Your Sun Sign as a Spiritual Guide

Chapter One

WHY THIS BOOK?

Why still another book on the sun signs? Isn’t the market fairly awash in them already?

My reason is that I’m not so much adding my own bucketful to the flood as trying to bail enough water out of this ship to locate the rudder.

Nowhere in any book have I read a clear way out of the depressing circumstances into which Fate drove me, like a pea pod in a storm, when it made me a Taurean. I’m supposed, in my Taurean earthiness, to be quite unlike those airy Geminis, or those fiery Leos, but I find we do have one thing in common: We’re all stuck, rudderless, wherever Fate left us. The books tell us what we are (or are supposed to be); they don’t take the trouble to tell us what we can do about it.

Where do we go from here? If I’m drifting helplessly somewhere north of the equator, and you’re becalmed somewhere south of it, then to find the equator we must go in opposite directions. If I’m a Taurean, and you’re a Leo, we may need different advice on how to go about doing something constructive with our lives and how to find a sane, middle point of balance. Instead, all we ever get from popular astrology is suggestions for accepting it as our destiny to remain just where we are. Taureans are stubborn because—well, they’re Taureans, and supposed to be stubborn. No one tells them how this stubbornness may be developed from sheer bull-headedness to that kind of firm loyalty to truth that can only come from being fair and open-minded. Leos are supposed to love the limelight; no one tells them how an egotistical desire to shine before others can be transformed into a purely generous wish to enlighten.

In other words, there are different levels in the manifestation of basically similar traits. But the astrological books to which I’ve been exposed show a tendency to throw all the strengths and weaknesses of a sign together as if into a blanket, and then let them fall out where they will. It is difficult to get a clear picture of who is really what, when, and why. All Leos, for instance, are supposed to love the limelight. Yet I know any number of them who don’t, in fact who seem to shun it as a bomber would searchlights during an air raid. Really to understand the different influences at work in human nature, it is necessary to realize that there are higher and lower (or perhaps a better expression would be more and less mature) ways of responding to those influences. It is easier to understand that a way is, clearly, more or less mature if it is also understood that the end of human development is spiritual wisdom. A trait must be considered higher or lower according to whether it takes one closer to, or farther from, this ultimate point of soul maturity.

In ancient times, astrology was praised by the wisest of men as a divine science. Why? if all it does is tell us our hang-ups, and when would be the most favorable time for us to take a vacation? The fact is, astrology’s main purpose is to help man to chart his way out of dependence on any external influences—to become a free soul, guided only by the light of truth in his own heart. As a good general must know the lay of the land, and the relative strengths and weaknesses of his enemies and allies, so a man is helped in his journey toward final freedom if he understands something of the subtle influences that are affecting him—some adversely, others beneficially. Lacking the desire to know all those influences specifically, he will find it greatly helpful even to be aware, generally, that there are such subtle influences at work.

The ultimate purpose of astrology is to help man to understand that he can develop himself inwardly, so as to filter out the harmful influences, and make the best use of the beneficial ones. From understanding how the external universe affects him, he can gain greater insight into the manner in which his own, internal, universe of subtle energies affects him also. By learning to develop this inner universe, he can gradually be freed of dependence on the outer.

To study the influence of the sun signs is, as any real student of astrology knows, but the merest beginning to an understanding of this divine science. Yet it is a good beginning. It provides a few real guideposts which can be helpful to a seeker in his long search for self-knowledge.

Chapter Two

CAN THE PLANETS REALLY AFFECT US?

How is it possible for distant planets to exert any influence on human lives and destinies? A great body of evidence suggests that they do. But if indeed they do, how do they do it?

The question is not so unanswerable nowadays, when it has been found that living creatures are affected by magnetism of many kinds. Mollusks open their shells in rhythm with the moon’s motion. The direction snails move is affected by the earth’s polarity. Human behavior is often more erratic when the moon is full, as has been revealed by various studies of criminal and mental hospital records. A number of meteorologists have found that by consulting astrology the precision of their forecasts is definitely enhanced. Countless psychiatrists have taken to casting their patients’ horoscopes for greater accuracy in their diagnoses. Recently the Wall Street Journal printed an article on the startling accuracy of certain predictions* of stock market rises and declines based on the movements of the planets. The planets affect man, not personally and deliberately, but more in the way that different people are affected by the rain. Some become gloomy and depressed; others, exhilarated; still others feel themselves somehow cleansed and purified. One person may become more peaceful; another may find himself unaccountably nervous and uneasy. The objective condition is similar in all cases. It is the human responses that differ.

The planets, similarly, exert certain magnetic influences, individually as well as in various combinations, to which people respond according to their own magnetic constitutions.

An individual’s subjective make-up is always affected by objective influences in the universe, but never more so than by the influences that occur at the time of his greatest openness and susceptibility: his birth. The special combination of magnetic planetary rays that were being received at the place and at the moment of his first appearance in this life affect him more exactly than they can at any subsequent time of his life, simply because his body and nervous system at that time represent a relatively clean slate.† Thus, they establish to a very great extent (though not entirely) the specific magnetic pattern that will determine his unique character and destiny, and how he will react to all future astral influences.

It sounds like a very interesting, but of course fanciful, theory. The compelling argument is that it works.

Numerous cases, for example, are on record of people who have been born very close together in time and place. (In astrology, even a few minutes can make for great differences in the astral influences.) The similarities have been striking. These so-called astral twins, usually unknown to one another, have often taken ill on the same days, married on the same days, met with similar accidents and died on the same days. Such case histories may be found in various astrological works.* To duplicate them here would only be parroting the research of others.

Astrology was more advanced as a science in ancient times than it is today.† Now it is still only, in a sense, being rediscovered. It would therefore be wise to look to ancient traditions as guides to present developments.

One feature that stands out most clearly in the ancient writings is the emphasis that was placed on astrology as a guide to personal development, rather than as a mere statement of problems with no suggestion of a solution. Another feature of those writings is their emphasis on spiritual progress as the true goal of all human development. The use of astrology for purely mundane purposes was considered a lower, if still acceptable, application of this essentially divine science. Astrology in its highest form was meant to help man to reverse the indignity that was imposed upon him at his birth. As he was, at that time, the more or less helpless recipient of an impersonal combination of objective influences, so now he can and must develop his own magnetic power, that its influence on the world around him become even greater than that of the powerful, but distant, planets. From being an effect, he learns to become a cause. Thus, the great souls of this world are able not only to guide their own destinies, but also substantially to affect for the better the destinies of people who come, even by mental attunement, within the range of their magnetic influence. It is said in Guru Stotra, one of the Indian scriptures: Even one moment in the company of a saint can be your raft over the ocean of delusion.

Footnotes

* Found in Astro-Economics: A Study of Astrology and the Business Cycle, by Lieutenant Commander David Williams, Llewellyn Publications, St. Paul, Minnesota, 1969.

† The Hindu teachings claim that man’s destiny is determined on a still deeper level by his karma, or actions, of past lives, and that the time of his birth coincides with a planetary configuration that is harmonious for him. This would suggest an even greater openness to the planetary influences on the part of the newborn babe.

* One fascinating book, which contains descriptions of several such cases, is Astrology: The Space Age Science, by Joseph F. Goodavage, Parker Publishing Company, Inc., West Nyack, N.Y., 1966.

† My book, India’s Ancient Book of Prophecy, offers startling evidence in support of this claim. It tells of an ancient manuscript that I encountered in India, in which are described, accurately and in detail, the lives of numerous people who are living today. From nothing more than a series of hypothetical horoscopes, ancient astrologers were able correctly to name names, events, places, and to predict the future for countless people who hadn’t yet been born—many of whom would not be born for millennia to come.

Chapter Three

ASTROLOGY — ANCIENT AND MODERN

When the astrology books tell you that you are a Gemini, they mean that the sun was passing through the sign Gemini at the time of your birth. Rarely is the further fact stated that, in all likelihood, the sun was not in the constellation Gemini at that time.

First of all, astrology measures out exactly thirty degrees for each of the twelve signs through which the sun and other planets must pass to complete their full 360-degree cycle of the heavens. The constellations themselves were not so neatly or conveniently spaced by the Creator. In fact, their sizes vary considerably.

Astronomers sometimes refer to these variances in an effort to discredit astrology. What they do not know is that the ancient astrologers were not, as is popularly believed, concerned with the constellations as such, but rather with general areas of steady influence radiating from certain fixed stars, or groups of stars, in the zodiacal belt