The Message of the Stars[22]

The Message of the Stars[22]

[PAGE 462]                                          THE MESSAGE OF THE STARS

                                CHAPTER XXII

                        PROGRESSION OF THE HOROSCOPE

                              FATE OR FREE WILL

   When  a chain is subjected to strain,  imperfections in any of its  links
become manifest,  and the weakest link will break first.  Similarly,  in the
case of the body, there are certain inherent weak points and these are indi-
cated in the horoscope.   From the moment of birth we subject the body to  a
constant  strain,  and in time the weakness of the  various  points  becomes
manifest as disease.   The movement of the planets after birth measures  the
time when any particular link is liable to break.   This motion of the plan-
ets in the horoscope is called "Progression."  Study and practice of medical
Astrology require knowledge of how to progress the planets in the horoscope,
and  we shall therefore take up that subject in connection with the  message
of the stars relative to disease.

   When  the Sun rises in the East the day is young and the labors  allotted
to each are still before us.  Gradually the Sun progresses across the arched
vault  of  the heavens,  and mark the time set for the  performance  of  our
various duties,  for keeping our appointments, for taking nourishment,  rest
and recreation, and when it has run it course through the day and has ceased


[PAGE 463]                                      PROGRESSION IN THE HOROSCOPE

to illuminate our sphere of action, its absence invites sleep until the dawn
of a new day shall present opportunities for continuation of the  activities
left in abeyance from the previous day.   If the Sun remained stationary  at
any  certain point of the sky it would not serve as a time marker but as  it
is, all events of our lives are fixed by its progression.

   The horoscope is a chart of the heavens for the time when the mystic  Sun
of Life rises and awakes us from the long sleep between two lives,  then  we
are born in the physical world,  to continue the labors of a previous  life,
to  keep the appointment there made with friend or foe;  to reap the joy  or
bear the sorrow which is the fruitage of our former existence on earth;  and
as the progression of the sun marks the changing time of day and year, as it
ushers in season after season in orderly sequence and changes the appearance
of the Great World, the Macrocosm, so progression of the horoscope will cul-
minate  in events;  it measures the periods of prosperity and adversity;  it
warns of impending temptation and tells from what quarter it will come, thus
aiding us to escape if we will but listen to its warning.   The natal  horo-
scope shows unerringly weak points in our character or constitution, but the
progressed horoscope indicates when previous indulgence of harmful habits is
scheduled  to  bring  sorrow  or  sickness;  it tells truthfully when crises


[PAGE 464]                                          THE MESSAGE OF THE STARS

culminate; thus it warns us to be on the alert at critical moments, and for-
tifies us in the darkest hour of calamity,  with hope of surcease of  sorrow
and  sickness  at a definite time,  hence the importance of knowing  how  to
progress the horoscope.

   But, some may say, if all is thus foreshown, it argues an inexorable des-
tiny decreed by divine caprice; what use is there then of striving, or know-
ing;  let us eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.   If we were born
into  this  life on earth for the first and only time,  to live here  for  a
while and then pass away from this sphere never to return, fate and favorit-
ism independent of justice would seem to rule.  Such cannot be the case;  in
a world where everything else is governed by law,  human existence must also
be reducible to a system, and we hold that a reasonable solution of the mys-
tery of life is given by the Twin Laws of Being,  the Law of Rebirth and the
Law of Causation.

   That which has a beginning must have an end,  and conversely,  that which
is  without ending can never have had a beginning.   If the human spirit  is
immortal  and cannot die,  neither can it be born;  if it will live  to  all
eternity,  it must have lived from eternity,  there is no escape  from  this
truth; pre-existence must be accepted if immortality is a fact in nature.

   In this world there is no law more plainly observable than the law of al-
ternating cycles,  which decrees succession of ebb and flow,  day and night,
summer and winter, waking and sleeping.  Under  the  same  law man's life is


[PAGE 465]                                      PROGRESSION IN THE HOROSCOPE

lived alternatively in the physical world where he sows seeds of action  and
gains experiences according to his horoscope.   These,  the fruits of exist-
ence  here,  are later assimilated as soul powers in the  spiritual  world,;
birth and death are thus nothing more than gateways from one phase of  man's
life to another, and the life we now live is but one of a series.   The dif-
ferences of character,  nobility or brutality,  moral strength or  weakness,
possession of high ideals or low instincts, etc.,  are certain signatures of
soul  power or soul poverty.   Finer faculties are the glorious garments  of
gentle  souls wrought through many lives in the crucible of concrete  exist-
ence  by trial and temptation.   They shine with a luster which  illuminates
the  way and makes it easier for others to follow.   Coarseness  of  calibre
proclaims  the young in Life's School, but repeated existences here will  in
due time smoothe the rough corners, mellow and makes them soulful also.

   The  horoscope shows this difference in the texture of the soul  and  the
aspects indicate how the soul is ripened by the kaleidoscopic configurations
of planets in progression,  which fan the fires in the furnace of affliction
to cleanse and purify the soul of blemish,  or brighten the crown of  virtue
when victory is won,  but though the planets show the tendencies most  accu-
rately  there is one indeterminable factor which is not shown,  a  veritable
astrological  "x,"--THE  WILL POWER OF THE MAN,  and upon that  rock  astro-
logical  predictions  are  ever  liable  to  founder; that, at times, is the


[PAGE 466]                                          THE MESSAGE OF THE STARS

Waterloo  of even the most careful and competent astrologer,  yet  the  very
failure of well-founded predictions is the blessed assurance that we are not
fated  to do thus and so because our horoscope shows that at a certain  time
the  stellar rays impel us in a given direction.   In the final analysis  we
are  the arbiters of our destiny,  and it is significant,  that while it  is
possible  to  predict for the great majority of mankind with  absolute  cer-
tainty that the prediction will be vindicated,  because they drift along the
sea  of life directed by the current of circumstance,  predictions  fro  the
striving  idealist fail in proportion to this spiritual attainment  of  will
power which rouses him to self assertion and resistance of wrong.

   A  beautiful little poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox gives the idea in a  most
pleasing form:

         "One ship sails East and another sails West,
         With the selfsame winds that blow;
         'Tis the set of the sail
         And not the gale
         That determines the way they go.

         "Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate,
         As we voyage along through Life;
         'Tis the act of the soul
         That determines the goal'
         And not the calm or the strife."

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