Dane Rudhyar on Astrology, the Eternal, the Sacred and the Profane

by Robert Wilkinson

Dane Rudhyar, one of the greatest astrologers of all time, said something profound about astrology in the last part of his masterwork, An Astrological Mandala, where he reinterpreted the Sabian Symbols used by so many in our craft. Today is a tiny but significant piece from that work.

I last gave this to you about 4 years ago, and added an insight at the end. For your consideration, from the section titled “The Symbolic Life,” the words of the venerable Rudhyar (with paragraph breaks added for easy reading).

The significance of astrology is that it can transform the profane into the sacred, the facts of astronomy into the revelation of a cosmic order manifest in the cell and the human person as well as in the solar system and the galaxy. To try to make astrology a “science” based on empirical facts and statistics is to deny its essential and ancient nature. Astrology deals with the mythos of the Sky. The elements it uses are archetypes.

Therefore, to live one’s life in terms of the revelatory message symbolically implied in one’s birth chart is to live a life in terms of the “sacred” character of existence. It does not mean to feel oppressed by “bad” aspects or elated by “good” ones. It does not mean to avoid confrontation with existential facts and to escape into fanciful dreams of pseudo-occult transcendence. It demands instead that life be lived strictly on the basis of non-escapism - that is, an attitude of acceptance of what is, but an “is” that remains transparent to the “eternal.”

Alas, the words “eternity” and “eternal” have been made to refer to an escape from minds haunted by a desperate urge to transcend biological and intellectual compulsions, just as nirvana in its popular sense has been equated with a concept of negation and annihilation. These perversions are at the root of the deepest tragedies that mankind is now experiencing. An eternity is a complete cycle of time. The consciousness which can perceive things and events in their eternal nature is one which sees every happening as definitely related to a particular phase of some more or less vast cycle of existence.

And from a little later in this chapter:

Our Western society, witnessing the disintegration of the great Images which once gave archetypal value to its so often tragic enterprises and its fanatic crusades and revolutions, finds itself hypnotized today by the chaotic contingencies of an almost totally profane collective living. References to archetypal values are mocked by our middle-aged and so often obsolescent intelligentsia.

Yet during the last years [Ed: the late 1960s and early 1970s] a remarkable surge of interest in at least what passes for “eternal” values, and in many techniques of personal or transpersonal transformation, has occurred. A growing number of individuals are seeking, often desperately, to restructure lives disjointed and disconnected from the now-profaned sanctuaries of man’s inner life…..

… But archetypal principles are not to be discovered by returning to a mythical, sacred past. The “eternal” is now; the cycle – the Eon – surrounds us. We live in it, just as the space of the galaxy pervades every cell of our bodies.

It is not to be sought in glamorous Aboves or Elsewheres. There is no essential difference between the sacred and the profane, the symbolic and the real, nirvana and samsara. What differs are our attitudes to events, inner or outer. What we must change is our frame of reference – and to avoid accepting or refusing to believe in any frame of reference is still to have a negative one. The atheist who denies God merely affirms in reverse.

It is all a question of inner attitude. To the consciousness that has realized the existence of cycles and is able to shift gears from the profane to the sacred, the whole of living become imbued with the magic of eternity. Every event is accepted as a necessary phase in the ritual process of existence radiating at every moment the significance and inner peace that wells out from the security of knowing oneself to be an essential and operative part of a vast cyclic whole.

Live your Eternal Sacred Self in the Now of worldly existence. Make each realization attained an exercise in living as a Spirit in the material world, having human experiences. We are all merest specks of sparks of Light in an ocean of Light/Life. We each have our part to sing in the Cosmic Choir. “The magic of eternity” is not outside you; and as it was famously sung, “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.”

© Copyright 2020 Robert Wilkinson

Comments

[Nic]

What a beautiful piece of writing and thought. Perspective provided in every paragraph.

Blessings be to all.