Guest guest Posted January 1, 2000 Report Share Posted January 1, 2000 [i began scanning this to answer a question about the Age of Aquarius, but I found it very interesting, so maybe you will too. It's from Dane Rudhyar's book, _Occult Preparations for a New Age_,1975. This is part of his Chapter 7, "Planetary and Social Cycles." I'll also send his last chapter.] -------- These general remarks were necessary to establish what, to me, is a sound approach to the study of all cyclic processes. It is impossible here to deal with the many cycles considered significant by both the Occultist and the astrologer concerned with planetary changes, the growth of nations and the various periods marking the development of human civilizations. In my book _Astrologicul Timing: The Transition to a New Age_ (Harper and Row, N.Y., paperback) the cycle of the precession of the equinoxes (with its twelve Ages) and the cycles of relationship established by the successive conjunctions of the larger planets (beginning with Jupiter and Saturn, and stressing more particularly the complex interplay between the revolutions of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto) have been studied with their historical correlations. The interested reader has to be referred to this book, as the subject is much too vast to be discussed here. It seems valuable nevertheless to point out that the precessional cycle (lasting around 25,900 years - a length that presumably varies slightly with each cycle) constitutes the third of the main cyclic motions of our globe - the two others being its daily rotation around the polar axis, and its yearly revolution around the Sun. This precessional cycle, as usually described in astrology, refers to the retrograde displacement of the equinoxes with reference to zodiacal constellations, which are supposed to be "fixed" (the fixed stars) but actually change shape very slowly. As the equinoxes represent the two moments during the year when the Sun sets exactly west and when days and nights are of equal length, this means that, _at the spring equinox_, the Sun today has moved away from a star with which it was in exact conjunction several centuries ago. Actually, however, this movement of the equinoxes in relation to the fixed stars is only the secondary result of a cyclic motion of the polar axis of the Earth, a gyrating motion, because of which the North pole points successively to stars forming a cosmic circle. In other words, the _orientation_ of the polar axis slowly changes during a period approximating that of the cycle of precession of the equinoxes; it is also a cyclic change, and evidently a very significant one because it is along the line of a prolonged polar axis that _galactic forces_ are said to enter the e!ectromagnetic field of our planet's organism. This polar axis may be compared to the erect spine of man; and any student of esoteric philosophy and yoga has heard of the importance of this spinal axis in the occult process of development of consciousness, called in India _Kundalini Yoga_. The North and South poles of the Earth can thus be compared to the ends of the human spine, the Root Chakra in the region of the coccyx and the center at the top of the cranium, while the Earth's equator refers to the diaphragm and the region of the solar plexus. Changes in the orientation of the polar axis bring this spinal column of our globe in direct alignment with a succession of "pole stars," and thus with a specific region of the galaxy - which, for man, represents at least symbolically the Spiritual World, the world of divine Hierarchies. As I stated in my first book on astrology, _The Astrology of Personality_ (first edition, 1936: _A Key to Astrological Symbolism_ pp. 179 and 191 et seq.) it may be that the Great Polar cycle is most significantly divided into 7 periods of close to 3700 years each. Another possible division is also suggested in _The Secret Doctrine_ (first edition, Vol. 2, page 505): a division of the Great Cycle (often referred to as "the great Tropical Year") into 370 "Days," each lasting seventy normal years. However, as astrology, at least in its popular aspect, deals primarily with the vital forces represented by the Sun, and as the zodiac - a creation of the apparent motion of the Sun - is the basis for most astrological measurements, the gyration of the polar axis has remained mostly unnoticed, even though it is the most basic movement. And not only has the whole attention of the people been focused on the precession of the equinoxes, but the peculiar idea that, as a new Age opens, the Sun successively "enters" Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, etc., has become popularized, though if stated in such a simplistic and inaccurate manner, it makes no sense whatever. There are other less important or secondary motions of the globe; moreover the shape of the orbit of the Earth undergoes some very slow periodical alterations. But these periods are very large and are not used because it is not possible to experience them, or even their sub-divisions. A celestial phenomenon which cannot be measured in terms of an easily available frame of reference, whose recurrence is too rare to be a collective human experience, cannot serve a useful purpose as a "word" in the symbolic "language" of astrology. Yet to the Occultist it could be a most meaningful indication of a cosmic or planetary process, if it has been so regarded in the accumulated group-wisdom of an occult Brotherhood existing for millennia. As I see it, a Great Cycle for the precession of the equinoxes began around 100 B.C., and as it lasts some 2160 years it will end in less than a century around 2060 A.D. Its seed period, being a tenth of the cycle, began around 1844. That was the year in which a young Persian Prophet announced the end of the Islamic era and the beginning of a New Age of which the Avatar (or "Divine Manifestation") was about to reveal himself - a revelation which came nineteen years later when one of his original followers proclaimed himself Baha'u'llah (meaning the Glory of God), the Expected One. In 1846 Neptune was discovered and in 1848 the Communist manifesto began the movement that has changed human history; American Spiritualism also began, and the Industrial Revolution, through the spread of the railroads and the invention of the telegraph, reached a more concrete and world transforming stage. Thus the transition that at the existential level will eventually lead to the new Aquarian Age has begun. Yet, referring to what has already been stated, this means that _at the spiritual-archetypal level_ the new cycle itself has already started with a release of cosmic power and archetypal Images. That release of power is slowly making its way "downward," producing a radical upheaval in all institutions and cultural forms which had been developing during the Piscean Age, especially since the mid-point of that Age, around 980 A.D. and after the great crisis of the year 1000. We shall once more consider the character of this "descent" of creative, transforming power in the chapter concluding this book, but now we have briefly to discuss another kind of cycle, a cycle whose origin is no longer based on a motion of the Earth, but on a sociocultural-religious factor, the calendar: the Century Cycle. It should be clear that when we speak of the nineteenth or twentieth century, we have reference to periods the beginning of which depends on the kind of calendar being used. These are solar and lunar calendars, and each calendar is made to begin on a certain date in the more or less distant past. That memorable date usually refers to some event of a religious nature or, in some cultures, to a specific cosmic event. However, the date is always selected after the event occurs. By selecting it, a particular religion and culture, as it were, returns to its actual or symbolical source, that is, to the original creative Impulse from which it claims to descend. The figure characterizing a particular century indicates therefore how distant from this point of origin a society and its culture find themselves - and perhaps how spiritually remote from the creative moment they are. We are dealing here, in a sense at least, with the occult power of numbers. What is important is the number the century carries - whether it is the sixteenth or the nineteenth after the point of origin. The meaning of these numbers has also much to do with the expectable length of the total cycle, or life span, of the society. One hundred years for a cosmic entity lasting a million of years is a very short period; but for a civilization whose life span may be only two or three millennia, the century period may have a meaning similar to that which the year cycle has for the living organisms of the Earth's biosphere. The biospheric cycle of the year is a basic period for all that refers to the vegetable kingdom, and particularly for all that concerns the _cultivation_ of living organisms. Similarly the century cycle appears to have much importance in the development of human _cultures_ at the level of social institutions, styles of life and artistic creation, and collective psychological trends. What we call "culture" is the product of the "cultivation" of human traits and special values; both processes, biological and (collectively) psychological, aim at improving the type of organism they deal with - whether it be the production of beautiful roses and large chrysanthemums through breeding and the use of special chemicals, or the formation of a social aristocracy with refined manners, esthetic tastes, keener minds and, at the religious level, more spiritual aspirations and controlled instinctual urges. It is in this sense that we should think of the value of a century-long period of sociocultural development, and of the possibility of significantly subdividing it so that every decade of the century may be given some sort of general archetypal meaning - just as any year of the seven year cycle in an individual life acquires some basic significance from the mere fact of its being a first, fourth, or seventh year. If we look back at the development of European culture we may readily see that each century can be broadly characterized by a few typical movements and features of the collective Euro-mind. The fifteenth century witnessed the growth of Humanism and the beginning of great voyages which established the global reality of mankind. The sixteenth century produced the Renaissance and the Reformation, the seventeenth century, Classicism and the rationalistic and mathematical foundations of modern science. The eighteenth century was the Age of Enlightenment, of Free Masonry and the Revolutionary Spirit; and the nineteenth century gave birth to Romanticism, Humanitarianism, and the Industrial Revolution. Our twentieth century is the epoch of the World Wars, of the Electronic Revolution and atomic power - an epoch now coming to a still uncertain seed culmination as the last quarter of the century begins. Each century the basic attitude of our Western society has changed quite radically, and new concepts and social-cultural institutions have developed. The line of demarcation between successive centuries is certainly not clear-cut; yet if one tries to see through and beyond, and at the core of, the complexity of outer happenings and changes of fashion, one should be able to discover a seed reality (or archetype) underlying and undertoning the most characteristic developments in each century. One really can speak here of a "seed" if one compares the development of a century culture to that of the yearly vegetation. A spiritual and (at least in our Euro-American civilization) occult power is released that is to the culture what the seed is to the annual plant. It is a power, a keynote. A particular quality of "being-in-the-world," a typical approach to interpersonal and social relationships and to religion and morality, emerges out of that key-vibration, as grains of sand spread uniformly on a thin metal plate form into geometrical patterns when the plate is made to vibrate under the impact of a tone. A culture is the product of the collective mind of a racial or national organism; and this mind is set in vibration by a few creative individuals. These in turn often are the conscious, half-conscious, or unconscious "agents" of higher Forces and Intelligences which are set in operation _by the need of the time_; that is to say, by the fact that a time has come in mankind's evolution for certain qualities, faculties, and powers to come to the fore. Such creative individuals are "seed men," releasing "seed ideas" to fecundate the minds of their or succeeding generations - and we shall speak further of them. These seed ideas, at the proper time, germinate and manifest as cultural forms and institutions. If we understand such a process in its essential structural time sequence, we can then relate it to the statement made by H. P. Blavatsky that, at least since the fourteenth century, the Occult Brotherhoods - or some of them - have made a definite effort _during the last quarter of each century_ to fecundate the collective consciousness of Western mankind with specific types of transforming spiritual energy and with related seed ideas. If H. P. B. is correct and the last quarter of each century has been the time of sowing spiritual seeds at the level of man's culture, then it follows that this last quarter corresponds to the Fall in the year cycle. We can therefore divide the century cycle in four "seasons," each lasting twenty-five years; and the century can be said to begin at the moment when the new vibration, which its main number indicates, takes hold of the collective mentality of our Western men and women. The century's "winter" lasts from January 1, 1900 to January 1, 1925; then its "spring" extends from 1925 to 1950, its summer from 1950 to 1975, and its fall from 1975 to January 1, 2000. It was in 1900, and not as some would say 1901, that the twentieth century began because what counts is the focusing of the collective mind upon the number 19. Besides, there never was a Year 1, as the Christian Era was established long after that year would have occurred. The correspondence between the seasons of the year and the four quarters of the century is logical so far as our Western world is concerned, for we begin the year after the winter solstice; thus we should also start our centuries with their winter period. It is also just before Christmas that a line drawn from the Earth to the Sun would point to the center of the galaxy - the astrological symbol of the divine Creative Power. H. P. B.'s claim that at the beginning of the last quarter of each century a "Messenger" from the Occult Lodge has appeared and sought to influence the mind of Europe is rather difficult to prove; yet if we look back to what happened at the corresponding time in preceding centuries we can perceive significant traces of such developments. The Theosophical Society was formed in N.Y. in 1875 and marked the definite beginning of H.P.B.'s public work as an emissary of the trans-Himalayan Brotherhood. France's defeat in 1871 and the rise of a powerful Germany produced one of the most fundamental factors in the future development of the Western world during the twentieth century, as it led directly to our two World Wars. Before the nineteenth century ended, the discovery of X-Rays and radium, then Planck's Quantum Theory and, at the psychological level, Freud's revolutionary ideas, also set the stage for the two other most significant developments in our present century: (1) the Electronic Revolution and Atomic Power, and (2) the fantastic growth of concern with man's neuro-psychological problems and the development and/or transcendence of his ego. In 1776 the Declaration of Independence and France's Revolution struck the keynotes of various attempts at transforming the social-political life. This fall period of the eighteenth century saw the earliest application of new discoveries: on which the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century was based. According to H. P. B. and some of her later disciples, the mysterious Comte de Saint-Germain was the main guide in the occult operations which took place at that time; and he has been considered the head of the Hungarian Lodge of Adepts, whose earlier work was related to the original Rosicrucian Movement. Anton Mesmer, as we already saw, also started a movement of great importance that influenced a number of leaders during the nineteenth century. What occurred at an occult level during the last quarter of the seventeenth century is not too clear, but Locke in England brought forth new ideas in political theory which greatly affected the attitude of the French Encyclopedists and American leaders. The Masonic Movement may have been p]anned in some secret groups, leading to its public emergence in 1717 as a powerful sociocultural force. And there were most important years in the earliest development of the American Colonies (King Philip's War, William Penn in Pennsy]vania, etc.). The last quarter of the sixteenth century was the last part of the Elizabethan Age, in which Francis Bacon and Shakespeare were reaching maturity, while France was torn by religious war between Cathoiics and Huguenots. The first unsuccessful English attempts to colonize the East coast of America failed, but soon afterward the Virginia Colony was a success (1607). The last quarter of the fifteenth century saw the beginning of the Italian Renaissance and, at its close, the "discovery" of America and other "great voyages." And, according to the occult tradition, the Rosicrucian Movement began at the end of the fourteenth century. When we deal with the seed which falls into the ground at the theoretical fall equinox we refer, by definition, to a more or less hidden or occult process. The more materialistic a civilization and the more dominated it is by powerful and oppressive religious or political institutions, the more difficult it is for spiritual impulses to take public forms. They have to operate through the minds, and even the passions, of individual leaders or creative persons who are normally not conscious of the source of their inspiration; they also affect the collective mind of the society in a less focused manner. As the new century begins, what has been started at the mental or occult level becomes affected by two types or trends: the seed ideas become popularized and often vulgarized and their consequences are being applied, at least in the more progressive circles; on the the other hand, the karmic momentum of the collective forces released during the now ended century relentlessly pursue their course. Thus, in our century we have the Russo-Japanese war, symbol of the rise of the non-European people, and World War I which resulted from the conflict between the great national entities who, during the nineteenth century, had been impelled by the results of the Industrial Revolution to expand in a competitive egocentric manner in search of raw materials and new markets for their industrial products. A century earlier, the Napoleonic era marked an expansion of the forces that triumphed in the French Revolution under the leadership of a great military and managerial genius who became a model for what later became the powerful Executive type in politics or business - the Caesar type of national leader. Such a type replaced that of the "King of divine right" or the divinely appointed Emperor of the medieval tradition - religious authority having now become secular power, yet power linked, in the mind of the person wielding it, with a "star," a celestial or evolutionary Destiny. The spring quarter of the century seems to bring out a collective, emotional reaction to what has just occurred. After the fall of Napoleon Europe witnessed a regressive and conservative political movement; but the seed-ideas of the 18th century began to pierce this heavy reactionary trend, leading to an upsurge of Romantic and revolutionary fervor climaxing in the late forties. Romantic poets, novelists, musicians, artists flourished. And the frustrated revolutionary mass-movement of the popular aspect of the French Revolution, transformed eventually by the impact of the now spreading Industrial Revolution, was reborn into the Proletarian Movement of Marxist Communism just before the "summer" period of the I9th century began. In our present century, 1925 saw the emotional revolt against Puritanism and the traditional position of women resulting in what is often called the Jazz Age. The power of American industry and finance soared to new heights. Soviet Russia began its amazing rise to power after nearly total devastation. China and India had begun to move toward a completely new future, and Japan dominated East Asia. The Theosophical Movement as such may seem to have no connection whatsoever with Asia's awakening; its founder had been discredited in the eyes of many, and the organization she inspired had split into several fragments. Yet the seed also splits as germination occurs. What is important is that in the last part of the nineteenth century, a spotlight of consciousness had been aimed at the occult wisdom and power of Asia, and that some of the seed concepts released at that time had begun to take root in the collective Euro-American mind. The second World War increasingly involved America's youth in Asia. At the same time the earlier revolutionary ideals of eighteenth century America and of the beginnings of Communist Russia became crystallized, and these two nations, armed with atomic power, faced each other in the cold war - somewhat as France under Napoleon III faced Prussia under Bismarck before 1870. Ghastly as atomic power is in its destructive aspect, this very fact has, during recent crises, prevented a global repetition of the Franco-German war. Atomic power is an occult form of power, as it deals with normally invisible forces which, unnoticed, can destroy all life (radioactivity, fallout, genetic mutation, etc.). But it is not the only danger confronting the world, as we now are beginning to realize. More subtle, because more widespread and more difficult to control, are the effects of pollution at two levels: the pollution of the biosphere (air, water, soil), and that of the mind and feeling-responses of the masses of mankind under the deleterious pressures of masterful propaganda directed by intellectuals and technocrats without moral responsibilty and sense of spiritual values. Polarizing this official type of thinking and the immense power of vested interests all over the world, we find the often confused and unsteady protest of youth, and the growth of a vast number of groups intensely (but usually not too discriminatingly) concerned with super-normal, parapsychological, occult and mystical phenomena. As this "summer" season of the twentieth century is ending, the most significant conflict is taking place in the field of consciousness. It is an occult conflict which can best be characterized and symbolized by the biological fact that, as the seed takes form within the fruit, the annual plant begins to crystallize and die. The presence of the seed kills the plant. The future destroys the rigidly institutionalized power-patterns of a past which refuses to realize its obsolescence. This occurred in the eighteenth century when, just before the "fall" season of the century began in 1775, the old privileged classes were unable to face the impending revolutionary spirit. The American War of Independence was a special case in that it was officially - but, alas, not too realistically - waged in the name of an ideal new society. Freedom was won, but many of the old patterns of the past remained in great strength - not only slavery, but the aggressive drive to conquer and recklessly use the vast "real estate" of our continent, after destroying most of its nature-worshipping inhabitants. A new class everywhere was rising to power: the bourgeoisie of wealth fascinated by intellectual games and technique, and brutally materialistic in its desire for power, comfort, and glamor. During the last quarter of the nineteenth century this growth of the industrial, commercial, and financial elements of our society reached a point at which counterbalancing forces had to increase in power - mainly the forces of Labor, but also subtler forces challenging the materialistic-scientific approach. These had actually begun to grow - as seeds do - around the "summer solstice" of the century, and mainly during the late forties. I am referring to Spiritualism (an inchoate attempt to break through the boundaries of bodily consciousness), Marxist Communism (a passionate and millenium-oriented attempt to force, through total antireligious despair, the violent rising of the working masses), and the Baha'i Movement (at least the first phase of it, begun by the Bab in 1844), a religious attempt to organize the whole of mankind on a global scale through the power of faith and all-inclusive love. We probably lack the perspective required to understand what, in this century, began in the hidden seed around or just before 1950. But the generation of young men and women who became the new rebels, the hippies entranced with psychedeiic visions and "flower power," were born after the end of World War II and Hiroshima. They were born in our affluent suburban culture, in an atmosphere of total permissiveness and spiritual emptiness and, during the cold war and under the menace of a nuclear holocaust, of insecurity. Under the inspiration of some of their elders, they developed a countercultural approach to life. They have represented the seed as yet surrounded by the fruit. Now seeding time is at hand. A still very confused call for a new kind of _metanoia_ - a going beyond the individual and rational soul (_nous_) - is being heard from many places. The greed and jockeying for power on a world scale, alarmingly revealed by the energy situation, as these pages are written, have explosive potentiality. Autumn begins in the harvesting and self-sowing of the seed, but ends in storms and the decaying of the leaves. 1789 saw the beginning of the United States as a strongly organized federal nation; but, a few months later, the French Revolution exploded. The two developments represented two ways of dealing with the past, neither of which led to spiritual success, in spite of America's tremendous material achievements - nay more, because of them - and of the highly significant Napoleonic vision of a united Europe, which, alas, personal ambition and insecurity vitiated and destroyed. Soon 1989 will come; and with it a massing of planets in the zodiacal sign of political large-scale organization, Capricorn. We will consider various possibilities presented by this "autumnal" situation. But first of all we should discuss some of the characteristics associated with the capacity in men to act as transforming agents for the creative forces leading mankind along its evolutionary path toward a New Age. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You are posting as a guest. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.