Permission has been granted to the Faculty of Astrological Studies

to reproduce this article. July 2001.

Astrology Reborn
By John Addey

The theme of this, the second Charles Carter Memorial Lecture, is

that astrology is evidently about to undergo a rebirth and a period
of new growth. It will be no ordinary rebirth and no ordinary period
of growth. From being an outcast from the fraternity of sciences, it
seems destined to assume an almost central role in scientific
thought.

What reasons are there for saying this? We may note first that in all
science there is, or should be, an interplay between the inner and
outer, between the idea and the fact, between the conceptual and
observational orders. In the larger sense the conceptual dominates
the observational, if only because we make our observations and
select and interpret our facts in the light of what we believe – in the
light of our conception of the kind of reality we are dealing with.

Nevertheless, the external aspect of science plays an important role

too, because the changing conditions of the phenomenal world
continually require science to be re-expressed and adapted to the
solution of new problems.

There is another point to notice and it is this: all human progress is

from thesis, through antithesis to a new and higher synthesis. The
period of thesis tends to be dogmatic and authoritative, to rely
heavily on tradition and to look more to the unchanging world of
ideas and so to enjoy a consequently greater stability. The period of
antithesis tends to be more sceptical and to try to test the inherited
teachings and traditions against actual experience. From the
interplay of these two should come a higher and more complete
synthesis which represents, in terms of that cycle, maturity and
balance.
The obvious example of this process is that of childhood (which has
a stability derived from the acceptance of parental authority),
adolescence (which must try to throw off the traditional rules and
find out for itself by experience), and adulthood (which eventually
accepts that the traditional ways had much good in them and is all
the stronger for having proved this by experience and found out
their weaknesses and faults).

1
In order to see where we now stand scientifically in relation to this
process, we must review, very briefly, the history of western
thought during the past two millennia.

Before the Renaissance there had been a long period in which a

certain view of the universe (within and without, spiritual and
material) had prevailed. It was a thoroughly ordered view of things.
Theocentric and hierarchical in conception, it was above all rational,
in the true sense, for it saw all things proceeding from a Divine First
Cause, through secondary and subsidiary causes to the last and
least of manifested things.

Notice that the whole essence of this system was its orderly
procession from unity into multiplicity. Every part was subordinated
to a larger whole which, being dynamic, expressed itself through the
parts of which it was the parent and origin. Without the
presubsistent whole the parts would not have existed, nor would
have had any reason for existing. It was a system in which matter
was considered to be passive, receptive, inert and nescient, and in
which spirit was considered to be active, creative, dynamic and the
source of all intelligibility in the worlds of form.

Between spirit and matter, this world-view conceived of a third

principle which it called Soul, which was partly like one and partly
like the other and was the intermediary by which the realities of the
higher and inner were communicated to and manifested in, the
outer and lower.

This was the great thesis which men inherited at the time of the
Renaissance. It had been enunciated by Pythagoras and Plato
(though it was not original to them), fortified (through the work of
Plotinus and others) with other elements in the thought of antiquity
and taken up, in large measure, by Christian philosophers and
theologians to provide a continuous tradition of thought which
retained its essential character right down to the Middle Ages.

This was the tradition of which the true astrology has always been
an integral part, for in its hierarchy of productive principles the
primary cosmic substances had a necessary place – in the words of
the Platonists the heavenly bodies were the “first-born thoughts of
God”; “born”, that is, in the sense that they were the primary lives
of the manifested universe.

Astrology, in this sense, was as homogeneous with the thought of

Pythagoras and Plato as it was with that of St. Thomas Aquinas and
St. Albert the Great in the thirteenth century.

But sooner or later, if man is to progress, thesis must be followed by

antithesis. That which has become the settled dogma must be

2
challenged, at whatever cost, or human thought crystallizes into
rigid forms which stifle progress and in the later Middle Ages this
rigidity had, indeed, set in.

Just as the thesis, then, had been that the spiritual and
unmanifested world was the primary reality, so the antithesis must
needs be that the manifest and material world was the real. And so,
at the beginning of the so-called Renaissance, men began to turn
their observational powers with an altogether new enthusiasm upon
the world about them. Increasingly they began to place their
confidence in observed facts and to reach, inductively, from these
observations, their own conclusions about the nature of things.1

In the absolute, if not the immediate, sense, this was a retrogressive

step, for in abandoning that hierarchy of principles rooted in
intelligible causes, they overthrew the basis of all higher philosophy
and, indeed, of all rational thought. For how can reason flourish
where matter, the very principle of unreason, is taken as the
starting-point of science?

To quote A. N. Whitehead:
“Science has never shaken off its origin in the historical revolt of the
later Renaissance. It has remained a predominantly anti-
rationalistic movement, based upon a naïve faith. What reasoning it
has wanted it has borrowed from mathematics which is a surviving
relic of Greek rationalism, following the deductive method … Of
course the historical revolt was fully justified. It was wanted. It was
more than wanted: it was an absolute necessity for healthy progress
… It was a sensible reaction; but it was not a protest on behalf of
reason.”2
Empirical scientists and their converts have constantly declared that
astrology is an irrational subject – in contrast, of course, to their own
brand of science which they deem to be rational. But this is an
inversion of the truth.

In reality it is always the inner content of facts which gives them

their intelligibility. One can never arrive at a larger truth by
analysing and reducing things into their component parts; this
always leads down into greater materiality and into greater
unintelligibility. It is only by enquiring to what higher, co-ordinating
formative principle anything is a subject part that one can really
make sense of it.

1
One can see that, ideally, these two views of reality, the “inner” and the “outer”
should be in a state of balance, each being accorded its proper place; and it is
arguable that the great cultural achievements of the early Renaissance were the
product of just such a state of balance when men’s minds were still grounded in
the old philosophy but when they were opening their eyes to the wonders of the
manifested world.
2
Science and the Modern World, Ch. 1.

3
So, if we stand back a little from the developing course of events so
as to see what has really happened and what is happening now we
can see that the scientific tradition of the past three centuries has
been no more than a necessary diversion.

When we speak about the restricted ideas, the limited horizons and
localised beliefs of those who are shut off from the main stream of
thought and life we use the word “provincial”. But Whitehead points
out that it is possible to be provincial in time as well as in space and
he suggests that the tradition of modern empirical science is an
example of just such provincialism in time.3 It has been a
backwater, astonishingly cut off from the great sweep of human
thought, into which scientists have retreated for a while to repair
the tools of their trade and to remedy some of the negligence of
their immediate predecessors.

We know with what success their labours have been attended.

Indeed, the very limitations they imposed upon themselves – or
which were imposed upon them by their historical origins – have
been the key to their remarkable success in the field of
methodology. No one should belittle what is good in these
achievements.

But they have clearly been gained at a huge cost in the erosion of
spiritual values, and not only in spiritual values as such, for all
values are rooted in spiritual values.

What man believes, that he will become. Modern science has

believed that all things emerged from the primordial slime; but
since all things return, sooner or later, to their parent substance or
idea, we ought not to be surprised, as we struggle against the rising
tides of pollution - mental, moral, aesthetic and physical – if this
same science now seems in a fair way to returning us to that very
primordial slime in which it believes we had our origin.

However, all is not lost; the nadir, in some ways at least, is passed
and the situation may yet be saved. Furthermore, if the overthrow
of the old order at the time of the Renaissance seemed in
retrospect, remarkably swift, the collapse of the central concepts of
modern science appears to be taking place far more swiftly; every
decade now brings remarkable changes – almost, one might say,
every year.

Now, before we go on, there are two things which must be

emphasised; the first is the supreme importance of the concept
which lay at the heart of the old philosophy, of a hierarchy of
principles, so that every higher cause is the origin of a multitude of
effects on a lower plane, each of which expresses one aspect or
3
Op. cit. Preface.

4
function of the whole to which it is subordinated. From this we may
understand that the originating idea or substance is not only the
cause of its effects but is also, and constantly remains, the
organising unity which gives coherence and intelligibility to their
developments and activities, in time as well as in space.

The second thing to emphasise is that this concept has always been
one of the essential truths of astrology, and astrology, conversely,
has always been an integral and necessary part of the tradition of
thought (the “perennial philosophy”) to which this doctrine is
central.

Now if it is true – and it is true – that science is about to undergo a

transformation in its thinking about first principles, it is to this idea
that we must expect it to revert and we may consider, first, what
signs are already visible that it is doing just this, and secondly, we
may enquire how far it has progressed towards recognising – even if
only in a primitive form as yet – the involvement of the heavenly
bodies and their motions in this new vision of scientific relationships.

Before we do this there is an unanswered question which we cannot

altogether ignore here, even though we cannot fully elucidate it
either. It is the problem of why modern scientific thought has
difficulty with this conception of a hierarchy of principles,
subordinated and superordinated one to another, as a key to the
understanding of the universal constitution of things.

What in fact is the nature of these principles? To answer this

question adequately cannot possibly be attempted here. They are
not abstractions; they are certainly not products of the human mind.
Man can think of these principles because they are there (and
because they are within man as well as external to him), they are
not there because man thinks of them.

There are a number of ways in which these principles may be

understood, but the difficulty in gaining a real insight into their
nature is always the same. It amounts to the difficulty we have,
especially after a long period of materialistic thinking, of
understanding the properties and characteristics of spirit. This is
the key, for it is the dynamic and connective characteristics of spirit
which enable wholes to express themselves in and through parts,
and to organise and maintain the activities of their parts; and these
properties are communicated by spirit even to the vital and
formative principles of existences in gross matter. It is as if spirit
(call it the divine spark, if you like) retained a footing in even the
least and lowest of material existences.

So, bearing in mind that we shall not expect those who have been
trained in the empirical tradition to have a real conception of the

5
realities towards which they are groping their way, what evidence is
there that they are moving in the right direction?

As many of you will know, one of the foci of interest in the scientific
world at present are the symposia recently held each summer at the
Villa Serbelloni on Lake Como, where Professor C. H. Waddington of
Edinburgh University has gathered together groups of leading
biologists, mathematicians and physicists to explore the possibilities
of a “firmly founded theoretical biology”.

The striking feature of the discussions at the Villa Serbelloni is that,

from every branch of science there represented, come arguments
along the same theme, and that theme is that the practice of taking
things to pieces to unravel their secrets – the process of
“reductionism” as it is now called – does not, in the end, appear to
lead anywhere and that the opposite hypothesis, that the nature,
purpose and interrelationships of the parts must be considered as
subordinate at each stage to their governing wholes – this is the
hypothesis which work in these fields now seems to require.

The results of these symposia may be found in Towards a

Theoretical Biology, edited by C. H. Waddington. There is also
Beyond Reductionism by Koestler and Smythies, which gives the
papers and discussions from a similar symposium at Altbach in
Austria, organised by Arthur Koestler.

John Davy, in an article in The Observer magazine, gave an

admirable description of these developments last year4 and since
the summary form of his article, written for the lay reader, lends
itself well to our purpose, it is from that that I take the following
quotations.

First of all the biological viewpoint.

“Molecular biology assumes that the instructions for co-ordinating

an animal’s various parts, for directing it to its ‘goals’, are coded
into the [genetic] blueprint. But copies of the blueprint sit inside
each cell of an organism: how does one blueprint know what
instructions all the others are issuing? How does one cell keep in
step with another? How does each part ‘know its place’ in the
organism as a whole?

“A number of scientists at Serbelloni emphasised that however this

control is achieved, it must be involved with the hierarchical nature
of living organisms; each organism consists of organs, which consist
of tissues, which consist of cells, which consist of a variety of
molecules, which consist of atoms, which consist of fundamental

4
Do we or don’t we understand the secret of life? The Observer Magazine, 15th
February 1970.

6
particles … At each level the parts serve a whole on the next higher
level which somehow organises the parts of which it consists”.5

“The ‘reductionist’ tradition of science assumes as a matter of

course that a complex phenomenon must be explicable in terms of
something simpler. The cells must explain the organ, the molecules
must explain the cells, … etc. Perhaps the most surprising event at
Serbelloni was that this assumption was explicitly challenged by a
physicist …”

“This challenge came from Prof. David Bohm of Birbeck College,

London, who argued ‘that the apparently chance behaviour of
particles at one level, in fact reflects an orderly pattern at a higher
level’ … At Serbelloni Bohm suggested that there is an analogous
situation in biology and that rather than the parts of living
structures determining the whole, the whole may determine the
parts. Perhaps ‘hierarchies of order’ are as fundamental a feature
of the universe as ‘particles’.”

“Bohm admitted that such an idea runs contrary to all usual

scientific habits and is therefore difficult to digest.”

One aspect of the capacity of the dominant whole to organise its

subordinate parts which has impressed the Serbelloni group most is
the self-organisation of living things in time:

“At the heart of this problem is one central problem: the

organisation of living things – their capacity to arrange and maintain
their cells and their organs as coherent wholes or ‘organisms’. And
again and again, in discussing this problem, the suggestion was
made that the answer would have to do with the peculiar relation of
living things to time”.

And so we see that, with suitable cries of astonishment, scientists

are in fact groping their way back to the idea of hierarchies of order,
orders in which each unitive principle is the parent of a multiplicity
of effects at a lower level.

The next step must be (and it cannot be more than ten or, at the
most, twenty years before this is explicitly and clearly recognised by
scientists) that, with more suitable cries of astonishment, it will be
realised that the cosmic bodies are the primary unities of the
manifested cosmos and that their motions and interrelationships are
5
Notice that the phrase “of which is consists” is the phrase of someone
accustomed to think in terms of the empirical viewpoint. The whole does not
“consist” of the parts, it presubsists them. The Arsenal Football Club does not
consist of its Chairman, Manager, players, etc.; it was there before they were born
and will probably be there when they are dead, but it has within it certain
principles or potential modes of manifestation which continually tend to embody
themselves in a Chairman, Manager, players, etc.

7
the primary determinants of the patterns in time – those “rhythmic
processes” – which characterise all natural processes of growth and
unfoldment.

I said that the scientific regulation of this could not be delayed for
more than ten or twenty years, but, in fact, it could be and should
be already recognised, or at least strongly suspected, and the only
thing which prevents it from being already seen is the
unmanageable diversity and superabundance of scientific
information published today, allied to the natural reluctance and
incapacity of scientists (one might say of men generally) to examine
thoughtfully, results, however scientifically sound, which cannot be
readily assimilated with their present concepts and world-view.

The fact is that the past ten or fifteen years have seen a remarkable
accumulation of scientific results which point clearly to the
relationship between natural phenomena and cosmic forces. Let us
consider some of these.

One of the best examples of such studies outside the astrological

field is the work of the Foundation for the Study of Cycles, of
Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. With a continuous programme of extensive
and penetrating cycle analysis going back to their founding in 1940,
this Foundation has built up a very large catalogue of well-
authenticated cycles in the occurrence of human and natural
phenomena in many different fields.

For much of this period the Foundation has been, to some extent, up
against the same problem which we face in a more pronounced
form, namely that despite the huge scientific standards they have
maintained, their subject of study has stood somewhat outside the
circle of accepted scientific research. The reason for this, of course,
is the one with which we are now familiar, that regular cycles of
events which continue to repeat decade after decade and, in many
cases, century after century, in such social phenomena as economic
and trade cycles and the occurrence of civil and international strife,
not to mention cycles in biological, meteorological and medical
phenomena, etc. – these all presuppose some higher, unitive,
regulating pattern or mechanism which the scientific fraternity have
been loath to acknowledge.

But in the past few years all this has suddenly changed dramatically
and the conferences now organised by the Foundation’s European
Division: The International Institute for Interdisciplinary Cycle
Research at Leiden, have been attended by scientists from all over
Europe who have come as individuals or as representatives of some
of the ever-growing number of societies (such as the Group d’Etude
de Rythmes Biologiques, which co-ordinates French cycle research)

8
which are now interesting themselves in the study of fluctuating
phenomena in many branches of science.

One of the projects which they have put in hand is that of a ten-
volume catalogue of cycles and for this they have some 87
scientists collecting and collating cycle references in 17 languages
and in 39 branches of science.

In many of these fields scientists are content to observe cyclic

phenomena without offering firm conclusions about the originating
causes of their cycles, but there can be no doubt that the
overwhelming, and growing, body of opinion now looks to extra-
terrestrial factors as the regulating mechanisms.

But quite apart from the rapidly expanding work of the Foundation
for the Study of Cycles under its remarkable president, Edward
Dewey, there are countless programmes of research proceeding all
over the world into circadian and similar rhythms, very many of
which are explicitly related to extra-terrestrial causal factors.

One ought to mention, in passing, the increasing variety of

phenomena which have been linked with sunspot cycles – (only a
few weeks ago Russian scientists announced that influenza
epidemics correlated with these periods) – and alongside this one
must place the discovery that these sunspot cycles can be
described very largely in terms of the harmonics of planetary
periods; a discovery which caused The Times to comment in its
Science Report that this might provide “a sound scientific basis for
some astrological predictions”. The report continued:

“The radiation from the sun is one of the prime hazards to manned
space flight, so we find the curious anomaly that the dates of the
future space flights might be chosen using the textbook astrological
techniques of Kepler to predict periods of low sun-spot activity.”6

Now if we survey all these many developments in the world of

orthodox scientific research we shall find that the all-pervading
concept is that of regular rhythms in the occurrence of natural and
human phenomena.

If we turn to the world of astrological research we shall find that in

all the leading examples of such work (and here I must include the
work of Professor Gauquelin, whatever he may protest to the
6
The Times, 5th December 1970. John J. O’Neill, Science editor of the New York
Herald Tribune and the first science writer to win a Pulitzer Prize, made the same
observation over ten years ago. He also wrote “Astrology is one of the most
important fields for scientific research today, and one of the most neglected …
There is absolutely nothing unscientific about engaging in research in this field …
Scientists today cannot look down on astrology; instead they must raise their eyes
to take in the wider horizons that astrologers have preserved for them.”

9
contrary) the same concept is to be found; that of regularly
recurring rhythms.

Now I know that there are those who say that John Addey has a bee
in his bonnet about the harmonics of cosmic periods, and I know
there are those who believe that what I have been saying on this
subject for many years is just some specialised application or aspect
of astrology, that it is like, say, horary astrology, something one can
either take or leave alone according to taste. In reality this is not
the case. The real position is that it is only by seeing astrology in
terms of the harmonics of cosmic periods that we can begin the task
of re-expressing our study, in all its manifestations, in clear scientific
– I mean really scientific – terms.

In this respect, exactly the same principles underlie both astrology

and all those subjects of enquiry, which I have been speaking of,
now attracting the attention of orthodox science. There is no longer
any dividing line, in principle, between them.

What we have in place of a “dividing line” is a graduated assortment

of scientific results, some of which look, at first sight, like the
familiar products of orthodox scientific enquiry, some of which seem
to belong quite clearly to the field of astrology, and some of which
could belong to either. To complicate matters, some of the first
group have been produced by astrologers while some of the second
have been produced by opponents of astrology. But they all
embody the same principles and will ultimately be seen to belong to
one science, the name of which is astrology.

It is true that there are many astrologers who have misgivings about
attempts to approach astrology through the methods of science.
“How do we know,” they say, “that if we begin by adopting their
methods we shall not end by adopting their philosophy?”

My dear friends, this is not the position; this is not the position at
all! How could scientists, as we have been accustomed to think of
them, convert us to their way of thinking when they are no longer
able to sustain their old beliefs themselves? We are not even in the
position, as we have sometimes liked to think of ourselves, of a
David pitting our strength against the Goliath of Modern Science.
Science today – and I am speaking of the heart and core of the
scientific world-view which has prevailed for the past 300-odd years
– is not so much like a Goliath as like a great simpleton who is even
now in the process of falling over his own boot-laces into the dust
from which he will not rise again.

I hope indeed that we shall become more scientific in our methods,

but we certainly need not fear their philosophy (if one can call it

10
that) when they themselves are already deserting that philosophy in
order to rejoin the road which we have never left.

There is indeed a difference between us and orthodox scientists and

it is quite simply this: that we have a clearer grasp than they have
of the principles towards which they are now turning.

Modern science has far greater resources than we have and their
methods are better, but their thinking about scientific problems is
behind ours. And this is why I have taken up so much of this lecture
in setting the present situation in its historical context, because,
unless we understand our position – our strength and our
weaknesses – vis-à-vis modern science and shake off our timidity
about it, we shall not have the confidence to take advantage of our
basically strong position or the open-mindedness to move forward
to that synthesis of the best elements in those two world-views I
spoke of earlier, and so make use of the valuable methods
developed by science to help us, where necessary, in clarifying and,
indeed, re-thinking and re-expressing the principles of our science.

What then are these principles which I believe we have a fresh

opportunity to clarify and re-formulate?

Obviously they are manifold but there are certain key ideas which
lie at the very heart of our science, which we all tacitly recognise,
which have the widest applicability for us, but which we have now
come to see only in terms of rigid traditional concepts, which, in the
interests of easy transmission, have been drastically over-
simplified.7

I would like to take up the most of the remainder of this lecture in

looking closely at one of these ideas and showing, if I can, how a
fresh approach could revitalise our thinking and our grasp of
practical procedures.

The idea I want to look at is the one I have been speaking about
throughout this lecture. It is that astrology belongs inherently to
that tradition which sees the whole manifested cosmos, and
everything in it, as being brought forth by a hierarchy of principles,
proceeding from unity into multiplicity by stages, stages in which
each superior principle is the parent of a number of effects at a
lower level, each one of which, in turn, has its own centre and unity
from which still further effects proceed at a lower level.
7
One of the themes which might have been included in this lecture, had
circumstances allowed, is the whole question of how traditions become corrupted,
what kind of things happen when they do, and how they are to be restored. The
(to some extent inevitable) shedding of the less central elements of a tradition by
its custodians when they have their backs to the wall, is one of the commonest
disintegrative effects. Alan Leo did much simplifying; Margaret Hone carried the
process to even greater lengths.

11
Now, in this procession from unity into diversity it is the character
and properties of the successive formative principles which
determine the number and variety of the subordinate effects and
also the number of stages through which they pass in their
unfoldment.

For this reason the symbolism of number is an integral part of

astrology; it is embedded in all the rules of horoscopy and we use it,
consciously or unconsciously, in every facet of our science.

Alongside this one may place the re-discovery of the fact, which has
always been implicit in the rules of astrology but which I believe my
own work has made clear, that the symbolism of number is
expressed primarily (for us) through the harmonic relationships of
planets in the circle.

Let me explain and illustrate this.

Pythagoras taught that there were only nine basic numbers and that
all numbers beyond nine were repetitions. Our system of
numeration exemplifies this for we use only nine numbers plus a
nought to indicate the return to unity and the beginning of a new
cycle. (That is, when we reach nine we return to one with a nought
after it).

What is the explanation of this? It lies in the truth that all things,
between their innermost unity and their outermost expression, pass
through nine stages.

Now I know there are those who believe that distinctions of this sort
are merely arbitrary conceptions of the human mind which have no
reality other than that given to them by our own thoughts. This is a
heresy which has arisen as a by-product of an era of scientific
materialism which cannot conceive of inner realities except in these
terms.

With what order of truth are we dealing then, when we say that all
things unfold through nine stages? It is the same order of truth, for
example, which says that man is tripartite: spirit, soul and body.
This is not an arbitrary distinction: it corresponds to a clearly
definable reality. Furthermore, this example (of the tripartite nature
of man) also has a direct bearing on the symbolism of the number
nine, for, in fact, we are not dealing merely with one trinity – a
“vertical” trinity one might say, thus:

Spirit 1

Soul 2

12
 Body 3

but also with a “horizontal” trinity, by which each of the first three
are triple in character:

static dynamic ideal 1 |2 | 3

Here we have a problem of nomenclature. Perhaps the terms static,

dynamic and ideal are the most apt. For just as spirit is static, soul
is dynamic and body is ideal (in the sense that it is through body
that ideals are actualised and so made manifest), so we can say
that spirit has static, dynamic and ideal aspects which are the
source of all secondary static, dynamic and ideal elements, that soul
has the same three elements and is the means whereby they are
implemented, and that body has the same three elements and so is
the vehicle through which they are all outwardly expressed. Thus
we have a combination of two trinities which give us the nine stages
through which all things unfold in passing from their innermost
subsistence to their outermost expression.

1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9

Thus the number nine is especially connected with the process

whereby the innermost root idea is ultimately connected to its
outermost full unfoldment and expression.8

We can now ask how this fits in with our ideas about the number
nine in astrology. Probably the most important manifestation of the
number nine in practical astrology is to be found in the navamsa
chart which is given such prominence in Indian astrology. As was
explained in a recent issue of The Astrological Journal,9 the navamsa
chart is really a diagram of the planetary positions of a chart shown
in terms of the ninth harmonic. (That is to say the chart is
considered as having nine cycles of 40° each: one complete zodiac
from 0° Aries to 10° Taurus, one from 10° Taurus to 20° Gemini and
so on).

One statement I have seen about the navamsa chart is that it

stands in relation to the radical map as fruit to the tree. This we can
now see to be appropriate, for the number nine in our diagram

8
Thus Proclus says that the soul “proceeds enneadically (i.e. according to the
number nine) … that it may proceed to the last of things after departing from the
monad.” Quoted in Thos. Taylor’s translation of the Timaeus of Plato; Princeton
University Press, p. 124.
9
Harmonics and Hindu Astrology: Charles Harvey. Astrological Journal, Spring
1970.

13
represents the complete realisation, or fruit, of what is implicit in the
number or root idea.

Again the navamsa chart is said to show the marriage partner and
the marriage generally. Here again we can now see the reason for
this, for the two ends of this ninefold process are like two poles
which must be brought together. “One” represents the root identity
and original potentiality, “nine” represents the ultimate ideal to be
realised. The bringing together of these two is symbolised in
marriage.

Whilst casting about for an example of an outstanding marriage

which might serve to illustrate this point, it was suggested to me
that Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning might be a good case to
take.

Upon obtaining the natal positions of these two, I found that I

needed to go no further than the first map I converted to the
navamsa – that of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.10 Here Venus is
exactly on the seventh cusp in the navamsa and in trine to the
navamsa Sun in 17° Scorpio. Since Robert Browning had the Sun in
17° Taurus we can see, without going any further, that the navamsa
describes both the felicitous nature of the marriage and also
something about the marriage partner. (The maps have other
interesting features, too, of course).

One may mention in passing that this characteristic of the number

nine, of marking out the successive stages of the unfoldment of an
idea, is the reason why, in numerology it is customary to add up the
digits of any number in order to arrive at the root number from
which it is derived.

This practice had always mystified me because of course, to add up

hundreds, tens and units as if they were all the same thing, seemed
illogical. But what one is really doing, when one adds up the digits
of a number, is finding out what is the root number in which a larger
number had its origin in a series of ninefold progressions.

Here we have a piece of occult lore which has seldom been clearly
explained but which is now confirmable and explicable in scientific
terms. This was brought home to me when we had all our
collections of sun-positions in all the available collections of data
held by the Astrological Association, subjected to harmonic analysis
by computer. These included some 20,000 sets of birth data.*
10
Born: 6 March 1806, 7.0p.m., Durham.

* These include the birth data of 7,302 Doctors of Medicine, 2,875 Artists, 2,492
American Clergymen, 1,970 British Clergymen, 1,970 Control Group ditto, 1,024
Polio victims, 970 Nonagenarians and 710 Judges.

14
This point can be illustrated by reference, for example, to the
largest single collection of birth data: that of 7,302 Doctors of
Medicine.11 (Those who find elaborate mathematical examples
unnerving may omit this part, continuing on page ??.)

In this collection of data the Sun’s longitude at noon was tabulated

according to the total number of times it occupied each degree of
the ecliptic. This gave 360 totals showing the distribution of 7,302
solar longitudes. (The crude totals are given in The Astrological
Journal, Autumn 1969.)

This distribution was then subjected to harmonic analysis in order to

discover the rhythms present in the distribution. The analysis was
carried from the first to the 180th harmonic and the results of this
analysis are given in the table shown on the following page. Each
harmonic is numbered and described according to its amplitude and
phase angle.12

This harmonic analysis has many interesting features (for example,

the harmonic which shows the highest amplitude of any of the 180
possible harmonics is the twelfth – which may be said to correspond
to the traditional twelvefold division of the Zodiac, showing that this
has the most vigorous presence of all the rhythms governing this
solar distribution), but the point with which we are here concerned
is the procession by nines and the reader’s attention is drawn to
those harmonics which fall at intervals of nine places from the 7th,
that is the 16th, 25th, 34th, 43rd, 52nd , and so on, all numbers of which
the digits add up to 7.

I call these the successive subsistences of the number 7. Thus 16 is

called the second subsistence of 7, 25 is the third subsistence and
so on. (I do not know if any other term exists.)

Now if we show diagrammatically the phase-angles of this series of

harmonics, from the 7th to the 178th, by marking them on a 360 dial,
we find that they are distributed in the circle in a manner which is
anything but characteristic of a random distribution. As can be seen
(Fig. I.), all except one of the 20 phase-angles in this series fall
virtually in one half of the circle, and the exception (the 52nd) has a
very small amplitude. This is a remarkable result but it is only one
of many similar ones which could be given.13

11
Extracted by Rupert Gleadow and Brigadier R. C. Firebrace from the Registrar of
Medical Practitioners 1850 - 1900
12
The amplitude shows the strength of each particular harmonic as a percentage
of the mean distribution; the phase angle shows where the “peak” of each wave-
form falls in relation to the point 0° Aries, the wavelength of each harmonic being
taken, for this purpose, as 360° in extent.
13
It should be added that the total distribution of all 180 phase angles in this
analysis shows no significant bias in the circle – as can be seen from the first

15
diagram (a) below, which gives the number of phase angles falling in each 30° of
the circle.
By way of comparison, here, too are the phase angles of those harmonics which
are subsistences of 7 in (b) the solar distribution on the birth dates of 1,970
British Clergy and (c) on the birth dates of 970 nonagenarians. This last example
is of extraordinary and far-reaching significance. (These two illustrations
comprise the first to the 10th subsistences only.)
It is not only the subsistences of the number 7, of course, which are significant in
results of this kind and, for comparison again, I give the distribution of the phase-
angles of those harmonics which are subsistences of 4 (13, 22, 31, etc.) in the
nativities of 1,024 Polio sufferers (d). cont on next page::
The significance of this type of result is no doubt difficult to envisage, but the
effect is to produce distribution peaks or troughs at intervals of 40°, since
harmonics which are nine places apart will coincide nine times in the complete
circle.

16
17
What it amounts to is this, that each one of these sets of birth data
– doctors, artists, nonagenarians, etc. – are, when analysed in this
way, just like different crystalline substances, each one
characterised by a different numerical structure.

Over half a century ago, D’arcy Thompson, in his memorable book

On Growth and Form, commented on the reluctance of
morphologists (in contrast to, say, astronomers or chemists) to raise
their study to a science by the proper employment of mathematics.
It was as if they saw in the teeming forms of nature, in the
lineaments of the growing plant or the convolutions of the snail’s
shell, mysteries too deep and too varied to lie within the scope of
clear numerical expression. Yet Thompson and others have since
shown how mathematical laws are at work in all forms of nature.

Now science must learn that all the lineaments of human character
and the convolutions of destiny too, fall, no less, within the scope of
number; for if it is true that God made “every plant of the field
before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it
grew”, it is no less true that He measured the ways of man before
he was in the womb, and made him an embodiment of ideal and
divine numbers.

18
Here is another example of the numerical basis of the larger
astrological symbolism, and one from which I want to go on to show
(what I believe is a new discovery) how, in principle, the genetic
code is expressed in terms of astrological symbolism.

In the Astrological Journal of Spring 1970 I contributed an article on

the symbolism of the number five as applied to human affairs, and I
showed that one basic pattern applied to all the different
manifestations of this five-fold symbolism. I illustrated it, you may
recall, in terms of the various faculties, the five senses, the five-fold
structure of the hand, the Indian Caste system, and the five types of
government described by Plato in his Republic and in other ways
too.

I showed that this five-fold order was always constructed in the

same way with a unity above, a unity below and a triad in the
middle, although this sometimes appears as a unity with four
subordinate principles.

I showed that this five-fold order was always constructed in the

same way with a unity above, a unity below and a triad in the
middle, although this sometimes appears as a unity with four
subordinate principles.

For example, man has three groups of faculties: the affectional, the
volitional and the mental; or heart, will and mind. The unity above
these is soul (which is their source, centre and principle of co-
ordination). The unity below is body through which they all manifest
outwardly.

Soul

Heart Will Mind

Body

Each of these can be further sub-divided into subordinate five-fold

groups of a corresponding nature. If we take on of the original five,
say “mind”, we can divide the gnostic powers (starting with the
highest) into intuition, reason, estimation or judgement, instincts
and senses thus:

Soul intuition
Mind reason
Will estimation
Heart instinct
Body senses

19
The point to insist upon, perhaps, is that divisions of this sort are not
merely arbitrary; they correspond to real truths about the
constitution of man (and other things too, of course). This five-fold
division in things human is of great antiquity and is expressed by
man in countless different ways and embodied in a great variety of
human institutions. It is of so universal a character that it has
passed into the language with such words as quintessence, for you
will see from the examples that the fifth and highest order of the
group always contains the essence of the four lower orders.

To go a step further we can now see that if we take a section right

across this five-fold type of hierarchy in human nature (and of
course there are other numerical divisions besides the five-fold one)
we might arrive at an example of this sort:

(Soul) Mystical faculty 5 aspects (5 x 5)

=25
Intuition 5
Reason 5
(Mind) Gnostic Faculties 5 Estimation 5
Smell
Instincts 5 Sight =25
Senses 5 Hearing
Taste
Touch
(Will) Volitional 5 divisions (5 x 5)
=25
(Heart) Affectional 5 divisions (5 x 5)
=25
(Body) Pragmatic 5 divisions (5 x 5)
=25

5 categories 25 categories 125

categories

On the left is our original five-fold division of man; in the middle we

have each of the original five subdividing into five branches each,
giving 25 categories of things in that column; and in the third
column a further splitting into fives gives 125 categories in that
column of which we have given the five separate senses as an
example.

Now if I am right in insisting that the sub-harmonics of the whole

circle are numerically correlated with the appropriate subdivision in
the hierarchical organisation of the whole, then it follows that, for
example, special qualities or defects of the five senses will be shown
in the 125th harmonic in the horoscope, and that special
characteristics of the faculties at the “higher level” will be shown in
the 25th harmonic, and so on.

20
Let us take Helen Keller14 as an example. Here, you will remember,
there were severe impediments at the level of the individual senses,
but no impairment of the intelligence at a “higher” level. So we
shall be looking for manifestations of the 125th harmonic, the wave
length of this harmonic (125th part of 360°) being 2°52.8’.

The positions of Sun, Mercury and Saturn in her chart are shown in
the diagram (Fig. II) and we see straight away that Mercury is close
to the square of Saturn. But if we look closer we see that the square
has an orb of 2°52’ – exactly the wave-length of the 125th harmonic
(to within 1’) which therefore means that these two bodies will again
be in exact square in the 125th harmonic.

If we look at the angle between Sun and Saturn we find it to be

69°08’ and here again we find this to be an exact multiple of 2°52.8’
(24 x 2°52.8’ to be precise, again to within 1’). Thus in the 125th
harmonic Sun is exactly conjunct Saturn showing the severe
blockage of the powers of self-communication at that level.

But Saturn does not impose any restriction at the higher level, that
is in the 25th harmonic.

On the other hand, let us take the positions of the philosopher

Bertrand Russell15 who, you will recall, was not only an outstanding
thinker but who also retained his physical faculties in good order up
to the age of 98. (Fig. III).

Here we find the angle between Sun and Jupiter to be 57°35’, and in
the ordinary course of events we should call that a sextile and have
14
Born 27 June 1880 at “about 4.0p.m.”, Tuscumbia, N. Alabama, (Astrology, Dec.
1952).
15
Born 18 May 1872 at 5.45 p.m., Trellek, Monmouthshire, (Astrological Journal,
Spring 1970 where a misprint gives the time as 5.45 a.m.).

21
done with it. However, in the light of our present enquiry we now
notice that this Sun-Jupiter angle is exactly 20 x 2°52.8’ (again to
the nearest minute) and thus, since 20 is a multiple of 5, he has Sun
conjunction Jupiter not only in the 125th but also in the 25th
harmonic.

I hope these illustrations will serve to demonstrate the principle I am

trying to get across. It is that the hierarchical arrangement of the
principles in the human constitution gives the key to the descriptive
harmonic relationship between the appropriate points in the
horoscope.

This is quite simply the “quantum” principle expressed in terms of

natural man. It may be said that intelligence is above nature, and
so it is, but soul works on matter through nature.

But once that is established we can immediately go much further.

All the characteristics of the physical body are determined by the

genetic make-up, and are transmitted genetically from parent to
child. But the body is what it is because man is what he is; all the
parts of the body are an expression of the inner constitution of man.
If the body is to be a true vehicle for the whole man then there must
be an appropriate part or attribute of body corresponding to every
one of his inner and higher attributes. The body is like a physical
microcosm; its every detail is an expression of something in human
nature as a whole.

For this reason, the harmonic relationships in the horoscope,

immensely complex as they are, provide the basis of a complete
genetic code and a total description of the genetic characteristics
communicated from one generation to the next.

I have chosen to give this particular application of the doctrine of

harmonics in this lecture because the science of genetics has been
for some time a focus of interest in the scientific world.

The position is that geneticists now know or can deduce a great deal
about the genetic transmission, its nature and processes. For this
reason, and with the prospect dangling before us of being able to
improve genetic strains and eliminate inherited disorders, there has
been much talk about what is called genetic engineering – that is,
the direct mechanical interference with the genetic process to
accomplish these apparently desirable objects.

But I believe that the wisest, most thoughtful and knowledgeable

masters of this subject have come to the conclusion that the real
prospects of genetic engineering are, for one reason and another –
and not least on the moral score – no more than a tantalising

22
mirage, which may appear feasible upon first sight but which, in
fact, are entirely impracticable.

Is it possible that, as one avenue closes to science, anther is

opening up, and that we have the key to it? Is it possible that as the
possibility of the mechanical control of genetic processes is seen to
be a false aim, the prospect of controlling them through a true
understanding of the right times and seasons for conception is
opening up? This may seem a remote possibility at present, and it
is certainly not an immediate prospect, but once the principle is
established, the rest will follow. Plato himself points to this
possibility in the eight book of The Republic.

The simplest example and the simplest potential application of this

principle relates to the actual prevention of conception. We know
that this can be accomplished by mechanical means – by
contraceptives, that is – but there are those who hold that this is a
wrong method and most others would presumably admit that is
looks like a second-best method. Catholics urge that a method
based upon natural rhythms should be used and pray for an
improvement in the scientific understanding of this problem. There
is no doubt whatsoever in my mind what the nature of that
improved understanding will prove to be. In the meantime we must
await the removal of the barrier of scientific prejudice which
prevents certain lines of enquiry being followed up by those who
have the means to follow them.

To revert to the genetic theme, one of the papers presented at the

Serbelloni Symposium mentioned earlier, was given by R. C.
Lewontin of Chicago University and had the title “On the Irrelevance
of Genes”.

In the accepted view of genetics, inherited traits are individually

determined by genes of which there are conceived to be many
thousands within each chromosome – 46 chromosomes in the case
of man. But Lewontin, indicating that inherited traits do not
normally appear singly but in associated groups determined by their
chromosomal origin, declares that the new picture which is
emerging is one in which genes entirely disappear, leaving only the
chromosomes as wholes.

This is another example of the assumption of parts within wholes

and it is, of course, fully in accord with the astrological picture
(where groups of associated traits are regarded as springing from
one astrological factor) and especially with the concept of
harmonics where the same principle is brought into much sharper
focus.

23
In this connection, one may ask if the time is not rapidly coming
when geneticists, turning away from the laboratory approach, will
gain far more enlightenment as to the nature and structure of the
genetic inheritance from considering, for example, the statement of
the neoplatonic philosopher Proclus (known, by virtue of his deep
identity of thought with Plato, as the Platonic Successor), that there
are in the soul 105,947 monads.16 A monad, in this context, being
one centre or unit in the hierarchy of principles, from each of which
flows a range of subordinate effects at a lower level.17

I have especially discussed one application of the law concerning

the harmonics of cosmic periods: that in relation to genetics. But its
implications are vast and it can be applied throughout the whole
field of science. The knowledge that the number of every substance
is a sub-multiple of its originating substance (and I use the word
substance in its philosophical sense as applying to spiritual as well
as natural substances) will be one of the central pillars of the
science of the future. It has already been acknowledged in one field
in the form of the Quantum Theory of physics and as we see, is
becoming a source of interest in other respects. But this principle is
of universal applicability and is the key as much, for example, to
new forms of curative medicine as to the discovery of new forms of
power based on the principle of resonance. It is, in fact, the key to
all vibratory phenomena.

One result of these developments in the sphere of astrology will be

a very great increase in the predictive potential of our science, and I
am speaking now of the new and enlarged astrology which is also
the true astrology.

Are we prepared for such an increase of predictive power? It has

been said18 that mankind has already passed, in recent centuries,
through three demoralising experiences. The first was the
realisation, through the Copernican revolution in astronomy, that
the earth was not at the centre of the universe and to many men
this had the effect of seeming to dwarf the significance of man
himself. The second was the Darwinian contribution to science
which, again, seemed to many to humble man still further. The
third was the advent of modern psychology which showed man just
how far he was the puppet of unrecognised drives and pressures
from the irrational side of his nature.

Insofar as the construction placed upon these three discoveries by

some was demeaning to man it was a mistaken interpretation. His
true nature and dignity was really undiminished by any of them.
16
The Commentaries of Proclus on the Timaeus of Plato. Trans.: Thomas Taylor
(1820), Vol. II, p. 109. (Also quoted as footnote on p.13.)
17
In Beyond Reductionism Koestler calls these “holons” (see page 197).
18
The following remarks are based upon some editorial comments of Edward
Dewey in Cycles of August 1970.

24
But a fourth and I believe still more shattering experience lies just
around the corner and its impact will be felt in the next twenty
years. It is the revelation of just how far the ebb and flow of human
events and activities take place in response to the all-various
pressures of cosmic forces.

The reaction to this discovery – which will be fortified by many

different kinds of scientific evidence – may be severe and a wave of
fatalism may sweep over men. Nevertheless, in the long run the
experience will be a salutary and beneficial one, for Renaissance
man and his successors have come to accept a totally false view of
the nature of free will and to believe that it consists in subjugating
his environment to his own self-interest (usually a very narrow self-
interest) in defiance not only of the natural order but, often, of the
moral order too.

This is a totally false kind of freedom.

True religion, indeed, has always pointed man the way, and
astrology has always been on the side of true religion, for it is a
God-centred science. But when the established church weakly
turned its back upon astrology at the behest of a debased science, it
lost its strongest ally. If it had upheld the right position of astrology
as carefully as did, for example, Albertus Magnus and Aquinas, the
story might have been different. As it is it lost its grip on certain
first principles and, with it, by degrees, the allegiance of the people.
An example, perhaps, of the salt losing its savour.

Taking the long view we can see that it is not until man has been
forced to the realisation of just how far, and in what respect, he is
not free, that he will be able to see clearly wherein his true dignity
and liberty do consist, and that these, indeed, when they are
realised, stand above nature and above all the fatal revolutions of
the heavens.

Then, indeed, if he is not in the meantime overtaken by Nemesis, he

can begin, with safety and humility, to build a new golden age. But I
suspect, as the Duke of Wellington might have said, that it will be a
damned close run thing.

25