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Standing Stones
by Jane Lewis
Mid-summer solstice was celebrated in a great heatwave in Britain this year, making it a proper fire festival. The cardinal signs and their related angular houses divide the Circle of Spirit into four seasons based around the solstices and equinoxes, which have always been celebrated by fire festivals performed in various guises by most major religions. As a symbol of life itself, the horoscope is based on the Circle of Spirit which enfolds everything, the material world being symbolised by square or the cross axis of the chart. The White Eagle book Divine Mother: The Feminine and the Mysteries brings together White Eagle’s teachings on the fundamental symbolism of the circle, cross and triangle. From these basic forms we can see how the horoscope is a symbol for four elements unified in the fifth, or quintessence. The one circle contains the triangle, the cross divides it into four quadrants which represent the four triangular faces of the pyramid which has a square base.
When people ask what astrology has to do with White Eagle’s teachings, it’s not because he speaks in terms of the meaning of planets in certain signs linked via various aspects, as for example how Jupiter in Cancer now squares a conjunction of Saturn and Neptune in Aries. Rather, White Eagle speaks in terms of the basic building blocks, the foundation stones, upon which the ancient hermetic sciences, including astrology, are built. His teachings explain how from the Source of Life (we can call it God if we like) originates the symbols which are at the root of astrological practice.
As the Sun is now in the cardinal water sign Cancer we might usefully mediate upon its meaning and the associated fourth house. We might reflect upon our roots: family, ancestors, the lineage we come from, genetically and spiritually. By using memory to piece back together, or re-member the past from which we have come, we seek to understand more deeply the pattern of cause and effect upon which our current life is constructed, like the warp and weft of the fabric of our lives which we weave for ourselves.
The four angular house cusps create the cross axis of the chart and the 1st, or ascendant, is symbolically where Spirit and Matter converge in a very outer, physical way, which is why planets contacting the ascendant have such a visible impact on our outer life. The 4th cusp on the other hand has more of an inner and psychological effect. The cross and square symbolise Saturn and the earth element. The Ancients spoke of the four corners of the earth, despite knowing that the physical world is round, or spherical. It is the base upon which the supreme triangle stands - the Holy Trinity of Wisdom, Love and Power.
In Britain the main centre of the midsummer solstice fire festival has always been Stonehenge. White Eagle has said that ancient races of people even before Stonehenge worshipped the very stones of earth, most likely at a time when Saturn was worshipped because Saturn is much related to stones, which are the densest crystallisation of spirit in matter, including gems such as diamonds. Stone was thought to correspond to the physical bones of the human body. Those ancient peoples realised that fire can be made by striking stones together, and from the early stone-worship sprang fire-worship, this making them believe that fire or life existed both in stones and in themselves. Stone temples stand as a symbol of the worship of the earth and the heavens. At great ceremonies at such places as Stonehenge and Avebury in Wiltshire the priests were helped by great beings from other planets to work co-operatively with nature spirits to bless the land and make them bountiful, in return for a great thanksgiving and outpouring of love which was necessary to ensure a harmonious harvest. The arrangement of stones in a circle reflected their knowledge of the encircling protective power of the Father-Mother God, the source of life, which is Light.
The triangle, we are told, was one of the most powerful symbols dating back to the ancient continent of Mu, representing the Father-Mother-Son, the Son being the Holy Mystery or the Third Principle of life which lives in every soul as a seed which slowly grows into its full potential as the Rose. June is the month of roses here in Britain. The rose is shown blooming at the centre of the cross within the circle. The cross axis of the horoscope, at the bottom of which Cancer sits, symbolises the cross of suffering we are karmically bound to endure during each incarnation, but White Eagle assures us that it need not necessarily be one of suffering, rather is meant to transform to become a cross of triumph, or victory.
At its root, White Eagle astrology seeks to interpret the horoscope as a symbol of the path which each soul must tread in its current lifetime for the purpose of helping the seed potential to blossom into the full-grown rose of beauty and perfume. It is an inner rose that grows and blooms within the heart centre. It is not astrology itself but the ancient wisdom teachings that underpin it that form the four-square foundation stone that upholds the Holy Trinity of Wisdom, Love and Power. It isn’t easy to understand the horoscope in this way and astrologers can only act as guides to help point people in a certain direction to help them understand their own uniquely personal cross of suffering and how it might be transformed into the joyous cross of victory. Each individual must to do this for themselves through introspection, contemplation or meditation. Cancer and the fourth house are about the soul life which requires us to go deep within ourselves in order to piece back together unconscious memories and penetrate into our heart space where the light of Love resides. We must each find the centre of our inner home, and warm ourselves on the hearth where the eternal flame must always be kept alight, as was formerly the duty of the vestal virgins in ages past in temples built of stone.