Esoteric Astrology

by Alice A Bailey

  RAY I.—The energy of Will or Power. This ray is outstandingly related to that aspect of will which conquers death. It is nevertheless the Ray of the Destroyer. In this connection, I would remind you that the human attitude that death is the destroyer presents a limited and erroneous point of view. The first ray destroys death because in reality there is no such thing; the concept is all part of the Great Illusion, is a limitation of [597] the human consciousness, and is basically connected with the brain and not with the heart, strange as that may seem to you. It is in a very true sense “a figment of the imagination.” Ponder on this. The abolition of death and of the destruction of form is a manifestation of Ray I, for it brings about in reality the death of negation and the inauguration of true activity. It is the energy which can be called “divine incentive”; it is the life in the seed which destroys successively all forms in order that realised fruition may eventuate. That is the clue to Ray I. It is the Will which initiates.

  Today, as regards humanity, its highest realisation is initiation.

  RAY II.—The energy of Love-Wisdom. This basic energy is the will to unify, to synthesise, to produce coherence and mutual attraction and to establish relationships, but—remember this—relationships which are entirely apart from the consciousness of relation or the realisation of unity. It is the fact of unification as seen from the beginning and as existing ever and forever in the Mind of God Whose will embraces past, present and future and Whose mind does not think in terms of evolution or of process. The process is inherent in the seed; the evolutionary urge is the inevitable accompaniment of life in manifestation. It is the Will to unification.

  Today, as regards humanity, its highest expression is the mystical vision.

  RAY III.—The energy of Active Intelligence. This is the will of conditioned purpose. The factors which are working out through its medium are the forceful carrying forward of the recognised plan with a goal intelligently [598] conceived and an active incentive which carries the process intelligently forward on the strength of its own momentum. Again I would remind you that I am dealing not with human consciousness but with the sum total of that undertaking which makes matter subservient to and adaptable to the basic idea in the mind of God. And no human being is as yet able to conceive of that idea. No one knows what is the will of God or what is the nature of His intelligent purpose. It is the Will to evolution.

  Today, as regards humanity, its highest expression is education, or progressive development through experience.

  RAY IV.—The energy of Harmony through Conflict. This is fundamentally the will to destroy limitation. This is not the same thing as the will to destroy negation as in the case of Ray I, but is an allied aspect of that. I am not referring to the consciousness aspect which recognises and profits by such struggle. I am referring to the energy, inherent in all forms and peculiarly strong in humanity (because man is self-conscious), which produces inevitably and unavoidably the struggle between life and that which it has chosen as a limitation; this eventually shatters or breaks up that limitation the moment that a point of real harmony or at-one-ment has been reached. Esoterically it might be said that the moment that form (limitation) and life balance each other a rift immediately appears and through it flows a fresh outpouring of the will. Christ had to die because He had achieved harmony with the will of God and then “the veil of the Temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom.” The significance of this fresh [599] inflow of the Will will now appear; the stage is set anew for a fresh and renewed activity of the living principle. As far as humanity is concerned the “seeds of death” emerge through the medium of this Ray and the Grim Reaper, Death, is but an aspect of this will, conditioned by the fourth ray and emerging from the fourth plane. Death is an act of the intuition, transmitted by the soul to the personality and then acted upon in conformity to the divine will by the individual will. This is the Will to harmonisation.

  Today, its highest expression as regards humanity is the intuition, as it works out through group activity. Death always releases the individual into the group.

  RAY V.—The energy of Concrete Science or Knowledge. To understand this expression of the divine will, the student should bear in mind the occult aphorism that “matter is spirit at its lowest point of manifestation and spirit is matter at its highest.” Basically this is the will which produces concretion and yet at the same time constitutes the point at which spirit and matter are balanced and co-equal. That is the reason why human perfection is carried forward consciously upon the mental plane, the fifth plane; this is brought about by the fifth ray and upon this plane liberation takes place at the time of the fifth initiation. This is the will which is inherent in substance and which actuates all atoms of which all forms are made. It is closely related to the first solar system even whilst liberating members of the human family who will constitute the nucleus around which the third solar system is constructed. The energy of this ray is intelligence; it is the seed of consciousness but not of consciousness as we understand it; it is the inherent [600] life of matter and the will to work intelligently; it is that living something for which we have no name which was the product of the first solar system. It is one of the major assets of God, the Father and also of the human Monad. This is the Will to Action.

  Today, as regards humanity, its highest expression is liberation—through death or initiation.

  RAY VI.—The energy of Devotion or of Idealism. This is the will which embodies God’s idea. It provides the motive power behind the working out of whatever may be the purpose of creation. What that purpose is we have not as yet the faintest idea. An ideal is related to the consciousness aspect as far as human beings are concerned. An idea is related to the will aspect. This ray embodies a dominant potency. It expresses God’s desire and is the basic energy emanating from the cosmic astral plane. It conceals the mystery which is to be found in the relationship of the will and desire. Desire is related to consciousness. Will is not. We are not, however, dealing with consciousness but with that impersonal force which drives forward through all the seven planes of our solar system and which makes the idea of God a consummated fact in the Eternal Now. Does that statement mean much to you? I would surmise that it means but little; it is a basic statement of occult fact anent energy as it expresses itself through humanity in a manner which is unique and peculiar. I would here remind you of a statement in The Secret Doctrine that “an Idea is a Being incorporeal which has no subsistence by itself but gives figure and form unto shapeless matter and becomes the cause of the manifestation.” This statement takes you straight back to God [601] the Father, to the Monad, to the One. It is related, consequently, to the Will and not to consciousness. Consciousness is per se the recognition of a progressive plan. The Will is the cause, the energising Principle, Life, Being. This is the Will to Causation.

  Today, as regards humanity, its highest expression is idealism, the incentive and cause of human activity.

  RAY VII.—This is the energy of Ceremonial Order. It is an expression of the will which drives through into outer manifestation; it is that which embodies both the periphery and the point at the centre. It is the will to “ritualistic synthesis,” if I might so word it. It is Necessity which is the prime conditioning factor of the divine nature—the necessity to express itself; the necessity to manifest in an orderly rhythmic manner; the necessity to embrace “that which is above and that which is below” and, through the medium of this activity, to produce beauty, order, perfect wholes and right relationships. It is the driving energy which Being emanates as It appears and takes form and lives. It is the Will towards Expression.

  Today, as regards humanity, its highest expression is organisation.

  In the above statements anent the rays, you can see that the full circle of their activity is complete from the angle of God the Father; the will to initiate manifestation and its attendant progressive expression meets the will towards full achievement and the energy of Being itself arrives—in time and space today
(in the mind of God) at full consummation.

  3. The Keynotes of the Seven Rays and the Will Aspect.

  [602] The keynotes of these seven Rays are, therefore, as they constitute the revelation of seven Great Beings:

  Initiation. Unification. Evolution. Harmonisation. Action. Causation. Expression.

  These are the keynotes for humanity at its present point of evolutionary development; as these seven energies play upon the human consciousness in an effort to produce and evoke the Will aspect in advanced man they produce:

  Initiation. Vision. Education. Intuition. Liberation. Idealism. Organisation.

  A close study of these seven major rays and seven minor keynotes will reveal these truths and their promise. At the close of the Aquarian Age, these keynotes will vary somewhat because the recognition of the Will (leading to understanding cooperation) will produce major changes in human polarisation and human objectives—realised objectives.

  Let us now see how these basic ray energies will work out in man’s planetary and zodiacal relationships and why certain constellations and planets are related to certain rays and transmit into the centre which we call humanity definite and specific influences. These produce certain tendencies in humanity, evoke certain attitudes of the will, and lead consequently to certain unavoidable events as well as to definite and determined forms of Being.

  As we proceed with our consideration of Tabulation X, there are certain fundamental ideas which must be carefully borne in mind. Let me list them for your helping:

  1. We are dealing with the effect of the seven ray energies, as they pour forth from one or other of the seven stars of the Great Bear into our solar system. These energies [603] are the life-quality of the seven great Beings Who are the Prototypes of the planetary Logoi of the sacred planets, seven in number. These latter are Their reflections in time and space, as the soul is the reflector of the Monad where human beings are concerned.

  2. The seven rays express themselves, each through three of the zodiacal constellations. The analogy (but not the correspondence) is that these three constellations are to the life of one of these ray Beings what the three aspects of monad-soul-body are to a man. Again, it is only analogy. Forget not that analogy and correspondence are not the same. In the first case there is resemblance but not in detail. In the second, there is practically identical expression, usually on a lower level.

  3. These seven great Beings express Themselves in our solar system as the custodians or the exponents of the Will aspect of Deity. Their effect, therefore, is ever to convey into our solar system and eventually into our planetary life, the energy of the Will, in its planmaking, form-building nature. Esoteric books and esoteric teaching have necessarily laid the emphasis upon consciousness as it expresses quality. That is as it should be. But behind all quality lies That of which the quality is the expression and behind that is to be found the dynamic “out-going” (if I might so express it) which is the motivation of both the quality or consciousness and the life or appearance, the precipitation of will and quality.

  4. The nature of the will is as yet undefinable for only the Monad responds to its impact, and only after the third initiation does man somewhat grasp the nature of the will. All that is possible to understand in this brief summation is the effect of the will as it makes its presence [604] felt and the result of its expression, emphasised through the three constellations.

  5. The constellations in groups of three transmit the seven influences of the seven rays to our planet, via the Sun, and the relationships which I am here indicating are only those in connection with our Earth. They do not apply in relation to others of the planets in our solar system, where the configuration of the relationship is different. This is dependent upon the nature of the etheric web through which all transmission of energies takes place. The lines of approach might be indicated as follows:

  DIAGRAM ONE

  An illustration of this in line with our tabulation would be:

  DIAGRAM TWO

  [605] 6. This diamond shaped formation of the inter-related energies is the prototypal pattern which lies behind the etheric network and is its final, conditioning influence as far as our Earth is concerned. It is hinted at in the reference to the “diamond soul” of which the Buddha is an exponent. This is necessarily a deep mystery but the correlation is interesting and guaranteeing.

  7. These seven ray energies, expressing the divine prototypal will in seven forms, are as follows:

  Ray I.—The will to initiate.

  Ray II.—The will to unify.

  Ray III.—The will to evolve.

  Ray IV.—The will to harmonise or relate.

  Ray V.—The will to act.

  Ray VI.—The will to cause.

  Ray VII.—The will to express.

  When their full creative work is completed, there will emerge a “something else or other” for which we have no name but which will be the seed of the next solar system. This third solar system will express the divine will, as this is slowly developed through the experiment and experience of the divine love.

  8. These seven ray aspects of the will, which are the goal of the higher initiations and which embody that which the Masters Themselves are struggling to understand, is that which flowers in the Monad when souls have reached perfected expression through humanity. They express themselves where humanity is concerned as:

  Ray I.—That which incites to and produces initiation.

  Ray II.—That which is the cause of vision or the power to see. [606]

  Ray III.—That which develops sensory perception into knowledge, knowledge into wisdom and wisdom into omniscience.

  Ray IV.—That which is the illumined will, the basis of buddhi or the intuition.

  Ray V.—That which is the cosmic seed of liberation. This is an aspect of destruction.

  Ray VI.—That which is the cause of the thoughtform building faculty, related to the creative urge.

  Ray VII.—That which can be called the principle of order.

  9. Just as desire has produced this “son of necessity,” our solar system, there lies behind all the energies of the Heart of God and all the forces which have produced the manifested universe that which is the result of divine need. It is neither the cosmic correspondence of brain or mind or focussed intention, as you might surmise. It is that synthetic something which produces cohesion and results in fruition or synthesis as the effect or final result of manifestation.

  It is well-nigh impossible for me to make this any clearer because I am speaking of some of the final aspects and effects of the highest initiations. I only touch upon them because they consummate and climax this study of divine psychology as it manifests through God and through man. I am simply giving faint and inadequate indications of that which emerges in the human consciousness after the third initiation—the point at which personality or form life is transcended and the Monad becomes the object of the desired attainment; its spiritual pressure is then increasingly felt. It is, therefore, only possible to point to distant goals. [607] We can, however, gain some dim, human interpretations of divine goals by relating these rays and their transmitting constellations to our Earth and by noting how this triangular relationship can work out on our planet. Individual apprehension will be dependent upon the point of development and only the higher initiates will understand the real implications of my remarks.

  You have to remember, therefore, as you study these most deeply esoteric relations that we approach them from two angles—the only angles which are as yet possible to the finite mind of man:

  1. The relation of the three constellations to the rays which are each expressing the quality of the Life of an Informing Entity—the Being Who is expressing Identity through one or other of the seven stars of the Great Bear, Ursa Major, as we probably ought to call this constellation.

  2. The three aspects of the will which the three constellations are expressing and to which human beings will consciously respond after the third initiation. These three
aspects are:

  a. The will which conditions and initiates.

  b. The will which brings fulfilment.

  c. The will which conquers death.

  Before entering into a closer analysis of our subject, I would remind you that we are in reality dealing with universals, symbolised for us in the huge aggregate of constellations with which our theme is concerned:

  1. The seven stars of the Great Bear or Ursa Major are involved in an intricate relation with Ursa Minor and the Pleiades. With this we shall not deal. This major [608] triplicity of constellations has a peculiar relation to that Great Being to Whom I have at times referred as the One About Whom Naught Can Be Said. All that can be hinted at is that these three galaxies of stars are the three aspects of that Indescribable, Absolute Monad, the Ineffable Cause of the seven solar systems—of which ours is one.