles
(144°), or when the oppositions occur at 72° intervals (quintile) and the
other sides of the rectangle are 1½ quintiles or 108° (tri-decile or sesqui-
quintile) in length. These rectangles of the quintile variety stress the
potentiality of creativity in one form or another. But we should recognize that
creativity may manifest in many more ways than those we usually consider,
for example, in the arts. In an expanded sense, creativity refers to the
capacity of an individual to transform the environment in some manner,
material or social, so that the person leaves an individual mark upon it.
Creativity can thus refer to any activity through which an individual
effectively projects upon any kind of material at hand or upon the way of life
of his or her community the manner of thinking, the vision or ideal, the typical
form of behavior which expresses his or her individuality.
An example of a rectangle structured by semi-quintiles and bi-quintiles is
found in the horoscope of Krishamurti. Here, Venus and the Moon are in
opposition, as are the Sun and Uranus. The Moon and Uranus are semi-
quintile, as are the Sun and Venus; and the Sun and Moon—and Venus and
Uranus—are therefore bi-quintile.
In concluding this necessarily abridged study of rectangular
configurations, we should note some important general points. First, some
rectangles may not fall into the categories we have described, but may
nevertheless seem significant on their own merits. For example, the chart of
Clyde Barrow—of Bonnie and Clyde fame —displays the integration of two
oppositions (Mercury and Jupiter —and Uranus and Neptune) by septiles
(Mercury/Uranus and Jupiter/Neptune) and trines (Mercury/Neptune and
Jupiter/ Uranus). A similar configuration is found in the chart of the 19th-
century occultist and author of the Secret Doctrine, H.P. Blavatsky. In her
horoscope, the Moon (fourth-house) opposes Pluto (tenth-house) and the sun
opposes Jupiter (which is conjunct Uranus). The septiles are between the
second-house Sun and the Moon, and between the eighth-house Jupiter and
Pluto. The Sun and Pluto are trine, as are the Moon and the Jupiter/Uranus
conjunction. Another atypical case is the birth-chart of India's Prime Minister
Indira Gandhi, in which two oppositions are integrated by a variety of
aspects. Here, two oppositions (Saturn/Uranus and Venus/Pluto) are linked
by a 153° quincunx (Venus/Saturn), a 35° semi-quintile (Venus/ Uranus), a
sesquiquadrate (Pluto/Uranus) and a novile (Pluto/Saturn) . Required in
fulfilling all such patterns is a highly original integration of what is presented
by the oppositions, and it must include the essential meanings of all the
aspects in evidence.
The generalization underlying the interpretation of all types of rectangles
is therefore that the way in which the oppositions are related is the key.
While in order to qualify as a 'classifiable' rectangle, aspects should be
standard, recognized ones, not too far 'out of orb,' other non-symmetrical
patterns linking a variety of aspects must also be recognized to exist as
subsets of classifiable configurations. The purpose for classifying
astrological phenomena resides not so much in creating pigeon-holes into
which subsequent examples can be made to fit, as in creating in the student's
mind a sense of pattern—a sense of a continuum of patterns having not only
identifiable categories, but underlying principles of formation as well. Once
the basic principles are grasped, the student should be able to generalize his
or her experience to creatively interpret patterns falling 'in the cracks'
between established categories.

TRIANGULAR CONFIGURATIONS
Geometrically speaking, the equilateral triangle is the most stable of all
forms. The astrological grand trine normally links the three aspects of each of
the four elements. It presents every mode of existence in its essentially
threefold nature. It is unique in all astrological configurations in that it is
composed of only one kind of aspect—and just as the grand cross is the
archetype of all rectangular patterns in astrology, the grand trine occupies the
same position in relation to triangular configurations.
The equilateral triangle symbolizes in most religions perfection of being
—i.e., God as the supreme foundation of all existence. In that sense, it is the
symbol of both a static and transcendent condition. It contains no opposition
aspect; therefore, it is essentially subjective. It simply is, without conflicts,
what it is. However, if an expansive planet like Jupiter dominates a grand
trine, this 'what it is' may keep enlarging itself until some internal pressure or
external boundary causes it to explode or to become objectively manifest
within a form—which may produce conflicts or tension. In a particular chart,
not only are the actual planets joined by the grand trine significant; what may
be as important is the way in which the grand trine is integrated (by what
other aspects) into the overall pattern of the chart. Since a grand trine refers
to a fullness of vision, or something complete as an ideal at the level of ideas
or archetypes, when it is integrated into the chart via an opposition, what is
complete at the level of ideas has a more obvious or pointed possibility or
necessity for concretization in the world or in the life and personality of the
individual.
When one point of a grand trine is involved in an opposition, the
opposition's other end almost inevitably falls at the midpoint of one of the
trines, forming sextiles to the other two planets in the trine: a 'kite' formation.
In such a pattern, vision or understanding and purpose (trines) find the
possibility of outward manifestation in objective form (oppositions and
sextiles) through organizational genius and the capacity for planning and
enlightened management in which needs and answers to needs are brought
together. The functional activities represented by the planet at the midpoint of
the bisected trine should be those through which is focused and released
what the entire configuration represents.
There are other symmetrical triangular configurations spanning the
complete 360° of the circle which have not the stability of the grand trine
because they are triangles one side of which is smaller than the other two,
which are of equal size. The planet forming the apex of the triangle is at the
inverse midpoint of two planets in aspect forming the triangle's base. This is
also the case in the grand trine, but multiplied and entirely mutual, as each
planet is at the inverse midpoint of the arc connecting the other two. On one
hand, this contributes to the cohesiveness of the grand trine, but it also serves
to keep its focus more or less diffuse and unmanifest (unless, of course, it is
involved in a kite or with other focalized aspects integrating it into the
overall pattern of a particular chart). The planet at the apex of the non-
equilateral triangle can act as a kind of dynamic release or 'seeding' point for
whatever is represented by the planets and aspect forming the triangle's base.
The most important aspects in the configuration, however, are not necessarily
the two pointing toward the apex. Depending upon the overall Gestalt of a
particular chart, the foundation-aspect—the base of the triangle (no matter in
which direction the pattern points)—could be considered the most significant
operation which is 'trying,' as it were, to manifest through the other two equal
aspects in one way or another.
One of the these types of triangular configurations has been studied by
some astrologers and variously called the 'Y-configuration' or 'Yod' or
'Finger of God.' This configuration is produced when two planets in sextile
to one another each form quincunxes to a third planet at the inverse midpoint
of the sextile. To single out such a pattern as particularly important, however,
without taking into consideration the others of the series of which it is part—
and the principles according to which all acquire significance—seems to
lack a basic understanding of astrological procedure as well as common
sense. For another triangle is formed when a quintile and two bi-quintiles are
similarly linked as in the so-called Y-configuration, and we have already
mentioned the instance of a square linking two sesquiquadrates.
Granted such aspects as quintiles, bi-quintiles and sesquiquadrates are
more difficult to spot in charts drawn in terms of zodiacal longitude, but that
should not be sufficient reason for failing to recognize the principles of
organization underlying major configurations in which such unfamiliar
aspects may be found. At the limit of the series of symmetrical triangular
configurations we find the so-called T-square, which is really a triangle in
that it links three planets, one at the inverse midpoint of the aspect formed by
the other two. In this case, the base of the triangle is the opposition, while the
equal sides are composed of squares. The triangle whose base is an
opposition is not a very 'tall' triangle, but it nevertheless fulfills the criteria
of triangularity fulfilled by the other three.
All these symmetrical triangular configurations in which the three related
planets are not equidistant—i.e., not constituting a grand trine—have one
thing in common. They refer to a state of dynamic equilibrium which is
calling for some sort of resolution. On the one hand, the planet at the apex of
the triangle can in many cases be interpreted to provide a possible outlet to
release and relieve whatever tension is involved in the relationship between
the two planets forming the triangle's base. But release and relief are not the
same as resolution. For all these triangular configurations represent a
dynamic trend toward a fourth point which is not necessarily occupied by a
physical planet (although in a particular chart it may be). The 'empty point,'
as it were, pulls to itself the combined biopsychic energy of whatever is
represented by the three planets in triangular configuration. This point is the
point in opposition to the apex of the triangle. When aspects are not exact,
this point may or may not coincide exactly with the midpoint of the aspect
forming the base of the triangle. In such a case, an area rather than a point
may be considered. In either case, the accompanying figure illustrates the
'direction' of each of the configurations toward what we will call the 'tension
point.'
 In the so-called 'Yod' configuration (which, of course, can be upside-
down, horizontal or diagonal in a chart), the 'tension point' is opposite the
planet to which the quincunxes point—thus at the midpoint of the triangle's
sextile base. The same principle applies to the so-called T-square. The
'tension point' is the zodiacal degree which, if occupied by a fourth planet,
would transform the T-square into a perfect or grand cross. This is why the
T-square acts like and is indeed a triangular, rather than rectangular
configuration.
To avoid confusion, we shall repeat here that the grand trine stands apart
because it is completely unique, balanced and self-sufficient. In and of itself,
it is a configuration devoid of tension. It does not indicate any drive toward
anything. It simply is what it is in fullness of being, and for this reason
symbolizes spirit or divine perfection. In all other triangular configurations,
the fact that one planet, the apex, is equidistant from two other planets in
significant relationship to one another indicates a certain amount of tension
between the apex-planet and the base-planets. The nature of the tension and
the way it seeks resolution (and not merely relief!) varies, of course, with the
nature of the particular aspects involved. Needless to say, perhaps, the house
positions of the planets, and the zodiacal signs in which they are found, are
also of the utmost significance.
Perhaps the best way of interpreting this triangular situation in general is
to say that in the so-called Y-configuration—whether it involves quincunxes,
bi-quintiles, sesquiquadrates or squares—one planet is related to two others
by equidistant paths. Thus, symbolically speaking, a possible choice is
shown to exist between two ways of life, two approaches to a definite
situation symbolized by the planets and aspect forming the triangle's base. We
could clarify the matter and refer it to zodiacal symbolism by saying that at
the inverse midpoint of two planets in sextile in, say, Virgo and Scorpio, a
third planet is quincunx them both in Aries. This can be interpreted to mean
that, while Aries seeks its complement in Libra (the empty point at the
midpoint of the sextile), it can seek it in two ways: the Virgo way or the
Scorpio way. This configuration involving Aries-Virgo-Scorpio has, as it
were, Libra as its goal; it is in a state of tension toward Libra. But there are
two possible approaches toward resolving the tension: the Virgo approach
(purity, discipleship, work, service or retraining) or the Scorpio approach
(union through feelings, cooperation or commerce, root-identification,
sexuality, etc.). We could go further and say that the whole configuration is
poised, so to speak, toward relationship and relatedness—release or relief
may be found in Aries (self-motivation or self-centeredness), but not
necessarily resolution of the whole question of relationship implied in the
configuration in its entirety.
Again, the houses of the birth-chart and the actual planets involved—as
well as the way in which a triangular pattern is oriented in terms of the cross
of horizon and meridian, and linked to other elements of the chart and the
chart's overall Gestalt—are of the utmost significance.
Examples of significant triangular patterns abound, both in general
practice and in horoscopes we have already used as examples. We can look
again at the birth-charts of Mohandas Gandhi, Albert Einstein, Albert
Schweitzer, Werner Erhard and Ram Das, and find significant T-squares or
triangles whose bases are oppositions. Gandhi's horoscope in particular
shows the T-square as a species of triangle, for in it both a T-square and a
grand trine 'point to' or 'hang off the tenth-house Moon. Both the
Saturn/Neptune trine and the Venus/Mars vs. Jupiter/Pluto opposition seek
release through the Moon and the field of Gandhi's public life. A vision of
transformed social structures (Saturn trine Neptune) illumines, as it were, the
Mahatmas struggle with sexuality and marriage at the personal level, and
both seek expression through the charismatic persona represented by the
tenth-house Leo Moon. Resolution of both configurations thus coincides in
the horoscope's fourth house—the field of experience related to a person's
ancestral 'roots' and the kind of in-depth personality integration that can
occur when their sustaining power is effectively and appropriately tapped.
Einstein's ninth-house Jupiter/third-house Uranus opposition is bisected
by Pluto in the twelfth house—a fitting symbol of the socially transformative,
Plutonian catharsis released through Einstein's work. But the configuration's
'direction of resolution' points toward the sixth house, the area from about
25° Scorpio to 2° Sagittarius. In terms we presented earlier, while Taurus
(Pluto) seeks its complement in Scorpio, it can seek it in two ways: the
Aquarius (Jupiter) way or, specifically in Einstein's chart, the Virgo (Uranus)
way.
The Jupiter/Aquarius 'path' presumably refers in Einstein's life to his
international (ninth house) and social fame and involvement, as well as to the
development of his humanitarian sense and relationship to his ancestral
Jewish religion. Since Jupiter is in waning square to Pluto, Einstein was
challenged to let go of inherited, obsolete structures determining the level at
which he operated in these areas. He was born a German Jew, gave up his
German citizenship at an early age to become a neutral and, to him, more
humanistic, less militaristic Swiss; and while he was asked to become
President of the State of Israel after Chaim Weitzman's death, he also had to
arrive at his own, more open and universal attitude to his Jewish tradition
and consequent status as a Jew.
On the other hand, Uranus is seen in 'waxing' square to Pluto, thus
challenging Einstein to become a definite vehicle for establishing through his
life what was released as a transforming, universalizing impulse at the
Pluto/Uranus conjunction before his birth (in the last two degrees of Aries in
1850-51). The Virgo (Uranus) path thus refers to what was released through
Einstein's innovative mind (third house Uranus) and to his utter dedication to
the difficult, and thankless, task he undertook after he had already made his
reputation as a 'genius.' Along this path he had to meet many deep personal
crises (Virgo and the sixth house), not the least of which was facing what he
termed the "biggest mistake" of his life: signing a letter to President
Roosevelt urging the U.S. to commit a considerable amount of its already-
taxed-by-wartime resources to the development of an atomic bomb before, it
was feared, the Germans did.
Although the configuration's point of resolution lies in Einstein's sixth
house, Einstein never truly resolved or satisfactorily answered the great
philosophical questions engendered by his early work in relativity. While
younger physicists readily adopted the statistical, probability-based world-
view of quantum mechanics, Einstein nevertheless determinedly maintained
that "God does not play dice with the universe." He sought an encompassing
alternative to quantum mechanics to no avail throughout the remainder of his
life. He never adapted to the role of a public figure, either, and in true twelfth
house fashion increasingly withdrew to his study at home and at Princeton
University.
In Werner Erhard's chart, the Sun opposes a retrograde (naturally!) Saturn
in the tenth house, and both are squared by the seventh house Moon. This is a
configuration involving the most basic of factors, challenging
individualization and independent emergence through marriage and close
personal relationship conditioned by a strong Mother-Image—all
conditioned by what must have been a difficult or in some way lacking
father-son relationship. But here marriage releases the psychic tension
involved in the 'wake up and individualize' Sun/Saturn opposition.
Resolution comes only through first-house personal integration and being,
through perhaps undergoing a 'test of isolation'* by separating oneself from
the taken-for-granted patterns of one's time, adopting and maintaining an
unpopular stance.
The T-square in Ram Das's chart also involves the Moon at the 'short
end.' The Moon is in the sixth house of retraining, spritual discipleship and
personal crises of readjustment, while the bisected opposition is between
tenth-house Venus and third-house Neptune. Public life is again involved, but
resolution comes through the twelfth house—through the universalization,
indeed ritual-like illumination, of all day-to-day activities, and by carrying
the self-sacrificing burden of participating in and leading a large-scale social
movement.
The T-square in Albert Schweitzer's chart is between Jupiter and
Neptune (in opposition to one another) and Mercury (square to both). The
Jupiter/Neptune opposition points to to the need to transform and make
entirely inclusive the sense of social participation. Moreover, it symbolizes
the necessity of making religion more than a merely cultural, taken-for-
granted activity. The challenge is to make religion a truly spiritual pursuit,
whose great Images live in and through one's open and transformed being.
Mercury (in Capricorn and in superior conjunction with the Sun)—
Schweitzer's formalists mind—potentially provides an outlet for expressing
what is symbolized by this Jupiter/Neptune opposition. Both Mercury and the
Sun are on a degree symbolizing a "total commitment to a transcendent goal."
Yet the configuration's resolution points toward Cancer and the seventh
house, toward "the focalization of complex inner potentialities in harmonic
and concrete relationship" (Cancer 24°). Schweitzer apparently had such a
relationship, not only with his wife, but also with his original and highly
focused image of the person of Jesus, who became for Schweitzer a living
presence and true exemplar.
Another triangle, a grand trine, is also present in Schweitzer's chart. It
links Venus, the Moon and Uranus. Since Saturn is opposite Uranus, and is
therefore at the 'resolution point' of the trine between Venus and the Moon, a
'kite' formation results. The integrative 'vision' symbolized by the grand trine
can thus be exteriorized via Saturn's power of organization.
Grand trines are also found in the horoscopes of Jimmy Carter, Herman
Melville (cf. Chapter 2), and the two charts in which two grand trines
interpenetrated to form Stars of David. Carters grand trine involves ninth-
house Pluto, fifth-house Uranus and first-house Moon—a perhaps 'fateful'
personal involvement in expressing a vision of large-scale, cathartic social
processes. In Carters case, however, Saturn rises before the Moon, and the
Moon is just separating from its prenatal conjunction with Saturn. Expression
of the Pluto/ Uranus trine (rooted in the same Pluto/Uranus conjunction as
Einstein's Pluto/Uranus square) is therefore heavily influenced by Saturn—
i.e., by the Father-Image and conservative, perhaps taken-for-granted or
dogmatic social imperatives and taboos.
 We have already found triangles formed by a square and two
sesquiquadrates—what we have called a "Finger of the World"— and we
point again to the horoscopes of Werner Erhard and Ram Das, and also to the
chart of Henry Ford. Erhard's Moon/Saturn square points with two
sesquiquadrates to second-house Pluto, which is also conjunct the Moon's
South Node. The great question posed by any focal second-house indication
is always how best to use one's resources, whatever they may be. Here, an
amassing of wealth or public renown can be seen as a way of releasing the
biopsychic tension involved in the Moon/Saturn square. The resolution of the
configuration points, however, to the eighth house, the field in which an
individual's resources are shared with others.
A similar house-situation is found in the birth-chart of Henry Ford,
whose sesquiquadrate triangle 'points' to the Moon in the second house (at
the cusp of the third). The square is a waxing one between Venus and Uranus
—a challenge to transform one's sense of values and one's capacity to give
form to one's ideas. Ford's industrial innovations and the automobiles they
mass-produced surely brought him much in the way of monetary gain, and
helped to make of him an autocratic empire-builder. While the configuration's
resolution points to Leo and the eighth-house/ninth-house cusp, Ford's Sun is
there (he was born at Full Moon) and whatever resolution there may have
been seems rather to have fueled the already fully formed Leonine ego.
Nevertheless, Ford, in true Full Moon fashion, stood as a real-life exemplar
—in his case, of the Horatio Alger 'myth' of a man who, through his own
initiative (and perhaps ruthlessness) managed to go from (almost) rags to
riches, accomplishing much of social significance along the way.
The triangle in Ram Das's chart links the square between eighth-house
Saturn and eleventh-house Sun/Uranus to the third-house Neptune. The use of
drugs or a yearning for unorthodox or mystical experiences can be
interpreted as a release from the biopsychic tensions of an overly rigid,
traditional background restricting satisfying and transformative interpersonal
and social relationships. The resolution of the configuration points to the
place occupied by tenth-house Venus. The Sabian Symbol for Venus's degree
(coincidentally the same degree as Werner Erhard's Saturn) pictures a large
cross "illumined by a shaft of light. . . lies on rocks surrounded by sea mist.
" The degree challenges focused individualization (the cross) out of the
undifferentiated psychic and collective 'sea,' and indicates that a "spiritual
blessing" (the shaft of light) will strengthen those "who, happen what may,
stand uncompromisingly for their own truth."
A triangle involving two quincunxes and a sextile is found in the
horoscope of George Sand. Saturn and Neptune in the seventh and eighth
houses are sextile, and both are quincunx the first-house Moon. The
Saturn/Neptune sextile is waning, beginning in the Saturn/Neptune cycle the
final phases of a process symbolically transforming the Father-Image and
heralding the acceptance of broader social archetypes. A new integration, on
the basis of transformed relationships, is possible and challenged here. The
midpoint of the sextile (the point opposite the Moon) coincides with Jupiter
at 27° Libra. While the symbolic references to relationships are obvious
here, Jupiter's Sabian degree emphasizes the ability to "transcend the
conflicts and pressures of the personal life. " Ms. Sand's personal life—
especially where relationships were concerned—was indeed subject to
conflicts and pressures, both inner and outer. She was indeed forced, and at
least partially able, to become objective to and transcend them.
Another triangle involving a sextile and two quincunxes appears in the
chart of Werner Erhard. As in the case of George Sand, a waning sextile
between Saturn and Uranus forms the configuration's base. Mercury in Libra
in the 5th house opposes the midpoint of the 10th/12th house sextile. Release
of the sextile challenging reorganization at the level of the Father-Image and
of social archetypes is through creative mental activity and communication
(5th house Mercury) and interpersonal relationships (Libra). With Saturn and
Uranus in such a relationship, it is interesting to note the eclectic nature of the
est training and particularly how much of the American New Thought
movement from earlier this century has been incorporated into it. The
configuration's resolution, however, is symbolized by the early degrees of
Aries in the 11th house—a challenge to pioneering social transformation.
Since the 11th house follows the 10th, it also poses the question, What will a
successful individual do with or about his success, and as well with the
rebellious attitude or feeling of deep discontent that made him act as a
reformer or revolutionary to begin with?
Such concepts could be developed much further and a whole book written
about rectangular and triangular aspect patterns. But enough may have been
said to indicate how the basic ideas might be extended and applied to
particular situations. We have interspersed what we hope will be useful
examples throughout the text, but if they are to prove valuable, they should be
studied in depth along with complete biographical information for the
persons whose charts have been used.
The study of simple rectangular and triangular configurations is only a
basic step toward the visualization and interpretation of the whole pattern
made by all ten planets of a birth-chart. As a foundation, it does help to
develop one's mind to see and think in terms of the whole chart, rather than
according to the merely analytical procedure, which is satisfied to list
aspects and planetary positions as separate factors and somehow to see what
they might add up to. Both methods are nevertheless valid when used together
—as they always should be—the former to present a whole view of the
individual person and his or her potentialities, the latter to clarify the many
detailed features of the personality in everyday life.

_________
* One can, of course, consider significant and interpret aspect configurations spanning fewer than 360°
—for example, a trine, bisected into two sextiles, an opposition divided by a semi-square and
sesquiquadrate. We would rather, however, consider these secondary, not primary, configurations.
Nevertheless, in particular charts, especially those of an overall hemispheric type, such secondary
patterns may form the basic structure of the horoscope.
* My Life and Thought, pp. 81-82.
* 'I believe that I was the first astrologer to study and interpret this configuration. It is mentioned in my
book The Astrology of Personality (1934-35). At first I called it a 'mystic rectangle' because its shape
seems to have been used in initiation chambers and temples of older civilizations; altars in these
structures had also been constructed on its proportions. Later on I realized the inadequacy of the term,
that it was confusing, especially considering the way it has been used and abused of late. I then began
to call it a 'harmonic rectangle.'
Some astrologers, perhaps not agreeing with my claim that such a rectangle had an integrative or
harmonic character, have spoken of it, years later, as the X-configuration. This, is, of course, in line with
such terms as perfect cross and T-square—and we shall see in a moment that some astrologers have
also spoken of a Y-configuration, which I consider as a species of triangle. The question here—besides
the fact that all such 'X's' are not integrated by sextiles and trines—is perhaps whether you like the
alphabet better than geometry, but it may go deeper. In speaking of rectangles and triangles, I am
envisioning shapes in which dynamic centers (the planets) constantly interact. What is important is the
interaction between these centers, and the geometrical concept expresses this fact better than the
alphabetic formulation—especially since letters such as T, X and Y are not found in all languages.
Today one should think universally, not in terms of national cultures and alphabets!—DR
* cf. An Astrological Triptych: The Way Through, "Twelve basic challenges and tests of individual
existence," by Dane Rudhyar (ASI Publishers, New York: 1978).
 6.
Interpretation and Intuition: On Putting It
All Together and "Howto"
In the traditional approach to chart-interpretation, each of the many factors in
a horoscope is considered separately. The astrologer, having memorized a
myriad of definitions and keywords (or stocked his or her library well with a
variety of tabulated texts), applies these, one by one, to the positions of
planets in houses and zodiacal signs, and to the aspects each planet—as
'ruler of a definite category of things, characteristics or events—makes singly
to other factors in the chart. Then he or she tries to synthesize them all—an
often difficult task because so much data has been generated, and many of the
definitions contradict one another.

Various more or less mechanical or mathematical procedures have been

devised to solve this problem of synthesis. Some astrologers advocate set
formulas for interpretation—for example, Sun sign first, then Ascendant, then
the Moon. Others start by interpreting the Ascendant and first house, then
work their way around the wheel of houses, including in their interpretation
of each separate area of life the planets in the houses and the zodiacal signs
on the cusps. Still others advocate beginning an interpretation from the house
with Aries on its cusp and following the zodiac around from there. Variations
on such themes are practically endless. More mathematically-minded
practitioners have devised quantitative ways of ascertaining the relative
importance and strengths of all the components of a chart.
Only very recently has a new approach to astrology and chart
interpretation begun to emphasize the element of Gestalt—the overall pattern
of a horoscope. Such a point of view becomes increasingly significant and
necessary when we look at a birth-chart in the spirit in which we presented it
in Chapter 1, as a message from the whole Sky (or universe or cosmos) to the
growing, developing whole person.
 This trend toward Gestalt in astrology has developed during the last fifty
years, paralleling a similar approach in philosophy and psychology. The
astrologer following it looks at the birth-chart as a whole and tries to grasp
the meaning of the total pattern which planets, house cusps, aspects, etc.
make. The first astrologer to deal with overall horoscopic patterns was Marc
Edmund Jones, who classified basic chart shapes into seven categories.*
When one truly follows a Gestalt approach, however, pigeon-holing an
overall planetary pattern into one of several categories is not enough. If the
old approach of adding essentially separate and perhaps contradictory
factors together is still followed, the Gestalt classification of any particular
horoscope becomes one more piece of data to be somehow fitted together
with a myriad of others. True Gestalt awareness means that the astrologer
must look at the birth-chart as a whole first, and start the entire interpretation
from there. It is an esthetical approach— that is to say, the astrologer must
look at the chart as a lover of art would look at a beautiful painting, seeking
to understand the integrity and the meaning of the whole without paying
exclusive attention to its separate parts.† A truly Gestalt-based interpretation
allows the meaning of the chart to flow from a sense of pattern or form, from
the way a particular chart is structured, according to the principles
underlying its unique make-up.
This is because only a birth-chart's Gestalt—its particular overall pattern
as a whole—is unique. No single factor in a birth-chart is unique, not even
the exact degree on the Ascendant. Any one placement, position or aspect has
happened before, and it will happen again in the relatively near or distant
future. What is unique and integral about a birth-chart—as about the person
for whom it stands as a symbol of seed-potentialities—is the total
interrelatedness of all its components.
What is required to see and understand a birth-chart's unique Gestalt is a
holistic ability we exercise daily, but because it is so much a part of our
common experience we don't question it or realize its significance. When we
meet a person, we do not meet a nose, two eyes, two arms, etc. Unless
something is obviously missing or blatantly over-emphasized, we never think
of running down a check-list to investigate all the basic 'parts.' Neither do we
meet and interact with a set of character traits or psychological categories of
behavior. We are not normally aware of any separateness of anatomical or
personality 'parts' as distinct from the whole person. What characterizes an
individual person is not a number of separate elements, but the structure and
dynamic operation of interrelated physiological and psychological factors
which in their togetherness constitute what we call his or her appearance,
character or personality.
Nevertheless, within this pattern of wholeness, one or two factors among
the many which impinge upon our senses and minds may stand out as being
stronger than the others. The sheer strength of one factor considered
separately is not what matters most. It is the way in which the strong factor is
integrated into the operation of the total person. To the astrologer or
psychologist, what should be most important is not merely the fact that one
aspect of a person's nature is stronger than others. The concern should be the
way in which the dominant factor is or can be integrated into the others and
in turn is affected by them.
A similar truth is found when we consider a man or woman living in a
community. Modern psychology has given up the romantic notion that an
individual can be understood in a kind of splendid isolation regardless of
where the person comes from or lives. A person can only be understood in
relation to his or her environment and times—i.e., in relation to family,
social group, culture and the complex pressures of the period. The entire
constellation of these factors at one's birth and throughout life, together with
the meaning one gives to them and therefore the way in which one responds
to them, is what makes up the significance, integrity and uniqueness of one's
life.
All of the above applies equally to factors in a horoscope. When we
approach a chart, we should not (at least not at first) be solely aware of a
Mars, a Venus, a fifth house, etc. as separate, definitely defined entities.
Neither should we be aware primarily of a square, an opposition, or even a
T-square or a particular kind of rectangle. We should rather perceive first the
whole constellation—a pattern which is always greater than the sum of its
parts. The nature of the whole and the relationships of all its parts, not only
to one another but to the whole itself, is what gives to the parts their specific
qualities and meanings. Only within the whole is each part related to all
other parts. Only in total interrelatedness with one another and with the
whole do all the parts, specific relationships and groups of relationships
between them acquire their full significance.
Such alchemical transformations of meanings are multiplied many-fold in
the total interrelatedness of a horoscope's overall pattern. Any planet,
placement or aspect is thus one factor within a group of factors, the birth-
chart's whole pattern—i.e., the state reached by the solar system as a whole
at the time of a person's birth. Every planet operates, whether or not it forms
exact aspects with any other planet. (Indeed the very fact that a planet makes
no aspect whatsoever—a rare occurrence if we use the full spectrum of
arithmetical and geometrical aspects as well as proper orbs and a sense of
process—is an important factor to consider in itself.) Every aspect also
operates in some way. But its specific operation, which of its many possible
meanings is called into play in a particular chart (and at a particular time in a
person's life), how the actualization of its potentialities can be involved in
the actualization of all other possibilities in the chart and vice versa: all this
depends upon the way a particular aspect is woven into the overall pattern of
the chart and upon the operation of every other aspect.
It is not easy, initially, to see birth-charts as wholes in which all
component parts are at once meaningfully related to one another and to the
whole. It requires a rather special faculty which operates among artists
contemplating a work of art and responding to what it radiates as a whole,
and in some scientists and mathematicians who, confronted with or
contemplating a complex pattern, are able to 'feel' what kind of solution to a
problem will be found. Then they carefully work out a detailed
demonstration, step by step, arriving at approximately the same result they
had anticipated.
What is it that allows a scientist or mathematician to 'feel' an elegant
solution before its logical deduction? What enables a person to achieve
mental synthesis without prior intellectual analysis?
On the one hand, practice and training geared toward the perception of
definite structural patterns within complex wholes. On other other hand, one
cannot detect, let alone resonate to the meaning of "definite structural
patterns" unless one thoroughly understands the principles according to
which such patterns are built and acquire meaning. We are speaking here of
acquiring what in Chapter 1 we called "back of the neck knowledge"—
knowledge which is so much a part of the knower that the person forgets
about knowing it. It is effective knowledge because it is unself-conscious and
therefore always spontaneously and appropriately available when 'tickled' in
the right way.
Such knowledge becomes in practice intuition. It do's not develop from
mere memorization or intellectual self-programming, although these are steps
or phases in the process of activating and developing the intuitive faculty.
Active intuition requires as a foundation a deeply felt understanding
(literally, to stand under) of principles. As basic principles are truly
understood, they form a new foundation (what one stands on) for one's
thinking, future studies and application of what one has learned. The
principles one learns thus help to organize the mind and thinking of the
learner. When one truly learns basic principles and builds what they signify
into one's consciousness and being, the learning—both in terms of its content
and the process of learning itself—transforms the learner. To the degree that
the principles one learns are 'cosmic' or universal in scope, to the same
degree will the mind be structured along universal lines. To the degree
universal principles organize one's mind and thinking, to the same degree
will one be able to perceive what is universal and whole in every
particularity—be it an astrological chart, a person's life-story and destiny, or
an algebraic equation.
For the scientist or mathematician, the principles of scientific
methodology, number, logic and mathematical operations form the foundation
of operative intuition. Over the course of his training, they become so
ingrained in him, so much a part of his being and consciousness that he
'forgets' he knows them. He does not need to consult a textbook of possible
solutions or try to solve a problem by a process of eliminating operations
which will not work. Instead, he thinks in terms of all the principles and
operations he has ever learned —or rather, they act through him; his thinking
is structured by them. All the years of his education and experience are
present and focused in him as he contemplates a problem.
In order to fully activate intuition, so too must a would-be astrologer
become thoroughly and unself-consciously familiar with the 'tools of the
trade'—i.e., planets, houses, aspects, signs, progressions, transits, etc. But
this familiarity must not be willy-nilly, without structure or form. Each basic
tool must be understood in a consistent, coherent way according to what it
symbolizes at its own level. This means that the astrologer must also
understand the principles of cycle, process, number and symbolism
according to which basic astrological tools acquire meaning. In this sense,
learning astrology is actually a process of learning a variety of consistent,
even compelling and exciting 'stories'—the story of the planets, the story of
the houses, the story of the signs, etc.
In this book, we have told, consistently and interestingly, we hope, the
story of astrological aspects. The stories of other astrological factors are told
in other books, and an annotated reading list is supplied in Appendix II. The
homework of the would-be astrologer, before he or she ever faces a
horoscope and a client, is to learn and think through these various
astrological 'stories.' There is no 'howto' apply them directly to birth-charts
and achieve the kind of mental synthesis which does not follow purely
intellectual analysis. There are no short-cut techniques of fitting keywords
into sentences that can substitute for an astrologer's active intuition. One can
proceed, however, through a structured process of learning and assimilating
astrological and psychological principles, and on the basis of such a process
one can activate and develop intuition.
For example, there are many ways to approach and consider the zodiac.
One can begin the 'story' of the signs starting from the vernal equinox and the
sign Aries, or with Capricorn and the winter solstice. One can take the signs
in successive pairs (zyzygies), or in terms of a threefold dialectic moving
from a cardinal, to a fixed, to a mutable sign. Similarly, one can tell the
'story' of the houses beginning at the Nadir or at the Ascendant. Houses can
also be given meaning in terms of the way we usually number them,
counterclockwise, or in terms of the Sun's passage through the sky during the
day—clockwise. The planets, too, can be considered and given meaning in a
number of ways—heliocentrically, geocentrically, in various pairings, etc.
Like the signs in relation to the zodiac, and the houses in relation to the
complete diurnal circle, planets also acquire meaning only in the context of
the whole solar system. They represent dynamic centers of activities and
functions, and each planet reveals a different facet of its nature when
considered in relation to each other planet. A different sort of picture
emerges each time one tells a 'story' from a different point of view; and each
'story' is valid at its own level if one is careful to be consistent and flexible
in one's interpretation. Each 'story' of a whole symbol thus reveals its parts in
a new light.
While telling and retelling these astrological 'stories,' it is not important
to be able to apply them directly to particular birth-charts. The process of
learning astrology in this story-telling spirit should be approached as an
adventure—to borrow a phrase, an "adventure in consciousness." Its purpose
is to allow the universal principles behind astrological symbols to permeate
and restructure the student's mind and thinking. Granted, such a process takes
a relatively long time, several years at least. But in a culture in which the
training of a physician requires almost twelve years beyond standard
elementary and secondary schooling, and of a psychologist nearly seven, why
should we expect the training of an astrologer to be appreciably shorter?
In addition to being well-versed in all the nuances of astrology per se,
the astropsychologist has also to deal with human nature in all its aspects and
manifestations—individual and collective, structural, developmental,
relational, cultural, historical, etc. Any counselor must be objective to—and
be able to state for potential clients —his or her general philosophy of life
and approach to psychology. A counselor must have an understanding of the
deeper social and cultural issues behind the types of problems clients face,
and a sense of what is necessary, practical and possible in human
development among contemporaries. These disciplines too, like astrological
symbols, can be treated as 'stories' to be told, retold from a variety of points
of view, and thought about in depth.
One of the best ways for an astrologer to sharpen technical skills and
develop holistic vision is to read biographies. A horoscope, timed or solar if
necessary, the whole life of progressions and major transits can be drawn up
for study along with a particular person's biography or memoirs. More than
any other technique, studies of whole lives can provide the kind of insight on
which a deep and intuitive understanding of human nature develops.* Such
understanding is crucial for an astrologer, because it is one thing to be able to
deduce problems or diagnose psychological difficulties from a horoscope; it
is quite another to have the kind of deep understanding of human functioning
necessary truly to counsel a client, to help give the most constructive meaning
possible to life-circumstances, and to understand the best, most 'growthful'
and dharmic way to face and deal with whatever problems or difficulties the
client meets in life.
When on the basis of such in-depth preparation, an astrologer
contemplates a birth-chart, focused in the practitioner's very being is a fully
assimilated synthesis of astrological and, in the broadest sense of the term,
psychological principles, and the mental structures built during the process
of learning about them. Having become thoroughly familiar with all the basic
astrological tools, the astrologer is able to notice everything in a chart all at
once. The act of contemplating the birth-chart becomes a single gesture in
which the astrologer embraces the entire horoscope with his or her eyes and
total mental being—and not merely with an intellect laden with memorized,
disparate definitions and keywords.
Since the various 'stories' behind basic astrological tools have also
become second nature to the astrologer, they can begin to retell themselves in
terms of their particular interrelatedness in the horoscope. The astrologer
who thoroughly knows, for example, the 'Mars story,' the 'Saturn story,' etc.,
instantly knows what these two symbolic centers of activities would have to
do with one another when in a particular aspect. Since the astrologer also
knows all the 'aspect stories,' he or she also knows what squares have to do
with oppositions or trines, how what is required by each aspect interrelates
with what is required by all the others. The practitioner approaches the chart
as a unique whole first, allowing the total Gestalt—the principles on which it
is based—to tell him or her what is most basic in the chart, and therefore
where and how to begin an interpretation. The chart interprets itself, so to
speak, through the astrologer who has learned to think in its own language—
astrologese—and who thereby allows the chart to reveal what in it, as a
unique whole, is significant.
Then, when the astrologer sits with a client, the same kind of single-
gesture, open-ended mental embrace can also apply to the client's life-
pattern. It too is a 'story,' a process unfolding step by step throughout the
client's life. Astrologers should become as adept as psychologists and social
workers in eliciting from clients a brief, but basic history covering the salient
facts of the client's background. With this as preparation, what had
previously been chart interpretation on the part of the astrologer alone can
become with a client's active co-operation a truly deep and meaningful life
interpretation. By applying the symbolic indications of the birth-chart,
progressions and major transits to the facts of the client's history and life-
pattern, the perceptive and intuitive astrologer can allow the light of meaning
to shine through the opacity of particular events in the client's life. These
become more than mere happenstance or the result of a cause-and-effeet
progression—whether this would be considered purely in terms of the
outward momentum of events or the inner mechanics of psychological
patterns.
What astrological symbols should do to the events of a client's life is to
reveal their deepest significance—that is, to show how and for what purpose
events have occurred as particular manifestations of phases in the client's
process of overall development. This occurs when the practitioner is able to
superimpose universal principles of process on the facts of the client's life,
when the astrologer is able to recognize that a sequence of events in a client's
life is typical of what happens in a certain astrological 'story.' On such a
basis, the astrologer can extrapolate from the events not only what the next
phase in the process is likely to entail, but also the events' meaning: what
they were and are meant to accomplish in the client's life.
On the basis of a client's history, an experienced and intuitive
psychotherapist can often predict with what seems uncanny accuracy future
developments in the client's life. This is because the therapist has seen and
understood so many complete human 'stories' that he or she can anticipate
how a particular variation will probably progress. It is necessary to say
'probably,' however, because the psychologist sees primarily only the
mechanics—the psychological 'how'—operating behind sequences of events
and circumstances. While the psychologist sees a good deal of what is
'normal' and expectable in terms of human reaction, he or she has no way of
seeing an overall picture of what is possible for a particular person in terms
of conscious response or dharma. The psychologist, unlike the astrologer,
has no birth-chart from which to intuitively deduce the potentialities inherent
in a client's birth. The psychologist therefore has no way of knowing what the
client's problems or life-circumstances are for, i.e., what they are meant to
actualize in the process of the client's overall development.
Thus, the usual type of counselor can only operate on the equivalent of
the old astrological dictum "Character is destiny," and its therapeutic
correlate, "Change character, change destiny"—or on a more modern, but
essentially little-changed restatement of these: "We create our own reality."
From the point of view of a truly process-oriented astrology, both of these
statements are only partially true. It is obvious that a person with a chip on
his shoulder creates his own reality by inviting angry or defensive others to
knock it off. His 'character' does indeed to a great extent shape his 'destiny'
and a picture that he lives in an explosive, unstable world from which he
must further insulate himself. But even such a person did not create the
society and the family into which he was born and to whose pressures he was
forced to react.
The fact is that all of us are born into situations conditioned by
circumstances long antedating our birth. We react to their pressures mostly
unconsciously through our youth and formative years, primarily in terms of
our innate temperaments and in ways that are mirror complements of the
pressures themselves. Having no control over the form the pressures take, we
essentially have no control over our complementary reactions to them: we
are like molten metal assuming the negative shape of the positive, pre-cast
mold into which it is poured.
As vessels are formed to certain aesthetic dimensions and utilitarian
shapes depending upon the function they are ultimately meant to perform, we
can only assume that there is an underlying purpose for the shape of the
particular mold into which we are 'poured.' Yet the process of creating a
'negative' to a mold's 'positive' is only one step in the process of sculpting a
vessel. It is analogous in human development to the period of youth and
adolescent rebellion, when a person reacts against the pressures of family
and society. If the process continues in its usual way, another 'pouring' will
be made, and eventually a vessel resembling its initial parent mold will be
produced. This is essentially what happens to people, particularly in their
late 20's and 30's, if the basic tone of their life has been primarily a reaction
against the pressures of their youth. Such a person first reacts to the
pressures, then reacts against the reaction, ultimately becoming like what he
first reacted against.
On the other hand, after the rebellion of adolescence—which today often
extends up through the mid-20's or later—a person has the possibility of
becoming objective both to the nature of the pressures against which he or
she is reacting, and to the reactions themselves. It then becomes possible for
the person to give meaning to the pressures and reactions—primarily by
seeing them as phases of larger processes. According to the meaning given
them, the person becomes able not merely to react, but to respond
deliberately to the circumstances of life—which by then have already been
set up and have acquired, if not a life of their own, at least a momentum in a
general direction.
Did the person create the reality of these life-circumstances among and
because of which he or she 'awakens'? Before even attempting to answer this
question, we should realize that the attempt should not be taken lightly. This
is a question which has, in one form or another and sometimes literally,
bedevilled human beings since time immemorial. Its simplicity is deceptive,
for interwoven into such a query are all the great and deep issues facing
mankind throughout the ages: What is the nature and purpose of human
existence? Of the universe itself? The writers of the Book of Job phrased it:
Why does evil manifest in the life of a seemingly righteous man?
Most fundamentally, the answer we give to the question "Do we create
our own reality?" depends upon the meaning we give to the word 'I.' If by 'I'
we mean our experience of being 'I, myself— Paul or Jane,' we actually refer
to the ego (which literally means merely T)—that is, to the outcome of a
process begun with the birth of a human organism at a particular time and
place. The organism has an innate temperament and genetic make-up—
variations on the general theme of being human and parallel at the biological
level to the social and cultural inheritance a person 'comes into' at birth—
and the organism as a whole reacts in characteristic ways to the pressures of
its early environment. These reactions are referred, first, to a diffuse sense of
organic wholeness, and later to the centralizing ego, itself structured around
the name the child is called and learns to identify itself by.
When we answer the question "What is 'I' " in such a way, we must
answer our original question about creating our own reality in the negative.
For how can an 'I' whose process of becoming focused and concrete begins
at birth have shaped or be responsible for what antedated its birth and later
impinged upon its nascent senses and consciousness, enabling it to become,
not only what it is, but conscious of itself? Such an 'I' creates its own reality
only in a limited and purely personal way, according to how it reacts to the
pressures of its environment. It reacts in good measure according to the
body's innate temperament, but how could an 'I' developing out of the
experiences of a particular organism with a certain temperament have
'created' the organism's temperament?
Such questions can be and often are answered by including in the concept
of 'I' the notion of a transcendent soul which chooses for reasons of 'learning
lessons' or 'soul evolution' its future temperament, birth-environment,
parents, time and place of birth—and therefore the horoscope under which it
was born. If we define 'I' in such a way, we can indeed answer our original
question about creating our own reality in the affirmative. But to so identify
'I' as or with such a soul seems to us a basic semantic, metaphysical and
psychological fallacy. Certainly, the concept of 'soul' is to the 'I' who thinks
about it merely that: a concept not grounded in experience or observation.
Moreover, it is a concept formulated long before the person's birth. It is part
of the cultural inheritance he or she 'comes into' at birth, part of what shapes
his reactions to life. Nevertheless, there may be something like a soul in
some way associated with the particular person who claims it.* But saying
that the person is a soul, when what the person experiences as himself or
herself and can to some extent control, is what should best be called the ego,
makes little sense and is ultimately confusing. If something transcendent to
what we normally identify as 'I, myself has at least a significant part in
shaping our reality, we should acknowledge it for what it is—which is
actually rather mysterious, complex, and probably our personalization of
greater forces and processes operating in the universe. We have previously
referred to these as karma and dharma, as the residua of past actions and the
necessity of compensating for or furthering what they have produced.
Thus the alternative we feel we must pose to the popular dictum "We
create our own reality" is that we respond to the reality with which we are
confronted. Collectively, and over many generations, human beings as a
species operating in a variety of cultures have created a more or less
common reality. Within that collective context we do not create our personal
reality any more than a seed creates the rain and warm sunshine to which it
responds by germinating or remaining quiescent in the spring. We are
responsible for our responses to the life-circumstances into which we
awaken as would-be individuals and adults. Yet, in all humility and not in
evasive pride, we must also acknowledge the greater collective and
universal forces and processes having shaped these circumstances focused
into our particular lives and personalities.
From a process-oriented point of view, our birth-charts reveal the highest
of our potentialities—that is, the 'story' in seed of what we may face in order
to take what kind of evolutionary, i.e., karmic and dharmic 'next steps/
Whether we created our reality matters only if we desire forcibly to change
it. If, on the other hand, we desire to fulfill its highest potentialities, we must
illumine it with meaning.
We are prepared to do so astrologically when we have done our
astrological, psychological and philosophical 'homework'; when we are able
to approach a birth-chart as a unique whole and allow our interpretation of it
to unfold according to the way the chart itself is structured, according to the
principles underlying its particular make-up; when we are able to pierce
through the opacity of a client's life pattern and allow it to become
translucent to the light of its own meaning, to the glow of the life-pattern's
own special purpose and process, which shines through what could
previously only be perceived as events or psychological patterns.

In conclusion—and perhaps as a new beginning for some readers— all of the

preceding takes on a more definite and inspiring meaning if we consider
what an astrology student thinks a study of astrology is for. If he or she
aspires to learn astrology in order quickly to delineate birth-charts, to collect
fees and impress clients by stating a few more or less spectacular
possibilities or events, the process-oriented approach we have presented
here may not be what is wanted. The would-be astrologer who is ready and
willing to devote some years of his or her life to preparation and study may
not want to do so unless the student feels that such work will be able to give
real help to clients, and also give a new dimension to the astrologer's own
mind. What is to be most deeply and meaningfully gained by dedicating at
least part of one's life to the study of astrology is a profound expansion and
deepening of one's consciousness, and of the way in which one meets life and
all its crises and opportunities.
C.G. Jung said that any analysis which does not transform both the
analysand and the analyst is not wholly successful; the purpose of astrology
is not merely to counsel others. It is also, as important, to enable the
astrologer to better understand his or her own life-process, to see it as a
phase in the larger, universal process of which it is a meaningful, dynamic
expression.

_________
* cf. his book The Guide to Horoscope Interpretation (McKay: .1941).
† The esthetical nature of such an approach was developed for, I believe, the first time in my book The
Astrology of Personality (1934-35).—DR
* The serious student is urged to study the lives of persons whose birth-charts we have used as
examples throughout this book. Only within such a context can the full impact of what we have pointed
out be seen, for it has been with such studies as a background that we have written. While a full
presentation of our examples' broadest implications has been beyond the scope of this book, the student
who follows up our presentation with his or her own researches will be amply rewarded. Not only what
we have written, but also what we have only been able to hint at will become clearer.
* cf. The Planetarization of Consciousness, by Dane Rudhyar (ASI Publishers, New York: 1977),
Chapter 7: "Soul-Field, Mind and Reincarnation."
 Appendix I

Example Horoscopes
All example horoscopes have been recalculated with Campanus cusps on a
DR-70 astrological computer. With the exception of the following, all birth-
information was taken from The Circle Book of Charts (Revised Edition,
1979):

Edmund G. Brown, Jr.

April 7, 1938
43N03 118W15
20:00 U.T.
Original birth-data from Brown by Orville Schell (New York, Random
House: 1978)
Rectification by A.L. Milner

Jimmy Carter
Oct. 1, 1924
32N02 84W24
13:00 U.T.
Chart in common usage

Werner Erhard
Sept. 5, 1935
39N57 75W10
27:25 U.T.
Werner Erhard by William
Warren Bartley (New York, Crown Publishers: 1978)

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Jan. 30, 1882
41N48 73W56
25:16 U.T.
Dane Rudhyar, American Astrology, September, 1942

Albert Schweitzer
Jan. 14, 1875
48N45 8E00
6:22 U.T.
Dane Rudhyar, Horoscope, March, 1949

Alan Watts
Jan. 6, 1915
51N25 0W00
6:20 U.T.
Autobiography,
In My Own Way
 Appendix II

Suggested Reading By Subject

INTRODUCTORY STORIES:

The Practice of Astrology

The First Step: To Understand the Nature and Purpose of What
One is About to Study
The Second Step: To Assume Personal Responsibility for the Use of
One's Knowledge
The Third Step: To Establish a Clear Procedure of Work
Person-Centered Astrology
Astrology for New Minds; The Astrology of Self-Actualization
The Astrology of Personality
Preface to the Third Edition
First Section: 1. Astrology Faces Modern Thought
2. Astrology and Analytical Psychology
3. Individual, Collective, Creative and the Cyclic
Process
4. A Key to Astrological Symbolism
5. A Classification of Astrological Viewpoints
From Humanistic to Transpersonal Astrology
THE STORY OF ASTROLOGY'S DEVELOPMENT:
The Practice of Astrology
The First Step: To Understand the Nature and Purpose of What
One is About to Study
Person-Centered Astrology
Astrology for New Minds
The Astrological Houses: The Spectrum of Individual Experience
Part One
The Astrology of Personality
Prologue; First Section
From Humanistic to Transpersonal Astrology
The Galactic Dimension of Astrology (The Sun Also a Star)
Chapter 1. Introduction to the Galactic Level of
Consciousness
Chapter 2. When the Sun is Seen as a Star
Chapter 9. The Challenge of Galacticity in Humanistic
Astrology
Culture, Crisis and Creativity
Chapter 10. Old Myths, New Myths and the Creation of a New
Culture

THE STORY OF THE ZODIAC AND THE SIGNS

The Practice of Astrology
The Fourth Step: A Clear Understanding of the Meaning of Zodiacal
Signs and Houses
Astrological Signs: The Puke of Life
Triptych: Gif ts of the Spirit
New Mansions for New Men
Meditations at the Gates of Light
The Astrology of Personality
Chapter 5. A Key to Astrological Symbolism
Chapter 7. The Signs of the Zodiac
Astrological Timing (The Transition to the New Age)
Chapter IV. Stars, Constellations and the Signs of the Zodiac
An Astrological Mandala: The cycle of transformation and its 360
symbolic phases
Part Three: 1. Binary Relationships Between Zodiacal Signs
2. The Cross and the Star
3. The Four Elements in Zodiacal Symbolism
From Humanistic to Transpersonal Astrology—pages 23-33
Astrological Insights into the Spiritual Life
The Astrological Houses: The Spectrum of Individual Experience
The Four Angles and their Zodiacal Polarities

THE STORY OF THE HOUSES:

The Practice of Astrology

The Fourth Step: A Clear Understanding of the Meaning of Zodiacal
Signs and Houses
Astrological Houses: The Spectrum of Individual Experience
Triptych: The Way Through
Twelve basic challenges and tests of individual existence
New Mansions for New Men
Mansions of the Self
The Astrology of Personality
Chapter 5. A Key to Astrological Symbolism
Chapter 6. The Dial of Houses
From Humanistic to Transpersonal Astrology—pages 20-33
Astrological Insights into the Spiritual Life
Astrological Themes for Meditation

THE STORY OF THE PLANETS:

The Practice of Astrology
The Fifth Step: The Use of the "Lights"
The Sixth Step: The Study of the Planetary System as a Whole
Triptych: The Illumined Road
Planetary Stations on the Way to the Star
New Mansions for New Men
Music of the Spheres
The Astrology of Personality
Chapter 8. Planets and Personality

The Lunation Cycle: A Key to the Understanding of Personality

An Astrological Study of Psychological Complexes

The Galactic Dimension of Astrology (The Sun Also a Star)

Part One
Part Two
Astrology and the Modern Psyche
Chapter 5. The Anima and Animus in Jungian Analysis and
the Moon-Symbol in Astrology
Chapter 16. Sex Factors in Personality
Chapter 17. The Mysteries of Sleep and Dreams
Chapter 19. Meeting Crises Successfully: Life in the
Psychological Century
From Humanistic to Transpersonal Astrology
Chapter 3
The Astrological Houses
The Planets in the Twelve Houses

THE STORY OF ASTROLOGICAL ASPECTS AND GESTALT-

PATTERNS
The Practice of Astrology
The Seventh Step Acquiring a Sense of Form and Accent
The Eighth Step: A Dynamic Understanding of Planetary Cycles and
Aspects
The Lunation Cycle
Person-C en tered Astrology
Form in Astrological Time and Space
 First Steps in the Study of Birth-Charts

The Astrology of Personality

Chapter 9. Planetary Interweavings
Chapter 11. Form and the Pattern of Planetary Aspects

PERSONAL LIFE CYCLES AND PROCESSES OF BECOMING:

New Mansions for New Men
Prologue
Occult Preparations for a New Age
Chapter 6. Human Cycles of Unfoldment
Astrology and the Modern Psyche
Chapter 18. Great Turning Points in a Human Life
The Astrology of America's Destiny—Pages 116-119
The Lunation Cycle
I: Astrology, Time and Cycles
VII: The Progressed Lunation Cycle
The Lunation Process in Astrological Guidance (by Leyla Rael)
The Practice of Astrology
The Ninth Step: Establishing a Proper Attitude Toward
Astrological Prediction
The Tenth Step: The Study of Transits and Natural Cycles
The Eleventh Step: The Study of Progressions
The Thirteenth The Establishment of Larger Frames of Reference
Step: for Individual Charts
The Astrology of Personality
Chapter 12: The Birth-Chart and the Progressions
Chapter 13: The Technique of Progressions, Directions and
Transits
From Humanistic to Transpersonal Astrology
 Chapter 2

COLLECTIVE CYCLES AND PROCESSES OF BECOMING:

Astrological Timing: The Transition to the New Age

Culture, Crisis and Creativity

Beyond Individualism: The Psychology of Transformation

The Astrology of America's Destiny

MISCELLANEOUS:

Planetary and Lunar Nodes:

Person-Centered Astrology: Planetary and Lunar Nodes The
Astrology of Personality: Chapter 9. Planetary Inter-weavings
Parts:
The Lunation IV. The Part of Fortune
Cycle:
V. The Part of Fortune and the Part of Spirit
The Astrology of Chapter 9. The Ascendant of the Planets
Personality:
Comets and/or Asteroids:
New Mansions for New Men: Asteroids and Comets The Galactic
Dimension of Astrology (The Sun is Also a Star) Chapter 2
Fixed Stars:
Astrological The Transition to the New Age
Timing:
IV. Stars, Constellations and the Signs of the
Zodiac

The Galactic Dimension of Astrology (The Sun is Also a Star) Chapter 9

Horary Astrology and Oracular Techniques:
The Practice of Astrology: The Twelfth Step
An Astrological Mandala: Part Four
Sabian Degree Symbols:
The Astrology of Personality: Chapter 10
An Astrological Mandala: The cycle of transformations and its 360
symbolic phases

This reading list is not meant to be exhaustive. All books listed have been
written by Dane Rudhyar unless otherwise noted. If not available at your
local bookstore, they may be purchased by mail from the New York
Astrology Center, 127 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016.
OTHER AURORA PRESS RUDHYAR TITLES

Astrological Aspects: A Process Oriented

Approach (With Leyla R. Rudhyar)
Astrological Insights Into the Spiritual Life
An Astrological Tryptich
The Galactic Dimensions of Astrology
Person Centered Astrology
The Astrology of Personality
The Planetarization of Consciousness

The Astrology of Transformation

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