The Spark and the Vessel: An Examination of the Two Poles of Being

When my book By No Means Equal was being prepared for print the publisher emailed me to say that certain passages contained what he called "problematic concepts involving unsubstantiated derogatory claims aimed at targeted groups (women, people of colour, et al.)" which contravened their editorial policy, and that they wouldn't publish unless I removed them. The specific passages concerned nothing more offensive than there being fundamental differences between men and women but I had to provide justification for statements I had made on that score. I watered my remarks down a little as a result and didn't object to doing so as the general point remained. But what really swung the argument in my favour and persuaded them to keep the rewritten section was an addition I made pointing out that differences between the two sexes are clearly signposted in astrology. Astrology seemingly helped me in this matter where everyday observation and common sense could not.

So, here I want to examine how astrology supports the traditional view of masculine and feminine while contradicting the modern attitude that the two sexes are so-called social constructs which are essentially interchangeable. As we shall see, and as everyone knew until recently, there is a profound difference between them and it goes right back to the duality necessary for manifestation. 

Astrology is not primarily a predictive tool nor a system that describes psychological patterns though it is both of those. Its real power is as a symbolic description of how the universe works and that is how I will be looking at it here. At root, it is built upon a system of polarity and shows the primal cosmic duality required to differentiate and bring a universe into being. The two forces involved are opposite and complementary and in their most basic form they might be conceived of as the expanding and contracting energies of creation.

 In the architecture of the zodiac, the 360-degree wheel is divided by alternating currents of charge. This is the law of polarity which is what lies behind sexual difference in human beings and everywhere else.

First, there is the masculine principle of Fire and Air. This is the initiating and expanding force which moves outward from the centre, the source of the One Life, projecting energy, ideas, light and impulse into space. It is the archetype of the seed, the spark and the active intellect. It is God’s initiating impulse and his first movement away from the still core of being. In terms of the constellations of astrology it is represented by Aries, Gemini, Leo, Libra, Sagittarius and Aquarius.

But this force must be balanced or it could never settle into form. Therefore, we have a complementary principle which follows on from the first as its opposite which means the first comes first just as Adam came before Eve. 

In astrology the feminine principle relates to Earth and Water, capitalised because these are metaphysical realities of which the physical elements are simply correspondences in the lower world of base matter. Its constellations are Taurus, Cancer, Virgo, Scorpio, Capricorn and Pisces. This principle is the contracting and receptive force. It moves inward toward the centre, drawing energy in, containing it, incubating it and providing the matrix required for the idea to take form. It is the archetype of the soil, the womb and the deep waters. It is the reaction to the action. Without it the first action would never be grounded or limited and would simply be an endless explosion with nothing being formed.

Creation cannot take place if these forces are treated as like one another. If you have only expanding energy (Fire/Air), you have a chaotic explosion that can never form a body. If you have only contracting energy (Earth/Water), you have a static, inert mass that can never stir into life. Creation requires the tension of their difference but for any growth or development to take place, the first principle must drive the process and there must be a slight imbalance in that direction. Harmony does not mean equality or perfect symmetrical balance as it might in a purely mechanistic universe. If the second principle dominates there is retraction and collapse to the base state of chaos, but if the first does by just the right amount, then there is ordered growth.

Traditional astrology supports the view that the sexes, based on the cosmic principles they embody, are complementary, possessing equal spiritual value but having different functions. The masculine principle initiates the law and projects the vision above the horizon, the day part of the horoscope, while the feminine principle grounds the form and stabilises the energies below the horizon, the night part. The irony of feminism, which is the attempt to flatten this duality and declare the two forces essentially identical or interchangeable, is that it undermines the unique power of the receptive principle. It tries to force the contracting, incubating watery element to behave like a projecting fire-spark and by so doing so destroys the harmonious balance that is required to ground spiritual force from the higher planes. 

For order to prevail in the material world, the active impulse must precede the receptive form. This can be expressed by a metaphysical law which states that expansion must occur before contraction can give it boundary. If there is no initial outward projection, which means no vision, no law and no igniting spark, then the feminine force has nothing to contract around and will remain a vacuum. Always in the sequence of manifestation, the expanding masculine force comes first and the feminine responds to that.

This response has traditionally been expressed in terms of submission and while, from the standpoint of metaphysics, it true that the feminine impulse must submit to the masculine, this submission is not a purely passive thing. It acts as the necessary wall of containment and resistance and so has its own strength and power. You might say the vessel must be strong enough to contain the burst of fiery energy and hold it in a stable and coherent form.

Disorder and chaos follow if the polarities switch roles. This is what tradition knew and what the modern world has forgotten. If the contracting force tries to behave like an initiating spark or if the expanding force refuses to lead and collapses into passivity, the whole edifice and structure of being fails.

If the form-building force tries to act as the primary explorer or initiator without a higher guiding vision, it builds structures that are rigid, stagnant and devoid of life. 

Conversely, if the masculine spark does not first project and then maintain the law, the created space becomes disorganised and chaotic. Harmony prevails only when the active and receptive forces are faithful to their nature.

I'm talking about this in terms of energies and forces as though it were simply a matter of cold, impersonal mechanics, but that is to make a point. I suspect that behind these forces there are actual beings, angels perhaps, and that the root reality of man and woman really is Man and Woman.

To be continued.

Robert Fludd Image part 3

At the top of the picture emerging from the cloud of unmanifested spirit there is a hand. This is where the One commits its first act that will lead to the creation of the universe and the generation of the many. 

Pure spirit (the Tetragrammaton inside the cloud) is completely homogeneous, absolute, with no shape, boundaries or dimensions. But a cloud of itself cannot act and the emerging hand is the concrete symbol of its power of agency, direction and execution. A hand gives but it can also hold and enclose, all qualities needed to make a universe. The hand signifies the Logos in action and the point where the formless Supreme Masculine Principle purposefully steps down its own infinite frequency to create the dualistic universe. It is the unmanifested Father projecting an active instrument of Will so that the cosmic plan can be executed.

The hand acts as the initial stepping-stone into form. While it is fully part of the divine cloud, it possesses a distinct shape. By reaching out of the formless void to grip the chain that is the link to the lower worlds, the hand demonstrates that the higher planes must take on the clothing of form to govern the lower worlds. 

In the image the process goes like this. The Hand of God binds formless spirit into the chain of manifested being and sends it down the vertical axis to the Anima Mundi who uses it, the life in it, to form the worlds.

The descending hand is a refutation of the position of the Gnostics, strict non-dualists and advaita enthusiasts because it shows that form, maya, is not an illusion or aberration but the instrument of God through which he works to bring about the multiplication of his being and the expression of his glory in the worlds of time and space.

I said in the previous post that we would explore how Fludd depicts the Trinity in his image. We should now be able to see that this hand represents Christ as the Logos, the first manifestation of form emerging from the formless Father.

The opening of St John's Gospel states that "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... All things were made through Him." Fludd’s engraving translates this text into visual form showing Christ as the Hand of the Father. For creation to happen, the Hidden God of the cloud must project an active, relational and creative aspect of himself. This is the Son, and the hand emerging from the cloud depicts the action of the Logos. Christ is referred to as the Right Hand of the Father, the instrument of Divine Will, and that is precisely what we see here.

But, Christ is not just the hand. He is also that which the hand holds, the vertical chain that descends from the hand down to the wrist of the Anima Mundi, and then from her down to the Earth. Christ, the Son, is the universal Mediator and the bridge that links the absolute of unmanifested Spirit, the Father, to the dense matrix of physical matter, the Mother.

The perverted ideology of modernity with its rejection of transcendence and collapse of everything to the horizontal reduces Christ, when it bothers with him at all, to an egalitarian social teacher. Fludd’s map shows the much deeper reality. Christ stands for and is the peak of the sacred hierarchy. He is the begotten not created Son of God who enters the world of matter acting as the vertical axis that upholds the entire cosmos.

So far we have seen in this picture the presence of the Father as the cloud and the Son as the hand. The Magna Mater, who is the divine form of the Virgin Mary and Queen of Heaven, is obviously present and it just remains to show how the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, is depicted.

In Christian theology, the Holy Spirit is the divine breath that spreads through all creation from the transcendent above to the immanent below. When we examine Fludd's cosmological map, we see it revealed in the great burst of light radiating outward from the cloud in all directions. This is God as the Divine Fire and Light acting as the immediate agent of creation. The Father wills the plan, the Son acts as the Logos or structural blueprint and the Holy Spirit is the active, vibrating light energy that carries that down into the planetary spheres where it takes a secondary manifestation as the radiation of the sun which has converted divine light into physical heat, life and vitality for the kingdoms below. Note the similarity of the light from the sun positioned in the planetary spheres with the light radiating from the cloud.

Thus, the Father is the hidden source that wills creation, the Son imagines it so that it can be given form by the Anima Mundi and the Holy Spirit is the radiant light-breath that fills the Anima Mundi from her starry crown down to the elemental earth with divine life. The Trinity does not passively sit outside of creation watching it. It surrounds and animates the entire structure of the world, all of which is shown by the light spreading down through the chain into the Anima Mundi and thence further down to the world. The hierarchical nature of creation is plainly on display, and each of the principal actors in the drama are shown performing their special tasks.

Is all this true? Yes and no. It is symbolically true but the reality will go far beyond what is captured here. Nonetheless, the basic pattern is here and meditation on Fludd's image should prove instructive, especially in its colorised version which I feel sure would have been approved of by Fludd had he known of its possibility.

Robert Fludd Image part 2

  Looking at the Fludd image again (this time in the original black and white), let us now examine the concentric rings that go out from the innermost terrestrial bands towards the cosmic rim.

 

The first section of rings immediately after the central globe are dedicated to the works of man as he translates natural laws into practical action, first of all in the mineral, then the vegetable then the animal kingdom where he corrects nature (metalcraft), assists nature (agriculture and medicine) and imitates nature (hunting and animal husbandry). We then reach the sphere of the liberal arts where man goes beyond working with physical matter to a more purely intellectual level. Even so, all this relates to the concrete mind and its operations.

 

The next sections relate to the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, and you might wonder why these come after the level of human work with nature since the further you travel out from the dense earth at the centre, the more refined and spiritual the spheres become until they reach the angelic host at the circumference so you would expect humanity to come after the three lower kingdoms. However, the idea is that the work of man lies below the work of God as it is an imitation of nature and not nature itself - hence the representation of man's activity by an ape. This means that the spheres of the three lower kingdoms are pure and holy in a way the human spheres are not as these latter belong to sub-creation rather than creation itself. Human art and science can only work with nature. It cannot create it. And so these levels are below the level of nature in and of itself in this scheme. Man is higher than mineral, vegetable and animal but his works are lower than the least of the works of God.

 

Having dealt with that we now come to the sublunary spheres, and this time you might question why there are only spheres of air and fire. This is because earth and water are already represented in the central globe where you can see them though you might have to blow the picture up a bit to do so. The tendency of these elements is to fall downward but air and fire are rising, active elements and so they have their spheres corresponding to the physical atmosphere and then an outer elemental ring of pure, unmanifested fire which is between the earth and the moon which we can imagine in spiritual terms as constituting a barrier between the material plane and the next world. These rings concern the mutable material world which is the world of generation and decay. After them we enter the celestial spheres.

 

These spheres that we now encounter are identified with the physical planets of the solar system, but they also relate to spiritual planes and states of consciousness. The interface between the sphere of fire and that of the Moon is a critical boundary between the mortal world and the spiritual. The Moon acts as a gateway separating the lower elements from the higher heavens. We might see it as the astral plane or the lower levels of that plane with the spheres belonging to Mercury and Venus governing higher realms that relate to intellect and beauty in their primal or pre-material forms.

 

We then reach the Sun which is the visible heart-centre of the solar system and the physical manifestation of God in the material world. The Sun is where spirit and matter are in perfect balance and acts as a reflector of the uncreated divine light. Proceeding onwards, we travel through Mars and Jupiter which we considered in terms of their meaning for human development in the previous post, but here we may add that the cosmic principles they hold and transmit are dynamic force and divine justice. Mars is the active energy needed to drive creation and Jupiter is the order that governs and directs that energy with wisdom and benevolence. Finally, there is the final planetary boundary—the ring-pass-not of time, absolute law, and strict structure which is Saturn.

 

Directly above the orbit of Saturn lies the sphere of the fixed stars where the Zodiac would be though Fludd does not depict that here, and then you have the Supercelestial Empyrean with three rings of angelic hierarchies representing the nine choirs of angels from Principalities, Archangels and angels to Dominions, Virtues and Powers and on to the highest rank of Cherubim, Seraphim and Thrones who are the nearest to God.

 

When this image was designed in 1617 the outer planets had not been discovered so it is tempting to speculate how they might fit into Fludd’s overall scenario if he had known of their existence. In fact, we find they do not disrupt his scheme but fill it out to bring greater detail and more spiritual understanding. Here’s how.

 

 In 1617 astronomy only knew of the seven visible planets, with Saturn being the outermost physical limit of time, boundary and law. If we integrate the modern transpersonal planets of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto into this metaphysical framework, we must put them between Saturn and the fixed stars, and when we do we find that they function as the direct mechanisms of a more advanced pattern of soul progression as befits the idea that the consciousness of humanity is evolving.

 

Saturn represents the strict law that limits human ego-consciousness. He is the Lord of Karma, ensuring we reap what we sew. Incorporating Uranus in the sphere beyond him sheds new light on spiritual evolution for Uranus is the planet of sudden breakthroughs and the higher mind, it represents the inspiration that takes you beyond worldly understanding. Once a soul has mastered the lessons of Saturn by achieving a certain degree of spiritual discipline, stabilisation and focus, Uranus comes as the revolutionary force that shatters the rigidity of the lower personality with lightning flashes of illumination. To an unprepared human vessel, it can destabilise and inflate but to one that has absorbed the discipline and humility of the school of Saturn it can open up new fields of consciousness with its energies of liberation and disruption of a convention that may have become stagnant.

 

As Uranus can be seen as the higher octave of Mercury, thought taken beyond the personal, so Neptune bears the same relation to Venus. This mystical planet represents universal love and the dissolution of boundaries, specifically those of the ego. In the Fludd (a very Neptunian name!) image, Neptune would fit where the starry firmament meets the World Soul. Spiritually speaking, it softens and dissolves the hard boundaries of the concrete mind, allowing individual consciousness to merge into the Anima Mundi, and attuning the mind to the timeless wisdom of the higher planes.

 

But there is more to come and that is Pluto, who shows that blissful mysticism is not the end of the path.

 

Pluto is the planet of death and rebirth, and it would be positioned at the outermost edge of the manifest cosmos where the starry zodiac meets the concentric choirs of the Angelic Hierarchy. The spiritual function of Pluto is the final, irreversible purging of the soul. In esoteric terms, it is the divine force that destroys the separate self, even in its most elevated and ‘spiritual’ form to prepare the soul to become one with the unmanifest light.

 

 These planets will, perforce, be present in the horoscopes of all human beings but most of humanity cannot yet respond to their true, what you might call, high-voltage spiritual frequencies. Instead, the unawakened personalities of ordinary humanity not yet on the path to God act like uninsulated wires that reduce the transpersonal energies of the outer planets into lower, materialistic or basic psychological echoes. Even the highest spiritual energy, love, for instance, if one can call love an energy, has a lower counterpart.

 

Uranus, which in its pure form corresponds to the higher mind, telepathic impression and alignment with the order of the cosmos, may when manifesting not on the vertical axis but the horizontal one of earthbound humanity appear as eccentricity, the revolutionary impulse or an obsession with technology. Neptune, which is universal love, intuition and mystical communion in its true form, may descend to escapism, sentimentality, formless mysticism and even drug addiction. The unevolved Uranian may be a rebel for the sake of it. The corresponding Neptunian may be subject to all manner of glamours and delusions as he indulges in feeling without discrimination, detachment or thought. As for Pluto, this represents the most powerful aspect of God, that of the Will with its ruthless task of shattering lower forms to enable the life within to grow. When unaligned to proper spiritual understanding and not guided by love, this may appear as the simple desire to dominate and control.

 

The lower response comes because the person for whom the planet may be strong in their chart has not yet subjected himself to proper spiritual discipline or evolved the purity of motivation to aspire to the soul and beyond. So, he responds to the energy but in a way that steps it down to his level where it takes a distorted form. The lower ego translates the energy into the only language it understands, that of personal emotion, material appetite and worldly power and survival.

 

If Robert Fludd were alive today to update his image, the outer planets would be drawn between Saturn and the fixed stars and would be included in the steps leading to the gateway to the heavens. They represent the higher-dimensional stepping-stones that human evolution has grown into since 1617. They embody the forces that an individual is required to master to lift his consciousness directly up the vertical chain, transforming him eventually into a divine son of the Father. 

 

The third and last part of this examination of Fludd's Integrae Naturae Speculum will look at how the Holy Trinity is represented. 

 

Robert Fludd and the Mirror of Nature

  One of my favourite images is Robert Fludd’s engraving Integrae Naturae Speculum Artisque Imago (The Mirror of Whole Nature and the Image of Art) which comes from his book Utriusque Cosmi.... or Metaphysical History of the Two Worlds which was published between 1617 and 1621. The two worlds are macrocosm and microcosm, the universe and man. Here is that famous picture in a colourised version which may appal the purists but helps to identify detail.

One is first of all struck by the female figure. She is clearly not the Virgin Mary, the usual feminine figure in Western religious art so who is she? Here I would like to examine just who and what she is, and use that as a jumping off point to look at the rest of the image in terms of the masculine and feminine poles of being because it sums up just what these are better than anything else I know. 

The image is a visual representation of the hierarchical nature of the manifested cosmos, and it shows the twin polarities of being as they are expressed in the field of creation. Here we have clearly delineated the metaphysical structure and relationship of the Transcendent Father (Spirit), the Immanent Mother (Matter), and the human being in a precise cosmic map.

There are three levels of this cosmic layout. At the apex of the vertical axis sits the Tetragrammaton (the Name of God), surrounded by a dark cloud radiating pure, unconditioned light. This is the Transcendent Source or Unmanifested Pole which represents the supreme masculine principle—the self-existent, independent root of being that sits outside and above the concentric circles of the manifested universe. It includes the formless Logos and originating Will that has its being entirely in itself.

Descending from the divine cloud is a vertical chain held by the hand of God. This chain is attached to the right wrist of a cosmic woman crowned with stars. She is the anima mundi or soul of the world who stands spanning the earthly and celestial spheres, and she represents the Immanent Feminine Principle or Nature in her universal aspect. She is not the self-existent source but the contingent reflection. Her posture embodies the sacred sequence of submission and containment. Her right hand, the vertical link, is passively raised and chained to the Transcendent Father, showing that she derives her being, authority, and life-spark directly from the vertical axis. Her left hand, which is the down stepping conduit, holds a second chain that descends to the arm of a small monkey who sits on top of the central terrestrial globe. This monkey represents human art and intellect.

Nature acts as the cosmic transformer. She takes the formless fire of the Father and uses her macrocosmic body which includes the nested concentric rings of the elements, planets, and stars, for all this emanates from her body, to shape, contain and crystallise that power of the Father into an ordered material reality. His word shapes her substance.

 At the centre of the image is the Earth, the dense and lowest point of the horizontal plane which is where the light that flows down from the Father and through the receptive womb of Mother Nature reaches the physical world. When that hierarchy is respected order and harmony prevail, but when it is neglected then disorder makes an appearance because the sacred has been disrupted.

Fludd's engraving is a pictorial rejection of modern horizontal and egalitarian materialistic flattening. It demonstrates that the vertical axis must hold structural superiority because it is the thread that keeps the material worlds from collapsing into a chaotic vacuum. Mother Nature does not try to usurp the position of the cloud. She honours her duty as the divine vessel, ensuring that the self-existent, primary law of the transcendent Father is properly held, shaped, and anchored into the fabric of space and time.

 Moving from the terrestrial centre toward the outer rim, Fludd lays out the geocentric planetary rings from the Moon to Saturn. In spiritual terms these spheres are not just the physical planets, they are the cosmic transformers of the Anima Mundi. As the supernal light of the Father comes down the vertical axis, it passes through each planetary ring, each one of which acts as a filter, slowing down the frequency, imprinting it with a specific vibration, and stepping it down so that it does not vaporise physical matter.

Likewise, for the individual soul undergoing the training of the Masters, these spheres represent initiatory checkpoints. To return home along the vertical axis, the consciousness must climb back up through these rings and pass the tests of the emotional vehicle (Moon), master analytical discrimination (Mercury), transform desire into love (Venus), achieve integration of the heart and spiritual sovereignty (Sun), understand how to use strength and the will in service rather than for self (Mars), learn wisdom, benevolence and justice (Jupiter) and endure the structural discipline, restrictive pressure and final humility of the boundary line (Saturn). The planetary spheres ensure that the path of return is an orderly, geometric ascent, preventing the soul from dissolving into chaotic, unstructured mysticism.

At the apex of the vertical column, inside the radiant cloud, sits the Tetragrammaton representing the First Person of the Trinity, the source of Will and Power that commands time, space and phenomenal being into existence.

Fludd and his engraver/publisher Johann Theodor de Bry demonstrate visually that the First Person cannot touch the lower three worlds directly. He remains enclosed within the sacred cloud of unmanifested positivity. His being and energy must be funnelled down the vertical chain into the wrist of the Feminine Principle or Nature who acts as the primary transformer to hold, shape, and distribute the power of God through the cosmos.

At the centre of the image, sitting on top of the terrestrial globe (Animalia, Vegetabilia, Mineralia), the small monkey holds a compass which Fludd calls Art mimicking Nature. The monkey is man and the compass stands for his creative work as expressed through the divine order of geometry. Without that compass and the higher connection it symbolises as it measures divine law into concrete form the work of man becomes destructive because it is separated from the source.

In Western esoteric thought the Anima Mundi is not an abstract concept. She is the universal being that bridges the gap between unmanifested Spirit and physical Matter, and, as such, the intermediary between the pure spirit of God in the formless cloud and the material world. She mediates his energy so that it can manifest on lower levels, and this is shown by the fact that her head touches the starry heavens while her feet rest upon the earth thereby connecting the top of the hierarchy of manifestation with the bottom. Her right hand and upper body are aligned with the heavens, chained to the unmanifested Source, showing her essence to be purely spiritual and deriving its light and life-spark directly from the Father. At the same time, as the mother of the physical world, her lower body and womb are positioned over the terrestrial spheres. She takes the formless spiritual fire of the Father and translates it into the concentric rings of the elements and planets, so organising the physical laws of nature.

When all is said and done everything is spirit. We may think of the unmanifested source as like vapour—pure, unconditioned, formless Spirit. This is stepped down to the Anima Mundi where this spirit becomes like flowing water. The Anima Mundi is the intermediate matrix that catches the vapour and carries the divine blueprints from the Logos through space to the etheric and astral planes, the fluid, psychic, and energetic levels of being where substance is not yet locked into rigid shapes but highly mobile, permeable, and constantly flowing.

We then come to physical matter where originating spirit has become like solid ice. It is not a different substance than the water; it is simply the water itself brought down to its lowest possible temperature and frozen into a dense, rigid structure which includes our familiar solids, liquids and gases, the final crystallisation of the cosmic substance. It is the time-bound realm of rigid boundaries.
The etheric plane holds the invisible, energetic grid or template upon which the dense physical ice congeals. The astral plane holds the emotional desires and cosmic magnetism that draw the atomic particles together. The Anima Mundi catches the formless vapour of pure spirit descending down through the vertical chain and from her fluid water-matrix distributes the blueprints down into the physical world.

Therefore, matter is simply the outermost garment of the World Soul. Physical matter is universal spirit operating at its slowest, most dense, and highly crystallised vibrational frequency.

The Anima Mundi is the form-building matrix. She acts as the macrocosmic womb of manifestation and as such takes the formless ideas of the Divine Mind and spins them into form, first as etheric blueprints which then congeal into physical objects, plants, animals, minerals. Matter derives its being from her and is sustained by her life force.

Returning to the engraving, we see concentric rings branching upward and outward directly above the three foundational kingdoms of Mineralia, Vegetabilia, Animalia. These show how formless spirit is gradually crystallised into physical reality in the formation of the cosmos, and we will consider them in the next post.
 

Above Us The Stars

  It is often said that the stars incline but do not compel meaning the man lacking awareness is ruled by his stars but the aware man rules them. Then again, as I read recently, the stars do not bind the liberated man, but they do mark the average man, who is mostly driven by forces he mistakes for himself.

This is all true but only up to a point. The fact is that a person's birth chart does mark that person, saint or sinner, fool or wise. The pattern of the chart will be the pattern of the person. What does differ is how the subject responds to the pattern. There will have been someone born at the same time as the Buddha but he will not have become enlightened. Someone born at the time of JS Bach will not even have been musical. The chart will determine the form a personality takes but it does not determine the quality of consciousness the person brings to bear in expressing that form. Otherwise put, it shows the personality but not the soul behind that personality. And yet even the highest soul is obliged to follow the pattern of the chart in expressing himself on Earth.

Take a simple aspect like the Sun conjunction Mars. A person can either respond to this by becoming an aggressive bully, a highly competitive sportsman or a valiant warrior for truth. And all shades in between. The aspect shows force allied to the self and can be expressed in a multitude of different ways though all with the same basic signature of strength and purpose. This is the case for every astrological configuration whether in sign, house or by aspect. There is always a higher and lower way to respond to the energy involved. 

Take squares, for instance. This is a 90 degree aspect between two planets or points in the chart. They are traditionally regarded as hard aspects because the points involved do not pull in the same direction so creating psychological friction or difficulty. For an unevolved person this aspect might express itself negatively but for someone who is more self-aware, meaning aware of the deeper currents of life and not just reacting to inner urges without reflection, they can be a catalyst for growth. Such a person does not respond to the resultant pressure by blowing off steam but by using the energy that ensues from the clash between two conflicting principles creatively.

The transpersonal planets of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto will affect everyone, and presumably even did before their discovery though probably in a more veiled manner then. The discovery of these planets did coincide with changes in human consciousness, most obvious in terms of Uranus, discovered by William Herschel in Bath in 1781 and heralding the Enlightenment, revolution and maybe even the capture and use of electricity. But Neptune in 1846 and Pluto in 1930 also prompted/coincided with radical changes. These planets are called transpersonal because they are generally perceived as having a collective rather than an individual influence, but if they hit other planets or important angles in a chart they will certainly have an impact. 

What that impact is depends on the consciousness of the individual. Uranus can lead to erratic individualism and a rebellious streak or innovation and even genius. It can be the lightning bolt of inspiration or the crazy radical. Neptune can cause dreamy mysticism, inspired art, deep spirituality or even drug addiction, all linked by the dissolution of boundaries which can have a transcendent or a destructive effect, again depending on the quality of consciousness or the soul behind the chart. As for Pluto, he was the god of the underworld and he represents what is hidden beneath the surface and that includes death but also its other side of rebirth. Incidentally, these planets were all well-named because their god forms really do encapsulate their energies. Make of that what you will. I believe there was divine purpose behind it.  

Sapiens dominabitur astris.  "The wise man will master the stars." This was the medieval maxim that summed up the idea that although the stars (really the planets) did influence the unconscious man, the conscious man could dominate them because while the stars certainly did influence everything in the lower worlds, all of which expressed their patterns, free will is paramount. And this is true. Free will is paramount. It is why we are here. Its exercise is how we grow. Nevertheless, the stars will determine the form that the personality of even the wise man takes. Where free will comes in is that he can choose to express the higher pattern rather than the lower one, and also by overcoming what is negative within himself he can prevent that unresolved negativity from manifesting externally. But still the pattern of his birth chart will operate. He cannot escape that. He can only work within it but what he can do is choose how to express it. And is this so strange? It is the same with everything about us. We are born as the embodiment of a certain form and cannot change that (we really can't despite some modern ideologically-based denials of that truth). We can only manifest our form to its highest or lowest aspect and everything between those two extremes. It's the same with the birth chart which shows our astral genetics.