Foundations and the Horoscope (Wednesday 11 January)

Wednesday 11 January 2012

"Reality" is a word which scares us sometimes because we think of it as always challenging. So it is, in the sense that the child being weaned from constant parental support and supervision has to face difficulties and learn from them.

Some of that is going on now, but as a theist I believe in the overshadowing and protecting presence of the Supreme One no matter what happens. Of course that is more effective and substantial the more one has faith in Him.

Yesterday and today, as reported before, are the two days of the closest (though not exact this time) approach of Jupiter and Saturn to their opposition. Whatever you have been going through--both crises and opportunities--since April 2010 is at a point where you can comprehend what it means and get a handle on it, perhaps for the next decade or two. Some things you have realized, or are realizing even this week, are solid supports you can rest upon or develop into even better supports over the coming years.

There is some emotional touchiness, or perhaps separations from people, with the opposition of Luna to Venus and Neptune into late evening and early morning of Thursday. A male-female relationship seems to be at a fateful turning point. This is not bad, even if troubling, but probably cannot be understood till later.

Yet abundant pleasures and satisfacitons are available. Some aspect of your work which is unique, which only you can do, is getting your deep attention. Job or career matters seem to be shaping up in ways you comprehend. Someone with a realistic view of health, technique, and friendship irritates you part of the time even though you learn from him grudgingly.

Communication, however fraught with tensions, becomes necessary, and you can do it as best you can rather than worry too much or postpone it.

Cosmic Piper


Foundations and the Horoscope

In writing about religion and people's religious or spiritual approaches to life, as I have been for several days, I sense that one factor is missing glaringly. It is the matter of individual approaches to these things.

It probably does not need to be said that everyone approaches G*d; or the universe, if he or she does not believe in God; or life, if he or she does not believe in the universe, in a unique fashion. Not all atheists are alike, nor all Muslims nor all Christians, and so on. And now with the "new age," however that be interpreted, there are even more diverse spiritual approaches, and people mix them up in endless variety. The "spiritual smorgasbord" turns around in the "spiritual cafeteria."

That is as it should be. And so my current insistence on reading the Bible (for myself) may seem odd, because if anything the Bible, whether Tenach or New Testament, presents not a spiritual smorgasbord but definite rules everyone must follow, a la Moses and the Law. (By the Law I do not mean just the ten commandments, most of which are relatively non-controversial, but all the complex laws in Leviticus, requiring that countless people be stoned to death, most of which are ignored by contemporary Jews and Christians.)

There is a progression in the Bible from the rigid adherence to the laws required by Moses on to the looser but still highly moral pronouncements of the Prophets to the much more gracious but still strict teachings of Jesus.

And now the progression has gone further, in the general consciousness of let's say Europe and America anyway, to the "anything goes," "choose your own path" notion.

I am in deep waters here, because to try to say something intelligent and helpful about all that in a few paragraphs may be impossible. Let's put it this way: The reason I am reading the Bible is that when there are no foundations, it is very good to look to foundations which have worked for people in the past: Not to adopt them blindly but to learn from them, choose those which work, or modify them if needed. And this is not mostly an intellectual process. Intellectual people generally are very impatient with the Bible. It is a process of sensing, feeling, absorbing, what past generations (in the case of the Bible Semitic generations, for the most important early Christians including Paul were of course Jews) have found essential to their survival and success.

One might, with tongue partly in cheek, say that it is an attempt to steal the fire of the group of people which might be the most materially and professionally successful in the history of the world, the Jews. And, following them, the European Christians did in fact seem to "steal their fire" through studying their Scriptures along with those of the early Christians which we call the New Testament. The British Empire may have been, outwardly at least, the pinnacle of the Judaeo-Christian tradition, in terms of worldly power, and the next pinnacle the American Empire. Yes, Manifest Destiny.

It would not be absurd to say that the traditions and teachings encoded in the Bible were the source of that enormous worldly success. Okay then, if you want to be successful, study the Bible! I am sorry if that sounds bourgeois, selfish and stolid.

But of course, there are other great works to study, and other Scriptures and other literatures, one of which, the Bhagavad Gita of India, has my special affection.

And much more for which I do not have time today.

Now to the title of this section: It is obvious to me as an astrologer (and to Cosmic Piper) that individuals' orientations to life, including their religious-spiritual orientations, are very much linked to their birth horoscopes. I could show this in scores of ways in a large book which I may write some day. But assuming for a moment that it is true, one sees at once that everyone has a somewhat different spiritual path, which brings us back to the first two paragraphs of this section. I am not ready to say that "everyone is his own God" because I do not believe that. I am ready to say, however, that everyone has his or her own special relation to the one G*d and that it is partly discernible or better understandable through studying that individual's horoscope. Even the greatest spiritual teachers or Avatars can be understood better by studying their horoscopes. This is an amazing fact. It leads me to make another astounding claim: We will never understand spiritual paths, teachings, and practices, and how they help people, and why some people need some paths and others others, until we begin to understand astrology and individual horoscopes much more deeply and fully.

Sir Real