Astrologically considered your path of life leads betwixt two forces in Nature, by which destiny produces various conditions around you. One force manifests through what is termed favorable aspects and causes environment to acquiesce with your desires at certain periods and especially on certain days. You drift along the line of least resistance and in business you make the greater progress with least expenditure of effort – you sense the popular needs of the masses and feel elated. The OTHER force comes through so-called unfavorable aspects, when prevailing conditions are contrary to your desires, and these are termed tedious periods and days. You recognize mistakes and feel humble. Thus life’s path leads amid alternate currents, the flood and ebb tides.
Astrological indications specify the periods and days when these two tides of energy operate upon you personally and upon your affairs; practically applied, they enable you to anticipate conditions and adapt yourself to the best advantage. Even as Shakespeare says: “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood leads on to fortune.”
The two alternate motions are in all phases of nature – on the horizontal plane they are shown by the flood and ebb tides twice a day, on the vertical plane by the sap of the trees. Its ascending in joyous Spring bringing the leaves, buds and flowers, and its descending in Autumn’s season of sadness when the leaves wither and fall, and the reverse conditions simultaneously occur on opposite sides of the Equator.
Even as electricity is generated between two discs revolving in contrary directions and illumination of the arc lamp produced by electric currents jumping over the vacuum between the two carbons, in a similar way are your energies aroused and talents illumined by Nature’s positive and negative qualities. Your Destiny’s purpose is gradually revealed and accomplished through daily joys and sorrows, under favorable and unfavorable aspects.
Everything in Nature is bipolar, or has a positive and negative – a North and a South pole. The law of polarity is in every phase of Nature, the masculine and feminine, by it life manifests.
In the study of Dynamics, opposites are essentially considered, even as heat and expansion are contrary to cold and contraction on the physical plane – likewise, there are two diametrical mental views upon which judgement is founded. To illustrate, by the apparent view of the heavens you seem to see the stars moving from East to West, but that is only a fantasy, for by the mind’s eye of understanding, we know they really turn in the reverse direction. If you trust the glance of your eyes to judge the motions of the stars, you are deceived, because it is the earth under your feet rapidly rotating from West to East that causes the illusion.
The Philosophy of Astronomy and Optics teach you should not judge motives of others by apparent conditions, – when the real facts are discovered, you will probably reverse your opinion. To quote: “We would love each other better if we only understood.” The law of harmony in Nature finds all things in polar relations of balance – the sweet and bitter are both necessary qualities – hence, “We should agree to be different but not disagree.” It is inconsistent with Nature to expect life’s indications to promise only favorable aspects. As necessity is the mother of invention, so the frictions of tedious days may be used as grindstones upon which to sharpen your wits. Even trees must be shaken by the wind if they are to thrive.
The old philosophers uniquely express the lesson of polarities in the law of correspondences in Nature, “Climb up to the summit of the mountain and sit down or slide down to the valley and stand up.” Hence, in the daily duties of life, the only way to develop and preserve your Free Will is to be mentally conscious and poised betwixt the dual aspects of Nature, learn to put them in juxtaposition, but keep one to your right, the other to your left. Never get one-sided – be neutral – live by the balance, which is in the midst of the three principles of Nature. Live as the Peacemaker between the Plaintiff and Defendant. On your favorable days, extend your plans, but on your tedious days, be reserved and economical. Be a mind spectator of your own life – look over conditions, do not lose your identity by being absorbed or subservient to them, but utilize them to your best intents. By living in this position of the balance, you develop Free Will – by that power your noble hopes will be realized.
Do not live for pleasure and gratified desires exclusively – life has its serious problems, which compel cognizance by the friction of untoward circumstances on trying days.
All of your affairs but one may turn out as you wish, yet this single instance of a tedious day in which your aims are frustrated, is apt to be a constant trouble to you, even though it be something quite trivial. You think a great deal about it, and very little about those other and more important matters in which you have been successful on a favorable day.
In the tedious day what has met with resistance is your Desire, as it is objectified in the organism, then your “Will” presented itself as a consequence of the struggle of life. Proving that the satisfaction of a puppet to gratified desires consists in nothing else than desire meeting with no resistance – it is pleasure in slavery which tends to bodily fatality – oblivion in negative matter. It is therefore a satisfaction, which is not directly felt; at most, it tends to increase your gravity, which keeps you subservient to the body – Earth – as effects follow causes.
But beneath the mask of the tedious day, there is hidden beneficence – which by checking or arresting desire awakes your positive power – The Will – and by it proclaims its own presence as a cause which produces effects. And it is Will that enables you to endure difficulty, and by persistent efforts to accomplish your work eventually.
All pleasure consists in merely Removing This Check from desire – in other words, in freeing you from friction, allowing the Will to slumber – hence, pleasure is not conducive to Mental Emancipation from the elements, the body and the fatalities of Earth – which depend upon an outside force.
The true basis of the teachings of Philosophy bids you direct your aim, not wholly toward securing what is pleasurable and agreeable in life, but toward avoiding as far as possible pleasure’s innumerable evil consequences.
If a day of pleasure is promised you by a friendly ray of Venus, for instance, and you have received the impression of any pleasure, guard yourself against being carried away by it. But let the thing wait for you, and allow yourself a certain delay on your own part, and thus develop individualism.
If, at any time, you think it seasonable to accept pleasure’s invitation, take care that the charm of it and the attraction of it, shall not conquer you, and set on the other side the consideration that how much better it is to be conscious that you have gained this victory. If you drift will all physical tendencies and seek to follow all beckoning desires actuated by the exterior aspects, and consider them compelling, then you destroy completely your Human-acknowledged power of Individual Choice and deny your Human nature as an Individual Intelligence. It is a most convenient subterfuge for all faulty propensities and of relieving self of the sense of responsibility for errors of both “omission and commission.” It is a pitiful effort to throw the dust of sophistry in the searching eyes of Conscience. It is because excuses are sought to justify self to make so much of personal feelings and to avoid self-sacrifice, self-discipline, which are essentials of friction against self, necessary to awaken the spark Free Will which characterizes Human superiority.
Hence, by the law of polarity, when contrary aspects on tedious days induce Fear which is contracting, you must counteract it by Love, which is expanding, – and against Anger, put Gentleness; against Greed, put Compassion; against Envy, put Benevolence; against Haughtiness, put Humility; against Cunning, put Wisdom. Thus learn to be a spectator to live in the mountain of your mind and your Will Power will increase in proportion to your ability to use the friction of good against evil at the psychological moment of the incident, not after calm deliberation, but at the precise time when conditions are perverse.
Observe there is a distinction between Will and Free Will, for a person may have Will and merely be an aggressive slave for Personal Gain, but you are free whom Free Will makes free – by it alone you work for universal good. Free Will is acquired by poise between Love and Will. It makes you Master in the midst of Fate through Wisdom and Understanding. Between the Shadow and the Light, the Spectrum is Revealed – the Law.
Between sleep and awakening is the Aurora of the brain, even as Dawn is between Night and Day and Twilight between Day and Night, and the Rainbow between the Horizon and Zenith. So your life’s path has been and will be between two forces astrologically termed favorable and unfavorable aspects, it is a metamorphose, even as the state of the cocoon is the intermediate chrysalis between the caterpillar and the butterfly. Balance of mind – poise is the key-note of the knowledge which gives power to cope with all the various circumstances which may be indicated by your stars.