tomasorban:

Philosophical
Astrology consists of the links between philosophy and astrology, from
the mysticism of ancient religions and cultures based in part on
astrology to the mathematics common to both astrology, numerology and
Sacred Geometry, and to the curious aspects of astrological Symbolism which have profound philosophical implications.  

The Ha Qabala and Tree of Life,
for example, are fundamental to Jewish, Christian, and a host of other
ancient, medieval, and modern mystical traditions and/or mystery
schools.  Together with Numerology and the Tarot, Astrology describes and identifies the characteristics of the many pathways between the Sephiroth in the Tree of Life.  Everything
from the “dark night of the soul” (usually referred to as the 32nd
path) to all the varied manifestations of processes contained within the
Tree come within the purview of the so-called occult arts.  Astrology provides one tool for identifying the meaning of the multiple transformations and transitions of life, all a part of The Fool’s Journey – the latter one of the better examples of a philosophy of living.  

Astrology’s connection to the Tree of Life can also be seen in such things as the Tree’s column of severity, which is represented by the astrological planets: Uranus, Saturn and Mars.  Uranus is revolutionary and sudden change, Saturn, limitation and boundaries, and Mars, aggressiveness and war).  Meanwhile the Tree’s column of mercy is composed of Neptune, Jupiter and Venus (illusion and fantasy, benevolence and generosity, love and romance).  In
essence, the attributes of the Sephiroth reflect what we know of the
astrology of the applicable planet being assigned to the Tree of Life.  Saturn,
for example, is about government, citizen responsibilities, societal
rules, boundaries and limits; while the Sephiroth corresponding to
Saturn – Geburah – is about severity and strength, justice, strife,
loss in pleasure, and earthly trouble.  Clearly a good definition of earthly trouble can be found in such government troubles as the IRS, FBI, CIA, DOD, ETC!  Other
examples include the Sephiroth, Yesod (foundation), which is amply
personified by Mercury (communications, analysis, thinking, and so
forth).  

Astrology shows up elsewhere in the cultural and philosophical traditions of everything   from
ancient Egypt – where an astrology very similar to modern day
astrology is carved into the Temple of Denderra – to ancient Babylonia
– where Berossus predicted and wielded an astrology sufficient to grab
anyone’s attention.  Astrology was
also a primary tool of Nostradamus (1503-1566 A.D.), who used astrology
as the basis for the timing of his many prophecies (many of which
profoundly affected royalty and influential leaders and whose validity
could thus be determined).  

On a yet more fundamental level, astrology is based upon Sacred Geometry, which is in turn based on the Golden Mean (represented by the Greek letter, phi).  Philosophy
can be written: phi-lo-sophia – wherein sophia (sophy) is “the study,
wisdom, or knowledge”, lo, “the amazing sight” (as in “lo and behold”),
and phi… just phi.  Thus philosophy is “the study, wisdom, or knowledge” of “the amazing sight” of… phi!  Sacred Geometry may then be said to connect astrology and philosophy.  The latter can be said to be wholly within the purview of Sacred Mathematics, i.e. the universe is based on numbers.  This
is not a definition of philosophy that many philosophers would accept,
but this is probably due only to their lack of mathematical acuity.  

A philosophy of astrology, per se, is less obvious, but can be described by alluding to what are known as “Sabian Symbols.”  These
symbols, according to Dane Rudhyar, “take events from the realm of
the fortuitous, the unprecedented, the unique and the incomprehensible
to the realm of ‘universals’.”  “Expressed through symbols, life becomes condensed into a relatively few interrelated units of experience.  Each unit is a concentrate of the experiences of millions of people.”  Symbols
use “an imagery that is close to the foundations of the natural life –
and these foundations are still very real and active in the immense
majority of human beings.”  The
Tree of Life, for example, is replete with symbols, and it is those
symbols which constitute its meaning – even when discussion and mere
words prove to be wholly inadequate.  

The history of astrology’s Sabian Symbols is critical to their understanding.  It
began in 1925, when Marc Edmund Jones (an astrologer) approached Elsie
Wheeler (a clairvoyant medium, who happened to be crippled by
arthritis).  Jones had a novel idea.  He
provided a deck of 360 cards, each card representing one degree of the
Zodiacal circle (and identified, for example, as one degree Aries, ten
degrees Scorpio, and so forth).  In
Miss Wheeler’s presence, Jones shuffled the deck (and reshuffled many
times during the process), and then began pulling one card at random –
without his or her seeing what the card was.  Miss Wheeler responded by describing what she saw.  Apparently,
a scene flashed in her inner vision, which she quickly described, and
which Jones made a brief pen notation on the card of what she said.  Not
only was the procedure entirely aleatory as far as the normal
consciousness of the two participants was concerned, but the amazing
thing was that the 360 symbols were obtained during a few hours in the
morning, and later in a few hours during the afternoon – at a rate of
roughly one symbol every ninety seconds.  

What made the resulting Sabian Symbols
so incredible is that while the two individuals had proceeded at
fantastic speed and had operated purely at random, the result was a
series which, when carefully studied, yielded a definite and complex
internal structure.  The entire 360 cards matched with one another in geometrical pattern.  Dane
Rudhyar, for example, found that the symbols formed, among other
possibilities, a pentagonal five-step process – much in accord with
Sacred Geometry.  Apparently, there was some kind of Consciousness  at work.  For
the symbols were not only operating at both an existential and
archetypal-structural level, but they could be considered as “phases of a cyclic process rather than as isolated images
– that is, when the possible interpretations are considered in the
light of preceding and following phrases in a characteristic five-fold
sequence, and in terms of wider relationships – any ambiguity usually
disappears.”  

Possibly
of all the Sabian Symbols, which might garner your attention, is the
symbol for the North Node (aka the “Dragon’s Head”, and which represents
destiny), taken from the chart of 2012 A. D. (i.e. the end of the Mayan Calendar, and potentially the “end of Time as we know it.”)  The symbol for this most incredible of all dates is “An X-Ray Photograph.”  Rudhyar interpreted this to mean, “The capacity to acquire a knowledge of the structural factors in all existence.”  He goes on to say, “The true philosopher is able to grasp and significantly evaluate what underlies all manifestations of life.  His
mind’s eye penetrates through the superficialities of existence and
perceives the framework that gives an at least relatively permanent
‘form’ to all organized systems.  Thus
if the structure is weak, deformed by persistent strain, or unbalanced,
the basic causes of outer disturbances and dis-ease can be discovered.  This
symbol… provides the conscience of the individual who refuses to obey
his society with a depth-understanding of what is wrong in the
situation he faces.  Beyond the
powerful feeling quality of ‘peak experiences’, the mind can understand
the great Principles of which they were the manifestations.  This is STRUCTURAL KNOWLEDGE in contrast to existential knowledge.” 

Interpreted as the end of time as we know it, implies that there may be much to learn in the ultimate “peak experience” of 2012 A.D., a time when Novelty and the TimeWave go to infinity, and the greatest changes of all human experience abruptly manifest!  Similarly,
another date – based on the TimeWave theory – is November 11, 2011
(just over 384 days prior to the perceived ending date of roughly
12-21-2012).  The Sabian Symbols (and a brief interpretation from Rudhyar) for this critical “beginning of the end” are:

• Sun     –     “A Woman Draws Away Two Dark Curtains Closing the Entrance  to a Sacred Pathway – The revelation to the human consciousness of what lies beyond dualistic knowledge. Plunge ahead into the Unknown”  
• Moon     –   “A Peacock Parading on a Terrace of an Old Castle – The personal  display of inherited gifts. Consumation.”  
• Mercury & Venus  “A Flag turns into an Eagle; the Eagle into a Chanticleer Saluting the Dawn – The spiritualization and promotion of great symbols of a New Age by minds sensitive to its precursory manifestations.  (An Eagle is the first living creature to perceive the rising sun.)  Annunciation”  
• Mars     –    “In a Portrait, the Significant Features of a Man’s Head Are  Artistically Emphasized – The capacity to picture to oneself clearly the salient features and the overall meaning of any life situation.
• Jupiter   –   “The Pot of Gold at the End of the Rainbow – Riches that come   from linking the celestial and the earthly nature.  Communion”  [Jupiter always was the Santa Claus of the Zodiac!]  
• Saturn    –   “A Butterfly with a Third Wing on its Left Side – The ability to   develop, for inner strengthening, new modes of response to basic life   situations.  Original Mutation”  
• Chiron   –    “In a Crowded Marketplace, Farmers and Middlemen Display a   Great Variety of Products – The process of commingling and interchange which at all levels demonstrates the health of a community.   (…what is stressed is the coming together, in a final experience of community, of all factors previously experienced.)  Commerce”  
• Uranus    –  “A Woman Just Risen from the Sea.  A Seal Is Embracing Her –  Emergence of new forms and of the potentiality of consciousness.   Impulse to Be”  
• Neptune  –  “A Butterfly Emerging from a Chrysalis – The capacity to utterly   transform the character of one’s consciousness by radically altering the   structural patterns of everyday living and the types of relationships one   enters upon.  Metamorphosis”  
• Pluto      –    “Ten Logs Lie Under an Archway Leading to Darker Woods – The  need to complete any undertaking before seeking entrance to whatever   is to be found beyond.  Threshold”  

The more complete interpretation for Pluto is perhaps worth noting.  “Number 10 is a symbol of completion; it symbolizes even more the revelation of a new series of activities just ahead.  [i.e. Death and Rebirth]  Yet
unless the concluded series is brought to some degree of fulfillment,
nothing truly significant is likely to be accomplished by a restless
reaching out toward the as-yet-unknown.  Number 10 is a symbol of germination, but the seed (Number 9) must have matured well.  No natural process can be accelerated safely beyond certain limits.  It establishes a foundation for what will follow.”  

It
rather as if we’ll each have about three weeks (November 11, 2011 to
December 3, 2011) to complete all our stuff, toss off all our baggage,
and prime ourselves for the last 384 days of the TimeWave.  Or we can begin to do all that shedding, right about now!  

The Sabian Symbols are just one aspect of the philosophy of astrology.  Determinism and Free Will also play a major role, as does the basics of how anyone interprets the symbolism of astrology.  Pictures
– and astrological charts – convey a thousand words, and perhaps more
than most things, demonstrate the limits of language (or rather, why,
perhaps, language is considered a curse during the time of the Kali Yuga).  Symbolism, in fact, conjures understandings and emotions far beyond a written sequence of words. 

According to Dane Rudhyar, an astrological “birth chart is a person-centered symbol.  That is to say, it carries a ‘message’ – the symbolic formulation of the individual’s dharma [destiny].  It suggests how [the individual] can best actualize the innate potentialities of his or her particular and unique selfhood.  It is a symbol, a mandala, or logos, a word of power.  Astrology, seen from this point of view, is a language of symbols.  It implies a process of unfoldment of an idea of feeling-response.”  “…a process of unfoldment, as Carl Jung might have said, of ‘individuation’.”  

A person’s experiences “basically repeat themselves [Cycles!], even though [the individual] might respond to them differently at each new encounter.”  “There are only a certain number of basic meanings
to be gathered by a human being in his or her lifetime, and that these
meanings can be seen in terms of structural and cyclic sequence.” “An
individual, however, acting as an individual and having succeeded in becoming free from collective patterns,
may break through the circle of limitations and tap into a deeper
source of life and consciousness; this indeed is what true occultism is
about.”

Rudhyar goes on to say, “Man should not seek tensely and self-protectively to avoid or control events.  Events do not happen to an individual person; he or she happens to them.  An individual meets them, and imparts to them his or her own meaning.”  “All truly constructive, creative, or redeeming acts are performed through the individual person by a focalization of the whole universe.  This is the ‘transpersonal way’ of which I have spoken for many years.” Astrology is thus, in many ways, transpersonal.  It is part of the Creating Reality and Intermingled Realities, in which we all have a part.  

Astrology can also be used for the most mundane and trivial purposes.  But then again, so can all really useful tools in the hands of men and women with limited intentions.