Untitled Document

MaKaRa hosts the Collected Works of Michael D. Robbins

May 2014; in progress ...

Astrological Signs

in relation to the Petals of the Egoic Lotus

and their Processes

Petal 1

1. The Petal of Knowledge for the physical plane. Through the breaking of the Law and the ensuing suffering the price of ignorance is paid and knowledge is achieved. This unfoldment is brought about through physical plane experience. (TCF 539)

2. I. The outer "knowledge" triad:

a. Petal 1...Knowledge on the physical plane.

Colours: Orange, green and violet. (TCF 822)

1. Major Sign in Series Beginning with Aries in Counter-Clockwise Order:

a. Aries: raw physical experience; a collision with circumstance; learning lessons the hard way. Under this ‘inexperienced’ sign (new to every cycle it begins) much karma is generated. Saturn which falls in Aries is the planet of the law.

b. During the experience of this petal, early or undeveloped man experiences the “breaking of the law”. This is an Aries trait. What is the planet of the Law? Saturn. What happens to Saturn in Aries? It falls. Thus in a way, the law falls in Aries. In the Aries ‘atmosphere’ it takes a long time (Saturn) to learn the law, because the primitive man is so red, so full of instinctual desire which does not respect natural law around him. This applies to very primitive types in our present day.

c.   Certain words describe “Undeveloped Man” in Aries (EA 332): “Blind, undirected experience”. He is driven “up and down the land” because the effect of Saturnian consciousness has not yet taken hold.

2. Major Sign in Series Beginning of Pisces in Clockwise Order:

a. Pisces: The ‘Evolutionary Mantram’ for Pisces is “Go forth into Matter”. The “fish”, which symbolizes the nascent consciousness, plunges into the ocean of matter. The matter into which entry is made (in middle Lemurian days, may not be as dense as matter will later become in the fourth root-race/

b. The Pisces influence on the experiences met while under the influence of this petal include vulnerability to environment. Pisces is a sign of great vulnerability. We are told that the animal kingdom took a tremendous toll on early humanity. Not only was early man at the mercy of the animal kingdom but at the mercy of the elements as well.

c.   Pisces correlates with an ill-defined, inchoate sense of self which would be characteristic of first petal experience. Early man (and very primitive types still existing in humanity) does not discriminate between himself and his environment very well—such is his initially very weak sense of self. He must learn (through bitter experience) to do so.

d. Esoterically, “water” is “matter”. The first petal person is lost is ‘water/matter’, undirected except by instinct. Pisces indicates this state of being lost and disoriented. At this stage, Pisces signifies an identification with matter. There is no sense of an inner point of reference, an inner self.

e. Pisces the beginning of the ordinary, “clockwise” wheel. The first petal will include animal man’s first incarnation. The following applies here and implicates Pisces in this first incarnation

Gemini and Sagittarius are connected through their ruling planets (because the Earth is more closely related to Venus than to any other planet) and thus again you have the six potencies which produce release from the bondage of form, entered into in Cancer as far as the mass of humanity is concerned (by this I mean the birth of the human kingdom) and in Pisces as far as the individual is considered. (EA 131)

f.    Under the influence of Pisces one “leave(s) the Father’s Home” and finds oneself immersed in lower matter. In a way it could be said that the now-individual (individual through individualization) has left the Monad or Father and are having his first incarnation. When the Monad descends onto the higher mental plane and contributes to the creation of a human being. Under the influence of Pisces the Monad enters a “strange country”, a “foreign land” as the Prodigal Son.

3. Other Astrological Signs and their Contribution to First Petal Processes: (Not given in any particular order)

a. Capricorn, representing law which is broken and the karmic consequences of learning the hard way. Capricorn represents immersion in dense materiality—the lowest levels of the cosmic physical plane. It also signifies insensitivity, or resistance to sensitivity. Newly individualized animal-man is at his least sensitive during first petal processes.

b. Pisces, already mentioned, signifies the karmic suffering

c.   Taurus for instinctual, heavy, inert material life related particularly to the guna “tamas”—inertia. Tamasic consciousness is a slow consciousness readily associated with lower Taurean behavior. The approach is almost entirely instinctual and not-intelligent. Taurus, with is exaltation of the moon, is closely related to the functioning of the instinctual nature.

d. Cancer signifying (as we saw above) the first mass entry into incarnation. It is sign signifying domination by the form and a very strong, instinctual lunar life. It can signify the very earliest forms of human groupings (the most primitive tribes). Man is entirely under the sway of the Moon. “The blind unit is lost.” (EA 332)

e. Leo, signifying primitive, extremely dim self-knowledge. (In fact, we are told that some three million years may be required before a man “comes to himself” in Leo and becomes dimly self-conscious, but then the opening of these first petals can take millions of years.) We will find Leo involved in various ways, in all three petals of the Knowledge Tier. Leo signifies the coming into knowledge of oneself as a separate being, the arising of the dim sense of “I am”. This would not occur as the first petal is becoming stimulated and organized, but only later as it is opening, unfolding.

f.    Virgo, for subjection to materiality. The evolutionary mantram for Virgo is ”Let matter Reign”. Matter reigns most in the first petal. The Knowledge/Knowledge petal signifies deep involvement with the “Mother Aspect”—the “Matter Aspect” Three signs in particular can be considered as “Mothers”: Cancer, Virgo and Capricorn. Taurus, with its exalted Moon, should not be excluded.

g. What about Libra, as embodying the thought that “for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction”? The man is upsetting the balance through Aries, and the consequences of doing so are brought home through the balancing aspect of Libra—unconsciously, of course.

There is also the factor of sexual affinity and, in general, the strong procreative, sexual instinct ruled by Libra: “Unbalanced, fiery passion” (EA 333)

We have procreativity through the sacral center, one of the strongest centers at this time of human developmental.

h. Gemini will signify the material knowledge that may be achieved. The opposites in this case are the nascent self and the environment. The discovery of knowledge comes through Geminian contrast. One learns what happens when one breaks the law and what happens when one does not.

There is also the factor of pleasure and pain, the ray four contrasts. The individualized human being participates in the earliest of dualities: ‘I-the body’ and the environment. He learns the contrast through bitter conflict on the physical plane.

i.     We may think of Aquarius as involved with the lowest Hierarchy, the “Baskets of Nourishment” closely related to lunar life.

Later Aquarius can signify the earliest form of tribalism. Although early zodiacs did not involved all the signs, the necessary involvement of Pisces in the first individual incarnation shows that even signs which can signify high states of consciousness, had their very primitive correspondences.

There was a degree of etheric living in those days before the utmost densification in the fourth root-race, and so the color violet, for both the Moon and for the etheric plane would be involved. It is as well the color of the sign Cancer according to the Tibetan. [Sagittarius is animal man who is centaur and half animal and half man, the hunter in Sagittarius]

j.     Scorpio would certainly be involved symbolizing the life or death struggle to which very primitive man was subjected. His world was intensely dangerous and death is always around the corner. It was a “bloody world” and at any moment through ignorance or through the predations of the animal kingdom, the early human could be deprived of form life.

k.   Sagittarius is certainly implicated in first petal experience, for Sagittarius represents animal man uniquely, the man who is the centaur half animal and half man.

The need to hunt (and Sagittarius is certainly the hunter as is lives up to it seems that evolutionary motto, “Let food be sought”) is also strongly indicative of first petal experience.

l.     What all this means is that it is possible to see the relation of any of the twelve zodiacal signs to first petal processes, though some of the signs will be more important. Indeed, an early human being could be born in any of the twelve signs and would undergo first petal experiences in any of them. I have sought to indicate what some of these experiences could be.

m.Such experiences would also apply to the members of Human Groups I and 2 (EP II 203-207) and to the people found in the earliest stages of adaptation. (EP I 322-326)

4. Signs Implicated in First Petal Processes on the Basis of Color:

a. Leo for Orange

b. Capricorn for Green

c.   Cancer for Violet