Heaven, Earth, & Humankind: Three Spheres, Three Light Cycles, Three Modes: Volume Iv: the Three Modes

By William Wadsworth

Heaven, Earth, and Humankind, Volumes I through IV was inspired by a dream in which I witnessed the collision of two worlds, one red and one green, the red cube was the dragon of Chinese Medical Philosophy, the green globe was the holistic cosmos that I already knew well through tropical astrology. The outcome of this dream was this book that integrates the two systems, and illuminates the core they share.

Behind every aspect of human experience we find the influence of light and darkness both as a reality and metaphor. Three great cycles of light and darkness govern experience: the seasonal cycle, the waxing and waning of the moon, and the emergence and retreat of daylight. These three cycles connect directly to the triune principle in Chinese philosophy that differentiates three aspects of human endeavor: spirit, body, and social life.

Heaven and earth seem to form a polarity. When they interact, they produce all the multifarious form of life near the surface of the earth. The whole ever remains a unity. Heaven floods the earth with both solar and celestial energy. The earth responds to that influx by producing living forms on its surface. The horizon line of the celestial chart symbolizes this plane where energy and matter interact. From this we can assess where a persons focus is and how they balance the three different aspects of human experience. Human beings are thefinest expression of heaven and earth, if and only if we harmonize with the great cycles of light. In Volume IV I connect this core wisdom from Chinese sages with the astrological idea of the three modes of tropical astrology

This volume continues the holistic and cyclic approach to astrology developed in the previous three volumes and culminates in a detailed description of the effect of the Sun, Moon, or Horizon in each zodiac sign. Each sign has a mode and the mode has affinity either with heaven and the sun, earth and the moon, or the ascendant and human affairs. The mutable signs are aligned with the sphere of the ecliptic and the mutable mode.

Heaven, Earth, and Humankind maps a path to understanding why astrology works in terms that anyone can understand. The operative power of astrology is the three light cycles as all the ancients understood. We have lost the wisdom, but that lost wisdom is recovered somewhat in this valuable book.

How is our human experience connected to the greater life of the cosmos?Our answer depends on our degree of self-realization, and we cannot truly know ourselves unless we understand how we feel and react to the cycles of heaven. This book brings some traditional wisdom into focus to help us with these fundamental questions about how to live well.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 23, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503560987

Book preview

Chapter 1

Theory

The aim of this volume is to map some of the deep structural and interpretive functions of the three modes for astrology, psychology, and medicine. By first making inferences from ancient writings then analyzing the correlations of the modes, it will be argued that the modes are vital to an understanding of human behavior. They anticipate a person’s level of functioning, or in other words, their governing meme. In traditional systems, modes define three basic levels of human functioning: the intellectual, social, and biological. Properly understood, these human imperatives provide psychological insight into the interpretive meaning of sun, moon, ascendant, and planets. The associative values ascribed to the modes derive from their corresponding direct relations to the planes of the ecliptic, the equator, and the horizon. Consequently, it is within astrological technology that this essay contends that the modes help interpret the sun, moon, and ascendant in a natal chart, whose meaning also is measured by these same three planes.

The modes carry a deeply personal message about character and values for solar and lunar phases and positions. Humans are part of nature, and the modes describe our focus on thought, initiative, or habit. The phases of the sun, moon, and ascendant in the annual, monthly, and daily cycles reinforce these determinations. In traditional fourth-century Ptolemaic astrology, it was the three modes that combined with the four elements to produce twelve combinations, which underlie the meaning of the traditional twelve zodiac signs. When planets, the sun, the moon, or the ascendant occupied a zodiac sign, it activated these latent modal meanings. Ptolemy called these combinations of four signs to a single mode the quadruplicities.

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Figure 1. The quadruplicities—three different modes uniting the four elements

In traditional astrology, the modes organize and differentiate the four elements as they function in different seasons. They also define three predictable phases for each season. The cardinal mode defines spatially the structure of the year by its ownership of the four directions and the solstices and the equinoxes. Cardinal signs are Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn. We find limited discernable seasonal explanation for the links between one cardinal point and any particular element. Rather, the traditional combinations seem more abstract and mathematical than seasonal in their derivations.

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Figure 2. The cardinal zodiac signs and cardinal quadruplicities shown angular in a 2014 fictional chart. The left/east ascendant is Aries/fire (wood), the fourth house north is Cancer/water (earth), the seventh house west is Libra/air, and the tenth house midheaven south is Capricorn/earth. Cardinal signs are considered compatible with the action-oriented cardinal points or directions of this chart.

For instance, while the link between the autumnal zodiac sign Libra and the air element is appropriate and matches ancient Chinese observations, the link between water and the summer solstice does not. Summer heat would ordinarily link to the fire element, not its opposite and conflicting water element. Similarly, the fire sign Aries rules the spring equinox that the Chinese give to wood as an extension of seasonal growth that springs from winter snow and ice, and the cool, moist weather could just as well be represented by earthly fertility and fecundity had Ptolemy lived in a temperate climate rather than on the edge of a desert. For desert dwellers, the earth is dry, extrapolating from common sense ideas of seasonal values—for instance, fire would appropriately be associated with Cancer, and water either with Aries or Capricorn.

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Figure 3. The Chinese elements at the cardinal points—east/wood, north/water, west/metal, south/fire—with earth rather than Greek ether at the center. Phases before and after the solstices and equinoxes were assigned the same element as the cardinal points, giving each season a congruent element for all three signs related to the season.

Given the non-seasonal emphasis in Greek element distribution, it is clear that in the case of cardinal signs, the modes are designed to emphasize symbolically that the qualities inherent in cardinality organize all four elements and in every season. Fire, water, air, and earth, respectively, each interact with the powerful symbolism of seasonal change itself, of transformation, of activity, of the ritual response of society to the solstices and equinoxes. The elements are subordinated to the process of transformation and to the modes. The cardinal signs focus on action and social action at that. This also defines whatever sign occupies the north, east, south, and west angles of a chart. The mode on the angle defines the values acted upon. The principle of dynamic, directionally certain change so conventionally associated with the cardinal points plays out through all the elements via the cardinal mode. But Western astrological geometry reduces the seasonal elements only to interplay between opposing principles whose elemental qualities have been abstracted from rather than tied to the seasons. We have only a ghost of emphasis when compared to the three-months-long continuity of elements to each season in the Chinese system. The element defines the season; the modal emphasis defines the person and, in the Greek system, takes precedence in interpretation over the element, which only has a loose connection to the seasons.

Traditionally in tropical astrology,

• the cardinal signs were coequal with the cardinal directions and were thought to refer to action and defining seasonal decisiveness—the beginning of spring, summer, autumn, and winter and the system of solstices and equinoxes;

• the fixed signs referred to the next-in-sequence months, where summer heat and winter cold were sustained and at their height or where spring was fully in bloom or autumn decline most marked; and

• the mutable signs were transitional signs, where winter or summer were clearly ending but autumn was not established and so forth.

However, since the Renaissance, when introspective and symbolic meanings were first explored, the mutable signs became associated with adaptability, reflection, and intellect; the cardinal signs with physical and social action and entrepreneurial behavior; and the fixed signs with determination, steady purpose, and deep desire or attachment.

Similarly, within Hindu astrology, the three modes were congruent with the three gunas or three fundamental states of being described as follows: (a) Sat (equilibrium/truth), (b) Tam (habit/desire), and (c) Raj (activity). We understand these states to refer to what traditional physics might generalize as potential energy, inertia, and kinetic energy. The idea of the three modes or gunas then all seem to refer to core qualitative states that can be linked to the three cycles of light and their more static and philosophical/symbolic representations in astrology. Some initial deductions can be made based on tradition.

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Figure 3. Classic American chart showing zodiac with ascendant (east horizon) or head of the cosmic man at thirteen degrees Capricorn on the ecliptic

The natal chart of Paul Newman, for instance, has a cardinal ascendant, which is more emphasized in the chart than the predawn sun in a fixed mode or the nearby night-ruling moon in mutable mode. Although all three quadruplicities (cardinal, fixed, and mutable) are represented, creating a degree of balance, the link between the cardinals and the horizon makes the ascendant the most congruent of the three. Then in addition, the elevated Saturn rules the ascendant and three other planets in Capricorn, and Mars in Aries combine with the ascendant to reemphasize this strong cardinal mode, action-oriented, socially minded focus. The horizon and its four cardinal directions give a clear outlet for expression of this cardinal energy. Newman’s holistic and alternative thinking and his genius in marketing and spiritual values that relate to his core identity, sun and moon, only emerged slowly from behind the dominant persona. We need to examine the basis for these kinds of useful determinations.

Symbolic meanings accrue to those periods of time before and after the cardinal points of the day or year. Before the cardinal point at dawn, the spring equinox, the traits of predawn darkness, and the chilly early spring are variable while afterward, midmorning and late spring display full bloom and steadily ascending warmth. Similarly, a summer afternoon between one and three or the phase of summer ruled by the fixed sign Leo, is more consistently hot than noon itself, or the period ruled by the cardinal sign Cancer. And the period before noon has more fickle, cooler temperatures, depending on weather from the previous week, or seasonally Gemini is unstable sometimes supporting rain for weeks or suddenly blazes with heat. While the dynamic qualities of meteorological heat, cold, moisture, and dryness generally are associated with an element, the bias in their manifestation before, during, and after the cardinal points consistently is tied to the modes. They display the three basic trends in time, appearances, and how things come into being namely beginning, middle, and end or before, during, and after.

We astrologers discern the same bias in human character as in the three phases of seasonal development and their modal counterparts. People also emphasize thinking ahead, or action, or maintaining the status quo. The quadruplicities describe same-phase characteristics differentiated by season that reflect in human behavior.

If a chart emphasizes cardinal signs, we see predictable activity and social activity as dominant. If a chart emphasizes mutable signs, we see flexibility and a cognitive emphasis. If in the fixed sign, we see that focused emotions, physical habits, love of nature, and family tradition prevail.

When we link cycles of light directly to the basic differentiation between heaven (sun), earth (moon), and horizon (human) and thus the three modes associated with them, we break into the secret code of real astrological cause and meaning. The true relations depart somewhat from the canons of Ptolemaic and modern astrology. With the help of the Chinese and Hindu systems, we see that the traits that identify spring, summer, fall, and winter are already well developed by the solstices and equinoxes and that the sun position and its light is at the midpoint of the seasonal progression. So experientially, the beginning of spring is earlier in the first thaw, or when crocuses first appear, not at the equinox. The preceding mutable sign is the beginning of spring and the end of winter and so on around the annual or daily cycle. Based upon this core observation, we make the innovative case that (a) the sun is associated with mutable / potential energy / Sat / heaven / altruistic thinking / intuiting; (b) the moon with fixed / inertia / tamasic / terrestrial / tribal, instinctive, emotional, reproductive, creative processes; (c) the horizon with cardinal / action / impulse / rajasic / relational / social / legal / individual.

The modes are not much emphasized in medieval and Renaissance astrology, but astrological medical texts before the eighteenth century implicitly refer to them in the clothing of the three souls of Galenic medicine: rational, sensible, and vegetable. The rational soul referred to the discrimination and intelligence that distinguish humans from animals. The sensible or animal soul admitted to sophisticated understanding and social behavior but had mostly to do with food gathering, group behaviors, and decisions about eating, sleeping, and the like. The vegetable soul took care of all unconsciously regulated functions, such as digestion and excretion.

These useful labels for levels of human experience and physiology carry hierarchical assumptions that support our proposed realignment of core modal associations. Yet we first have to understand that these medical labels were culturally filtered by the same Gnostic and Christian traditions that assumed the great chain of being with its elemental hierarchy of fire in heaven, air in the near sky, water in the clouds, and rain near and on the earth, with the earth itself characterized as a kind of locus for sin with a nearby hot and dry hell at the bottom. This wider notion continues to influence astrology and Western ideas of spirit that foster harshly dualistic ideas about morality and human experience. Fear of the future hangs over astrological interpretation.

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Figure 4. A 1579 drawing of the great chain of being from Rhetorica Christiana by Didacus Valades showing earth element and hell below

The use of the word spirit for physiological functions suggests, apart from inherent religious ideas, that the term was a way to describe motion or the impulse behind a type of motion. This is a vitalistic idea about how something invisible gives birth to life and activity. The rational soul would be the quickest-moving, most spiritual, yet most cerebral of energies, having a role in character formation and in defining of distinctly human behaviors including discrimination and moral responsibility. This represents a broad and hierarchical perspective on human affairs. The animal soul contrasts with this and would be the most decisive in determining specific actions, while the vegetable soul would operate in habitual ways through unconscious and often instinctive familial or tribal layers of behavior. It is easy to see how tradition linked the three spirits or levels of complexity in biological function to the three modes of astrology.

Modern astrologers, with Robert Hand, also summarize the modes as symbolic representations of different qualities of activity. Behaviorally, the cardinal signs typically are thought to emphasize action or kinetic energy; mutable mode signs, intellection with a tentative or episodic kind of physical activity or potential energy; while the fixed mode signs refer to habit and deep-seated emotions and attitudes. In the modern era, the action-oriented cardinal signs tend to be assigned the highest valuation. Also, owing to the Greek oppositions built into tropical astrology, Western astrologers wrestle with a cultural bias in which the sun dominates, earth is devalued, and ideas of gender and cosmic hierarchy are distrusted. These typologies understate their real importance as determinants of character and how people process information. Consequently, modern astrologers often miss the unity and behavioral literalness of the three levels—rational, sensible, vegetable, or heaven, human, earth—that shape modal actions. Thus, modern modal distinctions cloud the immediacy and functional contribution of the modes especially for an understanding of the sun, moon, and ascendant in a natal chart.

If the cosmic structures behind the three great light cycles can be summarized symbolically by the sun, moon, and ascendant and these be further connected to corresponding three defining zones of human experience as outlined by the three structural planes—the ecliptic, the equator, and the horizon—we discover a powerful cosmological basis for employing the modes as well. These planes and their levels of interpretation are the foundation for three corresponding three-dimensional models (figure 3) that establish the level of human identification through which the modes express themselves.

We have explained already that the natal chart is a two-dimensional drawing for relations in the three-dimensional space and time. Whenever a sphere is drawn, it requires the use of certain primary reference points. The modern natal chart contains these reference points to all three geometrical spheres. Each describes the one cosmos, but from three different perspectives. These three spheres and perspectives are the celestial sphere (delineated by ecliptic and the prime meridian), the mundane sphere (delineated by the equator and poles), and the individual sphere (delineated by the horizon, vertex, and zenith).

a.)

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b.)

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c.)

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Figure 5. The composition of the natal chart: (a) the celestial sphere based on ecliptic, (b) the mundane sphere based on equator, and (c) the individual sphere based on horizon

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Figure 6. A combined rendering of the three spheres

In the natal chart of astrology, all references to the mundane and individual sphere are visually folded down to two-dimensional positions on the plane of the ecliptic.

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Figure 7. Natal chart of Tycho Brahe

Tycho Brahe’s chart is a Saturn-dominated chart with Saturn elevated and the sun and moon with other planets in Saturn-ruled signs. The modal emphasis of the sun, moon, and ascendant are further diminished in value by not being in strong placements. The most important modal placement is the ascendant in a mutable mode, which harmonically gives an intellectual outlet for the dominant Saturn that also, in a mutable sign, is ruled by Jupiter. Interpretation aside, the important thing here is to recognize that the ascendant to the left of the circle is eleven degrees Pisces. The ascendant is the point where the plane of the eastern horizon intersects with the plane of the ecliptic. Nevertheless, all three systems are symbolically present. The sun is displayed on the ecliptic plane as though seen from above but is shown in its location above or below the horizon line that runs horizontally through the center of the circle as a line between eleven degrees Pisces and eleven degrees Virgo. This places the sun elevated above the horizon, yang in yang, with the daylight-subordinated moon close-by. The otherwise seasonally weak midwinter sun gains counterbalancing warmth from this daytime location.

The angle between the celestial equator and the celestial ecliptic is 23.5 degrees. The earth-centered equatorial plane can also be extrapolated from the flat drawing of Brahe’s chart on the ecliptic, and bodies could be located on that tilted grid one side nearer to us, the other away and below. The moon’s orbital inclination to the ecliptic is five degrees, and its inclination to the equator is a variable eighteen to twenty-eight degrees; but because its nearly circular elliptical orbit goes around the earth and it originally broke off from the earth an accurate description of its values would derive from the earth-centered perspective. The moon phases symbolically define the time frames and meaning in an equatorial system more than a solar- or ecliptic-based system. The inclination of the moon’s orbit to the equator is the cause of the long twenty-seven-year Metonic cycle, which is the time it takes for the moon to return to any original starting point of measurement horizontally along the equator/ecliptic and above or below them. Understanding this cycle is as important as understanding the zodiac signs, but a good starting point in this endeavor is to be able to understand the moon’s phase from its location on the ecliptic and its modal value, which symbolically represents the big picture evaluation of its equatorial and seasonal meme. Then the moon’s elevation in relation to geography will, like peak tides or an eclipse path, show the local intensity of its influence.

Tycho Brahe’s moon, though, as a daytime and waning moon that bows to the sun, does modally bring the principles of heaven and earth together in the middle ground of the horizon—a cardinal sign—which reemphasizes the similar equilibrium we find in the fortunate time of day that counterbalances the wintry dominance. This is a very focused, capable, persistent, balanced, active, and socially effective person even though he is an intellectual.

The three different systems continue to offer for interpretation three different perspectives on life: solar, earthly, and horizon. The three spheres and their perspectives describe visually and structurally the dynamic relations among the three cycles of light.

The celestial sphere defines the conditions that cause the annual seasonal cycle. The seasons have a special relation to the sun, as they are determined by the orbit of the earth around the sun in relation to the slant of the earth’s rotation.

The mundane sphere defines the parameters of the geographical, topographical, biological, and chorographical characteristics of life. In astrology, this primarily describes the balance of the prime qualities (heat, cold, moisture, dryness) and the elements of the growth cycle: earth, water, air, fire (wood). Because of the moon’s proximity and earth-centered orbit, their motion through this mundane sphere