Studies in Astrology


Elman Bacher

Volume VI

Chapter VI


   Architecture is, in essence, manifestive art as expression of man's consciousness of cosmic protectiveness.

   Whatever man builds, through his expressions in this art, is a symbol of his instinctive desire to enclose, enfold, and protect that which he cherishes. This art differs from the other three- dimensional arts--dance, sculpture, and drama--in that it fills and encloses space. There is a certain utility in the essential nature of this art which also differentiates it from the other arts. Buildings, to fulfill their reason-for-being, must be occupied by something or lived in by someone. Hence, of all the arts, architecture is the least abstract, the most useful, and it is the one that is most basic to the needs of humanity.

   An analogy--the blue of sky and the brown of earth are ceiling and floor of man's habitation on this planet, the vast house of our physical living provided as creative expression of God. Because all share this ceiling and floor, man as an individualization of consciousness and as a "spark of Divine Fire," must microcosmically reproduce this pattern as an expression of his God-hood. So, he builds "ceiling and floor" to enclose the heart of his creativities (home and work) and that of his reverence, the church. Since home and church symbolize the core of man 's awareness of relationship to humankind and to God, these "buildings" from time immemorial have stood as the two essentials of architectural endeavor.

   The God-hood of human kind is the permanent seed atom which endures throughout the cycle of incarnations. The first house that is built for it is within the maternal body prior to birth. The maternal body is the enclosure of protectiveness with nurture for the incarnating Ego. The etheric matrix is the "outer body" in which we live during incarnation and our physical flesh-body has the enclosures of skin, skeletal, and organic structure in which the seed atom is enshrined. The male parent functions in correspondence to his mate by providing the enclosure of home to protect his two "most beloveds" and the home is a specification of space in which the relationship-life of persons magnetized to each other by specific vibratory requirements is perpetuated. All of these "buildings" (the etheric matrix, the womb, the physical enveloping, and the home) are the "humanity" of that which is "architecture"in manifestive art. Man has never built for himself alone--he has always built, as God builds, as an expression of his octave of Cosmic Protectiveness. As water and, subsequently, air were the original "homes" in which we lived as physical involutions so the great "sea of electrical magnetism" is the "home" of our relationship consciousness and "home" is the individualized chemical expression of man's consciousness of focalized relationship on the generative octave of being. During incarnation, man abides, or can abide, in many houses but relationship with other humans is the "home-life" of his consciousness. We feel "at home" (and this is not just a figure of speech) with those we love, we feel "out of (our rightful) place" with those we dislike. With those we love we "build easily" the fulfillments of relationship--on whatever octave of experience or consciousness. To build beautifully is to express love. To "build unbeautifully" is to emphasize (pile up) the congestions in consciousness of desire-ignorance; the resultant buildings are "shrines to ugliness." Man expresses his "architectural best"when he builds (anything) as an expression of his heart's and mind's highest and best. The soaring spires of temples and cathedrals are designs which symbolize man's spiritual aspirations toward his "lost Eden"--toward which he returns on the upward spirals of evolutionary progress. These spires are variations of the basic design of the pyramid, which we will discuss in this discourse.

   That which is intimately external to us is the outer reflection of inner building. Consciousness--and nothing else--is the material we use to build anything, in whatever octave, cycle, or dimension. The result of material building is the effect from the way the man has imposed his mind, talents, and abilities on malleable substances; and mind, talent, and ability all are octaves of consciousness. He imposes his consciousness on the "stuffs of art" to embody his concepts of archetypes in manifestive artistry; he imposes his consciousness on the "stuffs of relationship" as his "embodiments of relationship-consciousness," to enfold, protect, and perpetuate that which is unregenerate or regenerate in human relationships. We can build "caves for jackals and dens for thieves" just as we can build "homes for the beloved and shrines for the adored." All of these, in their myriads of expressions, are building with the materials of consciousness.

   Since each human is an individualized consciousness, we are the builders of everything that is manifested in our lives. By incarnating, we serve to build a new identity for our parents as they were instrumental in building a vehicle for us. Each child contributes relationship-material and relationship-experience to the "building" of his parents as individuals and as a couple. He expresses his consciousness, they react; they express, he reacts in the years of his development and for as long as his relationship to his parents endures. The child was magnetized to his parents by law and he built the particular quality of parentage-consciousness by his exercises as father and as mother in past incarnations. In other words, his parents are a chemicalized expression of his consciousness of "parents;" they, in a sense, and in relationship to him, are something he himself has built. Each human being is, therefore, the architect of his own parentage. Concretely this is pictured in the horoscope by the vertical diameter of the cusps of the fourth and tenth houses. The "parentage" of the archetype, humanity, is the zodiacal diameter of Capricorn-Cancer focalized by the planetary architects, Moon and Saturn, the "form-builders" of our vibratory archetype. This diameter is, of course, complemented by that of Aries-Libra as the vertical diameter of a horoscope is complemented by the horizontal diameter of the Ascendant and seventh cusp. Further astrological illustration: we can think of the chart as the blue-print of an edifice, so architectural are the symbols.

   A circle with vertical and horizontal diameters; the symbols for the cardinal signs at the structure-points, Aries as Ascendant-sign. Connect the structure-points with straight lines forming a square. The four right angles are the "enclosures" of the angles made at the center by the diameters of the mid-points of the fixed houses (Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius); the right angles of the fixed sign square are the enclosures of the central angle made by the vertical and horizontal diameters. The sides of the two squares are the same in length. The cardinal points bisect four semi-circles; the fixed points bisect four quadrants.

   The circle is, at one and the same time, the perfect idea "Humanity" in Divine Mind. the perfect manifestation of that idea in form, the perfect objectifications of all the potentials inherent in the Central Point; by the perfection of its beauty it is the archetypal symbol of the Golden Wedding Garment which will be worn by the archetype humanity at the dawn of liberation from this manifestation, or which is worn by each individual at the timing of his liberation. The Golden Wedding Garment is the perfected habitation of the seed atom-- all humans have an etheric matrix, but not all humans wear a beautiful matrix; it is the perfect beautification and purity of this matrix that identifies the Golden Garment, the result of all of our building in incarnation.

   Previous reference has been made to the author's conviction that the circle which circumscribes the cardinal square and its "lines of force" (the Cardinal Cross), in combination with the Central Point, is a "bird's eye view" (looked down upon from above) of a pyramid. The archetype humanity involves from innocence--the state of Virgin Spirit--to the utmost of chemicalization by a spiralic process downward from the point in ever-widening (separative) circular windings. The essential perfect potential remains throughout but man, incarnated and new to this plane, sees only the chemicality of life and of his own nature. He does not know his unity with life and only dimly senses it in his feelings of instinctive togetherness with other humans with whom he is closely associated by ties of blood-relationship or clan-affiliation. For the most part he is aware of the differences between himself and his father, mother, and other people: stronger and weaker, older and younger, male and female, etc., but his similarities to other people, regardless of outer appearance, are not recognized until evolutionary processes have been in effect. To know relationship is to be aware of the "inner" of human life, and that awareness is the beginning of wisdom. The consciousness of involving humanity is not aware of the circular essential shape of the beam of light on which they are traveling; it is always circular but when it "strikes the screen of materiality " the undeveloped human consciousness sees only square--the sharp differentiations between people, not the unity by which all are affiliated in spirit.

   The two representations of the symmetrical square in our mandala symbolize the structure of the human family and the material from which that structure is built. The family is outwardly the male and female of human generative manifestation; inwardly it is the masculine and feminine of generic consciousness.The structure points of the fixed-sign square symbolizes the focalizations of the diameters of desire-love which is the food-substance of the total of our human relationship--life--the equipment we use to build each home of relationship-exchange. The cardinal structure- points are the four focalizations of human identity--mature and immature of male and of female--Father, Mother, Son, and Daughter; also the male and female as causer and reactor to the effects of causes. From this Cross of the Polarity of Identity, fed by the desire-love resources of the fixed sign diameters distributed by the unsymmetrical diameters of the wisdom octaves of the mutable cross, the upward spiral of evolution starts. As long as a human being must incarnate he participates in these three crosses; but to the degree that separative identity is transmuted into unity, desire into love, and ignorance into wisdom, will the squares get smaller and smaller, continually approaching resemblance to the circle which, in turn, is the perfect outpicturing of the smallest of all circles, the point. You can get a picture of this disappearance of the square by drawing a fairly large circle enclosing the cardinal square. Within the square draw a circle, within that circle another square, and so forth until the figures get so small you can't draw any smaller. Remember that "square" is an archetypal design; "cardinal square,""fixed square," and "mutable square" are three variations of one design; fixed and mutable are sub-archetypes of the cardinal as archetypal design of human identity and relationship. So, in drawing these smaller and smaller squares within smaller and smaller circles, you are really picturing, in essence, all three forms of the square on all evolving octaves. When you drew the first circle for this illustration (and the enclosed cardinal square) you pictured humanity ready to evolve; each successive smaller square and circle, in pairs, represents one higher octave-like the stories of a building that is pyramidal in shape. If you can draw or imagine a pyramid being cut by horizontal planes one above the other you will get the essence of how each spiralic level of the circle-and-cross is analogous to the floors of a building, each floor having many rooms in which different activities take place--or in which different expressions of Consciousness take place. In this drawing indicate "primitive" at the first level, and designate the different levels of the pyramid, cut by planes, as representing different periods in history in which men made noticeable evolutionary progress. On each level the cardinal cross of human relationship-exchange, the fixed cross of desire-love resource, and the mutable cross of wisdom-distillment are found in conjunction, or synchronization, with the eternal ideal that enfolds and interpenetrates them. With approach to the top point (the center point of the astrological wheel as we know it) love and wisdom become more and more fused, and the four identities lose their separative quality and merge more and more into the relationship ideal of fraternity, which is what our relationship to each other really is. We are all fraternal to each other because we are the "sons and daughters" of Father-Mother God; our "sonship" and "daughtership" is our bi-polar essential nature--"male and female" pertain to our nature only when we are incarnate, and in the upper octaves of being it applies only to our spiritual generative state, and the powers of bi-polarity are fused when the perfected awareness of the "one love" is attained. We are aware of "loves" while we are on the lower levels of the upward spiral--we identify the existence of love with the existence, in our lives and experiences, of other people. Actually, love, is one aspect of the circle and is omnipresent in perfect purity on all levels of being. As the top of the pyramid is approached the "separateness of loves" is transcended and the point at the top of the pyramid--the end of the upward spiral--is the perfect consciousness of the " one-ity " of love as Divine Attribute. As wisdom is distilled from experiences on the spiral, the congestions of fear and hatred are dissipated by the light of reason and understanding, which, in turn, are the illuminations of the mind by the power of love and the inspiration of beauty.

   Make a copy of a twelve-housed wheel, connect the cusp-points in sequence by straight lines creating twelve isosceles triangles. Each one of these triangles is half of an equilateral triangle, the arms of which are alternate house-cusps. There are two sets of these equilaterals: those of the fire and air trines and those of the earth and water trines. Think of the "Aries equilateral" as being: "masculine Aries and feminine Taurus" and so forth around the wheel. These equilaterals, three of each generic element, having polarity by division into two equal parts, are the real basic houses of the wheel as far as generic consciousness is concerned. Because each of the twelve mundane houses focalizes the principles of one of the zodiacal signs we recognize that they are specializations of the two-fold generic sections of each trine. Get this picture by drawing four wheels and "black in" (in each one) the three signs of an element and the succeeding sign. There is much food for thought in this representation of houses as generic divisions of experience.) The regular appearance of the twelve houses pictures a much more objective representation of cycle-experience during the years of incarnation. They are, in whatever form, rooms on a particular floor of your life-building. To the degree that the vibratory elements of your chart are congested will you be seen to be "living on a lower floor in your life-building."

   Think of your horoscope as a floor-plan blue- print of the evolutionary mansion (building) that you are now inhabiting. Your chart symbolically represents your potential for being a spiritual architect; the contents of your wheel represent the soul-materials you are using to build your pyramid--your Golden Garment--the composite of the best of your consciousness distilled from all previous levels of experience and realization. Become more aware than ever before of the beauty of architectural art--let yourself appreciate the esthetic values of fine buildings and, philosophically, let yourself become more than ever aware of their significance to human experience.


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