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.