The Aquarian Age web is jam-packed with information on the constellations. Websites provide detailed accounts of their locations and histories. People are fascinated by the ancient sky-art that adorns the heavens, but are completely ignorant of its significance. They’re unaware that the 48 constellated pictographs provide humanity with a spiritual treatise and come to life with the zodiac.
If you have ever watched an old ram lead his flock, each sheep never questioning his wisdom but following with utter confidence and certainty that he will show them the way to better pastures, you’ll know why a ram was selected to head the zodiac.
This Aries section covers 30 degrees and is divided into three 10-degree sub-sections, called decanates. Each decanate has a distinct influence, implying a distinct spiritual teaching, as set forth in the writing of pictographic symbolism by its corresponding ultra-zodiacal constellation.
The first decanate of Aries, the very beginning of the zodiac, is pictured by a triangle, and you might ask why a triangle? Why not some heroic figure like Perseus or Hercules, or even by one of the numerous animals with which the pictured heavens abound.
Well, if we are to believe that the ancient wise ones, who traced these figures in the stars were familiar with many great truths, and that each constellation was carefully chosen and given a place where it would best convey specific information, we must conclude that the placing of a triangle at the very beginning of the circle of decanates was prompted by the necessity of conveying some profound message and meaning.
Universal symbolism, a language which does not change with age, race or clime, is based upon common human experience. The picture or story chosen to convey an idea reveals its import through the associations which most readily come to the mind when the symbol is presented to it.
Triangles
Human nature in its essentials changes little with the ages and your first response to the word triangle is probably the same as that of bygone times. The domestic triangle is a favorite plot of stage and story, and a never-ending source of news headlines and neighborhood gossip. But in its more universal application, just what does such a triangle imply?
A domestic triangle embraces two forces acting upon a single center, yet pulling in different directions and the three sides of the constellated triangle express two united energies of a different polarity-motion and the result of that union. And while the domestic triangle, as suggested by the starry trine Triangulum, is a frequent occurrence, there is another of more common occurrence.
Father, mother and child are portrayed in the heavens, have positions of honor on both the tarot and the common playing cards, and represent the means by which nature reproduces and perpetuates a species.
The domestic triangle, suggested by the trine of heaven, reveals that the interaction of two forces, the diverse pull due to polarity, has a potency in either of two directions. It may either build up or tear down, be devoted to creation and construction, or turned into channels which disrupt and destroy.
Triangulum – the triangle – reveals a great truth
We might suppose that the start of the starry circle would find explanation in the universal symbolism of the commencement of some sacred work. And the first three verses of the Bible state: ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, let there be light; and there was light.’
Great scientific learning is possessed today but no better, nor more scientific, description of the bringing into existence of the material universe has ever been offered.
Many scientists now believe that stresses in the ether, aka upper regions of space or heavens, shear out right-hand and left-hand spirals of motion which as positive and negative charges of electricity form the protons and electrons of matter which is being created or destroyed out in space. And this is the same kind of matter of which our world is composed.
So, substituting the ether of science, in which matter is now being created or destroyed for heaven, and the matter sheared out of it, or formed in whatever way science finally decides, for the earth, and we possess two sides of the constellated triangle, and a Bible description of the beginning of physical existence which at every point is parallel to that of material science.
Until there was the stress of two forces, strains pulling the ether in diverse directions, our men of science say that existence was without form and void; and as light is a particular motion in the ether, there was darkness everywhere.
Cosmic rays, aka astroparticles or clusters of particles, resulting from the creation or destruction of matter, are invisible, as are many other waves in the ether, so when ether and matter, as heaven and earth, are given existence, darkness may still accompany these waves, moving upon the face of the deep.
Nevertheless, this interaction, or polarity, generates movement; in fact, no movement, physical, mental or spiritual, ever takes place apart from the union of positive and negative potencies.
Whether visible or not, when heaven and earth, positive and negative, ether and matter, are present there is action which is chiefly wave-like and not understood as to its exact nature and well described as the Spirit of God moving upon the face of the waters, the third side of the universal triangle.
However, when this energy reaches an intensity that causes the electrons revolving in given orbits about the nucleus of an atom to make big jumps from their accustomed orbits to other paths there is a spilling out of energy into the surrounding ether which sets up these wave-frequencies that we see and call light.
So, light, while not the only product of the first interaction of positive and negative forces that divided ether from matter, heaven from earth, was of paramount importance to human life.
To trace the universal application of this creative principle would be to encompass the entire realm of science, philosophy and the innumerable relations of life; for the first factors leading to every result are the union of the other two sides of the triangle.
Astrology and triangles
As our interest is in the signs, decanates and constellations, let us consider how they are located and measured: by triangles, of course. Distances along the zodiacal circle from the vernal equinox, and distances north and south of the celestial equator, in fact, all distances considered in astrology are measured and expressed in degrees of arc.
Such an arc is really one side of a triangle, the other two sides being the lines extending from its ends and meeting at the point of observation. The number of degrees east or west, north or south, either in the sky or on the surface of the earth, is merely an expression of the angle between the two lines which extend to the extremities of the third side of the triangle, which is an arc.
The science of spherical geometry and the science of trigonometry were both developed in olden times and made skilled use of by Hipparchus before the Christian era, to plot the stars and constellations and measure their relations one to the other.
The first measurements of time, and also of the positions of the Sun, were made by shadows cast by a stake upon the ground. By such shadows recorded at noon on the longest day and on the shortest day of the year, the Chinese, in 1100 BC, ascertained the inclination of the earth to the ecliptic.
The stake and the shadow on the ground formed the sides of a right-angled triangle, the hypothenuse being the line from the top of the stake to the end of the shadow. Measuring this angle at the two specified dates and dividing it by two, gave them the angular distance north and south of the equator of the tropic of Cancer and the tropic of Capricorn.
The astrolabe was invented to measure the angular elevation of stars and other bodies which do not cast a shadow; but it was a clumsy thing to use aboard a rolling ship so the sextant was developed from it as an aid to navigation.
Triangulation
Triangulation enters into all surveying of the earth and all plotting of the heavens; and any mariner who would venture far from land without an instrument by which they could locate their latitude, through the use of triangulation based on their observation of Sun or Moon or stars, would be deemed mad.
The measurement of angles — triangulation — is the first step in astronomical knowledge and astrological practice; and all the world’s great religions recognize the importance of the trinity at the beginning of everything. Father, Son and Holy Ghost of Christianity; Brahma, Vishnu, Siva of the Hindu faith; Osiris, Isis and Horus of ancient Egypt.
Creation involves a trinity, as does destruction. It is only when the union of contending or divergent factions is properly directed that true progress is attained.
According to this law, either within your mental conceptions or within our political systems, there must be some destruction of the old, worn tissues to give place for the sound and new. Ultra-conservatism and authoritarianism pull to the right and liberalism and progressive reform pull to the left, but if the old is destroyed too swiftly and completely, there is insufficient power for recovery.
If, according to ancient stellar teachings, a proper triangle is to be constructed, the best of each must be embodied in the third side to form true democracy.
And if the best is to be obtained in spiritual wisdom, the contention between blind faith and prejudiced materialism must be compromised by a knowledge of the physical world joined to a knowledge of the invisible realm and its forces.
Those born from March 21 to March 31, while the Sun is in the decanate pictured by Triangulum, are distinguished for their activity. And the starry triangle sets forth in its own symbolical language that: All life, thought and action are the product of the union of positive and negative potencies.
Astrology for Aquarius – sharing our knowledge
