By Dane Rudhyar
The Degree is not merely a subdivision of the zodiacal sign, or of the whole zodiac. It stands, as an astrological element, alone and in a position of supreme (though little understood) significance. The Degree is the most mysterious element in astrology, and indeed the key to all deeper astrological interpretation. For in the Degree come to a point of synthesis the two motions of the Earth — and, symbolically, the two great principles of all life: collective and individual, universal and particular. In the Degree, we witness the operation of the creative within an individual personality or a particular situation. Here “meaning” stands revealed — for whosoever knows how to read symbols.
Ignoring for the time being the numerical discrepancy existing between the 365 days and the 360 Degrees, we see that the Degree is the space covered by the Earth in its orbital revolution while it affects a complete axial rotation. The Degree is thus the projection in space of the time unit, the day. In the Degree, time-value and space-value are integrated, and the two motions of the Earth are combined. Every complete axial rotation distributes all over the Earth some phase of the Life-function related to the zodiacal sign (or segment of the Earth-orbit) in which this particular rotation occurs. Because the Earth moves in its orbit while rotating around its axis, there can be only a limited number of axial rotations within the yearly revolution around the Sun. Each rotation generates thus, orbitally, a Degree. These Degrees are not mere subdivisions of the zodiac; for the fact of their existence is not dependent upon any intrinsic differentiation caused by the nature of the zodiac itself, or of the universal Life-force. It is dependent solely on the axial rotation of the Earth. The Degree partakes thus of two natures. It is an orbital element conditioned by the axial rotation. It must stand therefore for that factor in life that “reconciles the opposites.”
What this function of reconciliation of the opposites is can be ascertained from our previous study of Jung’s analytical psychology as well as from the contents of our chapter “Individual, Collective, Creative,” etc. In the “day” we see operating successively all the phases of consciousness — from the waking state to the deepest sleep. All the stages from clear consciousness to the deepest unconsciousness are theoretically present. But if a “day” is a basic cycle of being, there must be something that integrates all these stages, a function of the relationship between conscious and unconscious. This function manifests in various ways; mainly, on one hand in dreams, on the other in creative phantasy. In the former, the unconscious predominates; in the latter, the conscious. But in both cases we find a linking or integrating process at work; and this process manifests through the projection of images, which are symbols. Dreams, or the greatest inspirations of the genius, are alike the products of an integrating process linking conscious and unconscious. In a sense, they are more often conditioned as to form by the state of the conscious — as the Degree is conditioned by the axial rotation of the Earth — but the energy with which they are endowed comes from the unconscious — the Degree is a part of the zodiac.
It might be said that the planet Uranus (and, in another way, also Jupiter) symbolizes this activity of the unconscious in relation to the conscious; but what a planet represents is pure activity. Whether the individual extracts out of the activity the “jewel of significance” or not, the planet of itself does not reveal; nor does it indicate the particular quality of the meaning that the individual at best could extract from the completion of this activity; that is, the nature of the “jewel of significance.”
What is seen in the Degree is the archetypal “quality” of whatever occurs within its boundaries; the potential selfhood of any life-manifestation focused therein. The zodiac, considered as a complete cyclic series of Degrees, becomes much more than a representation of collective energies. It becomes the universal womb of significances. It becomes Time in its highest sense: A cyclic series of creative moments which are “wombs of souls,” each of which releases a “quality” that becomes the “monad” of every entity reaching independent existence within that moment. Time, thus understood, is identical to the great Chinese concept of Tao.(1) The Degrees are units of Creative Time. They reveal the boundaries of the great creative “moments” for human beings on this Earth.
That there are 360 of such Degrees means that there are, from the planetary viewpoint, as many basic types or modalities of individual selfhood on Earth; as many “meanings” incarnate as “groups of human beings.” It is a planetary number. There is a different number for each planet, and it is determined (archetypally rather than phenomenally, as we shall see) by the relationship between the duration of the planet’s revolution and of its axial rotation. This relationship between the two durations is the mystical and creative meaning of Time, as we understand the term. It is the operative number of Tao on Earth, we might say — very much as, for instance, the number Pi (3.14159) is the operative number of life, universally considered.
From the foregoing, it may have become clear that the reality of the Degree, being of such a transcendental nature, can be considered and studied only in terms of a particular symbolical representation attached to it. Each Degree of the zodiac must therefore carry a symbol; and this symbol will reveal the meaning — the potential selfhood — of whatever is found located in this Degree; whether it be a planet or a cusp or any other abstract point.
How can one perceive or visualize these symbols? The answer is not so easy to give. To perceive symbols that are “wombs of significance” one must have a faculty of spiritual perception; moreover, the power to make the images visualized explicit and self-revealing. The term “clairvoyance” does not elucidate much, but we must use it in this connection. Space forbids us to explain what type of “clairvoyance” we are referring to. It certainly is more akin to real intuition than to mere “psychic” gifts. It can be said to be a special type of “holistic perception” — but one which is of planetary scope. Also, we must add that the revelation of the symbols may reach the public only through several stages of transmission. Those who actually have such a planetary “holistic perception” may transmit the symbols to disciples, who in turn record these for general use.
Be this as it may, we find that, in the Alan Leo Astrological Manuals series, the booklet entitled The Degrees of the Zodiac Symbolized gives two sets of symbolic interpretations of the Degrees. The first, by Charubel, is quite valuable; the second, from a medieval source, seems completely useless. Marc Edmund Jones has given out another set which is by far the best; which, in fact, actual practice has proven, to those who know how to use symbols, absolutely invaluable. The symbols are presented as quite modern pictures, thus in a garb more significant to the average student of today; but they are said to be derived from very ancient Egyptian sources. We are adding to this chapter, with the special authorization of the recorder, our own condensed formulation of these symbols. We believe that they constitute a momentous astrological revelation, the significance and import of which may loom larger and larger as the years pass.
In this “Sabian” cycle of symbols, we have something similar to the cycle of the Yi King as interpreted by King Wen some 3000 years ago. The Chinese seer used pictures and scenes taken from nature and from the simple agricultural life of his day in order to convey through the instrumentality of images otherwise inexpressible meanings. He had to use such pictures and scenes because unless they were familiar to, and easily experienced by, men of his time, these men would not have been able to extract the vital significance locked therein. The same thing is true today. Therefore the “Sabian” symbols, recorded by Marc Jones, present to us modern pictures and scenes which are relatively familiar or at least within the scope of our vicarious experiences. It is possible that the formulation of these 360 symbols is not yet perfect; that in some cases the scenes depicted as symbols are not sufficiently deeply rooted enough in the common experience of mankind, and not universally or vitally compelling. But in the main, we believe that such a series of symbols goes to the very root of planetary significance for our present era, and that, after being refined here and there, and after its structural rhythm is made clear through interpretative studies at various levels, it will stand with a significance comparable to that of the 64 symbols of the Yi King series. At any rate, its practical value in astrological practice is, to us, absolutely beyond doubt. It has proven itself in hundreds of cases; in fact, practically whenever it has been tested, both in natal charts and in important horary charts.
We might add, for the sake of a fuller understanding of the matter, that there are very plausible reasons why several valid symbols recorded in more or less the same way by persons of different spiritual “qualities” could be attached to each Degree. We must realize that in the realm of pure significance values are very different from those encountered in that of intellectual or scientific analysis. First, the individual element is paramount; second, it is connected with the factor of time. A symbol may be valid now, which may prove valueless a few centuries hence. The matter is not one of truthfulness or correctness, but one of value. And values are cyclically changing. A set of values may be “true” or rather vitally significant now; also it may have been as significant 5000 years ago. Yet it may have had very little or no validity 1000 years ago. For the same reasons, cultures and art expressions change periodically. There are cycles of significance within cycles. Each race, each cycle, is the symbolic image of some vast planetary or cosmic meaning. Some men who strive after real spiritual values refine their inner awareness to the point at which they can become the recipients, the “grails,” into which flows, and into which alone may flow, the “wine of significance.” They are the “seers,” the creative geniuses of the race — the avatars of Time, and themselves seeds of significance to the monadic group to which they belong by spiritual right.
These monadic groups can be discovered by means of astrological analysis. They are, in a sense, hidden behind the zodiac. But not the ordinarily understood zodiac of signs; rather, the more mysterious cycle of 360 Degrees. The key-number in such a cycle is not 12, but 6. The cycle is one of awareness, awareness being the vehicle for significance. As such, its first division is one which corresponds to the concept of horizon; and also to the theoretical division between day and night; which refers to the division between conscious and unconscious, outer and inner, man and woman, sensation-thinking and intuition-feeling. The concept of meridian, on the other hand, refers to the element of “power.” The birth-chart of the individual uses both axes, because birth means crucifixion in space and the number 4 is the number of formation. The ordinary zodiac, symbolizing also as a whole the universal “power of formation,” had therefore to be divided into 4 sections, which by trisection, gave the twelvefold division — or by bisection, the eightfold one.
Significance is based on the type of spiritual activity which constantly “reconciles the opposites.” It is, in an absolute sense, the source of this activity; in a relative and concrete sense it is the result thereof. Its keynote is thus 2 multiplied by 3; the number 3 referring to the principle of essential manifestation, or individuation. In other words, in terms of significance, we find the cycle divided into 6 phases. Each phase is the spiritual reality of what the occultist-theosophist calls a “Ray.” Each Ray, as it manifests concretely, has to subdivide itself into 4 parts: the crucifixion of the Ray. Thus we have the 24 Elders of the Bible, standing around the throne of God. In ancient times, as manifestation was more potential and energic than concrete and actually embodied, each Ray was rather trisected, giving the number 18 — the 18 chapters of the Bhagavad Gita. Krishna was the nineteenth, just as in the first phase of the Bahai movement, the Bab (the Herald of the Avatar-to-be) and his closest companions formed the 19 “Letters of the Living” — because they constituted the group before the concrete manifestation of the “Glory of God” — Baha’u’llah.
The 24 Elders represent the 24 hours of the day, for the day is the unit of Time and the reality of the Degree, which in turn is the unit of significance. Each “hour” stands therefore in the complete zodiac of significance for 15 degrees; just as each Ray stands for a two-month period — or two successive signs of the zodiac (which are traditionally referred to as a masculine-feminine pair; for instance, the pair Aries-Taurus).
In his interpretation of the “Sabian” cycle of symbols Marc Jones refers to these “hours” as spans, and divides them each into three five-degree sections: “In each hour the first five degrees express the factor of the habit realm in man; the second five, the emotional realm; the third five, the mental realm — the order of all trisection in . . . evolution from matter upward towards spirit.”
(Symbolical Astrology: Lesson 11.)
At this point, however, it seems necessary to answer two questions which probably have presented themselves many times to the reader’s mind while reading the last paragraphs. The first is: If there are over 365 days in the year, why only 360 degrees? — The second: Are there not seven Rays, rather than six?
These two questions can be answered simultaneously, the two answers deriving from the same principle. We can state this principle briefly by saying that there is always in Nature a value of indeterminacy where two fundamental polarities are to be interpreted in terms of each other. The axial rotation of the earth is a cosmically subjective and individualistic time-factor. The orbital revolution is an objective and universalistic space-factor. And the former cannot serve as an exact unit of measurement to determine the latter. We cannot measure one set of values by a unit belonging to another realm of value. The collectivity is not an exact sum total of individuals. There may be 360 individuals in a group; but the value of the group is not the exact sum of the values of each individual. There is in any collectivity an increment of growth, a plus; a mysterious quantity which, in a sense, is not a quantity — at any rate never a rational number.
The process may be reversed, and one may say that the individual is not an exact fraction of the group-value. Life is not as mathematical as we might think; and modern physics has discovered this while investigating the behavior of electrons. The result has been Heisenberg’s principle of indeterminacy: You cannot know accurately and at the same time the position and the speed of an electron. Likewise no two planetary motions of different orders can be related quantitatively by rational numbers. Perhaps the most universal symbol of this law of cosmic relationship is to be found in the value of Pi which measures the relation of circumference to diameter; 3.14159. It would seem logical that the circumference should contain 3 diameters or 6 radii. But it contains more than 6 radii, just as the year contains more than 6 X 60 days.
The “more” represents the coefficient of indeterminacy in all integrative processes. It represents the freedom of the Soul, the Seventh Day of Creation, the Atman of Hindu philosophy: the Imprevisible. Occultists speak of the Seven Rays. But the seventh is not really a Ray; it is a bridge between two six-fold scales of being. Musically speaking, it is the “leading note” of the major scale. It is the irrational value by which the length of the circumference is more than the sum of the lengths of six radii; that is .14159. . . It represents the freedom of all Rays; that by which they can be more than they are. Likewise if one divides 365 & 1/4 by 360 one gets a decimal value which represents symbolically that by which, each year, the individual may grow to a higher state of selfhood. This value, curiously enough, gives again the number 14 — being .014+.(2)
In another sense, the extra days mean also that the Earth’s orbit is not perfect nor the Earth’s pace steady. This might be referred to the tilting of the polar axis over the plane of the ecliptic. Whichever way one looks at the subject, 360 must be taken as the archetypal number measuring the relation of individual to collective on Earth: the creative number of the Earth as an archetype of significance. The realm of significance is the archetypal realm; and no concrete manifestation is ever a perfect replica of its archetype. Likewise, no astronomical cycle can be calculated in whole numbers; and, we might add, no actual life is ever absolutely and rigidly true to the pattern offered by the birth-chart; no group of prognostications can ever be absolutely accurate. Somewhere, at some time, some discrepancy will always occur. Otherwise the universe would already have reached a point of static perfection. The fact that life is, is the surest indication that spirit and matter, significance and form, can never be perfectly adjusted, and their opposite emphases never perfectly reconciled. Therefore there must always be destruction and regeneration. Out of the “indeterminate,” the creative freedom of Shiva arises — the symbol of all transitions, the god of the “First Ray.” All creation that is absolutely significant is imprevisible, because it arises out of relative imperfection, out of the perpetual need to find a new form to integrate the unintegratable.
There is a great symbolic truth in the tradition that, in leap years, on February 29, women can propose to men. For that extra day symbolizes the unfulfilled part of any cycle; and in that part the call of substance unmarried to spirit rises to spirit. And it must be heard. And the answer is the Avatar, the Christ-being, the Seventh Who is the First.
We now give the “Sabian” series of Degree-symbols in our condensed version. We shall add only these few remarks which are excerpts from Marc Jones’ course:
“Symbolical astrology is a living art and must be studied as such. The symbols connected with the degrees of the zodiac are seldom to be taken literally. They are rather catalytics to the astrologer’s higher understanding, the development of which will enable him to add content and implication to every factor of life.”
Marc Jones gives a positive and a negative interpretation of every symbol. In the present version, only the positive meaning is usually given, although occasionally both meanings are mentioned. This dualism of meanings is the expression of the fact that all being can orient itself toward spirit or toward matter, and all conditioning is susceptible of two basic types of interpretation — which, in turn, can be related to one of several (at least three) levels of consciousness. Hence the application of symbols to individual cases requires a technique, based on the higher understanding.
Any fraction of a degree is to be considered as a whole degree. Aries 15° 0′ is to be read as Aries 15°; but Aries 15° 1′, as well as Aries 15° 59′, represents Aries 16°. The symbols are the expression of a span of activity, a cycle, the significance of which is released at once, the moment it begins.