Studies in Astrology

by

Elman Bacher

Volume IX


Chapter VI

Light As Therapy

   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 occult or 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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