Hermetic Practice and Astrology

[Jajon]

Hello!

This is a fairly advanced question and assumes you have knowledge and experience practicing both astrology and hermetics. I would be grateful if anyone could help with with this.

Ok so here it goes:

When you introduce an element into your astral body, your personality changes as a result. For instance, by introducing the sense of gravity and density into my astral body, I feel more grounded. My perceptions change as a result and my personality becomes more practical and organized and 'down to earth'. The more I introduce these qualities of the earth element into my astral body over time, the more my instinctual emotional reactions to my environment become what would be associated with those born under the earth signs of Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn. The Moon rules the astral body, and someone born with their Moon in Taurus, for instance, will naturally have these earthy perceptions and behaviors.

Now my question is the following: If I was born with my moon in Pisces for example, and then introduced earth into my astral body regularly then my moon sign would for all intents and purposes begin acting as say a Taurus moon would.

So what would it mean when for instance transiting Mars contacts my natal Moon in Pisces? If my astral body is no longer resonating with Pisces then will contacts to Pisces even have an effect on me? And what would it mean if for instance Mars was influencing Taurus instead? Since my astral body is now Taurus like, will planetary transits to Taurus influence my astral body more than those to Pisces? In my mind, they should do! Because planetary contacts to a sign affect the qualities expressed by that sign. Or for instance, given a certain cultural astrological climate, society might readily welcome moon in Taurus energy and at other times reject it. So if you are expressing this energy then that means that you are indeed affected by the astrological climate involving Taurus.

So if it's possible to effectively change your Moon sign by hermetically introducing elements into your astral body, then what implications does that have for the rest of astrology? If you have Aries on the 10th house but no planets in that house, then will introducing explosive fiery pressure into your astral body eventually give you a Moon in the 10th house and therefore the career and fame benefits associated with such a placement?

By the way, I use the Moon as an example due to the fluid and changeable nature and it's association with the astral body.

Thanks in advance for your replies!
Jajon

[CFTraveler]

I am no expert in anything, and only have book knowledge in some of this, but something struck me about the premise of the question itself:

When you introduce an element into your astral body, your personality changes as a result. I don't know that this is true, and frankly I don't think it is.
I would think you acquire qualities that help you resonate with a personality type (or not, resonance is a funny thing), but I don't think this either changes your personality or your basic psychological makeup, which is not rigidly controlled by your birth moment. Your psyche depends on many things, and it is not a static template. It develops and changes as it is exposed to life experiences.
So I'd say, that, provided your hermetic work does change your energy body sufficiently enough to change your personality (which I don't think it does, but let's say it does) then you would react to other cosmic influences (once again, provided this is indeed how astrology works).
But frankly, too many variables make me not think so.

[Jajon]

Thanks for your reply.

From a hermetic perspective the personality is composed of combination of the elements. If you have read Franz Bardon's Initiation into Hermetics then you may remember that one of the first steps is to list all your personality traits and order them according to the elements. Then calculate what elemental imbalances you have and undertake the work of developing an elemental balance in your personality by introducing new elemental behaviors. So he's saying from the onset that your personality is malleable.

That's what it reads anyway. From personal experience, I have meditated a lot in the past on the fire element and can testify that it can produce some extremely powerful changes in your personality and reactions from the enviornment, at least for a certain amount of time. But the more I practiced with it, the more hardwired the traits became in my personality. This fits in with Bardon's IIH theory.

I've studied astrology for a long time now and can testify to the accuracy of astrology when you really get into the depths of a natal chart. Particularly how effects come into someone's life when a transiting planet makes contact with a position in your natal chart.

The signs in astrology are effectively a study of the 3 modalities of the 4 elements. So by meditating and emotionally becoming the explosiveness of fire you feel and act as cardinal fire Aries. By feeling yourself as steady light and heat, you feel and act as fixed fire Leo, I have found. This of course also changes the way people react to you based on their own elemental configurations. My flatmate who's Sun and Moon in Leo shows a lot more enthusiasm and comfort around me during times when I'm involved in fire meditations. This is a natural astrological reaction in synastry between people who share natal astrological elemental harmony. But my ex-boss at work who's a Scorpio would get a migraine headache every time I quietly practiced a fire meditation at my desk. These are only a few examples, but I've got enough in my head to see strong connections.

I see how accurate natal astrology is (which is fixed). But also how powerful hermetic elemental change is. It's because of this juxtaposition which naturally lead me to wondering how changing the elements in ones personality interacts with astrology.

[Korpo]

Just a very general thought:

I'd personally would think that any change to any energy body not creating balance would be rather temporary. All effects would be temporary.

If you however use your meditations as it seems to be intended by Bardon - to help you bring the elements into balance - I think you could create a lasting effect.

Every effect you create by will - by repetition of your meditation to produce a desired effect - would be temporary, and I'd personally think that it would have visible effects as you described. It's a similar temporary effect as in "raising vibration" or other exercises.

If you however use the knowledge obtained by the self-awareness exercises to identify imbalances and use your exercise to create a greater balance, I think that could last. In this sense any imbalance is temporary and will be "pushed out" by a counter-force in your environment. But moving from balance to balance would not generate such feedback, but IMO rather reduce it.

In this sense, balance means a self-sustaining state, a state where something comes to rest. Imbalance needs to be continuously maintained by effort, else the whole system will push back to come to a state of rest.

Creating imbalances on purpose to create a desired effect can therefore also cause undesirable effects not foreseen by just looking at the immediate effect on the environment. There will IMO be a counterforce generated, and this might bring undesirable effects.

Cheers,
Oliver

[Jajon]

Thanks for the interesting thoughts there, Korpo.

I do think though that most people in the world are imbalanced, and yet they are set in their elemental ways and are therefore sustained the way they are. The only difference between that and changing your elementary makeup is the principle of change. And like any change, the more you repeat the new behavior and the more intense it is, the more permanent it becomes. This is not to say you cannot change it back by repetition afterward of course.

The counterforce you mention is one's old conditioning creeping back in. When it does, you repeat the new behavior and you start to rewire yourself more permanently.

If I'm being honest, I'm not really working in Bardon's framework per say. In the past I have worked with Bardon's system and therefore have experience working with the elements. However now I am not so interested in following such a strict path to becoming a hermetic magician or anything like that and therefore I am not overly concerned with achieving a strict definition of balance at this stage in my life.

What I am interested in though is the ability to activate and accentuate certain parts of a natal astrological horoscope. This would take astrology to a whole new level and make it a lot more useful as a tool for change, rather than just a tool of divination which it currently mainly is.

[Tutor]

hmmm, to read Bardon, is to be reading about the divine personality vs the more grafted in (experiential) mundane human personality. so i am not sure the application holds in this scenario, for it brings it down to the mundane, even as the mundane is reaching up in this thinking query.

like, you've got to go deep in, to understand the 'divine personality', the 231 gates, the whole tree scenarios/paths/hidden paths, the tarot ♥♥♥♥♥s indicative of said (genetic) traits/elements, the i ching/occult/hebrew letters/genome, whole dna meshed theorum that would place the mundane as the overlay onto the hard copy of unchanging divine.

'a little knowledge is dangerous' would be the 'word' herein applied. we cannot assume to practice that which yet must be queried over. but there aint nuthin wrong with questioning, observation, and patient practice of what one does have in hand to safely do from. Because safe practice is honored practice, and honored practice leads to the opened door for those honorably having come.

it is like approaching one's virgin bride on the wedding night. she must be open to the approach. might mean that the groom waits months for the welcome. or it might mean that she ravages the groom on the way to the verdant bed the very wedding night. either way, it aint gonna happen if honorable motive has not engaged her to begin with. an analogy like that suffices to explain what otherwise seems mysterious. one has to see it, that she is the daughter of the most high God beyond God. this has roll-off into our mundane human personas that in our current modern world, are not easily contracted into true understanding. even to the fact that the actual marriage is upon consumation of sexual partnering, whether it is before of after the sexual act, made official to familial others in the outward ceremony. or if traditional, it is done as per old fashioned honorable means.

why the sexual metaphoring? because the whole of it is about dna, not the scientific datums of our modern era (yet inclusive of them), but the mere truth that 'word', all word, erupts forth into personified life, as revealed since the beginning of mankind's indoctrinating lettered writs of God's Word.

now, how that works into the 'astral' fields of operative being is up to how one has 'fields' ordered. for even as fields other than actual life seem to be followup fields, they are actually preparatory fields toward this one field where we humanly share our world together.

former: certainly one may induce a projectionable 'dream' state of their personal prejudicial liking to fit their means. latter: but, given a burdensome process, we can easily recognize how after sleeping/dreaming we awaken to renewed vitality of ease within what had been more burdensome the day before. we actually fruitfully learn while we are asleep, just as physical growth is paramount with sleep.

these two dissimulars are relative to two seemingly opposing ends that reach beyond our conscious arena of focus. the latter being acceptable and harmless, as it promotes lessening of human suffering. the former, however, is where the 'word', "a little knowledge is dangerous" comes in, for it might prove harmful to oneself and/or others (blind leading the blind) through mis-understandings in the thinking that it is passively operable like in the latter example.

for, you see, the former is Her, and she will take your inducement for a tail spin of an induction if your motives are unseemly, if there is intent of any kind beyond what is honorable. because, herein one enters into the 'root' of what is life giving, to unearth, to raise what is 'thought' of as dead, or the incomprehensible other side...etc. analogously speaking.

so, this is like the folding of what is unfolded. to take the left and right, fold them one overlaying the other cor-relatively. this is analogously seen in bringing the arms together to clasp the hands in prayer. the joining of two which are at odds into an evened oneness, a union.

then, turn it upside down, push the 'junk' out of it (fluid/afterbirth), and lo and behold, a child as the birthed answer of these two having 'come' together. analogy, but it is utilizing what is the mundane equivalent to understand divine method.

this is why our spiritual searching would seem so mysteriously confounding. because, whether we are male or female, we each think of it as myriadly separate personal undertakings, while it is everybit an interactive method to be honored, the same as which we honorably abide within in the world of man, or not. familially speaking that is.

tim

[Korpo]

Hello, Jajon.

The counterforce I'm talking about is not simply "old behaviour." It's the reaction to your change by the whole reality that surrounds you. Reality reacts. There is an interaction between all you do and all you send out, and the wider reality. It's a feedback loop, in a sense, but it is insofar unpredictable as not all effects are easily traceable to their causes.

In this sense, you can pursue arbitrary goals through the technique you describe, but if you do not - in the long run - pursue also a goal of deeper elemental balance you might experience rising resistance, counterforce or diminishing returns, for example.

You can repeat a behaviour to reinforce it, but you can never truly perpetuate it if it is not aligned with the wider reality. On the other hand, when you are aligned with the wider reality, you need only little effort for comparable results. It's will vs. reading the flow. Various levels of balance are various levels of alignment with the larger flow.

I'm not talking about a Bardon-specific thing here. (I'm not into Bardon at all.) It's a wider pattern, I'd say.

Cheers,
Oliver

[Tutor]

Korpo,

rightly written, i agree. yeah, not into Bardon here either. but he certainly has added to my understanding in past years. finding authors like Bardon, promotes going deeper as they did, to the sources which they themselves formulated from.

i agree, like you said, will vs flow. having spent some serious years invested into it, i also see that 'seriousness' has given the least results. it is when you get in that 'flow' that results manifest.

i actually read a quote on this recently that says, "if you have a hunger, feed it. otherwise it will undo you through having fended it off".

in talking to a cistercian monk once while he sat there in his wheelchair on the porch of the retreatant's dorm. this guy, 101 years old. with teary eyes he said to me, "I was closer to God when i arrived at this monastery at the age of 9, than I am at 101 about to leave it".

to me, summations like that on life say it all. and aid me everyday, in not taking 'it' to be so serious. but at the same time, not to take 'it' for granted.

also, i assume that the course of hermetic practice/s lean toward one's release from what otherwise is perceived as astrologic forces at play in the human 'freewill/consequential predicament. a great treatise on this is couched within Hercules' challenges of Twelve seemingly insurmountable tasks.

thanks Oliver,

tim

[Jajon]

Tutor, thanks for the poetic reply. Personally I'm a practical meat and potatoes kind of guy when it comes to this stuff so most of the post was lost on me if I'm being honest.

William Mistele writes about this stuff better than I can. The following is a link about changing the elements in one's personality using Bardon's system and it discusses briefly about astrology:
http://shell.lava.net/~pagios/ch1psychic.html

[Jajon]

Korpo, I see what you mean. I definitely agree that the world pressures you to become more balanced. That's the job of Saturn in astrology. It's known as the planet which gives you harsh lessons, but really deep down it's just trying to get you to realize your deepest potential to evolve into a truly balanced master.

From my perspective though, when pursuing a certain goal and developing the elemental qualities associated with achieving that goal, I am developing myself and as a result am becoming more balanced. Desires often point to something you want, e.g. part of you which is missing. By achieving my desire, I am becoming more balanced.

Bardon teaches to fix each of your elemental imbalances one by one until conquered. You don't do the whole list of a thousand items at one time, it's impossible. So by focusing on one element at a time you are not necessarily fostering imbalance and asking for a counterforce to smack you back. By the contrary the counterforce you receive back would be of a positive nature if you are truly pursuing your hearts desires.

[CFTraveler]

Saturn in astrology. It's known as the planet which gives you harsh lessons, but really deep down it's just trying to get you to realize your deepest potential to evolve into a truly balanced master. Thanks for that insight. Just now a synchronous event pointed to your post, and was just the right thing to read.

[Tutor]

Tutor, thanks for the poetic reply. Personally I'm a practical meat and potatoes kind of guy when it comes to this stuff so most of the post was lost on me if I'm being honest.

William Mistele writes about this stuff better than I can. The following is a link about changing the elements in one's personality using Bardon's system and it discusses briefly about astrology:
http://shell.lava.net/~pagios/ch1psychic.html

Jajon,

that's quite alright. i dont even realize that i am poetically writing. i guess i am a poet that doesnt know it. a vocational hazard i reckon. thanks for your honesty, by the way.

the noetic approach is, or has been for myself, one of deeper entanglement. simply because, i had not addressed superficial entanglements prior to my past attempting approachs.

but, as none of us really know any better, one supposes why there had arisen the 'hanged man' concept, often read also as the 'drowned man'. it is unavoidable, and thankfully a valid part of becoming.

i caution others too very much, perhaps projecting my own harshly perceived experiences in their given times. however, i do mean well, and i am thankful for your honest understanding, which, believe it or not, is all you require.

a lot of this type 'stuff' that we can all easily link to these days, was written in a not so long ago world of masking the truth. it is deliberately written to mislead the less than honorable "deli-berate" pursuers. Honesty sees it rightly, maybe not at first, but by some scant opening of mind's eye, things deliberately masked begin to non-deliberately reveal themselves (the natural flow). words once thought of as things to use, become keys of utility that open rooms in the mind that are beyond what the imagination would think to manifest of it's mere insignificant self-reasoning.

this doesnt mean that the enormity is there for insignificance of self. it just means that the insignificance can see enormity. well, there i go being strangely poetic...again.

tim

[istia]

Hello Jajon,
interesting theme. I was for decades into astrology but not in hermetic yet much.
Dont know if i understood all but most clearness i got by your example, so i also will use an example, and of course im talking only in a terminology here:
Your Moon in Pisces i.e. now. That has a lot of different qualities and like you mention you are working on that to i.e. settle or equilibrate the fine energy of pisces/neptune with exercises bringing more earth/tauro into this quality, ok.
Though you also have mentioned already that those transits of planets do as well influence and in specific anyway to bring chances from time to time to integrate other energies into already existing qualities. Like i.e. it happens now as Uranus is in Pisces. And now i.e. lets say Uranus would be placed exactly on your Moon in pisces. So that would mean that your Moon (with his qualities from Piscis/Neptune) would anyhow currently be having a chance and also the challenge to be kind of mixed up, better said influenced by uranian energies, you also could say could be enriched by the Air-Element.
So then, what would happen? Lets say, you would be still working on bringing some earthy-energies onto your Moon. Of course that would be a good thing, in the sense of equilibrum anyhow, but what in this momentarily time-quality would be ask most, still would more be - in my eyes at least - to flow with the uranian energy and lets say, be prepared for the un-expected and maybe be better not too fixed/earthy in any way - during this period. So finally it _could_ be a kind of contradictory to hold on to earthy-energy-work in a time-period which so to say by itself is transporting an air-quality (to stay in the terminology here) which best could be used in all kinds of mental, astral, verbal, sight and insight manners. All the same it is the earth-quality which still would support you with the power to bring all insights into realisation on an earth-real-level. So eventually i would say it is important - in the case you`re seriously deeply working with splitted energy-concepts (which are only to understand the single steps of one`s growth better i think) - to pay attention to ALL what is happening at the same time, which is not easy but i think is one of the specific adventures of our life as kind of multiple-character-energetic-beings.

[Jajon]

Thanks Istia, very interesting. You've made me think of working with the energies of transiting planets by focusing on certain elements within yourself.

For instance lets say Saturn was in Virgo opposing a Moon in Pisces. That would be like the world putting up resistance to Pisces energy. What you could do to deal with the transit is behave like a Moon in Capricorn and therefore the effects to the energy you are putting out would be a trine with Saturn, which is more beneficial.

Or like you say with Uranus, I could flow with its effects by welcoming the Uranian energy. Infact, the reason I'm thinking about all of this is probably because Uranus is having an influence on my Pisces Moon. Thanks for that insight! The chronological time-based perception of astrology is very Saturn like in its emphasis on structure, focus on time and place. Uranus, being the liberator is perhaps making me think of liberation from the Saturn like constraints of astrological natal positioning.

Again thanks for the thought provoking post :)
Jajon