By John White
Astrology as commonly understood is ego-oriented pop-culture nonsense. It is used as either entertainment or an effort to manipulate future circumstances for personal gain and protection. Some consult the stars to predict the stock market or determine propitious days and times to undertake actions, though there is no credible evidence that such predictions are valid. Newspaper horoscopes and books on finding your soul mate through sun signs belong in the realm of entertainment. Sometimes the stars are invoked as a New Age version of the "victim excuse": I'm having a bad day because my moon is in Pisces with Venus rising. There's nothing sacred, spiritual, or growth-oriented about such uses of the art.
That's not to say astrology is useless. There is an astrology which goes to the spiritual depths of humanity. It was pioneered by Dane Rudhyar, a dear and respected friend who died on September 13, 1985, at the age of 90. He attempted to restore the sacred nature and high purpose of astrology: enlightenment or God-realization. Of perhaps a dozen astrologers who've cast my horoscope over the years, only one--Rudhyar, as he preferred to be called--was able to tell me anything significant about myself. The rest of the horoscopes were either irrelevant, superficial, or nonsensical. Rudhyar dedicated one of his books to me (Beyond Individualism). I want to direct readers to his work--not just the transpersonal astrology which he pioneered but also his esoteric psychology, philosophy, music, art, and fiction.
Rudhyar was a visionary, a true Renaissance man of multiple talents and a social critic of the highest order. His prodigious output includes nearly three dozen books and innumerable articles; his music has been honored by a special presentation of his works at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and by various recordings. Luminaries such as Henry Miller and Leopold Stokowski praised Rudhyar's work in their fields. However, he is best known as the father of modern astrology.
In the 1930s, it was Rudhyar's articles in the then-new magazine American Astrology which caught the public mood and made astrology respectable. Those articles, lucid and profound, dealt with the basic relationship between humanity and the universe. They were soon collected in Rudhyar's most popular book, The Astrology of Personality. His synthesis of Jung's depth psychology with astrology made the book one of the perennial sellers in the field and a classic for serious students of the esoteric art.
But Rudhyar did not stop there. Ever growing, ever deepening his insight into human nature, he went beyond himself and the superficial pop culture spinoffs of his own work to develop in the 1950s what he called humanistic astrology. It linked astrology with the human potential movement and emphasized free will and personal development rather than some nebulous "fate written in the stars." He saw through the ego-fantasies of popular astrology, and in the 1960s, when psychologists Abraham Maslow and Antony Sutich developed transpersonal psychology, Rudhyar developed transpersonal astrology as a true spiritual discipline in parallel with their work.
His first statement on transpersonal astrology was published in 1975 by the Seed Center in Palo Alto, California. (Rudhyar lived in nearby Los Altos then.) It was entitled From Humanistic to Transpersonal Astrology. He expanded that booklet into his 1980 work, The Astrology of Transformation. It is his definitive statement on the subject.
Rudhyar's position is that the horoscope is to be used like a mandala for the unfolding of one's spiritual potential, rather than for predictive purposes. He distinguishes between what he calls an "astrology of information"--conventional astrology--and an "astrology of understanding and meaning." The astrology of information, he says, is inferior to, and cannot perform as, the astrology of understanding and meaning. He also describes a multilevel astrology--one which includes the biological and sociocultural levels of human existence, which condition and control people, and the levels beyond those, in which a person becomes authentically individual and, finally, transpersonal. (Incidentally, Rudhyar first used the term "transpersonal" in 1930, long before it became popular.)
From that perspective, the evolution of the soul can be understood and guided so that one evolves to a mature form of one's sun sign. "Mature" means, for example, Taurus's childish stubbornness is transformed into persistence and dedication to spiritual objectives, Leo's vanity and arrogance becomes humble pride in worthwhile accomplishments, and so forth. Optimizing the qualities of one's character means becoming God-realized. That is, in the highest ranges of human development, one is transformed beyond the entire horoscopic system. At that point, it is the same thing as attaining enlightenment or--to use the circular image of a horoscope--stepping off the wheel of death and rebirth.
Dane Rudhyar, born in France in 1895, was a musical composer, an actor in silent films, a poet and fiction writer, and a painter, as well as an astrologer. His connection with the Theosophical Society spanned his entire adult life. In his early twenties, he was associated with the Krotona Institute in Hollywood, California, then the headquarters of the American Section of the Theosophical Society, where he collaborated with Christine Wetherill Stevenson, founder of the Philadelphia Art Alliance and the Little Theatre Movement. She was producing a play on the life of the Buddha at Krotona and invited Rudhyar to compose the music for a similar play about the life of Christ, which was performed in 1920 at the future Hollywood Bowl. Rudhyar's experience at Krotona increased his interest in Eastern thought and contributed to his thinking about the cyclical nature of life and cultures.
Known as the "grand old man of American astrology," Rudhyar was a prolific author, with books from Doubleday, Dutton, Harper & Row, David McKay, Penguin, Philosophical Library, Random House, and others. A number of his books were published by the Theosophical Publishing House, beginning with Rebirth of Hindu Music (1928) and extending through six Quest Books: Occult Preparations for a New Age (1975), Culture, Crisis, and Creativity (1977), Beyond Individualism: The Psychology of Transformation (1979), The Astrology of Transformation: A Multilevel Approach (1980), Rhythm of Wholeness: A Total Affirmation of Being (1983), and The Fullness of Human Experience (1986), his last work, published posthumously.
John White is an author in the fields of consciousness research and higher human development. He has published fifteen books, including The Meeting of Science and Spirit, What Is Enlightenment? and A Practical Guide to Death and Dying, as well as a children's story, The Christmas Mice. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Saturday Review, Reader's Digest, Esquire, Omni, and Woman's Day, as well as in four earlier issues of the Quest. He lives in Cheshire, Connecticut. This article is drawn from his forthcoming book "Toward Homo Noeticus: Reflections on God-Realization and Higher Human Development."
This is the task that is set before us. Personal transformation is the pathway of Theosophy and all quests for Truth. With sustained effort we can regulate our attitudes and actions, and little by little we can change our keynote to one of compassion and concern for all. Then the vibration of our being will be able to permeate the atmosphere, not with the distress of a siren, but with the call to responsible living and the music of altruism.
Hast thou attuned thy heart and mind to the great mind and heart of all mankind? For as the sacred River's roaring voice whereby all Nature-sounds are echoed back, so must the heart of him "who in the stream would enter," thrill in response to every sigh and thought of all that lives and breathes.
—Voice of the Silence