"The great responsibility of the astrologer is to keep
his viewpoint free from all false claims of pride and power-lust. These
temptations are very subtle and can be very difficult to detect consciously.
To be able to read a horoscope sensitively does place in the astrologer's hand
a certain power over the mind or emotions of his client; the latter, being to
a degree dependent on the astrologer, may tend to feel and express a certain
reverence toward the astrologer, which can be very flattering to his human
consciousness."
So much favorable comment has come to us concerning the
astrological articles by Elman Bacher which appeared in our Rays from the Rose
Cross during past years that we feel sure this volume will be cordially
welcomed by all students of spiritual astrology.
Mr. Bacher's profound knowledge of and devotion to the
stellar science, along with an uncanny understanding of human nature, made it
possible for him to present material which undoubtedly places him among the
best of modern esoteric astrologers. As the truth and value of astrology
becomes more and more generally accepted, his presentations will serve
increasingly to help people know themselves and fulfill their highest destiny.
Before his passing in 1954, Mr. Bacher expressed a
keen desire to have us publish his articles in book form, and although we
deeply regret that he is not here to see the culmination of his desire, we are
happy in knowing that his wish is now being fulfilled.
Introduction
To the Rosicrucian student astrology is a phase of religion, basically a spiritual science. More than any other study it reveals
man to himself. No other science is so sublime, so profound, and so
all-embracing. It portrays the relation between God, the macrocosm, and man, the
microcosm, showing them to be fundamentally one.
Esoteric science, investigating the subtler forces that
impinge upon man, the Spirit, and his vehicles, has charted their effects with
no less definiteness than has academic science the reactions of sea and soil,
plant and animal to the solar and lunar rays.
With this knowledge we may determine the astrological
pattern of each individual and know the relative strength and weakness of the
various forces operating in each life. To the degree that we are in possession
of such knowledge we can begin systematic, scientific character building — and
character is destiny! We note times and seasons cosmically advantageous to
unfolding undeveloped qualities, correcting faulty traits, and eliminating
destructive propensities.
The divine science of astrology reveals the hidden
causes at work in our lives. It counsels the adult in regard to vocation, the
parent in the guidance of children, the teacher in management of pupils, the
physician in diagnosing disease, thus lending aid to each and all in whatever
position they may find themselves.
No other subject within the range of human knowledge
appears to hold for this day and age the possibilities open to astrologers for
helping people to their own dignity as gods-in-the-making, to a greater grasp
of universal law, and to a realization that we are eternally secure within the
caressing fold of Infinite Life and Boundless Being.
The Astrologer
The astrologer belongs to one of
those many groups of people who, motivated by impersonal love, seek to add to
the betterment of human conditions. He has come to a point in his development
when his inner resources, distilled from past incarnations, are of such
quality and scope that they "must out;" in other words, a part of his
consciousness can no longer find satisfaction in the purely personal — or
biological — levels of experience. (Of course, his impersonal service is
an expression of his development and experience as a human being, but its
purposes are for the world of human beings at large.)
Let us consider the astrologer in the light of
"astrological designs:"
In a blank circle draw the horizontal and vertical
diameters. The cross made by these two lines symbolizes the human-beingness
of the Astrologer: a man — or woman — incarnated for the purposes of
development, dealing with problems, trials, and temptations as anyone else
does; perhaps subject to one or many forms of testing-through-suffering. All
this pertains to the personal part of him, but when we add the cusp of the
ninth house to this "cross pattern" we see the astrologer emerge from the
limitedness of a mere human. Placing the symbol for Jupiter in the ninth house
of this design pictures his essential identity: he is "elder brother" and
teacher.
In his human-beingness on this plane he is brother to
all people who come to him for guidance. He recognizes that he walks the same
essential paths that all people do, but the thing that differentiates him from
others is the composite of his impersonal love quality, his range of
understanding of human conditions and his abstract mental faculties. This
composite lifts his consciousness to a level that transcends the basic
biological motivations of thought and feeling, he sees through the concepts of
race, group-religion, caste, family moldings, physical relationship patterns,
and even of sex itself. His approach to his "younger brothers and sisters" is
from the basis of studying and understanding their vibratory patterns — in
other words, their consciousness.
His fundamental study is that of the vibratory nature
of the entity we call humanity in its myriad expressions and variations,
manifested by subconscious impressions and feelings, emotional tastes,
physical attributes and conditions, and reaction patterns to all the
departments of experience and relationship common to all human beings in their
evolutionary progress. Mankind is not only one family — it is one thing, one
particular pattern of life-expression.
The astrologer is, of course, a facet of the one
thing; but, by perception and understanding, he is in relationship to most of
the other facets of the one thing as a person on a mountaintop is to those who
are climbing the same mountain or to those who have still remained in the
valley below. He has, at his particular evolutionary level, already distilled
something of what the climbers on the mountain slope and the people in the
valley are in the process of distilling: awareness of universal principles and
its expression through the processes of human life. He, in his turn, still has
mountains ahead, and there are those who have attained "look-out points" that
are higher than that which he now occupies. But the impersonal consciousness
is the common denominator of them all. That is the essence of the fraternity
which relates him to those still climbing and to those ahead of him. To the
former he is elder brother; to those ahead he is younger brother. But all of
them are elder brothers to those who remain in the valleys of purely
biological and materialistic consciousness.
In our design, the ninth house symbolizes the
knowledge or wisdom aspect of the astrologer; his love aspect is designated by
the eleventh house. To our design let us add Aquarius on the cusp of the
eleventh house and place the symbol for Uranus in that house; shade in the
ninth and eleventh houses so that they stand out from the rest of the wheel;
"ground" these two houses by adding the cusp lines of the third and fifth
houses, thus designating a composite of two polarity-patterns: (1) knowledge
raised to its transcendent expression of wisdom, distilled from experience;
(2) personal love, as a creative expression, raised to its spiritualized level
of boundless impersonal love for humanity — regardless of the latter's levels
of manifestation or development.
The love aspect of the astrologer's consciousness — designated by the eleventh house and the vibratory essence of Uranus — is the
culmination of all the houses of relationship and the most spiritualized
expression of the air signs. The eleventh house is Human Relationship in its
most protean expression. It is the distillation of all relationship
patterns — the power of love in its expression as the "waters of Life," the panacea of
all emotional experience, the ultimate goal of all human loving. We call this
state "Friendship" — the essence of the best that may be derived from the
togetherness of people, no matter who, or what, they may be as individuals.
This love aspect is, by its very nature, the fused
essence of the love aspects of both sexes — or polarities. The astrologer,
through his intensified experience in past incarnations, has distilled, to a
degree, the understanding of the emotional characteristics pertaining to the
masculine and feminine attributes. He must, to fulfill his service, be able to
see into the problems of both men and women and to perceive the directions of
regeneration and correction.
The consciousness of the astrologer, in reference to
this love aspect, might be more clearly delineated by another design. (The one
we have been considering refers more particularly to the evolutionary
directions or paths that must be traversed by one who seeks to render service
through astrological interpretation.) The flowering of the love consciousness
of the astrologer is shown by a blank wheel in which the cusps of the third,
seventh, and eleventh houses are connected by straight lines, forming an
equilateral triangle. Interestingly enough, one point of this triangle — the
third cusp — is in the lower, or ego consciousness, hemisphere; the seventh
cusp marks a point of equilibrium, being opposite to the Ascendant; the
eleventh cusp, representing the highest peak of relationship consciousness, is
in the upper, or soul consciousness hemisphere. There is an element — a common
denominator — of "fraternity," linking these three houses to each other. The
third house, on biological levels, is "brothers and sisters;" on a more
impersonal expression it is "kindred and neighbors;" still more impersonal it
is "fellow students" — people of whatever age or condition who are learning
from the same source of knowledge, or who are being spiritualized by the same
religious or philosophical interpretation. The seventh house is the fraternal
relationship of one person — or consciousness — to a complementary expression —
either sexual or vibrational. The "fraternity of marriage" might be described
in this way: one man and one woman serves, in togetherness, the on-goingness
of life in love experience and procreation. Husband and wife, in this life
service, are truly brother and sister as an expression of the third house
consciousness intensified by the composite powers of desire attraction and
love releasement. The eleventh house, in the soul consciousness hemisphere, is
the transcendence of the former two, since it is the love consciousness
expressed toward the entire entity which we call humanity, and it is not
limited in its expression by being confined to only one part — or selected
parts — of that entity as its object.
So, the spiritually motivated astrologer must stand
as a living symbol of that love which recognizes no barriers or limitations —
of any kind — to its expression.
We will now consider a design which could be taken to
represent a symbolic portrait of the astrologer in his composite factors of
human consciousness and spiritual consciousness. Using a wheel with houses on
white paper fill in the first six houses with a dark color — brown or blue,
etc.; fill in the seventh and eighth houses with red — symbolizing the "fires"
of relationship and regeneration; the remaining four houses will remain white-
-symbol of the spiritualized consciousness. The portrait which results is that
of a human being whose vibratory and environmental elements are essentially
those of any other person; he has experienced much development through
transmutation of his lower vibrations by the spiritualizing powers of
idealism, love, service, sacrifice, self-discipline, and responsibility
fulfillment. He has been many things — as a worker; he has fulfilled most of
the patterns of experience in love relationship — both as male and as female;
he is — or has been — something of an artist because his mental perceptions
include an understanding of the symbolic and of the abstract. He is aware of
the drama of life and he is sensitive to the nuances of human thoughts and
feelings as they are presented in the problems that he studies. He knows evil
but his mind and heart are set on good. He studies problems to fulfill the
purpose of finding solutions. His motivation being one of love, he radiates
encouragement, neutralizes fear, illumines the consciousness of his brothers
and sisters by alerting them to their strength and powers. He is — and realizes
that he is — an "open door" through which all who so desire may walk from the
darkness of their unregenerate patterns into the light of self-knowing. He
neither approves nor disapproves of anything he sees in any chart — he keeps
personal feeling out of the picture — because he recognizes that each chart is
a picturing of good in its becoming.
In relationship to the client who requests his
assistance we see him portrayed by this design: an otherwise blank wheel with
the first six houses colored or shaded, the upper six houses remaining white.
In this design, the lower shaded houses represent the client with his problem;
the white houses represent the astrologer and his spiritualized consciousness.
All human problems are rooted in unregenerate expressions of the first six
houses; they are brought into their most intense focus throughout the
composite action of the seventh and eighth houses and the solutions are found
in the regenerating powers of the last four houses. In this design the
astrologer reflects the regenerate potentials of the client. He is thus
portrayed as the client's other, or higher, self. The magnetic action of love
power attracted the client to the astrologer, who waits to assist all who need
him, and by the distilled powers of his regenerate consciousness, he is able
to study the client's chart and to throw a beam of light into the dark corners
and perceive the needed spiritual corrective for the client's consciousness
toward his problem.
The astrologer, in contact with the client, has the
responsibility of putting aside all patterns of personal disturbance while he
undertakes the task of reading the client's chart. He must be the white
hemisphere, and in the event that he is dealing with a deep personal
disturbance it would appear a better policy to defer the reading until he can
establish his inner poise. In recognizing the impersonal quality of his
service he knows that he is an instrument by which the client's good is
brought out into the open and he has, really no right to impose on the already
disturbed or apprehensive client his own inner frictions. His responsibility
is to reflect light — clearly, strongly, and unwaveringly.
Since all forms of service entail certain
characteristic patterns of testing for those who are aspiring, it might be
well to consider a few of the principal tests which are, sooner or later, to
be faced by all astrologers.
The great responsibility of the astrologer is to keep
his viewpoint free from all false claims of pride and power-lust. These
temptations are very subtle and can be very difficult to detect consciously.
To be able to read a horoscope sensitively does place in the astrologer's hand
a certain power over the mind or emotions of his client; the latter, being to
a degree dependent on the astrologer, may tend to feel and express a certain
reverence toward the astrologer, which can be very flattering to his human
consciousness. The astrologer must keep a respect for his own instrumentation;
if he does so he will not fall into the trap of letting his ability become a
source of pandering to latent vanities; he will, instead, let it remain a
"candle burning brightly on the altar of spiritual service."
The astrologer serves best if he can keep his service
output free from all limiting claims of financial remuneration. If he can make
his living in another way and do his astrological work as a creative
expression he stands a much better chance of keeping his channels open and
free-flowing. The client has a perfect right to make compensation if he wishes
to — since he wants to establish equilibrium in relationship to the astrologer
by what he considers right exchange and to express his appreciation. However,
financial remuneration cannot be allowed to become a static factor to the
astrologer if he is to keep himself a symbol of universal giving. The moment
he establishes a policy of specific charge for his service he risks cutting
himself off from many people who may need his assistance but who cannot ask
for it because they cannot afford it. In short, the astrologer who keeps his
service channels open and free is the one who serves best, most completely,
most happily, and most spiritually.
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