PLANETARY ASPECTS IN RELATION TO THE CYCLE OF LIFE
OVERVIEW
1st Half of the Cycle - The outworking of life through spontaneous, unconscious activity in answer to an inner or outer need, whether new forms of behavior, talents, or capabilities, or something more concrete such as works of art, a life-work, a business, an interpersonal relationship, or a family unit.
2nd Half of the Cycle - Conscious, mental, and group participatory evolution toward the fulfillment of a purpose, part of which may necessitate the letting go of any obsolete or limiting values and assumptions which no longer work or no longer get a positive response from others.
EXACT CONJUNCTION
Pure potentiality and the actual release of a new energy or power. It represents the possibility of developing what the planets represent together at a new level or in some new field, which satisfies the end of the previous cycle or builds upon any accomplishments in a progressive way.
SEPARATING CONJUNCTION
Beginning of a cycle. The release of new potentiality which has to be developed. It is the subjective experience of new possibilities and new power, which may become obsessive as well as overwhelming. There may be confusion and/or projection with activities or consciousness because of an inability to distinguish between inner wishes or dreams and the actual realities in the outer world.
WAXING SEMI-SEXTILE
The initial focusing of a vision of something toward which to work and aspire and the desire to manifest that vision. Effective action follows imagination, and imagination forms and focuses the will so that subsequent action can be controlled and purposeful. Everyday activities are infused with a sense of greater possibilities.
WAXING SEMI-SQUARE
Whenever you take or even contemplate taking a step toward some future fulfillment, all the past resistance or inertia within you rebels and refuses to take the step. This could range from simple uncertainty or hesitation to deeply entrenched patterns of fear which must be met, or prideful preference which must give way to greater possibilities. Subjective dreams and wishes must be reconciled with the actual realities encountered.
WAXING SEXTILE
Opportunities for the growth and development of your creativity will present themselves, and you can begin to become more focused and useful within your environment. As specialization occurs, you are able to synthesize materials from a number of sources and organize them in a practical way according to the direction of growth.
APPLYING WAXING SQUARE
"Crisis in Action" - You are being challenged by some experience to stand on your own two feet, build a solid foundation, and face the world as a true individual. You must make a decision, even if it takes the form of a crisis or requires severance from familiar and comfortable patterns. There is a need to break away from the past and reorient yourself toward a deeply felt and experienced intuition of what the future can be and prepare the way for it. If the challenge is not met because of fear or inertia, all growth and forward movement will cease.
SEPARATING WAXING SQUARE
You reached a turning point in your life. You achieved a victory over inertia, fear, and discouragement, and a decision was made and a direction committed to. Now you must involve yourself in making your new idea or ideal a concrete reality. You need to deal in practical ways with the planetary functions involved.
WAXING TRINE
You have the means and the potential for the application of creative expression into a workable and productive way of life. Carried along by your idealism, you will make major life decisions spontaneously in response to a challenge or opportunity without realizing their importance and knowing the larger implications. (The nature of the slower planet is creatively focused through the expression and activities of the faster planet.)
WAXING SESQUI-QUADRATE
Patience and perseverance are crucial to a successful and actual manifestation of creative expression. You have the possibility of fully expressing yourself, but you do so in an environment whose realities have to be met, acknowledged, and taken into account. Requires forceful but controlled striving and outreaching.
WAXING QUINCUNX (Self-Improvement)
Adjustments in expression, action, or application are necessary to bring things to successful fulfillment or manifestation. There could be dissatisfaction with self if faced maturely, or blaming or frustration with others if not aware of and accepting the realities of the situation. There is a need to gain awareness and take action to correct or improve oneself or one's environment toward what seems possible and desirable. If not adjusting to reality, some form of behavioral or emotional regression may occur or there may be crystallization and progressive degeneration (illness or neurosis).
APPLYING OPPOSITION
You need to free yourself of any unconscious projections or compulsive, conditioned behavior. Objectivity and personal and emotional detachment are necessary to bring something to fulfillment or to concrete manifestation in your life in answer to a need.
EXACT OPPOSITION
The culmination of your potentiality for individual selfhood. You now face the products of your labor and see yourself, your identity, reflected in them. At this moment of realization, not only what is seen but how you respond to it is crucial. (The faster planet reflects as much of the slower planet as it can.)
SEPARATING OPPOSITION
You have the latent ability to manifest the creative fullness of the planetary functions involved through the circumstances you find yourself in. You need to allow to come to objective manifestation what each side of the opposition represents, even if it means conflict, so you can gain awareness of what is at the root of the problem. Once you accept the situation as a potential for growth in your life and can see the bigger picture, a solution to the problem will be found in answer to a need. You are challenged to use your mind to operate with conscious understanding and objectivity toward the fulfillment of an evolutionary purpose. If repolarization and objective consciousness do not occur, you will be painfully bound to a conflict with no apparent solution.
NOTE: You can refer back to the prenatal conjunction of the two opposing planets to find out what underlies the opposition and what is required of you to meet the situation - looking at the sign, house, aspects, and Sabian symbol. I use the book "An Astrological Mandala: The Cycle of Transformations and Its 360 Symbolic Phases" by Dane Rudhyar for an interpretation of the Sabian symbols.
WANING QUINCUNX (Cooperation with Others)
You need to adjust to the realities of what you are now able to clearly and objectively see. You have the ability to widen the scope of your conscious understanding and give meaning to your experiences. You are challenged to go beyond such moral and ethical dualities as good/bad and right/wrong and see the necessity of the situation and interpret the interrelatedness of various factors. You need to accept what is and work toward what is possible in a progressive, evolutionary sense. If not adjusting to the reality of the situation, some form of behavioral or emotional regression may occur or there may be crystallization and progressive degeneration (illness or neurosis).
WANING SESQUI-QUADRATE
There is a problem disseminating your ideas and vision because of a failure to include the needs of others and understand the conditions your plans will have to meet upon exteriorization. By exchanging ideas and ideals with others and working with them toward the fulfillment of shared goals and needs, you will be able to find meaning and manifest your ideas. You are challenged to expand your understanding to include the needs of others while staying aligned with the essence of your inner vision.
APPLYING WANING TRINE
Opportunities present themselves to work constructively with others toward the actualization of a shared vision. You are able to respond to these opportunities with greater understanding, using your intuition to give purpose and meaning to any situation or experience that occurs. You are challenged to focus in your life the harmonious, conscious expression of what has been developing so far. (The functional activity of the faster planet enriches and brings new meaning to the functional nature of the slower planet.)
SEPARATING WANING TRINE
As consciousness increases and is able to give constructive meaning to life situations or experiences, this growth often turns destructive. Relationships which turn out to be upsetting to the status quo and the need to understand and integrate the meaning of all experiences have led to the necessity to reevaluate and question the basis on which you previously acted.
APPLYING WANING SQUARE
"Crisis in Consciousness" - Old forms of relating, feeling, or behaving - or more concrete forms of expressing yourself - reveal their inappropriateness in the light of new understanding and must be let go. Positive results are no longer elicited from the material with which you are working or from those to whom you are relating. You are challenged to reevaluate your foundation and bring in new insights, new values, and a new philosophy of life.
SEPARATING WANING SQUARE
You are challenged to question and sever your connection with any collective-cultural values, beliefs, or ideas that have outlived their usefulness and become obsolete. You are also challenged to destructure whatever in yourself, your community, or society is no longer contributing in a positive way to evolutionary progress. Through mental focusing and your ability to discriminate, you have the potential to make the idea or ideal you envision for the future a concrete reality, to become "an architect of a new future." If the challenge is not met, your solutions to life's problems will fail.
WANING SEXTILE
Due to a crisis in consciousness, you need to reassess your values and reorganize understanding. Your consciousness may seek renewal in the past from whatever remains of the spirit behind the original creative impulse, or it may seek a new foundation in the present by meeting the problems resulting from past mistakes. Or an attempt at reorganization could turn consciousness toward the future where a new vision is intuited - where the past and the present are resolved, yet superceded. You have the latent ability to reorganize old materials and express new possibilities for the future in a creative way - to implant in your mind and the minds of men the seeds for future development in answer to a need.
WANING SEMI-SQUARE
You identify with a future few others can imagine or relate to, but you are inwardly driven to scatter the seeds of potential rebirth. There is a problem exteriorizing your ideas and vision because some kind of adjustment is needed that takes into consideration the way in which others (because of their past conditioning) are likely to react. You are challenged to integrate the responses of others into the vision and become outwardly self-sufficient, inwardly dedicated, and embody the seed ideas yourself.
WANING SEMI-SEXTILE
You can no longer rely on traditional solutions to problems but must seek answers and the inspiration for new approaches within. You are challenged to free yourself from collective-cultural domination and serve humanity by becoming a dedicated channel through whom a new vision can be implanted in the minds of men. This includes the everyday experience and functional activity necessary to prove in terms of practical results all you have envisioned, known, built, and organized.
APPLYING CONJUNCTION
Ending of a cycle. You embody in yourself the essence of both the accomplishments and successes and the unfinished business and relative failures of the entire cycle. You are challenged to identify being, consciousness, and activity with the need for a new creative impulse in which both the assimilated harvest of the past and an openness to an unknown and uncertain future are united. Letting go of what the personal ego wants and envisions from past experiences for what the higher, transpersonal intuition senses but cannot yet grasp will summon forth the release of a truly new potentiality.
[With the permission of Aurora Press Inc., this article is rewritten based material in Astrological Aspects: A Process Oriented Approach by Leyla Rael & Dane Rudhyar - Copyright 1980 Leyla Rael &Dane Rudhyar - ISBN 0-943358-00-0, Aurora Press Inc., P.O. Box 573, Santa Fe, NM 87504 - E-mail: Aurorep@aol.com, Fax 505-982-8321.]