This series covers events from 01/03/1983 - 03/11/1983

This series uses Plotinian principles and the astrological symbolism of the “metaphysical chart” that was developed in prior classes to explore various ways of understanding Plato’s Divided Line (see Republic 507a-511e), and uses the Divided Line, in turn, to illuminate the principles of mundane astrology.

The conventional interpretation of the Divided Line is that it divides the knowable into the intelligible and the sensible, and then further divides each realm into two sections. The sensible is divided into images and that of which the images are likenesses, and the intelligible is divided into what can be known using arbitrary starting points, or assumptions, and what can be known without any assumptions. And the soul has four gnostic powers, each one capable of knowing the domain appropriate to it: conjecture, belief, reasoning, and intellection, corresponding to the four sections of the Divided Line, as one moves from the lowest end of the Line to the highest.

Damiani’s first point is that before the Line is divided, it is one undivided line, which means that “knowledge is eternal continuous knowledge. It is never broken up. It is our understanding of it that's broken up.”

But the fourfold nature of the Divided Line lends itself to many different interpretations. For example, the highest level might refer to the Ideas in the Intellectual-Principle (second quadrant of the metaphysical chart), the next level down to the Universal Soul’s reception of these Ideas in terms of the forms in Soul (third quadrant), the next level to a Cosmic Soul’s elaboration of the Universal Soul’s tentative illumination of matter (fourth quadrant), and the last level to the sensible universe (house 12).

Or the entirety of the Divided Line might be viewed as within the sensible universe (house 12), with its four levels corresponding to (a) the Ideas beyond the inerratic Sphere (Jupiter in Pisces, rulership), (b) the inerratic sphere (Venus in Pisces, exaltation), (c) the planetary spheres (Mercury in Pisces, Nature detriment), and (d) the sublunary world (Mercury in Pisces, fall).

Or alternatively, the four sections of the Divided Line in house 12, from the highest to the lowest sections, might refer to (a) the 360 degrees of the celestial zodiac, (b) the gnostic functions of the planetary spheres, (c) the fabricative functions of the planetary spheres, and (d) the sublunary world of the Dragon, the Earth’s memories, and the realm in which we find the natal chart of an individual.

Still another interpretation explored in this series is that the two upper sections of the Divided Line refer to the duality-in-unity of the Intellectual-Principle, Being and Knowing, where both sections are coordinate with each other. The highest section of the Line corresponds to Being, or the Ideas, and the third section to the power to know, or Truth. Using the metaphysical chart, Damiani maps the Ideas (represented by houses 4-6) to the highest section of the Line and the power to know (represented by the rulerships of the second quadrant) to the third section. The soul’s power to know the objects of the Divided Line itself forms a distinct Line, which can be pictured below the first Divided Line.

Damiani suggests thinking of the third section (the power to know) as Being, Life, and Intellect, or alternatively, as abiding, proceeding, and returning, with the caveat that nothing has left the Intellectual-Principle. This triad might serve as the paradigm for the higher knower in the soul, represented astrologically by the trans-Saturnian planets—Pluto, Neptune, and Uranus. Being (abiding, turiya-prajna) is the paradigm for Pluto (willing); Life (proceeding, the Ideas of houses 4-6) is the paradigm for Neptune (feeling); Intellect (returning, the rulerships of houses 4-6) is the paradigm for Uranus (knowing).

There is also extensive discussion of the lower half of the Divided Line. The second section (the objects of belief) might refer to the cosmic soul’s mental projection of the universe. Insofar that all the living creatures are being produced by the Cosmic Soul, each creature compulsively believes in its own existence and the existence of the objects it perceives. The belief is built in to the creature by the power that is producing it. This explains why the second section of the Line is correlated with belief (pistis). Through repeated experience of being embodied and being made to believe in their individuality, souls are being taught to individuate themselves.

This series also investigates the theoretical foundations of astrological aspects, including quintiles and septiles. Several methods of deriving the aspects are explored. One approach is to inscribe polygons within a circle—inscribing an equilateral triangle, for instance, generates a 120-degree angle, giving us the trine aspect; inscribing a hexagon generates a 60-degree angle, giving us the sextile. Another approach derives aspects from the angles formed between the houses of the twelvefold circle and the first house—house 3, for example, forms a 60-degree sextile to house 1.

The house-based approach generates the five major aspects, along with the semisextile and quincunx, and corresponds to the third section of the Divided Line, where Number is a force that unfolds the Ideas in the Intellectual-Principle. The polygon approach, by contrast, generates the same five major aspects along with quintiles and septiles, and pertains not to this unfoldment itself but to the way the soul grasps this power to know—that is, the soul’s gnostic function of dianoia. Quintiles and septiles thus serve as channels through which something of the knowledge of the World-Idea flows into the individual soul.

Classes and documents available in this series