Humanistic Psychology and Applications to Humanistic Astrology - More on Dane Rudhyar's Interpretation of the Planets

More on Dane Rudhyar's Interpretation of the Planets - The meanings of the planets in the four levels of consciousness

Having considered what the four basic reference levels mean, let us return to the planets for a moment to briefly mention some of their meanings in the four levels.

So, at the biological level Rudhyar considers the planets it is worth examining are the planets up to Saturn. He believes that the Sun's biological energy (its energy body so to speak) does not reach the extra-solar planets.

He cites as evidence for this that the solar wind has been measured by scientists as not exceeding Saturn's orbit.

·   At this level, then, the Sun expresses concepts such as the biological father, male fertility, and vitality.

·       The Moon expresses the biological mother, female fertility, and menstrual cycles.

·       Mercury the nervous system, Venus the genitals as the focus of the sperm or ovum, while Mars the male ability to penetrate the form and in this sense the power of the seed entering the soil, the power of the sperm that fertilizes, the muscle power that performs work.

·       Jupiter expresses the metabolism and the systems generally associated with the development of the body, while Saturn expresses the structure and skeleton of the body.

On the social level the meanings of the planets selectively as extracted from his treatise are as follows:

·      Saturn is the father, as the head of the family, the bearer of the law of society in the microcosm of the home.

·    Moon is the mother-foster, the one who raises the child, the mediator between the father/law of society and child, but also the mediator between the social frame of reference carried by the father and the biological needs of the child. Thus, she helps in the transformation of the child's psyche so that from the biological level of basic needs the child can progressively enter the social level, from where the father or society will then take over the child for further education.

·    The Sun is the character of the individual as "impressed" by society. The concept of "imprinting" refers to the primary teachings we receive as children, which are "imprinted" in our subconscious minds without being evaluated or judged. Rudhyar believes that the attribution of personality traits (George is a good kid, a good student), of labels is very much done through the mechanics of the name we are given. That is, the name accompanies desirable character qualities that society/parents would like us to have. Subconsciously there is always a tendency within us to express these qualities to achieve acceptance. To point out for the student, however, that in previous chapters we have illustrated this process of giving "face" to the Moon's function. The two are not necessarily contradictory, as in essence what they tell us is that the Sun is "born" from the Moon, in the same way that the mother symbolically and mythologically "gives birth" to her son-hero.

·    The planets Mars and Venus and Jupiter and Saturn function as dipoles. Venus, in addition to emotional relationships, is our sense of values, the attitude we hold towards the ideals of the group we live in. Mars is the power to change the facts when Venus judges that we don't like those ideals and the given situation we live in.

·     Jupiter is the making of interpersonal and social relationships. The concept of organizing people, delegating tasks, collective action and work leading to group development.

·    Saturn is the hierarchy. The laws that stand as a boundary to Jupiter and cannot be broken. The leader who allows Jupiter's collective work initiatives as long as the laws of the group are not violated. Jupiter on the other hand constantly challenges Saturn and tries to go beyond his limits by expanding the group.

·     On the social level, Venus and Jupiter are considered favorable planets because they promote the cohesion and growth of the group, while Mars and Saturn are malefic because they bring changes and restrictions to the group's functioning.

·   Mercury is an auxiliary planet both in the functioning of Jupiter's organization and in finding hierarchies and structures for the group.

·       The outer planets at this level only function collectively. They influence concepts such as education, fashion, public opinion, but they do not operate on an individual level.

At the individual level, the meanings of the planets are as follows:

·    The Sun gives the individual's desire to stand out, to form his own group in which he will be the leader - king, his own world.

·    The Moon gives the desires of others, the factor that the Sun prefers to ignore because it does not understand it. It is the subconscious and the repulsions.

·       Mercury is a helper planet to the Sun and helps it express its identity.

·       Mars is the individual's attempt to stand out, while Venus expresses the now personal value system.

·     Jupiter is the pride the individual feels in his or her successes. The bravo or motivation that he or she needs to develop individually.

The traditional meanings of the planets here may be changing. Mars is considered a rather favorable planet as it promotes individuality while Jupiter can be considered a malefic because it can bring conceit.

·     Saturn is the outer aspect of life that the individual considers his own. His possessions, his outer appearance, the boundary that distinguishes what is his own in relation to others.

·    Uranus on this level expresses individual intelligence. Through this, the individual can stand out from others and also bring about changes that change the whole society.

·       Neptune expresses a sense of uniqueness that comes from metaphysical inspirations. The individual has metaphysical experiences that progressively - if he understands that they only happen to him - give him a sense that he is not like others.

·  Pluto expresses a sense of uniqueness that arises from experience. The person goes through difficulties that steel his character and make him learn to act without unnecessary sentimentality. Through these difficulties he acquires a sense of uniqueness.

At the transpersonal level many of the above interpretations of the planets change orientation again.

·  At this level the Sun is the Hero/Son mystically marrying the Mother/Soul. More prosaically perhaps the man serving society or the ideal woman. Rudhyar says that if a man is to move from the individual to the super-individual level, women often appear in his life with the characteristics of the transcendental woman who helps him or Lilith who is called upon to test him and see if he is ready to give. In the ancient days of matriarchy this union was also symbolized in part by the sacrifice of the king, who was allowed to be king for one year. Of course, this sacrifice had a biological meaning, but it also had the meaning that the king/ego was sacrificed on the altar of Nature (capitalized as a transcendent entity/goddess).

·      According to Rudhyar at this level a big role is now played by the Moon. The Moon is a symbol of the Other, the Whole, to which we are called to open ourselves.

·      Mercury is a bridge used so that the transcendental knowledge of the collective can descend into the brain and become thought and action.

·   Venus grounds our Soul in practical beauty, healing, and compassion. She is the compassionate princess who attends to the sick, the creator of charity and attracts universal love and grounds it at the level of society.

·      Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn are mainly obstacles on this level. Mars is indiscipline that needs to be restrained, Jupiter is conceit that prevents surrender to the Whole, and Saturn is insistence on rules without content, empty formalities.

·       The transcendence of these planets is done according to Rudhyar with the outer planets. Though in classical astrology Uranus is considered the upper octave of Mercury and Neptune of Venus, here Rudhyar corresponds things a little differently. He connects the planets through the zodiac signs that used to rule as traditional and recently as newly discovered.

·    Thus, Uranus is called upon to transcend Saturn, bringing out the emptiness of formal forms and through non-conformism tries to convey the message that only forms that have substance should remain.

·     Neptune is called upon to overcome Jupiter, diffusing conceit and giving compassion, so that Jupiter understands that the work must be done for the whole and not for personal exaltation.

·    Pluto subdues Mars. Through harsh conditions and trials, he teaches him to be disciplined in duty and to promote strength as an agent of protection and service to the whole.

 

Humanistic Psychology and Applications to Humanistic Astrology - Introduction to Dane Rudhyar

Humanistic Psychology, we have to say, is revolutionary to some degree. It refuses to formulate personality theories like other psychological approaches, refuses to categorize people and to contribute that way to their compliance to the Establishment. It symbolizes the transition from the human who complies with laws to the human who transcends them and unleashes, literally, a burst of creativity to the world. Mental Cure for Humanistic Psychology is not the restoration of the individual to a “Functional” state but his encouragement in order to become as unpredictable as possible.

In order to to describe the issue of choice between social norms and individuality in astrological terms, a very successful method is what Dane Rudhyar described in his work as the four levels of consciousness. This, for example, explains why in astrology from a social psychology point of view, emphasis is given meaningfully to Moon and Saturn, whereas in humanistic astrology planets as the Sun, Uranus and Mars are the ones that promote human to stand out, and are therefore more important.

Indeed in his analysis, Rudhyar talks about four types of consciousness which classify human behavior and therefore also the interpretation of a natal chart, depending on the consciousness level of the person who owns it.

These types or levels of human experience and interpretation are:

• The biological level

• The sociocultural level

• The individual level

• The transpersonal level

At the biological level astrological interpretations focus on material issues and matters of survivor. The planets correspond to physical or alchemical substances and body organs or perhaps to elements, metals, and minerals. The most important effects are the Sun’s and the Moon’s which define the biological cycle of everyday life. Both the Sun and the Moon express energies, the Sun expresses the energy of vitality, and the Moon expresses the nature’s rhythm of change such us the tides or the human menstruation. At the biological level, the basic polarity of the chart is the Sun – Moon polarity, given yet, clearly with biological characteristics.

At the sociocultural level, the person is not considered anymore as a set of organs which work with each other and are affected by the various planets. Instead, the person is considered as an undivided biological unit and is treated as such. Having achieved biological unity the emphasis of consciousness now focuses on the psychology and the sociology of the person. The person now faces new dilemmas which are formed by social and emotional influences, influences which relate to the persons relations to other people. At this level social planets like Jupiter and Saturn become more important and the Moon as the power to comply and conform in order to be accepted has more power than the Sun in forming the person’s behavior. The basic polarity of this level is Moon-Saturn, Cancer-Capricorn or 4th to 10th house. This - if I might comment - is usually the level of interpreting when one is interpreting the chart from the traditional astrology point of view and mainly the seven traditional planets' model.

At the individual level, the person tries to escape from the group consciousness control and from the roles that are assigned to him by society or family or friends and tries to complete a process we call individualization. At this situation one takes individual decisions and also the analogous responsibility for them, even if he/she comes to conflict with his/her environment. At this stage, the person learns to differentiate between his individual interest and the ones of other people around him and shows a tendency to integrate his emotions under a unified will, creating a healthy or unhealthy personal ego. The Sun becomes again the dominant influence at this level, but this time hard aspects of personal planets to Uranus, Pluto, or Neptune, might indicate the process of breaking free from group consciousness.

The hardest level to understand is the transcendence of individualism or else the transpersonal level. At this level the person which has formed his own egoistic kingdom, is called to unite with something else beyond himself. Philosophically at this level, a soul is attributed to the person. It is however difficult to define the soul in psychological terms and what it does to human behavior at this level. Carl Jung tried to describe it by saying when one is influenced by the soul one is united with the collective unconscious. Rudhyar believes that it is not exactly that. He rather suggests the soul allows us to understand that in the human family, everyone has a position, if he voluntarily submits his ego to service of mankind. This sounds more Christian, but Rudhyar says that it is an experience that we feel in our organism. Unfortunately, for most of us, it remains unknown how it is experienced, as most of us operate consciously somewhere between the social and the individual level.

In any case, at transpersonal level, the human stops living for himself and doesn’t focus so much to what today we call the individual evolution. On the contrary, he puts himself to the service of the collective whether that is Humanity or the Planet and acts more as a conductor of a higher consciousness, than as a person, achieving in a sense a unity with the collective. The Moon again becomes more important indicating the Soul and a transition of planets to their higher octaves might take place (Mars to Pluto, Saturn to Uranus and Jupiter to Neptune, according to Rudhyar’s perspective)

Psychological Astrology - The horoscope from the aspect of social psychology

 

Psychological Astrology - Astrological Aspects and Mental Conflicts

 

Psychological Astrology - Astrological Aspects and Defense Mechanisms of Ego

 

Psychological Astrology - Houses and Human Psychosynthesis

 

The Horoscope from Humanistic Psychology's perspective

If Social Psychology gives emphasis to the roles and the restrictions that they create, Humanistic Psychology has the purpose of highlighting those forces that make the human special and separate him from the mass. This psychology does not have to do, so much, with the creation of social or psychodynamic models, as with the promotion of the potential each one of us contains inside towards the direction of our personal development.

This Psychology today we call Person Oriented Psychology, but formerly was called Humanistic Psychology.

Humanistic Psychology, which is considered to have been born, in essence, by Carl Rodgers, draws, its origins, among others, from Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler. Adler, along with Freud and Jung, was one of the three major exponents of the Psychoanalysis' movement in the early 20th century. But, while, Freud and Jung consider human to be, in essence, captive of his personal or collective subconscious, Adler was the first who strongly disagreed, considering that the Ego, namely the conscious mind of human, is the one that takes the decisions in every person’s life. In a few words, while the founders of Psychoanalysis (Freud) and of Analytical Psychology (Jung) were thinking that human was basically not free, Adler believed in human’s freedom of taking decisions, despite the obstacles of the subconscious. 

Based on the Adler’s point of view about the importance of Ego, many psychotherapy schools appeared, which tried not to dissolve the Ego as Psychoanalysis did, in order for the Unconscious to appear, but on the contrary, to strengthen it, providing it with world understanding tools and skills of communication. And, in general, increasing, we could say, human’s knowledge in order for him to take as many decisions as possible freely, and knowing the consequences. The commitment to the free human who decides knowing the possible outcomes, but also taking on the responsibility for whatever choice of his, is also an important point emphasized by Humanistic Psychology.

The difference between Humanistic Psychology and previous psychological schools was that it added one more factor to the psychological outlook of the human being. While until then, various schools (psychoanalysis, behaviorism, etc.) were trying to explain human psychology based on mechanistic models and internal conflicts, Humanistic Psychology made the point that mechanistic models, various kinds of categorization and typologies did not serve psychotherapy, because, in reality, they were not trying to get into every human’s place and see how he conceives things, but they were trying to fit human into category boxes, forcing him to comply with rules and norms and thus indirectly subjugating him to the established Social System.

On the contrary, Humanistic Psychology considered the Subjective Experience is the most important factor to view a human Person. For Humanistic Psychology it does not matter, if what each of us feels at a certain moment is real. As long as we feel it, it is completely real to us and that is enough. In Astrology, the application of this principle drives us to adopt a position of refraining from interpreting the Person’s chart according to the norms and beliefs of Astrologers who do the interpretation, but instead letting the person evaluate his chart on his own while we are trying to get into his place and understand him.

Accepting, though, the view that the Subjective Experience is what matters, Humanistic Psychology made an additional leap towards comprising both Holistic Philosophy and Metaphysics. It started examining anything that was a part of the Subjective Human Experience and not just the generally and “scientifically” acceptable phenomena. Thus it started to examine the so called metaphysic experiences as well as it tried to view the person holistically, meaning that it could not exclude a big part of human experience, like metaphysical experience, just because they did not comply with the restrictions of physical science.

One branch of Humanistic Psychology, the so called Existential Psychology, started examining the Existential Anxieties of people whereas humanistic psychologists began to experiment with alternative therapies, astrology and divination and in general with all practices that seemed to have an effect on the Subjective Experience of the Human, regardless whether they have been scientifically proven or not. Of course, this had a dire consequence after a point, the fact that Humanistic Psychology was to be disputed for its scientific invalidity, but, the step towards examining the Human Subject as a Whole, had already been made.

The question of human freedom

The purpose of Humanistic Psychology according to Carl Rodgers was no longer to focus on the problems of people, but on their opportunities. Life has a purpose, a meaning, which is learning, evolution, awareness. The person’s mental health, which for Psychoanalysis was based on solving internal conflicts and for Jung on the union with the Other and the avoidance of alienation, for Humanistic Psychology was based on the unification of human experience in order for the person to find meaning in what is happening, to feel that he is able to cope with everything, that life is in his hands, that he is the one who makes the decisions and that he, finally, is free.

This freedom of the human, which comes from raising his awareness, his skills, his abilities, his confidence to interact with the world, is the biggest gain of Humanistic Psychology, a gain that among others affected the Educational System and helped it escape producing technicians and laborers with specialized knowledge and become a system that is supplying human with tools to interact with the world in a better way and become more free.

In Astrology, this consideration is translated to an interpretation of the chart, not as a set of problems and predeterminations, but as a set of opportunities of evolution. So for example hard astrological aspects are not considered to create problems, but give opportunities to become better and more skillful, planets without dignities do not suggest a lack of ability, but the need to substitute something that is missing with something that the person can achieve. The entire view of the astrological chart, transits, or progressive systems changes in order to display how the human personality evolves, the changes it goes through, the challenges and the lessons it has to learn and not just the facts that are about to happen in a somewhat unavoidable way.

Destiny and Freedom

Integrated to the studies of Humanistic Psychology, though, is also Metaphysics. And that, because human, according to the Humanistic approach, does not deny the presence of forces which seem to determine Destiny. Humanistic approach considers however, that as much human needs the Divine Powers, so do they need him to accomplish the Divine Plan (if one is assumed to exist). Human from the Humanistic perspective, does not consider the flow of spiritual energy to come from above to the earth only, but he considers emanating spiritual energy himself towards the world as well, and furthermore that the Divine Plan (if any) is always up to him, as he is the one who is going to put the final details or produce the final outcomes of any situations.

The Divine Plan, in other words, does not define predefined events that must happen, but Principles that have to be respected and Balances and Analogies that need to be maintained. If these are respected, the final way of living his life is up to the man himself.

Lastly, Humanistic Psychology, we have to say, is revolutionary to some degree. It refuses to formulate personality theories like other psychological approaches, refuses to categorize people and to contribute that way to their compliance to the Establishment. It symbolizes the transition from the human who complies with laws to the human who transcends them and unleashes, literally, a burst of creativity to the world. Mental Cure for Humanistic Psychology is not the restoration of the individual to a “Functional” state but his encouragement in order to become as unpredictable as possible. 

Because then, he would be really creative, when he puts his own ideas into realization, and not those of whom he imitates or he is obliged by others to follow.

Therefore a Humanistic Astrologer has as a purpose to help his client to see how His own chart works and not the charts of others in general. A Humanistic Astrologer is not interested in what Mars in Aries means in general, but what Mars in Aries in that very specific chart might mean and even more, he is obliged to help his client interpret that Mars by himself and assess his own challenges instead of using general interpretations that might apply to others.

Of course, the nature of Astrology, as we inherited it from our ancestors, does not fit perfectly to this model, as it contains a great deal of typologies and general interpretations, which categorize the experience. So, it is a challenge for us astrologers to apply the principles of Astrology Consulting to clients, despite this, at least apparent, contradiction and if necessary to review some astrological principles, provided it serves the development of diversity, creativity and of people’s originality, because at the times we live, this is what humanity needs more in order to progress and not the return to the old good tested solutions.