INTRODUCTORY ESOTERIC ASTROLOGY

INTRODUCTORY ESOTERIC ASTROLOGY

LEO 2011

Labor of Hercules
Slaying of the Nemean Lion

Chase Lion in circles to Cave, block one entrance, leave weapons behind, and strangle Lion (little-ego personality), unseen by the people.

Motto: I am That and That am I
(Leo seeks release in Scorpio)

Healing and the Heart
Cancer, Leo, and Virgo are the three signs immediately conditioned by the energy and effort of the Three Major Spiritual Festivals of the year, and so it is important to get a grip on approaching the meaning of these signs in this context. Each attempt at divining meaning is necessarily partial. Even though incomplete, understanding of any degree opens one to the full spectrum of Actuality – of the Living Whole. These three signs signify, build, and condition the “mechanism of response” — penetrating and presenting to both inner and outer worlds.

Like reptiles and ‘Dragons,’ our bodies are like chemical manufactories that produce poisons or medicines that kill and exterminate, heal and preserve, as well as the inner correspondence to the more familiar external nutrients, supplements, and herbals that cleanse, heal, and promote the constant rebuilding processes of the gross physical body. Since we as humans incarnate only as etheric entities, physically speaking, the gross body has no identity but only Quality reflecting in the mists, fluids and dust of its composition.

These three signs are particularly relevant to the relation between lower and higher chakras. The two signs of the previous solar system –Cancer and Virgo– are both associated with vegetative and digestive functions and processes, physically and metaphorically. They are both related to lower and higher psychism — one sensory/feeling and emotional, the other sensory/feeling and lower mental. Both are related to the solar plexus which puts a burden on Leo the heart. Both, in their relation to the lower centers, indicate the health and longevity of the physical organism. All three are kept in balance and harmonious Flow through the Breath. The qi meridians of traditional Chinese medicine tie the Metal element meridian pair of Lungs and Large intestine with the two sets of Fire element pairs, Heart/Small intestine and Thyroid-Adrenal/Circulation-Sex. They form a ‘trine’ in the Chinese meridian chart. They also relate to DK’s Heart/Solar Plexus and Throat/Sacral axes.

The Sant Bani tradition mentions the importance of ventilating or air-conditioning’ the Heart to keep it spiritually healthy. Buddhism promotes compassion and detachment. The regulation and perfection of breathing takes considerable burden off the heart during the perpetual process of raising the synthesizing solar plexus energies to the Heart. The higher correspondence to this is ‘Sursum Corda’ or lifting the Heart up into the indigo/crystal heart center in the head — particularly for Ray One issues and types. Later, after the 3rd degree ‘raising,’ the more fully active head centers begin to utilize the head center in the heart, particularly in Ray One disciples. This has been called in some traditions the Kali chakra and relates the eight 12-petalled mental chakras to this 8-petalled chakra close to the heart. Needless to mention the dangers of fooling around or using force with these centers. Death is also a form of healing…

The major healing axis for Leo and Heart is Leo-Aquarius. Leo rules the central circulatory system, while Aquarius rules the calves which pump 70% of the peripheral circulatory system, taking the pressure off a burdened heart. Walking just 30-60 minutes a day (morning and evening constitutionals) can do more than many medicines to coordinate and recalibrate all the systems in the body — endocrine/blood, cardiovascular, nervous system & respiration, lymphatic & skin, genito-urinary, and musculoskeletal posture which helps to hold everything in place. This is the lower correspondence to the two Heart centers.

Leo and Ray One involve the will-to-be, identity, the evolution of consciousness through the subsequent karma of using self-will rather than will-to-good, will-to-heal, goodwill, willingness to engage and participate in the whole. Problems of Ray One involve rage, anger, spiritual indignation, irritation with environmental impacts on the Sensitivity cultivated by the advanced Leo. Spiritual indignation is distinct from moral or ethical indignation which two often involve religious/idealist/ideological bias, fanaticism, and delusional constructs of the lower mind.

Leo is naturally drawn to the will-to-heal through its cultivation of consciousness, multidimensional sensitivity, and its eventual realization that both self-control and control of the environment involve a detached engagement. Control or mastery finds a natural ally in the will to heal, to reintegrate, and to resurrect. The Ray One method of healing is to directly draw down universal energies to bring about reorientation and rejuvenation in the three lower vehicles. Healing through vibration and mere Presence is appealing to Leo’s drive for self-consciousness and individualized identity.

Leo can be finely attuned to self-will in others in order to identify basic individual problems. Will is used on the not-self — not on self or others. Discipline is used on oneself and can be encouraged in others. Leo is naturally radiatory and can use the Love energy to help focus, circulate, and distribute healing energy that can exterminate infections, reduce inflammation, and rebuild damaged tissues in the body. One can do the same with the arteries, layers, muscles, and valves of the heart when in deep meditative healing mode. This is often best done lying down or at night when the mind is more naturally reflective. These methods are naturally best suited to Ray One and Two types which predominate among spiritual students, recognizing that all lower (sub)rays naturally ‘gravitate’ toward, and learn from these two rays — Rays which involve the present and future solar systemic Life.

Going back to the Leo-Aquarius, central/peripheral circulatory systems, an emphasis should be put on walking, hiking, and dance in the present urban and rural strip-mall environments, where cars are used for transportation and to gas us with their exhaust. There is a reason Dance is considered the predominant Ray One form of art — optimally, it unifies head, heart and base with its attempt at expressing high art and states of consciousness through the physical body. It is a part of every indigenous human society, used in religious rites, social ceremony, and in generating what many cultures call Kef or Kefi — alternately understood as surrendering to a publicly disclosed social ecstasy to reintegrate the self-conscious individual, or simply generating goodwill and a sense of social well-being that people feel they can return to once they have had a good strong dose of it in their lives.

Here it is important to mention an important study done at New York’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine on the effect of recreational cognitive and physical activities on mental acuity and aging. Dance outstripped them all by more than two-to-one. [http://socialdance.stanford.edu/syllabi/smarter.htm / http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa022252] It involves the coordination of mental pattern and contextual memory with motor memory through “split-second rapid-fire decision making” in couple, circle, and line dance, in cueing, leading, and following, and in maintaining the integrity of the dance form. Many dance groups include people of all ages, breaking down the sociopathic ‘peer-stockade’ mentality of the lower orders, particularly in the U.S., which seems to have less and less access over the decades to multigenerational forums — prime staging grounds for the Hall of Wisdom.

From my point of view, this benefit also derives from dancing to music which one has chosen as beautiful or moving, in addition to sharing these feelings and emotions with a group of strangers or mere associates. It has the capacity to bring the power of Sound into human physical expression, transformative to the total environment. In my experience, climaxing moments of the evening can transcend the power of many meditation and healing groups in group formation. It underscores the transformative and radiatory effect of unconditional kefi, and for esotericists it clearly can be seen to extend beyond the confines of a little group. It is white magic, conscious or unconscious, in action. Those not ready for such universal or simply international experience naturally repel, with the lower mind, any possibility of participation and exclude themselves.

But any form of exercise, particularly dance and driving a car, for instance, demands continuous practice. Daily traffic proves that an attitude which assumes one learns to drive all at once (that first year) and never has to constantly practice on a daily basis, is a deadly proposition. Rehearsal and review in dance, as on the stage of life, is perpetual. It is just so with the mind and its continually fresh approach to ‘meditation,’ whatever one means by that word. Exercise and practice, physical or mental, involves (or brings down into play) all the human faculties.

The Thinker in the causal body, the Ego, and ultimate Identity in terms of the evolution of self and group consciousness, uses both the Pharaoh’s Crook and Scourge in disciplining oneself. The Mace or Rod of power of office must signify the discipline and austerity in oneself as well as the invoked response of a cooperating group. In Tibetan tantric Buddhism, the razor chopper of Vajrayogini (oneself as aspirant) held over her head reminds the practitioner that all lightning-like insight, energy, and force necessarily pass through oneself before being applied to others or the environment.

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).

Source: Alice A. Bailey, A Treatise on Cosmic Fire. . NY: Lucis Publishing Co., 1925, 1962 ed., 1982 pr.
Source: H.P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Centennial facsimile ed. Los Angeles. Theosophical University Press, 1988.