Astrology Revisited: Cosmic Influences on Human Life

As is the case in many aspects of life, "popular" astrology—with its zodiac signs, houses, cusps and retrograde planets—is a facile, and easily understood, system hinting at a deeper reality. Like religion, it seeks to reduce the infinite and unknowable to a set of simple rules and principles by which humanity might live in harmony with the cosmos. Rather than assembling a pantheon of gods—or a God—to influence human affairs, astrology proposes that planets, stars, and other celestial bodies determine personality traits at birth and sketch the likely events unfolding in the future. Thus popular astrology is imbued with a certain fatalism both as to personal psychology (your birth sign locks you into certain characteristics) and life events (which are foretold by the stars).

Natal Influences

The importance of the moment of birth has been vastly overstated in popular astrology. Since you swim in the cosmic soup from conception to death, choosing one particular moment as the "defining" one which marks you for life is simplistic at best. Still, the moment of conception and the time of birth can be pivotal points at which cosmic influences carry disproportionate effect.

Conception is significant because it is the moment when two cells—egg and sperm—fuse to forge potential new life. Until that moment, gametes are merely cast-off cells within their parent body; "cast-off" in the sense that they play no essential role in maintaining health. Their purpose is to beget the next generation, not to sustain the current one.

At the moment of conception, sperm and egg suddenly elevate their status from cast-offs to a new life form. The mother's body instantly knows conception has occurred and begins the all-encompassing shift to nourishing and sustaining the fetus. Larger influences also come into play, as souls hovering on the astral plane, searching for appropriate host mothers, become aware of a woman's pregnancy and evaluate her suitability. So conception, however private an event it may seem, generates ramifications at many levels.

The newly formed zygote has its own primary tasks: blending disparate genetic codes into a unique bodily template, multiplying its cells in a coordinated sequence, and entraining to the energies of its mother and her environs. This latter element is where cosmic influences may come into play. From the instant of conception—and until death—a living body seeks to entrain itself to its environment; to harmonize internal and external energies. This is especially crucial at conception, for a woman can be anywhere in the world—even on a boat at sea or soaring in the stratosphere—at conception. With some urgency, the zygote must entrain itself to its mother's environment as a means of stabilizing itself (since failure to stabilize often leads to spontaneous abortion).

Because the zygote urgently seeks stabilization, and because it is "wide open" to energetic influences from within and without its mother, any particularly strong cosmic influences can bear an impact. The moon, for instance, in its cyclical waxing and waning, offers a blend of stable and volatile energies. A new moon offers quiescent stability as its bedrock-flavored flow is not "excited" by the sun's random shower. A new moon therefore helps a zygote to stabilize and to "convince" it that the universe is a calm and ordered place; whereas a full moon's more volatile flow represents a chaotic, unstable universe. In very subtle ways, lunar influence can affect body consciousness for better or for ill and tip the balance between a stable, healthy body and one more susceptible to illness. Similarly, in the psychological realm, lunar influence may "tip the scale" between soundness and instability.

Another cosmic influence is the geometric relationships the Earth is involved in, either as direct participant or when simply floating through the fields of larger patterns. If such relationships are sympathetic, reinforcing the Earth's bedrock energies, they tend to enhance that stability. If the Earth passes through a phase of multiple discordant relationships (the cosmic precursor of the dysfunctional family), the Earth's energy is suffused with a theme of assault-and-defense and a general volatility. To the extent zygotes seek to entrain with the broader reaches of the universe, the degree of bedrock stability or cosmic disorder can influence the growing form toward equilibrium or imbalance.

It is important to note that these lunar and cosmic influences are, first, very subtle; and, second, bear influence only on zygotes experiencing difficulty in stabilizing. A zygote that from the moment of conception easily conflates its disparate genetic heritage and entrains to its mother is immune to external influence. Only an unstabilized zygote may—may—be imprinted with lunar/cosmic influence as it opens itself wide to universal energies, seeking to stabilize.

The single most significant effect is the relationship between sun and Earth. The Earth can only strive to protect itself from the fierce electromagnetic shower streaming from the sun; it cannot answer in kind. The side of the Earth facing the sun is more or less in the sun's grip; though deflecting some radiation through the atmosphere and absorbing some in its oceans, nonetheless the Earth's sunny side must passively absorb the solar shower. You rise with the sun not only because you see better in daylight, but because your body is stimulated to action by the sun's dynamic energies.

Thus, conception is more stable occurring at night than in daylight. There is a reason why you tend to feel romantic and sexual in the evening rather than at noon: by making love then, with conception occurring within a few hours, the zygote has the rest of the night, while the Earth is restored to its native bedrock energies, to stabilize and entrain to its mother and the Earth. This offers a quiescent and anchoring energy to the freshly minted form. Conception occurring during daylight is instead suffused with the clash between solar and earth energies and the theme of dominance/submission, a more volatile environment to which the zygote must entrain.

How significant are these influences? Very subtle. They are nuances, shadings and hues gently tinting the potential body, still blending its genetic codes and multiplying them into cells. They are more significant where there is greater difficulty in fusing two genetic backgrounds and stabilizing the zygote; where the parents are of different races, for instance, or come from different generations. As the genetic code is woven into a unique pattern within the zygote, a strong cosmic field of stable or volatile energy can influence, to a minor degree, the basic constitution of the body growing from that pattern, with ramifications for later health or infirmity, as well as basic personality traits.

Far more significant in forming the template of personality are the choices made by the higher self much further down the line. As a rule, no soul selects a fetus until at least the third month of pregnancy, as so many fetuses fail to survive to that threshold. Once a fetus passes that mark and appears viable, a soul can link with the fetus, blending its energies with the burgeoning form. Any cosmic or lunar influences on the fetal form would be noted by the soul and its higher self in selecting the fetus; and would be consonant with the personality and life themes planned for the life. In other words, the soul and higher self look for a fetus already bearing qualities consonant with the planned life theme, thereby reinforcing and building on any earlier cosmic or lunar influence. That influence is no more than a subtle background to the far more significant impact of the higher self.

For example, a higher self seeking an incarnation as a restless, rootless, rebellious iconoclast would do well to marry its consciousness to a form already suffused with volatility: where conception occurred at a sweltering noon followed by a full moon, all bathed in overlapping fields of discordant cosmic geometry. A higher self seeking to fashion a stable, ordinary lifetime would do better to find a fetus conceived in late evening under a new moon while the Earth floats through fields of cosmic concordance.

In addition, because making a boy is more complex than making a girl—since all fetuses begin as female and males must make a hormonally mediated switch to maleness—boys as a whole are more susceptible to volatile cosmic influences as they pass through the complex process of gender conversion. The "boy" genetic pattern is also more unstable than the "girl" pattern because girls have two X chromosomes, each of which can compensate for flaws in the other; whereas boys, carrying one X and a lesser Y chromosome, lack this genetic backup. The result of all this instability is that male fetuses are generally more susceptible to cosmic influences, and are more strongly imprinted by them, for better or for worse.

After conception, the second milestone in a developing life is the time of birth. Here the nature of cosmic influence differs: unlike conception, where the zygote seeks to entrain itself to its universe, by the time of birth a fetus knows full well where it lives. The issue here is that the transition from an aqueous existence of constant temperature and unbroken darkness to an atmospheric environment of varying temperature and bright lights, along with the loss of mother's comforting heartbeat, is profoundly disorienting. Having been expelled from its blissful warm cocoon—in a cataclysmic, torturous wrench—the neonatal body is almost desperate to regain its lost stability by entraining to its new environment. Cosmic energies are one ingredient in the vibrational stew the newborn struggles to open itself to and entrain with.

The same principles hold here as with conception: while cosmic influences are slight, a highly volatile, discordant pattern can exacerbate a tendency toward bodily instability and illness; a stable, soothing pattern helps quickly stabilize the body. In cases where the neonatal body is already somewhat unstable, cosmic influences can be strong enough to "tip the scales" one way or the other.

Cosmic Personalities

So far we have discussed the effect cosmic influences may have on the body. What about consciousness itself, though, as expressed through personality? Is this also open to cosmic influence?

To an extent, yes. Since the higher self sculpts personality traits into the body's energy fields while it floats in utero, a strong cosmic influence can subtly imprint those fields. Because the fundamental dynamic of any physical system is the tension between chaos and order, this manifests in personality terms as stabilizing or destabilizing effects. Traditional astrology often posits four main personality types aligned with the four elements: fiery, earthy, airy and watery signs. This has validity in that the tension between chaos and order is expressed in personality terms as the volcanic hotheads (fiery), the stable but dull (earthy), and those in between (airy and watery). Where a cosmic influence is particularly strong, or where the nascent personality template is unusually receptive to outside influence, cosmic energies can "tip the scales."

However subtle, the state of the cosmos always leaves an imprint in the personalities of those born at a given time. Because the body is an electromagnetic entity, exquisitely attuned to the state of its environment, it feels most alive and vitalized when cosmic conditions later match those extant during conception and birth. An extra "push" of vitalizing energy resonates within the body during such periods of cosmic consonance; one feels more at home in the world. Conversely, cosmic and lunar influences can grate and clash against the body's energy fields, making one feel out of sorts. It is well known that jails and asylums roil with turbulence during the full moon: naturally, for already unstable personalities are further destabilized by chaotic solar energy reflected in full measure by the moon.

The notion that cosmic influences mold personality at birth, or that they dictate life events, is simplistic fatalism. Cosmic influences are too subtle to wield such power. Nonetheless, they do subtly imprint themselves at conception and birth, and later affect one's overall feeling of comfort or discomfort as Earth passes through shifting phases of cosmic influence: life just "works" better when the cosmos is aligned with conditions similar to those extant at your conception and birth.

Excerpted from Spirit Wisdom II: The Enlightened Warrior's Guide to Personal and Cultural Transformation. Ramón Stevens has been publishing the material of Spirit Teacher Alexander for over 20 years; their collaboration has produced five books.
Website: www.alexandermaterial.com.