Mandala Of The Birth Chart
A persons
birth chart is like a map showing the special character and intensity
of the basic natural factors operating within this person and the
particular manner in which they are interrelated. Yet such a chart,
has, however, no actually individualized and autonomous center. The ego
does not constitute such a center. It oscillates and is swayed by
forces over which it has no steady control. It is only the center of
gravity of an ever-changing situation.
It
is only
when the process of individualization has begun, and the individualized
consciousness based on a deep feeling of separateness and estrangement
from the level of strictly social activities and relationships has
asserted itself that one can speak of the existence of a truly
individual center. The I-center.
In a birth
chart that center is found where the horizon and meridian intersect. It
is there that the individual center the real "I" disengaged from
family, social, and cultural patterns - is to be found.
A mandala,
in the usual two-dimensional sense of the term, is a configuration
revealing a more or less symmetrical arrangement of various kinds of
forms, scenes and symbolic images around a center. Usually the mandala
has an overall circular form and, in the majority of cases, a basic
quadrangular structure is apparent. Tibetan mandala are particularly
well known, and they are used in mediation to focus the mind and to
reveal through symbolic senses, picture or diagrams, the nature of a
process of integration.. leading to a vivid experience of central Being
or quality
of being.
In
classical astrology, the zodiac is also often represented as a mandala,
with the Sun at its center. A human body may also be pictured
surrounded by the twelve symbols of the zodiacal signs of
constellations.
At the
individual stage of human existence, the birth chart represents the
mandala of personality. Its center symbolizes the mysterious power and
experienced feeling to which the little word "I" refers. At the level
of an individualized human consciousness, the "I" should no longer be
considered an ego in the Saturn-Moon sense of the term, though it will
try to use the types of functional activity symbolized by saturn and
the Moon for its own purpose.( Saturn = the place in the society &
Moon= the emotions and feelings resulting from or to this social
position)
An
astrological birth-chart can be regarded as a mandala if it is
understood to be a symbolic two-dimensional representation of a
centralized field, not only of consciousness, but of purposeful
activity. This field, the field of space surrounding the newborn, is
primarily divided into four areas by the horizon and the meridian lines
forming a perfect cross. The four points at which the cross meets
the circumference of these fields are called the Angles. On the
horizontal line, the are the Ascendant
(or eastern point), and the
Descendant (or western point) and on the vertical line of the meridian,
the Nadir (or Immum Coeli) and the Zenith (or Mid-Heaven). These four
angles represent the four characteristic types of activity which
participate in the building and development of a conscious and stable
center within the whole human being. They are the 'roots' of the
individualized consciousness.
Through
these roots the I-center can draw sustenance and power from the world
of biological experiences and the realm of sociocultural cooperative
activity and interpersonal relationships. It can also receive what may
become actual "illumination" from the eastern angle, the
Ascendant for it
is at this symbolic point of sunrise that the
"I" can most effectively discover its purpose - or rather the purpose
of the birth of a living organism that served as the biological
foundation for the rise of a particular form of consciousness to
the level of a stable and operative individuality.
This
biological foundations is symbolized in the birth-chart by the Nadir or
I.C. (4th house). at the sociocultural level, whatever guarantees a
relative degree of permanence and psychic security (particularly the
home and the land of birth) is represented by this angle. It is where
an individual can find the particular quality of his or her rootedness
in the culture which formed his own her concrete personality.
The western
angle (the Descendant
) refers to the power that, in the process of
individualization, the consciousness draws from the relationships which
both the physical organism (body) and the socializing a person
constantly enters into in everyday living. No human being is born or
lives in a vacuum. Living is relating - whether the relationship is
given the positive meaning of steady and fruitful partnership in
personal love and social cooperation, or the negative meaning of
enmity. Consciousness grows out of relatedness. Through the experience
of close relationship (whether positive or negative) the I-center
becomes more clearly able to define the quality of its being and the
scope of its constructive activities.
The fourth
angle is the Zenith (or in the terms of zodiacal longitude the
Mid-Heaven), and it
symbolizes the power the individualized
consciousness draws from participation in any larger organized system
in which it plays a role. At the sociocultural level, this angle
refers to professional activity, but more generally to whatever brings
the I-center in touch with a broader, more encompassing system of being.
Every
organized system of activity and consciousness, while it is a whole
having component parts, is also a part within a greater whole. The
universe is a hierarchy of wholes, and consciousness inheres in every
whole. But there are levels upon levels of wholeness. In every
whole there is a point or an area of potential at which the lesser
whole can contact and receive some influence, power, or blessing from
the next greater whole. This point is symbolized in astrology by the
Zenith. For the person who is striving to become individualized and to
reach fulfillment as an individual, the next greater whole in whose
being he or she can actually participate may only be his or her
community, nation. or culture, It should eventually however be Humanity
as a whole and by Humanity, I mean far more than a chaotic collection
of human beings spread around the globe; I mean a vast planetary
Being that is also in the process of unfolding its immense potential of
activity and consciousness.
While at
the Nadir an individualized human being is still able to find a power
of sustainment in the energies of the biological functions and in the
cultural tradition, at the Zenith the individualized being should
eventually open him or herself up to the descent of a
"trans-individual power and to the revelation of the place and
function he or she potentially occupies within the vaster whole of
Humanity. What could only be intuitively sensed as the Ascendant (the
symbolic sunrise point) can in principle be clearly seen and concretely
applied at the Zenith (the symbolic noon point) At the Zenith, when the
individual is ready to take this radical step, he or she maybe 'reborn'
as a full-fledged, and in a real sense, consecrated individual, able,
egolessly and consciously to act as an agent by Humanity. Such an
individual can then be empowered by Humanity.
The
majority of human beings, especially in the Western world, are
struggling through the slow and arduous process of individualization.
In interpreting the birth-chart of these individuals-in-the-making, it
is therefore advisable and often imperative to assume that at the
symbolic center of the birth chart a centralizing entity or power of
integration at least partially operates. The birth-chart can therefore
be considered a mandala; and all mandalas have to have a center and a
circumference. Everything contained within this circumference should
sooner or later by referred to the center. All the contents of the
mandala of personality acquire their meaning by being related to the
center. They are potentially, if not actually, powers which the central
"I" should be able to peruse in order to express itself, to establish
its position and status in the environment and leave its mark -
signature of its individual being - upon whatever it is able to affect.
Any
integrative process requires some kind of boundaries which set limits
to it and define its scope in spatial terms. When a birth-chart is
considered a mandala, its center, is I repeat, the point at which the
horizon and meridian axes cross. Here stands, if not the actual
individual, at least the potentiality of individualization ( the
individual-in-the-making). The circumference which sets limits to the
field of existence of an individual (basic living space is
in present astrology the zodiac.
The
Zodiac also symbolizes for the individual generic "human nature'
which
also sets limits to individual.
In the
western world, all but a few astrologers use that is called the
tropical zodiac which to an astronomer, is the ecliptic the earth's
orbit.
At the
biological level of interpretation, the zodiac is the field of
electromagnetic energy surrounding the Earth. As the Sun's rays strike
our biosphere at constantly changing angles month after month, they
release into it and induce varying types of energies. The twelve signs
of the zodiac represent twelve fundamental types of energies. The day
of the year of person is born determines the type of energy providing
the foundation on which the different biological processes operate,
each in its own organic manner. This solar energy is then distributed
by the Moon, and mystified by the functional use the planets make of it.
At the
sociocultural level, a person's sun-sign gives the astrologer some
basic information concerning the "character' or personality factor of
that person as he or she participates in family or social activities.
By character is meant the way of least resistance and maximum
effectiveness this member of society has found to operate among other
members and in relation to a central collective authority.
When a
birth-chart is interpreted at the individual level, the Sun symbolizes
the "will' of the individual. But it should be clear that such an
interpretation does not invalidate the biological and social meanings
of the Sun in this individual's live. The power of will which emanates
from the individualized Sun is conditioned by the organic vitality and
the psychic state and character of the person, as he or she strives to
establish a stance in life. What is called "will" is the power of the
I-center to order the mobilization of the biological and social
energies operating within the circular space symbolizing the whole
person in order to act in an individual way.. thus to express its
relatively unique character and purpose in life.
.
Many
interpretations of what is involved in parapsychological occurrences
and psychic or spiritual healing are possible, and in spite of the
astronauts' landing on the Moon, which they physically experienced as a
barren globe of sand and rocks, the real nature of our one and only
satellite remains a great mystery - a mystery perhaps hidden in the
extraordinary fact that from the Earth the discs of the Sun and the
full Moon appear to be of practically the same size. This fact (which
is what makes total eclipse possible) is indeed extraordinary, for it
means that the small Moon had to be just close enough to the Earth so
that it appears to be the same size as the far bigger and more distant
Sun.
A
polarization is evidently indicated, and at the level of the individual
the Sun-Moon polarity points to that of the individualized will and a
collective psychic power which is still much of a mystery. Some people
may call it "soul"
others
(with Carl Jung) the "anima". It maybe the counterpart of the principle
of individuality. The marriage of Mind and Soul. and this will have to
be a complete different document. The Yin-Yang polarity.
In the
birth -charts of men and women trying consciously to meet problems and
opportunities related to the process of individualization and at least
temporary disengagement from collective values, the planet Mercury
plays a most important role. It gives mental formulation to the solar
will. It seeks to impersonalize and provide a conceptual foundation for
the often unclear urge the would-be-indivudual experiences to live his
our her own life
This urge
is seen in its emotional and personal aspect in the position of and the
relationship between Mars
and Venus. In these
planets we can see
symbolized what the drive toward individualization produces in
the personality and consciousness of the self actualizing human being
seeking to assert (Mars) his or her own difference and to revalue
(Venus) what his or her family and culture had impressed as being moral
or immoral, beautiful or ugly, socially acceptable or unacceptable.
At such a
level of interpretation, Saturn,
at least potentially, becomes that
active power of the Father-within, the "law" of one's own being. But he
center of that individualized being is not a planet; it is symbolized
by the central crossing of horizon and meridian. This I-center finds
Saturn the power to stabilize, steady and insure the validity of its
deep sense of uniqueness its identity Saturn certifies, if not the mew
name the individual may have adopted, at least the self image he or she
is building
Jupiter may
refer to the manner in which the social status and group experiences of
the individual have contributed to the urge ot develop a realization of
uniqueness.
Jupiter is
also the pride engendered by the process of individualization, at least
in the beginning. This pride can nevertheless, afteron, become a great
obstacle to further growth, because it can cut the individual "I" off
from the power of its roots and insulate it from the descent of
spiritual and transformation forces. At this individual level of
consciousness, Jupiter can indeed have a more insidiously negative
meaning that Saturn, Because it tends to fill the Satuarnian structure
of individual selfhood with an ever-increasing feeling of achievement
and a desire for fame and adulation.
At the
biological level, Jupiter too often leads to excesses in eating and
overweight. At the individual level, it may produce and over-estimation
of one's importance, an unjustifiable Messianic complex or even a
paranoid attitude. As we have seen, it is at the sociocultural level
that Jupiter can most beneficially and constructively operate,
because it is essentially the "social " planet.
When a
birth-chart is interpreted at the individual level, Uranus, Neptune and
Pluto can play two very different roles. They can be interpreted as
extensions of the individual person in his or her relation to society
and cultural processes, or as relentless disturbers of the personality
and the individual's peace of mind.
Uranus, in
the first and positive sense, symbolizes the potential "genius" of the
individual; and by genius I simply mean the capacity a person has to
express vividly upon the collective mind of his culture or community a
vision or ideal which has came to him from a source of whose nature he
is not clearly aware. The I conscious individual has emerged from her
natal cultural matrix and is most eager to do his own thing. The
individual even though willing to learn from the past of the culture,
is intent upon expressing himself in an original and creative manner.
In an individual's birth chart Uranus represents the area and the
conditions in which the genius of the individual may find expression.
Nothing in astrological terms, however can show whether this expression
will be significant for anyone besides the individual himself. This
need has nevertheless a transformative character. If the act of work of
genius can transform a whole community or an entire culture, then it is
truly linked with a manifestation of the vast movement of human
evolution. The individual may believe that what he created has such a
movement, but does not really experience the source of creative influx
as a transcendent entity of power unless he has already reached beyond
the strictly individual level.
This cannot
occur as long as the mandala of personality has a solid center. The
personality is not only strictly defined and limited by its
circumference - it's outer form; it is also closed to inner influences
that would effect its center. The I-center has to open up if
transcendent and transindividual power and light is to flow into the
mind and eventually the entire personality.
The Uranian
revolutionary is an individual in whom certain personal factors have
produced an unusual sensitivity to the change of rhythm caused by the
opening of a new planetary cycle. If such an individual is not
conscious of this sensitivity, and even less of what planetary and
historical cycles are, then Uranus can only operate (symbolically
speaking) within his or her closed centered field of consciousness. The
individual considers what he or she does and thinks as being her or her
own, even if the feeling is strong in this consciousness that somehow
the idea or impulse to act has come to him or her. In whatever way it
may be believed to have done the activity is bound to cause some sort
of crisis, and the events it spawns maybe strongly cathartic.
With
Neptune
we are dealing not so much with critical events as with slow,
persistent, and perhaps insidious changes. While Uranus may try to
batter down the fortified walls of the Saturnian ego, Neptune tends to
dissolve them. It has therefore been called the Universal Solvent and
its erosionary operation compares to the slow but repeated action
of the sea waves upon the rocks of the shore. Neptune evokes the
appearance in the consciousness of the visionary image of what might be
or should be. The Neptunian individual tends to be the dreamer of
utopias.
To these
Neptunian imaginings Pluto,
in its positive aspect, brings concreteness
and also a degree of fanaticism. Pluto is the ideologist. For the
Plutonian individual, everything has to be decided and acted upon the
basis of great impersonal, or rather super personal, principles. Pluto
brings the universal into the particular, the cosmos into the human
person. This can be magnificent or devastating and at times both. If
Pluto has often been given a bad reputation in astrological circles, it
is because its symbolic action is utterly unsentimental and unconcerned
with personal feelings. The sentimentality and constant concern with
personal values and issues so evident in our present American culture
can be seen as a reaction against the fact that human beings are now
confronted with the insistent need of making decisions requiring the
understanding of a large scale planetary and cosmic principles;
and most people are frightened by having to deal with such vast - and
to them incomprehensible - issues. In panic they cling to the ropes
that bind persons to an elusive play of attraction and repulsion. The
ropes constantly break, loved turns into hatred, or, what is worse,
selfish indifference.
In the
charts of most people, Pluto plays no significant individual role, but
only refers to the person's involvement in collective and social or
political Plutinioan crises. When Pluto performs an important
individual function, the individual often tries, consciously or
instinctively to gain personal advantage from these collective crises.
Even in a catastrophic inflationary period, some individuals manage ot
make huge fortunes. The man who gains wealth or power through black
market operations or by dealing in dangerous drugs - and also the
munitions maker, the merchant of death - may have a Plutonian
character. Pluto has been associated with gang leadership because
criminal gangs are the products of disintegrating social conditions,
which have a Neptunian character. The idealistic and, that the present
stage of social and cultural evolution, mostly unrealistic stage of
social and cultural evolution, mostly unrealistic concept of
egalitarianism in Neptunian. Necessary as it undoubtedly is when
Saturnian rigidity and Jupiterian privileges have become static and
meaningless, the Neptunian process of leveling down leads to social
chaos and the negation of all functional differentiation. Pluto has to
act, It acts positively when it clearly formulates new principles of
cosmic order to serve as a foundation for a new society or at the
individual level for a new personality and a new body. Pluto acts
negatively when the individual uses chaos to gather around his or her
ego and totally dominate a blind collectivity of lost souls eager for
order and personal contact at any cost.
Uranus can
be seen to be the power that constantly opposes the conservative and
security-obcessed activity of Saturn by producing minor shocks and
crises compelling the mind to overcome its formalism and traditional
assumptions and by inticing the consciousness and feelings to open
themselves to new ideals and broader viewpoints or more inclusive
attitudes. Neptune, on the other hand, counteracts the social ambition
and unrestrained expansiveness of Jupiter; it seeks to depersonalize
the motives of the individual and to give a more univeralsistic and
humanitarian quality and character to the ideal of indicidual
fulfillment. As to Pluto we can see this often cathartic and relentless
planet performing a useful function as the purifier of Martian desires
and impulses a purification taking the form of a repudiation of all
that dies not strictly belong to the character and temperament of the
individual.
In other
words,. the three trans-Saturian planets impel and sometimes even
compel, the self-actualizing individual to overcome the inertia of old
biological and social habits.
There are
many levels of how these three planets affect the deepest foots of
individual being - the transpersonal process that leads to a fourth
level of activity and consciousness, a level beyond the individual.
In theory,
the newborns first in breathing impresses the potential solution of the
basic problems life will present upon his or her etheric body - but
there is nothing yet in the body to be conscious of and to hold this
primordial revelation. The first out-breathing (the first cry)
represents the answer of the body to the revelation - an unconscious,
strictly biological response. Then life-in-the-body begins as heart,
lungs and nerves become definitely interconnected according to the
fundamental rhythm of the biological self hood. Eventually, a
collective-sociocultural personality develops through family contacts
and education; then perhaps a truly individualized selfhood, at least
relatively free from bondage to biology and culture, autonomous and
self actualizing.
If there is
a stop beyond individuality- if fulfillment of individual selfhood is
not accepted as an end in itself, but rather as an illusory goal that
just be deliberately discarded then the dynamic intensity or the
process of transformations increases. The birthchart is now seen as an
alter on which the fire of constant overcoming must burn. That fire can
be watched by the transpersonal astrologer as he or she studies the
progressions of the whole chart and particularly of the Sun and the
Moon, then the transits of the personal, social, and
transformative planets. What counts is the dynamism of the process.
Everything is seen moving, active, interacting - playing its roll in
the great drama of the transmutation of the "I" into the "we" of
individual consciousness onto Pleroma consciousness.
This fire
is a subtle power, relentless in its consistency. It flows up, in
antiphony with the descent of spirit-manifesting light. It is a song
that has forgotten the notes many cultures have produced during many
individual lives. At times. this song may seem tragic, even ruthless,
but it always is inherently peace. It is the song of the Sage within
the heart - a song of love escaped from the prison of pain. In it the
Yang of spirit and the Yin of trans-human desire blend in a silence
that is wisdom - that is nothing, yet embraces everything. It is the
whole singing Itselfs "I" into a myriad of silences.
Another Introduction to Astrology
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MYTH
Astro Journey
An Article: THE PRGRESSED MOON
See My Birth Chart
An article: THE LUNAR PHASES
