Part Two:
Twelve Phases of Human Experience
SAGITTARIUS - Page 1 of 3

With the Sign Sagittarius the Night-force which increased in power since the summer solstice is coming to its high-mark. The power that strove mightily through Libra and Scorpio to expand man's horizon and man's feelings is now operating almost unchallenged by the opposite trend of the Day-force, now at its lowest ebb. Collectivism overpowers individualism. Society dominates over personality; the far, over the near.
      It is the age of great adventures into the vast unchartered realms of generalizations, of religion and philosophy, of abstraction and metaphysics. It is the time of Crusades and pilgrimages burning with the intensity of the quest for God, the quest for eternal values valid anywhere and at any time, the quest for absolutes. It is the age of social movements and of fanaticism, of martyrdom and intolerance; when men lose the sense of the earth, the narrow feelings of self-preservation and security, the will to personal happiness — and soar on the wings of self-denial toward distant social or mystical ideals, for which they are glad to die.
      The logic of the process of development of social consciousness which asserted itself through Libra behavior and Scorpio emotions leads man, in Sagittarius, to new mental horizons. Whereas in the opposite zodiacal Sign, Gemini, man was trying eagerly to build a tight web of close connections — a nervous system, an intellectual system of logic, a technique of experiments to satisfy his curiosity about phenomena surrounding him — in Sagittarius the individual, completely absorbed by social or mystical factors, searches for distant connections. These connections will serve as the "nervous system" of the social organism, to the realization of which he is now dedicated. They will be, for instance, a network of telephonic and telegraphic lines; more abstractly still, a system of laws, ordinances, regulations which will enable the complex organism of society — the life of a city or nation — to operate satisfactorily.
      Connections, close or distant, mean intelligence and mental activities. Thus Gemini and Sagittarius are "mental" Signs. The former represents mind functioning within the lesser sphere of personality; the latter, mind operating within the greater sphere of society. In both cases the mental activities are direct and constructive. On the contrary, in Virgo (and we shall see later, in Pisces), the mind acts in a destructive, critical and, if all goes well, regenerative manner.
      Mind as the final stage of the rise of either the Day-force or the Night-force is a builder. It synthetizes, extends and brings to their culmination and maximum radiance the energies of the Day and Night zodiacal tides. This is mind in the stages just before the solstices. But mind in the zodiacal Signs preceding the equinoxes is an entirely different kind of power. It is a power which clears up the stage for a new kind of activity, which denies and cleanses, which says constantly: "Not this! Not this!" It is mind telling you what should be forgotten, left behind, overcome and transcended. In Virgo, the personal emotionalism and the dramatic self-indulgence of Leo is to be curbed by self-discipline, hygiene, self-immolation to a Teacher. In Pisces, it is the social excitement, the exaggerated idealism, the mystic fantasies and delusions of Aquarius which have to be analyzed away. The illusion of the "glory" of God must be transcended so that what the true mystics called the "poverty" of God, the silent and bare reality of the Presence of God, may be experienced in personality and in actuality.
      In Sagittarius, man seeks to put in working order what he experienced with great depths of feelings in Scorpio. During the latter stage of his zodiacal journey the individual sought to merge with others in intimate and poignantly real union, that he might become more than himself and identify himself with the throbbing life of some greater organism. Greater organism may have meant at first the "Two-as-One" realization produced by the ecstasy of sex-fulfillment beyond any thought for progeny and self-reproduction. But the typical "greater organism" is the social group (or the occult Lodge), with the life of which the Scorpio type identifies himself in feelings, and of which he often becomes an unconscious mouthpiece — destructive or constructive according to the nature of the group's animating energies and purpose.
      Scorpio is a Sign of power, and power seeks always a higher level from which it may be fed, in order that it may flow to a lower level at which it may operate as fecundator and ruler. In Sagittarius, power is already built in. Man has identified himself with the group — with society or any other kind of organic fife vaster than his own. He has power to use. With that power he can build. By harnessing it he may travel far and wide.