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Astrology by Hand Week 25
A
Dialogue Between Heaven and Earth
Last
week, I mentioned what I found to be amazing correspondences
between historical events and the movements of the equinoctial and solstice
points through the constellations. This phenomenon is explored in Jung’s
work Aion. Using Jung as a springboard, I have studied the
movements of the equinoctial and solstice points through the constellations
in depth. Before I can describe my findings, I need to describe exactly
what is being done here.
We need to
make a distinction between the 30-degree segments that make up the astrological
zodiac (whether it is the tropical one of the West or one of the sidereal
ones of the East) and the actual images of the constellations made up
by the stars. These images are not equal 30-degree segments. They can
vary from about 15 degrees to over 45 degrees. And not only that, but
they do not have distinct boundaries (except for arbitrary ones created
by modern astronomers). They can overlap, and there can be gaps between
them.
The 30-degree
equal signs as we have them in the West are named after the constellational
images that occupied them at around 200 A.D. But in fact, the constellation
of Cancer never filled the whole of that sign, and the image of
Virgo stretched out way beyond the boundaries of its 30-degree sign. Also, in
the area of Scorpio, there are two constellations that overlap and occupy
roughly the same space, one more northerly and the other more southerly.
The northerly one is Ophiuchus, or the serpentary, and the other is Scorpio.
Ophiuchus has for some reason never been recognized as a “zodiacal” constellation,
probably because the bulk of its image, a man holding a serpent, is considerably
north of the zodiac, whereas the heaviest concentration of stars in Scorpio
is quite close to the zodiac. The constellations are not as orderly as
the signs.
The images
of the constellations are in some cases very old, dating back to early
Babylonian observations. Others were established only by about the sixth
century B.C. The form in which we have them now (with some minor additions)
dates from Ptolemy in the second century A.D. From a modern rationalist
point of view, such images are purely projections of the human mind and
have no foundation in objective reality. Yet what Jung found and I, among
others, have confirmed, is that as the equinoxes and solstices have moved
by precession past the stars that make up the images, there have been
historical events that fit the symbolism of each portion of the images.
It is as if we have created the images, projected them onto the heavens,
and then they in turn have been influencing us. This simply does not square
with the modern rationalist viewpoint.
(In the examples
that follow I refer only to Middle Eastern and Western history. These
constellations were known only by these peoples until modern times, and
I have no idea what effects could be discerned in China, or even India,
which does have similar constellations.)
Sagittarius
and Caesar
Sagittarius is ruled by Jupiter. The Winter Solstice point (which defines our 0 degrees
Capricorn) encountered the first star of the constellation of Sagittarius
in 48 B.C. At about that time, Julius Caesar became dictator for life and
established the pattern of Roman imperial government. The Winter Solstice
left the constellation of Sagittarius in 1909 A.D. In that entire period
of time, there were always one or more emperors governing empires who
called themselves Caesars. In 1909 we had Kaisers (the German form of
the name) in Germany and Austria and a Czar (the Russian form) in Russia.
In 1914, shortly after the Solstice left the last star of Sagittarius,
World War I began, which swept all the “Caesars” away. Mussolini tried
to evoke the images of Rome in the 20s and 30s, but he never called himself
a Caesar.
Gothic
Cathedrals and Nuclear Energy
In 1270 A.D.,
the Winter Solstice point came to Rho Sagittarii. This is the first star
in the arrow that the archer associated with Sagittarius is pictured as
shooting. In the century preceding that date, an older style of architecture,
the romanesque, a style that was rounded in form and seemed almost earth-hugging,
was replaced with the gothic, a style that seems to leap off of the Earth
almost like a rocket ship or arrow.
The constellation
of Ophiuchus, mentioned above, consists of a man holding a serpent that
stretches out to either side of him. There is a point in this constellation
where the hand of the serpentary holds the serpent. I believe that this
can be regarded as an image of the human race struggling with the serpent
powers of nature. Well, within a few weeks of the Winter Solstice hitting
the first of the stars in that group, we had the first controlled nuclear
chain reaction. This was 1942. And the last star to be hit in this group
will be in 2017 A.D., not very far away. If I am right about the meaning
of this, this is how long, give or take a couple of years, that we have
to straighten out our relationship with the powers of nature.
I can give
innumerable examples of this sort of thing, and I have done so in lectures,
enough to make it clear that the above are not just a few isolated anecdotes.
Not only can we find interesting historical hits such as those mentioned
above, but we can even sort out the general themes of Western and Middle
Eastern history with these. It is as if we are living out a script that
our ancestors wrote into the heavens. This tells us much about the relationship
of human consciousness to that of the cosmos. We will
draw some conclusions from this next week.
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