ORION

This posting will take the place of the usual 1st Wednesday of the month essay due to the date involved.

As I write this, the web is alive with doom concerning the planetary lineup on December 3, 2012, when Mercury, Venus and Saturn correspond in the heavens to the pyramids at Giza.  The meaning of Orion follows.

KNIGHTS OF KING ARTHUR.  Jason conquered the brazen-footed Bull in one of his adventures while searching for the Golden Fleece, and Sargon of Akkad, fourteen hundred years before the time of Moses, came up out of the Bull-rushes to deliver his people from their tribulations.  But nearer to our own time, and perhaps, therefore, dearer to our hearts, is King Arthur and the famed Knights of his round table.

As is common to traditions when the historical background is dim or lacking, there are variants of the original, but the most authentic version of the story finds twelve knights, bold and strong, seated at a circular and revolving table; ready, like a panel of modern jurymen - twelve men good and true, each to view the matter from the angle of one sign of the zodiac - to pass judgment, and, unlike these later representatives, to fare forth in valiant exploits in the enforcement of their decisions.

The most conspicuous constellation on any yule-tide night, while the Candlemas Bull, Taurus, goes sailing overhead, as legend says it must, is Orion, who follows with upraised club.  In every land is he recognized as a warrior, and the three stars in his belt are known in every land.  In the region where the Tigris and Euphrates flow they are called the Wise Men of the East; but Celtic Druids held them to be three ladies who were present at King Arthur's birth.

Not only is Orion a warrior, but whether as Sargon, Moses, Jason, or the western legendary king, the fight he wages is not merely against oppression from without, but also against the materialistic tendencies and selfish ambitions of his own men.  In every legend relating to him, he fights with environmental forces that endanger his plans; and in every struggle some loss is sustained.

Moses, you will remember, when he had vanquished and utilized to more spiritual purposes the golden calf, called upon those who would support him, even as the constellation thus pictures it, every man to put his sword by his side.  And legend relates that the round table episode was precipitated by the personal ambitions of Arthur's men.

Each one desired the place of honor at the yule-tide feast; each man believed himself entitled to sit near the head of the table.  Nor, although so many hundred years have passed on what should have been progressive feet, do we witness much diminution in the ardor for similar social prestige.  But on this notable occasion the snubbing of one's neighbor was insufficient to express the fires of jealousy that raged within, and a brawl ensured which resulted in many slain; as a thousand years before a like slaying had occurred over the incident of the golden calf.

And thus, as Moses in the Bible times had been confronted by a serious problem, so was Arthur put to it to prevent a recurrence of such an incident among his men.  Nor did he shirk the responsibility thus at hand.  After all, ancient or modern, there is always a best way to meet every situation, always an opportunity to make the obstacle less retarding to progress than otherwise it would have been.

The Bull is pictured full tilt, as if enraged and pitching down upon the hero from the sky; who looks up to meet the impact of its charge undaunted, and with club well poised to deliver its most effective blow.  As belonging to the earthy0earthy sign, the Bull itself most appropriately typifies the crowding strength of the material environment with which we all must struggle and win if we are not to die.

But in its headlong plunge from the regions of above it also conveys the significance of those forces, invisible but potent, which assail man from the sky; the energies from planets and zodiacal signs, which, though more subtle in their attack, have even more power to shape and mold the destiny of man.

Environmental forces, those from the stars and those from the earth, are ever present, and their impacts call for well considered resistance.  We can not escape them, as the timid hare seems to seek to do as it scampers from beneath Orion's feet.  When problems are present, which every day they are, be they large or be they small, their issues must be met.  And for each such problem there is always a best of all possible ways in which to meet it.

This applies to all of them; and that they should be met with courage and full confidence, as Orion meets the rushing Bull.  No situation of life should cause the soul to quail.  Whatever physical disaster may come, whatever distasteful thing may be uncovered in the recesses of the unconscious mind, it is always better to face it squarely, to recognize it for what it is, and then to formulate plans by which the situation may best be met.

Those who form the patients of psychiatrists more frequently than not have refused to face something in themselves, or have refused to face some situation of their lives.  Freudian literature is filled with cases of illness due to unwillingness to recognize certain facts of people about themselves.  And even more serious is the effect of refusal to meet some crisis in the life; for when a condition is present which cannot be faced, the mind turns back upon itself, invents unconscious lies to explain behavior, and if the case is extreme enough in its unwillingness, there develops dementia praecox, one of the most prevalent forms of insanity.

We must face the problems of life firmly.  And among those problems is that of meeting the impacts from the stars.

The only possible way that the planets in their courses can exert an influence on the life of man is through imparting energy to him.  Whether spiritual, mental or physical, whenever work is done, whenever action results, there is always a proportional expenditure of energy.  Without consuming energy nothing is accomplished.

Within the body of man at his birth are lines of tenuous substance that act as aerials do on a radio receiving set.  And after birth, in response to the progress of the planets, other lines temporarily form that have a similar function.  It is these stellar aerials, mapped by aspects, which pick up the energy of the planets, load it with harmony or discordant static, and convey it to the thought0cells of which the finer body is composed.  They transmit to man, at times which can previously be ascertained, those forces from above symbolized by the downward pitching Bull.

Man is influenced by heat and cold and wind and rain and sun and innumerable other conditions that comprise his ever-changing environment.  But his reaction to the impact of these physical conditions is largely within his own control.  He cannot change the weather, but he can prepare to meet it, or if favorable, to take advantage of what it has to offer.  Neither can he change the motion of the planets in the sky, but he can change his own character, and in so doing receive energies more to his liking.

The permanent lines which extend across his finer body, and act as aerials to gather the programs from the planets, are expressions of his character, expressions of the harmonies and discords that have been organized within himself.  And if he changes these, so also will he change the aerials within his finer form, or even construct others not present at birth, which tune in spontaneously to the energy broadcasts of his seeking.

The temporary lines which form in response to the progress of the planets pick up energy corresponding to the rates to which they are attuned.  But the harmony or discord of the energy thus acquired may be vastly modified, so that it has a beneficial influence when it reaches the thought-cells.

Not only so, but the dial of man's own consciousness can be turned, if he used the resolution of Orion or King Arthur, to make an even more potent radio receiving set of his whole nervous system.  He can tune in on the planetary rate desired so completely and persistently that other programs coming from above reach him very little.

Here we see the wisdom of King Arthur.  To prevent a recurrence of the discord occasioned by each knight desiring the preferential place, he called to him the most cunning artificers of the land and instructed them to make a round table that would revolve, at which all the knights could sit, and each could thus consider himself at its head.

In the rgion where fabled Arthur is said to have reigned are still found today cromlechs, concentric circles of stone erected in prehistoric days to portray the orbits of the planets.  And in that land, as also among the Maya of Yucatan, the people array themselves in shirts of white on the first day of May, to dance in circles about the symbol of the Sun, the upright Maypole.

The weaving in and out of the dancers, as they hold ribbon strands reaching to the central post, cause these to form, one with another, sextiles and trines, squares and oppositions, and the other aspects by which astrologers ancient and modern plot the harmony or discord reaching the earth from various parts of heaven.

On that day the Sun has just entered the Struggle-decanate of Taurus, so-called because the life of those born from May 1 to May 11 is so seldom free from obstacles that must be overcome.  It is the decanate pictured by Orion.

We cannot doubt, therefore, that the problem of settling the conflict between his knights, with which King Arthur was confronted, was the same problem which confronts each individual at this day; the problem of avoiding the strife of influences coming from the planets as they sit in their seats among the twelve signs, and of winning their harmonious allegiance.

And he solved it as it must be solved today, by devising a method by which the dial of consciousness can be so revolved that any planet in its seat can be considered at the head, can be given temporary prominence, and thus enlisted fully in support of the most cherished endeavor.  Thus is derived the message of Orion:  The task of the soul on every plane of manifestation is to struggle with and overcome the limitations of its environment.

Spiritual Astrology

C.C. Zain