Astrosophy is freedom. Those who are familiar with what astrosophy means know that “man was created as a free being – even if he be born in chains” (Friedrich Schiller).
The universal law and Hermes Trismegistos
Astrosophy follows a so-called “vertical world view”, which corresponds to a universal law: The universe is pure spirit. As above, so below. What is external can be recognised by what is internal. As in heaven, so on earth. Nothing is motionless, everything is in motion. Good and evil complement each other. Opinions are just aspects of the whole. Every action occasions a reaction. Microcosm corresponds to macrocosm. What we take for a coincidence is merely an unrecognised law. “The starry sky is within you” (Goethe). Everything bears both masculine and feminine qualities.
This “law” was summed up by the “master of all masters” Hermes Trismegistos. For a long time it was a secret doctrine. Those who applied it according to true insight were persecuted and often murdered. Why? Because such universal laws, which we inevitably find in all religions, are contrary to the interests of the religious leaders in that they undermine every religious doctrine that is supposed to function based on power and the maintenance of power by rules. They are essentially about transferring power to all individual human beings and about making them realise that, as individuals, they have to live in accordance with those laws which were “inscribed in their body” at the time of their birth.
The exposition of this “secret doctrine”, as it is known these days, first appeared in written form in 1908. The Kybalion, which is a main work of “Hermetics”, contains the seven Hermetic Principles, which are considered to be the guideposts of all wisdom teachings and have meanwhile been scientifically proven to a large extent, although they do not require any scientific confirmation, because they are the description of what is, what has always been and what will always be: the order that is inherent in creation.
Seven universal principles
The seven universal laws are fundamental for people who are searching for their true self and happiness, for their unique truth.
Such are the laws for them to follow: the principle of spirit (spirituality); the principle of correspondence; the principle of vibration; the principle of polarity; the principle of rhythm; the principle of cause and effect; the principle of gender.
Astrosophy interprets these laws in its own way. The seven so-called sacred principles are those which we recognise in their totality as the perfection in form, that is, in everything that exists in the world and that we learn about, for instance, in myths and fairy tales concerning the seven little goats, the seven mountains, the seven dwarfs, and so on. We speak of the seven virtues and the seven vices and find the seven principles perpetuated in the naming of the days of the week:
1. the day of the sun (Sunday),
2. the day of the moon (Monday),
3. the day of Mars (Tuesday, according to Germanic mythology: Tyr, god of war)
4. the day of Mercury (Wednesday, according to Old English wodnesdaeg, Woden = Odin)
5. the day of Jupiter (Thursday, according to Germanic mythology: Donar, Thor)
6. the day of Venus (Friday, according to Germanic mythology: Freya, Frija)
7. the day of Saturn (Saturday)
We can only be free if we perceive this as being inherent in all forms as well as in all motion within the forms, and if we acknowledge and use it in its perfection. Then we are walking with „seven-league boots“ and packing our „seven things“. Then we realise that we are imprinted form, evolving alive. Then we understand Peter Maffey and others as they sing: “Seven bridges you must cross, survive seven dark years, seven times you will turn to ashes, but one day you’ll shine bright …”
Inferring from one level of phenomina to another
In the life cycle of time and space, which astrosophy fathoms in its very depth and essence, including everything that is and that has body, soul and spirit, we experience these seven principles as analogies (correspondence, synchronicity) on all levels of the world of manifestation. The Saturnine, for example, reveals itself as the principle of the lawfulness of life, of hardness and structure. It is assigned to the planet of Saturn and can be found in humans as the inner quality of the old, wise man. It represents the conscience and has the characterictics of prudence, objectivity and sense of responsibility. In terms of anatomy the Saturnine principle corresponds to the skeleton, the backbone and the knees; it manifests itself in diseases associated with stones forming in certain organs, for instance, or in hardenings. The virtues of being reliable and hard-working are attributed to it. Furthermore the animal species of ants, turtles and ibex represent that principle. Sculpture is its mode of artistic expression. Qualities of the Saturnine can be found in lead as well as in coal, lime and salts. Its shadow-aspect is hardening or solidification.
Whoever has understood this principle – and this applies equally to the principles of the Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus – knows how to infer from one level of phenomena to another, can thus infer from the essence of the knee to the Capricorn in the animal world and the holly in the plant world or to the metal lead – and of course also to the principle connected with it in the Genesis, in the evolution of the plan of creation.
Everything that is is more or less saturnine, is more or less venusian, is more or less marsian. That is what makes the distinction. On the human level, this indicates different temperaments, different modes of expression, different proportions of the upward striving (fire/choleric and air/sanguine) and the downward striving (water/phlegm and earth/melancholy). – What human beings bring with them is their condition, is inscribed in their body, is determined – and can no longer be changed. Freedom consists in recognising what cannot be changed. No one can get out of their skin. – Only humans are able to reflect with their “free spirit” that freedom means wanting what one is supposed to be or do. That the law they have to follow is laid down in the seed from which they emerged. It applies only to him or her as a unique individual. They have only this form, this particular world of their own to fulfil. They are their only goal and find their freedom only in what they already are. In one‘s beginning lies also the end. A human being follows step by step what Goethe expresses as follows: “Just as on the day that gave you to the world, the sun stood to greet the planets, so you too have prospered on and on according to the law according to which you began. Thus thou must be, thou canst not escape, so said sibyls, so said prophets; and no time and no power dismember embossed form that evolves alive.”
Uranus, Neptun, Pluto: Stepping out of any narrowness
In the terminology used in astrosophy, the Cycle of Twelve, the seven sacred principles are operating as the perfect form, but they are challenged to understand the universe as the highest conceivable form – and to step out of any narrowness (angst) that does not have the universal in view.
Thus, in 1781, the planet Uranus was discovered, which, in its principal significance, takes the liberty of expanding the existing, of betraying the petrified, the hardened insofar as it incites rebellion, of questioning that which already presents itself as the absolute and, if necessary, of eliminating weak points. What has become ossified is thus dislocated and disturbed in its saturated tranquillity, the conventional and conservative is stimulated to set out for new shores – and to free itself from the grip of living forever in the past.
But that’s not all: in 1846, the planet Neptune was discovered, which, according to the law “as without, so within” in the vertical world view, carries the meaning of solution and dissolution, of flooding this world. Under its influence one loses one’s bearings, finds access to the immeasurable and expands one’s consciousness. A person seeking proof, for example a scientist, comes to understand the finiteness of the causal and states, like the physicist Werner Heisenberg: “Truly new territory in any field of science can probably only be won if one is prepared at a decisive point to leave the ground on which science has rested so far and, as it were, to jump into the void.” In short: a true scientist must become a mystic.
Those who have thus penetrated into the interior of nature and, like water, are prepared to find the (so far) deepest possible space of life on earth, have not reached the end of the conceivable analogies of becoming and passing away, of contracting and expanding, of living and dying, in the cycle of boundary expansions, even with the discovery of Pluto in 1930 (it takes approximately 250 years for it to complete its round in the solar system). They also find the meaning of life in destruction, for example in volcanic eruptions. Everything is transformation – and takes its time to rise again like phoenix from the ashes. It takes 250 years for hot lava to cool down again, to produce dust in the cracks of a rock, then humus, then lichens, then mosses, then lower plants, then crops, then a granary. Mother Earth, like every mother, knows that once she has conceived, she can then bring forth from within herself, after a predetermined time, something living. It develops within her. In doing so, she uses the individual cells that are available to her – even if these cells do not (cannot) know anything about the bigger, the complete picture, because they have to take care of their smaller unit, which they have to serve. Just as the liver cell takes care of the liver – and knows nothing of what the larger human organism, in which this liver is at home, has as its task.
Freedom is service to what surrounds us
Freedom, then, is service to what surrounds us. Freedom is the sound that must pass away in order for a melody to emerge that is the greater unity of sound.
Freedom is the melody that permeates the world as an individual expression and expresses life as love and energy in its ups and downs. This energy fills everything. All melodies are interconnected: in major and minor, in war and peace. They are the spheres in which everything moves.
Astrosophy takes the liberty of describing this. Nothing more.
Wolfgang Maiworm: Publisher of Lebens-t-räume, Magazine for Health and Consciousness; Astrologer, author, servant in ZEN.
www.lebens-t-raeume.de; www.wolfgangmaiworm.de
