Friday, May 13th, 1983

The Third Phase of Soul

by Anthony J. Damiani

Paper V09MP

3-LETTER CODE: ASN

TOPIC: Astronoesis

SUBJECT: Soul

SUBSUBJECTS: Dragon, 360 Degrees, Thinking, Science, Astrology

ORIGINAL LOCATION & FILE NAME (of PDF used for typing): 1983 0513a V12ap. Astronoesis - Nature - Dragon.DOC & PDF

CONTENTS:

Dragon as material for Shelly and Moonlike bodies

Sabian symbol as matrix of disembodied tendencies

360 degrees as having three levels

Moment of birth

Soul powers reduplicated in the imagination

Ego as stuff of dreams and as vehicle of individual soul

Scientific thinking

Activity of reflective thought is within Dragon

Cul-de-sac and piercing to reason-principles directly

Horoscope as rich source of spiritual knowledge

Ego endowed with seven ways of functioning and four ways of knowing

How to read a chart, Santayana example

Relation between natal chart and transits

Psychosomatic as reflecting organism

Ego must become subservient to God within

SABIAN SYMBOLS: Sagittarius 25

CHART appended to this paper:

• FIGURE 1983 0513b-1. Santayana Natal Chart.

AD HANDWRITING: The version retyped below only exists as embedded in the verbatim class transcript

COMPLETENESS: Full Paper

PUBLISHABILITY: No, mostly published

ALTERNATE VERSIONS: AD SUPP ASN Originals, pp. 1015-1018, 1027-1030, both parts of long "Purpose of Life" paper; see also AD SUPPI 1-26.PDF; AD SUPPI 27-45.PDF; ASN MASTER SOUL 91-110 (pp. 103-110) and ASN MASTER SOUL 111-130 (p. 111); different version of paper is read in WG Class 1983 0527a Plotinus; Soul

DATE ASSOCIATED WITH THIS PAPER: 1983 0513

VERSION OF PAPER IN ASTRONOESIS: This is an early draft which is published in a different form in Astronoesis. There it is primarily found on pp. 256-262 of "The Third Phase of Soul," and on pp. 265, 269-270 of "Astrology: The Topography of the Subtle World". A number of paragraphs remain unpublished.

RETYPED AND REFORMATTED by IT 2023

NOTES:

• RETYPED AD PAPER presented in class (V09MP).

• This is 1983 05/13b, The Third Phase of Soul Paper, and the second entry associated with this date. 1983 05/13a = Astronoesis; Nature; Dragon Class.

• This paper is read and discussed in WG Class 1983 0513a Astronoesis; Nature; Dragon. It is a continuation of "The Third Phase of Soul" paper that was read in WG Class 1983 0429a Astronoesis; Nature; Mercurius. A different version of this paper which contains both parts is read and discussed in WG Class 1983 0527a Plotinus; Soul.

The Third Phase of Soul

[Paper as read by AS in WG Class 1983 0513a Begins]

We are retelling an ancient view of the mystery of Man, of the philosophic mythology of Orpheus.

If we conceive of the Mother Earth as a goddess within whose domain has transpired the manifestation of innumerable species of life, their immediate origin would be her body itself. This body will contain the necessary ingredients for the building up of the lowest two sheaths, what are referred to as the Shelly and Moonlike bodies. This "material" has been recycled innumerable times; it therefore has certain tendencies or proclivities which are indications of past functioning and which may be referred to as the tropes. The combination of the Great Elements into organized living bodies included these selected responses or tendencies that manifest themselves in the body's functioning. Or, in other words, within this mysterious imaginal essence is retained traces of its functioning after the dissolution of the entity, and the totality of these traces constitutes the memory of the earth. This beginningless ontogenetic and phylogenetic development is the source from which and within which the bodies of all living creatures are produced and live.

This indefinite and indeterminable storehouse of images, this seething cauldron of innumerable disembodied functionings, is the material of the soul's fabricative activity and is suggestive of the nature of the Dragon. The Shelly and Moonlike bodies of living creatures are an extension of it, and their activity is refunded into this "subconscious". The Dragon lives and breathes through the individual organisms, and not only is it constitutive of the physiological functioning of the organism, but also of the significance attributed to that functioning. This is the lowest vehicle, or the lowest pair of vehicles, which are supplied to a soul and within which it will acquire a rudimentary understanding of the sensible world. The soul as inhabitant of such a body is becoming acquainted with the traces of the intelligence of the Ideas which have been left behind as part of the earth's memory.

It is these traces (of the Ideas) which give rise to images. Each (non-optical) image constitutes a matrix of disembodied tendencies that have been miscalled "archetypes". Imperceptible in themselves, they can nevertheless be inferred through reflection on their activity by the soul's gnostic powers when it reaches the level of reflective conscious judgment. But for the present it is being maintained that these contents will become the environment or the idea of the world for that individual soul inhabiting that individual body, and that the presence of the soul within that World-Idea is also indicated.

What we witness here is the presence in the imaginal essence of the intelligence of the Ideas as tropes (or samskaras) and the powers of the soul or functioning of the soul as represented by the categories of the imagination, and both are included in this imaginal essence. Under these conditions, the soul perceives images in water--the shadows or phantoms in the cave. The soul as wrapped in a cocoon of oblivion, i.e., the body, is unable and unwilling to investigate into the mystery of the nature of man.

A preliminary investigation into the nature of the degrees, which are all-encircling, will require extended investigation. For now, we are simply asserting the suggestion of the intrusion of the Intellectuality of the cosmos into our world. Therefore, each of these degrees is often symbolized by an image that includes a homogeneous hierarchy of meanings. First we have the formative power of the Archetypal Ideas, the presuppositions of the genera and species of all life. Next, we have the intellectual mind of the Cosmic Soul, that is, its own forms or reason-principles intuiting the Archetypal Ideas and organizing the earth's memories, by its images or by its image-making faculty, into particular entities. Finally, the activity of these entities, that is, their life functioning which is left behind as memories in the imaginal essence. And furthermore, the totality of these images can be thought of as the subconscious, an intelligence so vast that an individual's intellect is nothing in comparison.

A selection from that totality or a specific combination of those degrees will constitute a specific psychosomatic individuality, in other words, a unique person, which will provide the soul with a body that his karma entitles him to. This is indicated at the moment of birth by the position of the planets, because each of the cosmocrators represents a certain gnostic and fabricative power of the cosmic soul to which the individual soul is conjoined. That peculiar quality of energy of that moment is imparted to the individual psychosomatic organism and results in the categories of the imagination, so that something of the intellectual nature of the mind is transmitted into that entity or into that functional but adventitious unity, i.e., the ego.

At the moment of birth, the precise aspectual relationship between the planets, signs, houses, and degrees indicates the exact relationship of the degrees to one another through the medium of the soul powers and vice versa the relationship of the soul powers to each other through the medium of the degrees. The powers of the soul leave traces behind of their functioning, indicated by the way that this ego is organized. These powers are reduplicated in that organism as psychological functions of knowing and categories of the imagination.

We are gradually approaching an understanding of how the ego is a thought made of memories, the stuff of dreams, but nonetheless reflects all of these principles that we have spoken of, for included in its subconscious is the totality of the memories of the Earth. The specificity of this individual ego refers to the significances that are attached to the functioning of its tropes. This ego will be used as a vehicle by an individual soul, whose knowledge and consciousness will be unfolded through the resulting interaction of the soul and its vehicle.

The process by which the individual soul or the I AM as embodied becomes more conscious would be by and through the power of combining in innumerable ways the significances or meanings that are attached to these tropes and thereby this I AM or the individual soul is creating the necessary concepts by which it can understand that which the intellectual part of its mind has created and then reflectively judging the object. It then could become scientific when there is a conformity of these concepts with the prior activity of the intuitive mind. That is, we could say that the mind is trying to understand through the psychosomatic organism that which its own prior activity has created.

What must be recognized and clearly understood is that the activity of reflective thought is within the Dragon. We are in effect combining those meanings and significances which are attached to the tropes and manipulating them, creating concepts of understanding to grasp the object. The compulsiveness of these significances can and does predetermine that understanding to such an extent that the meanings are then the presuppositions of our psychological experience. Insofar as the ego is constituted by these presuppositions and its life a gesture or manifestation of them, it is difficult to see how we can arrive at the formulation of a doctrine of Truth.

It is at this point that the full import of being in a cul-de-sac arises. The way out is shown to us in the Platonic teachings that attempt to disentangle the reason-principles, which the images embody, or in other words, what Idea the images are embodying. The great philosophic thinkers pierce through the images to the reason-principles directly. This is intelligible intuition without the use of any intermediaries and is not of a conceptual nature, does not rely on the language of the Dragon. Those who are not free from the compulsive intensity of these images do not have access to this intelligible truth.

The rich storehouse of information that the horoscope contains can be a source of spiritual and metaphysical knowledge that could inspire and enrich our lives, for in this mysterious way the transcendental is included or is immanent in the empirical. Perhaps in delineating the chart of well-known writers whose lives are well documented, we could, through a post-mortem astrological analysis, illustrate something of what is meant by the famous dictum that "We do not have ideas, rather they have us"--or--"What superior beings think, we must perceive."

So we must begin by reminding our readers that in the degree symbolism there is inextricably buried a hierarchy of meanings, that is, significances that are attached to the tropes functioning. At the moment of birth, the planets are conjunct with certain of those degrees so that we have at one and the same time an aspectual relationship between all the planets and between the degrees they are conjunct with and one another. As friends of the Ideas, we must point out that at the very origin at birth, this entity is already endowed with meanings that will be manifest in the course of the person's life.

These cosmocrators, which are powers of the World-Soul to which our mind is conjoined, will organize the tropes into a body of imagination. This entity then will have seven ways of functioning and four ways of knowing, each bearing the impress of the cosmocrator, resulting in a category of the imagination or a psychological way of knowing. That is, the result will be different ways that this entity of imagination can function and know. By "body" we mean here the grouping together of these tropes, and by "psyche" we mean the functioning of the categories of the imagination. This is the psychosomatic organism that is imitative being and includes within itself traces of the Ideas.

In the chart a planet conjunct a degree indicates, on the one hand, how that function is influenced by the trope, and on the other hand, how that planet will manifest the significances within the trope.

If we think, in the case of Santayana's chart, of the Sun at 25 degrees Sagittarius in the fifth house, and we attempt an analysis by pointing out that the Sun as a category of the imagination is the restriction of life to this central meaning or idea, that is, the principle that will individualize this life, the central purpose, Sun, is indicated by the degree that is in fact an idea that has been left behind as part of the earth's memory, the procedure we have to follow, and it must be elaborated, is to take each planet, correlate it with the category of the imagination, and situate it in the specific house and its relationship to that house; then the opposite degree and how it is the outward manifestation of that subjective functioning and also relate it to that opposite house, and then to integrate with all the others and try to show this as a functioning unity. Also, we can illustrate by this the law, the occult law, that what is within must get externalized or manifested and what is external must be internalized. After all this is done, then we can show how the soul, through its faculties of understanding, is creating the necessary concepts in order to understand the given, the World-Idea.

It can be shown that this understanding of the given, in all cases except the man liberated from his ego, could be traced back to those ideas which the categories of the imagination have manifested. It can also be shown that a deepening understanding accrues when the natal chart is making certain aspects with the transiting planets, and even further, that a vastly superior and universal consciousness can be transmitted through an individual soul particularizing itself within the system of tropes representing an individual entity.

If we continue retracing our steps on that upward path of that part of the Soul which is said to be divisible among bodies, we can further our understanding by pointing out the relationship that exists between the transiting Chaldean planets to the natal chart, or how that individual's greater mind is attempting to become aware of itself in the reflecting medium of the psychosomatic organism. The Soul must come to an understanding of itself through this organism that certainly has a phylogenetic and ontogenetic background, but nonetheless to which it is heir. It must take it upon itself in each incarnation to erase the interferences and distortions that intervene between the subtle image produced by the greater mind's functioning and its reflection in that empirical subject which is its vehicle, until finally the ego is subservient to the God within.

[Paper as read by AS in WG Class 1983 0513a Ends]