ESOTERIC ASTROLOGY

ESOTERIC SCORPIO 2008

Labor of Hercules
Slaying the Lernaean Hydra

On knees to lift the evil writhing Hydra into wind and light — the mystical 9th head of power buried under a Rock. Kundalini with Fire of Mind and Spirit conquer the entrenched reptilian instincts to become Asklepios and Healing Shaktipat. Scorpio wrestles again with Antares (cf. Gemini) as Ophiuchus and Hercules; Victory when Hydra seen as unit.

Motto: Warrior am I and from the battle I emerge triumphant
(Scorpio stages the release of Leo)

The Crises of the Soul — Battleground, Birthplace/Labor, and Burning Ground — All Testing is self-engineered, no matter how clouded one’s apprehension. All initiation is self-administered, otherwise it would not be fully conscious. With Capricorn, Scorpio rules the Twelve Labors of the Sun God Hercules, and particularly the Hydra’s Nine Tests of psychological hygiene(!) In Scorpio we find how spiritual values and life are anchored in daily ephemera.

Scorpio and Idealism
Scorpio rules service through Mars idealism — clumsy, self-serving and self-deluding at first. The transmutation of creative urges into the creative planetary Work. It is a realization that lies far in the future, but it is helpful to see encouraging and evolutionary signs of this transformation from time to time.

Scorpio rules the most violently self-interested, self-willed and predatory impulses due to Mars and its ancient habit of relying on fear, war and the dictates of the reptilian brain associated with raw survival, dominating the mammalian brain responsive to fight or flight. Meanwhile, the latent human forebrain seems also to be held captive by both its lower counterparts. To achieve a true humanitarian state and see the results of the evolution of a truly human forebrain, these physical evolutionary factors must be recognized and faced straightforwardly by individuals and ultimately by societies and the aspirants who organize, run and maintain them. The alternative is the incredible infantile mess we see the U.S. and other societies immersed in today.

We have a society based on competition rather than intelligent and loving cooperation. All the tests of Scorpio entail moving from ambitious and competitive use of force justified by gut-brain attitudes (Mars) to aspirational and cooperative use of energy and methods that derive from the illumined mind (Hermes, or Mercury) and that which it transmits from above.

To illustrate, we are all probably familiar with the endemic “boss” role player who is generally taller, wider, bigger, louder or more infantile, self-referential and eager to use force rather than intelligent assessment and communication to control others, and essentially to hide their own inadequacies or laziness in terms of leadership and management skills and constructive results. There is only one way, no alternative, and the exhausted, aimless or spineless just enable this scenario. This is not true leadership or right stewardship. Humans are generally incorrigible and pathetic in the main. Of course there are glorious exceptions, thank God. However, this is generally the state of world societies and how they are run.

The solution is American unity in diversity, and that means preserving America’s historic and Masonic dream as a beacon for the planet. The solution is more communication, fostering a well educated and informed citizenry to edge out and displace the consumer-based bazaar and distortion of America’s ideals of a noble public service oriented citizenry. The American public displays these noble qualities more clearly than their coopted representatives in government. This must end. The solution lies in Mercury, communication over dysfunctional coopted media, education over dysfunctional vetting factories, intelligent allocation of financial and human resources, and ultimately the recognition and expression of the dignity of human service and the Great Work of transforming humanity into a clear expression of stewardship of the infinitely interdependent planet as Sons of God (Mercury, Christ, Hermes, or Thoth). It is time to wake up and grow up and confront the ancient and decaying forces of pure self-interest, selfish ambition and delusional or unintegrated and uncoordinated self-will. Mercury is Humanity in its essence and represents all the mental vigilance, communicative skill, intelligent negotiation and conflict resolution necessary to bring the deep love-wisdom of Humanity out of latency, stasis and fear into full expression, and bring the Ideas, Love and Creation of God into full expression. Mercury or Hermes was the Son of God rescued and given birth (through His Sagittarian thigh) by his father Jupiter, King of the Gods.

Scorpio rules the creative drives and the love and dignity of the work necessary to bring creative impulses into manifestation and fruition. Creative work in a homeostatic and interdependent network of hierarchies like planet Earth is infinite. Earth has a lifespan as does humanity, but the world's people should repeatedly tell the more vicious of world 'leaders' that there is no necessity to rape our racial Mother Earth and “float away on the wreck” as someone once put it.

Scorpio has two phases — mastering the emotions through the mind, and secondly illumination by the mind of those dark delusional and beglamoured dysfunctions in human and planetary relations.

Phase One Scorpio. From the elevated perspective of Mercury, an idea or thought is a spiritual impulse taking form. These archetypal forms descend into the world of human currency through various phases — apprehension, visualization, idealization, and become ideals that gain currency through those who attach themselves to the particular idealism involved, no matter how refined or gross. This is the Platonic prospect. Thought is a living process, not a pastiche or collage of borrowed thought derived from tradition or memory, no matter how useful in its place.

On the lowest personality level, gut-brained attitudes are confused with thought. Only crisis and conflict can drag people out of this tar pit and into the light or the realization that thought is simply more. This is the Taurus-Scorpio dynamic. Taurus brings light to Scorpio and Scorpio tests it to the depths in the crucible of life. The materialism of both is lifted up in the spiral-cyclic process until the “thinker in the causal body” becomes a conscious reality. Both transmute gut-brained instinct into human intellect, and eventually into the insight and illumination of the Intuition.

Rank intellect is not thought. Thinking in black-and-white under the supervision of hypothetical constructs is simply information shuffling to arrive at temporary scientific conclusions for technical work. It is building. It is not creative and living human thought, strictly speaking. It is building up a knowledge base through empirical method. It is the Aristotelian way. It is useful and its philosophy in general is utilitarianism.

What is rank intellect but construction from knowledge-based tabulation or memory. Selection of information sources and relevant or significant factors is often biased, partial, or severely limited. What is memory but the Past, often a distorted construction. It is important to distinguish consciousness and awareness from memory. Marshall McLuhan expressed this dilemma as seeing the world through a rear-view mirror. Driving forward while navigating through this rear-view mirror is rather dangerous. Without vision, idealism or planning, thought is a patchwork of borrowed concepts and narratives.

Esoterically speaking, the personal and essential aspect of memory is the phenomenon of the Dweller on the Threshold. Deep memory along the lines of previous lives and (human) racial memory, along with historical and psychological insight enables the human soul and spirit to be distinguished from the personality apparatus, with “traditions” based on innumerable experiences over countless lives. The entire personality mechanism becomes the Dweller, faced off with the Soul and the Angel of the Presence. And in Scorpio it is sometimes found that the solar angel, or causal body, is superceded by the Presence. This instigates an entirely different sort of meditation, more related to states of identification.

Phase Two Scorpio. This is the stage at which the mind is recognized as an instrument transmitting impressions either from below (as is the case with the mental unit) or from above, as in the case of the Soul — composed completely of mental substance, and enshrining a spark of buddhi. The question is not what the mind is preoccupied with, but more importantly what is simultaneously pouring through it. An individual may be manasically polarized, but expressing buddhi or atma, or even monadic influence. At this second stage, Scorpio uses the mind to focus its essential nature as Light into the world of delusional attitudes and half-formed thoughts, where it often has a jarring or disintegrating impact. This is just the reactive or responsive process of disillusionment and active detachment at work. Since this is done invisibly and at a distance for the most part, it is meditative in nature. However, at some point the principle of self-possession becomes acutely necessary due to the impact of Light and vibration on one's immediate circumstances. At this point one must consciously adopt a stepping-down procedure in relationship with individuals and crowds (and sometimes the elements). This process of Light bearing is pursued further by advanced humanity in the sign of Aquarius, and it is done in group work and group formation.

This is the point at which esoteric psychology becomes truly useful, because it is based on graded initiations of the human soul rather than developmental stages of the human animal and ambitious personality, however constructed or construed by the many current schools of psychology.

This is all preface to the basic theme of Taurus-Scorpio, which is to introduce and anchor the spiritual aspirant to the “inner world,” and the dual life and consciousness of the initiation process. The entire universe is animate and conscious and sentient in one sense or another. This is the definition of theosophical hylozoism and of Buddhist philosophy. It is also the premise of the Cosmic Christ nature, or the Body of Christ, though the Christians may have no clue, philosophically speaking. The use of the term Christ nature to me is more or less identical with the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara and the Buddha nature, with Krishna as divine Personality of Godhead (the physical incarnation of the Brahma aspect), and with the essence of the traditions of Messiah and Imam Mahdi. Humans just seem to have a lust for separatism, conflict and violence — the human animal and personality nature, that is — which lacks continuity of consciousness in ongoing life and in the states of being and consciousness between lives.

The basic premise of esoteric psychology and cosmology is that we are all units or cells in the body of greater living organisms, within which we live, move and have our being, though this must be perceived not just mystically but with a much more inclusive and broader mindful (memory) and analytic and intuitive approach. Hylozoism is at least the best hypothesis for the life experience.

Pragmatically speaking, to move on to the level of genius in the human mind (Mercury-Uranus) we must consider the faculty of visualization. In Scorpio, imagination can take on a new aspect. The great insights of genius into science and society have not come from bean-counting or knowledge accumulation. These are only a basis of so-called evidence, proof to be introduced in retrospect. The open mind, when it expands to include all it can survey, is forced to use visualization to make its great leaps forward. Visualization of the visual presentation of information and knowledge is basically constituted of images-in-action, or imagination. These breakthroughs involve deep and prolonged meditation, a period of pause after intense scrutiny, or spontaneous eruption during sleep, dreams, or relaxing in nature, sitting under falling-apple trees.

Imagination through visualization is a faculty specifically related to Scorpio —deep, broad, and painful memory— and the perfection of its opposite sign Taurus, where desire is transmuted into aspiration, will and purpose — in other words into light, vision and intelligent direction. Mercury and Vulcan, the hierarchical rules of these signs, are both said to be one with the Sun. They are associated with the beginning of the solar initiations, which start at the 3rd initiation of transfiguration, and mastery of the fluid mental nature.

Scorpio is a sign of intense focus and creativity, which is apparent surveying the best exponents of Scorpio throughout history. With the help of Sagittarius and Capricorn, it transmutes lower creative urges into the higher creative endeavors associated with the throat (and heart) chakra. After the 3rd initiation, the throat is synthesized into the three head centers and begins to become truly creative in a spiritual (and generally invisible) sense. These head centers are associated with Mercury, Venus, Vulcan, Uranus and Pluto. The will aspect is subordinated to the fully conscious and identified Life aspect. On a planetary level this means that Humanity will finally transfer its focus from constituting the planetary throat center into the planetary Ajna center. The animal kingdom will then constitute the planetary throat center. Human society will be utterly transformed and most of the pain and agony experienced by contemporary humanity will be healed by the parallel evolutionary development of Mars and Pluto, under the supervision of Venus, Earth’s planetary egoic body.

This has been an attempt to describe the significance of the Triangle of Mercury-Gemini-Scorpio, one of three conditioning triangles of Earth humanity. These topics are a great abstraction in the minds of c.50% of the public at large. The Gates of initiation through death and rebirth are continuously open as long as this world period persists. Humanity is the beloved child of deity, but it doesn’t help to project the obscene and wretched failures of pitiful human scheming, avoidance, and disorganization on to the planetary group life and Deity. It is essential to overcome the individual fear of failure. Much greater group lives are involved. It is enough to simply stand and persevere as Sons and Daughters of God.

This I think is one reason why DK made the remark that the Theosophical Society was founded to initiate and anchor the thoughtform of Brotherhood and the Human Racial Family on the planet (as in ‘human race’) through its diverse human societies. Its first Objective is Universal Brotherhood, and its motto stands — "There is no religion higher than Truth." Academic theosophy may not be to everyone’s taste, but it is a thousands of years-old effort to express the ideals of the fifth kingdom of nature on earth, the kingdom of awakened Souls. It is one of many efforts.

Inspiration: Alice A. Bailey, Esoteric Astrology, and her 24 books on esoteric philosophy. NY: Lucis Publishing Company – website (http://www.lucistrust.org/en/publications_store).