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| Simplified Scientific Christianity |
The educational value of astrology centers in the fact that, more than any other science, it reveals man to himself. No other science is so sublime, so profound, and so all-embracing. It sets forth the relation between the Grand Man of the universe and the little god that is man. "In the image of God created He him." The Big Pattern is repeated in miniature human forms. God, the macrocosm, and man, the microcosm, are related and fundamentally one.
Material science has determined to some extent the physical effects of the rays of the Sun and the Moon. Speculations have been offered as to effects of rays emanating from other stellar bodies. Occult science, investigating the subtler forces that impinge upon emotion and mind, has charted their effects with no less definiteness than has academic science the reactions of sea and soil, plant and animal, to the solar and lunar rays.
With this knowledge, we may determine the astrological pattern of each individual and know the relative strength and weakness of the several forces operating in each life. To the degree that we are in possession of such knowledge, we can begin systematic, scientific character building. We elect times and seasons cosmically advantageous to unfolding undeveloped qualities, correcting faulty traits, and eliminating destructive propensities.
The educational value of astrology lies in its capacity to reveal the hidden causes at work in our lives. It enters into the intangible, yet ever present and potent, factors in life. It transcends form. It discovers Spirit. It demonstrates reality. It touches every walk of life. It counsels the adult in regard to vocation, the parents in the guidance of children, the teachers in management of pupils, the judges in executing sentence, the physician in diagnosing disease, and in similar manner lends aid to each and all, in whatsoever station or enterprise they may find themselves.
Astrology and astronomy were at one time a single subject. The soul of things has not always been so largely hidden to the great mass of people as it has been during the past century or two of skeptical, materialistic science. We have been so far removed from the true and inner science of the stars that its higher knowledge has been practiced either by the illumined few unknown to the world at large or by charlatans who have secured fragments of the subject and exploited that little smattering of knowledge by trading upon the ignorance and superstition of the uninformed.
Today, astronomy, child of astrology, after having left its Father's house and wandered into a far and barren country where it fed on the husks of forms and figures only, has turned and set its face toward its true home where the feast of spiritual abundance is awaiting its return. Today, men and women of first rank in the field of science are dealing with cosmic rays and their influence upon man and planet. The consciousness of the people is rapidly being prepared for an awakening on a vast scale to the recognition that, not only do stellar bodies mark time and tide, but also the impulses of our very Spirits are subject to their motions. Subject to their motions, mark, but not slaves thereto. The destiny of every human Ego is to rule his or her stars; knowledge and obedience are the means of the stellar forces and obedience to their perfect pattern.
Astrology is the greatest, the most sublime, and the oldest of all sciences. Its origin antedates history. Its sources apparently reach back to the time when gods are said to have walked and talked with men. It would be difficult to assign to primitive humanity the great invention of an astrological symbology, universally used throughout the ages and to which foremost seers of many lands and different religions have looked for pictorial presentation of the evolution of man and planet. In these glyphs, the understanding eye discerns the rise and fall of civilizations and the progressive unfoldment of the world's great philosophies and religions. They constitute keys with which we may unlock untold treasures in the Bible and the Sacred Scriptures of all the world.
Astrology is at once a science, a philosophy, and a religion. It is metaphysical, occult, and withal practical. The rudiments may be learned by anyone who can add and subtract. Its elements may be checked in one's own life with sufficient exactness to demonstrate the truth of its claim beyond all possibility of disbelief. An application of the principles it teaches, whether or not those principles are fully understood, is sufficient to prove their validity by their fruitfulness in our daily life.
The errors of practicing astrologers can no more be taken as proof that astrology is not valid than can the frailties of professing Christians be taken as proof that Christianity is worthless or the Christ unreal.
Real astrologers, like true saints, are few and far between. They both represent the fruitage of many lives of noble endeavor and selfless service. Goodness comes not from creed, but by living a life of friendliness and usefulness. Wisdom comes, not from memory-knowledge, but from an age-long extract of experience.
Only those who have purified their natures and sensitized their vehicles by pure living and high motive can receive and transmute the lofty spiritual influences impinging upon us from the heavenly bodies. Lilly, the great seventeenth century English astrologer, recognizing this, wisely declared to his students that the purer their lives, the better would their judgments be. By the ear of the Spirit we may hear the music of the spheres, and by the eye of the Spirit we may read and interpret their manifold revelations.
Astrology swings out life into wider orbits. It deals with our earthly span of life as but a segment of the whole. Our natal chart is what it is, not by an arbitrary decree of Fate, but as the result of our own past action or inaction. It marks the magnetic conditions prevailing at the time of our birth and affirms these to be such as will best favor the acquisition of those lessons most required during incarnation the beginning. By the operation of this Law of Consequence, this doctrine of hope responsibility, we recognize the present to be at once fruitage of the past and seed for the future. Character becomes destiny.
Astrology, like religion, is divided into two branches, exoteric and esoteric. The exoteric covers purely mundane matters. It tells the mariner when best to set out to sea, the farmer when planting is most propitious, the physician the underlying causes of disease to be treated, the teacher the basic nature of pupils, and parents the innate tendencies and capacities of the child. It reveals the favorable and unfavorable seasons according to which election may be made.
The esoteric transcends all these outer concerns. It deals with our inmost nature, with the very principle of life, the source of our being. It deals not with passing fortunes of the personality but with qualities of the soul and spiritual development. The incidents pertaining to the world of form are inconsequential to it. It is focused instead on that divine element within which is striving toward an ever increasing realization of its unity with the whole through its contact with form, time, and space. As such, esoteric astrology becomes a spiritual science, a universal religion. Only such a science and such a religion promise to satisfy adequately the united demands of head and heart of growing, aspiring humanity.
More than any other factor in the world today, astrology gives promise of leading a materially-minded generation into conceptions concerning the things of the Spirit. Physical science is handicapped by its own self-set limitations. Religion is under suspicion because its ceremonies are too often antiquated and empty. Astrology links the fundamental elements of science and religion. It is based on astronomical data. It charts invisible forces. It combines the seen and the unseen, body and soul, form and Spirit.
When the rapidly quickening spiritual perceptions of the race will lead it into a serious inquiry of the celestial scroll, we may expect an era of power and illumination such as history has never known. No other subject within the entire range of human knowledge appears to hold for this day and age the possibilities open to astrologers for helping men to an elevated sense of their own dignity as citizens of the cosmos, to a greater grasp of universal law, and to realization that we are eternally secure within the caressing fold of Infinite Life and Boundless Being.
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