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March 2004

A Conscious Evolution Newsletter

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Volume 3, No. 3

Opinions presented in Metamorphosis are those of their respective authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of others associated with the newsletter.

Evolutionary Astrology
Part 1

by Gregory Ellison

There is today an increasingly popular school of astrology called Evolutionary Astrology that sees astrology as a way of understanding not just the character and destiny of an individual human being, but of the progressive unfoldment (evolution) of the soul, in two distinct but closely related ways:

The development of the individual soul through a progressive series of incarnations on the physical plane.
The progressive development of the collective soul of humanity over the course of history.

Neither of these approaches is really “new” to astrology. The idea of reincarnation and soul development over many lifetimes has been a prominent feature of many religious and spiritual traditions through the ages, and has been reflected in astrology under various names: spiritual astrology, karmic astrology, esoteric astrology and so on.

Likewise, the idea that humanity as a whole progresses through various stages of soul development has been a longstanding element of astrological thought, reflected in the doctrine of astrological ages (like the Age of Aquarius that we are entering now).

Not until fairly recent times, however, have these ideas begun to seep into the mainstream of astrological thinking and gained any widespread attention. Even today, much of popular astrology concentrates exclusively on the individual’s day-to-day life experience: Will I find true love? Will I get a raise at work? Is next month a fortunate time to buy a new house — or take a vacation — or win the lottery?

As important as these more mundane concerns are to all of us, they do little to answer the bigger spiritual questions that have always guided our quest for wisdom and understanding: Who am I? What is the meaning of life? Where do I come from and where am I going? What is my cosmic destiny or purpose?

As an aspect of the ancient metaphysical wisdom tradition, these are the questions that astrology was originally formulated to answer. Observing that the cycles of movement in the skies correlated with the cycles of seasonal growth and human activity — “as above, so below” — the ancients sought to understand the underlying order and purpose of life itself through the movements of stars and planets.

With the rise of science and the triumph of materialism in the worldview of the “advanced” cultures of the world, this evolutionary/spiritual understanding of astrology gradually lost currency. Where astrological thinking survived at all, it took a turn from being a wisdom art to being at best a divinatory art — a way of predicting the future and discerning the “good” and “evil” influences that could affect the daily life of an individual. Although astrology’s spiritual roots were never completely lost, it was not until the coming Age of Aquarius began to make its changing values felt around the middle of the 20th century that serious astrologers began to turn their attentions once again to the understanding of cosmic meaning and purpose … and to merge these understandings into the new streams of “holistic” thinking about evolution and the nature of consciousness.

Evolutionary Astrology in Modern Times

Actually, this modern renaissance in astrological thinking had its roots in the late 19th century, in the writings of Madame H.P. Blavatsky, G.I. Gurdjieff, Rudolf Steiner, P.D. Ouspensky and others involved in the Theosophical movement, who re-presented to the modern world a great many teachings of the ancient spiritual traditions that had gone underground during the Dark Ages. Following on the heels of those pioneers, two outstanding figures of the mid-20th century took up the cause of spiritual astrology: Alice Bailey and Dane Rudhyar. Although adopting very different approaches, both writers presented astrology in its broader spiritual context and sought to bring the traditional teachings into harmony with the concept of evolution on both a personal and a cosmic scale.

Alice Bailey’s Esoteric Astrology presents this evolutionary understanding in the context of traditional metaphysics, as amplified by H.P. Blavatsky, and focuses on the “Seven Rays” or qualities of manifested energy in the universe:

The ray of will/power
The ray of love/wisdom
The ray of active intelligence
The ray of harmony through conflict
The ray of concrete knowledge and science
The ray of devotion and idealism
The ray of ceremonial order and magic

Each individual’s “purpose” in life can be understood in terms of development along the paths outlined by the seven rays, and the birth chart is an indicator of the individual’s “soul family” … or more particularly his or her unique role in the great work of ultimately unifying these seven rays into the white light of pure spirit or God.

The complete text of Esoteric Astrology is available online at http://beaskund.helloyou.ws/netnews/bk/astrology/toc.html.

Dane Rudhyar’s approach was less traditional, drawing more from the emerging holistic theories of biology and physics, and mapping these ideas to the framework of traditional astrology. Indeed, Rudhyar was a natural philosopher before he became a world-renowned astrologer. A good introduction to Rudhyar’s ideas can be found in my article Dane Rudhyar’s Astrology and Conscious Evolution, which appeared in the first issue of Metamorphosis, September 2002.

As different as these two approaches were, they were united in several important ways. Both presented evolution as a “journey of the Soul” through cycles of experience aimed at bridging the gap between the individual personality and the higher self of the Soul. The individual personality is seen as one’s limited identification with a single incarnation as a particular human being; the higher self of the Soul is seen as the spiritual being who goes through these experiences in various incarnations in order to gain experience. Both Bailey and Rudhyar presented the Soul as a particular expression of the underlying unity we call God. Both presented the idea that there is a natural order or structure to the process of existence, and that this structure has purpose and direction — that it moves always toward greater awareness of unity and harmony through the balancing of apparent opposites, and that the specific realizations and experiences needed are different for each individual. Both presented the idea that not only individuals but humanity as a whole is gradually evolving toward unity, and that each individual has a unique and specific role to play in the evolution of humanity … and that this role can be understood by studying the individual’s birth chart as a “map” describing his or her place in the grand scheme of spiritual evolution. And finally, both approaches were predicated on the awareness that life is not a rare and isolated exception in an otherwise purely material and mechanical Universe, but that in fact the Universe itself is alive, and that it unfolds in an orderly way because it expresses the qualities of will, purpose and intelligence, even in its apparently “material” aspects.

Evolutionary vs. Transpersonal Astrology

In contrasting the ideas of evolutionary astrology with the purely personal approach of predictive or personality-centered astrology, it is tempting to refer to it as Transpersonal astrology, and some astrologers have drawn this distinction. At one stage of his development, Dane Rudhyar described himself as a transpersonal astrologer. But this misses the real point, because spiritual evolution includes both the personal and transpersonal levels. If we consider the higher transpersonal levels as more “real” than the personality-centered awareness, then we will be afraid of “losing ourselves” as we gain greater awareness, as if we were merely drops of water that cease to exist as individual droplets when they join with the ocean. But this is a misunderstanding … our uniqueness is essential to the higher unity toward which we aspire.

When humanity as a whole has made the conscious evolutionary leap to the “global consciousness” of human unity — or even planetary unity, recognizing all life on earth as a single organism — this awareness will not exclude the personal, but will rather include it within a larger context. We will not lose our personal identities, we will simply no longer be trapped within them. Yet this fear — the fear of ego-death — is the strongest force that holds us back from reaching the higher levels of awareness that the Aquarian Age is pulling us toward, and which we can all see is a necessary step if we are to avoid the destruction in chaos that our competitive and ego-centered worldview is rapidly leading us toward. As astrologer Jeffrey Wolf Green puts it:

… in reality most people do have this [global consciousness] level of awareness in varying degrees due to the media. The common person in all lands truly desires peace and an extension of goodwill toward all. Yet, the people who are in power in the dominant governments of this world are creating policies that lead in just the reverse directions, while paying lip service to the concerns of the people they lead.

— Jeffrey Wolf Green, Pluto, the Evolutionary Journey of the Soul, Volume 1

These “people who are in power” are driven by this fear of loss, and thus they cling tenaciously to the old concepts of competition and dominance, even when these concepts are no longer viable as a way of structuring human society.

Evolutionary Astrology and Reincarnation

Evolutionary astrology depends on the concept of evolution in a larger context than the life of an individual human being, and much of it depends specifically on the idea of reincarnation. Like many spiritual concepts, however, reincarnation can be a limiting belief if it is taken too literally as a linear succession of physical embodiments by a single soul. There are actually many ways of conceiving the ideas of soul evolution that are not dependent on such a literal view of reincarnation. For example, Dane Rudhyar remained agnostic on the idea of sequential embodiment, and leaned toward a “genetic memory” view of reincarnation. Another approach holds that since time itself is not an absolute, it is quite possible that one’s “past life” is in the future … that incarnations can skip around freely in time, rather than following one after another. Yet another view is that since we are all connected at the deeper levels of being, our collective unconscious holds memories of all lifetimes of everyone — thus our valid “past life” memories can actually be memories of anyone who ever lived!

In the discussions that follow (especially in Parts 2 and 3 of this three-part series), we will speak of reincarnation as if the traditional view of successive embodiments were a fact, because it is the easiest way to understand many of the concepts. However, if your own view of reincarnation does not coincide with this, it does not follow that you cannot “believe” in evolutionary astrology.

As evolutionary astrologer Nikki Fay puts it:

If you do not hold a belief in … reincarnation, you may be able to translate the paradigm into the realm of genetic memory, God’s will or whatever works for you. There are no rules here, just an outlook of a “plan” and a “memory.”

— Nikki Fay, http://www.visualastrology.com/

Contemporary Schools of Thought

Following the writings of Dane Rudhyar and Alice Bailey, a number of astrological writers have contributed to the development of what we know today as evolutionary astrology (including Linda Goodman, who was one of the most influential writers to popularize the awareness of the Aquarian Age and the coming global shift in consciousness). Foremost among the contemporary astrologers who have developed the evolutionary astrology paradigm are Jeffrey Wolf Green, whose School of Evolutionary Astrology builds on the work of Dane Rudhyar, and Alan Oken, whose books and teachings expand and elaborate on the Esoteric Astrology of Alice Bailey.

After the publication in 1996 of Jeffrey Wolf Green’s enormously popular work, Pluto, The Evolutionary Journey of the Soul, Volume I, Green joined with astrologer Steven Forrest to write Measuring the Night: Evolutionary Astrology and the Keys to the Soul, and to create a network of students and teachers focused on evolutionary astrology. Their joint “definition” of evolutionary astrology is posted on Steven Forrest’s website:

What is Evolutionary Astrology?

Evolutionary Astrology embraces paradigms and methodologies which specifically measure the growth of the soul from life to life. These methods invariably focus on the planet Pluto and its relationship to the Nodal Axis. While it is composed of a set of specific formal methodologies, evolutionary astrology is ultimately characterized less by a technical approach than by a set of philosophical principles defined by natural law. Different evolutionary astrologers may use somewhat different interpretive methods, but they can always be recognized by a devotion to the following core perceptions:

An acceptance of the fact that human beings incarnate in a succession of lifetimes.

An acceptance of the fact that the birthchart reflects the evolutionary condition of the soul at the moment of incarnation.

An acceptance of the fact that the birthchart reflects the evolutionary intentions of the soul for the present life.

An acceptance of the fact that the circumstances of the present life, both materially and psychologically, do not arise randomly, but rather reflect the evolutionary intentions and necessities of the soul.

An acceptance of the fact that human beings interact creatively and unpredictably with their birthcharts; that all astrological symbols are multi-dimensional and are modulated into material and psychic expression by the consciousness of the individual.

An acceptance of the fact that human beings are responsible for the realities they experience, both internally and externally.

A respectful intention to accept and support a person seeking astrological help, no matter the evolutionary state in which such an individual finds himself or herself.

Copyright ©2000, Steven Forrest and Jeffrey Wolf Green

Again, coming from a very different framework of specific techniques, Alan Oken’s Esoteric Astrology expresses remarkably similar aims and basic principles. In Soul-Centered Astrology, Oken writes:

The soul is a life force inside every being that exists beyond the limitations of time and space. From it originates the deep need to know more of the Truth and harmonize completely with Life. The process of the evolution of the soul extends over numerous lifetimes. The soul enters time and space and incarnates, in order to work on its evolution, and learns more about life, each time from a different angle. In each incarnation it adopts an Ego, an identity, and through this identity it adapts to the current environment. In each incarnation there are conditions, stressful and supportive, that promote evolution. Nothing in life is random, every single experience and circumstance serves the soul’s purpose of evolution.

— Alan Oken, Soul-Centered Astrology

Interpretive Techniques of Evolutionary Astrology

While the basic ideas and philosophical framework of evolutionary astrology are consistent themes among all the astrologers we’ve discussed so far, the specific interpretive techniques they employ differ greatly. For example, Dane Rudhyar places great emphasis on the relationship between the Sun and the Moon in the birth chart, especially as reflected in the Part of Fortune, to determine the evolutionary state and direction of the individual. Jeffrey Wolf Green focuses on Pluto and its relationship with the Nodal Axis (North/South Lunar nodes) as representing the evolutionary intention of the soul in a given incarnation. Alan Oken has developed a set of interpretive techniques that combine the astrological signs and the Seven Ray energies to determine the level of evolutionary consciousness that acts through the traditional influences of the planets.

Coming …

The remaining articles in this series will discuss all of these specific techniques to provide some concrete approaches to using evolutionary astrology in practical chart interpretation. Part 2 will focus especially on the techniques of Dane Rudhyar and Jeffrey Wolf Green, while Part 3 will present the esoteric interpretive methods of Alice Bailey and Alan Oken.