which the Light flows into this world, enlivening the drama ...
That which the many take for the self is not the Self but only a graven image, an automaton, thoroughly
and boringly predictable, a red herring to distract our attention from the Source of our Being.
The human personality is like a cloudy day. One looks up but cannot see the Sun for the clouds. Yet if
during the night the clouds should blow away, one may look up and see the constellations, the planets, and
the Moon, and know the season and the causes of actions and events here below. Yet, though this knowledge
is useful, it is infinitely inferior to the knowledge of the day, for which the knowledge of night is but a
prelude, and which vanishes - as do the stars and darkness at the rising of the Sun. And yet until the Sun has
risen and set repeatedly, and one has frequently watched the orderly movement of the stars and planets in
the night sky and witnessed the concomitant mutations among men, he will not recognize the order of the
world and the One Source from which it all flows. Having recognized the order, he draws nearer the Source
until at last the Sun rises and does not set.
This is the aim. The Dawn of the Light of the Sun, of the Self, which may be uncovered through the
repeated observation of cyclic phenomena for the purpose of differentiating Same and Other. All other
efforts are in vain until this occurs. All talk of escaping various aspects of one’s Fate are ignorant. All
attempts to manipulate destiny according to our whims are madness.
This is the first approach to astrology I have ever encountered which strikes me as not only intelligent, but
indeed truly brilliant.
_________________________
A Response to Carl Sagan
- by Robert Zoller I°
It occurs to me that it would be a good idea to address the questions raised on page #3 of Runes #III-1. I’ve
locked horns with the “Carl Sagans” of the world on a number of occasions, and the result is usually an impasse.
They cannot accept my position, which is that of a medieval astrologer rather than of a 20th century scientific
American. I tend to think that the Hermetic doctrine of Mind [expressed in the Corpus Hermeticum] and the
oriental concept of Maya ought to be given serious consideration in this regard. This will not happen, of course,
because we Westerners are “concrete thinkers”; it seems to be in our genetic machinery to deny anything we cannot
hold in our hands.
It is beyond me how we can persist in this view in the face of [Greater] magical experience. where one can see
walls dissolve into visions of one sort or another, see “hallucinations” involving the transformation of those with
whom we work, and then lastly see our “ridiculous” rituals having the desired effect at least some of the time.
I suppose it is part of our education. Despite my efforts in astrology, it was 7 years before I could fully accept the
notion that it would really work. For awhile I was mildly schizophrenic about it, professing one set of values to the
outside world and secretly harboring another set myself. To a point skepticism is healthy. After that it can be a self-
imposed “trap” for the educated.
Astrological phenomena - the astrologer’s prediction of events and his character-analysis - can be demonstrated.
The Carl Sagans deal with this part of the investigation by not doing it. Having defined these things as “out of the
picture”, they don’t look at the facts - or they design statistical tests so unrealistic that the results are meaningless.
Astrology is not based on a mechanistic, materialistic view of the world in which you have neatly divisible and
quantifiable things. Astrology “knows” in a moment of time and in a context. There are indeed rules which lead to
results, and astrology leads us to be able to measure the mind - which modern science can’t measure. But this
measurement is not easily analyzed with statistics. If psychology and medicine were subjected to the same statistical
games, they too would have been “disproven”.
(1) Precession: This is a problem to explain because there are 2 systems of astrology, one using the
constellations and the other the signs. The problem is that they both work, and logically this seems impossible.
Astrology-haters jump on this as an argument against astrology, though actually it can be used as such only against
Western astrology. Indian (Hindu) astrology uses the constellations. It is true that Western astrology has no
astronomical verity, at least as far as the stars of the “signs” are concerned.
It is my position that there is no physical causality in astrology.
This hardly endears me to other astrologers, most of whom believe that electromagnetism will explain it all, nor
to astronomers [who know nothing besides the “known laws of physics”]. Say Amen!
If we presume some form of radiation [and medieval astrologers did ascribe to that theory, as you pointed out in
objection #5], then we may feel better by condemning Western and accepting Indian astrology. But this neither
explains astrology nor explains it away. As you point out, we have not found any radiation sufficient to explain
astrological influence.
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The precession business is best handled, in my opinion, by saying that, while there is no “HO-gauge solar
system” in our heads, there is a microcosm in our unconscious. Call it an archetype if you will [though I don’t want
to be understood as a Jungian]. This microcosm is not learned; it comes with the territory. This microcosm
corresponds to a macrocosm which is decidedly not the physical constellations we see. The men who organized the
random dots of stars in the night sky into constellations had first to discover what Plato called “the bright, clear
pattern of the soul” in themselves The really momentous discovery was that this pattern was common to all
humanity, transcending all national and racial boundaries.
This universal pattern, epitomized in the glyph of the zodiac, is what is esoterically referred to as the “Word”; it
is the pattern according to which all things are ordered. It is possible to elicit far more information from this glyph
through various numerical “tricks” and an approach in the proper frame of mind. This doesn’t necessarily mean that
all the theorems of physics can be deduced from it. I have found, however, that so-called “traditional wisdom and
morality” - meaning the way things work in society - are there, as are all of the “new age” values which many think
will unseat the traditional ones.
What is this zodiac? It is clearly what Plato wanted us to look for when, in the Republic he exhorts us to study
the sky with an eye to the truth rather than to the physical nature of the planets. It is definitely not an arbitrary
philosophical scam. It is a vision of the harmonia mundi which anyone who wishes to have power must know,
regardless of his motivations. The unripe usually cannot see this pattern for what it is, hence they respond by
declaring it obsolete, medieval, etc. It is always operative, and the zodiac - whether Western or Indian - is intended
to be its physical mnemonic referent.
Where is this zodiac? It is in the collective unconscious - the anima mundi, the Soul of the World, which is not
really separate from the individual soul (microcosm). Our science has not discovered the anima mundi. In fact its
discovery was delayed by the General Theory of Relativity. Look for it in the direction of time/space.
It will be
recognizable when we understand the relation of energy and consciousness, towards which we are now moving.
How dare I assert so outmoded an idea as an anima mundi? Well, everyone knows it’s there if he has progressed far
enough in yoga or magic, or taken sufficient doses of LSD. It is an enigma only for those of us who require that
everything be explained by reference to systems insufficient to do so, such as contemporary physics.
(2) Do twins have divergent lives? Some do and some don’t. I’ve seen reports of twins’ lives that are so
similar that it was weird, even though they’d been separated since birth. But this is not to say that twins have no
divergencies. Whether or not the birth times are significantly different, there are ways of explaining horoscope
differences. For instance, in my experience one twin is solar, the other lunar. Hence one will be extroverted, the
other introverted.
(3) Beginning of life: Why not conception? In the 1st century CE Ptolemy advocated using the time of
conception if known. There are numerous points which we can take as the beginning of life for astrological
purposes. Abu Ma’shar, perhaps the greatest astrologer of all time - and totally unknown to most modern
astrologers - invented what he called a “universal question” to determine the natal horoscope birth time. What he
seems to have done [not yet confirmed] was to erect a figure of the sky for the time, date and place the client asked a
question of burning importance to him. Ma’shar felt that this figure must relate in a meaningful way to the unknown
natal figure.
Today we take the moment of birth as the time of the first breath. Since this is not recorded, we take the time as
written down on the birth certificate. For precise work we must rectify the birth time by analyzing events in the life
of the client.
(4) Strong or weak influence: Strong enough to determine the influences which you suggest are causal. Our
understanding of life is that one thing causes another. The ancient Germanic concept of weird held that all things
are interwoven. The ancient astrologic concepts of heimarmene and harmonia mundi hold the same thing.
We come into this world at a time congruent with our soul condition. The oriental philosophies hold that the
Law of Karma determines our lives in accordance with the impressions ( sanskara) of our past thoughts, words, and
deeds - past lives. Whether or not we accept the concept of reincarnation, all nascent magical thought holds that all
things are interwoven such that apparently sequential events are actually mutually significant. Practical application
of this kind of thinking led to omenology as well as to astrology and other types of “-mancies”.
There is much more to this question than I can deal with here. It would require a course in self-observation and
spiritual development. The laws of sanskara are far-reaching and are very important to a proper understanding of
astrology as well of yoga.
(5) l discussed this in #(1).
(6) Mythology: I agree that astrologers misapply mythology to their subject. In the Hellenistic period the
names of the gods were used metaphorically to represent intelligible concepts. We see this in Proclus’ Commentary
on the first Book of Euclid’s Elements where he says: “Philolaus dedicates the angle of the triangle to the gods
Kronos, Hades, Ares, and Dionysius, since he includes within their province the entire fourfold ordering of the
cosmic elements derived from the heavens or from the four segments of the zodiac circle. Kronos gives being to all
- 373 -
cold and moist essences. Ares engenders every fiery nature. Hades has control of all terrestrial life. And Dionysius
supervises moist and warm generation, of which wine, being moist and warm, is a symbol.” He adds that the
triangle contributes to the process of generation and is the chief agent in the production of sublunary natures. When
Proclus used mythology, he knew what he was doing. When Jungians and Jungian astrologers do, they don’t.
From the above passage it is clear how the signs of the zodiac arose. They are codes for certain concepts, and
behind these concepts lie number and geometry, as I tried to show in Lost Key. For a personal demonstration of
astrology, try observing the events corresponding to the rising, setting, and culmination of a given planet. With a
modicum of sensitivity and simple observation of your inner and outer states, you will have undeniable proof that
there is something to astrology. Moreover you will have gained it exactly as the first astrologers did - empirically.
The real question here is why the planets have the names that they do. The answer is that the planets were seen
empirically to exert certain kinds of influences, whereupon observers rummaged through their mythology to find
gods or goddesses who seemed to correspond to the observed effect. In Babylon, where astrology grew up, the
processes of mythologizing and astrologizing went hand in hand.
(7) Aspects/Angles: Actually many astrologers use more than the old 8 aspects, 2 sextiles, 2 squares, 2 trines,
and opposition. I don’t. Geometry is at base here again. You must understand Pythagoreanism to understand the
role number and geometry have in astrology. The number underlying a thing forms its being.
This is no longer “occult”. Our modern physics is now a neo-Pythagorean exercise since it was recognized that
geometry is a causal factor in subatomic reality. At the level of hadron bonding, the way subatomic constituents
arrange themselves determines what kind of atom is produced. The geometry determines the atom. We find this
process of geometrizing continuing up through the mineral (crystalline) kingdom into the biological kingdom. The
Order of the Trapezoid knows that geometry determines psychology. In many senses geometry makes things what
they are.
Some astrologers have tried to explain aspects by reference to wave theory and harmonics [cf. Addey’s
Harmonics]. I think it is best approached in practice rather than theory. It is observable that the Moon’s square is
different than her trine, for example. Violent crimes go up at the square. To measure Sun/Moon angles, take their
centers.
(8) Planets under the Earth: The influence is still there, though not as powerful as above, and is determined
towards the home (4th house ).
(9) Nebulae, asteroids, and stars: We have to limit what we use or we’d go nuts. There is only so much
information we can process. These things have their influences. and some astrologers use some of them.
(10) Movement: Everything in space is moving - at what rate? Is it meaningful to Earthlings? The rate of
precession is 26,000 years. That’s negligible to us. So is the galactic center.
I hope I’ve properly answered the objections - at least as well as can be expected in a form such as this. Between
you and me and the Devil, objections such as these are mere words. They help the intellectual part of us, but we
sometimes forget that the “map is not the territory”. If astrology upsets us due to the cognitive dissonance produced
by a violation of our reality system, it is better to put the thing to a test than to condemn it out of hand.
______________________________
Twilight Zone: Magic/Science?
- by Michael A. Aquino VI°, GM.Tr.
By way of response to “Parastrology” ( Runes #III-1), Robert Zoller sent a 13-page letter, abridged in this issue.
While astrology itself is not particularly central to the Order
of the Trapezoid, Zoller’s response is germane in a
somewhat wider magical context.
As readers will note, Zoller’s response evidences his years of investigation into astrology’s historical roots - a
quest which took him through a B.A. degree in Medieval Studies as well as intensive courses in Latin & Hebrew. One
presumes that his arguments against the “Carl Sagan” objections to astrology, therefore, represent the best case
which astrology can make.
In the 4th issue of the Cloven Hoof I edited (2/1972), I wrote an article on logic. I did it for the simple reason
that many people abuse it, either innocently or deliberately. Since the Church of Satan was in the business of trying
to detect and extract facts from all the woolly thinking, snake oil, and assorted hot air masquerading as facts, it
seemed necessary for us to get our heads together on just how to, recognize fact when/if we saw it.
“The logician,” I said. “does not talk in terms of truth. ideals, or morality, but in terms of verification and proof.
As an academic discipline logic attempts to distinguish verifiable inferences from inconclusive ones. It is
approached through a comparison of statements, and thus logic is also defined as that branch of philosophy which
attempts to determine when a given statement or group of statements permit some other statement to be verified.”
After discussing deductive and inductive branches of logic, I cited the 11 fallacies or “danger signs” for which
Satanists should be alert when assessing an argument. They are:
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(1)
Quoting out of context.
(2) Sentimental argument: Attempting to prove a statement by citing popular or individual feeling
concerning the issue.
(3) Authoritarian argument: Attempting to prove a statement by citing a distinguished or important
person or institution who endorses it.
(4) Ambiguity: Applies to words, phrases, or statements which were intended to mean one thing but are
represented as meaning something else.
(5) Interdependence: Two unproved statements cannot be used to prove one another.
(6) Significance: Some statements are accurate only when viewed together with other statements
The Temple of Set II Page 93
