Studies in Astrology
by
Elman Bacher
Volume II
Chapter V
Neptune: Principle of Instrumentation
THY WILL BE DONE. It is by this phrase, or one of its
many equivalents, that the human being recognizes that he is an
instrument in the hands of the Over-all Forces, either White or Black.
In an attitude of adoration or consecration, he surrenders his personal will
in order to serve his concept of the purposes of those Forces. Also, those who
are qualified to act as agencies for the releasing of Power are driven by
irresistible urges to do so, even though they may not be conscious of their
instrumentality.
Of the former group, Jeanne d'Arc, the warrior-saint
of France, is a good example. Through her devotion to her "voices" she became
an instrument in the hands of those spiritual agencies which were concerned
with the development of the French nation. An extraordinary example of
conscious instrumentation was Isadora Duncan, the American dancer; her
inspirational responsiveness made possible a dynamic liberation to the concept
of the art of Dance in modern times. Among the many people in recent years who
demonstrated instrumentation we may consider Bernadette Soubirous, the French
peasant girl, through whom the establishment of the healing-grotto at Lourdes
was made possible; Max Heindel, the late Father Flannagan, and Mother Frances
Cabrini were "instruments" for the establishment of institutions for
instruction, human regeneration, and healing.
Of the second group, humanitarians who work along the
more secular lines of government, science, economics, etc., are good examples.
Of these we might mention Woodrow Wilson, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and
Albert Schweitzer.
The exoteric symbol of Neptune is the "trident," or
forked spear, of the ocean-god. Esoterically, however, the symbol represents
the upturned cup, open to receive the inflow of inspirational or astral
energies. Furthermore, we are told Neptune is not, really, a member of our
solar system but is functioning as a "transmitter of galactic energies" to our
system. In this function of galactic transmission, Neptune is seen to
parallel, on a vast, transcendent scale, the functions of our Moon, which
"works locally" between the Earth and the Sun.
Combining the above factors, we see that Neptune is a
feminine vibration, impressionable, sensitive, reflective, fluidic, and
receptive. As the Moon is "mother" in a personal sense, with reference to
relationship, home, and nation, so Neptune is "mother" in universal sense.
"Mother Church," all-embracing, all-forgiving, all-redeeming, is Neptune; the
ocean, harboring in its depths the evolution of millions of forms, is Neptune;
the virtue of compassion, which is understanding-love, recognizes no barriers
to its expression--it reaches all because it has experienced all--its
universality is a perfect representation of Neptune. The magic of Art is
Neptune; by attunement to this transcendent vibration Man gives expression to
the highest impulses of his consciousness through poetry, drama, dance, music,
painting, and sculpture. Through these agencies Man, from his beginnings, has
sought to give "body" to his idealities through the direction of technique by
Will, fired by inspiration. "Religion" and "Art" are two ways of saying "Man's
expression, of his recognition of Divinity." Through these two forms of
expression, Man proves himself to be "an instrument in the Divine Hands."
Through the exercise of his Neptune potentials, he manifests as a microcosmic
"transmitter of super-dimensional forces" in his capacities as artist, healer,
teacher, and philanthropist.
While Venus represents Man's faculty of "response to
Beauty" through his inner sensitivities and cultivations, Neptune represents
his faculty to "contrive Beauty" or "express Beauty" by means of exercising
his artistic talents and abilities; he uses his materials as instruments to
manifest his concepts, but he in turn, through response to inspiration, is an
instrument through which great Intelligences speak to humanity. The two arts
which most specifically represent the "instrumentation" of Neptune are Music
and Drama.
Neptune is the transcendent planet of the mental
triad--Mercury and the Moon being the other two. Since the language, or "the
word" of the inner plane is tone (rhythmic sound vibration), the musician
"speaks to us in melody and tonal harmony." The interpretive musician acts as
an instrument to manifest the concepts of the creative musician who, in turn,
acts as an instrument for inner-plane voices. The trained improvisor, by his
sensitive response to musical inspiration and the obedience with which his
physical equipment reacts to that inspiration, is an immediate and direct
channel for artistic utterance. In the exercise of his talent, his body, his
musical instrument, his musical intelligence and responsiveness are all fused
into one composite instrument through which the inner-plane voices speak to
uS.
The actor, from his inner knowledge of human nature
and experience, which is accumulated through many incarnations of intense
emotional experience, symbolizes in each characterization a certain vibratory
pattern, or level, of the soul body of mankind. Through his inspiration he
transmits the playwright's concept of humanity and temporarily assumes the
reality of a certain type of person. The greatest acting requires, of course,
technique of timing, reading, and movement, but the quality of spiritual
greatness that moves the members of an audience to rapture and exaltation is
that which is derived from the actor's transmission of his own inner memory
(the superconscious) of experience. He "out-pictures" a facet of the inner
memory of each person moved by his performance.
The Drama of Life is reflected, microcosmically, by
the drama of the theatre. Human problems, relationships, joys, loves,
sufferings, defeats, and triumphs are all mirrored by the projection of the
playwright and the instrumental interpretation of the actor. When we, as
individuals, choose to make ourselves "instruments of the Divine" we play a
role on our own Stage of Life that is ennobling, inspiring, beautiful, and
triumphant.
"Instrumentation" is a focalized releasing of power.
When used by persons centered by the higher dimensions of consciousness great
service of beauty, healing, and realignment are made possible in all phases of
life--human and sub-human. However, power is no respecter of persons or
things; it just operates as it is directed. (Consequently, when it is released
through an unregenerate or unspiritualized consciousness, instrumentation
becomes a process by which indescribable negatives may be exposed. Egotism
that is self-centered and self-glorifying makes of instrumentation a thing of
evil because through it Power is released for the fulfillment of ends that are
limiting and destructive. In this reference the vibratory effects of Neptune
must be understood in the study of horoscopes of criminals, delinquents, and
psychopaths. These sick people are disorganized, intensity of desire
capacities over-balancing Will and/or intelligence, intensity of Purpose
coupled with perversion of Ideality--and all maladjusted conditions tend to
develop responsiveness to destructive astral forces. Putting these impulses
into action is "black instrumentation." The person whose intense, but
undirected, sexuality leads him to perpetrate murder and cruelty as an
"outlet" is a tool of Blackness; the religious fanatic who, in the name of his
gentle, loving Masters abuses, imprisons, tortures, and enslaves his fellow
man "for the glory of God and his Church" may be perfectly sincere in his
motives, but in such treatment of others he proves himself to be on a low
vibratory rate.
The Spanish Inquisition may be studied briefly at this
point since the organization was an "instrument" of "Mother Church." There
were, doubtless, many members of the Inquisition who zealously and sincerely
perpetrated outrages against "heretics," being motivated by idealistic efforts
to express "glory to God" as their church interpreted it. Acts of heroism,
self-sacrifice and loyalty which they committed point to an unshakable faith
in their concept of spiritual rightness. The means used will have to be
answered for in subsequent incarnations, but there is no doubt that sincere
devotion to an ideal builds in Whiteness in the inner planes.
It is the ultimate perversion of the vibration of
Neptune when a pretense of ideality is utilized deliberately for self-
aggrandizement, self-glory, and domination over the mind and body of another
person. This is illusion masking illusion, corruption of corruption, a lie
lying to itself.
When the regeneration has been commenced and the
Neptune-patterns from the past are ready for redemption people are "pulled
into the most impossible-to-control situations." They are subtly influenced
into habits which destroy them; they ask for bread--they get stones; they
lovingly assume a responsibility--it becomes a back-breaking burden from which
they never find release in this life; they seek spiritual enlightenment--they
get a species of black magic which wrecks them; they have intense creative
urges and their efforts toward self-expression are frustrated at every turn;
they are endowed with unusual physical attractions--they never find the
fulfillment of love which they seek above all other things. In each of these
cases, the realization of the Ideal forever eludes the suffering person with
the >accompanying temptation to sink into negative levels of cynicism, rage,
and hopeless fury against Life which they begin to think of as something they
can no longer endure but must escape from. Negative Neptune is the "flight
from reality" through drink, drugs, indolence, perversion, and suicide. The
"flight from reality" is the attempt to escape the pressure of the Inner
Voice, which is the person's Reality; he cannot face his past failures to live
spiritually.
Neptune afflicted in the horoscope should be studied
as a karmic indication of Principle having been perverted in the past. People
who attempt, in one way or another, to escape their problems do so only
because they are not aware of the principle which is working for their
development. They have, in the past, blinded themselves to "Principle-
awareness" by deliberately masking their own truth. Objectively or
subjectively in these instances Neptune walks hand-in-hand with Cause and
Effect: clouding the lives of people with illusions because of Illusion having
been perpetrated.
Since everyone's Neptune is activated in some way
periodically it is of value to the astro-analyst to learn something of the
person's experience and reactions in those times. A person who, to a degree,
"lives with his Neptune" will recall moments of intense inspiration and
exaltation; he will refer to a highly developed, spiritually-minded person
whose acquaintance he made or an experience of artistic illumination. Persons
who are not well acquainted with Neptune may recall experiences that caused
them considerable distress. They misplaced and lost things; material affairs
appeared chaotic and confused; things happened and things were said, the
sources of which could not be determined; relationships took on a bizarre
aspect and unsuspected things were revealed. On the more subtle planes of
experience strange, disturbing emotions were aroused, complex desires and
peculiar ecstasies may have been felt; will power and purpose seemed to
dissolve into unaccustomed feelings of lassitude and indifference; trancelike
imaginings and weird dreams may have been experienced. Persons whose charts
carry a heavy emphasis on the element of Earth or the vibration of Saturn can
experience in their Neptune-activations something really frightening: the
material expression of life seems to become fluidic and perspectives appear
all out of focus. This is Neptune reminding them of impermanence of the
physical plane; it may appear like a temporary aberration but it is really
just a momentary shift of consciousness onto a more subtle plane.
The quality of "hyper-passivity" clearly describes
Neptune's "personality" and as such emphasizes in a pronounced manner the
receptive, feminine potentials of the chart. The sign of Neptune's rulership,
Pisces, is of the water element and the mutable cross--the most purely
impressionable of the entire zodiac.
Since Neptune's function is "channel-ship" we must
give careful study to the unregenerate patterns of the planets which aspect
Neptune in the chart even if Neptune itself is unafflicted. This is important
because though the "channel" may be efficient in function we should understand
the quality of "what comes through." A person naturally endowed with psychic
sensitivity or a high potential for idealism and devotion can, in his
unregenerate expressions, open up to all manner of perverse or destructive
influences. Thus, inundated by waves of inflow from the astral planes he can
submit his heart, mind, and consciousness to agencies which are neither worthy
nor health-giving. Neptune itself unafflicted in the chart is a potential for
transmutation through Ideality--i.e. through the exercise of prayer, living
devotion to high ideals which are expressions of life-giving Principle,
purification of the entire organism through regeneration of physical health
and responsiveness to the therapeutic power of music or art in general.
Neptune is the ruler of the twelfth house of the
"natural" or "cosmic" horoscope; its vibrations convey a twelfth house
condition of some sort or another to the house that has Pisces on the cusp--or
is principally influenced by that sign. Planets in Pisces--disposited by
Neptune--are "potentials for the unfoldment of Cosmic Consciousness through
the redemption of karma by Idealism;" frictional aspects to Piscean planets
indicate the required "soul adjustments."
The house containing Neptune contains the secret of
how you express cosmic consciousness and, particularly through which
experience-patterns; toward what ends are you used by spiritual or astral
forces; the source of your awareness of "heaven on earth;" the principal
environmental source of your inspiration; the point where you most easily
surrender to (your concept of) God's will; your transcendence of separateness
and instrumentality for truth.