Studies in Astrology

by

Elman Bacher

Volume V


Chapter III

A Study of Polarity

   The horoscope is, among many other things, a mandala of sexuality. The life of all manifestations is the interchange made by the Cosmic Forces as they express the dynamic and receptive polarities. That which is dynamic we refer to as "positive," "active," "masculine;" it designates "that which impregnates or stimulates." In physical manifestation of living, generating organisms we call it "male sex." That which is receptive is that which is acted upon; it is "passive," "resultant," "that which receives the impregnation or stimulation and nurtures the new life into active expression." In physical terms we call this polarity-expression "female sex." People are familiar with the terms "male sex" and "female sex" because the generative impulses are a natal factor in their own experience and they are evidenced in the life-experience of other forms, such as animal and plant life, perceived on every hand.

   However, the word "sex" is much more extended in its meanings. It is life in action and movement; the eternal interchange of vibratory powers and their effect on each other is that which makes manifestation what it is. And this applies to all planes, from the most dense, slowly vibrating level of material manifestation to the very essence of the Creative Source itself. Every moment of our existence is an expression of cosmic sexuality; this will be seen if we consider a few things that demonstrate our ability to stimulate and to be stimulated.

   We ask a question; we are receptive to the information given to us by the person who projects the answer. We speak; we take in breath as pabulum for our words and we project the thought which we incarnate in sound-symbols called words. Our sense-perceptions are agencies of receptivity, by their exercise we receive impressions by which we identify the world exterior to ourselves. We make ourselves perceptible to others by our action in movement and sound. Someone projects himself into our awareness; we react to his expression according to our vibratory state of consciousness.

   These simple, everyday illustrations are just a few of the many that could be considered; however, they are sufficient to show that we, as expressions of life, are composite expressions of Cosmic Polarity. We are so constituted that we demonstrate throughout our lives, in one way or another, our essential bi-polarity. To understand "sex" to mean only the attributes of physical generation is to keep our understanding at mud-level. The philosopher comprehends that a principle--whether of sex or anything else- -is omnipotent.

   In creative activity the essential bi-polarity of the human organism is wonderfully illustrated. The artist, in his inspirational at-one-ments, opens his consciousness to realizations of the perfect patterns resident in the inner planes; he draws down, as it were, the stimulating power which makes it possible for him to conceive the ideal pattern in terms of his particular artistic medium. By concentrated meditation he molds this realization into form on the mental planes. Then, by the agency of his highly developed physical technique, he gives birth to this particular version of the ideal pattern. In short, he projects this manifested concept into the Physical World and it, in turn, is perceived by other people who derive from it a stimulus of their own idealism and inspiration. Thus the creative artist exercises both the receptive and the dynamic polarities; he fuses his own "maleness and femaleness" into one intensely focused creative act. Incidentally, this is astrologically illustrated by the planet Uranus, which is exalted in Scorpio; Uranus is the fusion of Mars-Venus--the synchronization of the essential symbols of the planets whose points of rulership initiate the two horizontal hemispheres--self-awareness and soul-awareness.

   Pupils--as children--are in the process of integrating their faculties through the functions involved in "growing up." They receive a stimulus from the teacher and they absorb the effect of this stimulus; sooner or later they give life to their knowledge by putting it into action in their work as adults. The teacher, who, in relationship to his pupils, acts as a "stimulator" has, in his turn, been stimulated by those who radiated teaching to him. We are all dynamic and receptive links in the eternal chain of becoming.

   "Masculine and male" and "feminine and female" are personalized expressions of Cosmic Polarity. The ultimate abstraction of these terms--their composite essential truth--is summed up in the simple phrase: CAUSE and EFFECT.

   As the essential sexual maleness of the human organism acts on the essential physical femaleness, so the creative source acts on and through material manifestation for the ongoing of its total Life. The material dimension--in all of its immensity of spatial expression--is female to the cosmic male. Matter has been defined as the "negative Pole of Spirit," "Mother Earth," and many other such feminized expressions, or figures of speech. Neither pole exists--or can exist--without the other; the essentials of each are inherent in every expression of life. The horoscope bears this out in a simple, beautiful way:

   Use three blank circles as illustration: in the first, place a dot in the center. This is analogous to the creative source manifesting a universe, a galaxy, a solar-system, or an individual human being. The "Life" of the wheel is not shown; its area is, except for the dot, entirely blank. Meditate on this wheel as it represents a specific life- expression.

   In the second circle place a central dot and then add the vertical diameter; the circle now has "Life"--its area is differentiated in the simplest possible way: division, by one line, into two hemispheres. This vertical line is the abstract symbol of the dynamic polarity of the cosmos; it is the essential symbol for the generative action of sex; it is the root-symbol of cause. Apply it to any human horoscope and recognize that this vertical is the composite of the cusps of the fourth and tenth houses--the "houses of parentage." Our parentage is the "first step," the "initiating agency," the cause of our manifestation on the physical plane as human beings. But, note this clearly: we have, as our parentage, a composite of male and female sex; one is focalized in male polarity as its physical expression and the other is focalized physically in female polarity. The two together generated our physical vehicle.

   Now, to the third circle add the central dot and the horizontal diameter. This is the picturing of that which is acted upon by the generating agency--the subjective aspect of life, that which was generated and is the result of generation. The vertical is cause, the horizontal is effect. The third circle, with the horizontal diameter, is also differentiated into two halves but, since they are "focalized horizontally," they appear as the "counterparts of the vertical halves. This horizontal diameter is, astrologically, the composite of the cusps of the Ascendant (first house) and the Descendant (seventh house). The person represented by the chart--the native--stands at the Ascendant, his consciousness enveloped in his physical garment; he "looks across the wheel" and, at the furthermost point, opposite to his own place, he sees (in the same way we see our reflections in a mirror) his counterpart, his "other Self," his needed fulfillments, his--in short-- mate.

   The thrilling, stupefying marvelousness of astrological symbology is nowhere more evident than as the composite of four halves in one circle. Add to the second and third wheels the complementary diameter; the result pictures the four quadrants of the individual horoscope but, in simple form, it pictures the bi-polarity of that which generates and that which is generated.

   You are a man; your seventh house is a woman; one of your parents is a man and the other is a woman. Yet the vertical line of parentage represents the bi-polarity of the dynamic essence of life; the horizontal represents the bi-polarity of the receptive essence. Continuing this approach in a more extended way we see that every factor of the astrological wheel is a composite of dynamic and receptive polarities. Any male or any female can have any of the signs on any cusp; the ruler of the chart, the Sun and the Moon, or any of the planetary positions can be found in any of the zodiacal signs regardless of whether the signs involved are considered "masculine" or "feminine."

   So we are able to recognize that if our physical bodies are specializations of polarity into male or female generative sex, our consciousness is a vibratory composite of both polarities. Understanding human relationship is really understanding the vibratory sexuality of the human consciousness. The astro-philosopher must cultivate this understanding if he is to unlock the deepest secrets of astrological patterns.

   The-astro-philosopher who is a parent--father or mother--starts to understand his children's charts when he starts to understand his own chart. To the degree that he "turns away" from anything in his own vibratory picture, will he be deficient in interpreting those of his offspring. His eighth house is his generative life particularly in relationship to his mate, but his fifth house is the area of love- consciousness by which he extends an "invitation to life" to other Egos who come in as his children. All parents, to a degree, express the fifth house love potential, but parents who are astro-philosophers combine the powers of the fifth house with those of its spiritualized polarity, the eleventh. They are not just parents, they are friends; they are not just nurturers of the body, they are nurturers of the mind and Spirit; they are not just "the old man" or "my ma"--they are elder brother and elder sister who have offered to share their understanding of life with those who come in through them. And, as astro-philosophers, they offer to their young ones a viewpoint based on understanding of principles plus the warmth and consolation of a loving heart. He, the parent, will seek to understand the bi-polar vibrational constitution of each child and prayerfully seek guidance to clear awareness of the patterns of the children's charts as they represent potentials for unfoldment. He must understand the principles of life as they are pictured in the fifth-house pattern of his own chart and align his consciousness more and more with the essential meanings of parenthood as a factor in Life-experience.

   We have come to a point in our approach to human nature when we no longer put men into packages labeled "masculine qualities only" and women in similar designations of "feminine qualities only." This outmoded approach has been proven to be out of line with the spirit of truthful inquiry. Males can, and sometimes do, manifest a marked tendency toward elements of the feminine personality and the converse is true of many females. The astro-philosopher, who is a parent, knows--and knows with his deep understanding--that his sons and daughters are composites of vibrational polarity and that their purpose in living and his purpose in nurturing and guiding is not to become "all man or all woman" but to cultivate the power to express the best of both, according to the essential requirements shown in the charts. Here is a significant point which is presented as a basis for a parent to determine his vibratory effect on the consciousness of a child: compare your chart with the child's and if you have a planet conjunct the child's Ascendant, then know that you stimulate in a very marked degree the vibration of that planet in the child's chart. This is a basic example of the Principle of Sympathetic Vibration--the "tuning-fork-principle." If you, a man, have your Mars or Sun on your daughter's Ascendant you, as an astro-philosopher, are bound to cultivate the most constructive expressions of that planet in your own living. You are the first "living man-picture" your daughter has and to the degree that you can represent regenerate Sun or regenerate Mars, as the case may be, you assist in a remarkable way to help her "register" a favorable reaction to the opposite sex. Other planets work the same way but Sun and Mars are used in this illustration because they are in composite--the basic or essential "masculine pattern of consciousness." Unregeneracy on your part, in relationship to her, will stimulate her (she, being the child and impressionable, is very sensitive to your vibration) to intensify any unregenerate "male-picture" that may register in her chart and make it correspondingly difficult for her, when she is grown, to "clarify her pictures" of the opposite sex.

   The same principle applies to your effect on your sons, your wife's on the children, and the children to each other. This "planet on Ascendant" is a vital vibratory tie-up and must be studied with great care--and the results of the study applied conscientiously in daily living. Further study can be given to any inter-relationship between two planets and charts; note particularly those exchanges in which the dynamic planets of the boys conjunct the planets of the girls; this is a variation of the "planet on Ascendant" pattern. If a girl has a "masculine-plus" vibratory pattern and a boy has a "feminine-plus," and they seem to be strongly drawn to each other in their growing up together, then study the Uranus of each in relationship to each other. Uranus, as has been said before, is the "composite of masculine and feminine." In relationships between people it indicates spiritual attractions of great depth and intensity, and the child who has Uranus affecting the other one's chart in a noticeable way can be potential "illuminator" of the other one. Help your children to understand themselves as expressions of the Goodness and Beauty of Life--which, in truth they are--and make yourself a "mediator"--through your astro-philosophical understanding-- between that which they tend, instinctively, to be, and that which their charts indicate they can become.

   If one parent is an astro-philosopher, the other one should try to learn something of the subject so that a degree of mutuality of understanding and approach can be found as a basis of training and guiding those to whom incarnation was given. Each child has, innately, a unique "father-mother" picture: perhaps there is a deep and difficult karmic tie-up between one of the children and one of the parents, or between two of the children. Mutuality of astro-philosophical understanding can be a wonderful "at-tune-ment" for the parents in their cooperative service as parents. These tie-ups must be understood by both parents to be manifestations of the Law of Cause and Effect--to be perceived as energy-patterns that are in the process of regenerate fulfillment through Love. They are not to be side-stepped, avoided or "shrugged off."

   Astro-philosophy provides a wonderful channel by which parents who are inclined to live excessively in their centers of feeling-response and emotion may gain perspective in their seeking to understand their children; further it gives the parents a wonderful "joint- hobby"--something they can use to help other parents and to enjoy together as long as they live. Through it they can realize the truth that marriage is fraternity, its life is mutuality, its flowering is true friendship.

  



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