Studies in Astrology
by
Elman Bacher
Volume IX
Chapter II
Security
"To exist" is "to be in a state of motion," but
"to live constructively" is "to exist with a consciousness of source and
objective." In this consciousness is found the root of the security-feeling
regardless of the condition of outer circumstances. The astrological mandala
pictures this as follows: Draw a circle with the vertical and horizontal
diameters; place the Aries-symbol at the Ascendant-point Capricorn at the top
of the wheel, Cancer at the bottom; connect Aries to Capricorn and Cancer by
straight lines.
Aries is the primordial I AM--the consciousness of
individualized self-hood. Because Life is Action, "to be" means "to express,"
"to project" and "to act and react." Creativity and epigenesis are, depending
on evolutionary octave, the arch-principles of Life-action because all
expressions are radiative and affective by nature. Mars then is the Principle
of Action, the "Spark from the Central Flame" which provides every epigenetic
thing with the faculty of projective movement. But, Mars has to have an
objective toward which to move, else his action is devoid of purpose or
meaning. His unfocused actions are, therefore, wasted energy. To waste one's
endowment of energy is to deplete the consciousness of I AM; the result of
this depletion is one polarity of the insecurity-feeling.
To have a relatively dim awareness of I AM is to
be relatively decentralized and, correspondingly, relatively susceptible to
the impacts of other mental, emotional, psychic, and physical power-
projections. Remember that in target-practice the shooting and the throwing
have no meaning if there is no target to focus on for training; the target
chemically symbolizes the objective of developing physical co-ordination for
which the shooter or thrower practices. To continue to shoot or throw without
the focus of the target is "Mars without an objective;" such action results in
a bare minimum of muscular exercise but little, if any, muscular co-ordination
results.
We speak of growing boys and girls as "shooting up
to young manhood and womanhood." When the objectives of life-giving maturities
are not focused on, then the mechanical growing up-like the aimless shooting
and throwing-eventually results in the insecurity of wasted motion and energy.
To "take incarnation" has for its purpose life-givingness which is maturity
and which, astrologically, is indicated by the exaltation of Mars in
Capricorn, the Saturn-sign of power to assume and fulfill responsibilities.
These responsibilities are inherent in the fact that maturity of consciousness
implies self-direction and the spiritual responsibility is constructive
expression. On the genetic octave of expression, "constructive expression" is
generative life and steward-ship of that which is generated, whether it is the
incarnation of other Egos--"our children"--or the initiation of a work-
pattern--"our service."
Wasted growing-up-ness is, to a large degree, a
mechanical action which results in insecurity when the person is timed for
mature expression but is incapable of such functioning. He is at the mercy of
other people's vibrations and powers and he is incapable of functioning from
his center of self-direction. Mars, leaving Aries and traveling through the
wheel counter-clockwise, must rise from the Cancer-point at the bottom of the
wheel; to remain bogged down in dependency-security is to avoid the dynamic
upward propulsion of true growing. Any person so bogged down tries to
function through another strength, he does not "know his own." He remains
fixated on "source," but since he is unaware of individualized objectives, he
cannot help but fail to realize the ideal of true security.
Since that which is growing needs protection and
sustainment, true dependency-security is the fulfillment of legitimate needs.
The fetus needs the maternal substance, the baby and growing child need food,
shelter, guidance, and love; the student needs education, the worker needs a
service-objective and income. All people who are evolving need the security-
sense of specific identities--family affiliation, religious affiliation,
national affiliation, and racial affiliation--until such time as the truth of
selfhood is realized. Congestions in dependency-security result in
psychological and sexual subnormality, crystallization in opinion, prejudice,
intolerance, fixation on chemical expressions as symbols of security, racial
and nationalistic fears and enmities and, above all, the inability to adjust
to needed changes for development and elasticization of consciousness.
A person "arrives" at a specific point in his
evolution; when he identifies that point as "a reality" he remains, in a
sense, static for a time to fulfill the requirements of that point. If he
then fails to adjust to needed changes--remains fixated on that with which he
has become familiar--he "dies inside" because his consciousness of himself
will not permit the evolutionary forces of life to express through him. And
that "point" can be one of innumerable things with which humans identify
themselves during the sequence of their incarnations.
The sign Cancer in the Great Mandala is the "nest-
symbol" to the dependent person. Exoterically it is "chemicalized source"--
womb, mother, home, nation, and race. Esoterically it is his own
psychological base--the things he rests on inside himself as a consciousness
of resource to express for his individualized need for greater fulfillment.
The psychological base is never dependent on the chemical expressions of life;
once established the person rests on it and in it wherever he goes during his
incarnation. This inner establishment makes it possible for him to adjust to
any and all outer changes of circumstances; herein is seen a picturing of the
Moon--ruler of Cancer--being exalted in its own eleventh house-sign, Taurus.
Taurus corresponds to Cancer as Uranus-ruled Aquarius corresponds to Aries--
the eleventh house-sign pattern is liberation and impersonalization.
The disorganized person--the vagrant, the outlaw,
and the insane--is such because he has lost his sense of contact with identity
and inner focus. The vagrant has experience, certainly, but it is in the
nature of an aimless movement through life; the outlaw has lost his sense of
belongingness with other people--he is in a continual state of protest against
something in himself (something of the vibratory source of the present
incarnation ) that he has not understood or clearly perceived. In other
words, there is no connection, in the minds of such people, between what they
were in the past, what they should be now, and what they might become in the
future. Their forgotten past and unpictured future suspends them in the
aimless present.
The person we designate as "miser" is one of the
most insecure because he is not aware of the source of his over-attachment to
chemicality--money--as a symbol of security. His greed and unceasing grasping
outpictures his crumbled inner foundation--he seeks security in "possessing"
something whose essential identity is "medium of exchange as an expression of
feeling about other people."
Over-attachment to a loved one is also an
outpicturing of negative dependency-security because the suffering person
identifies another human as his psychological base. Devoted and faithful
love is not, in itself, a "mechanism of congestion;" it is an expression of
the human heart's highest octave. But the kind of love that cannot live
independently of chemical nearness is truly not love but a symbol of inner
insecurity; anyone who identifies another as "security" is off his own inner
base--he is continually afflicted with anxieties, apprehensions, and tensions.
The person, having "displaced" himself, says that he is anxious about the
well-being of the loved one but it is his own security that he is really
anxious about. True loving is health-giving, faith-strengthening, confidence-
inspiring; the "loving" that is a fearful, tense dependency is just the
opposite.
So we see that over-dependency on externals is
the arch-root of insecurity. The correction is found in understanding what
the external symbolizes and then establishing the reality of that symbol in
consciousness and expressing from that psychological base; such expression is
self-generating and self-directing; it is symbolized by the line drawn from
Cancer upward to Capricorn in the Great Mandala. This is the picture of the
dependent, immature person transmuting his consciousness with experience to
attain the status of a mature, independent individual. "We recognize, because
polarity is inter-active and retro-active, that the Cancer-Capricorn diameter
pictures the present insecurities having resulted from past unfulfillments and
present securities having resulted from past fulfillments. That which is now
established as sound, integrated psychological base-power is pabulum for
exercise of responsibility-fulfillments. To be free of dependency on
externals qualifies for self-directing, efficient dynamic functioning. Many
people assume responsibilities--parenthood, work, etc.--but their crumbled
psychological base, with resultant dependency on externals as securities,
disqualifies them from successfully and completely fulfilling that which they
have assumed.
For example--and there are many such to be
studied in these times--a man assumes the responsibility of governmental work;
he is insecure by reason of his over-dependency on money as a symbol of
security; he traduces the principles inherent in the responsibilities of his
job; he "works the angles of expediency" but he breaks faith in order to
realize his illusionary security-symbol; in his next incarnation--or in some
future incarnation--his faith in other people will be shattered by their
falseness and lack of principle; they will simply outpicture his own
intensified insecurity, the result of his previous (present) spiritual
immaturity. This is an important point to consider: to adhere to the
principles of a work-pattern or a relationship-pattern insures the maximum
efficiency of responsibility-fulfillment and, correspondingly, a maximum
efficiency of maturing the psychological base to carry over as "strength-
pabulum" into the next incarnation. The accumulations of strength-pabulum
total to the accumulation of relative Masterhood; the depletion of strength-
pabulum is recession from realizing Ideality.
The person who assumes a pattern of
responsibility and who betrays that pattern by inner darkness and lack of
principle disintegrates his own psychological base to a degree. He
disqualifies for further power-expression until he has reclaimed his
consciousness, faces and passes the testings which Life (his own
consciousness) brings to him in order to prove his worth. When you as an
astro-philosopher, study charts to analyze the sources of another's problems
and you recognize that his suffering has been directly due to his over-
dependency on externals, then know that, somewhere in his past, he
disqualified and his disqualifications have been outpictured this time by his
dependency-reaction on the weaknesses of others. He will tell you that his
parents never gave him enough, he never got any breaks, his boss never
appreciates him, he has been continually taken advantage of and cheated, he is
always involved in automobile accidents, his children are always sick, he was
divorced three times, betrayed by the woman he loved, etc. Such tales
outpicture terrifically deep insecurities, the direct result of betrayal of
responsibility-fulfillments in the past. Now, such a person doesn't know just
who he is or what he is here for; his motivations are only dimly perceived; he
is unaware of his power-resources (strength-pabulum); and his consciousness of
experience-principles is hazy at best. He has to learn anew what his identity
is and what it means to understand experience-principles and the spiritual
methods for expressing according to Principle.
Now--a case very much in point these days--
international security.
This term is a composite of the security-
consciousness of every human now incarnate. In these later days we have come
into a clearer recognition of "One World" than ever before in our history.
To recognize "One World" is to assume the responsibility of living
accordingly. To not recognize--or not be able to recognize--"One World"
simply outpictures adherence to separative nationalistic concepts;
nationalistically-minded people cannot be expected to"think internationally"
any more than a small child should be expected to love other children's
mothers and fathers more than he does his own. But--and this is very
significant--there are many now incarnate who profess the "One World
Consciousness" but who violate it continually. Which brings us to the subject
of "Americanism:"
To incarnate as a citizen of the United States of
America is to assume the responsibility of living the "One World
Consciousness." You and I and every other American citizen qualified for
incarnation here, and we must justify that qualification or re-incarnate--
under a much less liberal governmental form. We are established as a nation
under the spiritual directive of "liberty and justice for ALL--and the "ALL"
does not mean just Americans. The citizenry of this nation are principally
derived from European, Asiatic, and African backgrounds but, because of
consciousness-quality we were at-tuned to the democratic principles of living
and we were permitted--timed--to incarnate under a governmental form based on
those principles.
The horoscope of the United States of America
pictures the Sun and three planets in the sign Cancer--we are truly a "nest"
for humans of all kinds of racial, national, and religious backgrounds. The
Sun in Cancer is ruler of the fourth house, and in that sign it is in its own
twelfth house-sign--the "redemption-pattern." Cancer is on the second and
third cusps; the Sun and two of the planets are in the second house; Mercury,
ruler of the Gemini-Ascendant and dispositor of the Gemini Mars and Uranus, is
in Cancer in the third house; the Moon, ruler of second and third, is in
Aquarius; Saturn, ruler of eighth and ninth houses, is exalted in Libra and
trine to the Moon. Our "national psychological base" (there are no planets in
the fourth-house-sign Leo) is focused on this "planetary gathering" in the
sign Cancer; it might be interpreted as: material substance-exchanges and
education according to democratic governmental principles as the spiritualized
source of our national evolution and progress.
Have we ever perpetrated outrage on these
Principles? Our treatment of our American Indian and Negro citizenry says
YES. Have we ever wasted our fabulous endowment of natural resources? The
answer is YES. Did we, as a democratically-inspired nation, permit the buying
and selling of fellow-humans? The history of Negro slavery in this country
says YES. Have we encouraged the weaknesses of other peoples? The history of
war-debt defaults of other nations says YES. This is December, 1950--
newspapers in recent weeks have revealed how American materials are permitted
to be sold to the very nation we are warring against--a repetition, in part,
of the story of scrap-iron selling to the Japanese during their attacks on the
Chinese people in the 1930 's. This, on the part of a democratic government,
is certainly the supreme blasphemy against our principle of "justice for all."
Further, to say, as some do, that "nothing can be
done about it" is the supreme utmost of spineless acquiescence; such
violations of our powers as substance-stewards must be stopped. Since a
chemical expression only outpictures an inner state, to say that we are
"afraid of the Chinese communists," "afraid of the Russians," "afraid of
atomic bombardment" is only half-truth. We are afraid of the results of our
own violation of principle and what we are going through now in the Orient is
the result of our traducing those principles which inspired the founding of
this nation. Food for thought! Let every American take stock of how he lives
his citizenship. American citizenship is a blessing to be honored by living
it--it is not "just something dropped in our laps" to be taken advantage of in
wasteful, thoughtless ways. To the degree that we express according to
religious intolerance, racial hatred, financial corruption and personal dis-
integrity do we disqualify for this privilege; to the degree that we help
others to help themselves, steward our resources intelligently and for the
best good of all on earth, keep our minds open to further appreciation of the
qualities and rights of all do we maintain our democratic qualifications. We,
as a nation, are democratic power; we, as individual Americans, are microcosms
of that power and it is our spiritual responsibility and our personal joy to
manifest that ideal while we are incarnate. That, and nothing less, will
insure our individual and national security. We must, as Americans and
Earthians, function from the psychological base--the "power-pabulum"--or our
spiritual principles. The Capricorn regeneration and fulfillment of
democratic idealism is that which is "matured" from the Cancer-base. To
realize this maturity is the meaning of "being American" and the meaning of
"being democratic Earthians."