INTRODUCTORY ESOTERIC ASTROLOGY

INTRODUCTORY ESOTERIC ASTROLOGY

SAGITTARIUS 2011

Labor of Hercules
Killing the Stymphalian Birds

Swarms of iron razor birds in swampland must be flushed out; killing, trapping don’t work; crashing cymbals at twilight works;
3 deadly birds – cruel speech, self-referential speech, casting pearls before swine...

Motto: I see the goal. I reach that goal and then I see another
(Sagittarius, the disciple becomes the Saviour in Pisces)
Sagittarius — Judgment and Wisdom
Introductory
Sagittarius, with its hierarchic ruler Mars, represents the social (planetary) perfection of Mars energy (on Earth) — assertion, engagement, constructive conflict/negotiation, struggle, and total mastery of animal Instinct.
In three signs desire takes the form of Ambition — Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn. Scorpio represents ambition through force and the eventual mastery of that coercive force for good. Sagittarius focuses on direction, planning, goalfitness and purposefulness to achieve its goals and purposes. Capricorn achieves through optimization of all obstacles as opportunities and maintaining the equilibrium (which is Karma) that sustains its achievements.

Within Sagittarius (on Earth) there is somewhat of a war between Jupiter and Mars. It is interesting to note the extreme cases of opportunism and passive-aggression in (opposition and square) Mars-Jupiter aspects, especially in Taurus/Scorpio. Jupiter and the Earth govern planning and organizing a living environment, preferably in husbandry and partnership with Nature. Pre-Westernized Japan was one exceptional planetary ideal which continues to gain adherents in Western building habits. What happened in the U.S. to Smart Planning and the Garden City movements? — Theft of zoning freedoms by financial development interests in suburban gas-guzzling sprawl for the last 100 years in the U.S. These are predators hiding behind Utilitarian maximization of a rocketing population, but still represent a small group compared to the .01% slaveholder Plantation Democracy crowd — Winners take all, Losers die. (I recommend James Howard Kuntzler’s The Geography of Nowhere, and The Long Emergency.) From the Jupiter point of view, if America is the best country in the world, there is no reason not to make it better.

Sagittarius (actually the constellation Scorpio for the first 22-plus degrees) has a taste for sports and competition which becomes more easily integrated into constructive team efforts and eventual group-conscious projects. In relation to Scorpio, Jupiter versus Mars, one key to the nature of Understanding society and politics is seeing a clear distinction between ideals, values, and interests. In the Sagittarius personality (and disciples), ideals and values are often at war with self-interest (or exhaustion). This is one of the keys to understanding why seemingly intelligent (kama-manasic) people such as Tea-Partygoers opine and vote against their own values and principles on the one hand, and their own interests on the other. This is a good reason to study the true nature of intellect, intelligence and self-consciousness as distinct from kama-manasic attitude. When personality and soul are integrating, this Mars-Jupiter dynamic gives the energy, integration and mobility to do battle and persevere in the fight for progressive and spiritual values and programs.

Sagittarius’ Test of Understanding
The Sagittarius test as a disciple is understanding. Without honesty, sincerity and straightforwardness (HSS) it is hard to examine oneself as a soul, let alone others. That is why Sagittarius demands HHS and shuns the lack of it. It is crucial for those stuck on the personality level, since they hardly know themselves — the mental body hasn’t been integrated into the threefold personality and the mental ray hasn’t emerged.
Sagittarius demands HSS since it is already difficult enough to assess or analyze one’s social environment and circumstances, and Understanding is necessary for the ability to move forward. There is no possibility of direction without thought, except in a descriptive, figurative and rhetorical sense — particularly when dealing with personalities.

Understanding personality starts with knowing the background conditioning, the present compulsions and frozen attitudes, and the type of vulnerability in terms of appeal by persuasion or propaganda. What is important here is identifying the immediate life lessons, the stage of motivation to self-improve or study/learn (through crises) and the best avenue to their mode of learning and understanding. One immediate pedagogical obstacle is the fact that a high percentage of so-called caucasian Americans need to study ESL, since their basic body language is supplemented only by attitudes and parochial vernacular (and mind-chatter), or even just familial (baby) talk. Attempts at conversation here can be intensely and mutually confusing, if not annoying.
Understanding soul-infused personalities is quite another matter. Looking at Life as attendance at a world university, most events are simple allegories of lessons learned — or Not.

Sagittarius and Judgment
When addressing the topic of wisdom and judgment, it is necessary to observe both Jupiter/Saturn and Sagittarius/Capricorn factors and approaches.
Saturn — the humility and common sense to submit or acquiesce to inevitable constraints of aging, developmental phases, essential needs for mission, vs. desires and wants. The Ring-Pass-Not of Structure and Form
Jupiter — the ability to step back and see one’s present consciousness in relation to as broad an environment as one can perceive or know. Judgment is a combination of analysis, breadth of perception/vision, right timing and perspective — the apprehension of the difference between large and small, immediate and long-term. The Ring-Pass-Not of one's magnetic field, inclusive capacity, and Vision
Benevolence is one’s Heart, righteousness or right relations one’s Path. As Mencius noted, it is pitiful to lose either.
The integration of harmlessness into one’s life and work, dependent upon one’s genius, vigor, ingenuity — laziness and stupidity or the enthusiasm and willingness to make the effort. Mastery of karma depends on benevolence and ingenuity/genius in implementing it, not on cleverness – basically mastery of self and constructing an example to others, vs. coercion and manipulation of others to achieve the same or selfish results.

All the signs can be avenues of approach to the inner side of Life and access to the Inner Worlds.
Sagittarius expresses this particularly well as the soul in an animal body subordinating intellect to intuition and desire to Aspiration. Coming out of the depth or valley experiences of Scorpio and having finally got an inkling of the value of knowledge and wisdom interests (in this particular instance), wisdom is pursued on the plains of pedestrian life through the psyche and intuition and their ability to enhance skill-in-action. Scorpio achieves its visionary skill on the battlefields of Mars –the lower mind and self-will– by plumbing the depths through analysis, unconscious autonomic processing, and an emerging insight and intuition (Rays 4, 5, and 6 stabilized by Sagittarian drive).

Sagittarius seeks wisdom through perseverance, focus and skill-in-action. It may take some time before a distinction can be made between Practical Wisdom (philosophy) valuable to the personality’s integration with the soul, and Visionary Wisdom operating purely through the mind and heart, uniting spirit and soul, and enhancing skill-in-action in the Inner Life and inner planes where leverage is greater and more long-term.

Practical Wisdom – Judgment
Practical judgment involves the ability to ‘tread water’ as a personality, to get its problems and obstacles out of the way so the Soul can function through the personality in the world, and not be enslaved to the survivalist dictates of an instinctive animal and no more. This is a matter of ‘global’ integration as a human soul. The spiritual instinct to “turn back and save” (Jupiter rules Pisces) becomes a natural and automatic outpouring. Visionary judgment or wisdom predicates a conscious union of spirit and soul. The soul and personality constitutions become so integrated that the natural instinct, intellect, and wisdom of healthy animal society and its sensitivity to boundaries becomes an asset used to care for each other and the group.
Generally speaking, humans as instinctive animals are ‘damaged goods,’ but sentimental nostalgia for a natural state serves nothing but stasis unless it promotes personality and soul integration. Paradoxically (?) instinct is not fully recovered, integrated, and then dissolved in the whole human being until spirit takes charge of soul aspiration. This produces a full and natural inspiration of the human constitution and forms. This is all reflected in the relation of soul and mind, etheric body and brain — and then in turn by the integrated threefold human brain functioning through the instinctive (autonomic) nervous system, intelligently governing the refined sensibilities and expression of the human body.
Of course “the world conspires” to abort this work and to distract a normal functioning and ongoing integration with the subconscious.

It is an interesting fact that people generally choose a profession that involves their aspirations and weak points –what is easy–rather than applying effort and discipline to reveal their true abilities and strong points. By the end of a long life, things tend to trend toward the latter anyway.
Governors and managers seldom have skill in communication and the organization of multiple modes of intelligence, much less identifying them in others or oneself. But that is the essential component of governing and managing — they are beginners. Unwittingly or unconsciously most choose a work and life path that will produce the obstacles they need to develop and learn. This is particularly revealed by obsessively ambitious and compulsive but un-self reflective and nasty personalities. It is hard to recognize and reconcile oneself psychologically or emotionally with the fact that they suffer as much as they cause undue suffering in others.

Right use of speech is an essential lesson for the desire-enslaved Taurus as well as the gambling and risk addicted Sagittarian. Both also enjoy adrenaline pursuits for differing or opposite reasons — one to awake to their sensations and the other to see just how far one can go or how much one can get away with (in self and others). Right Speech is white magic. It can be summoned by a single well-placed word, or by a persistent assertive analysis (in resistant situations) until right transformative contact is made and the right resolutions fall out.

Right Judgment involves a broad vision maintained in immediate prosaic, distracting, or stultifying circumstance, the ability to distinguish great from small, essential from insignificant, need from desire, Being from business, and their right relations and integration through right timing. Right Judgment necessitates recognition and distinguishing among multiple intelligences, psychic modes, engagement approaches, and learning types, and most essentially involves applying the most fitting modes/means of communication, dispassionate engagement, and methods of instruction, or tactics of opening up the consciousness — awakening something intangible but grounded via brain, etheric body, soul, and triad.

Visionary Wisdom
In Sagittarius’ quiver of arrows — of spiritual impulse, though, speech, and action, it must be realized eventually that work with ‘thoughtforms’ is most valuable in the salvage work of resistant and enmired humanity at large. This is the purpose of studying the science of Illusion (GWP). What is an arrow — a shaft with a focal point and direction, with sensitive feathers that invest it with spin, or spiral-cyclic motion in forward flight.

I will receive all your arrows in my Shield, but I will send only one. […along your pre-established line of impulse.]
— Agni Yoga

Aspiration to Visionary Wisdom takes at least as much breadth of vision as well as depth and height. Sagittarius has learned the balance in some way — the battle for higher values takes pains and persistence and reiteration on Earth (Jupiter, Earth Mars rulers). Both Jupiter and Saturn, the wisdoms of vision and karma, demand sustained action to establish a gyroscopic equilibrium to move forward as well as preserve the viability of the larger systemic life and forms within which we “live move and have our being.”

Sagittarius has immediate access to the methods and tests of Scorpio and Capricorn. Earth and Gemini-Sagittarius humanity are guided by these four signs and kept in line by Scorpio and Capricorn. It is interesting that the 40-80 year economic recession cycles are governed by the Mars Heliocosm, and dated by the Scorpio and Capricorn positions at present. Economic activity and extremes are just the expression of masses of competing self-interested persons and values – forced periodically to stop and cooperate to avoid collapse of a living social system of many strata (of which they seem oblivious or scornful), the least indicator of which ought to be socio-economic status (except to the “blinded lives”). The Repug party has devolved in its evolution to a pseudo- quasi-aristocratic attitude of undemocratic morons whose philosophy is that of clever theft and absolute hatred and opposition to the public-sector ideals of virtually all the Founding Fathers of the civic-minded Republic.

Some Maddening Sagittarian Factors
Most ‘rural’ or ‘parochial’ anti-intellectual (anti-government) types reconcile themselves to injustices or brutality by non-recognition and traditional obliviousness (no mechanism of response), outworn adages, or self-aggrandizing / self-promoting bravado. This acquiescence or enjoyment of reactionary ad hoc survivalism also provides a source of idle spectator amusement in a dead environment (chaos ping-pong theory) devoid of aspiration or mission. It is hard to see the value of Ignorance –and there is a value and potential to it– in context, or in the much larger scope of evolution of consciousness, just like it is to reconcile one’s ‘construction’ of God and the ‘reason’ “He” allows evils to exist.

Besides defaulting to conflict and crisis addiction in order to stimulate thought and analysis, there is the mental sluggard/slacker factor, often found in those who do not value lifelong learning (the World is One Great School), persistent self-improvement, self-discipline (under psychological and circumstantial adversity), or self-possession (associated with maintaining norms, personal bearing and countenance associated with a fully self-conscious identity). We all know of instances where people claim to have learned something, say “I learned to drive at age 16,” with the implication that they have never needed to learn anything since, as they have passed on a form or a driving test. These are dangerous drivers whose attitude will eventually catch up with them in a rich, warm, moist and chewy accident. Learning any skill, especially driving, involves a wide range of skills as well as anticipatory knowledge deriving both from analysis or raw experience. Any discipline, such as the martial arts or professional skill, involves endless exercise and practice, coordinating thought and action so that they are one.

It is the greatest fear of this scribbler to be stuck in an emergency situation where such a moron as described above wants to arrogate control and issue orders. (Come to think of it, we are surrounded by such types and are doomed unless we have mastered skilled and modulated constructive self-assertion. One of many useful methods in dealing with such types is simply to take constructive needed action, remain silent, and wait to see if it is noticed by the self-indulgent and absorbed delegator.) Identifying this basic and common attitude illustrated above toward “thought” or “intelligence” and “expertise” (delegating?) is useful in distinguishing between Ray 6 and Ray 7 types. It should be clear and makes good sense that the attachment to the Sagittarius Rising US chart of orthodox astrology represents fascination with the ‘appearance’ or unregenerate shadow side of America’s Gemini personality.

Ray 6 — Here are those who seek approval of external parental or social authorities and the fleeting self justification and psychological rewards that come from manipulative and coercive power. It is clear they derive their feeble sense of identity from instances of approbation which are considered absolute and lasting (if not eternal). Puppet / clone conformist identity (popularity, belonging, acceptance, etc.) derives from external and material factors with their associated materialist insignia (and contrived awards ceremonies) which may well come from a decaying system or political machine, as well as from social pathology or semi-criminal feudal interests.

Ray 7 — Identity and norms –living ethics– derive from within. They mobilize proactive engagement and creative assertion, knowledge, dialogue, disputation deriving from mental and analytic capacity, and thought-through social interests. Recognition of the spectrum of social organizations and distinct organizational cultures, and the wisdom to navigate though externalia, inspire to produce mission-oriented improvements, needed reform initiatives, and programs that serve as stepping stones for the development and education and evolution of those social orders or stock types lower to them.

Down in the World
This is dramatically illustrated in the U.S., where its collective juvenility has yet to establish cordial relations between capital and labor. It still insists on its addiction to spendthrift madness and reactionary cornering of symbolic value (market cash and its variants subject to economic collapse) – until the system and its extant instrumentation hits rock bottom – at which point the self-absorbed and –interested addict can only dimly perceive that his obsession with getting ahead by theft and stealth has but served to destroy his economic playpen (litterbox) and the lives about which he cares nothing – except as cash cows, pigs and chickens in his plantation democracy, or as controllable and disposable ‘human resources’ or debt-slaves. It is a hard thing not to reveal or express one’s disgust.

Vigorous social Democracy is one of the few solutions — individuals ‘buying out’ of the mediocratic status quo and establishing new selfless initiatives that are socially magnetic and inspiring. We see this increasingly happening. True government and public service (vs. blind pimping to corporate ‘persons’ and political machines) is a necessary and noble self-sacrificing calling – made necessary by lack of vision in the masses and by a deliberately misdirected and dis-informed public (since PAC and marketing-subsidized media now sees itself as an information cartel, actually a static cliché and info-spin pinwheel). True democracy is a noble ideal, dependent upon an intelligent, interested, and informed public aware of its civic constitution and social contract, and promoted by the ingenuity and initiative of individuals – the people, not the ‘majority’ artificially constructed by media-market infotainment cartels; narrow unconditionally ‘special’ interests, a pitifully self-deluded elite – mediocratic, plutocratic, or totalitarian; or by tampered voting machines and procedures. At the end of 2011 the U.S. is a real smelly stagnant Repugnant sewer and MESS.

The other project of Jupiter (Hindu ‘Guru’) in the Piscean masses is that of transmuting Suffering into Consciousness, knowledge and wisdom, and Ignorance into Vigilance. Such low-grades and qualities of elite influence and ‘leadership’ are only reflections of Niebuhr’s Moral Man [and] Immoral Society. The collective host and its wisdom or ethics (morality) depend on the relative quotients of its stock-type group principled character.

Sagittarius and Religion / Spirituality
All Sagittarians have a philosophy of life and aspiration, whether they will admit it or not.
Is this Sagittarian’s values based on Humanism? Is he a Philosophe? Are his values so-called ‘secular’ or outright materialistic? Is he a Deist, even if he believes in the goddess Fortuna, or the ping-pong god of random chance, or the random ‘static’ of the god Chaos. Does his constructed pet anthropomorphic God prefer yellow, or pink, headgear and socks?

Atheists take everything for granted, especially the relevance and accuracy of their “human” (– undefined) conditioned or damaged perceptions of a material and energetic world, of visual and perceptual acuity (with lots of arguments “for”), with a distinct lack of analytic skill or capacity (sufficient for the public vernacular, but seldom for formal discourse), and a definite lack in the ability to formulate big questions in a larger context, following up with questions regarding their initial questions. Major questions are considered unanswerable or as an excuse to conclude discussion. Whatever. Atheism is simply a traditional or fashionable appeal, like choice of religion. Most personalities along these lines prefer to be called ‘agnostic.’

(Speaking from Puritan Boston and Massachusetts) Calvinism, with its materialist absolutism and material predestination (except permission to beg for unforthcoming grace), its absolute removal of human free will (without consulting God), and their Puritan spoor of fanatic reactionaries, witch-smellers, and fearless Quaker-killers in plain sight of “their God” seems little more than a fascination with or a species of Satanism and Devil worship (since that is another of their obsessions). Thank God for John Wesley, in this instance. All they contributed to society was sharp Yankee business practices and an obsession with academic credentials (once they completely secularized).

The question of what religion a person chooses (based on traditional hand-me-down, or a multiplicity of heart-and-mind needs and proclivities) is less important, meaningful or telling than the Question of what an individual believes, thinks, or identifies as God or Deity — concurrently with the Question of just what is Humanity, a human being and soul, and their relationship to Deity. All religions worthy of the name give expression to the golden rule and Deity’s Love behind the Creation and Nature.

Most Christian sects think their life on earth is a behavioral problem to be solved in one incarnation, for the benefit of an anthropomorphized Father/Mother God (Ray Six). If one relies on conceptions of predestination or endless forgiveness (for real or conventionally constructed ‘sins’), this is just another form of comfort seeking —in other words, idle pleasure-seeking. Taking the uninformed and unexamined attitude that it is all over in one lifetime is essentially lightmindedly hoping for an easy way out. Life’s lessons are infinite and until soul identity is distinguished from personality and then reintegrated, spiritual values are taken for granted and not fully actualized through deep struggle. In that case, with no conscious integration, is it possible to say that a human personality has a soul? It is certainly possible to observe that there is no “continuity of consciousness.”

Hope ???
What gives humanity perseverance and the ability to endure? Not the opiates of hope, faith, good intentions, wishful thinking, or the fantasy life of economic and political addicts. It is Aspiration and the unique training in Sagittarius that gives the power to “gut it out,” preserve equanimity, and remain free of anger and irritation, despite a spiritual or ‘righteous’ indignation at the Old World and Feudal System revivalists (the “wicked placed on high”). It is Sagittarius that gives perseverance, skill in thought, speech, and action, and the presence of mind to cultivate Vision, keep one’s eye on the target, and preserve self-possession in the moronic uproar of the 21st century ‘First World’; particularly in the present crisis of the U.S.A.

Sagittarius is peculiarly related to Humanity as a whole. Its method is unifying head and heart. It is sensitive to insincerity (from its own POV and construction of others’ actions and expressed ideals). Its process is Aim, Decision, Follow up, Assessment, and Aspiration to a better more intelligent, compassionate Reorientation and coordinated Reprise. Sagittarius has the capacity to become an exceptionally noble sign and influence.

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).