"Astrology is, first and foremost, a study in symbols
of the evolving consciousness of humanity. Therefore, the astrological reader
who aspires to fulfill a service of therapy must acquaint himself with the
subject of epigenesis. This word, derived from two Greek root-words, means 'to
build upon.' In its esoteric application, it refers to the faculty
of humans to build the quality of their vehicles upon the quality of their
consciousness. 'As a man thinketh, so is he' depicts this faculty, which is
the one creative faculty expressed by all humans from the start of their
evolutionary unfoldment."
The word therapy is derived from a Greek word
meaning "healing." The verb "to heal" is derived from a Teutonic word which
means, among other things, "to reconcile." "Reconcile" comes directly from the
Latin root-words "re" (again) and "con" (with) — together these indicate
to
reunite. Therapy is thus seen to mean more than "a process of fixing up a
part of the body." It means "to reunite harmoniously the affected part with
the rest of the organism." All therapy serves the purpose of re-establishing
the consciousness of physical, mental, psychological, or spiritual
unification. Christ Jesus said, "My Father and I are one," "Be ye perfect even
as your Father in Heaven is perfect," and "Love ye one another." In these and
other similar statements is found the declaration of the unity of each with
all and of all with the one — the health, harmony, and beauty of unity in
diversity. If the word "health" is understood to mean the vital and harmonious
functioning of the parts of the physical, emotional, and mental bodies then
the consciousness of love is the health of human relationships, for it
is in the consciousness of Love that the fulfillment of experience is made and
relationships are the agencies of experience.
The urge to realize or to recognize
(re-cognize — to
know again) unity is nowhere better illustrated than in those
activities which characterize healing. If disease, malformation, and
abnormality were characteristics of truth-full human being-ness, these
conditions would be accepted and endured without attempts made to correct
them. In fact, with such an attitude, it would never occur to anyone to try to
correct them. But Man, who is of the one spirit of his Creator, seeks
to realize the unity which is his true state. That unity is
objectified as, or reflected in, the harmonious inter-relation of all of his
parts with each other. The "search for health" is the striving, in
consciousness, to recognize and realize the White Light of unity.
There seems to be so wide a divergence, in "style,"
between the work of the spiritually-minded astrologer and that of the
therapist. The former studies an abstract diagram on a piece of paper and the
latter studies the living, breathing human body. Their respective "materials
of study" are poles apart but it is of paramount importance for astrological
students to realize that these two methods of human study are
fraternal — the astrologer and the therapist are "spiritual brothers."
Both must exercise the faculty of analysis, of symbols or of bodily parts and
faculties, which is the basis of diagnostic art. Both of these "brothers" must
know the individualized significance of each symbol or of each bodily part and
that knowledge is distilled by focused, specialized study. In the experience
of the astrologer, the concentrated exercise of intuition, through meditation,
is also a most important factor. That which represents essential knowledge
gained by analysis is that of the inherent perfection of the individualized
part and of the significance of the relationship of the perfection of the part
to the inherent perfection of the whole — horoscope or body. Thus it is seen
that the work of analysis is counterparted and completed by the work of
synthesis. Synthesis, in this respect, may be thought of as being that form of
study by which true knowledge of microcosms — astrological factors or bodily
parts — is correlated to true knowledge of the macrocosm — the entire horoscope
or the entire composite of the physical, emotional, and mental bodies. Both of
these forms of inquiry contain the same kind of exercise of consciousness.
"Exercise of consciousness" means "using the powers of light" (as sensory
perception to acquire factual knowledge through observation and study), and
"using the powers of Light" (intuitive and spiritualized realization of Truth
and motivations of dedicated service to human betterment and enlightenment).
Health is, as one way of manifesting and identifying the unity of
spirit. Healing, by whatever means — objective therapy or educational
enlightenment — is an action by which consciousness of health is intensified.
This, in essence, comprises the service of both the astrologer and the
therapist.
Astrology is, first and foremost, a study in symbols
of the evolving consciousness of humanity. Therefore, the astrological reader
who aspires to fulfill a service of therapy must acquaint himself with the
subject of epigenesis. This word, derived from two Greek root-words, means "to
build upon." In its esoteric application, it refers to the faculty
of humans to build the quality of their vehicles upon the quality of their
consciousness. "As a man thinketh, so is he" depicts this faculty, which is
the one creative faculty expressed by all humans from the start of their
evolutionary unfoldment. From incarnation to incarnation, on the spiral of
unfoldments of consciousness, human vehicles are formulated on the etheric
planes, as matrices of the physical, by conditioning of the individual
consciousness and karmic necessity. Since no human can use consciousness for
another — in the absolute sense — this means that we, individually,
determine
the future quality of vehicles by present exercise of consciousness. Since
we tend, subconsciously or instinctively, to identify ourselves and other
people as "bodies," let us consider a horoscope as being a picture of a body:
The circle may then be taken to represent the enclosure of skin, the "outside
of the physical body;" the planetary points are the vital organs, centers of
perception, and all other bodily contents. All human bodies are dense
expressions of one structural plan or idea and though a human may appear at
birth to be without some factor of sense-perception or organic structure and
function, it is important to recognize that all human horoscopes have the
same number and kind of symbolic factors. Lacking a bodily member or
sense-organ throughout an entire incarnation does not deprive any human from
his full quotient of horoscopical factors.
Correspondingly, if, during the course of the
incarnation, the person experiences a severance of a bodily part or cessation
of a sense-perception, his horoscope still remains entire — he does not
have a planet or sign taken away. This means that, as a living and functioning
human, his potentials remain intact. Vehicular deficiency from birth or
through incident during the incarnation outpictures a temporary obscuration
of consciousness, in a specialized way, of potentials. To
experience chronic or incidental physical lack is the karmic result of
having expressed consciousness in some way in the past that contributed to
another's lack, or limitation. In so doing, the perpetrator of the act
identified himself with obscuration with the inevitable result that he,
fully to explore that factor, must experience the obscuration in incarnated
experience. If the will to survive and develop is sufficiently strong,
the person will make intensified effort to compensate for the bodily
deficiency; the evolved soul will seek to understand the causation of his
deficiency in addition to his efforts to perpetuate physical survival. It
is the latter type of humans for whom the astrologer may most satisfactorily
act as a therapist because in the study of the horoscope as a registration
of consciousness he may help the afflicted person to understand how he may
regenerate his patterns of consciousness, mind, and emotion.
The path of "astro-therapy" is probably the longest
path that can be walked by an astrologer because every step taken on it must
first be realized in the astrologer's own consciousness. As "beauty is in the
eye of the beholder," so the ideality of health must be established, degree on
degree, in the mind, emotion, and awareness of the astrological interpreter.
The astrologer who, through whatever fixity or congestion of attitude, is
unwilling to undertake programs of internal regeneration might just as well
direct his energies and attention to some other branch of the subject because
he will be stopped on this path almost as soon as he is started. The desire to
help another to realize more health (unfold a greater realization of health-
full being) can be fulfilled only to the degree that the astrologer charges
his own consciousness with more health-full-ness in the form of experienced
regeneration and the subsequent realizations of spiritual truths
conveyed by the symbolism of the horoscope which he studies. The proof of
his desire is attested in the degree with which he seeks more clearly to
understand the causations behind the "unhealthy evidences" in his own chart.
If he cannot "face his own karmic causations," how can he possibly perceive
those of another person? The will to truth is the basic Light which
must be turned on his own chart; with that application, in sincere motivation
and idealism, he qualifies to help others. Technical material on astro-
diagnosis — the correlation of symbols with bodily parts and conditions — must
be learned first. Astro-therapy starts when the astrologer teaches the client
how he must start using his consciousness in specialized regenerative ways to
decrystallize and transmute the "obscurations" shown in the chart. The
astrologer, for himself or for another person, uses astro-therapy when he
starts to realize the following, which are offered as a few basic
suggestions:
The Sun: realization that the consciousness of
power must be attended by right use and application of Power; Power is
for good use, not for egotistical gratification; the urge to survive is
not a competitive fight with other humans — it is the aspiration to realize
life's unity and eternity; the Sun symbolizes the consciousness of
health through self-mastery.
The Moon: realize the significance and importance of
the mechanism of the instinctual mind as the store-house of memories from past
lives; fears, tensions, and hatreds stimulated by reaction to domestic,
parental, national, and racial relationships may be harmonized and transmuted
by (1) clearer understanding of the laws of karmic magnetic attraction and (2)
stopping the expression of fears and tensions in those relationships
and substituting more co-operative, constructive, loving, friendly and wisely
appreciative attitudes.
Mercury: stop using the (great) power of the spoken
and written word as a vehicle for expressing destructive criticism, malice,
untruth, and prejudice; start using the transmuted powers of clear,
unbiased thinking to evaluate more truthfully, to express encouragement
and constructive judgment, to open the mind in willingness to learn and
to consider helpful suggestions; respond with enthusiasm and joy to
opportunities to learn and to understand; it is your prerogative to
train your mind in any way you desire and to use it to realize
truths; it is also your right to know that only you can put your
consciousness — with its darkness or its light — into words, and if you desire
to realize a higher degree of mental health you can do so by using the
power of the word to express that which is true and loving.
Venus: you do not have to be indolent, lazy,
and negatively passive; you have resources of energy for use and
you can learn to express those energies in ways that make life more beautiful
and inspiring; you can develop your sense of the beautiful by disciplining
your emotional responses in such a way that your expressions of
consciousness contribute to the harmonization of your relationships with other
humans; you can become more co-operative with, and appreciative of,
other people and will automatically yearn to do so when you let your
consciousness become more aware of the good and the beauty which they
represent.
Mars: When the energy represented by this symbol is
used to add potency and effectiveness to constructive and regenerative
endeavors, cruelty, malice, fearful retaliations, and other such impulses are
diminished; the physical organism retains its magnetic and vital qualities
through constructively motivated conservation and with such internal
discipline, the realizations of capacities, self-confidence, and worth-while
goals are unfolded.
Saturn: the tendencies toward crystallization and
devitalization are counteracted when the consciousness of joyous and loving
fulfillment of legitimate responsibilities takes the place of the attitude
of burdensomeness. In the individual horoscope, Saturn indicates — by its
position and aspects — a point of much-needed balancing through additional
fulfillment; the unbalance implied has its resource in neglect and
unfulfillment of a past life in that particular department of experience. The
therapeutic value of Saturn lies in the consciousness of the immutable
justice of spiritual and evolutionary law; guilt and remorse complexes,
with their corresponding corrosive and crystallizing effects on the body, can
be released through recognition that now is the time to do what is
right, and in so doing the karmic obligation is fulfilled in the
consciousness of healthy and reasonable attitudes.
Jupiter: like that of Mars, this stands for a type of
energy that needs control and discipline; in its negative implications it is
the symbol of greed and false compensation; sincerity of motive,
word, and deed is the spiritualization of consciousness represented by
Jupiter because the power of the sincere mind and heart is the counteractive
to internal falseness which prompts the development of greeds and
distorted compensations. Jupiter symbolizes man's realization of truth
and aspiration to unfold true judgments. In consciousness, the nobility of
true sincerity must supplant the illusionary nobility of false pretense,
aggrandizement, and affluence.
Neptune and Uranus: the symbols of
super-sensory
perceptions and of transcendent areas of consciousness; Neptune is the
spiritual power of faith, Uranus is that of impersonal love;
Neptune is the power to visualize internally and to idealize — the
person who has faith in the existence of health can visualize it for
himself. Uranus is the urge to liberation and he who would free
himself from constricting conditions must contribute lovingly to the
liberation of others. Use these interpretations as "food for thought" and
know that they are only a few examples that illustrate the "therapy of human
consciousness by the power of Light."
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