The Dane Rhudyar Series on the Twelve Houses

The First House: How To Become Your True Self By Dane Rhudyar

Have you ever asked yourself: What am I here for? What am I supposed to be in this life? If you have, you have begun to live in a new way. You have begun to tap, even if only slightly, the power of your true self. You are on your way to becoming what you are meant to be. It is a long way, a difficult one. One proceeds along this way very gradually, hesitantly; there are usually many setbacks. But it is the only way really worthwhile, really "exciting." It alone gives significance to life your life. It is my deep belief that the function of astrology is to help men and women, who have begun to ask questions concerning the purpose and meaning of their own lives, to find answers to these questions. Astrology has, little of real value to offer to people who did not ask such questions. Astrology, for them, is a parlor game or a means to satisfy a more or less idle curiosity as to "what is coming next", "what is going to happen". This is all right as far as it goes; but the real function and value of astrology begin only when people ask of astrology rather than "what is going to happen to me", the far more important questions: How can I find out what I really am? How can I solve the problem which I am bringing to everything that happens to me? Every individual brings to all the problems of his life the greatest problem of all: himself. We may learn from our parents, teachers, priests or scientists how to meet intelligently this or that particular situation and problem, how to behave according to official and traditional rules of conduct in our family, society, business, clubs. We may learn these rules well and yet make a dismal failure or a completely meaningless average "success" of the major opportunities and the decisive crises of our lives. Why is this? It is because, while we may have learned to solve all sorts of external and social problems, we have never given much attention, or any attention at all, to the one fundamental problem of all: to find out the real purpose and meaning of our life. We have learned how to meet people and to talk to people in this or that standard situation at home, in business, in places of amusement. We have not considered it at all important to learn how to meet ourselves every morning as we awaken and how to talk to ourselves when some new situation brings out in its a kind of response which seems to conflict with and disturb our cherished idea of ourselves. Did we ask then: What am I, really? Why do I act, feel or react differently from other people, from the way one is supposed to act or react? Am I so different essentially? Am I unique? If so, why am I unique? What is the purpose o my being different the real reason for my feeling isolated, lonely? We often ask these questions but in a rather vague way, shrugging our shoulders and quickly forgetting the matter because there seems to be no way of getting a convincing answer from anybody. In some cases, the shock of seeing ourselves reacting to life situations in ways which are not according to the usual standards is such that we keep worrying about it. We come to think that there is something wrong about ourselves, that we are abnormal, neurotic or "plain bad" and we develop an oppressive sense of guilt or inferiority.

We let these negative feelings develop perhaps; before long, we find ourselves in a sad predicament. Then all the things that happen to us in everyday life seem to go wrong, even if they started out with great promise of success, happiness or achievement. Perhaps we feel so upset that we decide to learn a new technique, to change our residence, our circle of acquaintances, our profession. Yet things still keep going wrong, possibly from bad to worse. What is the matter? Will we get "better luck" if we ask of astrologers what will be the result of this or that new move or plan of ours so that we may act "at the right time" and bet on the right horse, so to speak? We may avoid some serious mistakes or catastrophes with such help; but this help, in most cases, is aid in solving external problems only. Nothing will really work out well as long as the one problem behind all other problems is not solved, at least to some extent: Why am I different from others? What am I really? It is essential that each individual today should find significant, convincing answers to these questions, answers which will transform him, which will change his attitude toward his real self and the basic purpose of his existence here on earth, now in our present society. The first thing is to be willing and ready to ask these questions, to realize that it is important to ask them. The next problem is: Who will provide the convincing answers? Many a great spiritual teacher has told us that when the pupil is ready, the master comes. It has been stated also that the whole of life can be our "teacher", that every friend or associate we have, our loved ones and also our enemies can give us the answer to this great problem of the "why" of our existence. In other words, we can see ourselves in their eyes, in their responses to us whenever we really want to "see" ourselves as we are. We can understand our "differences", and perhaps our relative "uniqueness" of character and destiny, if we are objective enough to find in the reactions of friends or foes mirrors that reveal to us, directly or by contrast, our different and unique self. However, it is very difficult to be sufficiently objective for this. We need or we usually think we need a "key" in order to interpret what we see pictured as ourselves in and through others' reactions. Moreover, even if we understand how we differ from others perhaps a very frustrating, confusing or bewildering difference this is not enough. We must somehow know why we stand out from the norm, why we are unusual perhaps to the point of neurosis. What is the sense of it all? If there should be no sense, no purpose, then, the only thing to do would be to become normal, average or at least comfortably "adjusted", whatever the cost to our pride, our hopes, our youthful ideals of unique accomplishment. Modern psychologists and psychiatrists often consider "adjustment" as the goal of their treatments; in many extreme cases, there is probably nothing else to aim at because the mental and neuropsychological situation has become set beyond the possibility of creative or transforming change. Nevertheless, every crisis (mental or physiological) is the indication of an opportunity for change and self-discovery. There are illnesses and crises essentially because people who experience them have long refused to ask questions as to the character and purpose of their true self. They dodge asking these embarrassing questions. Then the problems that they themselves pose to anything confronting them become more acute, more difficult to solve; they become more involved in their failures or "bad luck", more resentful of having "all these things happen to me!" This piles up and ends in a violent crisis. All crises, I repeat, are opportunities; but few individuals, while the crises last, can understand them as such! Who can open their eyes? Who can help them to meet their true self and to grasp the meaning and purpose of their "differences", their peculiar responses to life situations, their hopes and ideas which so few can share?

Astrology offers such help, but only if used by an astrologer who is both a keen student of human nature or psychology and a person with spiritual vision and compassionate understanding. These are rare qualifications, but they are evidently needed, at least in some degree, because of the very character of the help required. What is required is, indeed, spiritual help and always more or less some kind of healing of mind and soul. It is the kind of help which a religious man might be expected to give to help an individual to become transformed by a new revelation of the character and purpose of his unique self and true individuality. How can astrology help men and women to gain such a revelation? It cannot be done by considering any one factor in the birth-chart of these individuals to the exclusion of other factors, for all the planets, cusps, nodes, parts, progressions and transits must somehow concur in the over-all answer to the one problem of problems. Nevertheless, there is in a birth-chart, calculated for the exact time and place of the first breath, a sector upon which one should focus one's attention in the solution of this problem. This part of the chart is the first house and the exact rising degree, the ascendant. Meaning of the Ascendant The ascendant is the east point of the horizon in any ordinary astrological chart. Because the Sun rises in the east, it is at the ascendant at dawn. The ascendant symbolizes, thus, the dawn point, the beginning of every new life cycle. It is in astrology the point at which a new impulse to live takes external and concrete form on earth. It is, therefore, at this point that this impulse is to be found in its original pure character, before it becomes colored or modified by the struggle to exteriorize itself definitely in the midst of earth conditions and often against the resistance of the past, which always seeks to tone down every new creative impulse. If a person seeks to discover the nature of the basic type of energy which he can use, and should use, as he goes on living and acting, then he should look for the answer to his question to the Sun in his birth-chart. But energy is one thing; what we do with it, or what we should do with it, is another thing. It is valuable to know that one has the power to lead others, that one has great emotional vitality or a keen mentality or that one has a tendency to haste or anger; but what is far more important today, in our age of easily acquired psychological knowledge, is to know what we should use these powers for. It is to solve the many problems which constantly arise today as to what to do with what we have. The solutions to these problems must be found in the natal houses of the chart and in the positions of the planets, nodes, and so on in these houses. The houses of which I now speak are not the so-called "solar houses" which refer only to the distances between planets and the Sun; they are actual divisions of the space in which a person lives and acts, here on earth. This "living space" is determined astrologically by the natal horizon and meridian; these cannot be calculated unless one knows the moment of the first breath. I say the first breath, for this is the first moment of independent existence as an "I am", as a self which must gradually find by himself (even if with the help of others) his own solutions to the problems of his existence. In the branch of astrology called "Horary Astrology", the ascendant of the horary chart is said to signify "the individuality of the matter in question." It establishes the problem being asked, as the individual asking it sees it and is able to formulate it. It should be clear that birth into the world, as an individual having independent existence, is the origin of all subsequent problems! There is, thus, no question more fundamental than the questions: How am I to solve the problem of my existence as an independent and unique "I"? Why do I exist at all? It

is to the ascendant and to the entire first house (and its contents) that we must look first for basic answers to these questions. Everything that differentiates you from other persons has its source, astrologically speaking, at your true natal ascendant. There you find stated your uniqueness of being, the problem essential to the fact of being an individual ego, different from other egos; there also is the solution of this basic problem! Astrology actually shows us the solutions rather than the problems. Your birth-chart is "God's formula" for the solution of your problems; it is the Great Healer's prescription. By studying the solution, we can see what the problem is; but any positive use of astrology stresses solutions far more than problems. That is what you want to know, after all! You want to realize the real nature of your problems only insofar as this realization will lead to the knowledge of how they can be solved. Thus, the zodiacal sign on the ascendant and (if you can be sure of its accuracy) the degree of this sign are the first things to study. This means that there are twelve most characteristic ways in which you can assert positively your "difference" from others. However, in defining the meaning of the twelve possible rising signs of the zodiac, one must adopt a somewhat different approach than when thinking of these zodiacal signs with reference to the positions of the natal Sun or planets. Again, let me stress the fact that planets deal with energy with the different kinds of energy needed to be active as a living person. The Ascendant (and all the houses in general) refer not to the nature of your energies as much as to the way you are using them and gaining experience by so doing. A natal house is a "field of experience"; as you experience life, you come gradually to know yourself. You know yourself through the twelve primary kinds of experience represented by the natal houses. In the first house, you should experience yourself as an ego, a relatively unique and different kind of self. The Rising and Ruling Planet Mars in the first house emphasizes the need for strong action as a means to experience one's true self. A planet in the first house indicates the type of energy which it is best to use in discovering and exteriorizing your individual self. The only point to remember, however, is that a rising planet may also show a tendency to overuse such an energy, to use it at the exclusion of all others. If this is done, it leads to an over-strong kind of ego and to capitalizing too much upon what makes you different from others. For instance, if you have one planet rising in your natal first house, use it for all it is worth to you, but do not overuse it. Do not become altogether identified, as an ego, with it. If there are two or more planets rising, the problem is how not to become "split" in trying to become identified in your personal character partly with one and partly with the other. A problem of personal integration is shown for you to solve. It is easier, of course, if the two planets push you, as it were, in the same direction; but a man with Saturn and Neptune in the first house must watch lest he become pulled apart by opposite trends in his ego life. If there is no planet in the First House, the whole emphasis is thrown upon the ascendant; we must consider not only the characteristics of the rising sign but also those of the planet which "rules" this sign what the planet is, where it is placed in the birth-chart, how it is aspected by other planets and what position it occupies structurally within the entire "planetary pattern" (for instance, if it is a "singleton"). The planet "ruling" the sign at the ascendant is always theoretically the "ruling planet" of the chart; however, if a particularly emphasized planet is in the first house, this first-house planet becomes, as it

were, an all-important "prime minister" to the theoretical "ruler". The ruler holds the realm of the ego together; the prime minister does the most effective external work! In closing this brief study, I should say that, from the point of view presented here, the idea that the Sun symbolizes the real permanent "individuality" of a person and the ascendant his impermanent, fleeting "personality" does not apply, at least as usually understood. The ascendant changes its position rapidly, and thus affected by the geographical latitude of birth. It refers to a particular person, in a particular situation, and to everything that makes that person more "particular", more formed and precise in what he is. As I see it, spirit works through particular persons and situations, through what is unique and new in them. The one task of a truly spiritual life is for a particular person to accomplish the particular task for which he was born, at a precise time and location on earth. To be "spiritual" is to be able to bring to a clear and distinct focus the spirit, within and through oneself as an individual. The God-within is to be exteriorized, demonstrated, made actual. Every newborn has to do it, eventually and gradually. Every newborn has one particular function or task to perform, for which he was born. This is the focus of his "individuality", here and now that which seeks to make him a spirit-oriented, creative, truly individual human being. The Sun is not this individuality, but it is the power needed and made available to the individual in order that this individual may be able to fulfill his unique function. The Sun and planets represent power and the energy necessary for action; the power within the potential individuality a newborn. The power is there for this newborn to become his true self, his unique self; but he does not have to use it! He can refuse to use it. He refuse to assume the responsibility of being an individual. He can follow "the easy way out" the way of the average man, the man who is not distinct from others, whose true self does not stand out a much easier way, indeed! No astrologer can say positively and without fail whether a man will take this easy way; the decision rests mostly upon the person himself. Here is his sacred freedom. If he chooses to refuse to be an individual in myriad of small decisions that total up to a big choice then the indications found by studying the ascendant of his birth-chart will usually not work well or they will work in a negative manner. No one can tell if they will work. The more they work, and in a positive or definite manner, the more the person will experience himself and probably will demonstrate himself to others (barring some very hard seventh-house obstruction) as an individual. The danger of being too much of an individual lies in the tendency in many persons to stress "differences", whereas what should be emphasized is "distinctness". What matters is not of itself to be different from others, for this can lead to a sense of separation, isolation and complete ego-centricity. What counts, spiritually, is to be distinctly, precisely, in a clearly focused manner, what one essentially is. It is to be one's true self.

The Second House : How To Use What You Possess By Dane Rhudyar When one speaks of "possessions" today, most people immediately think of the money they have in the bank, the house and the many gadgets they own, the size of their wardrobe, the make of their car and all that goes with these very concrete and tangible things. These are material possessions; but they are not the only kind of-possessions. We must extend the meaning of the word so as to cover all that the individual "I" can use as his own and, using it, is able to demonstrate (to make actual, definite and visible) what he is. No one can say "I am" unless he has a tongue and larynx to say it with. No one can be a person here on earth without a body of flesh and bones and nerves. However, there are many people today who think that the body is the person, that out of the body a soul and mind somehow develop, that something happens gradually in the body in childhood which gives rise to the feeling of being "I". If this view is held, it may seem logical to say that the first house of a natal chart refers to the body because, then, the body is understood as the beginning of everything. But, in this case, one should realize that the "body" does not begin with birth. The beginning of the body is the act of conception, the fecundation of the female ovum by the male cell. If the body is what comes first in astrology, then the astrologer should make his charts for the time of impregnation and cell fecundation. But one never knows as a matter of fact within minutes or hours the time when this happens within the mother's body, even in the most favorable situations. Thus, the beginning of the body provides a poor start for astrological knowledge. However, astrology was built and has been mostly practiced by men who believed that a spiritual principle or entity we may call it "soul", ego, "monad" or whatever we wish enters or becomes definitely linked with the body at the time of the first breath. This soul entity comes into this realm of life on earth for some basic purpose; it needs a living organism, a human body, to achieve this purpose. It has to exteriorize itself in and through a particular kind of body. It must "incarnate" gradually and always more completely with its individual characteristics; it must release from this body the energies and the powers required in order to fulfill the soul's purpose. Thus, for you, as an individual soul entity, the body is your first and basic possession. You could not be, as a concrete and active person, and proclaim "I am", without owning a body. There is a portion of earth-matter which is your own; it is your body. If this is destroyed (or taken away, as it may be in some rare cases), then you cease to be as an individual person, even though you may be said to remain as a "spirit", a soul or an abstract "I" devoid of physical substance. The first kind of ownership you experience is, therefore, the ownership of your body and of all its (potential or actual) energies. However, this body does not come out of nothing. It is a combination of two lines of ancestors, paternal and maternal; it results from a mixture of ancestral tendencies or, as scientists say today, of "genes". All these things are your inheritance from the past the past of your family, of your race, of the human species as a whole. Into this blending, this synthesis of many elements inherited from the past, you come. You are the new factor, the at least potentially transforming factor. You have to make something new of all this past stuff if you want really to be yourself as a distinct individual aware of a particular task or work in life. This inheritance from the past has become yours at the moment of the first breath; you have to use it.

As we grow through childhood, adolescence and early maturity, we constantly accumulate more possessions. Our body grows larger and heavier because we assimilate foodstuff; and there are many types of food! There is physical food, which we eat; there is also mental food(learning), which we store as remembered facts and ideas. To go through the process of education is to accumulate (and, one hopes, to assimilate) the mental foodstuff which makes your mind develop in a certain way the way of your national tradition, your culture, your religious inheritance. You also develop through the years something else of the greatest importance: a feeling of value. Some things you feel are good, worth while, attractive others are bad, worthless or destructive. This sense of value is also, at first, something you inherit from your family and your society; but, gradually, you may transform this inherited sense of value and establish your own values. You come to see as valuable a thing or idea which has proven worthwhile to you, as an individual. Thus, eventually, you own also standards of value which are distinctly your own and which perhaps single you out from your family, your class, your people. You may be utterly bored or repelled by baseball or television and love to pass long hours painting unconventional pictures; that establishes you to some extent as an "individual". People may think you are a freak; some may consider you a budding genius. But if you are not afraid to stand for all the things and ideas which to you are valuable, then you come to regard the conscious and deliberate use of anything you own as an individual responsibility. This, let us not forget, should include the use of your body and all its consciously directed activities; the use of your mind; and, as you grow older and establish yourself in society and in some business or profession, the use of the money you earn, the wealth you accumulate, the things you produce. All this that you own either by the fact of birth in a body, through education, or through your own work is there for you to use. The problem is how to use it and what to use it for. The problem is there for you to solve in your own individual way and on your own individual initiative. I pointed out last month how the study of the ascendant and of the first house of your birth-chart can help you to discover what your true self is. The planets rising in the first house and the "ruling planet" (ruler of the rising zodiacal sign) suggest, moreover, what kind of activity, or what way of acting, will enable you to express outwardly this true self which you are. The next step is the study of the second house, a study which should be directed essentially toward a keener and deeper understanding of how to establish concretely and substantially your individuality by the very use which you make of what is "your own". However, many people do not really care to demonstrate their individual selfhood or their individual sense of value. They do not want to use their possessions except in the way the average person uses them. Indeed, they very often cannot be said to "use" their possessions; it is the possessions which use them! These people have become identified with their possessions; they become what they own, not what they were meant to be as individuals. They live so as to increase and pass on "property". They carry on the tradition established by the social position of their parents and impress it upon their children; they spend or waste what they own according to the custom of their class or the way an even more temporary "fashion" dictates. They do not want to stand out as individuals; they refuse to stand for anything which is not blessed by the collective sense of value of the average man and woman the so-called "normal" people! Astrology can hardly tell whether not a person will become an individual and use what he owns (body, mind and wealth) as an individual, for it is every man's supreme privilege to choose his basic

orientation toward his self and the use of his possessions. No astrological birth-chart will reveal definitely what this choice will be, but only the terms or conditions of the choice. A person can make such a choice as well in the midst of plenty as while struggling in poverty where the way every cent is spent counts; in vigorous health (where he can do seemingly as he pleases) or in illness (when he must save the smallest amount of vital energy to do what seems necessary). What matters most is not to be told whether one can expect much or little, but in what way one can use whatever one owns in the most individual, the most creative, the most generous, the noblest manner possible. Astrology can help us in this respect but only if the astrologer understands clearly what the real problem is and that the purpose of possessions is to provide the means by which we may give substance and weight to what we are. We must realizing what we are by using what we own; we must prove what we are, to ourselves and to all men, by this use of our ancestral inheritance and of whatever we come to acquire; we must transform these inherited and acquired possessions to fit the purpose of our true self. These are three basic steps. The Natal Second House It is, in my opinion, a serious mistake to think that the second house refers only to the usual kind of material possessions, to finances and to the person's ability to accumulate wealth. The second house refers first of all to whatever a person finds himself endowed with at birth: his body, his vital forces, his parental heredity, his cultural and social heredity. It indicates all that a "soul" is born into. If we believe in reincarnation, the second house refers also to what the reincarnating spiritual entity has built in past lives in the way of powers or abilities what it is able to bring to the new existence, as a spiritual capital and a power of attraction. At any rate, the second house is the reappearance in a new body of powers which had been generated in some kind of "past". This is, however, only the first level of interpretation of the second house; the second level refers to the eventual fruition of whatever a newborn inherited at birth, as he grows up to active manhood or womanhood. We are all born with a capital our body, our inherited mental abilities, our culture and social position. To become a mature person is to make this capital bear fruit. When we earn money, acquire property, gain friends and accumulate intellectual wealth, we simply make our birth endowment bear valuable fruit; we do it through our own efforts and often through "luck" whatever this exactly means. At this point, the reader may confused by the fact that astrological textbooks speak of the eighth house, not the second house, as the section of the chart referring to inheritance and legacies. The "legacies" to which the eighth house refers are those which come to a person as a result of the relationships he makes or he keeps warmly alive through his life (seventh-house matters). On the other hand, the second house represents the native endowment of the soul, the natural hereditary transfer from parents to children. This transfer is unconscious; it is not a deliberate gift of one individual to another. It is heredity rather than inheritance. Where something is bequeathed as the this refers to the eighth house because it follows after a conscious relationship between two persons. Actually, when the astrologer considers the second house as that representing the money earned, the goods acquired, this is only half correct; all that man gains, while engaged in business or in any productive activity which depends upon some type of human exchange (physical goods or ideas), is basically an eighth-house matter because it is the result of human relationship (seventh house).

Thus, strictly speaking, what the second house reveals is the individual's characteristic way of approaching the problem of (1) how to use what he is born with; then (2) how to orient the use of his inborn muscular strength, mental abilities, intuitions and of his social position so as to enter into fruitful relationship with other people relationships and partnerships which will, in turn, make for him wealth of some sort. This "characteristic way" indicated by the second house is the way in which the individual truly reveals himself the more so, the more of an individual the person is. It may not be at all, however, the way the individual will become rich, for it may not be his individual destiny that he should become rich in earthly goods! How can the astrologer determine what is this "characteristic way" in which the individual tends to use what he owns? First, we should study the zodiacal sign at the cusp of the second house of the exact natal chart and the position and aspects of the planet "ruling" this sign; second (and this may be even more important), the meaning of any planet, if any, found in the second house. It is my opinion that the cusp of the second house refers, generally speaking, to the basic attitude of the individual toward what is his own by right of birth. The planet ruling the zodiacal sign on this cusp indicates the type of activity through which this basic attitude is normally best exteriorized. If any planet is located in the second house, this planet refers more particularly to the type of activity by which the individual, as he grows up, is willing and able to acquire wealth or possessions. Any birth-chart must be judged as a whole. The natal houses represent the twelve basic "fields of experience", acting through which a man comes to realize who he is as an individual and, thus, gains maturity. The keyword here is "experience". A person must experience. He must dare to experience all that comes his way, at least once so that, by solving the many problems which such experiences and their results produce, he may become in full possession of his powers and faculties as an individual. This "full possession" is the ultimate goal of all second-house experiences. Physical goods or money, houses and bank accounts do not guarantee such a full possession of one's powers and faculties; indeed, they often hide the main second-house problem and the way it should be solved. "Full possession" comes only through significant, purposeful and creative or transforming use. Only, the possessions which are thus used help the owner to reveal and to experience his real self, as an individual.

The Third House: Mastering Everyday Relationships By Dane Rhudyar What we call in a colloquial sense "life" is a series of encounters. When you exclaim in a tone of annoyance or irritation "What a life!" you ordinarily mean that you have run against or counter to (i.e., you have encountered) a variety of incidents or of people that have hurt, frustrated, depressed or angered you. Things around you have not gone the way you would have liked; that is to say, obstacles, resistance, antagonism, enmity of one type or another have met your natural impulse to satisfy the desire for food, love and expansion of your mind and the eagerness of your ego to express its feelings and its characteristic nature. Any living organism and any ego normally wants to maintain itself in a healthy and happy condition, then expand, reproduce and impress upon others what he is. But no person or beast lives in empty space! We come to birth in a crowded world. Every place is occupied; everybody's affections are more or less attracted to various peoples or causes; everybody's time is somehow taken by one thing or another. All the persons you find around you when you are born have to make room for you if you are to have a fair chance to grow healthily among them. Some persons will make eagerly and lovingly (at least for a while!) a living space for you; others will resent your coming, and may either block your every move or fight you. Not only people around you may feel antagonism toward you; large sections of your community may be prejudiced against you because of various conditions or may harshly ignore your needs and troubles on general principles. Then the climate may be bad; food may not agree with you. All in all, your environment may be unresponsive to your appearance into the world or even inimical. You will know all sorts of obstacles which may make you recoil in pain and fear. You, therefore, will be impressed, and perhaps depressed, by your limitations. These limitations demonstrate to you your own strength and your ability to cope with challenges and tests encountered in your everyday life and wherever you live. It is by becoming aware of these limitations i.e., of how far you can go in your efforts at conquering the world around you that you come to know exactly what you are and the value of what you own. It is true that some environments are far more inimical and difficult to live in than others, but, theoretically and philosophically speaking, any one born on earth is born in an environment which provides him with whatever he needs in order to discover what he is as an individual, what his particular destiny is and how to use in his own characteristic way all that he owns at birth (mainly his body and his inherited abilities). If the natal environment is tough, it is because the newborn is meant to develop strength of a sort in making room for himself in it. The needed amount of potential strength is there in him to match the harsh realities of life around him; the individual's problem is to transform this potential and latent strength into actual and effective power. If the individual is apparently defeated, it may be indeed that this seeming outer defeat is just what was needed by the individual soul to discover itself in an inner way or to learn a necessary lesson for future use or to clear up "old accounts" (karma). At least, you can interpret this outer defeat in these many ways if you accept the idea that man is essentially a spiritual entity born into a body in order to fulfill a purpose, that this birth into a body is not the first one for this soul and will not be the last. What should be understood in any case is that as the child comes into the world, he emerges into a definite environment. He must act in relation to this environment. It is in it that he experiences life, other people, many objects. He is challenged to take his own position in this environment, to approach it in his own way. The manner in which any person approaches the people, the things and the situations around him, defines what this person actually is. It defines his character and his resources.

You can submit to your environment and develop a sense of passive acceptance or of personal inferiority. You can also fight back against the impacts of life and of people's actions toward you. You can be clever and cunning. You can use your inborn intelligence and instinct of self-preservation in order to change people and circumstances or to use them to your advantage. You can radiate such love and happiness that would-be enemies become friends or servants. In other words, you can relate yourself to people and things in your immediate daily surroundings in a great variety of ways. Your problem, as an individual, is to find the best way for you; and the best way is always the way which enables you to exteriorize and prove to others that which you essentially are as an individual your true self. In the preceding articles of this series, I have shown how the first house of any birth-chart (a chart calculated for the exact moment of the first breath) indicates our true individual self in this particular life; what we essentially are, our difference from others, our characteristic purpose for being what we are and also the way in which we can become, actually and precisely, this distinct and unique self by differentiating ourselves from others and establishing our own true rhythm and quality of being. I have shown also how the second house of the birth-chart refers to all inherited and acquired natural abilities, to our inner as well as outer, psychological as well as economic, possessions and wealth. These possessions are for us to use, as individuals. We cannot act in this world without owning some kind of material substance. The body is our first possession; later on, we come to own other types of material and mental properties, money and things of value. Our problem is how to use all of these significantly, constructively, with a sense of responsibility, so as to give us, as individual souls, the material bases of operation from which we can act and the energy or wealth needed for us to act in our own characteristic manner. Meaning of the Third House We are; we own that which enables us to be ourselves, concretely and effectively. But how can we know the value and the power of what we own unless we discover what happens when we start using these possessions of ours! So the third house of the birth-chart is the "field of experience" in which we discover ourselves by testing the reactions of our environment to the way we use what we own. At first, the third-house environment is the nursery, the home, the close neighborhood. In this first environment, we find relatives, brothers and sisters, objects of various shapes, pets perhaps, friends, servants, etc. There is also the mother and, more or less in evidence (depending on social conditions and customs), the father. Our parents, however, constitute a somewhat special case because we have been born from them; we are related to them in an internal and psychic manner. Indeed, the baby at first psychically identifies himself with the mother; it is only when this identification breaks down that the mother becomes truly objective to the child and a part of his life environment; even then, the psychic bond between them makes the problems of child-to-parents relationship mostly a separate matter (a fourth and tenth-house matter, astrologically speaking). The field of the third-house relationships is one in which external entities are things against which, or in relation to which, the child seeks to discover: (1) the extent of his power, (2) the value of what he feels to be his own, (3) the results of various types of behavior. The first gestures of the baby should actually be understood as efforts at finding out how far his body domain extends, how far he can move without encountering resistance of some sort and pain. This is the characteristic third-house problem: how far can I go and get away with it! As the child grows into a adult, this question will be asked at various levels and in a multitude, of ways; yet it remains always the same basic problem: one must discover one's limitations. The best (if not the only really valid) way

to discover them is by deliberate tests of strength in which people, objects or living creatures provide the testing mechanisms. The child who asks endless questions usually wants merely to find out how long he can attract the attention of someone that is, how great is his power over people around him. True education should be directed toward providing for the child and adolescent conditions and challenges which will enable him, in a consecutive and coherent manner, to test one by one all his powers and faculties. To make things easy for the child is senseless; to make them too hard, needlessly confusing or bewildering is even more senseless. Training by providing an environment especially devised to draw out strength, endurance, quick response, adaptability to change and also sympathetic response, helpfulness, kindness, love, cooperation and creative imagination: this is the only valid training and education there is. When there is no such deliberate training, the complex and often chaotic events experienced in one's environment must act as the education. Then the youth may have to see his possessions wasted before he can learn their value and experience much pain before he can be convinced that violent action or stealing "does not pay." At this stage of individual development, however, one can hardly expect the child (or at a higher social level, the individualist bent upon self-expression and egocentric activity) to think in terms of "laws of behavior." The third house is the field of judgments, of value based primarily upon expediency, and directly experienced responses. That the fire burns the finger is then far more impressive than a study of the chemistry of processes of combustion! That the big brother will "sock" you if you keep annoying him is an eminently valid proof that your power over him has obvious limits. That, on the other hand, if you are very good and "play the game" with your uncles or neighbors, you can get from them the gifts you want is also a demonstration of the value of adjustment to the ways of superiors. In the third house, everything revolves about the questions: What will this do to me? How can I find out the way to get the most out of the situation? How can I expand, or act the way I feel, without bad results? In this field of experience, the individual is purely egocentric; even kindness and love serve the purpose of personal expansion or personal happiness. All that is sought is to find out how everything works so that it can be used to demonstrate what one is. How does one find it? It is accomplished by the method of trial and error at first, then by the use of intelligence. Intelligence can be defined as the capacity of conscious adaptation to the requirements of the human environment. Intelligence operates by means of processes of thinking. To think is, first of all, to associate impressions and sensations so that we can become oriented satisfactorily toward everyday life. Thinking is conditioned first by the instinct for self-preservation and by the necessity to adjust oneself to outer conditions and to escape dangers of all sorts. It becomes eventually geared to a less immediately utilitarian approach to knowledge; yet at the third-house stage, it remains primarily the knowledge of how to get along and how to discover new ways of being yourself and finding out more about yourself. It is through this use of thought and by developing intelligence (at one level or another) that you can learn how to relate every fact of your daily experience. Intelligence is the ability to establish relationships. If you can establish satisfactory, wholesome and significant relationships between every part of your nature, you can become a well-integrated personality: that is, everything in you serves to enhance and strengthen your ego. There is no violent conflict between a part of yourself and another part, such as happens in the case of a split personality and even of all kinds of acute neurosis.

Likewise, if you relate yourself satisfactorily to everyone in your neighborhood, your life becomes harmonious and fulfilling. If you learn to relate ideas with ideas, discovery with discovery, even new words with familiar terms, your capacity for original and clear thinking increases. You become not only learned (through mere memory) but wise (through integrated thinking). It is to all these things that the third house of your exactly calculated natal chart refers. From them, problems constantly arise. They are essentially problems of relationship; but in this kind of relationship, everything is seen in terms of the use you yourself can make of it. Third House problems are very concrete, very practical and immediate in their application. You may take a very idealistic and entirely impractical approach to solving these problems; yet you think you are practical. You are eager to demonstrate this new way of relating things and ideas which is "yours" your opinion, your vision, your way of meeting problems. You should go ahead! Only you may soon find out by the response of your relatives or neighbors that your way is not the way that works best. Thus, you learn. What Are Third House Problems? The zodiacal sign on the cusp of your natal third house, the planet which is said to "rule" this sign and whatever planet may be found within the space of this house these three factors are the basic ones to consider in finding out what your basic "third-house problems" are and how best to solve them. The first thing to discover, in such a study, is the basic type of attitude toward (and approach to) your environment and the use of the power of thought which will serve best your purpose in this field of activity. It is a matter of orientation; the twelve signs of the zodiac should be considered as defining, in this case, twelve basic types of orientation. However, one needs great care in applying what one knows of the meaning of the twelve signs to the particular kind of problems connected with the natal third house and, indexed, with any natal house! In some cases, the zodiacal meanings may seem applicable in a very precise manner; but every sign has a variety of meanings, and it is best here to consider only the most fundamental characteristics of the signs. In closing, let me say that the usual astrological textbook narrows down too much the meaning of the third house; brothers and sisters, short journeys, writing letters, etc., are only expressions of a far wider field of experiences and activities. The third house refers to our capacity to associate personal and immediate experiences into sequences (causes and effects) and groups. Here one comes to know where one is, and how much of an understanding of one's own self one can reach. Here we are in search of connecting links, in search of meanings, in search of demonstrations and proofs. This search is the very foundation of all thinking. It is said: As a man thinks, so does he become. Thus, in this house, we see the individual in the process of becoming what he is or we see him stumble and fall, the victim of circumstances.

The Fourth House: Ways To Stability in Your Personal Life By Dane Rhudyar A young person graduates from college where he has lived and studied for some years; perhaps he is released from the Army after several years of training and service in unfamiliar cities and amid strange people. The young person has gained knowledge and experience; he has come in contact with many youths who also were seeking to find out what the world was all about, what people had thought and accomplished in past centuries and what seemed to be the job ahead for their own generation. The young person has discovered to some degree how he has behaved when encountering strangers, young and old; how he has met the tests of study and of friendship, of academic examinations under pressure, of life in fraternities and of rather hectic excursions into the dark borderland of those jungles, our big cities. He has indeed encompassed a great deal of, to him, new material; he has accumulated knowledge and memories, techniques and personal hurts, fears, blockages and complexes. He is aware of what he likes or dislikes, though this awareness is often rather vague and uncertain. Now, however, he is "free" in a world which has very little concern about him and which may well appear confused and chaotic. He is "free" to do what he chooses. But how is he going to choose? On what basis can he make his decisions and selections? To what purpose will he use his newly acquired knowledge? Obviously, a new step must be taken; but what should be this next step? As a rule, whenever possible, the young person goes home. But usually this going back home after a more or less extended period of adventuring and of learning "the ways of the world" is not a very deliberate gesture charged with profound individual significance. It is just the thing to do; we do it as a matter of convenience and custom and because our instinctive and natural feelings are involved and lead us back to our folks. There are many cases also in which the young man, quite consciously and deliberately, feels the need of going back to his life roots and investigating, kindly but critically, the beliefs, the ideals, the patterns of everyday behavior which, in his childhood, he took for granted, never even thinking of questioning their validity; now he is determined to question this validity. There are instances also when the youth feels sick and weary and wants to nurse for a time his physical, emotional or moral wounds; in other cases, he is totally confused and hurt to the quick; he can think of nothing except recovering his early childhood faith and identifying himself once more completely with the traditions and way of life of his ancestors. The "return home" is not only something which happens at the end of college years or military service. It is an ever-present fact of our inner life and a challenge to our ego. Let us say that we experience something new; we go, into it impulsively; we risk in the fray what we have and our very strength; we are hurt or elated and through it all we either learn new and valuable lessons or we shrink back, hurt and defeated. Then comes the question: What next, little man? The next thing to do is either to go back to that which is the very foundation of one's sense of security and strength and tap once more the power and vitality of our own roots or to establish, on the basis of what we have learned and experienced, a new sense of power and of inner security. In either alternative, we are seeking to evaluate what we have discovered; to find where it fits; to "place" it in relation to something that we consider sound, solid and stable. We can do it in a rather automatic and instinctive manner by comparing the new facts with those things which, at home and in our childhood, we have taken for granted as being truly worth while. But we may also have seen our ideas of value, our sense of like or dislike so extended or changed by what we have experienced

away from home that we do not want any longer to judge according to what our ancestral tradition tells us is right or wrong. As I use the word "home", I do not mean only the physical, or even parental, aspect of the usual home. I am speaking of whatever has given us our first feeling of stability, the feeling that we "belong" to something fundamental and vital, something with a past and a future, something that has roots and is to us also a life-giving root. Every person needs this feeling of stability. No one can really understand or give value to the many events occurring around him and to the varied encounters with people who pass and go unless he can refer them to something that is stable, a mentally significant, and emotionally satisfying "frame of reference". The question is: Where do we find it? It is evident, particularly today, that the parental home and all that goes with it does not always provide the adolescent with a stable "frame of reference". The home may be racked with conflicts, broken up by divorce; what is taught at Sunday School or seen on TV programs may dismay or confuse the sensitive child able to contact opposite points of view in books or through friends. The young person may, therefore, either refuse to accept wholly the "roots" which his home provides him with or soon discovers that there are no life-giving roots, no stability in his home. Then he finds himself in a difficult situation. He cannot refer the knowledge he has acquired or the experiences he has (as he moves about in his community, village or city) to anything dependable, basic and secure. Everything changes and fluctuates; there is nothing that is reliable and permanent, at least relatively so, nothing to return to when new experiences must be evaluated and understood. When this happens, the youth must find stability somewhere else than in the usual home, or even in his social tradition, ethics or religion. There is nowhere else to seek, essentially, except within himself; but before he comes to realize the full implication of what this means, he usually has to pass through many crises during which he discovers that every substitute "home" he has been trying yearningly to adopt proves inadequate. How can he be guided in his search for this elusive, yet so necessary, stability? This is the question which a vast number of youngsters and supposedly mature people ask of psychologists today because the solutions which the philosophers or religious teachers of older days have presented, and keep presenting, seem ineffectual or lacking in convincing power and root vitality. But most psychologists have likewise no real solution to offer, for they can only show to the confused and disturbed men and women of our hectic age the road to conformity. "Conform. Be adjusted and all will be well." Will it really be well? Is this another opiate to calm the restlessness of the uprooted men and women of our cities to the point where it will not do too much harm to themselves and to society? Can all be well until men find a new quality of stability in their lives, a completely new approach to the very problem of stability? Significance of the Fourth House The symbolism of astrology can help us understand in a very graphic manner how the kind of security ancestral roots and "home" foundations used to provide can become replaced by a new kind of inner stability. What we need to do is to consider carefully what is meant by the fourth house in the true birth-chart (that is, a chart erected for the exact moment and place of the "first breath"). In ordinary textbooks, it is said that the fourth house refers to the home, to one of the parents (opinions vary as to whether it is the father or the mother), to real estate and the present place of residence, also to the "end of things" which, of course, may mean the return to the dust of the ground whence we come, as is said in the third chapter of Genesis. But the fourth house has a still

deeper and more basic meaning in terms of the essential experience of the individual person, able to assert his own self. The basic meaning of the fourth house is obscured by the fact that most astrologers still think of the cusps (or beginnings) of the twelve astrological houses as occurring in the zodiac. A truly modern astrologer should realize that what makes the houses so significant indeed, in my opinion, the most basic factor in a psychologically oriented type of astrology is that they are equal divisions of the space surrounding man, as he is born and lives on the surface of the earth. The twelve houses constitute the basic framework of the individual human experience; they are twelve basic "fields of experience", passing through which man grows (or should grow!) to maturity as an individual person; they symbolize our world in its totality. This world starts at the surface of the globe. The "natal horizon" of a birth-chart (the line from the true ascendant to the descendant or seventh-house cusp) is a representation of the surface of the earth, on which man breathes (first house) and comes in contact with all that lives with him on this surface (seventh house). This "natal horizon" is, in terms of man's personal everyday experience, the horizontal line which he follows as he lies down and sleeps. The meridian (the line which marks the beginnings of the fourth and tenth houses of the astrological chart) represents the vertical line, to which he aligns himself as he stands erect, asserting his selfhood, his verticalness of being, his full stature as an "I am". This vertical or "plumb" line reaches up to the zenith and down to the nadir of the space surrounding man on the surface of the globe. At the zenith, we see stars if it is night or if we can see through the glamorous light of the Sun. But if we try to look for the nadir, we find at first only solid substance that is, the ground on which we stand. The first and obvious meaning of the nadir and of the fourth house is, therefore, this ground we stand on it, we build on it. The fourth house is the "solid ground", the place of our "life roots", the "foundations" of whatever we build as an individual seeking to assert his own "I am" in a stable and relatively permanent manner. Here we find a sequence of significant ideas: (1) We stand on the ground as we establish our own body stature, as we walk toward what is needed to fill our essential needs or to run away from dangerous contacts. (2) If we consider ourselves as parts of a larger community, as members of a particular society, culture and ancestral line, we find ourselves rooted in the psychic substance and "soil" of a collectivity of human beings; indeed, we often are not even completely emerged as true "individuals" from the psychic envelopes (or "wombs") of our mother, our tradition, our Church or Party that is, of all that has established for us, from the very moment of our birth, the fundamental way in which we should face the world and adjust ourselves to the pressures (the "line of gravitation") of our society. (3) As the time comes for us to follow the example of our elders and as we come of age as a (supposedly) mature personality, we marry and think of building ourselves some kind of home whether or not it means an actual house we own. Then we take a stand in our society as a builder of home; if we are to make a real success of it, we must seek, first of all, to build solid foundations. These "foundations" may be psychological far more than actually made of stone; but in order to make them, we must, symbolically, dig down into our earth; we must do so in order to reach rock-bottom stability. This is as far as most people dream to go, insofar as their "fourth house" experiences are concerned. Yet the ground may be shaken from under your feet; you may become uprooted by wars, by

necessary changes of occupation, by sudden losses or conflicts with your neighbors. The home you built, however securely its foundations seem to have been erected in the "rock" of faith, tradition and morality, may be taken away from you by society or natural storms. Where are you then? Where do you stand? How can you stand erect and say: "I am, and this is my world, my certainty." The answer is that you can dig farther down into the earth until (symbolically speaking, of course) you reach the center of the earth. As you "reach center", you shall find that you have reached your own center. You have become a "global" being. You are now like a planet moving in cosmic space, circling about a sun in company of other planets. You have become the citizen of a celestial society. You are in the kingdom of heaven, and the kingdom of heaven is within you at the very center of your integrated and global personality. It is this change from "foundations" to "center" that I was hinting at a while back. It is a change of essential quality of consciousness and of feelings, a fundamental change in a person's approach to the problem of discovering a kind of stability and permanency which nothing can destroy not even, in due time, death itself, provided the change is thorough enough. However, much is demanded of the human being before this change can be brought about. If one is busily engaged moving about and seeking an ever-larger field of operation on the surface of the earth or if one is sure that the only way to gain stability is to build heavy foundations out of "stones" (i.e., of the ancient dogmas and set traditions of your society), then one never will reach the "center". But, in the majority of cases, it is best not to try to do so unless one has a strong determination and intense faith and unless all else has proven unsatisfactory and hollow. A time often comes, nevertheless, when we have to choose what we truly seek and desire to reach. It is the strength of our desire which will make the decision, for every man chooses what he desires most, what he feels for most eagerly, what he believes in most implicitly. No choice is of itself wrong; none is basically greater than any other. What counts is simply whether or not it is your choice, whether it is the right choice for you at this particular time of your development. The process of reaching the center of our own global being is a very difficult and strenuous one. One can think, as an illustration, of the struggle necessary for a tree to send its tap root straight down, through rocks and clay, toward the center of the earth; of a man seeking to drill an oil well at great depth. But in these or similar illustrations, the problem is to tap some substance which lies deep under the surface, water or oil. The man who seeks to find stability at the center of his being cannot be deviated from his purpose by whatever resources or wealth he may encounter on the way; he must not stop until he has reached center. As he goes deeper and deeper, the pressure and resistance of earth materials grow greater, the heat is more stifling; but if he persists, if he is lured away neither by the excitement of the world on the earth surface nor by whatever wealth he may come to tap as he digs on; and if his strength holds out and he does not lose faith and courage, the individual must someday reach his goal. There he will find that, at the center, gravitation ceases; no heaviness is left; all "burdens are light," as Christ said. At the center, everything is perfectly balanced; one may move in any direction; every direction is the vertical; every direction radiates from one's creative self. Stability is perfect; yet it is a stability which brings one into a new and far vaster realm of being, where many new and greater problems arise. If one has reached one's own global center, one begins to operate in a dynamic, creative sense. What makes the motions of the planets and stars so stable in their orbits is that they move on. If they stopped one moment, everything would explode or disintegrate. The stability of rock foundations is a

static kind of stability; the stability reached at the center of one's self is of an intensely dynamic type. If it is not dynamic, then it is not the real center. If the process often a tragic one then, too, one may be sure that what has been attained is not this real center. In any case, all experiences which the individual encounters in his search for stability and a secure basis or center of operation can be, astrologically speaking, referred to the fourth house of the natal chart of this individual. Obviously, what such a fourth house will show can at best be a most general indication of the type of experiences to be expected in this search. But, even so, a study of the natal fourth house and of the planets (and other factors) which may be found in the house should be deeply rewarding, if properly undertaken. Significance of the Fourth House Cusp The first and basic factor to consider is the nadir point of the chart: the cusp of the fourth house. The zodiacal sign at the cusp and, if one is sure of it, the exact degree at this nadir point tell a basic story. From them, we can infer what the individual's characteristic approach to the problem of stability and of personal integration will tend to be as the result of his experience. The zodiacal degree of the natal nadir point indicates the path to the center of one's being because if one follows the line of gravitation which passes through the head, the erect spine and the feet, one reaches, first of all, the center of the earth; then the antipodes of the birth-place; and finally, in the sky of the antipodes, a certain point whose zodiacal longitude is that of the cusp of the fourth house. Whether one ever reaches the kind of stability which is found at the core of one's inner being or one is content to find an at least temporary security and base of operation in a solid, concrete foundation just below the ground's level, the cusp of the fourth house shows the way that destiny, or God, has prepared for you. It does not tell how far you will go and what will satisfy you, but it shows the manner in which you will have to approach the problem as a result of your life experiences since birth. In this fourth house field of experience, one deals with most intimate matters the moment one attempts to go beyond the surface concern with home, real estate, etc. Thus, examples out of the lives of famous people do not always lead to obvious results. This is the realm of "depth psychology" in the truest meaning of the term. There one is seen at a level which he usually seeks to hide from others, the more so the more he is a public figure. But the study of the fourth house is, therefore, a particularly fascinating study in any psychologically oriented approach to astrology. It is, moreover, one which would fill a very great need today, for modern men and women grow ever more insecure as the ancient foundations on which our civilization was built are seen collapsing or at least are found sadly in need of basic repairs. Out of insecurity and uncertain foundations, our uprooted individuals lose increasingly all sense of real and permanent value. Every effort should, therefore, be made to help people to reach their own centers by approaching in a new way the problem of how to find some stable basis from which they may begin to act as dynamic and creative individuals.

The Fifth House: Your True Path of Self-Expression By Dane Rhudyar When an astrologer who follows the usual type of practice looks at a birth-chart, she tells or writes to her client, "Because your Sun or Moon is in this or that sign of the zodiac or house, because you have this or that aspect between this or that planet, you are such a type of person." In so doing the astrologer reads in the chart a number of characteristic features which depict what the person is. In these articles, I am taking quite a different approach to the study of a birth-chart, for I seek to help you to find from your birth-chart how you can best be what you are intended to be. In other words, I am taking the attitude that your birth-chart as a whole tells what you should develop into as an individual thus, the purpose of your existence on earth. The chart does not primarily describe what you are, but indicates the solution of your basic problems; it shows what you need, and by "you," I mean here you as an individual self, not the mass of physical and psychological tendencies which you have inherited from your ancestors and society. You, as an individual self, are intended to use these inherited tendencies. You are born in a particular family and nation and you are subjected from birth to the impacts of a particular social, religious and cultural tradition because this inheritance and early social environment are necessary for you to develop certain faculties or powers and to achieve certain things. Your being born in a particular place, at a particular time and in a particular family has a purpose. From the point of view of your true self, nothing in the world health, wealth, love or success included really means very much unless you can realize, understand and consciously work toward this purpose. All these things acquire meaning in terms of this purpose: that is, in terms of the individual self, you. Your birth-chart should, therefore, be considered as a general formula telling you how you can best use the energies of the human nature you have inherited. You inherited this human nature at the moment of your first breath, when you began to assert yourself as an independent self able to control (very little at first, then gradually more and more) a human body and all that goes with it. You then found out gradually by your constant attempts at using your body and its organs, and from the reactions of your environment to your own acts, what this human nature was over which you were meant to gain control. Gradually, this led, through the years of childhood and youth, to the establishment of your own personality; you became a particular person with characteristic features and abilities. To most people, it seems very easy to say, "I am Peter, or Jane" or whatever one's name is. Yet if you ask members of a group, in school or in some meeting, to stand up in front of everyone and to say simply and definitely, "I am Peter," you might be surprised by the results. Many people whether children in their teens or adults when thus put on the spot, fumble, feel terribly shy, mumble their names, giggle or throw the name at you as if they wanted to hit you. They know very well, of course, that they are Peter or Jane; but especially if taken by surprise and confronted with onlookers, they find it very hard to make a clear, unequivocal, definite, unemotional statement. The way they say, "I am Peter, or Jane," the intonation of their voice, the way their arms or legs are held, the expression of their eyes will reveal a great deal of the psychological peculiarities of their personalities. It is not enough to feel within one's self or in relation to one's family intimates, "I am this or that person." What this person is has to become exteriorized and presented to others. It has to stand on its

own feet and to make its impact upon the outer world of society. "I am Peter"; "I am Jane" this has to be known and experienced by other people, by potential friends or foes, lovers or strangers. You have to state what you are and, above all, who you are, for the world is won over not so much by the "what" as by the "who." It is the way you release the power of your personality which will "sell" you to the world, make people smile at you or avoid you, hate and fear you. "Who are you?" the world asks. You will answer this question not only by saying your name, but by your bearing and personal attitude, including your posture and all habitual mannerisms. Your everrepeated problem is how to answer in such a manner that you may be able to act out what you truly are as an individual I and to fulfill the purpose of your life on earth, without harm to others or to your I self. It is an everyday problem, for you never can tell whom you will meet or what new and unexpected situation will demand of you a statement of your own self and your own purpose. Many, indeed, when this occurs are found to be without distinct self and without definite or convincing purpose. People will tell you that they must "express themselves". Yet if you confront them unexpectedly with the challenge to state simply and clearly who is that self which needs expression and for what purpose this expression is needed, you will find very often that the answer given either is very vague and without individual character or that it is given without real conviction. Of course, there are schools and methods of training which are planned to give you the kind of assurance displayed by high-pressure salesmen or broadly smiling and baby-kissing politicians! But these standardized techniques of self-projection should not deceive anyone. They project no real self but only a mask of assurance hammering out blatant statements behind which the individual human soul is imprisoned, starving and weak. To act out what you truly are as an individual this should be the essence of life in a really democratic society. To make it possible for you more, to expect it of you is the one purpose of democracy, even though a too often forgotten purpose! This means that you have established your personality on the ground which you have deliberately chosen, as an individual; that you have found your true home. Having found it, you can use it as a base of operation, act out what you are, then at will withdraw and regather strength and act again in your community. Thus, people will know you as you are; they will experience you in and through your actions and your creations, which will be truly the exteriorization of your individual selfhood and the release of your characteristic vitality and power. However, this is not all. As you release your energies, the result may be a constructive creative activity or it may mean also destruction. It may mean freedom and growth or enslavement and sickness to others and to yourself as well. It is not enough to seek to act out what you are as an individual; you must permeate your actions with the quality of harmlessness. Harmlessness is nonviolence; it is the substance of peace and of a love that is true and not only a form of possessiveness and of clinging in fear. You must express what you are and manifest in your creations your vision and your dreams; but in so doing, you must also beware lest there come harm to others and injury to your body and your psyche or soul. A great many actions performed by individuals eager to release their energies hurt others and, directly or indirectly, the individuals themselves. The egocentric person takes no thought of what his actions will do to others; he acts explosively and blindly, under the compulsion of feelings of pride, anger or lust; beyond these "three gates of hell" there stands fear, the root of all sins and all evils. Actually, the individual does not act; it is the energies of human nature which burst forth, as steam from a boiler. With this fact, we reach the very center of the problem we are discussing.

When a man says, "I am angry," then proceeds to act angrily and in so doing hurts someone and himself by reaction what has usually happened is that anger was aroused in his mind or soul by the sight of some disturbing occurrence. This feeling of anger releases from various glands of the body (particularly from the adrenals) powerful chemicals which race through the blood and produce an emotion accompanied by some muscular action the fist hits something or someone or the vocal organs shout insults, etc. Emotion means "moving out." In the emotion of anger, violence moves out of the body and spreads all around the angry person. In the emotion of lust, a passionate craving of the body and the desire nature reaches out for someone who is expected to satisfy the craving. But in such and similar instances of emotional outgoing, the whole individual person is usually not involved. The true "I" is not really acting himself out; he is like a weak king forced by an aroused mob to give his reluctant sanction to some popular deed of violence. Anger is the aroused mob; the mob controls the king, who stands powerless or is busy somewhere else. A man says, "I am angry." But he ought to say rather, "Anger has overcome me." He, the true individual "I", has abdicated to the emotional impulse produced by a compulsive feeling and a sudden release of glandular hormones. He is not "master in his own home"; he is not an integrated person acting from the center outward. It is human nature that acts, not the individual self. The action is not "true" to the self and the purpose of the self; neither is it, in most cases, harmless because what we usually call human nature operates compulsively in terms of instincts which have no regard for any value except organic satisfaction, self-defense and self-aggrandizement. It is true that there are individuals who are powerfully integrated and yet who deliberately perform actions which are destructive and harmful to others; but such basically evil individuals are more rare than people think. In most cases, violence and harm come out of personalities who are overcome by compulsive desires or fears; they are weak, unbalanced individuals. They have been hurt, oppressed, thwarted; and the hurt compels them to hurt others. What they need is, first, to work steadily toward inner harmony and integration; then, to set definite safeguards which would stop sudden emotional impulses from running wild or would lead them into other and constructive channels. The Fourth and Fifth Houses If we translate these remarks into astrological terminology, we shall see that the problems here stated concern primarily the fourth and the fifth houses of the birth-chart. The fourth house represents not only the physical home, but that more or less integrated whole which is called the "personality." The personality is the internal "home" of the individual self. In the fourth house, this self, which has come into manifestation with the first breath and in the natal first house, becomes a concrete, organized personality with some sort of roots or center of stability. It is no longer only "I am," but "I am Peter Smith," conditioned by heredity and by the environment he has grown in. The fourth house is the field of feelings because a man feels according to the kind of personality he has become stabilized into. The feelings may be consistent and well organized according to individually recognized and assimilated values and ethical-social principles; they may also be very inconsistent, changeful, uncoordinated and over them, the true self may have very little control. As the feelings are, so will the emotions tend to be unless disturbances or obstacles intervene between what the person feels and what sweeps through the body and soul as an "emotional impulse" as a result of the feeling. A man may meet a beautiful girl and he may feel love for her; yet he may not be able to experience the full emotion of love, either because of some psychological

complex (mother complex, for instance) or of some serious glandular deficiency. If he cannot experience fully this emotion, then either he will not act toward the girl as a would-be lover or he will act in an awkward, perhaps aggressive, violent and sadistic manner, as if he were challenging his own inability to experience love emotionally. These are parts of the great complexities of human nature and human character, and these complexities provide endless materials for the novelist and dramatist also for newspaper headlines and criminal courts! Astrology can help us to understand better such psychological intricacies and to meet more wisely our own emotional problems. But such a help should be presented with the utmost care only, for the matters at stake are very elusive and subtle and the world of man's feelings and emotions cannot be placed into set classifications, astrological or otherwise. The Fifth House Cusp The zodiacal sign found at the cusp of the fifth house of the birth-chart (calculated for the exact moment of the first breath) is to be considered an indication of the type of self-expression through which your real self can best act out what it is and its true purpose of destiny. The position of the planet which rules this zodiacal sign will show, besides, the main field of operation in which this selfexpression will best be focused or what will mainly condition it. If there are planets (also the Moon's nodes and the Part of Fortune) in the fifth house, added indications will be given as to the character and quality of your attempts at expressing yourself thus, indications concerning your emotional nature and the influences acting upon it. These indication do not refer to what needs to happen, but to what is there for you, the self, to use. They do not represent Fate, but rather opportunities for realizing and exteriorizing your inner genius. If an architect is asked to build a house in the Siberian forest, it does not mean very much to say that Fate compels him to use wood as the main building material. We should say instead that he was born in Siberia in order to demonstrate what he can do (as an architect) with the use of wood. If he passes his time bemoaning the fact that he cannot make a marble house, instead of imagining new and beautiful ways of using the wood of the forest, he certainly does not add to his stature or fame as a man and as an architect. Marble could perhaps be imported under certain conditions; but then money would be required as well as special workmen, etc. The zodiacal sign on the cusp of the fifth house is the most basic indication of what is available in this life, naturally and spontaneously, as materials for creative individual self-expression. You must learn to use these materials, first and foremost; later on, other things may be added.

The Sixth House: Personal Crises and Personal Development By Dane Rhudyar In every one's life, a time comes when one is forced to realize that what one does, feels or thinks does not come up to the ideal of behavior, personal achievement and success which one has held. Even the most self-satisfied individual is aware of some lack; his self-satisfaction is ordinarily a screen behind which he hides a sense of unacknowledged inferiority, uncertainty or dread of failure. If there were such a thing as a completely self-satisfied person, life would someday prove to him that his body or his mind, his emotions or his nerves are not able to meet successfully some emergency or challenge. Illness, pain, inner doubts and conflicts are proofs of at least relative defeat or inefficiency The real problem, however, is what does the individual do with this experience of defeat? How does he cope with the realization that he lacks strength, endurance, adaptability, technical skill or wisdom, refinement and the ability genuinely to love? How does he meet the realization of the necessity for self-improvement? How should he meet it so as to insure the best possible results? A person is seen in his true inner worth when he faces the experience of inadequacy, lack, frustration or defeat. When he is equal to the ordinary needs of the day and able to meet with fair poise what life and society (or his family) demand of him, we see only his abilities at work. When these fail or are inferior to their task, when his body falls ill or his mind is thrown off its normal sense of stability, then we see the person himself. It is only in crises that we can ever know the real self of even our best friend or associate. But we actually come to know this self not so much by what the person achieves outwardly as by the way he approaches the emergency, by the quality of his response to lack and defeat. If a person with great reserves of vitality falls ill and makes a spectacular recovery, if a nation with vast resources throws itself with great success into a program of enormous production when confronted with war or disaster, this does not of itself necessarily reveal the greatness of the individual's inner self or of the soul of the people. What counts spiritually is the quality of the effort and what this effort creates in the person or the nation. It is the aftermath of victory that tests the spiritual quality of the victory. It is what victory does to the mind and soul of the victorious. The word "crisis" comes from a Greek word which means "to grow." Crises are opportunities for growth as well as challenges; but there is growth and growth! A man can grow bigger and fatter, wealthier and more self-important. Does it make him better able to meet the next crisis? Does it make him come closer to a fulfillment of his true and essential purpose in life? If it does not, then it is only a false kind of growth. To grow is to become, actually and effectively, what you are in, potentiality, as a spiritual being, at the threshold of your birth. It is to achieve the essential purpose of your life as a whole God's purpose for you, the religiously inclined person would say. The question is then: How can you best orient yourself to an oncoming crisis? If it comes unannounced (as does a sudden illness, an accident or death), what is the most basic power, function or drive which you should call into play in order to meet the emergency and, what is more, to meet it so that you grow spiritually from the effort? Most people, obviously, do not stop to ask these questions and to find answers; it is well that they do not, at least at first! But when they grow older and realize that there is something quite wrong about the way they have approached their crises so far and dealt with their illnesses or sense of inferiority,

then the time comes for finding out more about themselves and their innate abilities to meet these crises. Reorientation has proven to be necessary. New techniques, perhaps, must be learned what is more fundamental, a new approach to the use of the skills one already possesses. This is where the idea of discipleship comes in. One may learn from written instructions or from an impersonal statement of what to do and the tricks of the trade. One may memorize exactly a set of responses to a critical situation for instance, what to do in a traffic jam when driving a car. This is technical knowledge; we, today in America, worship this kind of knowledge. But you may be a technically skillful driver and yet through impatience, emotional recklessness or over-fatigue and nervous tension cause a serious accident. The technique is there, adequate to meet the impending crisis; but your personal, emotional or physiological approach to the possibility of crisis may defeat your ability to use your technique. In some cases, a subconscious wish for failure or death may make this defeat almost compulsive. Discipleship, when properly understood, does not deal merely with the learning of a skill, but above all with being subjected to the contagion of example from an individual who not only has the skill, but is able to use it to the fullest in times of crisis. A student acquires knowledge from a teacher; a disciple receives from his master the power to transform his personal attitude to life, to himself and to God, so that he can use whatever knowledge he has or whatever inspiration comes to him effectively and creatively. However, this power which the disciple receives does not come to him unless he qualifies for it. Therefore, he must discover the manner in which he can best qualify; this implies always some kind of preliminary reorientation. Before the disciple can actually receive the power to experience a true inner metamorphosis with the help of the master, he must desire to change and to grow. He must, be ready to serve and to obey, for true and eagerly accepted service is the only cure for egocentricity or selfishness. The capacity to obey and to take directions is necessary to the disciple if he is to pass successfully through crises which imply a challenge to the very existence of his ego, his dear ego. The Sixth House Because the sixth represents fundamentally everything that deals with personal crises and the way to meet them, it shows, more than any other factor in the whole of the astrological field, how an individual person can grow and become transformed. It indicates, by its contents, the basic type or types of challenges to be expected whenever opportunities to growth are presented. These are presented either simply by life itself or with the added assistance of the master and spiritual guide, whose task it is to make the opportunities more definite and, thus, the crises more focalized and acute a point very well worth thinking about and remembering. In traditional astrological textbooks, the sixth house is said to refer to employment (either to servants one employs or to one's employer), to everyday work, to all forms of training, to matters concerning health and hygiene and in specific cases to Army and Navy service. As usual, such traditional meanings, if considered in themselves, are superficial, limited and fail to reveal the basic significance of this most important house. This basic significant is that of personal growth. Growth means transformation or change of condition. This change requires taking a new step forward (or, if the motion is negative, backward); in every new step one takes, there is a moment during which the person is off balance, having left a previous state of equilibrium (or stability) and having not yet reached the state ahead.

This off-balance state means a "crisis." All crises are transitions between two states or conditions of existence and consciousness. Most transitions are difficult or painful; hardly any man will pass through them deliberately and consciously unless he is made to desire the risk by a sharp or poignant realization that he lacks some skill, that he has (at least partly) failed or been defeated. Illness is either the direct result of some defeat of the vital energies unable to cope with a challenge to grow stronger or a way of the soul to impress upon the outer consciousness the need for a revision of attitude or the normal sign of bodily disintegration in old age. It may also be imposed upon the body (or the mind) by the violent impact of some over-all social crisis, war or revolution. In the last case, however, the twelfth house is the main field of disturbance; the sixth house (its polar opposite) shows mostly the response of the individual to the social situation. One should not forget, however, that for the individual to respond to a social or national need is the normal way to grow; this normal way does not inevitably require that the individual pass through acute crises or experience illness. What is demanded of the individual is that he contribute to the productivity and the growth of his community; this contribution takes the usual form of employment or service. Such a contribution may well include, nevertheless, a multitude of small crises or of determined efforts at adjustment to social conditions even if it be only daily commuting in crowded subways or the effort to overcome fatigue every morning as the alarm clock (the modern slave driver) whips one out of slumber! If the relation of individual to community is negative, employment means slavery, crude or attenuated; if one's society is torn by wars and revolutions, the field of sixth-house experiences means compulsory military service of some sort. Crises become sharper then, even if small and repeated. Yet they still can mean growth for the individual; the slave can demonstrate far greater spiritual growth than his ruthless master! What counts is the attitude taken and the degree to which the spirit within, the inner self, has been aroused and has been able to induce transformations in the total personality; this should include, at least to some extent, the transformation of the body's responses and the transfiguration of instinctual urges and desires. At the limit, the alternative is transformation or death. Death can be a very slow and gradual process to which the individual soul assents (or which it even induces) out of weariness or despair. Growth always means some type of transformation. The message of the sixth house is: Be ye transformed! No person with an emphasized natal sixth house should seek to escape or to refuse to hear this call for transformation. To conform is to accept a static condition of existence; it is to accept the inevitability of crystallization, the degradation of the living into the inanimate, the stone. All dynamic living implies transformation the transformation of one's personality and one's creative contribution to the transformation of one's society and civilization. To be creative is to be a power of transformation; it is to use crises to the fullest so that they come to mean effective and successful metamorphoses. This is the challenge of all sixth-house experiences. How can you meet it with the greatest chances of real success? If we look to the birth-chart for an answer to this crucial question or, at least, for a clue which would help in clarifying the problem and its solution we must first of all study the cusp (or beginning) of the sixth house.

The Sixth House Cusp The zodiacal sign on this cusp indicates the basic type of energy, quality of behavior or approach which the individual should use to the best advantage in solving the sixth-house problems. If the person's attitude to life is natural and spontaneous, he will tend to use the type indicated; but an individual's natural abilities are so often deviated or twisted by the pressures of family, of religion and of moral, social and cultural tradition that he loses his true, spirit-directed spontaneity and intuition. He faces crises and opportunities for growth, he approaches the problems of work and service not as an individual, but as a member of a family, group or party. Someone else or some intellectual and religious system conditions his responses at the most crucial times of his life the moments of transition. If Aries is found at the cusp of your sixth house, for instance, you must meet the challenge of growth in a pioneer's way, as a creator of (relatively) new values. You are not going to grow by conforming to a past tradition, even though you must, of course, be fully aware of it and of its historical significance in yesterdays now gone. You should have the courage to go forth as a leader, to point out new directions of growth. You must pour yourself personality into your work. It is you, as an ego, who must first of all be reborn, for it is you the individual whom your society needs but the real you, not the mask which your family and culture have carved in the image of old ideals. If Taurus is at the cusp of your sixth house, your approach should be different. It is the very substance of your personality which is to be transformed. You should tap the deepest roots of your being for power; your ability to use power is at stake. You are the alchemist who should learn to transmute lead into gold, earthly materials into solar energy. Take whatever materials you find around you and integrate them or "transubstantiate" them, as Jesus did when he changed water into wine at Canna, then wine into spiritual substance at the Last Supper. With Gemini on that cusp, the individual tends to, or should, meet his crises and the opportunities for growth as a thinker; thinking in his case will tend to be expressed in some definite formula or intellectual theory The planet which rules the signs at the cusp of the sixth house will show, by its position in one of the twelve houses (and also, to some extent, by the aspects it makes to other planets), the "field of experience" in which the challenge to growth should be mainly focused or which will usually color the character of this challenge in its typical manifestations. The natal house in which the planet ruling the sixth-house cusp is placed will also point, in most case, to the location of these typical challenges and crises. In the sixth house, we should see the solution of all individual problems of growth and selfimprovement. There one meets crises and passes through transitions which determine one's standing as an individual. There the true spiritual self of an individual is seen acting directly or unable to act. There the one proves oneself truly victorious or defeated by the quality of one response, as an individual, to illness, failure, frustration or apparent defeat.

The Seventh House: Your Greatest Test A Human Relationship By Dane Rhudyar On the gate of the most famous sanctuary known to ancient Greece, are words which, translated, mean: Know Thyself! This was the great request of a civilization for which self-knowledge, reason, order, proportion and beauty were supreme ideals. To know oneself is, if the knowing goes deep and far enough, to realize clearly and objectively, without illusion or confusion, what one is; but it should also be to realize, to the best of one's ability, what one is for. It is to sense, however dimly and uncertainly it may be at first, the purpose of one's existence. I look at a chair; I can describe it and analyze all its parts and the way they fit with each other. I know then the structure of the chair; yet the purpose of the chair may escape me entirely. If I were a thinking bird able to describe a chair on a sun porch, still I would not know what the chair is for, even after perching on it and investigating it in a birdlike manner. If I have never seen or heard of an airplane, I can describe minutely a propeller which I find lying on the ground, yet never realize the purpose for which it was given its particular structure. The purpose of the object becomes clear to me only as I discover how this object relates itself to other objects within some larger construction and particularly how it acts when it fits dynamically within the activity of an established group or community of related objects. I can hold an acorn in the palm of my hand; but analyzing its form and what it is made of will not reveal to me its purpose unless I am aware of the relationship of this acorn to the oak tree on which it grew and to the whole species of trees to which it belongs, as a seed. The acorn's purpose can be defined satisfactorily only in terms of the oak species of trees; its function is to serve the purpose of the species; that is, to insure the species perpetuation and, if possible, expansion. The purpose of the airplane propeller, likewise, is revealed when I see the plane ready for flight and the engine is started; then all that I have found out about the propeller's structure suddenly becomes invested with a purpose. What was before to me, having never heard of an airplane, a strangely shaped object is seen now as the performer of a significant function within the larger whole, which the entire plane is then revealed to be. The purpose of an object or entity is, therefore, known only (1) when this object is seen related to other objects and (2) when it is seen in action within a complex process of activity in which other objects are also operating. The liver of a man is only a mass of strange red-brown substance until we know where it fits in the body of the man and how this liver functions within the complete process of metabolism (food digestion, etc.). Then the purpose of the liver is demonstrated. The same thing applies to the individual person, though with some important differences. We may study a person and know what he is made of, as the expression goes; but this knowledge remains static, dead as it were, unless we see the man act in relation with other people and in relation to the group, the community or the nation of which he is an active member. Truly, the purpose of the one's existence is inherent or implied in what the person is (the structure and character of his body, mind and soul); but this purpose is revealed or demonstrated only as this person begins to operate as a functional unit with-in his community. Know thyself this is the logical first step. But this first step remains barren of real results unless a second request is obeyed: act out thyself in relation to other selves and within a larger hole of human activity (group, town, nation, humanity, as the case may be). In astrology, the first step refers to the first house of the natal chart (calculated for the exact moment of the first breath); while the second step is symbolized by the seventh house, the house opposite the first.

The Seventh House The seventh house represents, therefore, essentially the field of experience in which the individual, by being able to act in relationship to other individuals and in terms of some larger process of human activity, reveals and demonstrates to himself as well as to others the essential purpose of his or her existence. This statement is fundamental; all other meanings attributed to the seventh house are derived from it are secondary and often superficial. But we have to examine carefully what the term relationship signifies here; we have to be equally careful not to forget that relationship in action is meant and, what is more, a relationship which is referred to the over-all activity of a larger whole or organized system. Relationship, in this basic seventh-house sense, is functional relationship; it is a more or less integrated part of some vast progress in which many individuals cooperate. Cooperation, however, can have a destructive as well as a constructive meaning when understood in this general way. Thus, in astrology, the seventh house refers to divorce as well as to marriage, to war as well as to contracts of partnership, to effective hate as well as to productive love. In every organism, there are cell destroying processes (catabolic) as well as cell building activities (anabolic); both are functional and integral parts of the life process. If nations, when faced by the historical and economic necessity to cooperate and to pool their resources in peace refuse to do so because they are bound to old patterns of nationalistic selfishness or greed, this refusal compels cooperation to turn negative and to become war. The blood of enemies mixes in the soil of battlefield because the blood of lovers could not mix in the joint progeny of two people bent on sharing and on building up a vaster human community. Relationship, in the seventh house, is functional relationship. It is relationship acted out for a purpose which includes, and in a sense transcends, the purpose of individuals in the relationship. It is with reference to this larger purpose that the smaller individual purposes acquire their full and truly significant meaning. However, the individuals may not be aware and still less clearly conscious of this larger purpose. They may obey it instinctively, as in the mating activities; or they may struggle toward the fulfillment of it against emotional and mental resistances of all kinds, as in the case of establishing a religious community on a new basis or a federation of nations. All experiences dealing with mating belong to the field of the seventh house, provided mating serves the purpose of life and of the animal or human species. In the vegetable or animal organism, this service of the individual organisms to the species to which they belong is entirely unconscious and compulsive. In humans, however, the mating instinct becomes more or less conscious and can be controlled (or frustrated in various ways). Then it becomes love. As a result, a new situation develops; what belonged entirely to the seventh house's field now has to be referred at times to other houses, particularly the fifth house. Traditional astrology refers all love affairs and all emotional activities which fall into the category of self-expression, whereas the seventh house is the field of marriage and conjugal living. What differentiates the two categories of experience is whether or not the relationship between two individuals is functional. It can be functional in terms of either the propagation of the human species or the work of a social community (the production of social-cultural values). On the other hand, the purpose of the relationship can be that of providing emotional release, excitement or pleasure to two persons (or perhaps even only one of the two).

The typical love affair has no purpose except to allow a man and a woman to express themselves emotionally and physically. In some cases, children are not wanted and the normal biological and reproductive function of the union is frustrated. If there is no deliberate frustration, then the love affair is a gamble or risk-taking adventure in this, a characteristic fifth house experience. Even if marriage does not fulfill or intend to fulfill the purpose of reproduction, the marriage partners are, nevertheless, recognized parts of their community; the lack of children may release other energies (intellectual, artistic, religious, educational, etc.) which fulfill definite functions in the culturalsocial life of the community. If a love affair stimulates and is meant to stimulate the cultural creative activity of the participants, it begins to operate as a seventh house function. The relationship is productive and functional in terms of society or of the human race. The fact that it may be only temporary is of relative unimportance, especially in our days of frequent divorce. More significant, but not always to be considered a decisive factor in the classification, is whether society officially recognizes and accepts the relationship, as it does in marriage. What is really crucial is whether or not the couple recognizes that their relationship, legalized or not, serves a purpose in a larger social, cultural or spiritual process. This distinction had to be emphasized because it has a basic importance in all problems born of human relationships. Fifth house problems are problems in self-expression. You act out what you are as an individual; in so doing, you should seek not to harm other people and yourself also! You release what you feel is your purpose or your way of doing things. You let go of your emotions; you should try to do so as an integrated, harmonious personality, rather than in hasty and violent reaction to some emotional irritant. But at this fifth-house level you are the actor, the star; the world seems to you to be your stage. Nevertheless, what you feel to be yourself may not be at all your true self! How can you find out what is your true self and the real purpose of your existence? This can be done only by acting on the basis of a more or less permanent relationship to a particular person or group and for the deliberate fulfillment of a superpersonal, communal social or universal purpose. This means accepting the responsibility of performing, a function within the field of activity of a larger organism, a community. The community, maybe your family, social group, town, humanity as a whole; but it must be a community which you can know and experience fairly well. The function which you select should be one which you can understand and effectively discharge. You may soon realize that you made a mistake. The function and the community which attracted you at first may prove alien to your deeper nature. Then, by contrast and through your experience of frustration and hostility, and finally by passing through a crisis of separation, divorce, repudiation, surrender and perhaps emptiness and isolation, you will come to discover what your true function is. This discovery can be very gradual. Many attempts and many crises may be required before the essential potentialities of your own individual selfhood may become concretely actualized and clear to you, as well as to others. But however long and tedious (or tragic!) the process, it is only through such a process that what you are can be proven by the one irrefutable proof: the proof of work. "By your fruits, you shall be judged." The creative characteristics of individual selfhood can become demonstrated in the test tube of human relationship only. No individual can be sure of his own life purpose, and he cannot truly convince any group of persons of the validity of his vocation or God-given destiny until he has met successfully the test of relationship unless he has proven himself able to perform his function as a needed and significant phase (however humble) of the complex pattern of activity of some kind of community, be it a very small village or a great nation.

Role of the Seventh House If we look at the matter astrologically, we should see, however, that the performance by an individual of his or her social-cultural function takes place in the field of the tenth house: the field of professional activity, of public prestige and achievement. It is in the tenth house that the purpose of the individual's existence in relationship to his family, his society, his civilization is truly and actually fulfilled; but this fulfillment depends upon what has happened in the seventh-house field of experience. The seventh house is the foundation; it is the testing ground. To solve the basic seventh-house problems, to emerge victorious from the tests, the loves and conflicts of relationship, to orient oneself successfully toward the goal of conscious, effective and needed participation in the work of the world: these are the steppingstones to the consummation of one's individual selfhood and one's true vocation. The key to the solution of the problem which human relationship poses is participation. Relationships should be entered into and fulfilled as a foundation for a wholehearted, profound and vital sense of participation in some kind of community. A human relationship is great in proportion as it produces, bears fruit, the effective, significant and creative participation of the partners in the work of the world, at one level or another. A relationship between two or more individuals which produces no worthwhile participation of these individuals or, at least, of one or more among them in the activities of the community or the growth of civilization is an essentially meaningless relationship. Ask yourself, therefore, as you enter into some new partnership of any kind: Am I are we willing and ready to aim this partnership toward the achievement of a more sound, intense and productive (or transforming) contribution to our society? If you are not willing, or if you are afraid, to face this question, then the relationship will tend to be barren. It may provide you and the other (or others) with temporary satisfaction or excitement; but it will most likely lead to an increasing number of problems or to an unproductive self-enjoyment in each other, devoid of any feeling of responsibility and leading to a slow form of spiritual crystallization or regression. The moralist and the psychologist stress greatly the idea that you must not be selfish in any partnership; you should give of yourself to the other, love and understand him. This is right, of course; but it is just as essential to see to it that the relationship itself be not selfish and isolationistic. The character of the relationship; as a social entity, counts as much, as the love of the partners for each other. The husband and wife are responsible for what their marriage will be and what it will produce and create. It is not only a question of sharing between two persons, but of the participation of the couple, as a unit, in the activities of their community. What will they both bring to the world as a result of their relationship? This is the problem. Here again astrology can help us to orient ourselves more effectively and harmoniously to this problem. This orientation is suggested to you by the character of the seventh house of your natal chart, by the zodiacal sign on its cusp, the planet ruling this sign and any planet which is located in the seventh house. The first thing to realize here is that the zodiacal sign at the cusp of the seventh house at the descendant is always the opposite of the sign at the cusp of the first house or ascendant. When, therefore, we describe the meaning of the rising sign (ascendant), our description must include characteristics of individual temperament which would fit the fact that the opposite sign is at the descendant.

One could take every one of the twelve possible combinations of zodiacal ascendants and descendants and characterize them in an attempt to correlate the indications produced by the presence of opposite zodiacal signs at both ends of the natal horizon. The point which I have sought to stress here, however, is that these two ends of the horizontal axis of the natal chart operate inevitably in relation to each other and that the problems indicated by the nature of the ascendant can never be really solved except by taking into consideration the nature of the descendant. Selfhood and relationships are the two poles of one single fact; we are born on the surface of the Earth teeming with other lives. Birth demands of us that we come to know ourselves, what we are. But it calls upon us also to seek to discover the why of our existence; this discovery can never come to us fully except through human relationships. It may mean the experience of love or that of enmity and hatred; nearly always, it must mean both, in varying degrees. But be it love or hatred, association or war, there must be relationship. Yet relationship cannot be an end in itself; socialization cannot be an absolute ideal for human beings no more than individuality and spiritual isolation can be goals endowed with an absolute value. Reality, growth, evolution, spiritual peace and divine harmony can only be found in the dynamic interplay of the self (seeking to discover its highest and purest truth of being) and of the experience of relationship through which the self can demonstrate the validity and reality of this truth of self. The most godlike individual is, therefore, he who loves most, he whose field of relationship includes the most, he whose experience of relationship is the most vivid and the most productive.

The Eighth House: How To Solve The Problem of Living By Dane Rhudyar The obvious meaning of the term business requires no explanation. The word is on everybody's tongue; there are few Americans who are not concerned about some kind of business, whether they pass their time clipping coupons from stock certificates or go through the daily routine of factory, shop or office work. To be in business or to profit from business makes of business "everybody's business." Thus, colloquially used, the word actually comes closer to its original meaning; the word business signifies simply the condition of being busy busy meaning, according to the original Anglo-Saxon term, active. In French, the corresponding word is affaire, meaning that which is to be done. In order to be active and to do something, we have to enter into relationship with some kind of material upon which we work or with some person with whom we act. In our complex society, practically any type of activity requires coming in contact with other persons. It calls for some kind of buying or exchange, some form of association, however temporary. The important point here is that when we buy something or when we associate our efforts and skill with those of another individual, we follow precedents. Our activity, the way we approach and deal with the other person or group of persons follows a more or less predetermined pattern. Essentially, there are two kinds of precedents: there are instincts, which not only the body must obey, but which are also deep compulsions within the emotional life; there are social, religious and cultural customs and traditions which normally direct our activities into generally accepted collective forms of behavior. An individual may try to rebel against following these instinctual-emotional and social-cultural patterns of activity (also of thinking and feeling); but even in our democratic society which recognizes the theoretical right of the individual to be self-determined and free in his expression, the individual's freedom is considerably limited by common customs, moral traditions, laws and regulations. We cannot run naked in the street; we cannot go into a store and simply take what we like or even what we need to save us from starvation; we cannot kiss spontaneously a stranger who attracts us or slap a police officer who objects to our jaywalking or to the speed at which we drive. In ancient tribal societies or in modern totalitarian states like Fascist Spain or Communist Russia, the freedom of the individual to act as he pleases is even more limited; it is, indeed, practically nonexistent. Everyone has to conform in every way to collective patterns according to rigidly enforced laws. One is even expected to conform in one's thoughts and feelings. We must realize, however, that the need for adhering to various types of group patterns of behavior is found wherever, there is life. It is present, at first, as sheer biological necessity. What we call instincts are manifestations of this necessity. We must conform to instinctual patterns of behavior in order to perpetuate and to reproduce ourselves as living organisms, as human bodies. When tribal societies are formed and achieve an increasing degree of social stability and group consciousness, the purely unconscious instincts of the animal are extended from the biological to the psychic and social fields of collective behavior. Taboos, rituals and traditional precedents compel every member of the tribe to conform rigidly, basically, for the sake of collective biological, social and cultural survival. Even today, we are trained from the cradle on to conform to a large number of definite patterns of behavior and of thought by our parents, teachers, friends. Nonconforming brings punishment or, later on, social isolation and ostracism. The question, therefore, is not, in actual practice, whether or not we have to conform, but how much we are compelled to conform. The compulsion can be an

internal psychological one (we can be compelled by our unconscious emotional reactions, fears and complexes) or it can be external and enforced by what we call law. In other words, there are some areas of living (or fields of individual experience) in which conforming and following group precedents are necessary for personal or group survival. There are other areas in which conforming may or should not be required; still others where the compulsion to conform is a threat to progress and sanity and kills all spontaneity and creativity leading, thus, sooner or later, to atrophy, crystallization, paralysis and death. The fight for individual freedom and for allowing creative self-expression is, therefore, a struggle to reduce the extension of the areas of living in which we must conform or else suffer worse deprivation. It is a struggle between the will to transform what is today (in order to create a richer future) and the pressure to conform to what has proved valuable or necessary for survival in the past. This struggle goes on incessantly in the world. It goes on in the cosmos as well as in human societies and within the individual personality or the group. It gives rise to basic and often most tragic conflicts. The Eighth House The problems these generate are difficult to solve; yet if not solved, they tend to lead to insanity and bio-psychological disintegration. A whole nation can become insane and on the verge of disintegration; witness, for instance, Nazi Germany. These problems must, thus, be understood; first of all, they must be resolutely faced. Astrologically speaking, they are to be faced in the eighth house of the natal chart. This rather mysterious house (or field of individual experience) had quite a bad reputation in traditional astrology, and it is still defined in most textbooks as the "house of death" but also of "regeneration." What is meant by these terms, death and regeneration, is in most cases not made clear or else the explanation is quite unconvincing. Particularly the usual explanation fails to show logically why this house of death should follow the seventh house, which is described as the field of intimate partnership, conjugal love and, in general, of opportunity. The deeper interpretation of the eighth house rests with the fact that as individuals meet, trade, associate, love or hate, they at once have to face the necessity to conform to predetermined patterns of group behavior; if they refuse to conform, they must face the consequences of this refusal which can mean death, but also, in some cases, regeneration. We do not need, however, to discuss the matter in such extreme personal terms. The conflict between the need to conform to social patterns or precedents, and the eagerness to make any new association or opportunity produce an unprecedented harvest is the cause of the major problems everyone has to face in business and in the business of living which underlies all industrial or commercial activities. It is clear that this conflict between the requirements of conforming to laws and customs, and the desire for unprecedented profits (psychological as well as financial) reaches an extreme of intensity at times when entirely new opportunities for personal and group expansion and desires arise. They arrive when there is a business boom, when the possibility to make trading and human association extraordinarily profitable occurs. This has been the case in an unparalleled manner since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution some 150 years ago. Not only have the concerted activity of individuals and the pooling of individual resources and individual abilities or imaginative ideas produced enormously profitable results (thanks to machines and technological procedures), but the number of human beings able to work productively together has vastly increased during the same period. The effect has been a fantastic

increase of what we call today business. Men have driven themselves to a never before experienced fever of activity; they have done more things (affaires) than ever, and they had to do them in association. Any kind of association produced immense results; limiting this associative activity to precedents could only limit the profits at least of those who engineered and led the group activity. Thus, precedents were thrown overboard in America (and to a much lesser extent in Europe); American productivity boomed. It was the age of rugged individualism and even more rugged and ruthless associations (trusts, cartels, etc.). The result is modern commercialism. The fruits expected by the partners as the outcome of their association can truly be of many kinds. What establishes the worth of a relationship is not only whether it conforms to precedents or it makes new paths for the activity in common of the associates, but it is also the nature of the results expected of this relationship. We have two factors to consider. The purpose of the relationship is the primary factor; then comes the way in which the associates work toward the realization of this purpose the technique of realization. This technique may be conventional and according to precedents or it may be original and defying precedents; it may conform to a social or business norm of behavior or it may transform the ways of custom and demonstrate a new principle of conduct. If what is expected of the association by the partners is a customary type of production and profits, the tendency is to follow technical precedents; if any modification is introduced, it is superficial only and it does not defy tradition. If, however, the association is formed by individuals for new and unusual purposes, it is more likely that conformity to old ways of doing things will not be considered valid, except perhaps as a temporary expedient or a camouflage. In an astrological birth-chart, the character and quality of the approach of the individual toward all basic life associations (whether of the conjugal or the business or cultural types) is shown at the descendant and in the natal seventh house. The fulfillment of the definite purpose of the life as a whole is to be referred to the zenith (or midheaven) and tenth house though it is implied in the individuality of the person (ascendant and first house) as a "God-given" potentiality. It is in the eighth house, however, that the solution of the problems attendant to the practical working out of the life purpose through human associations is to be looked for. There the business of living is seen in everyday operation; there the practical, concrete issues it raises have to be met; there ideals of relationship, love and conjugal happiness or the plans for business profits have to be made into workable realities. This is not a place for dreams or for beautiful words. The eighth house is a field of experience where substantial realities are to be built by constant efforts, prolonged and repeated activity, whether according to precedent or along radically new or partly new lines. In the second house (the opposite of the eighth house), the incarnating self, the "breath of spirit," finds itself active within a body and hemmed in by human nature. The self has to deal concretely and practically with the materials of the body and the vital energies of generic human nature. It has to use these materials or become completely involved in them and "materialized." In the eighth house, it is the social consciousness of the individual and his approach to steady associations, to love and partnership, which find themselves confronted with the rules and the customs of his society. He may approach people with great ideals of love and sharing in his heart, but he has actually to meet these people within the framework of social-cultural order.

What will this framework do to his ideals? Will he have to conform to regulations, hypocritical phrases and the many rituals of society; to compromise utterly in his contacts with others, in his marriage life? Will he, on the contrary, defy convention with rebellious ardor? If he does, will he see his ideals shattered and his sanity questioned or will he prove himself victorious, a reformer, a creative pioneer and the father of new precedents? These are questions which the natal eighth house raises in every chart. To suggest solutions for the many problems related to this eighth house is not an easy matter. Yet the intuitive astrologer should be able to show to his or her client some kind of basic line of orientation along which the client should best be able to deal with the difficulties he will tend to meet in practicing the business of living. If he deals successfully with these difficulties, he will experience a regeneration. He was born as an individualized "breath" or life impulse; but now he is reborn as a social person able to participate effectively and productively in the organic pattern of activity of his group, his nation, his civilization. The term, social, as used here, may be applied to any kind of group. The group may be an occult brotherhood, a church, a transcendent spiritual community. Thus, the pattern of activity in which the social person participates may be a ritual, a magical ceremony of whatever may be imagined as a transcendent spiritual work on so-called higher planes. In all cases, this participation means the rebirth of the individual within the group; this rebirth requires at first conforming to the group pattern, just as birth necessitates the acceptance by the incarnating spirit of the limitations of a material body and of the functional rhythms of the life which circulates through this body. However, conforming may mean a complete and passive self-loss of the individual into the material body and its vital functions (in the case of birth) or into society and its customs (in the case of social rebirth); or else conforming may be a deliberate procedure undertaken as a means to become accepted by the group so that the power of the group may be used sooner or later for a creative and transforming purpose the individual's purpose. These constitute the two possibilities open to every man and woman in the eighth-house field of experience, the negative and the positive approach. No astrologer can tell which approach you will take.

The Ninth House: How To Expand Safely and Sanely By Dane Rhudyar Sooner or later, every individual seeks to expand the field of his activity and, by gaining a wider experience, to find a broader consciousness of life and selfhood. Every individual, consciously or unconsciously, acutely or dimly, feels this urge to be more than he is. We may call this urge ambition; but to call it so does not solve the problem to which it gives rise. Because ambition too often manifests under negative or destructive ways, the use of this term tends to confuse the issue. We seek expansion; there are a number of ways in which as a social person once can legitimately, safely and sanely expand. In astrology, these ways refer to the various fields of experience represented by the ninth house of the birth-chart. However, if one is to expand safely and sanely and to become one's "greater self," the person has to orient himself correctly as he enters these fields. He has to approach the matter of expansion with a constructive mental and emotional attitude. If he does not, he is defeated even before he starts; his experience of self-increase ultimately turns bitter and toxic, leading to some kind of illness or insanity, mild or acute as the case may be. What then is the right, constructive attitude? Before we can define in practical terms what this attitude demands of the individual, we need to understand clearly the foundations of personal development from which the urge to self-expansion derives its strength and dynamism and the general direction in which it normally operates in our present-day society. The first point to consider is that human expansion takes place essentially at two levels: the organic and the social. From the time of birth, the human organism increases in size. This increase is merely the prolongation of the prenatal development, and it is due to the assimilation of external foodstuffs. The growth is instinctive and compulsive biological and natural. Nevertheless, this process of growth can be interfered with through improper and insufficient nourishment, as the result of psychological and social pressures or obstructions of many kinds experienced by the child in his environment. The problems which arise in these early fields of human experience should be referred astrologically to the second, third and fourth houses of the natal chart. Through these houses in their initial aspect, the physical organism of man is built. The individualizing spirit which incarnated at the time of the first breath gradually learns to adjust to, and more or less to control, the basic materials provided by heredity and environment. In the process, he develops individualized traits and faculties of his own which he tries spontaneously (when allowed to do so) to exteriorize and display. In the process, he becomes conscious of what he is, of his desires and of his failures in attempting to satisfy these desires (fourth and fifth natal houses); then he seeks to improve his techniques, to reform his ways and to gain a new orientation toward other people and the way of working with other people (sixth house). The individual's truly conscious and responsible life begins only as he gains a vivid and real sense of relationship to others whom he meets as an individual, that is, of his own free will. As he meets them fundamentally as equals, he begins to feel that, together with them, he will be able to work out some new phase of activity and gain new experience which he could not reach alone or in the protected field of his home environment. The human being becomes, thus, a social entity. He participates more or less consciously in the complex whirl of activity which constitutes society; he experiences, profitably or not, the result of this participation (seventh and eighth-house fields of experience). He is in business the business of living in society, as a social unit in the midst of a multitude of other social units.

It is at this point that the real question of conscious and deliberate expansion poses itself and a variety of specific problems gradually arises. The business of living in society can be met in a positive or in a negative manner. We can so thoroughly and unquestioningly conform to the traditional patterns of our society that we become a mere cog in the social machine. We act according to set and rigid precedents. This may bring to us vast profits. We may become bigger social units, successful creatures of the way of life of our society; but we remain creatures, not creators, however big and powerful we may be according to ordinary social standards. We may also infuse into the necessary element of conformism, required in the business of living, the transforming of imagination, emotion and will of the true individual self. We may learn to use the patterns of the group to which we belong as a means to impress upon society our vision and the purpose for which we were born as individualized spirits. Then we act as creators, even though we may be temporarily ignored, repudiated and unsuccessful according to the usual standards of our generation. We may not become bigger social units; yet we may become greater individuals provided we do not break down or collapse in the attempt, a constant danger! In either case, we need to orient ourselves consciously toward the many activities of society. We need to know where the various relationships which we have made fit into the larger pattern of the presentday world; how we and our associates can ride upon the expanding tide of society or how we can use adverse social winds to reach our goal. In numberless ways, we should learn how we can use intelligently the tremendous energies generated by human cooperation and production, whether in business or in the realm of culture. The natal third house refers to those experiences which one can have with single persons in one's immediate environment or with the small tools needed for everyday personal living. There the individual learns to discover the extent of his abilities, his power, his persuasive strength by trying them against this or that relative or neighbor; he may learn how to become a passive creature of his environment and to avoid hurts by pleasing this or that person. Meaning of the Ninth House The ninth house, on the other hand the polar opposite of the third deals with those facts and lessons of experience which derive from our effort to understand and to come to terms with the ceaselessly expanding vistas of human association and human commerce. There we learn to assimilate the treasure of human knowledge which is passed from generation to generation and to which every generation adds the harvest of its many experiences. There we seek to relate ourselves, as a thinking (thus a social-cultural) person, to thought itself. We study the process of thinking, the generalizations and abstractions of the human mind, the laws conceived by that mind as tools for understanding and for ever more successful group activity. Thus, the ninth house is said to refer to philosophy, to the abstract mind, to law. It is also related to long journeys, foreign affairs, diplomacy; finally, it is the field of religion and mystical or prophetic experiences. These varied meanings are all expressions of the basic and ultimate purpose of the house, which is assimilation of all that is unfamiliar or distant and the inclusion of all that is at first alien, disturbing and seemingly unusable. To include always more, to assimilate that which constantly challenges you with its differences, if not its antagonism: these are the requisites for true conscious expansion. They alone can make man greater and true to his destiny. The above mentioned characteristic meanings of the ninth house should, however, be studied more closely, for much is hidden in words such as law, metaphysics, religion, prophecy, etc. much that

every thinking individual, eager to sustain and implement his personal growth, should truly understand rather than merely take for granted. First, the concept of law. There seem to be several kinds of laws; we speak of the "laws of Nature," of "moral law" and of the many laws which the government of a country decrees or votes in order to define precisely what people should or should not do in certain situations. However, we should realize that all laws represent a generalization and codification of the common experience of human beings able to share the results of their experience over more or less long periods of time. Jurists and lawyers speak of the "common law" in contradistinction to the more officially stated and recorded type of law proclaimed by king or parliaments. But whenever a law is not founded upon a common experience of value, it is a command, an edict or a temporary experimental regulation: it is not actually a "law," and it cannot be enforced very long unless new circumstances prove its utility. The true process of lawmaking can be seen clearly in science. We say usually that the scientist discovers a law of Nature. But by saying this, we beg the question, for no one would know whether Nature acts according to what we call laws unless it was the common and consistent experience of men that some well-defined causes are followed by certain effects. Actually, therefore, a scientific law is simply a generalized statement saying: it has been the common experience of trained observers that, under well-defined conditions, specific results follow certain actions or phenomena. The scientist generalizes upon the recorded experience of trained observers in order to enable other men to expand in safety the field of their activities, to protect themselves collectively against either familiar or as yet unknown dangers, to live a more abundant life, etc. As to the concept of "moral law," this is a projection of an ideal of human conduct which the spiritual elite of mankind has demonstrated to be the effective way to reach expansion in the direction of the next evolutionary step which humanity is slowly preparing itself to take. Buddha, Pythagoras, Jesus, St. Francis constitute examples of what the average individual may become millions of years hence. The Sermon on the Mount establishes a pattern of interpersonal behavior which, if rightly practiced, must produce a type of spiritual expansion that is safe and sane and leads to a more inclusive and more abundant life, of which "love" (agape, in Greek) is the motive power. Religion, too, is a way of dealing with the urge for human expansion. In all its forms, it seeks to help individuals to meet and assimilate a broad category of unfamiliar experiences which otherwise might be frightening and dangerous. This category of experiences refers to any and all contacts with a realm of forces and with psychological processes which transcend the normal experience of the average man and, thus, confuse and bewilder him because he is neither able to dismiss them nor to understand or assimilate them. It does not matter how a particular religious philosophy or theology interprets supernatural or extrasensorial experiences. The point is here that it gives us a convincing interpretation, thanks to which the experiences are given a cause that fits within the ordered scheme of the universe which we are ready to accept. We needs this sense of order just as much as or more than bread. If there were no religion, people would go mad when faced by these irrational or transcendent experiences. Men do go increasingly insane when, as today, the traditional interpretations of religion seem to lose their validity. Yet these experiences, whether seemingly external (like the apparitions of saints or demons) or more obviously internal (like fears of the unknown, vague feelings of self-loss in

the universe, ascetic urges, sudden changes of consciousness, etc.) are integral parts of one's effort to become more. Neuroses and psychoses of many types (though not all types, evidently) are the result of such an effort, when it is frustrated, premature or occurring under too adverse conditions. The effort may be neither deliberate nor even consciously felt as such; yet it is operative simply because man is man and not mere animal, because we can and, therefore, must strive (even if only in the slightest degree) to become more. This striving is just as natural to humanity as is the evolutionary trend which makes family groupings expand into tribes, tribes into nations, nations into empires or federations and eventually into a world community. This expansion of social groups occurs, by means of travel, of trade, of intermarriage and of diplomatic or educational exchanges. These various means are all to be referred in astrology to the ninth house; they indicate that a process of absorption and assimilation of foreign and alien elements is taking place. It is not basically different from the process of assimilation of transcendent, irrational, superpersonal experiences which goes under the name of religion. The ultimate purpose and function of any true and universal religion is the development of a "spiritual communion of souls," whether in this or another world. The deeper function of astrology is also to lead individuals to a sense of participation in a universal order of which the visible sky and the motions of planets and stars are significant manifestations. If your birth-chart is the symbol and signature of your true personality, then because this chart is the actual projection of the whole sky, you are yourself the whole universe in miniature a small cosmos in which the vast universe (macrocosm) can be seen focused on Earth. But so is your neighbor, your friend and your worst enemy! You are all one and the same vast universe, but seen at different times and from different places on the surface of the Earth. All planets operate in you, as well as in the criminal or the saint. The same human stuff is there in all men; only the relative proportion, the arrangement of elements, the balance of the various functions of human nature differ. If you truly realize this, your approach to your enemy and to the heathen and the gangster must change. The change should mean an expansion of consciousness, for it will mean growth in your ability to include the alien and the as yet unknown. It will mean greater understanding, greater love and one more step taken toward your own latent and as yet unrevealed divinity. Two Ways of Expansion Expansion may be based on cooperation, peaceful inclusiveness and love; it may come as a result of killing and "eating up" what you find around you. In the first case, we progressively becomes more than what we are; in the second, the greedy and voracious person becomes merely a bigger man. He becomes, socially and psychologically, fat. These two ways of expanding represent essentially the two basic approaches to the problem of expansion and, thus, to ninth-house experiences. A third way would be, however, the completely negative approach: that is, the refusal to expand. Each way produces characteristic challenges and problems. One type of problem arises from the refusal to expand or the inability to make oneself desire expansion in one realm of activity or another; also from the repeated frustration of this expansive urge through conjugal, family or social pressures; perhaps as the result of having been shocked by unusual and premature experiences of a transcendental or socially tragic nature. Another type of ninth-house problem is the consequence of the constant effort to absorb more than one is able to assimilate; this may mean more food, more, wealth, more social or political power

even more learning, more unrelated facts, more experiences with foreign people or alien philosophies, too many dreams. Problems also develop out of the attempt to cooperate and to love, where no response comes to love and cooperation. To help others where no assistance is asked of you, to heal where healing is deliberately resisted and unwelcome this, too, leads to difficulties. To avoid them or to deal with them, knowledge, understanding and wisdom are needed. Psychology, philosophy, religion, the study of law and custom are meant to give us such a knowledge and understanding. But we must seek that knowledge, welcome the understanding and reorient ourselves deliberately toward our "greater life." We should do so in a manner that is truly our own if we want to gain a deeply valid and personally useful harvest and, on the basis of this harvest, achieve our individual life purpose: that for which we were born as spiritual entities in an earthly body. The "manner that is truly our own" is implied in the ninth house of our natal chart. As in the case of any house, we should study the zodiacal sign on this ninth-house cusp, the position of the planet which rules this sign and the aspects it makes to other planets, the contents of the house (i.e., how many zodiacal degrees it contains and what planet, if any, is located in it). What you will not be able to discover, however, is whether you should seek expansion by traveling afar rather than through a deep study of philosophy or law or through the path to profound and transforming religious experiences, cosmic consciousness or prophecy. You can see indicated a general approach to any and all experiences of expansion into vaster fields of activity, consciousness and understanding. You can see, symbolically stated, the path to your "greater self" and the best way (the, to you, natural way) to proceed as you go along; but you will not find anything telling you precisely: "This is what you should seek." The path may lead you to and through many fields.

The Tenth House: What You Can Contribute to Society By Dane Rhudyar When a girl or boy graduates from high school or college, a phase of life ends. During this phase the child later, the adolescent finds himself on the receiving end of his relationship to his family, community and, generally speaking, to society. He had not asked to be born into this family and society. He was born, weak and unable to make his own biological and psychological-mental adjustments to his environment. It was right, therefore, as well as necessary, that his family and society should attend to his needs, guide his growth and bring him as it were up to date on the evolutionary road of human progress. When the youth reaches his twenties, it is usually taken for granted that he is biologically, psychologically and intellectually developed to the point where his relationship to society can reverse its polarity. He has received; now he is expected to give. His elders confront him and ask of him that he decide the nature of the contribution he can and is willing to make to the maintenance, the expansion or the transformation of his society. There was a time, not far distant, when the youth actually had very little choice in making this decision. If a boy, he was expected to follow in the footsteps of his father and to begin his apprenticeship in the same profession, trade or occupation. If a girl, she was to marry a man whose class and way of life were more or less closely determined by her father's standing in the community and the size of the dowry he was able or willing to provide. In either case, there was a degree of flexibility in the determination by the parents of the manner in which the children would have to play their parts in society; yet, basically, the family tradition and the success of the father established the type or level of participation expected of the youth. The only thing asked of the young man and woman was that they should discharge well the duties established by past examples and fulfill significantly and nobly the function in society which they had been led to assume, whatever it be. In our days, especially in the United States, the situation facing the youth out of school or college is very different. There are cases, of course, in which the child is pressured into pursuing the same career as his father, into taking over the ancestral business; he may spontaneously and readily fit himself into the patterns which father or mother has built and which brought them success, at least of a sort. Yet, basically, in modern life, the youth has a freedom of choice concerning what his or her life occupation shall be; within a particular profession, he or she can introduce a new approach, truly his or her own, different ways of doing things and other goals. Marriage not being a social compulsion, the girl can pursue a career or work in an office or factory; indeed, she very often is obliged by economic necessity to work for a living and she must choose what she wants to do. Where there is such an individual freedom of choice, new problems arise. How is this freedom to be used, and to what end? What does a job or career mean to me personally? What do I expect from it? What shall it give me, and just as important what shall I give to it; what am I willing, ready and able to give to it? What can I do best? Back of these questions, there are still deeper ones which more or less insistently call for some kind of answer; above all: what is the meaning of my relationship to my community, my society, my culture? What is the value of what I have been taught in school and in church, of the example my parents presented to me, of my schoolmates and friends behavior? How much is it right for me to

conform to what everybody calls normality? How much should I try indeed, how much can I afford to try to be myself an individual with a "relatively unique temperament or destiny and relatively original ideals? It is not easy for the youth to answer these questions. As a result, many protect themselves by not asking them! They look in books at some official list of occupations, at how much these pay, what advantages they offer, what special training they require. The boy or girl gradually eliminates many possibilities; if he cannot make up his mind as to the rest, he may go to an expert in vocational guidance and submit to intelligence tests, aptitude tests, personality tests, hoping to be given an objective and scientific answer as to what he is best fitted to do, what is most likely to bring him success and happiness. Such testing procedures are, in essence, analytical; they may help to eliminate various fields of activity which require definite aptitudes (physical, intellectual or psychological) which the youth lacks. They do not usually seek to bring the youth face to face with the central question: What should my purpose be in selecting my life work? To make enough money to have a comfortable home, keep up a family in fine style and to become a respected member of the community these are what one could call the normal purposes of the socially well-adjusted boy. The same type of ideal, with differences of function, would be normal for the well-adjusted girl, eager to be a mother and have a lovely home. In following these patterns of social normality, the youth acts on the basis of a collective consciousness and of collective ideals very much as did the young men and women who had no freedom of choice in their professional or conjugal lives. But the modern youth has freedom; freedom means, whether one likes it or not, responsibility for the choice responsibility for the use to which this freedom is put, for the purpose directing the way it is used. The responsibility may be rejected, and no real attempt may be made to discover a truly individual purpose guiding one's selection of his life work. Then the line of least resistance is followed and freedom becomes bondage bondage to an attitude of passive acceptance or of violent rejection of the example given by the parents, the relatives, the friends; bondage to one's emotional reactions to experiences in the home or the school; bondage to one's psychological make-up. The modern youth seems to be free to select the profession he or she wants; but what does the selecting? Is it the true self of the young man or woman or the complexes which have been built through years of disturbed childhood and confused adolescence? Does he select a career just because his father had one diametrically opposite, because "Mom knows best" or because of a sense of inferiority or unconscious guilt, perhaps as a punishment or an escape, as a release for an overaggressive attempt to compensate for some deeply felt inferiority or to forget some basic childhood hurt? Psychological tests may help to answer such crucial questions crucial inasmuch as they may determine whether the whole life will be colored by inner frustration and unhappiness or will produce truly fulfilling experiences. Yet the usual tests alone cannot do much in many cases unless they are accompanied by a long and deep process of psychological re-education also, a costly one, beyond the financial capacity of the average person. Can astrology give answers which would be more easily available, more simple, yet reaching deeper to the core of the problem? I would hesitate to say enthusiastically yes to this last question, knowing fully how extremely difficult it is for even a psychologically minded and efficient astrologer to give real and basic help to a person

faced with the problem of selecting an occupation. Nevertheless, there are points of very great importance that the astrologer could clarify for his client, basic issues of a psychological and spiritual character which the study of the person's birth-chart can help to decide effectively, provided a rather new approach is taken to the whole matter of vocational guidance through astrology. The central issue is that when a man or woman decides upon a life work he or she should be choosing the means by which what he or she is, as an individual, can be demonstrated and made effective. The part an individual assumes in the vast system of activities of society establishes the field in which he should be able to prove himself and his worth. Every person must, in some fashion, give this proof, the proof of works "By your fruits you shall be judged." Where can he give it most satisfactorily? Roles of the Various Houses In astrology what the individual is, in a relatively unique and original manner, can be seen by considering the ascendant and first house of his birth-chart, erected for the exact time and place of his first breath (his first act of independent existence). The ascendant, however, refers to the potentiality of being the as yet unrealized, unexpressed, unfocused character of the individual-to-be. This potentiality then becomes concrete actuality through the gradual building of a definite personality. The heredity (second house) and the environmental influences (third house) provide the infant with materials (physical, psychic and mental which become absorbed, assimilated and incorporated in the field of experience of the fourth house (the place where personality is built, the home, the root foundations). In the seventh house, a person having tried to express himself spontaneously and to release the extra energies not needed merely for maintaining his body (fifth house), having been bruised and hurt and having tried to learn better (sixth house) enters into the field of human association with a more or less conscious or steady readiness to cooperate with others. Association, cooperation, partnership mean essentially activity in common. In the seventh house the individual learns to adjust his activity so that it fits with that of other people, adding something to the others' actions and receiving in return. In the eight and ninth houses the individual becomes more deeply and vitally concerned with and involved in common forms of activity. He learns from precedents or rejects them, perhaps with immature emotional excitement. He studies the laws or customs regulating all social intercourse; he expands his understanding of the varieties of human temperament by studying history, philosophy, by traveling. As a result of all this, he "comes of age" (at least theoretically) and is, or should be, ready to prove himself by contributing to his society and to the human race. What the youth should contribute to his society is what he essentially is. Every newborn is a new element that humanity needs. If as a grown individual the person fulfills his true nature, he thereby solves his own problems and meets also the need of his society, the need which he should meet for every man is born when and where he needs to be born for his own soul growth and, as well, when and where he is needed. The basic question to answer is, therefore: What is my true nature; what is the truth of my individual being? Everyone is born to live the truth one is. Alas, often one finds oneself, as one is born, surrounded by social lies and personal fallacies. He is made to mold his mind after obsolete social patterns, to polarize his feelings in response to parents, teachers and older playmates who may have failed to demonstrate their own truths as individuals. The adolescent becomes confused and cannot see or sense what he is and what he is born for. Not realizing what he is, he does not know either what is his

real contribution to society. In his doubt and confusion he tries to decide what to do by conforming to some average standard of normality. One may be a success in the world. People may think he has contributed much to his society. But if his life comes to feel increasingly empty, it may well be that he has not contributed what he was meant to contribute; he has not contributed his truth. Seen from such a point of view, the problem of finding one's life work takes on a twofold aspect. First, the youth should discover what he is; then he should try to find a field of public or professional activity in which he can best make his own characteristic contribution to society. The best place may not mean the easiest! The best profession or occupation is the one in which he will have experiences which will stimulate him most to be his true self and to give of his true self. If it is your characteristic contribution to bring spiritual light to people, you may well do so most effectively in very dark social conditions. If you are meant to stir, rouse into action, take the initiative, break old patterns, the best place to do so is likely to be where there is inertia, senseless conformity to routine behavior or worship of traditional cultural patterns. In attempting to help a person to discover his or her true vocation, the astrologer will find in this person's birth-chart indications which refer not so much to a particular professional activity, but rather to a basic nature of the contribution which the person could make effectively in almost any profession. What counts is the type of experiences which the profession provides, not the profession as a thing in itself. What matters essentially is not the job, the place, the exact type of work you engage in, but what you can contribute to people and to the job out of your own personality and in a (relatively) unique way. For instance, you have Libra on your birth-chart's midheaven, the essential character of the contribution which you can make to your society is one which deals with values, particularly with group values. This Libra type and Venus type of contribution can be made obviously in the field of culture because culture is based on a certain set of values which are defined and applied, directly or symbolically directly through social and group behavior; symbolically through the fine arts. But the sense of value is not limited to the cultural field. It is needed in every realm of social and personal activity. Libra refers to the establishment of significant groupings of human beings thus, to all associations which have a significant purpose in terms of human, national, spiritual unfoldment. If you have Libra at the midheaven, you may realize your vocation in organizing groups in any professional field, in bringing more value, more beauty, more harmony to any place in which you work. You do not need to be an artist or a beauty parlor operator or a fashion designer. There are several types of astrological indications which can be and have been used in vocational guidance; but anyone using them should realize at the start that in our modern society, there is practically no hard and fast line separating one profession from another; that the job you hold does not, in most cases, classify you irrevocably as one type of human being; that manual work can be as respected as intellectual accomplishment and basketball coaches in colleges make as much money as and are often better known than the college presidents. Moreover, changing one's occupation is a most common occurrence; a we are not tied down to a single job. But the person is irrevocably what he is. He brings himself to any job, any career. The problem is not so much at first one of discovering a one's abilities as of finding out what one is ready and emotionally free to do with one's abilities.

The Midheaven of Your Chart The individuality of the self is shown astrologically at the ascendant; therefore, a study of the ascendant and of the planets in the first house is a most important factor in real vocational guidance. Nevertheless, it still remains true that the zodiacal sign at the cusp of the tenth house (midheaven) indicates, together with the planetary ruler of the sign, what your essential contribution to society basically is. The way in which you should demonstrate your true self and the power of your true self is shown especially by the planet ruling the midheaven sign. The house of your natal chart in which this planet is located should tell where (that is, in what field of experience) your essential contribution to society can best be made, at least under normal circumstances. For instance, if you have Libra at the midheaven and Venus in the fourth house, your home, considered as a field of activity, should be an excellent place to demonstrate your sense of value, your culture, your ability to bring harmony and beauty to others. If you are an artist or writer the indication is then that you should work in your home rather than in a public office. In a more spiritual sense, it means also that you should build within your own personality this sense of proportion, of value, of harmony. An interplay between your public life (symbolized by the tenth house) and your private life (fourth house) should be in this case your goal. You should dare to express publicly and professionally your true "I am" (the Venus symbol) and, in a more superficial sense, your emotional experiences. On the other hand, the spontaneous contribution you made to society in your work or in your group contacts with people should become the very material you can use in your own personal development. You will grow by giving out what emerges from the depths or center of your personality. In astrological practice much importance is also given to a planet (or planets) located in the natal tenth house. In my opinion, however, such a planet should not be considered as indicating any particular occupation or profession, but only the kind of experiences the individual is likely to meet in any profession he or she may have. For instance, Mars in the tenth house will not necessarily make of you a military man, an ironworker or a surgeon, that is, it will not lead you necessarily to a Martian profession. But in whatever profession you are engaged, you can expect to have to use your Mars function your power of initiative, your emotional energy. You will be called upon to lead, perhaps to open new paths; you should throw yourself completely and in a very personal, intimate way into what you are doing. If you find yourself following a conventional path with no desire for initiative or direct action, if you fear being personally involved in your activities as a participant in some public or professional function or cause, then you should know that you are not living up to what life expects of you. You are blocked by some complex or parental influence which you should try to understand and face courageously. If it is Jupiter which is located in your tenth house, you should know that it is natural for you to be called upon, in however small a way, to accept some responsibility for or in a group. If you refuse to identify yourself with a social position or an image of authority and to use the power and prestige of it for whatever you feel to be constructive, then you cannot expect to live your life fully and without a sense of frustration. If, Saturn being placed in your tenth house, you scatter your interests and seek ambitiously to expand "all over the map" instead of bringing your experiences in your public or professional life to a clear and steady focus of expression, then you may be headed for a fall or at least you will not avoid the depressing feeling that you have failed in your appointed life task.

The Eleventh House: After Success What? By Dane Rhudyar You have struggled eagerly and persistently to achieve something. You now have what you wanted. What will you do with it? What will you do with your success? Perhaps you have failed; whatever you sought to gain or achieve is out of your reach, at least for the time being. You face loss or defeat. What will you do with your failure? These positive and negative alternatives, in one form or another, sooner or later confront any human being. The individual living in society among other individuals must of necessity strive after some goal, whether trivial or of the utmost significance. He is compelled to seek participation in the activities of his society. The woman who bears children and hardly leaves the seclusion of home is participating in the continuation of her race and her nation; directly or indirectly, through her influence over husband and children she is an active part of society. She, like her husband and children, faces success and failure. Will it be true of her and of them that "nothing fails like success?" Will they, perhaps, having met failure, find in themselves the power and the imagination to use this failure as a springboard for magnificent victories? They could also glide passively and hopelessly from failure to failure toward personal disintegration or social servitude. If theirs is the way of achievement, they may so soberly, wisely and imaginatively make use of success that they will reach greater accomplishments. The key to an understanding of what is implied in these four alternatives is the small word "use." Failure can be used creatively as well as success and often more easily. Success as well as failure must be used courageously, wisely and, above all, significantly and creatively if it is not to lead to inner or outer defeat. It is relatively simple to win victories or to obtain academic degrees certifying your skill. It is often far more difficult to know what to do with your achievements: that is, how and where to put them to use. Any achievement which is not consciously used or deliberately and intentionally placed in reserve for future use tends to lose its value. It is the use which you make of victory and success, of failure and defeat which establishes your worth. The mere fact of success or failure, of gain or loss tells only one side of the story. Achievement is but a pedestal; the real question is: What kind of statue or monument will you build upon it? It could be a monstrosity or a banal imitation; it could be a great work of art, a beautiful and inspiring sculpture stirring the imagination and feelings of your people. What will it be? You must choose and prove the worth of your choosing. What many people do not realize, or do not want to think about, is that the choice is being made by them, even if unbeknown to them, while they are striving for victory or achievement. If it be true in your case that "nothing fails like success," it is because the way you have sought success the methods you used and the spirit in which you used them contained already in seed the inevitability of spiritual defeat after outer victory. Or else, because you became so blindly identified with the struggle, you could not be objective to success when it came. Success came and possessed you; you did not use success as a springboard for future success, as a tool for greater achievement above all, as a gift to humanity.

Success or failure can be used imaginatively and creatively only if you have not become identified entirely and blindly with your struggle for achievement. The typical man of action in most cases does become identified with his activity. He is so completely involved in his activity that once his climbing efforts have made him reach the plateau of success he does not know what to do except race around excitedly across the plateau or build monuments to his own glory. The struggle for attainment, once the plateau is reached, turns into a will to self-aggrandizement and, even more, self-perpetuation in fame or progeny. The ego becomes as involved in self-satisfaction ("Was I not wonderful?"; "Did I not save the situation?") as it was in mobilizing all its energies in the determined struggle for survival or attainment. To achieve means literally "to come to a head" (from the Latin, caput head). Achievements can indeed "turn your head." Success, like strong liquor, easily goes to your head. What does head actually mean in these colloquial statements? Head means brain and the various nerve centers of consciousness whose operations build up, from infancy onward, what the psychologist now calls the ego. The ego is the achievement of human living at the level of physical organic existence and within the framework of one's family and community. Success normally builds a strong ego because it gives the person an at least relatively outstanding place and position in his community or group. The ego of a person and the position of this person with reference to his associates or his kin are definitely related and both are to be referred, in astrological analysis, to the tenth house of the natal chart (calculated for the exact moment of birth), particularly to the zenith point. The zenith is the point above your head. It is a projection (in terms of zodiacal longitude) of your head upon the sky. It is your transcendent head, your life achievement; it is your ego. If the spinal column symbolizes the "I" of a man, the head is the dot above the "I." It is the place where the consciousness of having achieved some kind of status (or position) as a individual among individuals is established. The ego, however, can develop through negative as well as positive experiences. The experience of failure and defeat can lead, at least in many instances, to the formation of an exceedingly strong and stubborn ego. The process in that case is one of psychological compensation. The psychologist Adler has particularly studied and stressed such a type of process. In it a sense of inferiority (caused by physical incapacity, emotional insecurity or experiences of social discrimination and humiliation in early youth) becomes changed into, or masked by, an attitude of aggressive superiority. This compensatory attitude builds up the ego; but it is a negative build up which inevitably implies tensions, strain and often violence to oneself as well as to others. What follows then? Both the ego born of defeat and insecurity and the ego growing big with success and social-professional prestige have to operate in society; they must deal with groups of people in everyday life. They operate by using the energy which gave them strength and power. In the first case, that energy is essentially negative; it is an energy of protest, born of resentment, rebellion, perhaps of the will to revenge or destruction. In the second case, the success-born ego faces the society or the group that made this success possible with a proud expansiveness, perhaps benign and somewhat patronizing attitude. Realm of the Eleventh House In the first case, the ego seeks to use its tense rebellious strength to transform or destroy the conditions which brought about failure or loss to the personality unless defeat was so thorough that the ego-building process could not operate and the person collapsed, froze in fear and self-pity or

escaped into insanity or "false paradises" (drugs, religious fanaticism, amusement and sensation seeking, etc.). In the second case, the success-born ego seeks to enjoy success; and success can best be enjoyed in the company of friends or in lavish shows of generosity and display of wealth and power. In both these cases, certain types of experiences are met. Whether they be born of negative or of positive situations, they refer in astrology to the field of the eleventh house. Astrology textbooks speak of this eleventh house as that of friends and hopes and wishes, but this is a very inadequate and superficial characterization. Nevertheless, it can be understood in its true and complete significance if one has grasped the meaning of the statements in the foregoing paragraphs. The term friends symbolizes whatever type of relationships a man enters into as a result of his social and professional status or position which includes, naturally, the relationships based upon the fact that one belongs to a certain family, group, class or religion. The term covers membership in clubs, associations, political parties and to all group activities with which one identifies oneself as a member of a particular culture. The eleventh house is the field of culture, for culture is the result of group achievement and steady social interchanges; it is the flower of the plant of organized and collective human endeavor. But the eleventh house is also the field of all those experiences which an individual has when, dissatisfied with or rebellious against his culture, he takes the attitude of a reformer or a revolutionist. It is the field in which he gives expression to his resentment, his hostility toward his society and also to his "divine discontent" which urges him to sacrifice his own position, security and happiness as a crusader for progress and justice. In the eleventh house we do not see merely hopes and wishes (such unconvincing and non-dynamic, noncreative terms), but even more, a man's ideals, his passion for collective improvement, his burning zeal for reform, his faith in humanity and in humanities future. In this house the path begins which may lead to rebirth or to the martyr's death, to social immortality as a Promethean spirit and a civilizer or to the personal collapse of the premature and reckless revolutionist who not being psychologically strong and certain enough may end in the hospital or the insane asylum. The martyrdom, the jail, the asylum are met in the twelfth-house field, but also in this house the socially accepted and socially adjusted person, through the friends he has served and loved, reaches his social reward. The realm of public institutions (twelfth house) does not contain only hospitals and jails; we find in it also academies, Nobel Prizes, political "plums" and all kinds of social honors in recompense for past service and old age pensions, insurance benefits, etc. Just as in the fifth house a person can display and make use of the power which accrues to him if he manages wisely the wealth of energy of his physical body and the innate abilities of his inherited nature (second house), so in the eleventh house the individual can spend the profits of his business and the wealth which accrues from his partnerships (eighth house). The fifth and eleventh houses are opposites; so are the second and eighth. But if partnerships have been pervaded by a negative quality by greed or hatred the eleventh-house experiences are those of social isolation and friendlessness. One's hopes turn sour, and one's ideals become bent deathward; there is bitterness, despondency and the road to loneliness, which ends in the tragic twelfth house.

Yet there can be a higher positiveness beneath the surface of a seeming negative state! There are men who refuse to enter into the cheap and meaningless relationship of the people around them (seventh house); who refuse to conform where conforming means hypocrisy and slavery to senseless destructive or decadent patterns of social behavior (eighth house); who challenge the laws of custom and tradition in their search for a nobler wisdom and a greater vision (ninth house); who dare to bring down from the star at the zenith of their individual selfhood a new light and a new power, even though they must do it alone and without sustainment from family and community (tenth house). These are the reformers, the great dreamers whose dreams become human tomorrows, the seers who have the courage to act out their vision. Through them humanity expresses its hopes and wishes for a nobler future, its ever-dynamic, ever-creative "divine discontent" with that which is set, static, traditional and rigid. The farther one goes from the beginning of a cycle, the more complex the pressures and influences which bear on new fields of experience. In the first three houses, the issues are direct and clear; astrological indications can be interpreted imply the planet ruling the zodiacal sign at the cusp of the house, the house in which this planet is located and the planets (if any) found in the house being studied. But when one comes to consider the last houses of the natal wheel, one should realize that these are always influenced by their opposites and by whatever experiences have been encountered in the process of personal and soul unfoldment. Therefore, the problem of interpretation becomes far more complex and difficult. We saw in a previous article that if one seeks to understand and solve problems connected with the tenth house, especially at the level of professional or public activity, one must take into consideration not merely this tenth house, but the three preceding angular houses (which begin at the ascendant, the nadir and the descendant). Likewise, a thorough study of eleventh-house problems requires, as a background, a full grasp of conditions affecting all other succedent houses (second, fifth and eighth), as well as the tenth house. In the succedent houses, the individual always meets his greatest tests. In the angular houses (first, fourth, seventh and tenth), the individual comes to experience himself, his status (private and public) and other selves; but in the succedent houses (second, fifth, eighth and eleventh), the individual must decide how to use these experiences and the energies which the experiences have made available to him (energies born, of selfhood, of integrated personality, of human partnership, of professional activity). It is this decision and the way in which he manages to carry it out which test the individual. They prove his worth. The eleventh house is the field of experience in which the final tests are met. For Jesus it meant the tragic night before the crucifixion. He had challenged death the most rigid tradition and custom of mankind! He had now to prove that he had the strength to accept a gruesome way of dying, so as to be able to experience himself as a victorious challenger in the resurrection. These experiences of Jesus are symbolic of similar and lesser encounters which every person must meet who dares to challenge the heavy weight of the past and the bondage to tyrannic powers produced by the failures and also the successes of his race and society. Success and the products of success can indeed become tyrannical. Wealth can enslave. "Productivity at all cost" may cost the individual, and the nation, spiritual integrity and freedom. Victory may lead to a false sense of security. No astrological birth-chart can ever tell with certainty what type of response an individual will make to the tests of the eleventh house; I repeat, no natal chart can tell

what will happen. The birth-chart shows, nevertheless, what way the person should best orient himself or herself when confronted with the tests. The birth-chart is the universe's solution to your problems. However, the cosmic language is highly symbolic and hard to decipher. This is so, however, simply because that in you which is to do the deciphering is not your intellect or even your rational mind, but your intuition.

The Twelfth House: The Art of Bringing Things to An End By Dane Rhudyar If you ever have had to improvise a speech after a dinner party, you should know how difficult it is to bring your talk to a convincing and significant end. When coming to the close of their speeches, many speakers fumble, repeat themselves, go from climax to anticlimax and perhaps at long last let their words die out wearily into an inconclusive end. The listeners by that time have become tired of expecting the end, and their minds promptly dismiss or forget whatever might have impressed them at some point of the speech. The composer of music, the dramatist and novelist often find the same difficulty when confronted by the obvious necessity of bringing their works to an impressive conclusion. It is relatively easy to start something; the natural impulse of life within you, the emotional eagerness to express yourself can do the starting and the people's attention is not yet well focused or critical at the beginning. They are warmed up only gradually and will forget how the thing began. But nature in you will not produce a significant, worthy of remembrance conclusion; the natural end of everything is exhaustion you get exhausted and so do the people around you. Your speech, or you yourself, dies rather meaninglessly of old age; the great moments of your speech or your life are clouded up by the settling dust of a wearisome end unless you, the self, the spiritual being, take control and, binding up all the loose strings of your great effort, gather into an impressive and revealing conclusion the most essential elements of your message. Everything that came before may be largely forgotten; but such an end will be unforgettable. It impresses itself into the mind and soul of the people who are witnesses to it. It is like a seed, the last product the consummation of a yearly plant's life. The seed falls into the ground; but in it the power of ever-renewed life is contained. From that seed an abundance of results will come forth. "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit" (John. 12:24). Symbolically speaking every great and significant conclusion to a prolonged human effort can be a "seed." Every cycle of experience, as well as every human life, can end with the release of such a seed conclusion; if it does not, then what remains is only a fleeting and impermanent memory in the mind or the feelings of some witness to its achievements. The beauty of the flower of the cycle may be remembered; the leaves may have given shelter and food to some living creatures who lived more happily because of them; but if there is no seed, the essence and substance of the cycle of experience, of the speech, of the life are lost. The Twelfth House Astrologically speaking the achievements are symbolized by the tenth house of the natal chart (calculated for the exact moment of birth); but the seed consummation is represented by the twelfth house the last phase of the cycle of experience. In this twelfth house the individual should bring all things to a significant and unforgettable end, an end filled with the creative potency of new beginnings. This alone is real success. In India, where the belief in reincarnation has prevailed for thousands of years, it is said that the last thought held in death conditions the future birth. But by this last thought is meant more than a mere fleeting thought! What is implied is the final consummation of the long process of living experience, the "Last Judgment" (for the individual) a balancing of the accounts of life within a final experience of value.

What value have I given to my life and to all I have felt, done and thought? What new value have I been able to project, as an individual, into the world? What value did my kin, my associates, my friends, my community find in my life; finding it, did they become for it better human beings? The body dies; but the value remains. It remains in a social form, in the memory of friends or foes, if I have been able to make a valuable contribution to my community. The value of an Edison shines forth in every electrical lamp; it has its undertones in any phonograph recording. The element of value is not a social factor only. It is above all a personal and spiritual factor. By living man adds value to his soul, for the soul is the granary in which the harvest of all cycles of experience is kept; this harvest of seed is the very substance of man's eventual immortality in a spiritual body. When the granary is full, then man reaches individual immortality. He has overcome death, not by denying it a futile gesture but by learning how to die significantly: to die the death of the plant which is rich with fertile, life-renewing seed. Death can be made creative, exactly as the conclusion of the orator's speech or of the great author's novel can be made creative. They are creative if these ends release into the world unforgettable meaning and value, if they fill the soul's granary with a substantial harvest. The art of bringing everything and every experience to a creative ending is the greatest of all arts and perhaps the least practiced in our Western world! In old Asia death was seen with no fear or sense of tragedy because men there saw death as a phase of life an end which was also a beginning. They prepared for it soon after reaching the age of personal maturity, just as a speaker deliberately works out a vital and effective conclusion for his speech, or the writer a striking end climax for his short story. How to tie the loose ends of living together, how to learn to meet the last moment before the great silence falls upon the living organisms, how to die with the whole of one's creative energies focused upon rebirth this, every individual should learn. He learns it by realizing that every day is a small life cycle, that every experience should produce its seed harvest, that every human relationship can end in beauty or at least in profound significance if the value it holds is consciously extracted and understood by the participants. There is no end that could not have led to a harvest of meaning and value for the soul that lived to face it even the seemingly most tragic conclusions. The only tragic end is the end one lives through in complete meaninglessness and utter weariness or boredom that is, in spiritual defeat. In order to make a significant end, creative of new and greater cycles of future experience, one thing, however, is needed; this is the courage to repudiate the "ghosts" of the past. It is this repudiation which is also called severance. There can be no real freedom in rebirth without conscious severance from the past, without the ability either to bring the whole past to a significant and harmonious conclusion or the courage to say finished and to dismiss the memory of what one must leave unfinished, unassimilated, unsolved if one is to enter the new life, the new cycle of experience. Ghosts linger on, alas, with subtle tenacity in the unconscious the ghosts of things undone, of words unsaid, of small or big gestures which the heart and hands could not be made to perform. The speaker who sees from the clock on the wall that his time is over, that he must bring his speech to an end, may suddenly remember all that he had meant to say but did not. Will he try to crowd the unsaid into a jumble of last-minute statements which would leave his hearers completely confused? Speakers often try and, thus, defeat themselves. One must have the courage to dismiss the things

unsaid, the gestures unlived, the love unexperienced and make a compelling end on the basis of what has been said and experienced. This takes skill, of course; but it takes, even more, courage. It is a peculiar type of courage, a psychological kind but courage of the purest type and often far more difficult to summon than the strength to die well in the excitement of battle. The nature of this courage is usually neither recognized nor well understood. It is not an emotional or physical kind of courage. It is partly mental but mostly an act of spiritual will. You take your loss, and you go on anew knowing full well that some day, in some place, the ghosts that you dismiss will be met again. But if, in the meantime, you have grown enough and established yourself at a higher level of consciousness and power, you will know better how to deal with the unfinished business. Almost every fire leaves some ashes; every tree produces, besides seeds which germinate during the following springtime, green leaves which fall and decay. That which decays is fertilizer for that which will be born again; but with the reintegration of this fertilizer as chemical food for the new vegetation, there comes also the reappearance of the ghosts of the past the memories of failure, the subconscious pulls of the unlived life of yesterday. I have spoken in the language of symbols; but these illustrate facts of everyday life. Every day is a cycle of experience; every year, a round of births, maturing and dying. He who can live fully in the shortest possible span of time, he indeed is the master. He lives in a perpetual state of fulfillment; in the fourth dimension of time past, present and future rolled into an experience of perfect activity which leaves no ghost, no ashes or, to use a well-known Hindu term, no karma. The House of Karma Astrological textbooks repeat that the twelfth house is the house of karma and of bondage. But it is also potentially the field of fulfillment and the symbol of the perfect end which is the prelude for more glorious tomorrows. What the natal twelfth house indicates is how you can reach perfect fulfillment, if you can at all reach it. It does not say whether you will or will not reach it. It does not say whether or not you will leave, at the close of your life cycle or of any smaller cycles, many waste products and much unfinished business. It does not say whether or not you will be able to dismiss your ghosts dismiss them with a blessing and courageously renew your mind and your life. But it tells you something concerning the nature and insistency of the ghosts you will have to deal with; it gives you a general picture of your subconscious the realm of ghosts and of the remains of unsolved problems or unlived experiences. It suggests to you the best way to deal with your ghosts and the disintegrating products of your subconscious. The twelfth house gives as positive indications as any other house. There are indeed no bad houses. There are, nevertheless, fields of experience in which crises do occur; they must occur, for the sake of your tomorrows, for the sake of the future you, your greater self. In the sixth house, the crises you meet are a preparation for your life of relationship (the field of the seventh house); you must meet them, and meet them successfully, if you are to experience true partnership and the deep, vibrant sharing of steady companionship. In the twelfth house crises are the outcome of the way you have worked out your relationship to family and community, to your culture and its values. In the twelfth house you meet the results of your social and professional failures or frustrations but, as well, of your successes and wealth. Above all you meet the less obvious results (the karma) of the methods you have used in order to reach fame and power or of the laziness and inertia which have

brought you inner or outer defeat. Many achievements indeed produce a shadow as dark as the attainments were spectacular. Success often engenders resentment or enmity and perhaps causes misery or death to others. Are you aware of these negative results? Are you aware also of those inner shadows: the fears, the sense of guilt, the remorses, the nightmares repeating past tragic scenes you cannot stop the shadows which your own actions have produced, directly or indirectly, willingly or unwillingly? Some day you will become aware of, or at least you will experience the results of, this shadow part of your inner being and of your outer achievements. Then there will be a crisis. If it is dire enough, you might be led by it to a hospital, an insane asylum, a jail; you may develop unexpectedly psychic gifts and behold the ghosts you have created. Obviously it is only rarely that a twelfth-house crisis is so serious. Nevertheless, such crises must be met. If we do not meet ghosts, we may be blocked by hidden enemies, another traditional twelfth-house characteristic. In any case, it is the shadow of our failures or our successes which we must face; we face it in an even more concentrated form as we ready ourselves to make more important and creative beginnings. The only way to deal with a shadow is to illuminate it by use of sources of light placed in different directions. It is not to become frightened or frozen up. Ghosts and shadows must vanish if subjected to the light of understanding and compassion. Astrological tradition has given the meaning of "the end of things" to the fourth house; the reader may, therefore, wonder how this fits in with what has been stated in the foregoing paragraphs. This problem can be solved if you realize that the end of which the old astrologers spoke was a total end, an end without subsequent beginning. In the twelfth house, the individual faces an end which can and does become a beginning thus, a transition between two cycles. A transition means a critical state, the threshold between two conditions. But let us suppose that you stumbled over that threshold and collapsed; that as you met your ghosts, they overcame you. Then the new cycle is not a real rebirth but a more or less swift descent into the abyss of final and total disintegration. As you reach bottom (the nadir or fourth house), the end without possible beginning occurs. In everyday life, many things do die without any conceivable return, at least insofar as your personal consciousness will ever be able to know. In horary astrology, when a person inquires about a particular concrete matter, the fourth house of the horary chart refers indeed to the end of the matter. Yet what seems very dead may leave ghosts; in this case, the remains of the matter you thought ended will come back in your subconscious life to obsess you. The point is that nothing should be allowed to die a final death; everything should be transformed and transfigured transformed in the eleventh house and transfigured in the twelfth. Every cycle of activity, as it comes to its eleventh and twelfth-house stages, should (theoretically) become transfigured into a new beginning of activity at a higher level. Nothing comes to a dead end unless at some crucial time of crisis and opportunity it has failed to become transfigured or translated into something new and greater. The symbolical place where it can become so translated is the twelfth house. It is only when this translation has failed that the ultimate fourth-house end comes inevitably, by progressive stages (in the first, second and third houses considered in a purely negative sense as phases of disintegration).

The twelfth house is, therefore, a most profoundly important field of experience, far beyond the superficial meaning attributed to it by classical astrology. By studying the zodiacal sign on its cusp, the planet ruling this sign and whatever planets (or other astrological factors) may be located in this house, one may come to understand better some of the deepest problems which an individual has to meet. These problems deal with the subconscious, with the way to deal with the insistent memories of the past and with karma, with the challenge to transfigure every closing cycle into a new and higher cycle. It deals even with one's approach to sleep every night and with the attitude one holds toward the activities of the day which is closing. It deals with all forms of activity because every act begins in a first-house phase, reaches achievement in a tenth-house zenith and must be brought to a significant conclusion if there is to be further progress, greater activity and true individual growth.