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Astrology and the Ritual ofLife

Posted on August 9, 2017August 10, 2017 by silentalan
Astrology was considered the queen of the ancient Sciences by all civilizations be it Vedic, Greek, Baby-
lonian, Egyptian and even the Renaissance philosophers were adept astrologers like Marsilio Ficino. It is
only since the Enlightenment and the dawn of rationality that astrology began to be distrusted and the
nal nail in its cofn was driven by the advent of Science in its modern avatar. There have been many
studies in the past century debunking the myths of astrology and how it does not make any sense for
a reasonable person to believe his life depends on the movement of distant stars and planets. After all,
how can giant rocks moving around in space affect an ordinary life here on Earth ? In the absence of sci-
entic proof of causation, the modern civilization lost probably the greatest tool given to Man to under-
stand his Life and take charge of it instead of being driven around by forces which he would never un-
derstand otherwise. With the coming of Psychology specially Carl Jung, this problem could be resolved
but as is the fate of a materialistic age, He too was quickly sidelined to the margins of mainstream Psy-
chology since it did not conform to standard material psychology with its absurd assumptions about the
creation of consciousness from brain cells. Jung was also an expert astrologer and always consulted the
birth charts of his patients before beginning his analyses. His deep interest in Alchemy combined with
his knowledge of Astrology gave him an astute understanding of the inner structure of man. It was this
wisdom which he tried to bring into modern culture through his concept of Archetypes which as essen-
tially astrological forces in a psychological garb. But since the word Psychology is itself a very vague
term, Jung did not dene the esoteric structure of reality in which his work was based on because that
would lead to the ire of the materialists who were active even in his day. It is hoped that the Aquarian
Age with its emphasis on the ner levels of reality will once more usher in a Golden Age of Astrology
when the Ancient Wisdom will once again ow on the arid plains of the reductionist intellect where live
the lost souls of modern man. It is my attempt here to give a truer picture of the basis of Astrology which
can illuminate to thinking minds, its profound relevance.

A great esotericist had once said, Birth is not so simple a thing as Death. Although Death is not so sim-
ple a thing either as I explain in a previous post, it is in essence a departure and so its a process of disso-
lution rather than creation. Forces involved in Death are ingrained in the very fabric of creation in and
around us and one can say, its the most abundantly available force in existence. Chaos is the default state
of things and any dissolution is a return to the original unstructured state of reality. It is creation which
taxes our hearts and minds. Human birth is a creative act of giant proportions involving many orders of
intelligences in the inner planes though in modern culture we have scarcely any idea of this. To under-
stand why, it only requires an open mind and a childlike wonder to ask how a single spermatozoa of in-
nitesimal dimensions uniting with one egg create an intricate structure of nerves, organs and trillions of
cells working in super-human precision to prepare the body of a nine month old baby. Science has no
clue to this. It can intermittently observe a growing child in the womb but the internal processes cannot
be known to it. Keeping aside the understanding of the invisible intelligences constantly at work to pre-
pare the body of an incoming soul, we turn to the signicance of the birth itself. Every human birth is the
beginning of a ritual, one whose elements and rhythms have been decided long before it begins. If one

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asks, who decides this blueprint, it will be a very difcult and esoteric answer which may not be very
well understood even if explained. So I will mention simply that this blueprint is based on karma. Its a
specic selection of the combined karmic imprints which constitute the blueprint of a human life. This
selection allocates the cycle of events in the life of the individual arranged in a complex yet well ordered
rhythm with an aim to teach the lessons or give opportunities for the evolution of the indwelling soul. It
is this blueprint which the ordinary man feels as luck or curse. In reality, it is neither since luck and curse
both have their lessons to teach. A curse is a bad reaping of some past karma which can teach a percep-
tive individual the lessons of some behavioral trait since every event in the material plane has an origin
in his or her own interior psychic structure. Its very rare that some completely random event like an acci-
dent happens or an earthquake takes away a life in which case a more collective karma, social, national
or global beyond the control of the individual is involved. Outside the collective, individual karma is a
result of causes which originate in the inner planes. Sometimes, luck brings joy to the individual but it
too can teach a lot. Usually undeserved joys dry up too quickly teaching humans the eeting nature of
purely material happiness. Thus goes the life of the untutored man. Astrology enters the scene in help-
ing us to decipher this selection of karma. The reason Birth is not so simple a thing as Death is that the
selection of karma is made in such a way that the timing of the karmic events correspond exactly with
the grand order of the cosmos in the heavens. And Time is in the last analysis, the great Teacher of Man.
This is why in Indian Mythology, one of Lord Shivas forms, Mahakaal (The Great Time) is worshipped
and his blessings sought after. The Physical plane is dened by Time and Space. And astrology is also a
study of the temporal and spatial distribution of karma. This is the reason why many souls cannot come
into incarnation for many centuries or even millenia because the order of the cosmic play of the heavens
do not correspond to the karma they have to play out. In the case of souls who have nished with their
karma altogether and will come for a divine mission, its a question of very much creating bodies which
will have some karma and which they can inhabit.

There are two great examples of such bodies being created for Great souls to come to Earth. The rst is
mentioned in the Mahabharata where Maharishi Parashar, the father of Veda Vyasa does a grand ritual
along with other great sages to create the Etheric Body for Krishna to come into incarnation. Krishna be-
ing a transcendent soul without karma, has to articially create new karma through an etheric body
which will contain the seeds of his karmic interplay for his stay on earth. The need for a special Yagya
comes from the profound spiritual power of the soul of Krishna which an ordinary etheric body will not
be able to handle. Ordinarily this work is done by the devas in the inner planes for every human birth in
accordance with the karmic blueprint for the incarnation. The other example is that of Lord Maitreya, the
incoming Kalki avatar. There has been a lot of talk about his advent on earth which the Christians call,
the Second Coming of Christ. People have been expecting him in many circles but it must be remem-
bered that on the physical plane, karma must be created for such pure souls else it will impossible for
them to inhabit a physical body. Now the order of the heavens and the interplay between the heavenly
bodies has been set ever since the creation of the solar system. Thus there can be no change in that order.
So if there has be an intervention in the usual course of things, such an intervention must be sought
within the existing order of things. There are times when the rhythms of the heavens are such that there
is no feasible time period in which a particular order of karma can be played out. It is this scheme of
things which we call the Yugas. In the present Black or Kali yuga, the nature of the placement of the stars
and planets are such that the general karmic implications on earth are of a miserable kind. For the truly
great seekers, no time is importune because we must always remember that the Stars Condition but do
not Compel. It is often asked why is there such a dearth of divine souls in kali yuga. Aside from the
lethargy of the degenerate man in seeking Truth, its also the case of the astrological placing of planets.
Prophets and Sages come in cycles where we see a sudden rise in consciousness of the Planet because a
high soul inundates the etheric and emotional atmospheres of the planet with so much light that entire
nations are swept away in its wave. Great religious movements like Christianity and Buddhism were the
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result of the inux of such powers in the atmosphere of the planet. At a rst glance, the issue of the unfa-
vorable positioning of the planets seem confusing since we see the earth circling the sun every year and
the planets too moving around in their pre-dened orbits. Pluto, the farthest planet of the solar system
has a period of 248 years so surely in that time, there must be many repetitions of the planetary move-
ments to nd period which favor great upliftments to humanity. There are and because there are such
small favorable windows of spiritual progress, do we have infusions of great movements which die out
when that window closes. But we have to remember that the Sun is also tracing out a larger circle
around an even Larger Central Sun. This cycle takes place in 25000 years so no two moments in this time
period resemble each other. And even for the earthly rotations around the Sun, because of the precession
of the equinoxes, every year around the sun is a unique year in itself. No two years is the same even
though everything else resemble each other. Precession of the Equinoxes is a mystery which is revealed
in higher circles but from an astrological view point, it lends uniqueness to every moment in time. We
now come to the mechanism by which this grand interplay of Time is played out in our lives.

The basis of Astrology is not the physical plane. In other words, it is not the physical bodies of the plan-
ets and stars which have an effect on our physical bodies. Science takes causation to be a purely physical
phenomenon and thus misses the essence of Astrology completely. But emotional causation is as real and
probably much more real in human life than physical causation. Art takes its whole subject matter from
this plane of causation. Human lives are essentially emotionally driven dramas whose origin happens to
be physical to the untrained observer. The basis of Astrology is the etheric body or the Pranamaya Kosha
of Yoga. It is this body which is felt in meditation as a sheath of sensitive pulsating threads around the
human body which rise and fall with every breath in a concentrated state of mind. Every object in exis-
tence has an etheric body. It is the blueprint on which our physical body is structured and which forms
the basis for the transmission of emotional and mental forces to the physical body. Thus we can talk of
the etheric body of the planet altogether also. It is this body which is in contact with the etheric bodies of
the large planets and through which, astrological forces affect mankind. It is also the reason for Yogis al-
ways emphasizing Pranayama as a way to master your destiny because if one has complete control of
the etheric body, he can control the astrological forces which are working through that body. Most hu-
man beings do not know wherefrom they get the diseases in the physical body or how they are driven
away by emotions or how thoughts are able to inuence their actions in life. Every internal force be it,
emotional or mental affect the physical body through the pranamaya kosha so mastery over this body
allows one to detect every individual emotional and mental force aside from healing the physical bad
karma contained in the etheric body in the form of latent seeds of diseases in the body. Life on the physi-
cal plane is a school, not an amusement park as taught by the popular culture today. Its a grand school
because Titanic Beings are involved in conducting this ritual of Life. Every Planet is a Titanic Being who
has taken physical incarnation as a planet to help conduct the karmic processes of billions of souls in the
solar system. In the Vedas, it is this wisdom of the true nature of the planets which is contained in the
various Suktas and Mantras about them. Jupiter is called Brihaspati, the Guru of the Devas because the
Logos of Jupiter holds an immeasurably high position in the Sublime planes of Reality where they have
their true station. Similarly Saturn is feared as Shani and is propitiated by many rites and rituals because
the entire Karma of the Solar system is conducted by intelligences in Saturn. He also happens to be the
last planet of the Solar System beyond which the planets are not involved in the system per se. Uranus,
Neptune and Pluto are extra-systemic planets and thus their inuences are always collective and not in-
dividual. They do not belong to the Solar System and infuse forces from outside the system to accelerate
evolution in it. Saturn forms what is called the Ring Pass Not or the Boundary of the System. It is t-
ting that the Karmic Lord of the system forms of the fence since no one can escape from the physical
manifestation without clearing out his Karma. We now come to the ritualistic aspect of Life.

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Any ritual comprises of an ordered set of movements which accomplish a certain end. In the case of
Vedic Rituals, the exceedingly complex set of constituents, driven by a xed set of mantric invocations
were meant to enact a larger cosmic ritual in the inner planes. By carrying out a particular set of external
movements, the mind was guided symbolically through another set of corresponding mental thought
forms and that combined with the mantras accomplished a sublime jerk in consciousness of the Agni-
hotra or the conductor. Every external ritual had an internal signicance, what is known as Bahiryagna
and Antaryagna. It was the internal movement which was the aim through the outer. When the symbolic
science was lost, the rituals became mechanical and thus lost the original connection to the intelligences.
The heavens also display a precise symbolism through its well ordered movements in the heavens. The
symbolism can be understood through the nature of the planets as they affect the earth through plants,
animals and most importantly humans. The birth chart is a snapshot of the positions of the planets and
stars at the moment when the soul became incarnate on the physical plane. Its the state of the sky as it
welcomes a soul on earth. Here begins its sojourn and his trials and tribulations. As the heavens conduct
their grand ritual, a similar ritual will be played out on the earth through the embodied Man. His being
will be the ground of the sacred play in a miniature form. The Planets will be the ofciating priests and
He the sacrice. This was the original interpretation of Yagya where every human life was a Ritual and
his life would be modelled on the original Heavenly Man called YagnaPurusha. Just like the Unmanifest
sacriced his original innite bliss and entered the sacricial ground of Manifest Created Life, so is every
Human Being a YagyaPurusha whose Life will be a Sacrice by which he will Rise in Reality. This is the
esoteric meaning of the great Purusha Suktam of the Rig Veda whose esoteric elaboration will disclose
the specics of this Cosmic Sacrice of the Great Heavenly Man, the Devas involved in it, the meaning of
the various intelligences who conducted the sacrice and so on. In the Bible, this is the Being who is re-
ferred to the One in whom we Live and Have our Being. Life below was a imitation of Life Above and
every human life was to follow this to the last breath. This gave meaning and purpose to Life. This was
also the age when every single event of every day life from getting up to bathing and eating had an as-
trological signicance. The seers and rishis of that age gave extensive injunctions with respect to Time
because they were following this original goal of Life. A great Age indeed.

Astrological forces are essentially invisible intelligences which ensoul the etheric atmosphere of the earth
and as the heavens move in their orbits, the combinations of those outward movements affect human be-
ings through these invisible intelligences acting in the inner planes of emotion and thought. Any one
wanting to verify this can do a simple experiment with the Moon whose cycles are of 28 days. The Moon
is the emotional guide of the planet and each of its phases from the new moon to full moon and back,
represent a waxing and waning of the inner emotional states. If one perceives the changes day by day in
the nature of the thoughts and emotions for a month, one can easily verify the existence of such forces.
The great mistake of Science has been to assume that emotions and thoughts are just creations of the
physical cells of brain matter. Astrology has unfortunately become a system of faith and belief when its
actually a profound way of coming in contact with forces immeasurably greater than Man and who are
essentially helpers of man in his journey on earth. It is the ignoring of these forces which lead man to
suffer because whether we know of their existence or not, the forces are always working inside of us.
When we dont acknowledge their presence, we tend to either repress them by seeking distractions or
we simply ow unconsciously with them not depending on our karmic imprints which only get aggra-
vated by creating new karma. Every moment of our lives is imprinted with the unseen forces of the plan-
ets through their intelligences and an understanding of these movements allows us to become aware, be-
forehand of their possible interplay in future so that we are prepared for them. This gives us a much val-
ued distance from their effects and we are ready to acknowledge that an outer event was simply a
karmic play. It also allows us to peek inside the forces of our psyche and try to handle them before they
get out of order. The Planets are not our enemies. They are the facilitators of creation whose ultimate
goal is self-realization. The reason astrology is so useful is that it gives us a great way to understand our
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karmic blueprint and work towards handling our inner forces and gain mastery of them so that the ob-
jective of human life is attained which is self-mastery. The Planets teach us in harsh ways what we other-
wise will never learn. There are now ways to make astrology once again, a tool of self-realization like it
once was. Instead of just treating it as a set of inevitable events which have to just tolerated, we are now
entering an age when the ancient goal of liberation will once again be illuminated through Astrology. It
is known in the Higher Circles that Gemini always facilitates Initiation for example. This knowledge
does not concern the ordinary man but it shows that Astrology is deeply embedded in every level of re-
ality and not just the physical. This is why the charts of spiritual aspirants have to drawn anew because
the birth chart does not apply anymore to someone who has decided to take charge of his own destiny
and not be an unconscious pawn to the planets. As said by a great astrologer, The Wise man controls
the planets instead of being controlled by them. As a soul develops in consciousness, the planets
change from being conditioning forces to be conditioned forces and in sublime levels, one enters into the
arena of constellations who then become his guiding lights. This is the goal of every human being. To
rise and fulll the Plan of Creation and Astrology can give every man, a benecial tool.

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