This series covers events from 05/06/1983 - 09/05/1983

This four-part series of classes explores "the Dragon"—Anthony Damiani's term for the Earth's vast storehouse of memories, or "tropes" (traces of life experiences), accumulated from the experiences of all living creatures on Earth.

Drawing from Plotinus, Vedantic philosophy, and astrological symbolism, the series develops a three-tiered cosmological framework in which to situate the Dragonic realm: Platonic Ideas in the inerratic sphere, the cosmic soul's reason-principles in the planetary spheres, and the realm of memory traces in the Earth’s aura.

Our individual psychosomatic organisms are constructed out of these memories held by the Earth Mind, and since these memories are the result of previous modes of functioning, they have a strong tendency to continue operating as they had in the past. These tropes (our natal degrees) thus predetermine how the world will appear to us, as well as how we will function in the world.

Through extensive analysis of Gandhi's natal chart, with brief examples from Nietzsche and others, Damiani demonstrates how each zodiacal degree contains a "homogeneous hierarchy of meanings" spanning all three levels, with natal planets on specific zodiacal degrees representing soul powers operating through specific tropes that structure an individual’s presuppositions. To grasp the depth of meaning in these degrees, conceive them as being like myths, which are “exemplary” and “creative.”

The central epistemological problem is how souls can achieve genuine knowledge when incarnated in bodies made of tropes that have such compulsive power. Damiani shows that most philosophers express in their philosophies only the meaning of their natal degrees rather than authentic knowledge.

To free ourselves from this conditioning, we must understand impersonally the tropes that constitute us as psychosomatic beings. This is what is meant by “burning up” our samskaras; they then lose their power over us and we can function with the soul’s understanding of the reason-principles that formed the phenomenal object in the first place. Concomitantly, the tropes are transformed through the way we live them out. In each life, the soul chooses a body whose tropes are appropriate to its level of understanding, and over many incarnations our vehicles evolve to facilitate ever deeper levels of understanding.

Classes and documents available in this series