Arthur M.

Young

*Astrology as Cosmology*
by Arthur M. Young
We have indicated how the last stages of evolution transcend the
capacity of self-development which is so necessary for the learning
process. When competence is attained and the monad masters growth, which
can be seen as enlargement of self, the goal of the fifth stage is
reached. To go further this power must be surrendered and effort turned
toward mobility, the ability to choose and pursue a variety of goals.
Mobility is too limited a word, because in general it is not just
mobility as with animals, but as we have seen with the object lesson of
molecules, the sixth substage proteins are not just mobile, they create
forms suitable for a variety of functions -- functions useful only to a
higher order of entity. How does the protein for feathers know that it
will make it possible for a bird to fly?
The seventh or last stage eludes description. Ability to pursue goals of
unlimited scope only describes it by combining the options of fifth and
sixth stage. In terms of the object lesson of molecules it is DNA, which
transcends other molecules by constructing entities billions and
trillions of times larger than itself.
Such a recital affords a description, but it does not explain how the
jumps from one stage to the next occur. Self-interest, or enlightened
self-interest, accounts for the fifth. In myth it is the stage of the
hero -- Hercules and his twelve labors, Theseus and his conquest of the
Minotaur, and many more -- but after the hero has accomplished his tasks
he holes up with some beautiful maiden who turns him into a beast, or
the like.
The fate of Theseus after his conquest of the Minotaur, to fall under
the enchantment of Ariadne and become himself a beast, carries us to the
sixth stage. We have seen how sixness involves oppositeness, the mutual
opposition of two sets of three. How is this stage transcended? How do
proteins make the jump to the seventh, to DNA?
We saw from the animal kingdom that seventh substage vertebrates did not
take off from insects, the most advanced arthropods; they started over
again, beginning with simple vermiculate creatures, the lancets. But
this doesn't explain the jump. Similarly, despite the multiplicity of
forms of proteins, none show any hint of the double helix, how the
complexity of the protein chain sequence becomes internalized in DNA,
nor how such internalization incorporates protein diversity and commits
itself to a fixed shape (a change echoed in the shift from animals to
man because all humans are of one species).
The shift from proteins to DNA involves a radical change of direction, a
shift from the performance of a function to creating the instructions
for many functions, plus an agency, RNA, which takes this instruction
and manufactures the protein which performs the function.
Thus DNA makes proteins of much greater variety and capacity than
proteins could make themselves.
This intercession which seems to be essential at the sixth stage is what
we call the /pull from above./ It takes over when the push from within,
the internal tension of growth, has spent itself. It also seems to
suggest that the gods make animals.
If this seems to be straining too much despite its appropriateness for
molecules, we could think of the sixth as close enough to the goal to
afford such occasional glimpses of the goal to provide stimulus and
hence a pull from above.
According to the Theosophist tradition, animals make the leap to the
next kingdom whey they show devotion (Leadbeater and Besant, /Man, How
Whence and Whither/). This impresses me because devotion is an emotion
without a finite object and thus differs from the finite goals that
characterize animal behavior.
When we come to man we have suggested that the scenario provided by
planetary directions affords a variety of situations, challenges, and
interactions by which human life is enriched far beyond the necessities
of survival. We must realize that evolution for man is such that
survival of the fittest, whether or not adequate to account for animal
evolution, has no bearing on man, no relevance to human evolution. Man's
evolution is that of each individual person, not of the species. Each
person lives his life, learns his lesson, and gradually through many
lifetimes increases his scope and competence. This gain is not
transmitted to his offspring. Nor is it stored as with higher animals in
the group soul -- since man's task is to individuate, to stand clear of
the group soul and learn to think and act on his own initiative.
Not only is it important in this connection that human behavior does not
affect the genes -- that is, there is no inheritance of characteristics
acquired by the parent -- but even if there were such inheritance it
would not operate after the childbearing age, often the most rewarding
part of a person's life. "Life begins at 40," it has been said, and I
think it's true. Until about this age we are gathering experience which
we can only begin to use after 40.
The duration of the life span fits perfectly with the periods of the
planets, and if it does not afford a confirmation of their influence, at
least it provides, as we said, a way to define their influence --
Uranus, with its period of 84 years, defining the longest cycle of
change that can be encompassed within the life expectancy of a healthy
person; Neptune, with double that period, correlating with the
unconscious, and so on.
But it's time we stopped borrowing bits and pieces from this ancient
"science" of astrology. I feel rather guilty, in fact, about this
borrowing. Like a person who takes the limestone facing from the Great
Pyramid to construct modern buildings, or columns from a Greek temple to
erect a railroad station, I have borrowed from the zodiac the concepts
for the construction of /The Geometry of Meaning/ -- from the Table of
Houses the concept of kinds of relationship not possible to consider in
science, such as that to an equal and that to what is above oneself --
and I've borrowed from the planets for the definition of the powers
which characterize the stages of process.
Because of the disrepute into which astrology has fallen in modern
times, I omitted reference to the subject in my first books. I hoped to
show the same conclusions from a candid appraisal of the sweep of
evolution plus arguments from first principles.
On the other hand, when I do claim the authority of astrology I am told
that the subject does not support my interpretations. The double bind
reminds me of how Chinese artists in the past used to follow the manner
of more ancient artists to lend prestige to their own work, while modern
artists go out of their way to invent an "original" style. To add to the
confusion we have parapsychologists following the protocol of science to
gain credibility.
I think I understand the intelligent reader's hesitancy about astrology,
and I share with my reader an even greater bias against religion -- at
least insofar as the church has distorted Christ's teachings. On the
other hand I want to share with my reader the disenchantment I have come
to, by long study, with the credo of science, which I come increasingly
to realize is at odds with its own findings.
Science has been the great venture of modern man, but I am deeply
disappointed that it has stopped short of its goal. It has become
political, adhering to a materialist dialectic. The cult of calibration
and measurement has dispensed with consideration of first principles and
produced tons of facts tied together with bits of fragile string. The
consistency and clarity, even of classical determinism, has been lost
and its blundering prejudice retained. The stimulating challenge of ESP
is ignored and made ridiculous; even the nineteenth-century recognition
that perception was only partially based on sensation, and had
components of value and image carried over from earlier experience, is
set aside in obeisance to a reductionism based on a physics long since
obsolete.
Science, in short, is a motley of fragmented special disciplines, each
encrusted with its own jargon and incomprehensible to its fellows,
rallying under a common policy of objectivity -- valid enough as applied
to method, but downright misleading when applied as it is and without
justification to require that the world be exclusively objective and
physical.
This despite the recognized fact that the fundamental particles are
without identity and the photon, so ubiquitous in that it is the source
of all changes in matter -- chemical, atomic, and otherwise -- is not
recognized for its primary role, and is non-objective, impossible to
observe.
When I then find that the most fundamental entity in physics, the
quantum of action -- "more basic even," as A. Wheeler says, "than
particles or fields of force or space and time themselves" -- is
nonphysical, non-objective, should I remain silent? I can at least say
so and leave the layman to draw his own conclusions.
And so I could leave it. But when it comes to constructing a cosmology
based on the nonmaterial, and I find that the discredited astrology, the
divine science of the ancients, is founded on the same vocabulary of
elements that is the basis for the measure formulae of physics, I am,
like John Dean,* impelled to turn state's evidence and expose the cover-up.
But there is no court of inquiry to hear the evidence.
It is only when the cosmology I have set up, based on scientific
evidence, itself calls out for the importation of something of larger
import than the ingredients of science per se, that I turn to astrology.
At this juncture I can no longer say as before, "Ignore the popular
usage of astrology, ignore its employment by fortune tellers; consider
only the remarkable vocabulary it uses." Why? Because I find it not a
relic of ancient custom, a temple built to an unknown god, not even an
occasional revelation such as inspired ancient prophets or modern-day
persons who have seen flying saucers -- it is an ever-present influence
as real as were the Greek gods to Ulysses. The arcs and transits of
planets do precisely correlate to important events in my life.
Proof of this I cannot supply here -- for its province is not in the
objective that can be calibrated and measured; but it can be verified by
each person in his or her own life.
Nevertheless some statement of its scope and manner of working is
available from Eric Schroeder, a close friend who like myself was
converted to astrology in his forties and who worked with it almost to
the exclusion of all other occupations until his death in 1971:
The proposition suggested for belief before entering upon the
unfamiliar matters before us is threefold: that a special and (for
lack of a better word) poetic symbolizing power pervades nature
while evading or transcending (but not contradicting) the known laws
of material behavior; that this power uses material and mental
events as repositories or vehicles of diagram, and apparently of
metaphysical or ontological diagram, in conformity with a sort of
imaging which can be traced very far back in the religious or
metaphysical concepts of mankind; and that, while astonishingly free
with disguise, using here a beetle and there a bishop for the same
symbolization, this power is rhetorical in method, relying much on
formal predominance, on what might be called rhyming emphasis, and
working on feeling.
/-- Zodiac, An Analysis of Symbolic Degrees,/ preface, p. 10
Rather than try to restate what Schroeder describes so eloquently, I
will only point out that in his reference to symbols as "events or
objects in which powers of greater or higher order are configured for
intelligence" he speaks of what I call Level II.
Elsewhere I've described Level II as mythos as against Level III as
logos. Mythos and logos are two complementary ways of viewing the world.
They are the means which are referred to in the /Timaeus/ as mediating
between the World of Being and the World of Becoming. To add that the
former is noumenal and the latter phenomenal may help, but for my part I
find the definition that leaves least room for gratuitous and often
misleading coloration is to describe Level II as having two degrees of
freedom and one of constraint, Level III as having one degree of freedom
and two of constraint.
With this definition the correlation of Level II to values is precise --
values can only occur on a one-dimensional scale. This does not mean
that there are not many possible scales -- for example, maps might be
evaluated on the basis of accuracy, or on the basis of antiquity. Each
criterion establishes its own scale, and maps can be assigned a value.
Level III correlates to forms, concepts, definitions, ratios: A is
bigger than B, but this does not tell us the size of either. Eddington
said that all science consists of statements of relationship. Berkeley
said the same when he said the chemist had no need of the notion of
substance; all his operations dealt with relationships. A reason for
this is that only statements of relationship have the objectivity
required by science.
However, it is necessary to add that the statement that all science
consists of statements of relationship, which was used by Berkeley to
dismiss the notion of substance, is also a statement of the limitations
of science -- in fact the limits of knowledge. In short, totality
includes something quite different from knowledge and inaccessible to
knowledge.
The reply to Berkeley is that while the chemist conducts his experiments
on the basis of ratio, and the book of chemistry deals only in
relationships, he could not perform an experiment without some substance
to work with. This would take us to the Bishop's criticism of Newton,
who with his concept of the derivative was the first to give formal
expression to the concept of a ratio (the rate of change of a variable;
the steepness of a hill, the slope of a curve). Berkeley insisted that
Newton's notion of ratio had no reality; it was absurd.
That is, if we measure the slope of a curve we do so by measuring the
ratio of two measures, the horizontal and the vertical distances, and
find the value of their ratio for smaller and smaller increments of
both. Berkeley criticized the notion that the ratio of infinitesimals
could have a finite value, and the issue troubled mathematicians for
hundreds of years. It was supposedly settled by Cauchy's proof in the
late nineteenth century, but I don't think this is convincing. The ratio
between quantities is of a different logical type. The measures of
horizontal and vertical distance are tangible; the ratio is intangible
-- to shift from one to the other will always make trouble until it is
recognized that measure and its ratio are different categories, logical
types if you will, and both are valid.
In his "invention" of the derivative, a notion we take for granted in
speaking of the velocity or speed of a car, Newton laid the basis not
only for calculus but also, as we said, for the measure formulae -- the
basic vocabulary for science. These may be understood without reference
to calculus and have wider application. (It would be better and easier
to teach the measure formulae in school instead of calculus.)
In dismissing the notion of substance in preference to ratio on the one
hand, and the notion of ratio on the other, the Bishop could be accused
of inconsistency. But he is correct in that neither one is ultimate
"truth"; both are means. The difficulty is that "truth" cannot be
described. And though mythos affords an access to truth as important as
knowing, it can also be misleading.
Level II on the way down is the trap of illusion. Recall the Popul Vuh
myth, in which the twins failed their initiation because they mistook a
wooden idol for a god. Level III is the trap of ego and of intellect,
which is only vanquished by the hero on the way back as he moves through
Stage 5.
Myth is deficient in describing the task of Stage 6 -- Greek heroes
seem, as I said, to lose their way. Popul Vuh describes the twins as
becoming itinerant magicians, and we might ask whether the shaman,
himself a magician, is not serving his apprenticeship here -- again at
Level II, no longer as the victim but as one who employs illusion.
Beyond that the theory of process is not too helpful. I can only say
that I am reporting that the pull from above is indicated.
The efficicacy of astrology goes further. Schroeder says, "If a
relatively simple high power agency of general competence within a
complex system may be called an angel, astrology may be frankly
designated as an empirical angelology."
But Schroeder is speaking of the degrees, which are subdivisions of the
elements, themselves the "gods of the four directions" which I correlate
to logical types, for which there is abundant testimony not only in myth
but also in our own Bible, notably the vision in Ezekiel and in
Revelations:
. . . a great cloud . . . . And out of the midst thereof came the
likeness of four living creatures, and this was their appearance.
They had the likeness of a man, and every one of them had four
faces, and every one had four wings . . . they four had the face of
a man and the face of a lion and the face of an ox . . . they four
had the face of an eagle.
But the notion of elements and their subdivision does not encompass the
other ingredient essential to astrology -- the gods as principles or
powers operating through the planets.
This is where, in answer to the charge that I'm snatching pieces of the
temple of astrology to serve my own purposes, I can cite my own
inadequacy. The whole temple cannot be transported except it be taken in
pieces. And the temple itself is not the ultimate; it too is an idol.
But as an idol it is closer to life than the idol of science. That
perhaps is my final plea. So I must take the gods and their correlation
with the planets on faith. Let us see what this faith entails.
I . That the solar system is an organon.
II. That the organon is "a process machine" having a number of distinct
periodicities or rhythms.
III. That said rhythms are indicated by the planets.
IV. That the direction in which planets "point" at any given time
indicates, or creates, the zeitgeist of that time.
V. That the pointing of the planets produces such zeitgeist because the
directions are themselves different in quality.
VI. That the planets, because of their difference of period, contribute
to the different powers of persons.
VII. That a person's birth is an introduction into this organon. A birth
is an enrollment, as it were, to "take a course in the universe." The
birth establishes the central stance. The motion of the planets
thereafter establishes the scenario.
Curious that the word university is so close to the universe in which we
are all students -- and the word itself, universe, "one that turns,"
singles out the salient feature of the whole process, /rotation./ The
soul like meat on a spit is roasted, first on one side, then on another.
The soul does not just plunge blindly into life; it chooses its script
much as we would choose a course in a university. This can remove some
of the negative implications of Fate.
*Fate and Free Will*
This leads to a familiar paradox -- the question of fate versus free will.
As I hope I've shown already, the third derivative removes the apparent
conflict of free will and determinism. They are not in conflict because
they are at different levels. When we know the law we can use it to
extend our freedom. The third derivative is assurance from science of
this option, testimony from science that there is something outside of
science which can use science.
Free will and fate are also at different levels. We could say that
because we choose one chart, we choose our "fate," and thus put free
will on top of fate. But ordinary life is on such a different time scale
from that of fate that it is impossible for the two to be in conflict.
We do not and cannot know our fate in terms of ego consciousness; the
self that chose a time of birth is not on call to our waking personality
(he may be in sleep), and the conscious ego doesn't know its fate, so it
cannot be in conflict with fate. It's busy, very busy, trying to do
this, trying to do that, pushing buttons, ringing bells, knocking on
doors; but this activity is 99 percent futile. It is when Fate, a
different agency, opens the door or returns the call that things happen.
This still doesn't answer the feeling that a pre-programmed scenario is
inconsistent with our free will. This feeling may be insatiable, no
doubt because it cannot see itself. In this respect it is like reason
and the Zeno paradox. Reason cannot solve the Zeno paradox, that
defining motion in terms of rest it has to realize that motion and rest
are incommensurate -- like the point and the line which are regarded as
undefined terms in geometry.
In other words free will and fate are not in conflict because they are
not on the same level, or even at the same time scale.
"There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the peak leads on
. . ."
"There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them as we may."
NOTE: This journal excerpt written in 1973, at the time of the Watergate
cover-up.