FOREWORD

This book, understood as a whole, is in truth an epic revealing through symbols taken from ancient astrological lore the basic cycles of the development of human consciousness.

In "Mansions of the Self" the spiral-like process of formation of the individual Soul through the twelvefold field of experience is outlined. In "Music of the Spheres" the functions, powers and faculties which this Soul must use and harmonize, if it is to reach fulfillment and operative wholeness, are evoked and linked with those "wandering stars" — sun, moon, planets, planetoids — which trace orbits of light round our planetary abode.

The "Meditations" lead us finally to the realm of light which is the substance of the Soul on its own plane. They seek to convey the significance of those cyclic modifications of the light — symbolized by the zodiacal signs — which mark not only the passage of the year but the spiritual changes of attitude of man to his divine Source. It is these changes that tell of the Soul's progress in its adventure in spiritual realization, that reveal its trials and its hopes on the path toward the inward communion with the essence of all Meaning: the goal of all consciousness.

Consciousness: how it is formed through the fields of experience — how it is activated by the life-energies which pour through the total organism of man — how it is substantiated through progressive realizations of the essence of being. Such is the real theme which is developed through the many stanzas of this poem.

The book which preceded this, The Astrology of Personality, was an attempt to reformulate traditional astrology in terms of the modern philosophical and psychological outlook. It was therefore in form a "treatise", and aimed at a strict, logical continuity and coherency of thought. It established new foundations for a consistent system of symbolism, using astrological factors as its symbols. Its goal was the formulation of an "algebra of life", using organic life-qualities as its primary elements, defining these qualities particularly at the psychological level in terms borrowed from C. G. Jung's analytical psychology.

This present work adds to its predecessors, as it were, a new dimension. It is addressed to the intuitional faculties, rather than to the philosophical mind. In this sense it is a more "esoteric" work, which evokes depths rather than describes surface-relationships. Thus it is essentially a poem and not a treatise. It deals with life through symbols taken from experience.

It is therefore a book for everyone who wishes to go deeper into the substratum and the meaning of human experience in terms of consciousness and understanding — though the person familiar with astrological values will obviously reap a richer harvest of significance because of associations of ideas with which he or she has dealt in a practical or even a theoretical manner. It is however a book which leaves many things unsaid. It suggests more than it states. It provides subjects for meditation and introspection. It opens new vistas or transforms old landscapes, vivifying them through the light of a more direct and less traditional — often an antiquated — meaning. But it is not a textbook for the lazy or formalistic mind hoping to find all things neatly catalogued and described.

Indeed it should be read as a poem, an epic of the human Soul. But not a poem in the modern sense of "literature"; rather a poem as poetry was understood in olden times, as an initiation into life-mysteries sub speciem aeternitatis — as a revelation of permanent and essential meanings through symbols that have power because great beings who lived them poured power into them.

The symbols which are derived from astrology have indeed power. Countless millions of men have believed in them, have worked with them, lived through them, experienced them and poured life, joy, fear, expectation, disappointment, tragedy into them. These symbols are great primordial Images of the universal memory of men. Their potency is as great as that locked in the countenance of gods hoary with age and laden with the devotion of multitudes.

Today is a new birthday for ancient gods. New men call for new symbols. Their cry rises, beyond their logical intellects ashamed of mystical longings, for new gods to worship and to use in order to integrate their harrowing mental confusion and to stabilize their uprooted souls: young gods, fresh and radiant with the sunshine of a new dawn, glorified with the "golden light" of a new Sun of Power, ecstatic with virgin potentialities after the banishment of ancient nightmares; gods whose urge for living springs from a deeper well of being than of old, whose compassion is vibrant and clear, whose energies burn free in skies wondrous with vistas of total and inescapable wholeness; gods whose abodes are no longer confined to heavenly realms but whose hearts beat in unison with every human heart and whose minds illumine the consciousness of all men; gods made human with the divinity of our inextinguishable quest.