Astrology Explained - Characteristics of Planets and Signs
In astrology, the constellations and planets are credited with differing 'characters' corresponding to the different functions or processes they are supposed to control or symbolize. Everyone is familiar with the qualities supposed to be visited upon the individual by his 'Sun sign', that is, the constellation against which the Sun appears to rise on any given birthday. The individual born under Aries is supposed to tend to hot-headedness, impulsiveness, assertiveness; the individual born under Taurus to conservativeness, patience, deliberation, and so on.
Critics of astrology believe that ancient priests and astrologers arrived at these characteristics through sham empiricism and fanciful imagination, and assume them to be without foundation. But in fact fancy and accident played no part whatever in their development. The characteristics of the constellations and planets are derived from numerical considerations and depend upon the meaning allegedly inherent in number -a type of thought usually associated with Pythagoras.
The Pythagorean approach makes it possible to investigate qualities, functions and processes systematically. If numbers are viewed as neutral abstractions this cannot be done at all, nor can logic or reason aid in the understanding of the processes that invest the physical world with 'life' - birth, growth, assimilation, fecundation, death, renewal.
The number one, in all developed philosophical and religious systems, represents unity or the Absolute. It is the conscious and deliberate scission or division of the Absolute that is held to account for the manifested universe. The first quality or function to result from this scission is polarity, represented by the number two, and familiar as man-woman, active-passive, positive-negative. But polarity is fundamentally static, a tension of opposing forces. Before anything can 'happen', relationship or interaction must be possible. The number three represents this possibility. Man-woman is not a relationship, but man-woman-desire is. To take a chemical example, sodium-chlorine is not a relationship, but sodium-chlorine-affinity is. The artist and the canvas are insufficient to produce a picture, there must be a third term: inspiration.
Yet a relationship of three terms remains potential; three terms are insufficient to account for the fact of matter, of substance. Sodium-chlorine-affinity is not yet salt. To account for salt four terms are required, sodium-chlorine-affinity and then salt itself. Thus the meaning of the number four is substantiality or matter, and it is this that lies behind the old notion of the four elements. The four elements represent the constituent principles of matter, not their chemistry.
Through number, all the functions, processes and qualities that we experience in the physical world can be accounted for. A system of twelve terms is required, and it is this twelve-term system that lies at the root of Western astrology with its zodiac of twelve signs. (Eastern astrology is based upon a related but somewhat different numerical system, with different emphases.) Thus the meanings ascribed to the various signs of the zodiac and to the planets do not result from fancy but are dictated by number, and the choice of Ram, Bull, Twins, Crab and the rest occurs because the given symbol best represented the qualities, functions and processes inherent in the given numerical position.
In astrology, the signs are first distinguished by polarities; Aries is positive, Taurus is negative, and so on. Simultaneously, they are divided into quadruplicities, called 'modes of action': cardinal (instigator of action), fixed (that which is acted upon), mutable (that which facilitates the action). Finally, again simultaneously, they are divided into triplicities, corresponding to the four elements of fire, earth, air and water, represented by a set of three signs each.
Thus each sign has an inescapably different character, while in this twelve-term system all combinations of two, three, and four are played out (see figure above). The zodiac may be seen therefore as the symbolic chart upon which all the world's forces interact. And it is this systematic symbolic method that lies behind the simple-minded generalizations in the daily papers. Aries is 'hotheaded and impulsive' because, as the first sign of the zodiac, it is positive, cardinal, fire. And Pisces is 'reclusive, mystical, receptive' because, as the last sign, it is negative, mutable, water.
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