Each of the three twenty-eight-year periods in this archetypal eighty-four-year life-cycle not only unfolds its potential in four seven-year subcycles, but the patterns of the latter often display revealing correspondences. In other words, the internal structure of the subcycle from birth to age seven finds itself potentially repeated in the one from twenty-eight to thirty-five at the new level of individualization. In a usually less noticeable manner the period from fifty-six to sixty-three may also reveal corresponding developments at the new level of synthesis of ancestral-collective and individual values. There is also an often clearly recognizable connection between age fourteen and age forty-two (twenty-eight plus fourteen). One can truly think of the much publicized "change of life" (psychological even more than biological, and in males as well as females) as a kind of puberty in reverse. The emotional tensions which had followed puberty often are reflected at the level of the mentalized consciousness by an equally emotional crisis in the mid or late forties.

At twenty-one a young person is — or at least was until recently — "coming of age;" and at forty-nine or fifty the active member of society may see his life socially realized, perhaps as an executive. In the third twenty-eight-year cycle this corresponds to age seventy-seven. Death may be impending; but in some instances these last years of the archetypal life-pattern may witness spiritual experiences and the transcendence of death at the level of a mind totally free from the natural entropy which dominates our biosphere.

Correspondences may or may not be revealing to the mind studying the archetypal patterns revealing, that is, in terms of the meaning they can give to specific remembered events. But even if there are no apparently significant correlations and reflections, the very attempt to think of one's life in such cyclic terms should help to develop an objective approach and a consciousness of this life-as-a-whole. This whole may be experienced as an unfolding melody, whose tonality reveals the essential character and quality of the purpose of having been born in a particular time and place.

Natal astrology can also be a means to reach a revelatory experience of the meaning of one's life-as-a-whole. Astrology deals with individual cases, and it can help us to follow year by year, or even month by month, the manner in which the basic functional activities in a man's biopsychic organism operate in their constant interrelationships and interblendings. These basic functional activities are symbolized by the ten astrological planets (including the apparently moving Sun and the Moon), each of which moves at a different speed because their orbits occupy different places in the solar system (or heliocosm). It is these places which fundamentally determine the symbolical meanings of the planets, either from a heliocentric or a geocentric point of view, or both.

Astrology can deal with actual events far better than the type of cyclic symbology discussed in this chapter, because it deals with functional activities at the existential level. Cyclic patterns that refer to human life in its most universal aspect have, I repeat, the character of archetypes. They show what is possible for every human being simply because of the fact that he or she is human — a representative of the genus homo sapiens, but from the occult point of view, even more a microcosm of the universal macrocosm.

The study of these all-human cycles can also throw some very basic light upon the character and significance or purpose of important events — markers in the pattern of destiny — merely because of their occurring at a particular age. One of such events might be marriage, childbearing for a woman, or even death itself. The fact that such an event occurs during the first, second, or fourth, or seventh year of any one of the seven-year cycles can be highly significant. The numerological meaning of the year will normally undertone the meaning each partner gives to the marriage. Marriage during the twenty-fifth year (after the twenty-fourth birthday) may be seen to carry the deep impress of vibration 4. It may lead to a critical revaluation of the partner's consciousness and life, also perhaps to conflicts which nevertheless can be harmonized and become the foundation for a self-transformative process. Marriage during a seventh year carries the meaning of "seed" realization, out of which a new life can assuredly be expected sooner or later to emerge.

In most cases the ages of the partners vibrate to different cyclic notes. Today, however, because of our type of school education in which boys and girls of the same age are thrown together in daily contacts, marriage whether legal or extralegal often unites two partners of the same age. Thus the numerical vibration undertoning the marriage is reinforced. This occurs also when two people marry who are seven years — or a multiple of seven years — apart. These usually are quite significant cases because every new year alters in the same way the character of the union, especially if the birthdays are close to each other.

If marriage occurs before twenty-one it is likely to have a more "psychological" meaning than if it occurs between twenty-one and twenty-eight, the "social" level in the seven-year cycle. If it occurs after thirty-five it may well be an answer to some life-development which took place as many years before thirty-five. Marriage at forty-nine would tend to reflect what, at twenty-one, brought either psychological pressures and frustrations or some achievement which eventually made this marriage possible. When an eighty-four-year life-pattern applies, such a marriage at forty-nine may resonate to what occurred in the individualized life at age twenty-one — because forty-nine equals twenty-eight plus twenty-one.

This is not the place to discuss individual case histories which, I repeat, generally speaking are only for the individual person to study and evaluate; and what was said about marriage can be applied to any event deeply affecting the manner in which the life-pattern becomes filled with existential and perhaps transforming events. The main purpose of this chapter is to show how a whole life can be scrutinized from an objective and detached point of view — an approach which should clarify and intensify the meaning of basic changes in one's life experience, if pursued in a constructive spirit and not with a literal mind. This discussion was also meant to stress the importance of the age factor to contemporary men and women, whose attitude towards themselves as well as towards others is mainly personal and hypnotized by facts, small occurrences, and strictly existential values.

In our youth-glorifying American society and with children and adolescents rushing feverishly toward experiences which their nervous system and emotional nature are not able to handle significantly and constructively, or even less assimilate, the values inherent in every age-period are most often forgotten, or thought of in a culturally biased and morally prejudiced manner. By trying to see everything at every time through the heavily colored glasses of equalitarianism denying the functional differences which allow for harmonic interaction of individuals within an organic society and culture, modern men and women, young and old, have lost the most basic sense of human and planetary value.

In the operation of any whole organism, every function is essential and valuable. There should be no question of "superior" or "inferior," whether racial or functional. In an organic democracy every cell and organ — every individual and every healthfully operating group and institution — is equally important, necessary, and to be protected as well as valued. But every function is different. No individual should be compelled, urged, or subtly forced to occupy a function which is not his or her own by right of individual destiny (dharma or truth-of-being); yet in a well organized society every individual should consider the welfare of the whole above his own individual welfare. Childhood, adolescence, maturity, old age have different functions; and it is tragic to see any of these ignored, over-praised or scorned, and above all confused.

To grasp the significance of every phase of the age-pattern has indeed become an urgent task in order to bring sanity to our social, educational, and business processes. This however is assuredly not a call for a return to old traditional patterns of family or social behavior! One should always look ahead and be intent on creating the future. Yet creation demands understanding: understanding requires wisdom rather than the kind of knowledge our factories of learning provide for a high price. And there can be no wisdom where the mind is not able to operate in terms of universal principles intuitively sensed and reverently applied.