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Principles of Astrology
Charles and Suzi Harvey
To all who would hear the music of the spheres.
Table of Contents
5: Divine Dialogues – The Aspects
7: The Corners of the Soul – The Houses of the Horoscope
10: Learning to Listen – Astrology in Everyday Life
Whatever is born or done this moment of time has the qualities of this moment of time.
C.G. JUNG
Time is the flowing Image of the Eternal … and the planets are the instruments of Time.
PLATO, THE TIMAEUS
THE STUDY OF TIME
Behind the light-hearted horoscopes of the popular press lies a hidden wisdom that can transform our understanding of ourselves and the nature of reality. For real astrology, from which this popular entertainment derives, is a language, science, art and craft that deals with the ever-changing qualities of time. Astrology studies the paradox that in each moment of space-time there is a point of access to the Eternal. It shows that each moment, such as of our own birth, is a seed containing a specific blueprint for the unfoldment of the infinite potential of one facet of the Great Jewel of Eternity.
Normally we take time for granted; we think of it as something neutral and simply a measure of duration. But in fact, according to the astrological and Platonic tradition, time is the great formative dimension of life. It is the dimension of time which, by means of the planetary cycles, dictates and unfolds into manifestation the changing patterns of Divine Ideas that shape our individual mind-set. It is the cycles of time, such as the daily shift from dark to light, and of the seasons, which govern the ebb and flow of daily life and at the same time the rise and fall of civilizations and the evolution of consciousness.
If this is your first astrology book, make a note of the time, date and place you obtained it. As you progress in your study of time, you will be amused and instructed by looking back at a map of this moment of space-time to see how it relates to your own birth chart, the unfoldment of your own consciousness of your infinite yet very specific potential.
A NOBLE SECRET
It is deeply unfortunate that for much of the general public the word astrology instantly means the Lottery’s Mystic Meg and breathless mediums peering into crystal balls. As the great French surrealist poet, critic and philosopher André Breton (1896–1966) lamented:
I see astrology as a very great lady, most beautiful, and coming from such a great distance that she cannot fail to hold me under her spell. In the purely physical world, I see nothing that has assets to emulate hers. She seems to me, besides, to hold one of the noblest secrets of the world. What a shame then, that nowadays – at least for the common masses – a prostitute reigns in her place.
Since Breton wrote that, the media’s trivialization of the ‘very great lady’ has become even more widespread. In consequence, no one who has not studied a book on real astrology could possibly understand why some of the very greatest minds and creative individuals down the centuries have preoccupied themselves with its study. From Pythagoras, Plato, Plotinus and Proclus to St Thomas Aquinas, Kepler, Galileo, Goethe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, W.B. Yeats and Jung and many, many more, the Royal Art and Science has proved to be a source of deep fascination, inspiration and guidance. And, despite the contemptuous guffaws of scientific orthodoxy, it still continues to enthral the minds of some of our finest contemporary thinkers, and to be used, behind the scenes, by some of the world’s leading figures. So what is astrology’s noble secret?
Astrology’s noble secret is rooted in the fact that she preserves an ancient understanding of the temporal cosmos as:
the flowing image of the Eternal God Thought;
a living, intelligent, purposeful entity in which part and whole dance together in resonance to the music of the spheres;
a hierarchy of levels of order in which the higher levels order the lower and in which the apparent random activity here on Earth below can be seen to be orderly behaviour when viewed from the heavens above.
We explore the key principles of this understanding of the cosmos in the next chapter. But first we need to look briefly at some of the key steps in the history of the evolving consciousness of the relationship between above and below, between time and eternity.
A BRIEF HISTORY
Prior to Newton, most thinkers in Western universities, and in most Eastern cultures, believed that all life on Earth was regulated and controlled by the movements of the celestial bodies. This was not a superstitious belief but a position developed from reason and experience over 2,000 years, and one that is still maintained by thinking astrologers today. This does not contradict the laws of physics, which describe the material