Layers of Astrological Occurrence: Personal, Interpersonal, Impersonal

[Jim Eshelman]

A few minutes ago I had an idea that might be pivotal going forward. I should write it here and see where the idea goes. It's not obvious where on the forum it goes, so I'll pick this forum as being "as good as any."

One of the oldest questions in astrological theory boils down to the unclear relationship between the personal horoscope and mundane astrology - between things that affect the individual and things that affect the collective. From the middle of the 20th century, this has most often been phrased as some version of, "Did everyone in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 have a lousy horoscope for the day?"

The answer - based on the raw odds of the matter - is that they did not. We modulate the question a bit by saying that the each had different experiences that early morning, but that really doesn't take care of the people whose charts promised a great day. We know from experience of astrological methods - astrological frameworks, as well as continuing transits that pass through them - by which things are set in motion that affect large numbers of us collectively, though we don't necessarily have a coherent philosophy about the matter or an articulated (let alone well-articulated) understanding of how it all fits together.

We probably all get it in our gut. Ignoring astrology for a moment, we all know that when the weather is freezing cold or overbearingly hot in a city, everybody is going to feel it. The weather doesn't have anything to do with our individual desires and choices, nor does it allow much individual distinction in our experience. There are places choice can make a difference, such as whether to be in a climate-controlled building, whether to go outside, how to dress, or what activities to undertake. But, bottom line, we're pretty much all way too cold or way to hot and we experience this together.

Experience with astrology helps us identify which techniques to use to look at our individual experience and which to use to look at our collective experience; but there isn't a coherent position (let alone a developed philosophy) sorting through the relationship of these to each other.

[Jim Eshelman]

I realized a short while ago that there is a path to understanding this holistically that begins with my view that planets are best understood as representing fundamental needs that we all share.

One need not use this particular model for the planets. It's pretty universally accepted that the planets represent different types of fundamental energy and, for natal astrology, I find it most useful - and frankly (to my mind) more correct - to express them as fundamental needs. However, the basic flow of thought hereafter works pretty much the same with whatever language you pick to describe the energy of the planets.

I am meandering toward a description of my insight, rather than diving strait for the punch line. I want to mention that the three-volume book I'm writing was intuitively structured to fit what I'm about to say, even though it was outlined years ago.

• Volume 1 is on natal astrology - one chart only.
• Volume 2 combines two topics (which fit together into about the size expected): It includes both predictive methods and synastry. This came from my instinct that synastry is, in many ways, a description of how we relate to a particular moment and place (which includes another person born then and there). Vol. 2, therefore, is about two charts: The relationship of the birth chart to some other chart.
• Volume 3 is about mundane astrology, or a vast number of charts.

One person... two people... all the people. That's the convenient pattern.

In an individual horoscope, planets are our own needs. We all have the same fundamental needs (at least, in general) even as we all have all the same planets. We are alike in that we share these needs, and different in that we each have them at different strengths and priorities in our psyches, and intertwined in unique combinations. To each of us, though, the potency of a planet is the potency of a particular cluster of needs that we individually have.

As I have been thinking ahead toward eventually starting Volume 2, I've been rephrasing what I've historically said, using the language that has been developed freshly in Vol. 1. One rethinking that has been settling in pretty well - I may still have to tweak it - is that transiting planets in relation to our natals (e.g., pure transits, or when transiting planets are angular in return charts) represent needs the universe has for us, or (better) gates the universe opens to give us access to fulfilling our needs. The opportunity (need?) the universe opens may not be the needs that we ourselves have strongest at the moment (which is where it gets interesting). For example, if transiting Uranus aspects natal Saturn in the foreground this means that (so far as that "transaction" is concerned) our strongest needs of the moment are our material, security, and survival needs, most often expressed through Saturn behaviors. Meanwhile, the need "the universe has for us," or the opportunity being offered (nearly compelled) is for us to fulfill our freedom and renewal needs, signified by transiting Uranus.

We can use the old language - say that Uranus' transit to Saturn means that change in the environment is encountering our own need to lock down and keep things locked down, secure, and safe - that the world brings something new while we're trying to hold on, with all of our might, to something old. Or we can step up the language by saying that while our own security and survival needs are highlighted, the universe opens a gate to our fulfillment, instead, of our freedom and renewal needs. (The main advantage is it keeps it all within needs theory.)

That one is no big deal. Others have said similar things, or things that end up about the same in practice. Today's realization involved the next step.

[Jim Eshelman]

What, then, happens in mundane astrology, in those charts and methods that describe the experience of the collective? And why don't our charts interact with those methods so that our individual astrological patterns are necessarily part of the picture?

It is because methods of mundane astrology are INDIFFERENT to our individual charts.

By now, this is really clear. Scores of examples have traced those pivotal people connected to major mundane events and generally found no connection. Even with something as intimate and personal as, say, a public figure being murdered, the murder is separately told by the victim's chart - in terms describing his or her experience - and in the mundane charts that show the surrounding world's experience as a whole.

On a rainy day, the rain just doesn't care about its affect on one person or another. It is utterly indifferent. It just rains.

When a person is the centerpiece of a mass event, the person has his or her own experience and the world has its experience. They may overlap, they may use some of the same aspects (though usually they don't). They need not be any more similar than the individual charts of the two people getting married (who are having separate experiences of the event reflected by different sets of personal charts).

Having said this, I now wonder why it was never this clear before. It resembles what I've intuited, but never figured out how to say.

One familiar thing that somewhat bridges this gap is a transit that occurs in space and exactly aspects something in a person's natus. For example, Mercury opposed Neptune today: If that fell exactly conjunct, opposite, or square something in your chart, you had a double-bang transit of some personal relevance. The universe invited you to simultaneously fulfill your information and reality-forging needs in a way detailed by whatever this hit in your natus. It was personal. However, if (like, say, me) it didn't hit anything in your chart, then the universe and its Mercury-Neptune opposition are indifferent to you. The aspect will go its merry way expressing itself all around you with no particular care about whether any of the rain falls on you. Like the weather, it's just "what's happening."

In conclusion, it isn't that mundane charts have priority over personal charts, or wrestle with them, or, for that matter, have anything to do with them. They are indifferent to those things that distinguish us individually, indifferent to personal effects. And I do think it useful to anthropomorphize the universe just a bit and break it down this way:

• Planets (and their conditioning placements and configurations) in your nativity are entirely personal. They reflect the relative strength and cross-connections of your needs and the desire to fulfill them.
• Planets in predictive charts (charts that arise directly from your birth chart) are interpersonal. They can be understood as showing the needs the universe has for you at the moment, or the universe opening an opportunity for you individually to fulfill one of these basic needs. (Aspects to other people's charts are the same type of phenomenon.)
• Planets in mundane charts (mapping the astrology of the collective rather than the individual) are indifferent to you and your needs. (If it's raining and you're outside, you get rained; if not, you don't. Whatever.)

I likely will refine this over time, find better way to say these things. (It likely will be basic to the architecture of the three volumes I'm writing.) But this is the understanding that came in a burst today and clarified for me something that seems important that I hadn't quite articulated before.

[Veronica]

I really love this Jim, thank you for finding the words to articulate this so nicely.
It's very interesting to me, I'm reading a brilliant book by a Jungian MD who is exploring cultural Fairy Tales of midlife (as opposed to the more popular and long embraced Youth Fairy tales) and his insights into aging and our struggles with transitioning from being young to being in the middle deeply parallel what you explained regarding astrology.
As an aside, your word anthropomorphic reminded me of a conversation I had with my friend about the very interesting Mundane charts for events, events that sometimes seemed odd or as you say a dumb note, like a traditionally positive planet appearing strong in a chart that otherwise is horrific. She reminded me that humans, and especially men, have been culturally reinforced to think we/they are the epitome of creation and that the entire living world is beneath us but that Nature is indifferent to us, that we are not set a part, but are apart of a web of life. That Nature on the one side needs us, and created us to fulfill and express a need and on the other side doesnt give a hoot one way or another.

[SteveS]

So many mysteries Jim for my mind to contemplate with my 40 years of studying my Natal, and mundane astrology. At my age when I ponder how in this universe-- math/geometry can arrange certain precise time frames for me as an individual to experience a main life event/incident for my future with a birth chart/timed birth and all its symbolic factors, my mind is overwhelmed with mystery, the same for mundane astrology. I can only as an experienced astrologer clearly see my life with its main events as a precise mathematical/geometrical science arranging my life with its main events/incidents with symbolic astrological factors, but I can only understand it as only a deep mystery never to be fully understood. I think maybe Veronica understands as we are born into "nature" surrounding us as maybe our personal stage play of life with certain life experiences sometimes seen through our Natals with the symbolic factors of our personal planets. I am trying to figure out: what's the point of it all? Wish me luck in figuring this out. We as a species have a lot more evolving to experience.

[Veronica]

Best of luck Steve!!

[SteveS]

Thanks V .