Chapter 3 FINDING THE SOURCE OF TRUE POWER

Power drives astrology. Astrology charts the natural flow of the Life Force energy through the year, and shows us the complex web of interrelations between the planetary archetypes and the signs, and each other, and the flow of power is central to this story.

Power is not only imposed or established through acts of will upon others and our environment. It derives from right analysis, expression, exertion, assertion, individuation, resistance and action, the masculine principles, and right reception, submission, listening, abeyance, contemplation, and immersion, the feminine principles- in the specific context of the environment, the prototypical sign.

Power of this kind is analogous to the primal electricity that flows in nature, and in creation as a whole; it is ever-present in potential, but it is only accessible to the native when they meet the energetic demands of the sign. The exact quality and direction of the power matches the quality and direction of the Life Force in the season.

Traditional astrology is based on a specific rulership scheme of planetary types who hold dominion over the different real estate plots carved into the sky, the signs, which point directly back to the seasons here on earth. The sign is not only territory in the heavens: the vast terrain was thought of as an essentially primordial, deep, dark, feminine, watery firmament through which the shining, fiery (relatively masculine) planets travel and the foreign fixed stars animate in perpetual passion plays.

The rulership of the sign is not based exclusively on an affinity between the ruler and the sign. The ruler shares more or less archetypal expression with the prototypical sign, but affinity between the ruler and the sign is by no means the whole story.

All of the planetary archetypes wander and give off light, while the signs host vast quantities of foreign luminaries and vast depth and darkness. The planets are actors and the signs are the stages and the scenes.

All of this is also within us. The stories of the heavens are the stories of humanity.

Rulership depends on the particular skills that the ruler has to establish order and harmony in the territory, and most of all, to functionally move the story of the Life Force forward in the Zodiac. This includes the ability to influence other archetypes and move them forward in whatever way their natural elemental relationship dictates, whether it is to calm and soothe them, to ritually cleanse and purify them, to examine and analyze them, to uplift and transform them, to constrict and diminish them, to midwife and manifest their will, or simply to spur them into action.

Or, to face off against one another in conflict.

LOCK AND KEY

The ruler has the keys that make the territory yield its secrets.

We learn about the unique skills, the keys of the Rulers, largely from the mythology of their archetype. But to simply read ancient mythology is not enough: the prevalent cosmology behind astrology was Hermeticism, or something very similar from which this set of principles arose. To read mythology and apply it to astrology properly, it has to be interpreted through this Hermetic lens, which was one of the main drivers of ancient thought.

How this metaphorical scheme really works and fits in with a Hermetic cosmology, and why it works, is the basis of this inquiry.

The meaning of rulership is in itself a riddle, a Pandora’s box of possibilities.

POLITICAL POWER

One common metaphor used to represent sign rulership is correlated to political power, and this is very useful in many cases, but it is crucial that we do not stop there.

Political power is one of several metaphorical frameworks that we need to apply consistently. However, if we lock our metaphor too tightly into a political model, it will likely limit and degrade our larger metaphorical framework. There is much more going on than can be described by political or hierarchical organization.

Astrology tends to name the Sun as the Emperor, the Moon as Queen or High Priestess, and establishes possible hierarchies that the other planets occupy. This is somewhat useful, but dangerously simplistic.

POWER IN METAPHOR, POWER IN REALITY

The ultimate power of the stars, and especially the luminaries, is deeply ingrained in the human psyche and inextricably part of our consciousness. Astrology resonates with us and compels us because the stars and the sky are so profound, mysterious and beyond comprehension, presenting us with awe- inspiring possibilities that challenge our capacity to create meaning and our ability to make sense of time and space. They demand that we question who and what we are in this expansive cosmos.

This fascination persists in the modern mind with alien, UFO and science fiction mythologies penetrating the collective consciousness to the point of building entrained cults around this lore. Many authors and cultural analysts have recognized the links between UFOs or alien visitation and traditional mystical phenomenon such as the Fae, Djinn, Nagas or a plethora of other crypto-zoological or extra-dimensional phe- nomenon. Speculation along these lines is fascinating and highly productive.

However, there is a dark side to this. Our lack of connection to the past, and the prevailing futurist, progressivist dogmatism has made us extremely vulnerable to the abuses of these compelling cultic mindsets, which track with New Age ascension ideas. The (relatively new) Sci Fi futurist cults are loosely updated versions of ancient cults. These new cults are too deluded by over-sold technology and self-negating ideologies, and too entrained to see that this mindset is anti-human.

This symbology of the stars, specifically the Sun, has been used for all of known human history to signify status and to lay claim to and usurp power here on earth. Symbols carry more weight in the human psyche than most people can ever imagine, and if we only look at the how the symbols of the Sun have been used and continue to be used by corporations, churches, governments, NGOs, secret societies, artists, et al, we can clearly see the undeniable importance of the Sun and stars to human consciousness.

The halos around Jesus’ and Mary’s heads, and those of many saints, the Lion of Judah, the Crown, the Eye, the Phallus, the Egg, the obelisk, projected rays of light, anything gold or gilded, rays of light, chariots and sky vehicles, and dozens of other symbols denote the Sun. This symbology is used to claim the power of the Sun.

Akhenaton was the first known Pharaoh to use his power and position to place his preferred Solar Deity, Aton, above all others, in denial of all others, in a prototypical monotheism. Aton was not even a popular deity in Egyptian culture. He may have been a family deity primarily reserved for private worship before Akhenaton put him forward as the exclusive God of Egypt, the established Cult of State.

His cult claimed divine affirmation of their new utopian religious movement due to the huge epochal change in the skies that was already in place as Akhenaton seized power. This was the precession of the equinoxes- the end of the Age of Taurus and the beginning of the Age of Aries. The Atonist cult worshiped the Ram in recognition of the Sun moving into Aries (the Ram) on the Vernal Equinox by precession.

Akhenaton’s dynastic legacy was known as the Shepherd Kings, they were the Hyksos according to many researchers, and their followers were referred to as shepherds. Those who refused to kowtow to Akhenaton’s cult of state were called Cow-herds (perhaps the defamatory term coward may be linked here) or Bull-herds.

Akhenaton also forbade the worship of the Old Gods, who were relevant during the Age of Taurus and now were “obsolete” in the coming age of the Ram. His new religion of Atonism displaced, if only temporarily, thousands of years of an evolving spiritual and religious tradition. Those who refused to go along with state prescribed dogma were persecuted by Akhenaton’s messianic regime, but ultimately Akhenaton’s enemies regained power and threw Akhenaton and his followers out of Egypt. At the time of Akhenaton’s ascent to power, these Amenist groups may well have been corrupt and abusing their power; the situation was complex, without a doubt.

This was effectively the birth of state-sanctioned monotheism. It placed a permanent and indelible mark on human history and our consciousness, which is as visible as ever today.

The association of the Sun with the Emperor probably preceded the advent of Akhenaton and his Atonism, but there can be no doubt that astrology was profoundly influenced by Akhenaton and the abrupt tear in the fabric of thousands of years of polytheism or pantheism. The prevalent idea of many varied signs, and many rulers with many strategies for attaining dominion in the various places, does not jibe well with a politically-based model that places one ruler above all others. State power could be exerted to subtly (or not so subtly) make astrology conform to the needs of the Powerful.

Astrology has very distinct, seasonally oriented signs that track with a typical climactic zone that is more or less temperate. The zodiacal rulers are associated with specific signs because their archetypal function is appropriate to move the seasons forward. This moves the story of human life forward.

This points toward the elephant in the room: astrology was originally developed in, or at least modeled on, a temperate climate, likely in the Northern Hemisphere, by Druids, or stellar cults, long before Egypt or Mesopotamia were centers of civilization.

A NORTHERN ORIGIN OF ASTROLOGY

According to historian Ralph Ellis, the “Watchers” of the Book of Enoch were the Sabaeans, a stellar cult, perhaps the original astronomers and astrologers of the ancient world.

Their diurnal calendar system had an 18-hour day, rather than our 24-hour day. They recorded the length of day through a series of 7 “gates”: gates 6 and 0 were solstices, when the Sun shone for its longest or shortest periods. At gate 6, summer solstice, the sun shone 12 hours of the day and there were 6 hours of night out of the 18-hour day. At gate 0, winter solstice, this was reversed. Gate 3 stood for both equinoxes when the sun shone for 9 hours and night was 9 hours, and gates 1 and 2, and 4 and 5, were equal increments between these extremes.

This was all documented by the Archbishop Richard Laurence in 1883, when he translated the Book of Enoch for the first time into English. This book was found in Ethiopia.

These day lengths are correct only within 45-49 degrees of latitude in either the Northern or Southern Hemisphere. The places that are generally considered the birthplaces of astrology in orthodox scholarship, Egypt, Greece, and Babylon, are much closer to the equator.

This should give us pause, and reason to reassess our ideas about astrology’s origins.

The zodiac itself describes a sine wave, the dignity scheme puts the Sun into exaltation at the Spring equinox as the sine wave goes positive, and it assumes rulership over the fertile season. The Sun goes into fall or depression at the autumnal equinox where the wave goes negative, fertility ends and the outer world becomes cold and barren. Saturn, the planetary archetype associated with intemperate cold, exalts at the beginning of Fall, and rules over winter’s beginning and midwinter signs.

This typology can only come from an idealized, typological Northern Hemisphere-based place, or places. High altitude can give more seasonal changes, but the length of day documented by the Watchers is only to be found far from the equator.

Like, perhaps, Hyperborea, or Atlantis, in our deep past. The Watchers could have been in the Caucasus Mountains, or in Crimea. Or in any number of other places at that latitude.

The Watchers’ actual nature, be it human, giant, angelic or demonic, is another question altogether.

The Fallen Angels’ story has a Hellenistic parallel in the myth of Uranus and Gaia. Gaia and Uranus created the Hecatoncheires, a destructive primordial race of Giants who were cast out of our creation by the Sky God, Uranus, into Tartarus, not unlike the Watchers of Enoch’s apocryphal works who were cast underground by God.

To determine exactly where astrology came from is of great interest, but that is not the focus of this work. To reconstruct at least one possible consistent metaphorical framework for astrology is the focus of this work.

One clear message that we can take away from a seasonal- based astrology is that human experience, human fortunes and human psychology run as wide and deep as the seasons in those places where there are marked and undeniable yearly cycles and changes. The fertile times and barren times of this climate are the source of metaphor central to astrology.

In these climates, there are times of growth as fortunes rise, followed by times of abundance; there are harvests, when our efforts timed to nature’s good graces yield fruits; and then, fortunes wane, things become cold and barren, and we must turn inward and protect our root. The incredibly wealthy, powerful, gifted and wise can suffer or benefit from reversals of fortune, just as the common, the meek, the weak and the destitute can.

As above, so below; as within, so without.

Even in places where there are no extreme signs of changes of season, Human fortunes run the gamut of possibilities. Human life always runs through its phases, or seasons.

In all places, the equinoxes and solstices mark the changes of light. The planetary archetypes always have rising and waning fortunes as they wander through the houses in the sky. But it seems clear that a monotheistic Sun worship can easily emerge and evolve out of a desert climate, where the Sun is something more like a tyrant, while the farther we go from the equator toward the temperate and polar regions, the more the Sun demonstrates an obvious fall and exile in the winter.

Many ancient astrologers, including Middle Eastern astrologers who emerged when Islam dominated the culture of that region, divided the year along the Solstice points into a Solar half and a Lunar half of the year. The Solar half begins when the Sun is growing in power from it’s lowest point, running from the solstice at the beginning of Capricorn to the end of Gemini, and a Lunar half of the year running from the solstice point at the beginning of Cancer to the end of Sagittarius.

The traditional festivals held around the Spring equinox were fertility rituals, which Catholicism has turned into Easter, an entirely astrologically-derived holiday celebrating the resurrection of Christ. This happens on the first Sunday after the Full Moon in Aries every year. This astrological formula is not commonly known, and it hides the fact that this is an occulted Solar/Lunar holiday. The Goddess (the Moon) is there in the formula.

There is reason to believe that all Abrahamic religions are indirectly or directly derived from the Atonism of Akhenaton, which was a Solar cult. The celebration of Jesus’ birthday on the 25th of December, the first day after the Winter solstice that the length of day starts to grow perceptibly longer, suggests that the Sun was the occulted driving force behind the choice of this date, which was also the birthday of the Solar deity Mithras and many other Solar deities. The Sun starts to grow in power at this time, but by no means does the Sun dominate Capricorn season or the winter months in general.

While astrology is not exactly a religion as we have inherited it, its creators were members of the Sabaean cult, a stellar cult. Astrology certainly has a lot to say about the calendar, and religious festivals are generally defined by the seasons. The religious festivals we have inherited through Christianity, Judaism and Islam can all be traced to astronomical and astrological dates of significance, and ancient pagan festivals at these times were co-opted into the dominant religious traditions and given new names to obfuscate their seasonal and astrological significance.

The importance of the seasons to the human experience cannot be understated. The long process of divorcing humanity from its inalienable connection to nature has been aided and abetted by this detachment.

FREE WILL AND FATE

Behind any discussion of rulership is the question of control over one’s own Life. It is our nature to seek to become the regent of our personal domain from a very young age, and yet fate clearly tosses us all around, some more than others

It is also natural that we try to wrap our consciousness around concepts of fate and free will. I believe that the ancients were not simply stuck in a feudal mindset, nor were they entirely fatalistic when they used the metaphor of kingship to describe how archetypes rule their territories. The zodiac suggests a great deal of nuance and inter connectivity.

Early Christianity may have offered some appeal to those who believed that they could gain freedom from astrological influence by simply pledging one’s devotion to Christ. However, it is doubtful that anyone really expected such a thing, or felt such a dramatic change in their lives simply through baptism and emotional declarations of faith and fealty, which were features of the already ancient cult of Isis, as well as some heretical Jewish groups in ancient times, like the cult of John the Baptist. This does not in any way diminish the power of religious epiphany and devotion, or the inestimable value of spiritual awakening- when it is genuine.

Kingship is anathema to the postmodern mind, and the idea itself is largely equated with tyranny, not with the nuance and dynamic flux of its metaphorical meanings. Of course, real-world monarchs largely are corrupt and despotic, but the concept should not be constrained by the terrible examples we have seen. The modern psyche has largely swung so far away from monarchical metaphor that it is largely lost in egalitarian collectivism, dim-witted futurism and mindless progressivism. Modern society is increasingly subject to a tyranny of the deluded herd, the demos.

Ironically, the hidden social engineers and culture makers responsible for whipping the herd into murderous collectivized ideological frenzies are the Illuminati, the Bilderbergs, the Tavistock Institute, the 3 letter agencies. The Jacobins of the French Revolution were bluebloods themselves, who had infiltrated certain orders of the Masonic establishment at the highest level.

Modern people generally infantilize ancient people and can’t accept the nuanced ancient ways, which certainly had problems that we do not want to repeat. But the ancient mind seems to have held much more space for multiple levels of meaning. Ancient people were not always blind authority worshipers.

THE BATTLE OF THE SEXES

While it is true that political metaphors are vital to understanding astrology, they are only hiding a larger metaphorical context, which is the Battle of the Sexes.

Even Akhenaton, like all other Pharaohs before and after, ruled at the pleasure and whim of the Dragon Wives, a matriarchal group that was the power behind the figurehead of the Pharaoh.

The Truly Powerful will never show you where true power lies: a masculine face upon the Kingdom does not necessarily mean that true power lies with the male figurehead.

Study of ancient thought-ways demands the embrace of masculinity and femininity as integral laws of the universe, and when there is an apparent imbalance, it is our responsibility to understand what is going on. Astrology, as I interpret it, does not attempt to create false equivalencies: Power is Power, but it is in constant flux. There are different types of power invested in each sign. Each sign and season shows a quality and character, and as such we can infer that there must be a different strategy for gaining power in each territory; the Emperor is the Emperor, but even the Emperor can fall into irrelevance at certain times.

The feminine archetypes rule their territory, just as the mas- culine archetypes do. They do not rule in the same ways, nor do they have the same psychology. Feminine archetypes have at least of as much nuance and complexity as the masculine archetypes do, and their functional relationship to the natural world, creation itself, is different.

But this does not always equate to benevolence.

For example, the functional, nurturing mother archetype will not, under ordinary circumstances, impose an exclusively draconian or Saturnian template or regimen upon her children: she encourages the child to express his or her true nature and genius through supportive nurturance, and always parents by example. However, under some (seasonal) circumstances, a certain measured containment, physical restraint, emotional coolness and withdrawal can be called for, depending on what archetype the child is presenting along the continuum, and to what degree. To feed into a child’s natural forays into emotional manipulation, or even cruelty and physical violence with passivity or even rose colored glasses sends the wrong elemental information to the child. A parent must recognize and react appropriately- with the correct archetypal presentation- to quell destructive and self-negating behaviors, while understanding that the will to power and control is entirely human.

The archetypes must provide this empathy, wisdom and guid- ance to Creation itself.

The functional parent does not blindly trust authority. She understands the potential for tyranny of society, which mani- fests psychologically as the superego, and she holds no illusions about society’s many pitfalls. She recognizes its abuses and sub- versions of our personal integrity and individual sovereignty: she is in a dynamic relationship with power herself, as a parent she is ultimately the authority to her child. The power dynamic of mother and child is a model, the child imprints this model, with his own particular lens. When this is functional, he has an opportunity to learn to navigate society’s oppressive paradigms without becoming a feudal vassal or indentured servant to the powerful, or a slave to the will of the masses, which is engineered and manufactured by those who would be our overlords or social engineers.

A true and functional conscience is the flower that grows out of this dynamic relationship.

This metaphorical relationship of mother and child is suggested throughout the Moon’s travels of the zodiac and her many and varied relationships with the other archetypes. She is the advocate for Fertility. Both the Moon and Venus’ relationships show some of the complex and conflicted aspects of the Battle of the Sexes.

Venus hosts Saturn in Libra, where he is in Exaltation. According to Hellenistic astrology, she is therefore received (honored) in Saturn’s home of Capricorn where the Moon is exiled.

There is an incredibly fraught affinity between Saturn, the Greater Malefic and his brand of power, and the feminine archetypes.

There is incredible nuance here. This is not a mistake: the tra- ditional dignity scheme is telling us that Saturnian maleficence tends to follow the feminine, and Martial maleficence follows the Masculine. We must put this raw information into the context of the Battle of the Sexes, and try to see what archetypal territory tends to support the creative and procreative process, and what fights against it.

The Battle of the Sexes is an incredibly nuanced concept: it is a reflection of the polarized and essentially dualistic universe we live in. Gender is one of 7 (or more) principles of Hermeticism. These principles are baked into all of this. This is the basis of astrology.

Ancient Western thought presents an incredibly wide swath of philosophical territory. The Hermetic tradition at least, is not a form of deluded non-dualism or solipsistic utopianism. It demands we take responsibility to act when necessary, and for the consequence of our actions or inaction. There is a Natural Law, a moral imperative that governs human consciousness, and therefore our behavior is subject to it, as are all other aspects of creation.

Practical rulership is gained by finding and grounding ourselves in the metaphorical roots of our consciousness, which is in flux, like the seasonally changing planet. Our consciousness must be in alignment with our bodies, which are themselves “feminine” vessels that house our “masculine” fire or psyche in its voyage. Our bodily consciousness is based in our physical relationship to nature, the seasons and the larger context of the cycles of the year, and the stages of our psychological and physical development throughout our lifetime.

The archetypal planets have many subtle multi-year cycles that can be used to predict the general demeanor of a period in an individual’s life. There are also much larger patterns and generational cycles like the 200-year cycles of Jupiter and Saturn conjunctions. These profound historical cycles help us to explore vast swaths of history and the ancestral foundations of our psychology, which are inseparable from our reality. This is the universal consciousness, of which we are a microcosm.

We neglect to acknowledge our conscious connection to the planetary consciousness at our own risk. If we fail to remember that our minds and bodies are of the earth, then our psychology will become disconnected, trapped in a virtual reality, and our mindset can easily become our greatest enemy.

If we disconnect further and further from the natural world and her cycles, this opens the door to the debasement of our psychology and a negative feedback loop can ensue. We become prey to ancestral trauma, primal fear and psycho-sexual manipulation which may dominate us. Failure to recognize the actual road we are navigating will inevitably allow for backsliding.

There is no viable option to ignore who and what we truly are, as children of the Goddess. We are not tabula rasa, we have a biological basis with instinctual orientations that are universal and yet unique in expression to the individual. If we do ignore this, we will gradually be placed at the whim of those who seek power through esoteric and occulted knowledge. The more disconnected we become from the natural world, the more we deny our earth-based psychology, the more we devalue and degrade consciousness itself.

This disconnection leads us to ignore and misapprehend history, or to blindly and stupidly accept dogmatic establishment talking points as if they were not propaganda and deception. We can study every history book we can find, and still potentially forget who and what we are. Consequentially, we become fodder and prey for those who wage a war of attrition upon us.

Our Tutelary Gods always remain available to us. They can advise us, ground us, and free us of delusions, if we are willing to hear their voices. Theirs are the voices of the earth and her processes.