“Stars and Symbols” presents a collection of essays and conference papers, initially intended for a limited audience, exploring the exposition of traditional scientific concepts within a Brazilian context. Olavo reflects on the challenges of disseminating these doctrines in a society lacking the spiritual and cultural preconditions for their reception. With a backdrop of weakening Catholic influence, syncretism, and ideological distractions, the book emphasizes the importance of affiliating with authentic religious traditions for proper spiritual growth. The essays touch on the use of astrology as a support for understanding traditional cosmological and metaphysical principles and caution against pseudo-spiritual paths. While the collection lacks a systematic order, it serves as a showcase of Olavo’s efforts to disseminate traditional sciences, hoping to stimulate further study and exploration within the context of genuine religious affiliation.

Preface

Upon reviewing these pages that I once dedicated to the exposition of traditional scientific concepts, I cannot help but feel the gravity of the decision to remove them from the private realm of provisional writings (they began their life as course materials, intended solely for a restricted group of readers) and give them a fixed form through printed letters and a public existence through reproduction.

Perhaps, in the world today, there is no country less accommodating for the dissemination of traditional doctrines than Brazil.

Not that there is a lack of interest: readers will undoubtedly come forward. However, what is lacking is a backdrop, a constellation of spiritual and cultural preconditions suitable for the reception of such doctrines. They are not risking anonymity and oblivion but rather incomprehension and distortion.

On one hand, these doctrines were not made solely for theoretical study but for the actual realization of human spiritual possibilities. On the other hand, this realization cannot be accomplished outside the framework of the rituals and norms of a traditional religion like Judaism, Catholicism, or Islam. Without this framework, the aspirations born from contact with those doctrines are at risk of degenerating and decaying, like unfulfilled dreams that time wears away and dissolves, leaving a sediment of bitterness and resentment in the aged soul, the result of long-settled hopes that were defeated. Without religious ritual and norms, the hope for a “higher knowledge” tends not only to fade into the smoke of unfounded fantasies but, even worse, to be captured, diverted, corrupted, and ultimately perverted by some of these supposedly esoteric sects and organizations that currently offer and sell a simulacrum—sometimes more, sometimes less plausible—of spirituality and initiation.

These organizations, which serve to divert and waste the generous impulse of reaction to modern society born with the “counter-culture,” recruit their members mainly from educated young people who have acquired some level of information about traditional doctrines but have not had the time, means, patience, or wisdom to integrate into an authentic religion. An apt image would liken these young people to naive lambs straying from the flock, exploring an unfamiliar and attractive territory until the wolf arrives. However, this image falls short in describing the Brazilian case because here the lambs never had a flock: they were born astray, and upon hearing that there were flocks to which they could belong, they set out aimlessly until the wolf captured them.

Every society has certain resources representing its spiritual defense and sustenance. Regardless of the varied forms of this arsenal, it is always present, and not only does it determine the salvation of individual souls after death, but it also guarantees the sanity of culture and individuals during their lifetime. The fundamental elements of this system are rituals and traditional teachings. Through initiations, it transmits essential knowledge from generation to generation, shaping and fixing the stature of human destiny on Earth and ensuring the fulfillment of humanity’s role in the cosmos as a repository of objective intelligence and free will, hence as guardian and guide of all beings inhabiting this planet, or as “vice-regent of God on Earth.” Through norms and laws, tradition extends this knowledge—and awareness of this destiny and responsibility—into the most remote sectors of social life, integrating the whole orb of the community into the ritual and sacred meaning of existence. For individuals, the most obvious result of this way of life—which has always been and remains continuous in all known civilizations except for the modern Western civilization—is translated, at the very least, as psychological security, possession of a life purpose, stability of ideas and attitudes, moral strength, simplicity, harmony, and, within the limits of earthly conditions, happiness. No one has ever been able to offer more.

The modern world, in general, has lost this ritual and sacred meaning of existence, and societies are governed by pseudo-goals that are always unstable and provisional, mere human inventions and institutions, dragging whole masses into effort and death for the sake of pure fantasies that fade away from one generation to another, leaving a dark balance of weariness, bitterness, and disappointments, soon numbed by the propaganda of a new and equally fantastic “ideal.”

This is the case today in all Western countries and everywhere in the East where Western influence has deeply penetrated over the last two centuries. But there always remain a few pillars that never yield, beside which a person can take shelter, rediscovering some trace of traditional meaning in the midst of the “tormented vacuum” of modern society. There is always some church, or ritual, or authentic spiritual group where echoes of the initial Word spoken by God to humanity can be heard. In Europe and the United States, the impressive rise of Islam in recent years shows something more than mere survival of the impulse towards traditional life; it displays an unexpected vitality beneath dense layers of torpor.

However, when viewed from this perspective, the panorama of Latin American countries—and particularly Brazil’s—is frankly discouraging.

Throughout this part of the Western world, the only traditional reference point for the vast majority of the population would be the Catholic Church.

But, first of all, the Church has never had here the vast influence and uncontested power that the naïveté of its faithful and the malice of its adversaries attribute to it. Instead, it has continuously been weakened by the silent and underground opposition, which is, for that reason, even more barbarously efficient, from syncretic cults that currently count among their ranks not only prominent figures in politics and the affluent classes but also the most notorious luminaries of the artistic and scientific community. Brazil has been and is only the “largest Catholic country in the world” in hollow statistics, which obviously cannot include in their assessments the quality of the interviewee’s Catholicism, much less their more or less secret or discreet connections with wizards and witches, whose influence on elections is as obvious to the popular consciousness as it is absent from the IBGE tables.

Secondly, this Catholic influence, already countered and diluted since the Discovery, by repeated clashes, at a disadvantage, with imperial and military authority, and weakened in the Empire and the Republic by the presence of Freemasonry and positivism in literary and political circles, suffered a fatal drain with the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, which emptied the ritual of all symbolic efficacy and opened the consciousness of the Catholic masses to the influx of all kinds of ideological (liberation theology) and scientific (Teilhardism) debris produced by the machine of contemporary folly. (Cf. Rama P. Coomaraswamy, The Destruction of the Christian Tradition, Bedfont, Perennial Books, 1979.)

If these reforms have had disastrous consequences worldwide, in a country like Brazil—where there are not even the artificial defenses of a well-structured academism, and where ideas, therefore, do not pass even through the sieve of minimal logical consistency—these consequences are enormously amplified, offering an open and inviting field to ideological fashions that spread today in the shadow of the historical authority of the Church.

This panorama is, in itself, discouraging from a spiritual point of view. Anyone who understands the articulating and defensive function of rituals can assess the immense tragedy represented by a nation of 120 million inhabitants without ritual, without spirituality, and consequently without culture, in the most precise sense of the term.

To make matters worse, in a situation where even the purely quantitative and materialistic “cultural” life of the academic world suffers from starvation, and where even the lowest form of literate culture, the newspaper, does not reach more than a minimal and insignificant portion of the public—in this scenario, new syncretisms, this time of a pseudo-oriental nature, further confuse, deceive, and corrupt the sons and daughters of a nation with no other spiritual defense than the Mercy invoked by rare and obscure prayerful individuals scattered here and there throughout the immense territory, amid a night filled with the noise of atabaques, the cries of exus, and the moans of hordes of condemned souls and afflicted armies. For amidst this smoky and noisy chaos, a crystalline thread of silent devotion to the Holy Virgin still mysteriously stands, connecting Heaven to Earth. But it has the millimeter thickness—and perhaps decreasing—of a last hope.

Within this framework, where “cultural life” is increasingly confined to ever pettier and more insignificant matters—to the extent that discussions about each individual’s sexual problems are now posed as philosophical debates—it is not surprising that someone who dares to speak of sacred matters to a broader audience fears the consequences and now invokes the protection of God.

Under these conditions, an individual who is aware of traditional doctrines and is committed to their study will sooner or later confront tremendous psychological obstacles, probably beyond their strength. Such obstacles will not present themselves directly as honest and clear resistances but rather as quicksand—underneath and around—slowly, subtly, and malignantly undermining and corrupting. This is how many set out in search of traditional teachings and end up being coopted by some pseudo-master who convinces them that good is evil and evil is good, truth is error and error is truth, and ultimately leads them to do exactly the opposite of what an authentic traditional life would require. I have personally witnessed people moderately informed about traditional doctrines ending up, under the guidance of one of these “masters,” accepting as traditional teaching a body of purely “magical” techniques designed to “create impressions” through sensory impacts—in short, subliminal propaganda.

Clearly, the only effective defense against this kind of corruption is the individual’s affiliation with an authentic tradition, which means nothing more and nothing less than becoming a faithful and practicing member of an orthodox religion (Catholicism, Judaism, Islam) and shaping one’s life according to the norms of that religion, renouncing all individualistic opinionated arrogance, relying on quod ubique, quod ab omnibus, quod semper credita est (“that which has been believed everywhere, always, and by all”), and striving for a moral perfection that is the conditio sine qua non of a well-functioning intellect (for who can know perfection without being perfect themselves?). Unfortunately, contemporary individualism, combined with the propaganda of pseudo-gurus, easily leads people to believe they have “transcended” religion and are perfectly suited for a mystical or initiatory path without any prior preparation in ritual or moral order (without realizing that a “path” that dispenses with this preparation declares its own falsehood in the same act). This conviction, amply nurtured by interested organizations' propaganda, may flatter each individual’s ego, but it does not seem to be the best way to embark on a spiritual journey, under any pretext. If these “paths” are so effective in recruiting young adepts, it is because these young people are generally poorly educated and insecure, and the offer of apparent and easy psychological balance acts on them like the serpent’s eyes on a toad, captivating and paralyzing whatever critical judgment they might possess.

Without realizing that this “balance” is merely a fleeting impression created and sustained by the group itself (American psychologists dealing with sect defectors coined the term “altered group perception” to designate these perceptual distortions), these victims, as their intellectual capabilities decrease and they become more dependent on the “master,” display affected self-satisfaction, behaving as if they possess essential and secret knowledge, uttering phrases like “I have found my center,” “now I am on my path,” etc. The emphasis on the individualistic and merely psychological aspect of this “balance” already shows that it is just a form of anesthetizing the moral conscience, a state similar to that mentioned by Huxley in Brave New World as a result of soma consumption.

Against these dangers, it is necessary to warn once again and always that there is no traditional path—neither mystical nor esoteric—that one can access outside authentic and orthodox religions, and that everything else is pure flattery and cheap temptation.

But in the case of Brazil, the situation of religions is clearly more challenging than in other countries. Firstly, because our national religion is Roman Catholicism, which is currently in the state that everyone knows, with no conditions to offer the slightest effective spiritual protection. Secondly, due to the widespread dissemination of all kinds of syncretism and witchcraft. Thirdly, due to the extreme fragility of our cultural life, even academic culture. Fourthly, due to the tremendous disintegrating impact of technocratic invasion and mass media, which wield a literally unrestrained dispersing power.

For all these reasons, here it is necessary to be more careful than in Europe or the United States, when speaking of traditional doctrines and traditional sciences.

This caution consists summarily in warning, from the start, that what is going to be read here cannot be understood outside the framework of an authentic religion, and those who try to use the concepts that I provide here to reinforce their own positions of spiritual individualism or adherence to teachings not purely traditional will be tying the rope around their own neck, and extending the other end to the enemy. All I can do is warn you not to do this, not to be proud, to seek first the “narrow gate” of a religion and not the wide portal of “teachings” pseudo-Hindus, pseudo-Sufis, etc. ; practice what religion orders and abstain from what it prohibits. And so, gradually, with the grace of God, the discernment that allows to separate the true from the false spiritual paths will sprout in your souls, and, if they fall into error, not out of malice but in good faith, religion will guide them back to the truth. The arrogant person who dismisses religion always has psychological tricks to confirm himself in error, because his judgments do not obey any universal criterion, but the arbitrariness of subjective preference.

Extending and specifying this warning, it is necessary to clarify that the astrology discussed in this book is what is most properly called “spiritual astrology”, that is, the use of astrological symbolism as a support for the understanding of traditional doctrines of cosmological and metaphysical order, and also as a hermeneutic instrument for the correct and traditional interpretation of rites and symbols. This is by no means predictive astrology - “scientific” or not, it makes no difference - or “psychological” astrology in the sense so widely disseminated by Jungians. I speak of astrology as an aid to mysticism, and not as a tool for prediction or as a psychological crutch masquerading as self-knowledge.

The book is composed of independent writings - articles and conferences, written for various destinations and different occasions. It is a more or less casual collection, without order or system; they are sketches and not a picture.

There is much to correct in these works, the limits of which experience and the passage of time are revealing more and more clearly.

However, I do not believe that it is the case to alter them now, because I offer this book to the public only as a showcase of what has been a work of dissemination of traditional sciences, carried out over the past few years. This showcase is meant to illustrate the possibilities of this study, and not to bring ready-made results. Its purpose is to stimulate, not necessarily to teach. Before these seven chapters, the reader must not forget that they reflect only seven days of work, within an effort that lasts several years and in which I have given classes or conferences at least once a week. Therefore, no hasty conclusions.

The reader who wishes to continue this study must first affiliate with an orthodox religion and then refer to the indicated bibliography, personally seeking the Author in case of doubt.

I dedicate this book to all those, who through all temptations and dangers, have remained faithful to the authentic traditional perspective, and I also dedicate it, with deep gratitude, to the generosity of Marco Pallis.

São Paulo, August 1985

Olavo de Carvalho

I. Towards a Definition of Astrology

Among the many distinctive traits that mark a clear demarcation line between authentic, traditional astrology, and its many contemporary counterfeits, there is one that, due to its importance, should be firmly established at the gateway of this study, as a guarantee to the reader and a warning to counterfeiters and usurpers.

Astrology is not and never has been an autonomous and complete discipline that contained its own foundation, and that could be studied and understood without the difficult preliminary assimilation of its mother sciences and, after that, without long side excursions through the territories of its sister sciences.

On the contrary, it has been and continues to be part of an integral and coherent body of knowledge, isolated from which it can only survive as a pale caricature of itself. This is precisely what happens today.

Ignoring the organic affiliation that gave meaning and life to the science they practice, contemporary astrologers try, sometimes to establish it on autonomous bases, from zero, generating it completely within the womb of their own individual speculations, sometimes to insert it – better said, to squeeze it – into the established framework of modern university science and the prevailing cultural taste. In the first case, they slide into the worst “occult” fantasies and only attract discredit. In the second, the desired adaptation is made by force of cuts, adjustments and insertions that end up completely mutilating and distorting astrology.

This chapter intends to give some indications about what astrology is. What it is, and not what we would like it to be, or what the current mentality – whether in its “occult” aspect, or in its “scientific” aspect – would like it to be. To this end, we must stick to the lesson of good phenomenology and, in the words of Henry Corbin¹, describe our object “as it presents itself to those to whom it presents itself”.

We must show it as it was seen by those who saw it, and not as understood by some second or third-hand listener. So, let’s ask what astrology is to those who actually had an astrology, and not to those who, having none, seek to invent it, improvise it or even deny its possibility of existence.

Now, the documents that attest to the existence of a body of astrological knowledge in various civilizations – past and present, including pre-Renaissance Western – are enough to fill many libraries, and nothing justifies their ignorance on the part of those who, as lawyers, judges or accusers, venture to speak on the subject.

As soon as we go to these documents, we discover that, in all these civilizations, astrology was linked, in a vertical, descending line, to at least three mother sciences – metaphysics, cosmology, theology – and, in kinship of horizontal similarity, to six sister sciences: grammar, music (or aesthetics in general), logic, rhetoric, arithmetic and geometry. (It is needless to underline that none of these sciences had neither the objectives nor the meaning of their namesakes today.) From the first group, it drew its principles, or foundations. With the sciences of the second group, it had relations of contiguity and analogy, as they represented applications of the same principles to other domains of reality.²

Amputated from its mother sciences, astrology sees itself as a cluster of arbitrary rules, vaguely fantastical and devoid of any foundation, if not of any meaning. Isolated from its sister sciences, it becomes like a design without proportion or perspective, for if all converged with it towards the same principles, as the rays of a circle converge at the center, it is only the junction of all the contiguities that marked each one its precise territory, and therefore the outline of its epistemological status; the amputation of this contour results in the loss of all spatial reference and in the confusion of all domains; the proper object of study of astrology is thus haloed with an aura of unreality, nowadays nobody knows how to define it properly.³

Only the reintegration of our science into the framework of its original coordinates will restore the profile of this noble lady, so ill-timed kidnapped by bandits and made to serve as repast to the libertinism of the grand lords in the brothels of a new Babylon.

These preliminary observations provide the reader, from now on, with a reliable criterion to know whether they are speaking with a connoisseur of the subject or with a charlatan, ignorant and forger (varnished or not in academic tints): the born astrologer must know, on one hand, to state the metaphysical, cosmological, and theological principles upon which the astrological rules they apply are based, and, on the other hand, to convert these rules into their grammatical, logical, aesthetic, etc., equivalents.

But it is necessary, in addition, that this man of erudition be also a man of spirituality, marked by the vocation of the convergence of all knowledge in the unifying light of the Intellectus primus, or Logos, or Divine Word. For here we are not dealing with scattered knowledge, but with a knowledge perfectly integrated into the axis of a personal spiritual realization, which is the ultimate purpose to which all this should orderly concur. Absent the mark of this charisma, - and of all the secondary signs that should accompany it, such as piety, inflexible inner rectitude, obedience more to the voice of the Intellect than to the demands of worldliness and good taste - absent these signs, one will not be in the presence of an authorized interpreter of the celestial configurations ⁴.

So close and inseparable is the integration among all these knowledge that, just to give an example, each of the sciences in question is represented by one of the planets (grammar by the Moon, rhetoric by Venus, logic by Mercury, arithmetic by the Sun, music by Mars, geometry by Jupiter, and astrology by Saturn) ⁵. The ignorance of any of them, on the part of the astrologer, would reveal a gap in his understanding of the symbolism of the planet that represents it, and would not be merely a fault of erudition, external and casual, but an intrinsic deficiency of his astrological knowledge.

In the same way, the musician who ignored the planetary correspondences of the distinct rhythms and tonalities would not be able to understand the world’s harmonies, so his art would be condemned to crawl on the mere sensations and ordinary feelings, powerless to rise to the collaboration in the great cosmic liturgy to which all arts, in the traditional conception, must concur. The ignorance of astrology would end up preventing him from being a musician in the full sense of the term. ⁶

These criteria have two limits. First, only those who also possess the vocation at their own level and modality can recognize the sign of a vocation. All the better for the true astrologers, who will not see themselves judged by incapable judges. Second, it is a fine sieve, and most of those who today pass themselves off as astrologers would not pass through it. All the better for the reader, who will be spared a myriad of mistakes and follies.

On the other hand, the same organic tie that affiliates astrology to such a vast complex of knowledge prevents us from adopting, in this work, a serial mode of exposition, which goes from principles to their consequences in a coherently logical manner. It would never end. But to speak only of astrology, without stating its (supra-astrological) principles, would be to speak of nothing based on nothing.

I have thus opted for a middle ground. Without the least pretension of giving even the slightest idea of the general panorama of astrology and its connections, I will try to deal only with selected astrological issues - such as certain aspects of planetary symbolism -, focusing on them simultaneously from the perspective of several of the sister sciences (with emphasis, of course, on the prism of astrology itself), and letting just transpire, in the background, the higher principles that inform and govern such approaches.

With this, I intend to throw the reader immediately into a different way of seeing, which is neither that of “occultism” nor that of “modern science”, but is the proper and authentic way of seeing of civilizations and eras where astrology flourished, civilizations that fit into the category of those that René Guénon called “traditional” ⁷ and Mircea Eliade, with less propriety, “archaic”. ⁸

The price of this method is expensive, for me as for the reader. For me, it will imply being overly compact or obscure in certain passages; for the reader, it will leave the obligation of a very closed, very continuous and careful reading, which does not skip or miss any step of the progression of the argument. For what matters here is not just the explicit content of the latter, but above all its implicit form, its structure, which will seek to reproduce, in the conduct of the discourse, the cognitive structure, the modus cognoscendi of astrology itself - and, by extension, of all other traditional sciences.

So, more than an informative study - which the dimensions of the book would not contain - this work offers itself as an intellectual experience to be performed by the reader; the experience of thinking and seeing as traditional, or if you like, archaic civilizations thought and saw. ⁹ And the most surprising thing about the science of these civilizations is their degree of synthesis, of unity. In a traditional civilization, there is virtually no expression of culture that is not organically linked to the body of fundamental principles that support this civilization. This leads to many confusions when the modern scholar, intoxicated with fragmentary notions, tries to penetrate the universe of this knowledge and dismember it according to current standards.

A striking feature of traditional science is that its goal is not exhausted in discourse, in the rational formulation of data, but goes beyond and aims at a profound transformation of the knowing subject. It is never an anonymous science, aimed at an equally anonymous and quantitative subject, but always aims at a concrete human subject, who, when absorbing it, will never be the same again.

Hence, on the one hand, this science, due to the need for synthesis, expresses itself more in symbols than in discursive mode, which is an obstacle for the modern reader. And hence also that, by proposing a transformation, a conversion of the mind to man, it appears as a terrifying science, and arouses all sorts of gloomy premonitory fantasies in the current reader, which lead him to identify it with witchcraft, with occultism and with all things that populate the bas-fonds of contemporary psychism.

If the objective of traditional knowledge is a metanoia, a conversion from the outer empirical opacity to the crystallinity of the inner vision, it is clear that we will not achieve this goal here, in the dimensions of this work. All we can do is give some indications that suggest the type of path to be taken, and the intellectual conditions required for the walk.

Astrology - the sparkling princess of this constellation of sciences - will serve for us, on one hand, as a subject and pretext; on the other hand, as a mold and structure for the organization of the argument. Indeed, the very term of celestial map evokes the idea of spatially orienting oneself in a translucent, incorporeal, ethereal domain; the idea of giving a structural body to spiritual contents; the idea of drawing the invisible; for Heaven is a purely visual reality, with no bodily proximity, and the map brings it closer to us. It is only natural, therefore, that we base ourselves on the movement of the heavens to structure our inner worlds. And the idea of embodying the invisible is what is expressed in the symbolism of the planet Saturn, which, not coincidentally, also symbolizes astrology, according to Dante.

But, note: it is not about a “model”, arbitrarily chosen by an academic investigator, to squeeze the data of the problem into it and produce more or less ingenious combinations.

It is rather about the model par excellence, the natural and paradigmatic mold of our speculations, for all the models we can invent - the ternary structure of the syllogism, the rhythmic pace of dialectics, the tables and grids of structuralists, the flowcharts of economists, and so on - all ultimately refer to an originating space-time framework that is immanent to human psychism and congenitally homologous to the spectacle of the celestial orb that surrounds us. And how could it be otherwise, if the psychic and perceptual structures of beings of all species must necessarily have an analogical correspondence with the structure of their circumstance, their Unwelt, to use the term of German biologists?

Thus, not to say, with Claude Lévi-Strauss¹⁰, that astrology was a structuralism avant la lettre (which is a singular way for the anthropologist from the Musée de l’Homme to place himself at the top of the millennia-long evolution of human knowledge), we would rather say that structuralism, functionalism, dialectics, the systemic approach and however many more explanatory models the human sciences have proposed in recent decades are nothing more than partial, fragmented, and mutually isolated applications of intellectual possibilities that, in the symbolic body of astrology, are offered all at once and organically integrated.¹¹

Moreover, if it were not so, the astrological model could not have been present, as it was, in all the great syntheses of methodology and knowledge, already achieved at privileged moments in the history of culture. If you want some examples, it is in this model that they are structured:

The Ars Magna of Ramon Llull, intertwining all methodologies in an integrated body of criteria, conceived by an inspired missionary-philosopher monk, and later popularly celebrated in the Glass Bead Game (Glasperlenspiel) by Hermann Hesse.¹²

The Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity (Ijwan a-Cafa), an integrated summary of esotericism and Islamic science, carried out by a Sufi community in the city of Basra in the 9th century AD.¹³ The cosmology of Saint Isidore of Seville (6th century), one of the greatest sages and philosophers of all time.¹⁴

The structuring of the sciences by Boethius, founder of Scholasticism and master of all European scholars for almost a thousand years.¹⁵ The cosmology of John Scotus Eriugena.¹⁶

And so on. More recently, we have witnessed a formulation of a Criteriology, by the Viennese philosopher Arnold Keyserling (son of Count Hermann Keyserling), on the same basis.¹⁷

To understand that this potential of astrology has always been known, and is no secret, we extract this paragraph from Plato’s Timaeus, which is placed here as a rule and compass to fix the true direction and vocation of astrological studies, and therefore the method of the present study:

"Of all the speculations that can now be made about the world, none would have been possible if men had not seen either the stars, or the Sun, or the Sky. But, in the actual situation, there are the day and the night, the equinoxes, the solstices, things that have given us knowledge of number and have allowed us to speculate about the essence of the universe. Thanks to this, we have been given this kind of science, of which it can be said that no greater good has ever been given to man… The reason why God created sight was His pre-knowledge that, having we humans observed the periodic and regular movements of divine intelligence in the heavens, we could use them in ourselves: having thoroughly studied these celestial movements, which are partakers of the straightness of divine intelligence, we can then order by them our own thoughts, which, left to themselves, do not cease to err." (Timaeus, 47 c)

Coordinating, in its symbolism, the three essential conditions of our perception of the world - space, time, and number -, astrology is thus the normal and primordial model of integrated knowledge. Therefore, it was also called mathesis, “measure”, mathesis universalis, the structuring measure of all things and knowledge, the system of patterns and criteria in which, on the one hand, our perception of the cosmos is structured, and, on the other, our culture.

So, here is a first definition of what astrology is - and, as the reader may have noticed, it is quite different from what is offered under that name in the black market of contemporary pseudo-spirituality.

However, with this definition, we return to a theme mentioned pages ago: integrated knowledge, being integrated, cannot be expressed in an extensive mode. On the contrary, it demands synthesis, it tends more towards intellectual intensity than discursive extensiveness.

Hence the extensive use of symbolism. We will see what traditional science of symbolism is in Chapter II. For now, it is important to note that intensive, synthetic, integrated knowledge requires an equally integrated knower, and therefore no one will progress on the path of this science without integrating into a harmonious bundle the forces and representations that currently fight each other for possession of their psyche. Traditional studies are usually accompanied by a practice that, restoring the ability to concentrate, persist, and maintain continuous attention, organizes the entire orb of the psyche into a wheel around an axis, which is attention itself; this, in turn, carries the student to a state of continuous intellection, that is, a state of clarity and evidence that allows him to assimilate extremely complex knowledge without much difficulty. This intellectual flowering is one of the first steps to be taken in the process of conversion, or metanoia. In Islamic esotericism, the stages of spiritual achievement are counted in the number of one hundred. ¹⁸ The theoretical study, the theoretical integration of knowledge for which astrology is, in this case, the tool par excellence - should therefore be understood only as a preliminary to a path that should end with the complete regeneration of the student’s psyche, and the achievement of a permanent state of intuitive evidence. The body of techniques that contribute to this end is what is called esotericism, synonymous with “internalization,” and should not be confused at all with “occultism,” magic, witchcraft, real or feigned psychic powers, etc. ¹⁹

To recap; (i) astrology is part of a harmonious set of knowledge, which includes various sciences; (ii) it itself, through its symbolism of space, time, and number, represents a synthesis - symbolic, not extensive - of this body of knowledge; (iii) the acquisition of integrated knowledge has always been understood, in all traditional civilizations - including medieval Western - as a preliminary to personal spiritual achievement, which should lead the student to reclaim certain original human capacities, such as a permanent state of intuitive evidence and, therefore, of certainty and peace.

These are, in broad terms, the criteria that will guide the next chapters. If astrology, in times of decay, is reduced to a real or falsely predictive tool, designed to placate or excite worldly fears and fantasies, this will not prevent us from understanding and studying this science according to its true nature, which is the mathesis universalis, and therefore, a way to access the Being.

If to the worldly it only occurs to look at the stars to ask “what will be” tomorrow or after, we will look at them in search of what “always was, is, and will be”.

II. The Symbolic Dialectic

"(I swear) by the pink twilight of the morning;

by the night and everything it envelops;

and by the Moon, when it is full:

you will pass from plane to plane."

Sacred Quran: LXXXIV, 16-19

Seen from Earth, the Sun and the Moon have the same apparent diameter: half a degree of arc. On the other hand, all their other sensible qualities - color, temperature, etc. - are symmetrically opposite. This makes them the emblem par excellence of all maximum and irreducible oppositions, modeled by the scheme of two divergent and equidistant points from a third central point: on the occasion of the full Moon, the setting Moon and the rising Sun, or the rising Moon while the Sun sets, form the perfect image of the balance of opposites, with the Earth in the middle as the balance’s pivot.

It’s an image that naturally occurs to us when we want to evoke the idea of balance, say, of the active and the passive, of the masculine and the feminine, of the clear and the dark, of everything that, in the end, Chinese culture summed up under the concepts of yang and yin.

Being an easy image to engrave, and endowed with great evocative and mnemonic power (coming, incidentally, from the structural homology between the human psyche and the celestial sphere, as we will see), it was natural that, in our time, the media would seize it, using it as a tool to fix in the consumer’s imagination the message of new diets, workout programs and other ideological gadgets that entered the market through hippie naturalism and pseudo-Oriental doctrines. The abuse of the lunar-solar emblem came along with the vulgarization of yin and yang.

Despite the vulgarization, the image and the concept it evokes are perfectly suited to the reality they intend to express; the law of mutual compensation of opposites is not a pure fantasy, but something that effectively prevails in many planes and sectors of experience, and which can be observed and deduced from nature, for example in the case of communicating vessels or the acid-base balance. Within its limits, it is a perfectly valid explanatory principle, which works for a certain number of cases.

As soon as we move from the abstract concept of balance to the attempt to actually balance something concrete - for example, when we learn to ride a bicycle - we find that our image of perfect symmetry crumbles to the jolt of successive disappointments: in fact, there is no perfectly static balance anywhere in the sensible world. Once the moment of balance is reached, the central point slips, the set escapes the fleeting symmetry and falls; and we return to face the oscillation of opposites. Thus we notice that, in lived experience, the point of balance is not properly a point, but a line; and it is not even a straight line, but a sinuous line, which, swaying on the sides of a merely ideal axis, is compensating the tensions from here and there and composing with the game of imbalance of the parts the pattern of the unstable balance of the whole.

In homeopathy, for example, this reasoning is often used.

An apparently alarming symptom - fever, bleeding, suppurations - certainly manifests an imbalance, but the homeopath may not medicate it at all if he believes that this partial imbalance will end up restoring the balance of the total organism. Conversely, he may prescribe a medication that breaks an apparent state of balance, to induce from the depths of organic tendencies the ascensional formation of a new and more deeply rooted pattern of balance.

We must agree that this reasoning is much more subtle and complete than the previous one. It allows going deeper into the understanding of reality. For example, if our pseudo-Oriental “naturalists” studied a little of the Hahnemannian method, they would end up realizing - better late than never - that there are no yin foods or yang foods, but rather foods that, in a certain pre-existing framework, temporarily assume a yin or yang role, which can also be reversed with the subsequent evolution of the framework; indeed the Chinese tradition is categorical in affirming that the yin- yang duality is “the extreme limit of the cosmos”; that, therefore, one and the other only exist as such on the plane of the total cosmos²⁰; and that individual beings not only are composed of different dosages of these two principles, but that this dosage becomes progressively more complex and indirect as we descend from the universal plane to the more particular planes; so that to evaluate whether any entity - let’s say, a turnip - is yin or yang, it would be necessary to weigh an practically indefinite amount of variables, among which, obviously, the moment and the place. Such subtleties have never escaped the Chinese. It is only the foolish grossness of our “mass culture” that imagines it can express cosmological concepts in dietary tables and linear, shallow, and moreover, purely fictitious correspondences.

But, going back, what is the precise difference between the two reasonings we have just witnessed? In the first, the two terms were opposed statically by equidistance to a center. However, if we move from the idea of static balance to dynamic balance, that is, if we transition from abstract concepts to concrete experience and thus verify that balance is not only made of symmetry and equidistance but also of interaction, conflict, and collaboration between the two poles, then they are no longer opposites, but rather complementary. They are no longer just the extremes of a contrast, but the matrices of a harmony, as appropriate and complementary to each other as semen and ovum, bow and string, sound vibration and the resistance of the eardrum. They no longer speak to us solely through their fixed equidistance, so to speak crystallized in the sky, but through their loving interaction, pregnant with tensions and possibilities.

Delving further into the difference, we find that when we change our point of view, we introduce the variable of time.

In logical terms, we can say that the first reasoning is a reasoning of identity and difference, while the second is a dialectical reasoning (in the Hegelian sense of the term). Hegelians have always accused the logic of identity of being purely static, aiming more at formal abstractions than concrete things immersed in the thread of time and subjected to incessant transformations. Dialectical reasoning aims to grasp the movement - so to speak, the vitality - of real phenomenal transformations. According to this method, truth is not found in the fixed concept of isolated entities, but in the logical-temporal process that simultaneously reveals and constitutes them. This is the meaning of Hegel’s famous formula: Wesen ist was geworden ist - “Essence is what has become.” In other words: being is becoming.

In astrology, the symbol that evokes this second approach is that of the lunar cycle. It projects on the celestial canvas the spectacle of permanence in change, of being revealing and constituting itself in becoming. In fact, it is the changes of the lunar face that ultimately show humanity the unity of the light source: the Sun. However, the Sun is almost never directly visible. In Chesterton’s precious formula, “the only thing created by light is that by which we see all things, and the only thing we cannot see.” The Sun is thus an invisible luminosity. On the other hand, the Moon can be seen with its clear profile cut in the sky, but to compensate, this profile is not constant. Thus, each of the apparent luminaries has something elusive, not to say equivocal: one evades direct gaze due to its excessive brightness, the other evades conceptual crystallization due to its changing form. Now, this form clearly goes through three phases, or faces (the fourth face, the New Moon, is invisible): in the first, it seems to grow as a source of light progressively independent. At that point, it reaches a fullness: we have the full equivalence of two luminous circles of half a degree of arc. If it stopped at this point, we would say: there are two sources of light in the sky. However, the moment of its fullness already announces the decline, already contains the germ of its suppression; and then it wanes, and finally the Moon disappears: the Sun, which during all this time remained constant under its luminous cape, revealed itself - to the observing intellect: it constituted itself - as the one and only real source of light, expressed and unfolded temporally by the ternary compass of its reflecting surface, the Moon.

According to traditional astrological symbolism ²¹, the Sun represents intellect, truth, and the Moon represents the mind, reasoning. In dialectics, a latent truth is constituted in the human spirit through the process of becoming, which reveals and verifies it.

If the balance of the Sun and the Moon on the horizon, statically contemplated at the time of the full Moon, represented the static balance of opposites and therefore, the logic of identity and difference, the integral lunar cycle, contemplated in its temporal succession, displays in the skies the ternary course of dialectical thought and the “everlasting flow” of things in nature.

Dialectical reasoning has a close relationship with reasoning of cause and effect, with the idea of continuity of the same latent cause beneath the procession of effects. The lunar cycle can thus represent both the dialectical approach and the causal approach.

While reasoning of identity and difference ²² is simple, direct, and based on the observation of immediately offered correspondences to the senses or intelligence, dialectical reasoning demands much more complex operations and the tracking of a whole cycle of transformations.

There has thus been a passage from one level to another, an ascent: by moving from static opposition to dynamic complementarity, from static to dialectical reasoning, we have changed the observation point, and a new system of relationships has become evident in the spectacle of things.

It seems that we have come closer to effective reality, leaving behind purely formal schemes and the traps of our own subjectivity.

It seems, therefore, that we have arrived at a solution to the initially posed opposition: by introducing the variable “time,” the opposition has been resolved into complementarity.

However, upon closer examination, we find that dialectics has only solved one problem at the cost of creating another: by resolving the opposition between the Sun and the Moon, it has placed in its stead the opposition between the static and the dynamic. While it may be a fate that all static oppositions can be resolved through dynamic reasoning, it is equally true that they can only be initially established through the static and abstract formulation of the concepts of their elements. How could we dialectically “fluidify” the opposition between the Sun and the Moon if we did not know what the Sun and the Moon are, that is, if the concepts of these two celestial bodies were not static? From now on, we are condemned to a radical duality, which separates thought and reality with an iron curtain: our concepts will always be static, reality will always be dynamic. Dialectics leads to the methodological dualism of Bergson ²³ and Bachelard ²⁴.

To make matters worse, dialectics itself, in order to come into action, must introduce new concepts, which will also be static, including the concept of dialectics itself. These concepts can then be dialecticized in turn, and so on indefinitely.

If, in the words of Heraclitus, the grandfather of dialectics, “we never step into the same river twice,” we may ask if this saying of Heraclitus has twice the same meaning.

Dialectics finds itself, thus, facing a tragic dilemma: to opt for an endless discourse - which, having no limits, ceases to have any identifiable content, as the neo-positivist critics of Hegel have pointed out ²⁵ - or to arbitrarily and therefore irrationally determine a point of finality for the dialectical process. Hegel, as is known, made himself the endpoint of the history of philosophy, and philosophy had the audacity to continue existing after him.

Therefore, it is urgent to rise above dialectics, to climb another step, to ascend to a wider and more encompassing view. And, again here, it will be the celestial model that will come to our aid, following Plato’s warning that, without orienting ourselves by the lines of divine intelligence crystallized in the planetary cycles, our thoughts ceaselessly wander from error to error.

It turns out that the two poles of our initial opposition can only be said to be contrary—or, subsequently, complementary—when seen on the same plane, that is, when, measured by the same standard, they result in similar magnitudes. In the transition from static to dynamic reasoning, something certainly changed—the mode of representation—but something remained exactly the same: the observer’s point of view; in both cases, we assumed that it was based on Earth; first, contemplating the moment of balance of the Sun and the Moon on the horizon; then, following the cycle of transformations during a lunar month; but always from the same place.

All oppositions (and all complementarities therefore) are based on some common characteristic, which inversely polarizes in one element and in the other; that is, oppositions are accidental differences that result from a background of essential identity; complementarity consists only in subsequently reconstructing this background of essential identity, which a moment of the process had veiled, and which the tracking of the entire process reveals again, just as the Sun and the Moon can veil each other at the moment of the eclipse, returning then to show themselves as they really are. This game that goes from identity to difference and back to identity only unfolds in front of a static observer, firmly installed in their observation post.

However, humans cannot normally abandon their observation post; they cannot physically transport themselves out of Earth.

They can only travel mentally; but, left to itself, the imagination wanders among the celestial spaces and falls into shapeless fantasy. Astronomy (which is the descriptive and substantial part of which astrology is the interpretive and essential part), astronomy is the antidote to such wanderings.

Through correct measurement, humans restore the correct figure of the heavens in their representation. And they already have the support of a new intellectual model based, according to Plato, on divine intelligence—to seek a point-of-view that allows them to transcend vulgar dialectics, penetrating into a focus that we could call symbolic dialectics.

If, in vulgar dialectics, we had introduced the “time” factor, here we will make use of the “space” element, thus completing the model on which our representations were based. We can say that the dialectical point of view corresponded to a merely “agricultural” observation of the skies: all it captured was the idea of transformation and cycle. The symbolic dialectic, now, will start from a properly astronomical understanding, and launch into the comprehension of the spatial intertwining of the various points of view and the various cycles that they reveal.

Now, if we abandon the terrestrial point-of-view and take into account the solar system as a whole²⁶—that is, the larger frame of references in which the various elements in play are established and differentiated—we find that, in reality, the Moon is neither opposed to the Sun, as in the reasoning of static identity, nor coordinated with it, as in dialectical reasoning, but rather subordinate. It is even doubly subordinate, since it is the satellite of a satellite. Earth is to the Sun as the Moon is to Earth. We thus form a proportion, and here for the first time we reach a fully-fledged rational focus, since “reason”, ratio, originally means nothing more than proportion. It is the proportion between our representations and experience, which ensures the rationality of our thoughts.

Immediately the initial opposition and the complementation that followed reveal themselves to be partial aspects—and therefore insufficient—of a set of proportions, which reabsorbs into the unitary principle that constitutes them.

Because all proportions, as we will see later, are variations of equality, just as the interplay between the angles and positions of the various planets among themselves are absorbed and resolved in the positioning of all around their central unique axis, which is the Sun.

This third modality is called reasoning by analogy. There are many misconceptions today about what analogical reasoning is. For example, many authors believe that it is about noting mere similarity in forms²⁷. Others suppose that it is a primitive and vaguely “poetic” form of assimilation of reality, radically distinguishing itself from rational and logical apprehension²⁸. In fact, none of the modern philosophers have ever demonstrated a mastery of analogical reasoning as practiced in antiquity; therefore, none of them are authorities to say what it is. Analogical reasoning, as we will see later, synthesizes into an integrated vision the reasoning of identity and cause-and-effect, and is therefore superior to these.

If academic philosophers are confused about this, their adversaries, that is, professional astrologers, are no less so. Only that they do it with the opposite intention, emphasizing the superiority of analogical reasoning. In fact, they use and abuse a famous “law of analogy”, called to justify their art, which should unite, in synchronous pulsation, the whole and the part, the universe and the individual, the distant and the near, everything, in short, that fits in the classical formula of the micro and the macro.

This is not the place to criticize professional astrologers, but the fact is that they interpret this “law” in a flat, shallow, linear way, as if between the macro and the micro there was not just an analogical relationship, but an identity; for example, when reading individual horoscopes, the correspondence they see between celestial configurations and individual human life events is practically direct, without the modulations and mediations that common sense requires, and without the inversions of meaning that the very rule of analogical reasoning, when well understood, demands. Having established, for example, a symbolic link between Saturn and fatherhood, and between the Moon and motherhood, they will directly interpret an inharmonious angle between Saturn and the Moon in the natal chart as an indication of a conflict between the mother and father of the querent. This form of crude reasoning was very well caricatured in a “syllogism” invented by the Spanish astrologer Rodolfo Hinostroza:

“Saturn = stone. Sagittarius = liver. Therefore, Saturn in Sagittarius = stone in the liver. Or, if you prefer, liver stone”. ²⁹

In the same way, they establish direct correspondences between Libra, as a symbol of cosmic balance, and the common justice and the flow of our courts; and many others in the same vein. Now, astrology is a cosmological science, not a psychological one: the plane where phenomena unfold, the stage where their drama is played out, is the total cosmos, not just the individual’s mind. Between these two planes, separated by many “worlds”, there must necessarily be many transitions and attenuations; we will explain this later. What is important to assimilate is that analogical reasoning is a subtle, precise tool: it cannot withstand a flattening that compresses the macro into the micro and pastes them together.

What does analogy actually mean? First of all, any Greek dictionary will mark, in the entry αµαλωγος, análogos, the meaning of “proportionality”, in the sense of the formula or in the sense of the harmonies between the different lengths of the strings of a musical instrument and the sounds they respectively emit when vibrated. Such proportions, as anyone can perceive, consist precisely in the reason of the differences between the different values. Therefore, if there are no differences, there is no analogy, there is pure and simply identity, in the sense of the formula or, to summarize, 1=1. This should reveal, from the outset, that any astrological symbol - planet or sign, angle or house - can never have the same meaning when considered on two different planes of reality, for example on the plane of the total cosmos and on that of individual psychology. Secondly, the prefix aná, αµα, which forms this word, designates an ascending movement:

µελανες αµα βοτρµες ησαν

Mélane aná botrües esan

(“On high, there were clusters of black grape”)

(Iliad, 18:562)

It translates as “over”, “above”, “upstream”, “upwards”, as in αµαγωγη, anagogê, “elevation” “action of raising, of snatching upwards”, or even as in anabásis, anaforá, etc.

The term “analogy”, therefore, suggests that it is a relationship in an ascending direction. Better said: the two objects united by a relationship of analogy are connected above: it is in their superior aspects, and through them, that beings can be “in analogy”. An analogy is more evident the more we move away from sensible particularity to consider beings under the aspect of their greatest universality. Conversely, this relationship fades the more we look at beings from their lower aspects, that is, from their sensible phenomenality.

What establishes an analogy between two beings, therefore, are not the similarities they present on the same plane, but the fact that they emanate from the same principle, which each one symbolically represents in its own way and level of being, and which, containing both, is necessarily superior to both. It is on this level of universality that the bond of analogy is celebrated in heaven, which goes on linking, in a chain of symbols, gold to honey, honey to the lion, the lion to the king, the king to the Sun, the Sun to the angel, the angel to the Logos. Seen from above, from the principle that constitutes them, they reveal the proportionality between the symbolic functions they perform for the manifestation of this principle, each at the cosmological level that corresponds to it, and it is this proportionality that constitutes the analogy. Seen from below, from sensible phenomenality, on the contrary, they disintegrate into the multilaterality of differences. Thus, analogy is simultaneously evident and ungraspable; obvious for some, inconceivable for others.

We, therefore, make use of analogies to ascend from sensible perception to the apprehension of the spiritual essence, to move from the visible to the invisible, or, in the terms of Hugo of St. Victor ³⁰, to move from nature to grace: nature, the sensible world, “signifies” the invisible; spiritual grace “exhibits” it at the top of the ladder. The ladder of analogies - evoked, for example, in Jacob’s ladder, in the steps of Paradise in Dante, and in all hierarchies of spiritual knowledge - is a means of access to the principle, and on the other hand, it collapses if this principle is removed from the top.

Being, then, a vertical and ascending connection, analogy is different from simple relationships of similarity - complementarity, contiguity, contrast, etc. - that relate, join, separate, and arrange beings on the same horizontal plane. This distinction, however elementary it may be, easily eludes today’s observer, to the point that even a competent historian like Michel Foucault errs in classifying analogy as one of the forms of similitude in medieval science. In reality, the difference in planes between these two relationships does not allow them to be seen as species of the same genus, just as hierarchical classifications in general differ from typological classifications: the distinction between captain, major, and colonel is not of the same kind as the distinction between infantry, artillery, and cavalry ³¹. And even less could analogy be subjected to similarity, as a species to its genus, just as one could not say that the classification of military ranks is a species of which the division into the three arms constitutes the genus.

This should suffice to demonstrate that certain similarities that astrologers point out between planets (or planetary myths) and entities and events in the terrestrial world - for example, the fact that Mars and blood are both red - are not analogies because they do not refer to the principle that constitutes these two entities and is the common reason for their similarities and differences. Therefore, they are mere similarities discerned on the same plane (in this case, that of chromatic sensible qualities). And as, in the plane or descending sense, the relationship of proportionality progressively dissolves into the multiplication of differences, mere similarities may be quite insignificant and even entirely casual; and no one would think that serious knowledge could be obtained by collecting curious coincidences.

In the symbolic scheme we are studying, the transition from the particular to the universal is symbolized by the transition from the geocentric to the heliocentric point of view. The latter, due to its greater scope, allows the capture of relationships - analogies - that the particularism of the terrestrial view concealed. Summarizing the stages covered, we pass through: 1st stage. Point of view: momentary sensible appearance. Reasoning: identity and difference. 2nd stage. Point of view: temporal and cyclical. Reasoning: casual or dialectical. 3rd stage. Point of view: space-temporal, comprehensive, universalizing, ascending. Reasoning: analogy.

On the other hand, if analogies lead to the knowledge of the principle, it is because this principle already resided in us in a virtual way. This latent presence, this invisible guide that securely leads us through the “straight path” of analogies amidst the forest of similarities, is symbolized by Virgil, Beatrice, and St. Bernard in the three stages of the poet’s ascent in Dante’s Divine Comedy.

Now, universal principles generally reach our knowledge only through abstract formulas, so that we are always divided between a universal and abstract truth and a concrete experience devoid of truth, devoid of meaning. The climb of analogies aims precisely to bridge this gap, leading, as far as possible, to a lived and concrete knowledge of the universal. Through analogy and symbolism, as well as through many traditional arts, sciences, and techniques that aim to crystallize and condense this symbolism in the student’s psyche, the goal is precisely to transform and expand this psyche so that it assumes a universal scope, in the image of the Universal Man ³², who is a compendium and model of the entire cosmos.

In numerical symbolism, all proportions are, ultimately, forms and variants of identity. Identity is a single, simple, and abstract formula, 1=1, which contains synthetically all the proportions of the universe, that is, all the “dosages” that compose all things and beings. By knowing the principle of identity, we know, in a certain way, the reason for all reasons; it is universal knowledge, but still in a virtual way, like a seed that potentially contains an entire forest. The scale of analogies from lived concretion to this principle recapitulates, in a shortened manner, the whole range of possibilities contained in the principle of identity, and at the top of the ladder, we rediscover this principle, no longer as an abstract formula but as full reality, as the meaning of truth and the truth of meaning. This is what scholasticism called the concrete universal, the synthesis of logical universality and existential fullness. ³³

This reunion, this reconnection, resonates as the full realization of happiness. It is the reunification of man with himself, preliminary to the reunion with God. In the philosophy of Hugo of St. Victor ³⁴, it is the reunion of the outer, or carnal, man with the inner, or spiritual, man. Hugo, following a tradition but translating it with genius and originality, distinguishes in man, first, four levels: in the corporeal part, sensus (senses) and imaginatio (imagination); in the spiritual part, ratio (reason) and intelligentia (intelligence). Then he asks: is there not an intermediate level, a link between spirit and body? To this intermediate level, Hugo gives the name affectio imaginaria, and his disciple Richard of St. Victor calls it imaginatio mediatrix; “imaginary affection” and “mediating imagination.” It is in this intermediate level that the knowledge of analogies and symbolism in general takes place, and it is here that the reunion of universal truth with and in concrete experience occurs. The ontological counterpart of this psychological level is the so-called mundus imaginalis, the world of imaginal forms, which are not to be confused with the imaginary (Hugo attributes the imaginary to the corporeal part) and which constitute the missing link between the world of the senses and the “pure (or abstract) forms of understanding”; it is here that the reunification of man with himself takes place, and it is there that we must turn our attention if we want to break the soul-spirit divorce to which four centuries of Cartesianism have accustomed us. If the reasoning of analogy is so incomprehensible to modern man, it is because he has lost sight of this intermediate world, getting used to understanding as “abstraction” anything that escapes the realm of the senses. But this intermediate world is not only the world of symbols but also the world of imaginal entities symbolized by them, for one could not conceive of a cognitive faculty that did not have an objective counterpart, its own object of knowledge, and independent. And it is in the imaginal world that we then rediscover angels and all the characters of biblical and mythological narratives as forms of reality that do not reduce either to our subjective psyche or to a merely external objectivity.

The ascent ends here. Having reached the higher principle that organizes the various planes of an analogical sequence, it seems that there is nothing more to know, at least within this particular domain.

However, the closer we get to a universal principle, the further behind and farther away the concrete realities whose explanation we sought seem to be. And as we return from the top, sometimes it seems that we have lost sight of the purpose of the journey. The moment of reunion passes, and we are left with nothing in our hands but the abstract and lifeless statement of a logical principle, which is the melancholic remembrance of a lost universality. Therefore, it is necessary to descend again from the principle to its particular manifestations, and then ascend again, and so on. Thus, the oscillation of yes-no, truth-error, which constitutes the beginning of our investigation, is finally replaced by the alternation of high-low, universal-particular.

We thus move from horizontal oscillation to vertical oscillation. And it is precisely the awakening of the capacity to constantly perform this ascent and descent that constitutes the goal of all traditional education.

But the last stage, which will absolve analogical reasoning from its final trace of abstraction, is precisely the supreme form of reasoning, a form superior to all others, which practically represents an entry into the world of intuition and immediate knowledge. We call this form of reasoning convenientia, “convenience,” because it designates what is fitting, the central point where all the rays of a circle converge and from where they depart again in all directions, representing the dual movement of contraction-expansion from the particular to the universal and from the universal to the particular.

When our intellect reaches this form of reasoning, we can then begin to comprehend the Hindu doctrine of “Brahma’s days and nights” or the Islamic doctrine of the “inspiration and expiration of God,” as the retraction of all worlds to their principle, followed by a new multilateral expansion of universal manifestation. We are thus at the doors of pure metaphysics, but this will be a subject for another occasion.

III. Astral Influence and Planes of Reality

1

Like that of all traditional arts and sciences, the study of astrology can be conducted, either in an ascending or descending sense. In the first case, we gradually move from sensible phenomena - the planetary bodies, their movements, their reciprocal positions, etc. to the cosmological and metaphysical principles that govern them, and which they in turn symbolically represent. In the second case, we move from the planets to the phenomena of the terrestrial sphere governed by them.

Now, the domains of the human extend from the earthly realm to certain regions of the spirit that extend far beyond the “natural” sphere. The influence of the planets could not, therefore, play the role of ultimate explanation of human acts, which common astrologers often attribute to it. This influence only acts on the domains inferior to the heaven of Saturn, that is, on the bands of reality (and therefore of human constitution too) that are within and below the orb of reality symbolized by this planet; what this orb is, we will see in another study. Here it is only important to establish the most general criteria so that we can legitimately talk about a planetary influence on the human being. In fact, such criteria have already been established, with great skill, by Saint Thomas Aquinas ³⁵. Our work is only an extension of what he said.

As bodies, says St. Thomas, planets only act upon bodies

This means that, if the action of the planets on bodily entities such as water or minerals is direct and causal, and encompasses these bodies in the totality of their being, the same could not be said in relation to the human being, as this has qualities that go beyond the bodily domain and therefore could not be at the mercy of the influence of any bodies, including the planets. This does not mean, however, that the planets do not act upon man at all, but rather that they only act on what is bodily in him, without affecting his higher faculties, such as will, reason, and understanding.

However - the Angelic Doctor continues - this does not mean that they cannot exert some incidental and secondary influence, if not on the higher faculties themselves, at least on the conditions of their manifestation in each concrete case, facilitating or hindering it. If, for example, a planet exerts a harmful action on a man’s body, this does not properly alter the rationality and free will of the latter, but it can hinder its full manifestation, during the period in which the illness lasts.

This is what St. Thomas means by the sentence “bodies only act on bodies”; a body can exert an essential and truly causal action on another body, but its action on the non-corporeal will, on the contrary, be only peripheral and accidental.

It is not, however, inappropriate to remember that, even in the case of the action of the planets on bodies, this influence should not be understood in a purely energetic or mechanical way, but rather in a synchronic or harmonic way, according to the laws of analogy and sympathy. We must be careful not to attribute our modern conceptions to ancient authors; the word “cause”, for St. Thomas, did not have the same resonances that it has today; today, by virtue of a habit that time has been transforming into an undiscussed presupposition, we automatically restrict the meaning of “cause” to that of “efficient cause”; but for St. Thomas, as for Aristotle, the cause could be efficient, formal, material, or final.

2

If, as bodies, planets only act on bodies, we can complete the reasoning of St. Thomas by saying that, as symbols, on the contrary, they represent or convey the action of spiritual and cosmic powers that infinitely surpass the domains of the corporeal. In this case, it is not the planets that act, but the angelic powers of which they are only the symbolic and sensitive crystallization, so to speak. However, it is common to use the term “astral causality” to designate both the bodily influence of the planets and the action of the angels of which they are the hierophany. The term is rigorous only in the first case; in the second, we proceed as when we say that “the image of the Holy Virgin in such a chapel performed a miracle”; it is a force of expression, which cannot be taken literally; it is at the confluence of these subtle distinctions that astrology borders on idolatry and was severely condemned by the Church.

It is clear that the action of the planets is never independent of the angelic powers, but, while in the first case the planets convey the action of these latter, - and can be said, on the physical level, to be the cause of events - in the second case they merely signal it in time and symbolically represent it, without interfering in the process as links in a causal chain. It is not difficult to distinguish between the instrument and the sign of an action, but common astrologers have no clear idea about these two forms of action, and therefore attribute to the action of the planets, uniformly, both the events effectively provoked by them, and other types of facts where the planets did not exert even the slightest influence.

A simple example will allow better understanding. When my alarm clock rings - let’s suppose, at seven in the morning - it has a noticeable effect on my eardrums, and I can conclude that it was the cause of me waking up. However, at the same moment I wake up, I can legitimately conjecture that throughout the city, millions of workers are getting out of their beds, to go to work. The vulgar astrologer’s mistake lies in attributing to his alarm clock the power to wake up the entire city. In fact, the ringing of my alarm clock is just a signal that millions of other alarm clocks must be ringing at the same time.

The occasional objection that astrologers know perfectly well the distinction between causality and synchronicity is irrelevant, because to assign a cause is to give an explanation, and to simply say that one phenomenon is synchronous with another does not explain anything at all; when astrologers speak of synchronicity - borrowing, by the way, from Jung’s prestige - they naively imagine that they are switching from one explanatory key to another, when in fact they are just giving another name to a factual correlation that they can’t explain at all. It is astonishing that the scientific world has taken seriously a so-called “theory of synchronicity”, when evidently the very definition given to the latter - “meaningful acausal coincidence” - contains only a designation, not a theory, of any kind whatsoever. The synchronism of two phenomena cannot constitute their explanation, simply because it is just another phenomenon, whose explanation is even more difficult. A time when such naiveties are taken for high philosophy is a dark and sad time.

The distinction I pointed out above evidences the need for two different approaches, which constitute, so to speak, two opposing and complementary astrologies: astrology as a natural science studies the influence of the planets; astrology as a hermeneutics studies the significations of planetary phenomena as symbols of higher powers. This latter form demands, of course, knowledge of a metaphysical and cosmological order that transcends the usual field of the astrologer; it leads to an angelology and a theology; and its practice requires the same intellectual and psychic conditions demanded of the interpreter of sacred texts; this includes not only personal qualification and theoretical knowledge, but the practice of a spiritual discipline within the framework of an orthodox tradition ³⁶. If you want historical examples of these two approaches, we find the first in the work of the Persian astrologer Al-Biruni, the second in the work of Plotinus and Proclus, as well as in the quoted text of St. Thomas Aquinas. Certainly, the first approach is logically and epistemologically subordinate to the second, but if it is conscious of the limits of its approach, the natural astrologer may correctly exercise his profession without also being a theologian. Al-Biruni himself had very limited knowledge about the spiritual symbolism of astrology, but this did not prevent him from being a good astrologer, as long as he adhered to the limits of the religious law in force in his culture. The same could be said of our Kepler.

3

Between these two levels of astrological science, there is evidently an analogical correspondence, since the hierarchy of bodies imitates the hierarchy of intellectual substances ³⁷, so that it could be said that the beings of the angelic world are to the planets as the planets are to the minerals, plants, waters, etc. Now, an analogical correspondence is not a logical identity ³⁸, and this is what vulgar astrologers so frequently lose sight of, which leads them to the misunderstanding of considering the planets as direct agents of divine will (either in a coercive and causal sense, as understood by classical predictive astrology, or in a magical and psychological sense, as a “celestial archetype” of individuality, as understood by so-called humanistic, Jungian, transpersonal, etc. astrologers).

Given the fact that man simultaneously inhabits many planes of reality – being an entity as corporeal as the calcium of his bones and as spiritual as the divine intelligence that resides within him – his relationship with the planetary world cannot be univocal: he is subject to planetary cycles, insofar as the elements that compose his body are; he is identical to them and cohabits in the same plane, insofar as he is a being endowed with reason and symbolism, so that his acts have multiple dimensions of meanings that are precisely symbolized by the complex structure of planes and rhythms that make up the celestial sphere (as a model, for example, of the system of sciences); but he begins to transcend them as his reason rises above the celestial body symbols and directly grasps the intentions of the angelic world that these planets symbolize; and finally, he infinitely transcends the sphere of planets insofar as he is also endowed with pure intellect and can grasp the divine above all symbolism and all concrete representation³⁹.

Indeed, man lives essentially on these four levels, but the focus of his attention and his individual consciousness circulates, so to speak, between these levels. The “time” spent on each of these levels is dictated by each man’s degree of concentration and spiritual accomplishment, but even the most spiritual of men must have moments of intellectual torpor in which his consciousness is limited to the most immediate physical data, although these moments can be reduced to almost nothing; and even the most brutish of men will have some moment of pure intellectual apprehension, even if this moment is of infinitesimal duration and leaves no trace in his waking memory. The rotation between these four levels is symbolized in the astrological phenomenon of the succession of days and nights (quadrifasic rotation dawn - noon - twilight - midnight) and also in the succession of the four phases of the moon. The two intermediate phases - dawn and evening twilight - represent, respectively, the rise from the phenomenal to the symbolic and the descent from the symbolic to the phenomenal; noon and midnight can have their meanings inverted depending on whether we refer to an objective and natural symbolism or subjective and psychological; in the first case, the noon sun represents the full light of intellection and midnight represents the total (although temporary) immersion in the opacity of the sensitive phenomenal data; in the opposite case, the noon sun will represent the appearance, the exterior, the evident, the phenomenal (el zâhir) and midnight, on the contrary, will represent the “light that shines in inferiority”, (el bâtin)⁴⁰. Indeed, the symbolism of the “midnight sun” represents the paralyzation of this rotation, achieved and crystallized in the moment of luminous splendor and in the place of the sensitive phenomenon, thus creating a full luminosity of the concrete phenomenal entity, that is, transforming all appearances into transparencies⁴¹.

Correspondingly, the midnight sun may have a “satanic” inversion of its symbolism, when the paralyzation occurs at the place of luminosity (intelligence) and at the moment of darkness, that is, when darkness has managed to cover up intelligence.

Therefore, the spiritual degree can alter or even invert the most obvious and immediate meanings of planetary positions⁴², as can be seen in the story of Saint Clement⁴³, where, depending on the spiritual degree of the latter and his master Saint Peter, the same planetary positions that should produce certain events ended up producing opposite events, transforming apparent misfortune into uncommon happiness, but by the same means (the mother’s flight, the shipwreck, etc.). In this case, there was a subtle transition from the astral determination on the lower bodies to the free governance of the celestial bodies and their effects by human will transformed into the agent of God’s will. The planetary positions were the same, the terms and times the same, the events (externally considered) the same, but the meaning and the final destiny of everything ended up being the opposite.

We can briefly set out what has been explained in the form of a diagram of levels of reality:

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4

The notion of plurality of levels, so essential in traditional studies, is not entirely unfamiliar to contemporary philosophy; we will see some notable examples ahead. However, in this philosophy, the perception of these levels - that is, a clear, simultaneous perception of their distinctions and interrelationships - is more of an exception than a rule in the philosopher’s personal psychic life. If he does manage to grasp it, it is often in an exceptional moment of intuitive lucidity, the peak of his career as a thinker. But he does not fully integrate it as a way of being in his person and in his current perception of the world. To achieve this, a methodical effort of concentration would be necessary, using a reliable technique and guided by a qualified master. On the contrary, in traditional practices, the goal is to gradually integrate the hierarchy and dynamic play of planes of reality into the student’s very being. Thus, their perception of the world permanently reflects this mode of understanding things naturally.

Henri Bergson states that philosophical systems are nothing more than the intuition of a single moment, followed by a lifelong effort to explain and unfold it discursively ⁴⁴.

We could say that while the modern philosopher abandons the initial intuitive act and radically changes to the intellectual stance of discursive formulation, the spiritual seeker - who is the same as the traditional philosopher - aims to persist in the state of intuitive evidence. They seek not only to obtain new and successive evidence but to live in a state of uninterrupted vision, clarity, and understanding. This state, undoubtedly one of the ultimate goals of concentration techniques, is designated as the reception of the Shekinah, or the “great peace” ⁴⁵.

In other words, where the modern philosopher considers the work of intuition complete and starts the task of logical explanation, the spiritual seeker sees only the first of a series of auroral flashes that must eventually transform their own person into luminosity and transparency ⁴⁶. The shift pointed out by Bergson, from intuitive state to the pursuit of logical formulation, is justified only if the purpose of philosophy is deemed to be building deductive systems or explicating the pure logical coherence of discourse. However, this coherence is already given, though implicitly, in the initial intuition. The philosopher then merely needs a “physical effort” to select the language materials and arrange them in a decent order. If this is what philosophy is, then it is of little value ⁴⁷. On the contrary, in the traditional perspective, the task of the philosopher is not to construct systems or academically elaborate coherence in discourse but to seek wisdom. If the seeker of wisdom is forced to interrupt their journey at every step to explain each new intuition, they will not reach the end of the journey any time soon. This is why the works of spiritual seekers are sometimes limited to abbreviated and symbolic notations of acquired knowledge. These notations are of great value only to those who personally retrace the path taken by the spiritual seekers. They act as guideposts on the journey, not as verbal reproductions of the trip for a distant and unfamiliar observer. Of course, in principle, there is nothing preventing a spiritual seeker from explicating dialectically a large part of their knowledge. In this case, their work will be quite similar, outwardly, to that of an academic philosopher, as seen in the case of Plato, Plotinus, etc. However, this excursus of dialectical exposition is not an end in itself as in academic philosophy; instead, it serves as either a teaching activity motivated by compassion or a disciplinary practice if the dialectical art is part of the body of concentration and spiritual realization techniques of a particular spiritual lineage, as it was in Plato’s Academy.

Regarding the levels, it can be said that many practices aim to integrate this perception into the student’s “psychic body” through bodily practices that imitate and crystallize the hierarchical distinction of levels. One of the simplest “models” used for this purpose is that of the four elements. In a practice like t’ai chi, the student is first taught to distinguish the two divergent lines of an internal dynamism of weight and force, symbolized by water and fire respectively: water descends, fire ascends. By systematically throwing the weight of their body towards the lower regions - the pelvis and coccyx - and accumulating as much “water” as possible in the belly region, the student subtly awakens an ascensional counterpart. This is an invisible channel through which force, instead of being an anarchic potential that suddenly arises in any muscle without plausible reason, orderly rises from the foot to the hand. In this struggle, the punch originates from the foot and rises through a double system of mechanical levers (bones and joints) and energetic connections (muscles, nerves, veins, and especially the acupuncture meridians) to the hand ⁴⁸.

Remarkably, in the science of symbolism, there is a connection between the words “foot” and “father,” and “hand” and “mother.” In all languages, the word for father is built from a root constituted of consonants “pb,” “pp,” “bp,” “bb,” “vp,” “vd,” “fd,” etc. (e.g., Vater in German; Father in English; Abba in Arabic; Padre in Spanish; Pater, patris in Latin; Pater, patrós in Greek). The same applies to the word “foot” (Foot in English; Fuss in German; Pied in French; Pes, pedis in Latin, etc.). Similarly, the word “mother” is always some variation of “m,” “mt,” “md,” “mm,” etc. (mater, matris in Latin; meter, metros in Greek; Omm in Arabic; mere in French; madre in Spanish, etc.), as is the word “hand” (manus, us in Latin; main in French; mano in Spanish, etc.) ⁴⁹.

Moreover, “father-foot” and “mother-hand” are evidently related, respectively, to the symbolism of the Sun (solo, só) and the Moon (Moon in English; Mond in German). Thus, the upward movement of force from the foot to the hand mirrors the downward movement of solar rays to the Moon. If the Sun marks the directions of space, the Moon traverses them, dividing them into 28 (= 4 x 7) stages, thereby unfolding the synthetic and static structure demarcated by the Sun in a successive, analytical, and dynamic manner ⁵⁰.

Furthermore, the Moon preserves and cyclically redistributes solar energy and light, which it reflects in various patterns of nighttime luminosity according to the lunar phases.

Similarly, in t’ai chi, a single position of the foot can be developed into many hand movements, allowing the hand to develop and discover the various possibilities offered by the foot’s position.

This practice has formidable consequences from the perspective of integrating the cosmological model into the student’s psyche. On one hand, its alchemical action is evident, as the descent of waters and the rise of fire already represent a phase of “separation of the subtle and the dense” ⁵¹. Psychologically, this is reflected in an increased ability to distinguish in the perception of the world the areas of “deterministic necessity” and “creative freedom,” not only statically but also in their constant interchanges.

Continuing the practice will lead to the awareness of the areas corresponding to the other two elements (earth, the base, the coccyx; air, the breath). After some time, the student’s perception of their body will become a microcosm reflecting not only the movements of the Sun and the Moon but also other natural cycles (as the four elements have correspondences in the four parts of the ecosystem, the four states of matter, etc.). The integrated diversification of movements will form a miniature planetary model, providing support for the deep and integrated understanding of the disciplines of the trivium and the quadrivium ⁵², which are also structured according to this model. Through them, the student can ascend to higher insights of a cosmological and metaphysical order.

The integrated perception of levels of reality and their symbolic, synchronic, and harmonic correspondences is essential for understanding spiritual doctrines or engaging in any traditional science or art, including dialectics. Without this integrated perception, certain partial or momentary patterns of interconnection in reality can become misleadingly central, contributing to the “convincing distortions” that modern philosophers and scientists often fall into. The quality of knowledge is directly conditioned by the quality, completeness, and integration of the self and world perception of the bearer of that knowledge. Therefore, engaging in philosophy without a spiritual discipline is a source of plausible errors ⁵³.

5

Well, as I said before, plans and levels of reality are not totally unknown to modern philosophy. However, beyond the restrictions it is subject to, as we’ve seen, there remains the fact that only one philosophical school has systematically utilized this observation. The philosophers who belong to it are distinguished precisely because they move among the various planes without almost ever confusing them.

This is Edmundo Husserl’s phenomenology. This school is remarkable for the integrity, rigor, and intellectual honesty of its method, and a phenomenological training is by no means useless for those who wish to enter the world of symbolism and traditional doctrines.

The case of Henry Corbin, who began as a phenomenologist and ended up as a leading authority in the world of Iranian Islamic spirituality, is particularly illustrative in this respect ⁵⁴.

Let me give a brief example of applying this method to discern the levels of reality. Polish philosopher Roman Ingarden applied phenomenology to distinguish the “strata” that make up a literary work of art ⁵⁵. He made this distinction in the course of an investigation into the “mode of existence” or “way of being” of literary works. What kind of reality, what kind of entity, are they? With this question, he intended to find a firm orientation in the tangle of criteria - historical, linguistic, psychological, stylistic - that vied for primacy in the field of literary studies and literature science. Ingarden discerns four basic strata in a literary work: first, a sound stratum; the literary work of art is a fabric of sounds, and it allows for separate study under this aspect (phonetics, prosody, metrics, etc); second, the band of “meaning units”, where each word joins the others, forming phrases and various patterns of meaning and symbolization; the literary work admits an autonomous study under this point of view, for example, in semantics and stylistics.

Third, the sphere of beings and objects, the “world” of the novelist, poet, playwright, etc, human world, ideological, social, religious, etc; this part is studied under the sociological, historical, historical-cultural prism, etc; finally, he discerns a fourth stratum, that of “higher qualities” or “metaphysical qualities”, like the sacred, the terrible, the tragic, the sublime, etc, which are part of the literary work as much as the letters that compose it; this stratum, which refers to the ultimate and therefore metaphysical meaning of the work, is for example the one that Berdiaeff studies in the work of Dostoevsky, Guénon in the work of Dante, and Gilbert Durand in the Chartreuse de Parme ⁵⁶ by Stendhal; in this band, literature touches the borders of mysticism, philosophy (in its superior sense) and esotericism.

The strata are methodologically independent but ontologically united by the various patterns of meaning that rise from elementary sounds, - taken either in their mere evocative resonance, as in profane letters, or in the rigorous symbolism of the primordial creating sonority, as in sacred letters - to the complex units of metaphysical understandings into which the work finally must flow. The same scale of spiritual meanings resonates simultaneously in four worlds.

With such explanations, Ingarden cut the Gordian knot of the disputing explanatory schools in the literary field, arranging the various explanatory possibilities into a unitary organic complex.

Well, Ingarden’s scheme coincides in kind, number, and degree with the symbolism of the four elements in the t’ai chi: earth, the base sounds, the material substrate whose couplings will create a support for the manifestation of meanings; water, the plastic intercombination of larger and smaller units of meaning in fluid interpenetration; air, the human, historical, and cultural “atmosphere” of the work; fire, its ascensional potentiality, analogical.

Here we have an example of how a great philosopher, driven by an honest intention, rediscovers in his own research field the eternal realities conveyed by traditional doctrines, of which he probably has no direct knowledge. In modern philosophy, such fortunate encounters occur much more frequently among phenomenologists, - disciples of Husserl, than in any other school, because Husserl, - also without direct knowledge of traditional doctrines - was a model of intellectual honesty, rarely imitated among academics.

It remains to point out that such encounters can mark the beginning of an intuitive ascent and put the philosopher on the path of a true spiritual quest, or, on the contrary, die still at the stage of promise and produce nothing more than another academic thesis. We do not know what happened in the specific case of Roman Ingarden, but we hope that the angels have been favorable to him. What is certain is that the current structure of the academic profession does not favor at all the flowering of these superior vocations, and tends to suffocate any budding intellectual light amid the demands of hollow formalism.

IV. Note on the Word “Zodiac”

The word “Zodiac” comes from the Greek diakos, meaning “circle,” and zoon, which is usually translated as “animal”; hence it is often attributed the sense of a wheel with animals drawn around it ⁵⁷, which it indeed is when observed exclusively from a graphic point of view.

However, this perspective only represents the first impression of an inattentive and superficial observer ⁵⁸, and it cannot help us understand its true nature.

In truth, the word zoon – just like its Latin equivalent animal – does not solely mean “animal” ⁵⁹, but rather any living being, including humans. This is confirmed by the presence of representations of human beings in the Zodiac, such as the Twins, the Virgin, or the Water Bearer (Aquarius).

By expanding the field of meaning to encompass the entire zoological realm, including humans, we still do not exhaust the word’s content, as the Virgin carries an ear of corn, which requires broadening the connotation of zoon to include plants as well ⁶⁰.

To complicate matters further, the Zodiac also extends beyond the realm of what modern biology ⁶¹ designates as “living beings,” a term that is used rather imprecisely. It also includes some other things that for modern humans may not be alive, and not even beings.

It includes representations of creatures that we now understand as fantastic or imaginary, such as the Sea-Goat (Capricorn) and the Centaur (Sagittarius). For the Greeks, therefore – and also for the Babylonians from whom they inherited these representations – centaurs and sea-goats are also zoon, or “animals.”

Considering that the Greeks had words explicitly intended to designate the fantasies and imaginations of the mind (Φαντασια = “fantasy”; Φαντασµα = “phantom,” “apparition”), it is necessary to conclude that if they referred to such creatures with the word zoon, it was because they considered them as real as elephants or worms and not merely products of the human psyche. In fact, the idea of identifying “reality” with “corporeality” did not occur to anyone before the 19th century, and thus the Greeks had no reason to believe that the incorporeal was necessarily subjective. The modern man may suppose that they confused everything, that they mistook the subjective for the objective, but in reality, as seen in books, among others, by Hippocrates, Theophrastus, and Aristotle ⁶², they perfectly understood the pure fantasies and imaginations of the mind. Therefore, when they called the sea-goat and the centaur zoon, and not “phantoms,” it was not because they confused fantasy with reality, but because they recognized a distinction between objective and subjective imaginations, between real and fantastic. This distinction disappeared from modern philosophy and science, being preserved only in the specialized field of literary studies through the respective concepts of imagination and fancy, which were introduced by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834).

Beings like the sea-goat and the centaur thus possessed a distinct form of reality, separate both from corporeal presence and pure subjective ideation. This intermediate form of reality was denominated in Latin as mundus imaginalis, and the term “imaginal” implied a radical distinction between it and the “imaginary” ⁶³.

A study of the consistency and structures of the mundus imaginalis could lead us too far from our purpose, which is simply to define the meaning of the word “Zodiac.” However, we can refer the reader to Henry Corbin’s monumental work ⁶⁴, which not only provides an explanation but also extensive documentary evidence of conceptions regarding the imaginal, especially in Persian philosophy, which he was the first author to disseminate in the West.

All that we can do here is indicate that the imaginal is not “produced” by the imagination – whether individual or collective – but apprehended by a specific and distinct faculty called Active Imagination, which certain practices of concentration in various spiritual disciplines of the East and the West aimed to awaken and develop, and which the common and ordinary man of our days is completely devoid of ⁶⁵. The mundus imaginalis is the realm of hierophanies, sacred appearances, which the modern man confuses with individual or collective hallucinations because the possibility of going mad seems much more concrete and plausible than the possibility of encountering God – a belief that, in itself, is a very precise indicator of the psychic state considered normal today.

V. Notes Towards an Astrological Psychology

According to Saint Thomas, the stars do not influence our understanding, but rather our bodily apparatus; if they therefore act on our psyche, it is not as essential causes, but as accidental causes. ⁶⁶

The traditional science of symbolism aims, as with Saint Bonaventure, to penetrate the opacity of sensible phenomena, which thus lose their empirical gratuitousness or their logical-positivist mechanicity, and transform into “stages” of an interiorization, on the path of the mind to God.

And this is the only sense that astrology can have. It will be neither magical (superstitious), nor scientific-natural, but symbolic and, ultimately, metaphysical (which obviously does not imply any exclusion of scientific-natural procedures aimed at obtaining an exact description of planetary phenomena and their terrestrial concomitants; only that, in this case, far from constituting a final goal, it is merely the starting point for the true study, which correlates these data with ontological principles, correlation without which they would have the slightest sense and not even reality. ⁶⁷

In the following pages, I provide some scattered indications about astrological psychology, that is, about the applications of astrological symbolism - which is assumed to be known in its principles and details, for which I refer to previous works - to the study of characterology and human destinology. This work, I warn, is not intended for beginners, but for people who have a good knowledge of symbolism and traditional doctrines. On the other hand, I insist: these are scattered notes and suggestions, and not a coherent exposition. The terminology, for this reason, is fluctuating, uncertain.

From the point of view of astrological psychology, the planets (from the verb plano, planare = “to level”, “to flatten”) are nothing more, nothing less, than levels of actualization and intellection of the symbol provided by the sign or house; each planet is a transformer and catalyst of this symbol, limiting and concreting its “abstract” universality to a precise and particular level of crystallization in the individual psyche.

This definition is consistent not only with the etymology of the word, but also with the traditional symbolism in which the planets represent: (a) planes of reality; (b) scales of a cosmogony; (c) gradations of knowledge; (d) degrees of initiation.

All these meanings are obviously analogous, and the initiatory theme of “celestial journeys”, on the one hand, and the gradation of planets and sciences in the trivium and the quadrivium, are abundantly known.

The plane of astrological psychology. - If the stars do not influence our understanding, the global scheme of psychological astrology could not be a study of man’s free and central intelligence, but rather of the set of conditions (cosmic, social, historical, etc.) that limit and frame this intelligence and, with it, human freedom, conditioning it as an occasional cause, as S. Thomas emphasizes.

Therefore, the plane on which one can speak of an astral psychology is not that of intellection, nor of decision (since, still according to S. Thomas, the stars do not directly influence our will), but rather of representation, of the formation of a system of individual vision of the world from, on the one hand, the individual structure itself, and, on the other hand, the data and parameters provided by the environment.

As Guénon emphasizes, the planetary system is, by its form, the symbolic synthesis of all influences that weigh on the nascent individuality, and therefore, astrology is like an atrium with doors to all kinds of studies about the human being ⁶⁸.

The planetary influence will be visible, psychologically, in the formation of the imagetic and logical reference frameworks in which the individual will support his reflections and decisions; such frameworks tend to crystallize into a system of rigid psychic “routines”, which therefore condition a coercive destiny unless they are obstructed by a higher spiritual influence that dissolves them. Sometimes it is not a matter of properly dissolving the system of influences, but of elevating its hermeneutic level; it is not a question of changing destiny, but of ennobling it with a spiritual significance ⁶⁹. The destiny crystallized in all the immutable data - family and historical past, body shape, heredity, etc. - functions as the “cross” of cosmic conditioning that is not to be rejected, but to be lifted. When an individual’s cross is very heavy, a traditional influence can help carry it.

It is also logical that, the more we move from the interior to the exterior, from the informal to the formal, from the unmanifest to the manifested, the more the network of polar differentiations that compose this system of references is acutely felt and, inversely, the more we go towards the interior - and upwards - the more the differentiations are reabsorbed into the unifying vision of God; therefore, the spiritual man, if he does not materially rid himself of the contradictions of his fate, does not internally experience them as unsolvable, and the external tearing seems less a reality than a point of view ⁷⁰.

Knowledge of planetary symbolism leads to a reflection on the underlying unity of the contradictions of fate. Astrological psychology is a theory of the meaning of suffering and the root of the latter in the polarizations that cosmogonically unfold the manifest orb from the unity of Being. It leads to seeing this world, in the words of S. Bonaventure, as the “shadow of God.”

Let’s look at some levels of symbol crystallization, based on planetary positions.

Saturn. – It’s the lowest level. The symbol loses its unifying force, is problematized rationally, risks decomposing into blocks of contradictory and conflicting representations (and therefore tendencies), threatening to break the unity of the psyche itself ⁷¹. The cognitive function assigned to the house does not count on the synthesizing contribution given by the symbol and, considering the observation of Susanne K. Langer, that psychologically the symbol functions as a tool to create abstractions, or as a “matrix of intellections” ⁷², the intellections are naturally seriously hampered by all sorts of contradictions and internal objections that a perverse and capable rationality is able to raise. (Because Saturn, in functions, is reason, and reason is not given once and for all, but must be conquered by learning, so that at the beginning of life we contact it, logically, first by its lower, deficient and limiting aspects) ⁷³.

This is therefore the point of maximum distance between the “personality” and the “individuality”, or, on another level, between subjective individuality and the external environment, or, on yet another level, between what I sense about myself within myself and what I suppose I have expressed, or what I suppose others understood from what I expressed. It is the maximum contrast between psychological time and chronological time; and between space and time. Only the strength of Reason itself, but in its most authentic universality, can synthesize again what is dispersed here; here, the man suffers at the individual level and in an existential mode the social degradations of reason and reflects in his life the incoherence of the mentality of his environment.

The Sun – It is the highest level of integration. The symbol - of the sign or house - is lived in its fullness of meaning and at the maximum of its integrative power; it is the great ascending and unifying force of all tendencies and representations. It is, therefore, the point where individuality most easily identifies with personality. The psychological risks, here, are of idolatry (of the symbol and the values that existentially translate it), while in the house of Saturn the danger is that of negation and despair.

Between these two poles, the encounter of real spirituality restores the analogizing balance between similarity (Sun) and difference (Saturn), between superior (archetypal) personality and empirical existential individuality.

The symbols. – The twelve signs designate the twelve fundamental divine qualities, which crystallize into the twelve basic mythical structures ⁷⁴, which constitute, from a cosmogonic point of view, the twelve directions of manifestation, and, from an initiatory point of view, the twelve “return paths” to unity through a ladder of generically identical symbols (the signs being twelve genres of symbols). As each of the signs contains within its own symbolic scope symbols corresponding to the other eleven, the zodiac is also the sum of the twelve stages of knowledge, ten at the cosmic level and two in an “interworld” at the portal between the cosmos and the divine Throne. The first ten are the astrological correspondences, on one hand, of the ten logical categories of Aristotle, and, on the other, of the ten ontological categories or “laws” of Pythagoras ⁷⁵, which summarize the numeric archetypes of the entire created universe, and therefore the fundamental structures of intelligibility.

The symbol is the great integrative force of the psyche, and the position of the Sun in one of the signs reveals the basic symbolic “key” intended to integrate representations and tendencies into a teleological convergence that represents for the individual the sign and guarantee of his authentic self.

In symmetrical counterpart, the signs ruled by Jupiter and Mars are placed 60 degrees from the Saturnine sign of Capricorn, respectively to the left and right. They then represent polarizations of the reason function. Now, reason, in such a happy moment defined as “the system of all determinations,” unfolds from a point set by free decision, in space and time. The establishment of a beginning, a starting point⁷⁶, is linked to decision, to will, this function polarizes into (a) orientation in space, sense of direction, Jupiter (which in the quadrivium is geometry and in the cognitive functions scheme is will or faith); (b) orientation in time, sense of stop, cut and rhythm: Mars (which in the quadrivium is Music and in cognitive functions is the active imagination, suspicion or alert).

Note on reason and intuition. – Reason tends towards identity, the homogeneous, fixedness, integrity, but it achieves them through the concept, that is, abstraction, which is nothing other than separation (from abs – trahere, “put aside”).

Sensible intuition, on the other hand, tends towards individualization of perceived entities, therefore ultimately towards heterogeneity, flow, and multiple; however, it happens that the maximum individualization of the being coincides with its symbolic universalization (because a being could not be irreducibly itself except when charged with the totality of its attributes, which is only possible by symbolic synthesis, which is the opposite of abstraction); thus every universe “is” in that being pregnant with maximum significance. If it were not so, all art would be impossible.

Berdiaeff (Esprit et Realité, pp. 17-18), protesting against the confusion between the general and the universal – also pointed out by Guénon – affirms that, strictly speaking, only the concrete individual, and not the abstract general, can reflect the universal. Hence the strict necessity of symbolism in transmitting traditional doctrines.

The present theme of the relations between abstraction and symbolism has already been studied in my work “Universality and Abstraction” (published in booklet by the Institute of Traditional Studies), but this supplement is necessary. Reason tends towards unity through separation, sensible intuition tends towards individualization through universality. It is not necessary to say that such cognitive functions correspond analogously and respectively to the ascending and descending movements of the Spirit (Burckhardt, Clef spirituelle, p. 24).

What is most significant here is that sensible intuition, when taken to the highest degree of symbolic universality, can already be compared to hierophany, it is a highly privileged modus percipiendi. When we consider, with Susanne K. Langer (Philosophical Essays, Chap. III), that the symbol precedes and informs the abstractions, we understand that symbolism – and in its synthesis, the Zodiac – holds the key to the system of categories that structures reason; it is logical, moreover, that God’s descending movement logically and ontologically precedes man’s ascending movement, and therefore that the symbol precedes reason.

Conversely, from the “pedagogical” point of view, reason is privileged, because symbolic separation, the more significant, the more momentary and fleeting; hence the need to fix by the abstract universality of reason the landmarks and buoys that lead to it (or lead back to it) (Cf. Corbin, Temple et contemplation, Paris, Flammarion, 1980, p. 132): the dialectical journey culminates in the hierophanic vision.

Therefore, strictly speaking, what is called intellectual intuition should be defined as a medium – or synthetic – form of knowledge, which simultaneously possesses the individual concreteness of sensible intuition with the immutable fixedness of rational conceptualization: it is, literally, the vision of truth.

The association with alchemy is evident: reason corresponds to sulfur (fixing factor), sensible intuition to mercury (changing factor) and intellectual intuition to salt – crystal that gathers the properties of the two previous substances .

These notes are obviously fragmentary, and the gaps in the exposition should be filled with the reading of the texts indicated in the “Notes” and with the notions given in the other chapters of this book, as well as in my booklets “Questions of geometric symbolism” and “Grammar, logic and rhetoric”. Whoever, possessing good knowledge of doctrine and traditional symbols, gathers all this material and studies it under the criterion here exposed, following the order of the quotes, may unfold this study into incalculable practical and theoretical consequences, in psychology and in astrology. This work is a stimulus to my students, to continue these investigations, without being intimidated either by the lamentable state in which the “astrology” practiced in our days is found, or by the disenchantment of those who, faced with this state, give up all hope of regaining this precious instrument of integrated science and scientific methodology, which is traditional astrology.

VI. The Hieroglyph of Saturn

As noted by Burckhardt ⁷⁷, the hieroglyph for Saturn, ђ, consists of the semicircle - symbol of the substantial or existential aspect which complements the circle, symbol of the determinant or qualifying essence - surmounted by the space-time cross. It, therefore, designates the moment in the cycle of mutations where all possibilities of the concerned plastic substance have been exhausted, leaving no further possibility of mutations. It thus properly indicates the end of a process, the extreme limit of a cycle or order of manifestation. It’s worth noting that Saturn rules, in astrology, the sign of Capricorn, which is the tenth sign, thus associated with the symbolism of the number 10, which precisely designates a complete cycle of manifestation or, in other words, the full and extensive unfolding of the possibilities contained in the point, or number 1.

The sign of Capricorn is represented by a goat, a mountain animal, whose head emerges from the body of a fish, which is an eloquent enough symbol for the totality of the states of a field of manifestation - in this case, the sensible world - from the top to the base. This symbolism, evidently, can be seen in two senses, descending or ascending. In the descending sense, it has a cosmogonic meaning, marking the unfolding process that spreads, expands from the unity represented at the peak to the multitude of beings that pile up in the most compressive part of the base, and even extends to the lowest states and pure undifferentiated multiplicity, marked by the fishes. It is opportune to remember, when talking about the origin at the top, the myth of the goat Amaltheia, which fed the future demiurge Jupiter, thus being placed at the superior root of the manifestation of a complete world. In the ascending sense, it refers to the initiatory meanings marked by Marco Pallis in The Way and the Mountain ⁷⁸, about which there is no need to insist. It’s only necessary to note that the mountain peak marks the transition from one world to another, and in this sense, the planet Saturn will necessarily be associated with all the symbolisms of the “guard of the portal” and the supreme test that the postulant to initiation must pass; among these symbolisms is the dragon, and in astrology, the two extremes of the dragon, head and tail, involve the earth in a circular tie that marks, on a minor plan, the same idea of extreme and integral limit of an order of manifestation. Now, the Moon rules the sign of Cancer, polar opposite to Capricorn, and it’s only natural that their symbolisms have analogous meanings on different planes. The sign of Cancer is symbolically related to lakes, and it’s interesting to recall the character of Sir Lancelot of the Lake, guardian of passage who first offers an obstacle and then helps King Arthur; still at the top of a mountain, and from a lance, like Lancelot’s, the centurion Longinus uses to wound the side of Christ, from where the water of divine blessing will gush forth, rewarding him with conversion. Michel Veber repeatedly pointed out this symbolism of the lance associated with the dragon (Long, in Chinese, with striking phonetic kinship with Longinus, lance, long, etc.) and we only repeat it here to establish a greater connection between the various ideas that are bundled in this marvelous symbolic complex: from the top of the mountain, a lance, in ascending sense, represents the opposite and complementary role to the ray, in descending sense: the interconnection of worlds, the revelation ⁷⁹.

Now, the idea of an extreme limit is also found in the Chinese ideogram Ch’iao, ㄎ, whose current meaning is “obstacle, difficulty in breathing”. Its design is surprisingly similar to the hieroglyph for Saturn, but its explanation will show that it is not a fortuitous coincidence, but a logical consequence of the internal cohesion of the science of symbolism, which must give homologous results in its applications in the four corners of the world. Ch’iao is first formed by the sinuous line, which designates breathing. There is no need to insist on the universality of this symbol. Here, breathing collides with a horizontal line, —, at the top. The horizontal line is nothing else but the ideogram I, which means the number 1, and also, according to Wieger ⁸⁰, the primordial unity, the being, from which all things emanate. Being is therefore the extreme limit where all the mutations that constitute and dissolve entities are contained; and the “difficulty in breathing” will designate the instant of cyclical mutation where the entity is at the extreme limit of its possibilities, to the point of extinguishing itself; which brings us back to the symbolism of the semicircle and the cross pointed out by Burckhardt.

We still find many related ideas in the Chinese language. One of them is in the ideogram Wang, ㄤ which designates (Wieger, p. 160), “a man who puts all his weight on his right leg, to make an effort, to jump”. When this ideogram is added with another vertical stroke, at the top, it becomes Wu, 万, "a man who strives against an obstacle, without being able to overcome it; by extension, it means denial, no".

These ideograms, remarkably similar to the Saturn ideogram, are radicals, and from them derive numerous words associated with the idea of impediment, as well as the other symbolic and divinatory meanings of the planet Saturn in astrology: wang, “paralytic”; yu, “evils, calamities, error”; yu, “more, even more”; yu, “censure, condemnation”; po, “to become paralytic”; t’ui, “to become rheumatic”; chien, “stumble”, chiu, “achieve, accomplish”.

VII. Astrology and Astrolatry

Although all my work as a writer and lecturer is closely linked to astrology (though not exclusively), nowadays I feel a certain reluctance to talk about this science because its misuse has created a series of false expectations in people. When I say “misuse,” I am not referring to pure commercialism or the popular horoscopes found in newspapers, which are merely sociological ills; I am referring to the curious and poorly balanced mixture of “scientific” prejudices and pseudo-mystical speculations that form the basic tone of much of today’s writing about astrology – I would even say the prevailing “astrological ideology.” This constitutes a corruption of intelligence, something much more serious than a simple abuse of popular faith. The notion that people have their destinies written in the stars and that pre-knowledge of that destiny can lead to individual “improvement” is not entirely false in itself, but an excessive emphasis on this way of seeing things – mixed with fantastical conceptions of karma, which I will discuss later – can lead to the extinction of all authentic religiosity and the establishment of a new astrolatry.

In large cities, especially among so-called intellectuals, there are now more people willing to believe in horoscopes than in God. This propensity can be partially explained by our civilization’s attachment to sensory evidence: after all, the stars are material bodies, and if we seek a sensible explanation for everything, it is easier to see the causes of phenomena in the movement of the stars rather than in the decrees of an absolutely invisible God.

Moving from a magical-naturalistic understanding to a metaphysical or theological understanding of reality can be as difficult for an adult as it is for a schoolboy to transition from working with wooden cubes and balls to dealing with abstract entities like numbers. Many people cannot make this leap, but it seems that today some individuals are firmly determined to make their deficiency a norm and standard for everyone, forcing us to remain at a sensory level of understanding.

Regarding conceptions of karma, it is clear that planetary configurations are related to it, and studying the horoscope can help in understanding it. However, the problem is that, having been brought up in a Christian or Jewish environment, and therefore tending to view or at least emphasize things from this perspective, we end up seeing the notion of karma in terms of individual responsibility before the Creator, a criterion that absolutely does not apply in this case.

Karma, as defined by Hindu doctrines, is merely the set of objective or circumstantial conditions resulting from the totality of past actions – our actions, those of our parents and grandparents, and the social environment, etc. By assuming karma, we are simply accepting reality as a whole, and this is on a completely different level from the responsibility of a Christian for their conscious and voluntary mistakes, abstracting from mistakes made automatically, as well as mistakes made by others and actions forced by circumstances – in short, abstracting from almost everything that precisely constitutes karma.

However, what happens nowadays is that the poorly balanced mixture of Christian sentiments and Hinduistic concepts causes individuals to lose sight completely of the radical difference between recognizing their own mistakes and recognizing the reality around them. In fact, one of the reasons that can lead a person to be interested in astrology is precisely the desire to find an external explanation for their actions in order to rid themselves of a sense of individual guilt, without realizing that this is only a way to dull the rest of their conscience. In this sense, astrological characterology is just another in a series of sociological, psychological, and so on, explanations – with which people have been trying to prove for a century that they are merely puppets of blind forces.

But while an individual can reject the concept of guilt, they cannot prevent themselves from feeling guilty. The final result of this process is that the more they dull their sense of individual guilt, the more they feel guilty about the reality around them, which they intended to ascribe that guilt to. This puts them in a self-persecution process versus self-blame, a true cerebral short-circuit and one of the most frequent symptoms in “occultist” circles.

This circular self-persecution can lead to insanity, but it can be avoided by a simple decision: either I am a Christian, Jew, or Muslim, and I answer to the Church for my conscious and voluntary mistakes, disentangling myself from any concern about environmental conditions and the actions of my ancestors, or I am a Hindu and I assume the totality of environmental conditions without opposing them in the least but also without raising the question of individual guilt.

Either attitude is correct, as long as the individual identifies as either a Christian or a Hindu. What cannot happen is being both at the same time without falling into moral contradictions that will eventually lead to the collapse of one’s personality. (Moreover, the possibility of being a Hindu is merely theoretical in this case, as “Hindu” is a condition of birth that cannot be acquired; there is no “conversion” to Hinduism.)

Many people who read their horoscopes are merely seeking a “karmic” explanation for their present troubles, hoping to alleviate their guilt and anguish, without realizing that this explanation may lead them to feel guilty about having Saturn in a certain house or Mars in the Ascendant – in other words, shifting them from the realm of real human guilt to that of “magical” and subconscious guilt.

This confusion is currently fueled by several factors, one of which is the prevailing “astrological ideology,” which presents itself as a substitute or simulacrum of true religion, thereby harming both religion and astrology.

I strongly recommend astrology students to carefully study the doctrines of various religions – especially Catholicism, our cultural source – concerning destiny, freedom, and guilt in order to avoid such terrible confusions. It is necessary to learn to distinguish “circumstances” from “guilt” without denying the reality of either.

Contrary to what is commonly thought, astrology, as the study of the relationships between planetary movements and terrestrial and human events, has never been outright “condemned” by the Church. This is evident from the long and beautiful passages in which Saint Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa contra Gentiles, explains the influences of the stars as vehicles of angelic powers.

The Church considered this study to be very dangerous due to the enormous confusion it can generate, given the subtlety of the distinctions it implies, which are far beyond the understanding of those without knowledge of theology, metaphysics, and symbolism. In this, as in everything else, the Church has merely demonstrated its infinite wisdom.

Another point that is too often forgotten is the close relationship between astrology and magic, which is one of the causes of the aforementioned danger and makes the reading of a horoscope have psychic and even bodily consequences that the consultants – or sometimes even their astrologers – cannot even imagine.

For example, symbols are channels that convey psychic forces, whether they belong to the individual’s psyche, their social environment, or the cosmic environment. The continuous focus of the mind on a planetary symbol would be what the old manuals of magic would call “invoking the spirit” of the respective planet. This “spirit,” at best, constitutes a powerful force but is blind, just like any natural force when disconnected from higher spiritual influence. Once the stream of psychic influences linked to that planet has been linked to the individual’s mind, it will trigger very profound personality transformations that are difficult to stop and can spread their consequences far and wide, entirely catastrophically.

In doing so, the individual engenders a process similar to what would technically be termed “obsession.” At the same time, the current social legitimization of astrology may prevent them from seeing the abnormality of their situation, so they do not seek help until it is too late. The only preventive against this is religious faith supported by regular practice.

The number of people entirely hypnotized by the idea of a persecutory planetary configuration is exceptionally large, requiring special care from the astrologer (or psychologist using astrology). In general, it would be better to avoid mentioning technical designations of planets and houses to the client, providing only a generic translation in understandable psychological language, as is done in any form of clinical counseling.

I believe this rule is in line with Saint Thomas Aquinas' recommendation that the astrologer should not be detailed but “speak in general terms.” In order to help the client, they must focus on their life, their person, not magical and incomprehensible symbols. Astrology should serve to assist, not to bewitch.

Such care would be just a small part of what should be demanded of an astrological practice conscious of the possibilities and responsibilities of this art. In fact, in all previous civilizations, the interpretation of horoscopes has always been deeply connected to the structure of social institutions, which acted as a “mediator” between the cosmic environment and the individual. For example, in ancient China, all civic rituals, administration, and economy were regulated by a cyclical pattern similar to that of the stars, so that the astral influence was, so to speak, “directed” and attenuated by society before reaching the individual. In the Christian world, the liturgical cycle, which is not directly governed by the periodicity of the stars but by the infinitely broader symbolism of the life, passion, and death of Jesus Christ, also fulfills this protective function by making man partake in a higher (transcosmic, we could say) cycle that removes him from the direct influence of cosmic forces.

However, modern society has lost all sense of ritual, and the individual is, so to speak, naked and unprotected in the face of the mass of cosmic influences (as well as the tremendous psychic forces that uncontrollably emerge from the depths of the social psyche in an anguished response to these influences). For the individual, this represents a challenge that is absolutely beyond their capacity, and it is no wonder that a populous country like Brazil currently has, according to recent statistics, ten percent of mentally ill individuals (psychotics; not counting neurotics, drug addicts, alcoholics, and mildly disturbed individuals). The rites and symbols of the great traditional religions – Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Islam – still today and always are the only protection that exists, and one does not need to be a statistical expert to observe the correlation between the abandonment of rituals by the masses and the increase in the number of victims of mental illnesses.

The study of astrology, while investigating the cyclicality of natural and psycho-social events, should lead to an awareness of the importance of these rituals, instead of contributing to distancing man from religion and propelling them into the practice of a new astrolatry that will ultimately be nothing more than persecutory fantasy. Our titanic and anti-spiritual “civilization” began with a proud and disproportionate assertion of man’s independence from God. It is ending with a deplorable confession of man’s powerlessness before cosmic forces and the chain of causes and effects in nature.

There is no reason for astrology to contribute to this catastrophe when it can, on the contrary, help in regaining an awareness of true spiritual needs. A book that addresses this issue and is recommended for astrology students is “The Man and Nature” by Seyyed Hossein Nasr (Zahar Editores). The author is an Iranian philosopher and religious scholar, a professor at M.I.T. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). He discusses the relationships between the loss of spirituality and the degradation of the terrestrial environment, or ecological crisis. He also talks about the influence that the loss of understanding of the true nature of sciences such as astrology and alchemy had in this regard, as they precisely emphasize the spiritual or “interior” aspect of nature. He further emphasizes that these sciences cannot be reclaimed outside the framework of authentic spirituality, meaning within the framework of traditional religions.

This warning is more than timely and echoes another, by Marco Pallis in his book “A Buddhist Spectrum”: “Beware of a supposed ‘master’ who offers Sufism without Islam, Tibetan tantric initiation without Buddhism, or the Prayer of Jesus without Christianity.”

Similarly, we could add: beware of anyone offering astrology without metaphysics, without symbolism, without theology.

All traditional sciences of nature – astrology, alchemy, geomancy, etc. – mobilize powerful psychic forces that cannot be governed by the individual’s mind and can only be controlled by God. All treatises on alchemy (which is nothing but operational astrology) clearly insist on the absolute necessity of prayer. And there is no prayer without regular affiliation with a traditional religion.

Henry Corbin, En Islam iranien. Aspects spirituels et philosophiques, Paris, Gallimard, 1971, t. I, p. XXVII.↩
The forms of structuring this set, and therefore the criteria for differentiation between the fields of the different sciences, vary slightly from civilization to civilization. In India, for example, the total corpus is made up of sixteen disciplines, and not ten as in our example, (see René Guénon, Introduction générale à l’étude des doctrines hindoues, Paris, Editions Vega, 1976, pp. 205 ss.). Here I have adopted, for example, the structuring in force in the medieval West, as it is the easiest to understand. It should, however, be completed with one more discipline – alchemy –, but this corresponds to the practical part of which the mentioned disciplinary body is the theoretical basis; so what I say later about the spiritual realization that should complete these studies is a reference to alchemical techniques, understood as spiritual techniques and not as a “chemistry”, see Titus Burckhardt, Alquimie: sa signification et son image du monde, Milano, Arche, 1979.↩
For example, some define astrology as the study of “astral influences” (understood as energy radiations), others as a study of pure “synchronic coincidences”; some see in the stars the causes of our behaviors, others as the projection of our individual or collective psyche. How to suppose that there is some unity in a science that defines its object in such a varied way?↩
“In every operation of a traditional art like astrology intervenes a more or less direct inspiration, and that depends on the participation (of the astrologer) in a spiritual influence (coming from a traditional and orthodox teaching line – N. T.) There is no truly “exact” science without such a “vertical” intervention.” (Titus Burckhardt, Clé spirituelle de l’astrológie musulmane d’après Mohyiddin Ibn Arabi, Milano, Arche, p. 54).↩
Dante Alighieri, Convivio, Treatise II, Chapter XIII (Complete Works), Spanish translation, Madrid. B. A. C. , 1973, pp. 604-605). See also René Guénon, The Esoterism of Dante, Portuguese translation, Lisbon, Vega, 1978, pp. 20 to 23.↩
Boethius, De musica, in Migne, Patristica Latina, v. LXIII. See also Kepler, The harmonies of the world, Book five, trans. Charles Glenn Wallis, Chicago, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952 (col. Great Books of the Western World, vol. 16).↩
René Guénon, La crise du monde moderne, Paris, Gallimmard, 1956.↩
Mircea Eliade, Le mythe de l’éternel retour Gallimard, Paris, 1969, pp. 13 ss.↩
In fact, both the term “traditional” and the term “archaic” can lead to confusion. According to Guénon, traditional civilization is the one where all expressions of life are unified around originating and revealed metaphysical principles. According to Eliade, the archaic man is the one who still lives close to an Edenic situation, therefore to the originating principles (arkhé). Guénon’s definition is technical and rigorous, Eliade’s is more impressionist and psychological.↩
Said in an interview with the French magazine l’Astrologue.↩
The reduction of all the disparate methodologies of current human science to the unity of traditional synthesis is proposed by the great anthropologist Gilbert Durand as a way out of the current “crisis of human sciences” (v. Durand, Science de l’Homme et Tradition, Paris, Tête de Feuilles – Sirac, 1979).↩
Card. Ottaviano, L’ars compendiosa de Raymond Lulle, Paris, Vrin, 1956.↩
Cf. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, An introduction to Islamic cosmological doctrines, London, Thorsonss, 1978, pp. 25-104.↩
Sancti Isidori, Liber numerorum, De natura rerum and De ordine creaturarum liber, in Migne, Patristica latina, v. LXXXIII.↩
Boethius, op. cit., and also, The consolation of philosophy, transl. V. E. Watts, Hamondsworth, Penguin Books, 1978. V. also Edgard de Bruyne, Studies in medieval aesthetics, trad. Armando Suáres, O.P., Madrid, Gredos, 1958, vol. I, pp. 13-43.↩
Cf. Etienne Gilson, La philosophie au Moyen-Age, Paris, Payot, pp. 19-26.↩
Arnold Keyserling, Kritik der organischen Vernunft, Wein, Verlag der Palme, 1970. Unfortunately, Mr. Keyserling, while using some traditional data, forcibly fits them into a Gurdjieffian schematism that undermines his best efforts.↩
See Laleh Bakhtiar, Sufi: expression of the mystic quest, London, Thames & Hudson, 1979, p. 96.↩
One can benefit from consulting the manual by Luc Benoist, O Esoterismo, trans. Fernando G. Galvão, São Paulo, Difel, 1970, or if more in-depth information is desired, study the clear distinctions established by René Guénon in La Crise du monde moderne (op. cit., v. supra, note 7); Le règne de la quantité et les signes des temps, Paris, Gallimard, 1945, and Le théosophisme. Histoire d’une pseudo-religion, Paris, Éditions Traditionnelles, 1978. See also the valuable study presented by Marina Scriabine, under the title “Contre-initiation et contre-tradition” at the 1973 Cerisy-La-Salle International Colloquium on the work of René Guénon (the Proceedings of the Colloquium, under the title René Guénon et láctualité de la pensée traditionelle, were edited by Archè, Milano, era 1976).↩
René Guénon, La Grande Triade, Paris, Gallimard, 1957, pp. 39-45 (Chap. IV, “Yin” and "Yang").↩
René Guénon, Symboles de la science sacrée, Paris, Gallimard, 1962, pp. 395-405 (Chap. LXX, “Coeur et cerveau”).↩
Something quite similar to the sequence of passages from one level to another that we are presenting can be found in Philippe D’Arcy’s book. La Réflexion, Paris, P. U. F. The four stages we have shown correspond respectively to what he calls: 12, the stage of the object; 2a, the stage of the subject; 32; the stage of the Transcendental Ego; 48, the stage of the Sun or the stage of the luminous medium; these correspond to the four types of reasoning - identity, cause and effect, analogy, convenience - pointed out by Eugène Caslant in Les bases élémentaires de l’astrologie, Paris, Éditions Traditionelles, 1976, Vol. I, Chap. II, pp. 21-22.↩
Henri Bergson, Introduction à la métaphysique, in Oeuvres, Paris, P. U. F., 1970, pp. 1392 et seq.↩
Gaston Bachelard, Le nouvel esprit scientifique, Paris, P. U. F.↩
For example, Bertrand Russell in his A History of Western Philosophy, translated into Portuguese, São Paulo, Nacional, Vol. III.↩
The issue of the difference between a geocentric symbolism and a heliocentric symbolism will be addressed later.↩
Susanne K Langer, An introduction to symbolic logic, New York, Dover, 1967, p. 21 ss.↩
Gaston Bachelard, A poética do espaço, trad. bras. , São Paulo, Abril.↩
Rodolfo Hinostroza, El sistema astrológico, Madrid, Alianza Editorial.↩
In Edgard de Bruyne, Studies, op. cit., vol. II, p. 216.↩
Michel Foucault, Les mots et les choses, Paris, Gallimard, 1966, pp. 32-59.↩
The Universal Man is the prototype of humanity, the model according to which, according to all traditions, the universe was structured. In Christianity, it is both the old Adam and the “new Adam,” Jesus Christ. See, in this regard, René Guénon, Le symbolisme de la croix, Paris, Véga, and, from the perspective of exclusively Islamic doctrines, 'Abd al-Karim al-Jili, De l’homme universel, trans. and commentary by Titus Burckhardt, Paris, Dervy-Livres, 1975.↩
V. De Bruyne, op. et loc. cit.↩
id., ibid.↩
Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, ed. Carcedo-Sierra, Madrid, Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1968, L. III, Cap. 82 to 85.↩
“Its procedures (of astrology) have, on the one hand, a character of an exact deduction or of a calculation, and suppose, on the other hand, an intuition ‘from above’ that captures the unique quality of each emerging form from the combinations. Whereas the deduction, or combination, is substantial or horizontal, the recognition of the uniqueness of each resultant is essential or ‘vertical’. In every operation of a traditional art like astrology, therefore, there is a more or less direct inspiration, which generally depends on a participation in a spiritual influence. Besides, there is no truly ‘exact’ science without such a ‘vertical’ intervention.” (Titus Burckhardt, Clé spirituelle de l’astrológie musulmane d’après Mohyiddin Ibn Arabi, Milano, Arche, 1974, p. 54).↩
Burckhardt, op. cit. , pp. 12-18; on the hierarchies of being in the Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity, from Basra (9th century AD), see Seyyed Hossein Nasr, An introduction to Islamic cosmological doctrines, London, Thames 4 Hudson, 1978, pp. 66 et seq.; in the “illuminationist” school of Sohravardi, see Henry Corbin, En Islam Iranien. Aspects spirituels et philosophiques, Paris, Gallimard, 1971, vol. 11, p. 94. See also, as to hierarchies in Christianity, Saint Isidore of Seville, De ordine creaturarum liber, in Migne, Patrologia Latina, vol. LXXXIII.↩
See Chapter II.↩
Symbolism can be seen, therefore, either as the objectification of the Spirit or as a tool for re-ascent towards the Spirit. See, on this subject, Nicolas Berdiaeff, Esprit et réalité, Paris, Aubier-Montaigne, 1950, pp. 80-85.↩
See on this subject the Narrative of the Empurpled Archangel by Sohravardi, in Henry Corbin, op. cit., vol: II, pp. 246 ss. and The Man of light in iranian sufism, trans. Nancy Jearson, London, Shamballa, 1978, pp. 1-13.↩
The “paralyzation” here refers to the symbolism of the end of planetary rotations and translations at the “end of times”, and therefore to the symbolism of the “squaring of the circle” as the passage from the “Earthly Paradise” to the “Celestial Jerusalem” at the end of the cycle. See René Guénon, La Règne de la qualité et les signes des temps, Paris, Gallimard, 1950, Cap. XX, p. 186 ss.↩
See the narrative of the two planetary journeys, that of the “rationalist investigator” and the “fervent believer”, in the work of Mohyddin Ibn Arabi, L’Alchimie du bonheur parfait, trans. Stéfane Ruspoli, Paris, Berg International, 1981.↩
Jacques de Voragine, La Legende Dorée, French translation, Paris, Rouveyre, 1902, and Garnier-Flammarion.↩
Henri Bergson, Introduction à la méthaphisique, in Oeuvres, éd. Robinet, Paris, P. U. F., 1970, pp. 1430-1431.↩
"The Sakïna in Sohravardi and in the mystics related to him is essentially the feeling of a Presence attested by a Sign or Signs, whose perception does not concern the common organs of sensory perception but the spiritual senses ordered to the perception of the intermediary or imaginal world… It is precisely this idea… of the quietude of the soul as unshakable certainty of faith in the things seen by the soul…". Henri Corbin, op. cit., vol. II, p. 37.↩
Cf. Frithjof Schuon, L’Oeil du coeur, Paris, Dervy-Livres, 1974, pp. 13-19, and also Henry Corbin, The man of Light, English translation, op. cit.; René Guénon, Aperçus sur l’ésotérisme islamique et le Taoïsme, Paris, Gallimard, 1973, pp. 42-43.↩
Eric Weil, Logique de la philosophie, Paris, Vrin, 1967, insists, on the contrary, on the ethical, pedagogical, and ultimately sapiential meaning that justifies the philosophical pursuit of discourse coherence. This is not an end in itself, nor the highest realization of knowledge.↩
Ismênia J. Veber, Fundamentos de Wu-Chu (T’ai chi Chuen), São Paulo, Academia Kan-Non, 1977. The current popularity of t’ai chi imposes the duty to remind its practitioners that this practice, by itself, and separate from regular affiliation with an orthodox religion, does not lead to any spiritual realization, of any kind, and even the psychic results it may produce (including the development of certain extrasensory perceptions) hold no spiritual significance if they do not correspond to genuine progress in the religious and moral improvement of the disciple. T’ai chi is an alchemical practice and thus follows the rule so well formulated by Titus Burckhardt: “There can be no free-thinking and religion-hostile alchemy, for the first requirement of every spiritual art is the acknowledgment of everything the human condition, in its situation of superiority and danger, needs for its salvation.” (Alquimia, Spanish translation, Barcelona, Plaza & Janes, 1976, pp. 20-21.) Under no pretext should this point be distorted.↩
Cf. Fabre d’Olivet, The Hebraic tongue restored, English translation, New York, Samuel Weiser, 1978, pp. 93-98.↩
Titus Burckhardt, op. cit., pp. 31-37. It should be noted, in passing, that the number 7 is the ratio between the number of cardinal points and lunar days, and it is also the number of planets (visible, i.e., the only ones that count in traditional astrology). Thus, the cycle of lunar mansions represents a framing of the planetary cycles, a static summary of the totality of their possibilities. While the lunar cycle is extensive and analytical in relation to the Solar cycle, it is intensive and synthetic in relation to the planetary cycles.↩
“Separate the earth from the fire, the subtle from the dense, gently and with great prudence,” the seventh phase of the alchemical work according to the Emerald Tablet. V. Titus Burckhardt, Alchimie. Sa signification et son image du monde, Milano, Arche, 1979, pp. 198-201.↩
Cf. –Edgard de Bruyne, Estúdios de estética medieval, 3 vols., Spanish translation, Madrid, Gredos, 1958; Dante, O Convite, Tratado II, Cap. XIII: “Similarities between the heavens and the sciences” (Spanish translation, Madrid, Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1973, pp. 604-609); René Guénon, O esoterismo de Dante, Portuguese translation, Lisbon, Vega, 1978, pp. 22-23.↩
Henry Corbin, Philosophie Iranienne et philosophie comparée, Téhéran, Académie Impériale de Philosophie, 1977, p. 60; and En Islan Iranien, op. cit., p. 43 ss.↩
Corbin, in addition to those mentioned: Corps spirituel et terre céleste, Paris, Buchet-Chastel, 1979; Histoire de la philosophie islamique. Des origines à la mort d’Averroës, Paris, Gallimard, 1974; L’Imagination créatice dans le soufisme d’Ibn Arabi, Paris, Flammarion, 1977, etc.↩
cit. in René Wellek & Austin Warren, Theory of literature, New York, Hartcourt Brace & World, 1956, pp. 161 ff.↩
Nicolas Berdiaeff, L’Esprit de Dostoievski, Paris, S. C. E. L. , s/d; Guénon, O esoterismo de Dante op. cit. ; Gilbert Durand, Le décor mythique de la “Chartreuse de Parme” , Paris, Corti, 1971.↩
For example, Rupert Gleadow, Les origines du Zodiaque, French translation, Paris, Stock, 1971, p. 15.↩
I have already pointed out that a shift in focus from the meaning to the pure and simple bodily substrate of the signifier is considered an index of weakening psychic faculties when it occurs in an isolated individual. However, when it happens on a collective scale, affecting a significant part of the literate community and imposing itself as a true methodological norm of mandatory dulling of intelligence, there seems to be nothing particularly dangerous about this phenomenon. And what is the attachment to the “concrete fact,” understood in all its massive corporeality, if not a confession of cerebral fatigue and horror at subtleties? And what do certain current lines of thought, such as “concrete” poetics and linguistic automation studies, represent other than a kind of theoretical codification of the loss of mental tone and the capacity for synthesis necessary for the understanding of all symbolism? A deeper study of this phenomenon, more alarming than catastrophic, would require an examination of the properly “counter-initiatic” content of these lines of thought, a study that was only lightly outlined by Marina Scriabine in her brilliant work on modern counter-initiation, presented at the 1971 Colloquium of Cerisy-La-Salle on René Guénon et l’actualité de la pensée traditionelle (proceedings edited by Archè, Milan, 1980).↩
The duality of “bicho” and “animal” is a subtlety of the Portuguese language. “Bicho” comes from Vulgar Latin besche, which also gave rise to bicha and besta, forming, in a way, distinct qualitative gradations of animality (calling a human a “bicho” or a “besta” is offensive), a distinction that seems not to exist in many other languages. This is relevant because these gradations are outside the scope of zoology but not of ontology, which is what interests us here. I found the etymology of “bicho” in Augusto Magne, A Demanda do Santo Graal, vol. III, Glossário, Rio, INL, 1944.↩
Moreover, when speaking of zoon, one must avoid the confusions that may arise from the current connotation of the term “zoology.” In fact, the subsequent evolution in the use of the derived term could not possibly affect the original meaning of its etymology. However, when translating zoon as “animal,” what are we doing if not attributing to archaic Greek a delimiting and classificatory intention that did not arise until Buffon laid the foundations of zoology as an independent study in the 18th century? At the very least, it should be acknowledged that the zoological sense of the term “animal” only began to take shape from Aristotle onward. But don’t we all know the accidental tendency, noted by Heidegger, to “Aristotelize” everything written in Greece before Aristotle?↩
The observations about the undue assimilation of a modern sense to the word zoon also apply to bíos, which has nothing to do with modern biology.↩
Hippocrates, Sacred Disease; Theophrastus, Characters; Aristotle, On Divination through Dreams (464a).↩
The loss of the concept of the imaginal in the West came along with Descartes' reduction of all reality to the dualism of soul and body, res cogitans and res extensa, a drastic and abusive simplification that replaced the intricate and subtle network of levels and planes recognized by medieval philosophers, as well as by all traditional doctrines, with a single pair of concepts. It is possible that Descartes himself did not attach so much importance to this duality and saw it merely as a provisional and partial nomenclature. However, his successors transformed it into a literal and formal dogma, leading to what Gilbert Durand called the “metaphysical catastrophe of the West,” namely, the loss of the dimension of the imaginal and the symbolic: after Descartes, everything lacking corporeality and extension was systematically thrown into the realm of the mental and the subjective, i.e., the unreal. See Durand, Science de l’homme et Tradition (Paris, Tête-de-Feuilles, 1975, pp. 29ss.).↩
V, Henry Corbin, L’Imagination créatrice dans le soufisme d’Ibn Arabi, 2nd ed., Paris, Flammarion, 1958; En Islam Iranien. Aspects spirituels et philosophiques, 4 vols., Paris, Gallimard, 1971; L’Homme de lumière dans le soufisme iranien, Paris, Librairie de Médicis, 1971, etc.↩
I earnestly ask the reader not to confuse such disciplines with any of the modern techniques of “expanding consciousness,” mediumship, telepathy, clairvoyance, etc. If the modern man, in his normal state, is already lacking Active Imagination, the only result that such trendy “techniques” achieve is to dull what little capacity he has left to acquire it. In contrast, the common prayer of the faithful of any Church is closer to reaching the mundus imaginalis than any supposed “occult teaching” that one might find in the modern spiritual supermarket. Moreover, the true disciplines of concentration, leading to the awakening of Active Imagination, are precisely based on an extension and deepening of the possibilities of prayer, provided, of course, that it is canonical and regulated prayer of a genuine religion. Cf. Corbin, L’Imagination créatrice op. cit.↩
On the astrological conceptions of Saint Thomas Aquinas, see chapter III of this book.↩
Hugo of St. Victor (in Migne, P. L. CLXXVI, 199) seems to admit only two types of astrology, the superstitious and the natural (scientific). However, his own work demonstrates deep knowledge of symbolism, and on the other hand it is clear that only real facts, scientifically proven, can be the object of symbolic interpretation, since what does not exist cannot symbolize anything; so that symbolic astrology presupposes natural astrology. As the idea, essentially nineteenth-century, that simple facts could exist by themselves, without meaning anything more, would never occur to the medieval man, it is then clear that Hugo, when mentioning only two types, implicitly assumes the existence of a third.↩
René Guénon, La Grande Triade, Paris, Gallimard, 1957, Chap. XIII, esp. pp. 117-119.↩
Nicolas Berdiaeff, Esprit e Realité, Paris, Aubin, 1950, p. 147.↩
Frithjof Schuon (Esotericism as Principle and as Way, Paris, Dervy-Livres, 1978, p. 142 and n. l) gives a brief indication on the “leveling up” of fate in the spiritual path.↩
It also deals with the symbolism of lead as a “compact”, “opaque” and “disorganized” metal. V. Titus Burckhardt, Alchemy, Meaning and Image of the World, trans. Ana M. de La Fuente, Barcelona, Plaza y Janes, 1976, pp. 97-98.↩
Susanne K. Langer, Philosophical Essays, trans. Jamir Martins, São Paulo, Cultrix, 1971, Cap. Ill, esp. p. 64.↩
Cf. Titus Burckhardt, An Introduction to Sufi Doctrines, trans. D. M. Matrheson, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, Thorsons, 1976, Chap. XI, pp. 93-98.↩
Jean-Charles Pichon, History of Myths, Paris, Payot, 1971, pp. 14-20.↩
Cf. Mário Ferreira dos Santos, Pythagoras and the Theme of Number, São Paulo, Matese, 2nd ed., 1965, pp. 167-181.↩
Keith Critchlow, Islamic Patterns. An analytical and cosmological approach, foreword by Seyyed Hossein Nasr, London, Tames and Hudson, 1976, p. 9.↩
Titus Burckhardt, Alchemy: Meaning and Image of the World, trans. Ana M. De la Fuente, Barcelona, Plaza y Janes, 1976, pp. 87-101.↩
Marco Pallis, The Way and the Mountain, trans. Hector Morel, Buenos Aires, Kier, 1973, pp. 13-35.↩
The work of Prof. Veber - totally unpublished until today consists of class handouts given at the Kan-Non Academy, in São Paulo.↩
L. Wieger, S. J., Chinese Characters. Their origin, Etymology History, classification and signification. A thorough study from Chinese documents, transi, by L. Davrout, 5. 3. , New York, Dover Books, 1965.↩

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Wednesday, July 26, 2023

Stars and Symbols, by Olavo de Carvalho